Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Anna. She is the CEO of Embody.
It is a decentralized period tracking and women health app. So I have not come across perhaps such a wonderful use case in Web3 so far. And we’ve talked about in this particular conversation, we touched upon women’s health and real use cases in Web3 and how Embody is starting a larger conversation about privacy in this area of health in this day and age.
A very relevant conversation and very good pointers for other folks who are perhaps looking to build in this space. So I can’t wait for you to hear this. Let’s deep dive right in.
Hi, Anna. Thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? I’m good.
How are you doing, Tarusha? I’m doing wonderfully well. Thank you so much for asking. So, you know, for our listeners, we’d love to know how you got into Web3 and, you know, your journey is you are the CEO of Embody and how did you get to this point where you started creating and building Embody and what were you doing before that? And how did you get into Web3? Sure, I have a, it’s a long answer.
And it’s a bit of a convoluted story, but it’s also a fun one. Yeah. So I always tell people, I got into the Web3 space in 2014.
That was really the first time it became a part, a big part of my life. That was when I moved to Silicon Valley with my partner. Okay.
Who had Web3 company called Fold. And, but at the time I was a teacher. So I teach students with disabilities and I did that for 10 years.
And I did that in the Bay Area. But I think any founder knows that when, when you are founding a company, your family and friends become a big part of that because they become thought partners. And I read a study once that it was around 80% of CEOs admit that their partner plays a large role in the decision-making of their company, which I thought was kind of shocking, but at the same time resonated with my own experience.
Right, yeah. Yeah, so I learned a lot on that journey. We were in crypto quite early on and I’ve seen a lot of the rises and falls.
I felt that I was involved sometimes on the books doing menial work for the companies, but obviously with my own focus as a teacher. Right. But, you know, I knew what was going on.
I met a lot of people in the space. It felt like being where we were in Silicon Valley, I got to see a lot of the action and the changes in the crypto space over those really exciting years. But then I jumped in.
You took a leap of faith. I took a leap of faith and it was really recently. And it was kind of a unique way to jump in.
So background on me, I was diagnosed with a premenstrual disorder. So that’s a health condition that really appears ahead of when I start my period. And this was when I was 31.
So I am 30 now. So about five years ago. And my husband obviously was still in crypto running a company called Thesis, which builds freedom tech.
Okay. So projects on the blockchain related to preserving people’s rights and freedoms. Right.
At the same time, I was using a period tracker. I was learning about my menstrual health and my body. I learned things I hadn’t learned.
And a lot of us don’t learn until we have a problem with our cycles. Yeah, that is true. That’s very, very true.
I think that is something that I can say for most of my friends as well. You know, we really don’t look into things in that much detail until there is something wrong. That’s right.
Yes. And so I was learning. It was a huge unlock too.
It was like, oh my gosh, it was like learning about your circadian rhythm for the first time. It was just, you know, I learned a whole lot more about my body. I learned that there were four phases of the menstrual cycle and not just one.
Yeah. And I was in the United States at the same time, Roe v. Wade was overturned. So this, and I was in the state of Georgia.
So for context, that meant that women who were pregnant and wanted not to be, could no longer have an abortion after six weeks and could be prosecuted in the case of a suspected abortion. And security experts in this moment are saying, okay, delete every evidence of menstrual health you have online because things can get misconstrued. People can be subpoenaed and that data can be used against them in a court of law.
So, you know, I was using these tools, learning about my body. I was then told to delete these tools, which really weren’t great tools to begin with, I’ll be honest. And then, but they’re necessary.
It’s helpful to know, they let you track your symptoms, right? And let you know when your period will start. So you can really plan your life around them, but they’re no longer safe. So all of this was happening.
And at the same time, I was like, wait a second, we do not need to go back to using pencil and paper. There’s technology that exists that I know is safe. And there’s a big gap in the market.
You know, the tools, the period trackers we have available are not really providing the level of education and support that we need as menstruators. We have the right to have sophisticated tools just like everybody does for their workouts or their wellness and other aspects. We need a comprehensive menstrual wellness app that is safe for users using what we know about cryptography, right? So that’s the story of how I got in.
I thought, you know, I know how we can create this. And so I got together a proposal. My husband was like, I can’t be a part of this.
And he stepped back and he’s like, you’ll have to present to leadership. And so, because at that point I was co-owner of Thesis, which is a venture studio for Freedom Tech, right? And what they do is they take on projects that resonate with their values and mission and support them. It’s an incubator of sorts, right? So I present to leadership minus my husband and they really liked the idea and have been supporting us for a year now in this project.
So that’s an unconventional route into Web3, but I do feel like I’ve been a part of this world for a long time and I’m excited about where it’s going. Absolutely, and me both. I think, you know, I’ve been around in the Web3 space for a long time as well, very early days, when, you know, sometime in late 2011, 2012.
So I started off with a data center company and had all of this hardware basically, and we started mining. So it’s been quite a journey and the space is absolutely very exciting. But, you know, more part to you, like, you know, you really saw a problem and you went out and tried to solve it.
I think what you said, you know, just in the beginning, that we don’t really look into things until, you know, it gets close to home. And for you, it did. And that is how, you know, it kind of pushed you into creating something so important because this is something, you know, so I’m in a different continent, right? But the decisions and, you know, whatever the news that has been around women being denied the kind of healthcare that they perhaps need during pregnancy, you know, you’re aware of all of that.
And it’s very appalling to say the least, right? And that they can actually be, you know, prosecuted and persecuted because the data is available essentially. So now, you know, you’ve kind of brought decentralization into the picture. And I think it’s such a wonderful use case for this technology.
Considering, you know, your app is all about privacy and security in the realm of women’s health data. Can you give us like perhaps a specific example just for our listeners so that they can understand how the encryption and the decentralization actually protects their data in a real-world case scenario? Absolutely. So what makes us different from another period tracker, first of all, we are decentralized right now because we are local only at this moment.
So all of the data on your phone stays on your phone. It does not touch the cloud without your specific explicit consent. So, you know, having it locally on your phone is a way of being decentralized.
And then also another way in which we protect data is it’s locally encrypted on phones as well. So there’s a second layer of protection. Right now, we have users who are wanting a PIN.
So we’re setting up a situation where you’d have to have a PIN in order to access the data that’s already on your phone only. So, I mean, it is super, super secure at this point. And we intend to keep it that way.
What we believe strongly about is that our products will always be offline first, will always be local first, and people can opt in to connectivity. We believe that this is really, should be the standard for tech companies and apps, especially with important private health data. But, you know, that’s not the case.
So, but we are also looking at, you know, as we build analytics and have some deeper insights to provide our customers, they may opt in to a decentralized network. And then another feature that we are building, which I’m really excited about, is called InnerCircle. And this is a decentralized network for women.
And the portal into this network would be through our app. And this is just for you and five friends that you can invite who you know and trust already. You invite them to your InnerCircle, and you see where they are in their cycle.
You all receive a daily prompt with a local notification saying something like, on a scale of one to five, what’s your energy like today? Or have you had any cravings lately? Or when’s the last time you’ve cried in your car and why? And it’s just a touch point for friends. Talking with each other, right? And then also to talk about their symptoms as they relate to their cycle and get to see where they are in their cycle. Because a big part of what we’re doing within body is education, right? We learn from our friends the most, especially topics around like this.
And this helps you build your body literacy to see when people experience different symptoms at what point in their cycle. And you’re doing this in a safe context with trusted friends. So we’re really excited about this feature.
The questions are daily and they’re ephemeral. So just like Snapchat, they’ll disappear within 24 hours. But we’re really excited about building this.
Again, it’s like a very basic decentralized network for women, starting with a small network of five trusted friends and having it’s prompt-based and ephemeral. So definitely secure, kind of our first tap into DSoC. And I’m really, really excited about it.
Wow, excellent. You know, I do think that this is like a, this is such a wonderful use case and this is so pertinent. A, to have this data being stored in a decentralized manner so that women feel safe and secure to be able to perhaps track their moods and their cycle, which we, you and I perhaps know are really, really important for our, just the way we kind of lead our day-to-day lives.
And secondly, you’re creating this wonderful community which would help as well, because now in this day and age, everybody has become perhaps a little more distant from their friend circle. Not always, but you know, we find it hard to perhaps do like a daily catch-up and everybody’s busy. So, you know, just having this virtual community to rely on, I think that is something that I would sign up for in a different way.
So, you know, wonderful work there as well. That’s good to hear that you would sign up for it. I think it would be, you know, both fun and also just really, like I said, we’re social people.
We learn in small trusted groups and we can’t learn in an atmosphere of fear and knowing that. So, you know, one of the big questions we’ve had as a company with Embody is we want to talk to our users and our potential users about the problems that Embody is trying to solve. But there has not been a space online where I have found that the comfort level is enough that we can really have these deep, meaningful conversations that it’s not Facebook, it’s not Instagram, it’s not TikTok, it’s not Discord.
You know, we’re really looking for a safe space to have conversations about the tougher things that we’re facing and the very private things that we experience as women. So, yeah, I’m really excited about this community. I think it’s a very, very not format for us to learn in but we just need to create a safe one, right? Because it’s really not out there right now.
So what is perhaps the next big thing for you guys in terms of a milestone? Is it like getting some, onboarding some, you know, X number of users? What would be the next big milestone for you? Sure, yeah, so right now we’re in a closed beta and this was a choice we really wanted to work closely with our early supporters and make sure we’re building an app that people want. So we will be out of closed beta and moving into open beta. We just launched a new website and we’ll have access to the beta version of the app via app store buttons on our website in the next couple of weeks.
So before Thanksgiving, it’s gonna be an open beta and at that point we really will be looking at downloads and really pushing the growth pedal on ahead of our public launch, which will be in February or early March of 2024. So we’re, and we’re building, so we have a small team right now, it’s an all-female team. Myself, a developer in Sao Paulo, a product designer who is in the Netherlands and a growth person who is in New York.
We also have an advisor who’s a former Web3 founder and cycle coach who lives in Australia. And then we’re onboarding another part-time engineer to help us build out features. We met, all of us met in Atlanta a few weeks ago to really plan out exactly what we want based on user feedback and based on our vision for the, for our dream period app.
So we could really figure out what features we’re gonna tackle ahead of the public launch. And those have really been what I was talking about with the inner cycle. That’s one that we’re hoping to tackle before then.
But then the other component right now, like I said, we’re in open beta or in closed beta, excuse me, and we have an app that includes tracking in a safe way. So you can log your symptoms, you can say when your period is, it offers predictions. And it’s beginning to tell, to allow users to learn about the different, the four different phases of their cycle.
So we have a tab in our nav bar that says phases and you can go and learn about each phase of the cycle. What we’re gonna be doing in the next month, we have collected experts in different areas, including nutrition, fitness, relationship support, mental health, sleep. And there’s one I’m forgetting that’s really important.
I’m gonna come back to it, but we all, all of these experts are creating content. So it’s really, I think one way that resonates with men who are listening about this idea is it’s really biohacking for women, right? Right, yeah, absolutely. It’s learning different habits and practices that you can incorporate in your daily life to support your wellness based on different needs and different symptoms you experience during your cycle.
So I’m really excited. So we’ll have different meditations, workouts, recipes, advice from therapists, all of that good stuff is going to be a part of our public launch and we’re creating that now. Oh, the other category is work.
So our cycle does affect our work and I’m not saying that it affects it in a negative way. I’m saying that at different times of the month, we have different strengths in the way that we work and are productive and work efficiently, not just productively. And it’s been really satisfying as a CEO.
This was a big intention for growing this business of women that we incorporate our cycles and our patterns into the way we work together. What that looks like is when we have any type of planning or even our Monday stand-ups, we say what day of our cycle we’re on. It’s not a requirement that everybody has gotten into this and realizes the benefits.
So we share which day of our cycle we’re on, how we’re feeling and what we think we can get done that week, what we hope to get done. For example, during your luteal phase, this is the time right before menstruation, it’s often kind of like a calmer, more introspective, slower, quieter time for women. You might experience some symptoms ahead of menstruation, right? And this is a good time for reflection, for writing, for having one-on-one conversations with people.
Typically, women are less social during this time, but a little bit more intentional, clear-minded, thoughtful. So good time to be collecting and synthesizing information. As opposed to like your ovulatory phase, this is when women are most fertile and most social and usually experience a spike in energy.
It’s a great time to like go to a conference, give a talk, network, really work on business development. And so having awareness of these different strengths at different phases of your cycle has become a pattern of how we work together as a team. And I’ve really seen the benefits of this.
We allow each other time for rest when we need it, it’s a given. And then we also know when we can really step on the pedal and get some really good things done. And then when we’re done together.
We came together as a team really in March and it took between March and August to get out our first version of this app. So I really think we work well together and considering how we work together has been related to our cycle, has been like a superpower. It’s been really fun.
Absolutely, that sounds wonderful. You know, like the more I’ve been reading about it and again, I joined the bandwagon of reading about my cycle and how it affects my body and mood and just productivity in general, pretty much related in life. But when I did, it was such an eye opener because you feel so heard and validated.
You know, you perhaps realize what were your own patterns and you get like a new insight in them. Yes, and then that knowledge really unlocks a lot of, you know, just planning and productivity and enjoyment. And like you said, validation, like this is a normal way to feel.
I think we’re really, you know, we live on a more like masculine view of the work week. We like to look at it as a work month because we do experience different patterns throughout the month. And like I said, I really think that’s just to our benefit, especially when we have open dialogue around it.
Absolutely, I think it’s very important that, you know, we talk about this more and more women become more self-aware, I think. It’s very important to have that look where you feel comfortable talking about these things. You know, this kind of brings me to my next question, which is something that I’ve always wondered.
I think that privacy, you know, as a feature is perhaps not something that is understood by all users and not all level of users will understand why privacy is important or why decentralization is important. At times people are just looking at convenience. So how do you go about educating your, you know, potential users, your users about the importance of data privacy while using Empathy? Yeah, I think that’s an excellent question.
And yes, as we were building this company, and even still we have this question often, do we put our privacy foot forward, which is, you know, we deeply believe in creating a safe space for women to track their cycle, or do we put the cycle syncing, which is the descriptive word for, you know, including these practices and habits in your life that support your wellbeing based on your cycle? So do we put our privacy foot or our cycle syncing foot forward, which is most appealing to people? And the answer has been cycle syncing, you know, when we test ads, when we talk to the general public, but we are finding more and more interest in the privacy piece. And really a lot of our diehard users are coming from the privacy angle. Like you said, it’s not something that people care about on a large scale when you’re talking outside of the Web3 community, which we are.
But if you look at data, especially when it comes to people being skeptical of inputting their health data into apps, I believe there’s been a jump in 20%, 20% of people are less likely to enter health data into an app as they were last year. And that’s a huge jump. I think people are turning on to, they’re becoming more aware that their personal data is vulnerable and not as safe as it should be, especially in the United States.
I think women in the United States have heard this a lot over the last year. But given that there’s still a lot of education that needs to be done, I’m hoping, again, with our feature, our decentralized social network for women, InnerCircle is, I don’t wanna say sneaky, but it’s a private tool that doesn’t necessarily have a Web3 front to it. Okay, so people wouldn’t know the difference between, okay, I’m just joining another social network or I am joining a decentralized social network.
So I think it’s built in, right? And we don’t want people to have to be thinking about it. Or usually you begin with connectivity and you have to move back if you care enough about your privacy. And again, we’re starting with privacy.
It’s a given. But as far as conversion goes, I think there does need to be a lot more dialogue around the potential effects of using less secure technology to store your personal data. And that’s something I’m hoping we can do within our app and within our social media is sharing some more education about privacy.
I think, yeah, it’s a bit of a challenge. I do believe that to sort of just educate your user about why privacy matters, but the only way to go about doing it is through just trying to create apt content which they can relate to and market yourself in a way that they sort of understand why privacy is becoming very, very important as we move forward in this day and age, especially. Now, this kind of brings me to what I had in mind earlier, and this is something I feel very strongly about.
I feel like user-friendly applications that are adding convenience into people’s lives, they become the sticky ones, right? The ones that the users will keep coming back to. If you are creating something which is privacy-focused, yet user-friendly, were there any trade-offs that you had to make vis-a-vis the interface, or vis-a-vis the flow of the application? Yes, honestly, it’s a constant discussion point as we’re building this app. It’s a discussion that happens every single time that we meet together as a team, ease of use versus privacy.
And I think the answer to that often is just creativity and working with some brilliant people. Yeah, again, we care a lot about user flow, and a lot of people are already, I think it’s a third of women in the United States, 50 million people worldwide are using a period tracker, right? And so we cannot create a tracker that makes tracking your cycle harder than what exists out there already. And I think that we’re managing to do that, which is exciting.
I also, again, with InnerCircle, I think it’ll feel easier and more fun than some of the social features that are being built on other period-focused apps. Yeah, and again, we’re not necessarily out there saying, hey, we’re a web-free company. Of course we are, and we identify as that right now, but we really are, it’s kind of unique, right? In this space, usually our lead with that, but we’re really talking to a lot of more Web2 users than the typical Web3 company.
Right, yeah, absolutely. There’s like, you are in Web3, but you’re not the typical Web3 company. And I think that’s what is wonderful about what you guys are building.
You know, there is a full spectrum of women’s health experiences, right? They can vary greatly, and we know that, considering, you know, we talk to our friends and our mothers, our aunts. So how, you know, you are obviously trying to create something that is inclusive in nature, but how does the app accommodate diverse health and menstrual needs? Like, how are you doing that? Are you using AI? Are you, how are you accomplishing it? Sure, yeah, we are not using AI at the moment. What we are using are predictions based on large data sets that are available publicly, not our own data.
So, you know, thankfully we have large data sets to work with for modeling and whatnot. But we do realize that, and this is something I’m kind of excited about exploring more as a feature in our app as we grow. A lot of administrators have some type of identity attached to administration.
For example, I identify first, you know, as a mother, I’ve had two kids, and that’s affected my cycle. And as somebody with a premenstrual disorder, right? So with PMDD, it’s called premenstrual dysphoric disorder, that’s essentially, I have an atypical reaction to the fluctuation in hormones ahead of menstruation. And it just means that a lot of my symptoms, the typical symptoms of PMS, that time before menstruation are heightened, are extreme to the point that they affect my day-to-day life in pretty significant ways.
And I’ve worked through that by changing my diet, by taking medication, by working with a therapist, and those types of practices that we’re building into our app. But other women have other identities. So some may have other diagnoses like endometriosis, or PCOS, and they come to the app with that perspective.
Others may be experiencing infertility. Others may be not interested in using hormonal birth control anymore. So we’re looking at other ways to understand their cycle.
Some might be menstruating for the first time. Others might be experiencing symptoms that might align with perimenopause. So that time before you experience menopause, we really have these identities that shift sometimes, but we identify as a certain type of menstruator.
And we are really trying to highlight that in our app. In our onboarding, you’ll see it asks, which profile do you want to use? More general profile, one specific to trying to get pregnant, one specific to trying not to get pregnant. And we’re gonna be building that out more, but it suggests what symptoms you might want to track based on that identity.
And I’m hoping that eventually we’ll be able to provide content based on those identities as well. I just started working with a naturopathic doctor who focuses on perimenopause. And I’m really excited about that work because… So the first peer trackers came around in 2013.
So a lot of women who started using a period tracker then are reaching perimenopause. And there’s not really an app that supports their needs and their changing symptoms. It’s really an important time to track your cycle so you know where you are ahead of menopause.
And I’m hoping that as we grow, we can specialize more and speak more to those different menstrual identities. Yeah, that makes sense. Wonderful.
So you’re trying to create something that’s completely inclusive and you’re trying your level best to ensure that you are able to cater to these different experiences that various women kind of go through actually, various menstruators go through. So that is wonderful to know and see. And you guys would be coming out of your closed beta in March next year, correct? Yes.
Wow, wonderful. I look forward to it. I would love to check out the application and sign up myself.
The more I hear about it, the more exciting it seems. So it’s wonderful that this is perhaps gonna be a part of a broader conversation about digital privacy as well as women’s health. So more power to you guys, really.
Thank you. Yeah, it’s really, it’s exciting to explore. I feel like there’s room for a lot of creativity in the Web3 space.
It’s beyond crypto and making money and gambling and tokens and NFTs. There’s real life applications for this technology. And I think we’re just beginning that part of how cryptography can really support social good.
So we’re excited to be at the forefront of that. If you’re interested in the project, I do wanna say, please go to embody.space and you can add your email address to our waitlist. And also if you’re interested in the project or supporting or have some ideas, you can email me at Anna at embody.space as well.
I’m happy to talk. Awesome, awesome. Now our listeners know how to get in touch with you and they know how to get on the waitlist.
I’m sure that this will get you a surge of people on the waitlist and at least definitely one. I’m gonna go right after this recording and put my name there. So just for our, again, for our listeners who might perhaps not be familiar with the concept of why decentralization, can you explain how this approach perhaps would benefit the users and their data in like say two sentences in simple words.
Right, so data is, will not, your menstrual health data will not be accessible to bad actors. That’s really the heart of it. Through decentralized systems and cryptography, your menstrual health data, your private data is not available to somebody who may misuse it.
Right, yeah. And that becomes so, again, so important in this day and age especially when the law is the way it is currently. So it does help like a lot of women feel safe, secure and have a good niche or good space where they can talk about their issues without any fear in mind.
Yes. So on a personal note, you know, you’ve, how did you decide or, you know, that you want to take the entrepreneurial journey? It’s something that not a lot of people would choose. And obviously it’s not easy to be an entrepreneur though it looks very glamorous from the outside.
How did you get, how did you decide that you want to be an entrepreneur? And were there any specific role models or experiences that, you know, moved you and motivated you to kind of take this path? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think very personal, I, you know, I was a teacher for a very long time and I was no longer teaching. I resigned from my teaching position during 2020, during the beginning of the pandemic because I was with medically fragile students and I did not feel that it was safe.
And logistically I couldn’t make it work because I had two babies at home to be with. So I resigned from my, there wasn’t enough space for them to go other than the home. So I resigned from my teaching position.
I was at home with my kids through the pandemic teaching them the best that I could. But of course this time was a time of introspection and, you know, what do I really want to be doing with my life after this moment? And I was toying around with, you know, going back to teaching. I was toying around with going back for a PhD in education.
And then this moment of, you know, understanding more about my cycle through a new diagnosis and the overturn of Roe v. Wade, I think, you know, I was also considering this. So I was thinking of those three things, which do I think would have the most impact to the most amount of people? I am driven by my values and ideals. And I remember talking to a friend about, you know, these three different paths that I was very seriously considering.
And she says, well, you just light up when you talk about the app. And I think that’s when I decided, okay, I know this is gonna be hard because I have a partner who is also a CEO. And in this space and I’ve seen, you know, how it affects our lives, you know, work never turns off.
You have to set your own boundaries, especially when you have kids. But, you know, we were also already doing that as a family. So I knew how to do it.
And I will say, I have friends in the space because we’ve been through all these different incubation programs and accelerators. And so I’ve grown friendships with women to have started their own companies in this space. And I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen how hard it is and I’ve seen how exciting it is.
And I’ve seen the level of commitment and work involved. And it just felt like at that time with my kids being a bit older that I was ready. And I had, but more than anything, there was something I really cared about, right? And I think it always baffles me when I hear about somebody who wants to start a company and they don’t know what to build yet.
Like that boggles my mind because I think not having a clear problem that you wanna solve is, I don’t know how you could devote so much of your life and energy to something that you’re not really, really passionate about. So yeah, I mean, I encourage other people who are considering this route, like if there is a problem that in your life you need solved and would really greatly impact your life, then go for it. But until you have that, you know, that passion point, just wait.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, I totally agree. I think, you know, you need to be very, very passionate and truly believe in what you’re doing.
Otherwise it’s very hard to make it as an entrepreneur because, you know, it’s hard as nails to get a company off the ground to have real people be using your solution. So, you know, your advice is like really sound that way. Now let’s switch it up a little bit.
I would love to know if you know, if you’d like to reveal any memorable anecdote or funny anecdote from your journey while building your application that you’d like to perhaps share with our listeners. Ooh, that’s a good question. I’m gonna have to think on that for a second.
Okay, so I don’t have a funny anecdote from the beginning of Embodied, but I do have a funny one from the beginning of Fold, which is what became Thesis, right? And we’re working with. Um, so I was finishing my master’s in education in Atlanta and my husband had already gone out to Silicon Valley. It was in San Mateo.
They were a part of an accelerator out there called Boost. Right. And right, and so they went out there.
I’ve always lived with founders. And so he and his co-founder moved out there together. I was still, we were married at the time.
I was still finishing my master’s degree, like I said, and teaching and finishing out the school year. And the plan was to finish and then go join them. But we realized, you know, they had housing for this accelerator in like this old hotel that the accelerator now owned.
And so all the participants of the accelerator lived in this old hotel in these tiny rooms. And we owned a cat. So we were like, oh, we’ve got to bring our cat.
But I know that they’re not, the cats are not allowed at this hotel. So we, you know, when I drove out there, I drove the car all the way from Atlanta to California with our cat. And we ended up having to sneak the cat in through a fire escape.
Wow. Into the accelerator just to make it out there. Cause we couldn’t yet afford an apartment.
Like, you know, you didn’t have to stay in the accelerator housing, but we really were trying to save money so we could get our own apartment. And by, I mean, our own, I meant me and the co-founder and my husband and the cat. So, you know, we’ve been through, you know, the typical startup moments in our life.
And they’re pretty funny. When I got pregnant, that’s when our co-founder found another apartment. Wow.
Hey, I think it’s all a part and parcel of running a startup. So that happens. But this is wonderful.
This cat story is very similar to how I got my first pet because my pet was the idea. So I had to like sneak in my cat and my cat lived in my, you know, the dressing area in my room secretly for nearly a month before they came to know. So this is when I was a teenager.
But yeah. Yeah, so it was hilarious. I’m sorry.
I was saying the things we do for our pets. Absolutely. I really, really wanted a cat and, you know, so I just, I got her and it was the best decision.
But yeah, I did create a lot of confusion with my parents because they couldn’t understand and they couldn’t locate why there was some mewing coming out from my room for quite a few days. And I had to make all sorts of excuses, but yeah, fun times. So yeah, that is very similar to your experience as well.
Like, you know, you snuck in a cat. I have done that as well. Yeah.
So finally, like, because, you know, look at the time, I think I completely lost track of time talking to you. And it’s so wonderful to talk to founders who are so clear in their vision of what they’re building. And, you know, you’re not, you’re not getting swayed by any distractions.
You know exactly what you want to, you know, build. And that is wonderful to see. And I completely lost track of time listening to you, but let’s come to the penultimate question before we wrap this up.
If, you know, if somebody was learning about Embodied Today and what are the three key takeaways or benefits that you would like them to remember? Oh, three key things is that embracing your cycle is embracing your superpowers, right? Yeah. And also in order to do that, you need to have ownership. Absolutely.
Of your data. So, you know, we empower, we empower, Embodied empowers women through ownership of their data and ownership of the power of their cycle. I think that is a good pitch to go with.
And I’m sure that, you know, many women that are perhaps listening to this podcast, they would feel the same way. They would feel that this is like the right choice to make. And like I’ve repeated myself quite a few times and repeated this phrase, but in this day and age, I think decentralization and this kind of very critical health data, it’s very important that they marry each other.
And this is such a wonderful use case of decentralization. And as you mentioned, you know, not everything about blockchain technology has to be about gambling and tokens and NFTs. This is like a real use case.
And that is what makes this so supremely exciting for me. So, you know, I have only good things and I want to support you in every way that I can on this journey to whatever extent that I can. I am really grateful that you can make the time.
I would really like to just push in this one question that I ask everybody who comes on the show that if somebody is say peering in from web two, like you were, you were a teacher, right? And you know, you jumped into web three, what would be your one or two suggestions for them to start living on blockchain? Oh, that’s a really great question. I think joining a community of people that look like you in the web three space. So for me, that was like going on Discord and finding SheFi or Boys Club.
And so find a community of people like you already existing in this space and insert yourself. And then the next thing, there’s so much educational content out there right now about the web three space. I find, you know, just Google some videos and get some, you know, get some basic education.
So you feel comfortable with the technology and the tools and why they exist. Luckily, there’s a lot of information out there now. Just Google a couple of videos and join a group.
Yeah, I think that is wonderful advice. That’s a good starting point, right? Just, you know, you just looking up some information which kind of puts it out clearly and then just join a group and see if this is your tribe. And if it is, then go ahead and, you know, start your journey into web three.
Excellent, Tara. Thank you so much for making the time to speak to me. This has been such a good conversation and it is so wonderful to see, you know, I know that I hate hearing it like female founder, but it’s so wonderful nevertheless to have the other gender be represented in the web three space, because we already know, you and I know that it’s primarily a sausage fest and it’s nice that, you know, that there are more women that are taking it up and they’re building in this space.
So thank you so much for what you’re doing for the community. And thank you so much for building this app, you know, that that’ll help women everywhere. And lastly, thank you for making the time to speak to me.
Any last thoughts before we, you know, shut the recording and part ways? No, I just really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me Tarusha and having this podcast for other people to come on and talk about what they’re building. And again, if you’re interested in the project, please go to embody.space and sign up for our wait list. Absolutely, doing that as we speak.
So yeah, you’ll see me in your community very soon. Thank you so much. I will, I absolutely, as I said, I would love to support you in this journey of what you’re building.
And if there’s anything that I can do, please do, you know, hit me up. I would love to help you out. Thank you so much.