Meet Aagya Mathur, Co-Founder & CEO of Aavia
We’re here to advocate for you and your hormones
On being obsessed with the problem Aavia is tackling:
My entire life I have been given answers but no solutions. When I was a teenager, my doctor told me that an irregular period was normal because I was an athlete. When I was in my early 20s, another doctor told me it wasn’t normal and taking birth control pills would fix it. So I took the pills, or I tried to at least. I was traveling for work every week and working crazy hours, and even though I had countless alarms set, I would get to Thursday and my Tuesday pill is still in there, all the time. For me, that meant I would start my period, every single time. So instead of regulating my period, I now had a more irregular period because it was starting every 1 to 2 weeks.
I was frustrated. What is going on? Why did they even put me on pills? What is that supposed to do? What is a normal period anyways? I didn’t know the answers. I studied neuroscience in undergrad, did biomedical engineering research, and I even took the MCAT. TL;DR I’m a science nerd. So I started to look into research and studies myself.
I was shocked by what I learned. No one was telling me the whole truth. Forget about the pills and my period, even more importantly, I learned that the ovarian hormone cycle impacts WAY more than your period.
Beyond the 24 hour circadian rhythm, people with ovaries have another cycle, a 21–35 day cycle where the ovarian hormones are fluctuating daily and depending on where you are in the cycle it impacts your quality of muscle toning, quality of sleep, mental health, energy levels, sex drive, skin, mood, and the list goes on.
I’ll never forget the feeling: how different would the last two decades of my life have been if I would have been informed of this and I could plan accordingly? I was captain of my basketball and soccer teams and I would have had my teams train so differently if I would have known.
That’s just my story. HALF of the world’s population is going through the exact same thing. My story is playing across every single country and across every person’s life no matter where the live, no matter what kind of care they have access to, no matter if they’re 15 or 35. They are all going through the same exact struggles I did. My story is their story. and that means we have 4B of these stories to be told.
On the problem she is solving:
(Female: referring to anyone with ovaries, unrelated to gender association)
Females have a 21–35 day ovarian hormone cycle. Majority believe it only impacts their period and fertility, when in reality it impacts everything from quality of muscle toning to quality of sleep, mood to mental health, energy to sex drive, and more. The majority of 85 million females in the US with an ovarian hormone cycle don’t have the knowledge and tools to optimize their lives based on their hormone health.
Further, whether you’re taking the birth control pill for contraception, acne, period pain, period regulation, or something else, you have to take it at the same time for it to be as effective as it can be. However, the average person misses one pill per week. And when it comes to contraception, in the US alone, there are 1M unintended pregnancies for people who take the pill inconsistently. To put this into perspective, there are only 4M births in the US each year.
This is where Aavia comes in.
On the solution her team has built:
We started Aavia to make hormone health more human and end the stigma around it — for good. We provide daily education and personalized actionable insights through our app, a trusted community of members and medical experts, and a patented smart pill case so you take your pills on time, every time.
The Aavia Smart Birth Control Pill Case has patented sensor technology that knows if you have taken your pill at your daily set time and works with the Aavia app to remind you until you actually take it. With the Aavia smart case & app’s persistent, customizable reminders, our members are 99% better at taking the pill.
With Aavia, members decrease stress and increase confidence around their health, and take proactive action to build a better relationship with their hormones to optimize their physical and mental health, every single day.
On putting it out into the world before you’re ready:
You never know that something is the right solution. You start with a gut feeling and by putting something out into the world before it’s perfect. Then, you test. We’re so lucky to have an engaged group of members who tell us their pain points and what they like and what they need. We’ve evolved so much and they help us continue to evolve.
On impact as a primary motivator:
What we’re doing has a huge impact on people’s lives. We’ve gained members’ trust, and they’re asking us to play a bigger role in their lives. In one case, one of our members was logging her health indicators on the Aavia app. Her findings prompted her to seek out a doctor consultation. A doctor had her on antidepressants 365 days a year, but her data showed that it was only one week a month she had depressive moods. Her issue was hormone change rather than chemical imbalance, so the doctor changed her medical regimen.
On listening to customers:
If you’re not listening to your members or your actual end users, and therefore not building for them and with them, the solution won’t be something they will use.
We started D2C to build WITH our members and develop a platform that they want and need, before expanding distribution channels.This allows us to own the entire member experience from start to finish and truly build a community and brand. We’re breaking the stigma around hormone health and proudly speaking about topics traditionally spoken about in hushed voices. Our demographic tends to be Gen Z — 80% of our members are 18–24. The Gen Z community is such a natural fit for our brand so we wanted to meet them where they are most before expanding.
On validation beyond raising money:
A lot of people put emphasis on, “This person raised x amount of money,” but our validation comes from our members. The first day we ever sold anything in August 2018 was a big day. Now, we use different metrics such as customer retention and satisfaction for validation. We have really high retention, and our customer satisfaction is off the charts.
On building Aavia’s brand with intentionality:
We took months to build our brand guidelines out. Our brand was and is really important to us and we weren’t going to finalize anything that we didn’t feel entirely confident in. We’re a hormone health brand. We have a physical product and an app, but at the core we are a community. Once we had decided what we wanted this brand to be, we had to decide how we wanted to express it to the world. We knew we wanted to be like a big sister — friendly and supportive. Hormone health is personal. If our members don’t truly trust us, we can’t help them to our full ability, which is our goal. So we knew building trust was going to be a big task for our brand and I believe that we have achieved that.
On closing the data gap for female health:
Female hormone health has been largely ignored and most health research is done on white males. Our platform and data enables females to take control of their health as never done by other generations. We’re building the largest and most diverse data set on female hormone health. It’ll open doors to understand the connection among hormonal, physical, and mental health as never in a way that’s never been done before.
By focusing on hormone health, we’re unlocking the next generation of health for females.
On starting in school:
Starting Aavia during business school afforded us many valuable resources, the first being time since you choose how you prioritize and spend your time. Classmates from business school and across campus provided us with a diversity of experiences and networks, and we’re lucky to still be supported by so many of them. Whether through cold emails or MIT VMS, Fuse, Delta v, etc., alums and EIRs were invaluable in answering questions, making introductions, and providing frameworks and feedback. This bled into some courses such as Entrepreneurial Sales, Pricing, and Founding Teams.
We also earned stipends and $50K non-dilutive funding through Sandbox, Delta v, MEMSI, and MIT 100k. Especially with a hardware product, the funding was critical in building and selling out first prototypes, and allowing us to begin conversations with angel investors. Each of these elements gave us the escape velocity to start meaningfully solving the problem we set out to solve.
Sloan was incredible because encouraged collaboration across campus and based on my background in science and consulting I truly believe cross-collaboration / multidisciplinary teams can most efficiently and effectively solve the biggest problems. I wanted to learn from people with different interests, skills, and ways of thinking. As a matter of fact, I met my two co-founders outside of the business school!
On building a founder network:
One of my investors says that 50% of the CEO’s time should be relationship-building with other founders or people who you can learn from. What I wish I had done, even in pre-seed, is be more plugged in with founders who were at my stage or a step ahead. They are going through the same thing — fundraising or not — and can give you tactical advice or just support in the moment.
On what every founder should keep in mind:
At every stage, you’re going to have new big dreams. Let that be a motivator.
You and your business are only as big, powerful, capable and impressive as you let yourself believe. Don’t limit yourself or your business, and have grit to withstand the naysayers. Use the power of storytelling to bring people along the journey and to call them into all that you are doing and dreaming.
