Talking to real humans is hard, Part 2

In a follow up from the Talking to real humans is hard, Part 1, I wanted to tell you about some of the discoveries I have found in talking to real humans!

To bring you up to speed, we founded Ash Wellness (my wonderful team Kyle Waters, Rina Schiller, Mio Akasako, Nicolas Sempere and myself) while taking part in Cornell Tech’s Startup Studio course, because we all truly believe in the importance of making sexual health and wellness more convenient and accessible for all. And we have launched with at-home STI testing kits for Gonorrhea and Chlamydia.

At Ash, we operate based on the following thesis: If you’re sexually active and have more than one sexual partner — you should be getting tested regularly. Testing should be a part of your normal routine to be a responsible and conscious pupil in our sexual ecosystem.

We want to make sexual health and wellness a normal de-stigmatized part of the conversation when it comes to ‘hooking up.’ We dream of a future where it is completely normal to ask your partner(s) when they were last tested and if they’re being a responsible pupil in our shared sexual ecosystem (before hooking up).

We realize that no matter if you identify as lesbian, gay, straight, bi, a man, a woman, trans, queer, non-binary, intersex that getting tested should be part of your routine. Why? Because many of the most common STIs don’t present symptoms and the only way to know you have them is to get tested.

So while speaking to hundreds of potential users and thinking about our team’s experiences and pasts (we are a predominantly queer-identifying team) — we realized that LGBTQ+ communities tend to have an open and transparent (this is not always the case but we’ve found to be the case more so than straight, heteronormative communities) approach towards talking about sexual health and wellness and acting upon it.

The reason for queer communities having a more open and transparent approach to sexual health and wellness is likely for several reasons, but the main one that comes to mind is the AIDs crisis of the 80s. Where gay men were predominately affected and many lost their lives to the virus. While this epidemic so profoundly affected this community (though it was not the only community to be affected) — it caused societal and cultural change when it came to sexual health.

As a result, many in the queer communities live with this past and understand the importance of sexual health and wellness. And to help these communities further (as they are still at the highest risk for STIs) and to cater to them — we are targeting the LGBTQ+ community to start. Starting with a community that already understands the importance of sexual health and wellness also makes our job a lot easier. And as our team often says “everything fabulous starts in the gay community.” :)

So in speaking to these users, I wanted to share our Key Takeaways in how these insights are shaping the community and products we build:

1. Sexually active people are usually aware they need to get tested but struggle with getting tested regularly because of location and convenience issues.
2. LGBTQ+ identifying communities are more likely to seek out testing and sexual health resources than straight/heteronormative communities.
3. Many of the gay men we spoke to are on PrEP and have to get tested quarterly for STIs and other diagnostics to receive their prescription.
4. These same users get tested on average about 3–4 times on top of their quarterly test, totaling about 7–9 times a year for testing.
5. These same users often subscribe to concierge health systems, like One Medical, to make the testing more convenient.
6. Gay men on PrEP over a certain income bracket consistently say they would pay for a subscription STI test that makes it easy for them to stay on top of their sexual health.
7. We heard multiple people liken our subscription STI kit to Quip (toothbrush company) that sends you a new toothbrush every 3 months — and therefore enforces your dental health positively
8. Many LGBTQ+ people mentioned issues where healthcare professionals assumed things about their gender and sexuality and it resulting in a lack of care
9. There is less emphasis on STI testing for queer women than for queer men.

Taking these findings we decided as a team to first wedge our way in this market through LGBTQ+ communities as they tend to be more educated about the importance of sexual health and wellness (which is half of the job) and are statistically at the highest risk for STIs.

We realize that these findings are not representative of all LGBTQ+ individuals and only represent a subset of the population. We are keenly aware of many groups that are missed as we target the ones represented in these findings. As a result, we are constantly striving to be as inclusive as possible. As I said up top — our phenomenal team deeply believes in the importance of making sexual health and wellness more convenient and accessible for all.

And to end off with my shameless pitch →

Check out Ash Wellness (and our recent awesome content on Instagram), and reach out if you want to give feedback or talk about sex!

Ash website — www.meetash.com

Instagram for our awesome content — https://www.instagram.com/meetashwellness/

Awesome COVID19 Content — Ash Wellness