Ep 179: Feelings Check In on the vaginal microbiome with Priyanka Jain, Co-Founder & CEO of Evvy

[00:00] The Feelings Check-In is a podcast for people who love to listen to two women overshare about the challenges of building a business, navigating careers in tech, and trying to have a personal life. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No. No. [00:20] Welcome to the Feelings Check-In. My name is Dina Burke. I'm one of the hosts. Today, we have a fantastic interview and conversation and feelings check-in on the vaginal microbiome. It's a conversation between Natasha Hoskins, the co-host of this podcast, and Priyanka Jain, who is the co-founder and CEO of Evie, which is a precision women's health startup that is [00:50] going to talk about all of that in today's podcast, and I hope you enjoy. [00:55] Thank you. [00:56] Hey Natasha, so a question we get asked a lot is, what do you look for in a crypto platform? So let's talk about it. Well, Dina, I look for a secure, no fuss platform that I can dive into right away. That's why I love today's sponsor, Kraken. If you're waiting for the right time to get into crypto, Kraken makes it super easy and intuitive to get started. Plus, if you get stuck, they have an award-winning client support team that's available 24-7, along with a bunch of educational guides, articles, and videos to help you along the way. [01:26] go to kraken.com backslash boys club. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers through Payward Interactive, Inc.

[01:38] Priyanka Jain is the co-founder and CEO of Evie, a precision women's health startup discovering overlooked biomarkers starting with vaginal microbiome. Evie has raised over $19 million, which is absolutely incredible for this work. In short, Priyanka is helping women know what's up down there. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited for our conversation today. Me too. Me too. Okay. So tell us a little bit about what you're [02:08] ground as sort of a grounding for the conversation. [02:11] Of course, of course. Okay, well, my background is not in healthcare, but in data and machine learning, and frankly, of being a female patient of the healthcare system. I always joke, I was a patient one too many times, and then I got really frustrated and figured there had to be a better way. And more specifically, I was a patient, and I think many women are, who went to the doctor time and time again, dealing with [02:33] symptoms, things that I just couldn't understand why they were happening. And no matter how many tests I ran or specialty doctors I went to, everyone kept telling me that I should drink more water [02:43] sleep more than maybe I had too stressful of a job. And I just couldn't believe that in the age of data and machine learning, and we could predict anything. And I mean, now it's even more insane, right? AI can do anything, but it's like, [02:56] If it has to do with a female body, like hands up, nobody has answers. And I was extremely frustrated as a patient. And as I did some of my own research, as so many women I think end up doing, that was when I found out that women weren't required or really allowed to be in clinical research in the US until 1993. And that to this day, we're diagnosed on average four years later than men across over 700 diseases. And I remember just feeling like, one, wow, my whole life makes sense.

[03:26] as it relates to data on the female body. Essentially, all of modern medicine has been based on whatever was predictive of health and disease in frankly middle-aged, mid-sized white men. [03:36] We like made things smaller and then we assumed we had health care for women. And obviously, here we are. [03:42] And so our hypothesis and interest was really in, you know, the female body is probably constantly giving us these signals, right? Trying to tell us where things are going well and where we need help. But we're just not doing a good job paying attention because we never studied women. So we don't realize that those things matter. And so our focus is really what are those signals that we could leverage to help us better predict risk? [04:02] diagnose, and treat disease as it uniquely manifests in female bodies. And as you alluded to, our first focus is on the vaginal microbiome, which I'm sure we will talk a lot about, but just to give a very high level, there's kind of two interesting sides of things to know as it relates to the vaginal microbiome. One is that from a clinical and patient perspective today, vaginal discomfort is the leading reason that women seek health care advice in the U.S. 30% of women at any given time have at least one vaginal infection. It's the number one type of OBGYN appointment. [04:32] is just to say how prevalent these conditions are. So if you are somebody who is dealing with vaginal symptoms or infections, like you are so, so far from alone, these are some of the most common conditions in women, period. And what's so unfortunate, [04:46] is that when we go to the doctor, we are more likely to be misdiagnosed and not get better than we are to be correctly diagnosed or get better, right? So you have this incredibly prevalent condition that's affecting so, so many women. And yet the healthcare system just doesn't have the tools to give us the care that we deserve.

[05:03] And then on the other side, there's so much research showing that the vaginal microbiome is playing this really interesting role in the rest of our healthcare outcomes as women. And just to kind of explain the 101 here, the concept is that the vaginal microbiome is obviously, you know, a microbiome, a community of bacteria and fungi that live somewhere in your body. And the ones in the vagina, when they're in kind of a healthy community, if you will, what's happening is that these good bacteria are producing lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide. [05:33] making it so that when pathogens inevitably get into your vagina, which is essentially an open gateway into your body, that they can't survive, right? It's too acidic, there's no space for them. And in that way, the vaginal microbiome acts as this interesting kind of like immune barrier for the rest of your reproductive system. But when that breaks down, which like, God forbid, you have sex with someone new, or you sit in your swimsuit for too long, or you have a long period, all of those things can elevate your pH, allow those pathogens to start to replicate, [06:02] And that's when we go to the doctor with these symptoms and these infections. But what we're not taking into account is that we've also lost that barrier. And that's where the second side of the vaginal microbiome becomes so interesting because what research is starting to show is that when you have a kind of [06:16] unhealthy or not optimal vaginal microbiome, there's then higher risk of everything from infertility or IVF failure or preterm birth or cervical cancer progression or STI acquisition. And it just blew my mind that for something that was the leading reason that women are at the doctor and contributing to so many other really negative and expensive health outcomes that we had never really used any of this data and that nobody had really built robust enough data sets to really understand the vaginal microbiome. So, okay, my monologue and rant is over,

[06:46] Lots to say about women's health and the vaginal microbiome. No, it's so interesting. And honestly, I'm having this crazy experience of listening to you talk. And for most of my life, I would say that this topic is so embarrassing. Like, I'm just like, I just don't even want to talk about it. Like, even with my other female friends, it's just like, oh, there's this area of your life that is actually so fundamentally important to your life. [07:10] health as a woman and I have always related it to it's not even shame around like my vagina. It's shame around like I don't want to be perceived as like crunchy. I think there's like this idea that women's health is like a I don't know kumbaya kind of thing. And like I don't want to be like in that camp. But listening to you talk I'm like wow that's so problematic. Such a problematic way to approach this because it's literally like [07:36] connected to every part of a woman's well-being and their health and deeply scientific and like the actual opposite of what my weird perception of it is. [07:44] Well, it's so interesting you say that. And I, because I think the reason that so much of women's health lives in this kumbaya land is because we don't have science and because we don't have research. And so instead, we've listened to our moms and our grandmas and the stories that they've told and the things that they did. One of our advisors uses the term that in women's health, we have so many what he calls storytelling diagnostics, right? Where it's like, we don't have diagnostics. And instead, we listen to stories. And we try to piece together through that story, what could be going on, right? And I think it's such a [08:14] an unfortunate reality, which is that so many things in women's health live in supplement land or live outside of healthcare because the healthcare system just frankly wasn't designed. Survival mode. Totally. And it makes sense. I don't blame anyone for ending up there. And I think there's a lot to do to really bring the science and research and rigor that can bring so many of these pieces of women's health out of online communities, out of Kumbaya land and into the healthcare system.

[08:44] Okay, so I see this really interesting trend that's happening, I think, across tech right now, tech communities, but also celebrity culture, sort of this idea of longevity, precision care. There's also this term targeted healthcare that I'm hearing a lot about. I think a lot of this trend is coming from also an advancement, advancements in AI and machine learning. [09:14] be familiar with sort of give us the landscape of that world right now totally so as you said precision medicine and longevity medicine i mean frankly they've been around for a long time they've been things that we talk about in the healthcare community or in the consumer health world as things that patients want patients want care that is precise to them and they want care that's focused i think it's interesting i read a post the other day about how longevity is less about living to 100 and it's really just the new term that we've given to preventative medicine right [09:44] but look at my health goals and really orient my health plan around those goals. [09:48] which I think is a nice kind of reframe. Yeah. I think that there's a lot going on in both of those areas. And I think foundational to both of them is really testing and data, right? Most longevity companies or preventative health care companies start with, [10:02] comprehensive robust testing. To do precision medicine, the first thing you have to do is identify [10:08] how you want to define that patient's [10:10] specific stratification or phenotype or genotype or whatever it is that then determines how you personalize care for them. And so I think

[10:19] I say all of that because the beginning of the longevity health journey, the precision health journey is testing and data. And I think the unfortunate reality is that the majority of [10:29] those tests and services don't provide care for women that is [10:33] that specific or that different. [10:35] Right. And I think what's frustrating, and I remember when I was starting Evie, I was comparing my annual physical report to my two brothers. And I remember being like, why are these essentially the same besides like when was my last period? Everything else that we looked at was basically the same. And that's insane because every single cell in my body functions fundamentally differently, right? There are so many unique signals that my body is giving off, you know, the vaginal microbiome being just one of probably many that we do or don't even know about. And so I'm extremely [11:05] we can look at a patient as an N of one, take into account all of the unique things about her, whether it's her life experiences, her genes, her microbiome across all the different parts of her body, her symptoms, [11:17] you name it, and then provide care that's most likely to help that single patient versus treating us like statistics and probabilities and kind of the way that healthcare has been designed today. I [11:27] an amazing future. And I think my only hesitation is that it's impossible to have precision medicine without data and we don't have data on women. So how are we going to have precision medicine for women? And I think as we see, as you mentioned, the rise of AI and people looking at different algorithms you can build on top of EHR data. It's like, well, the data in the EHR doesn't even include the data sets that are unique to women, right? So I think that like as much as it's so exciting, it also really, I think is a high pressure and important time for us to focus on

[11:57] So we don't just codify the [11:59] all of the problems that we already have. [12:01] Totally. That's actually, we sent you some questions and then I started to build on them a little bit. And one of the things that I was writing down and was thinking about, would love to hear you expand on is exactly what you're talking about, is this idea that I recently just learned the same stat that you said around how women were included in clinical trials until 1993, I believe, which is mind blowing, like insane that all of this research that we have up until that time didn't account for women. It's like, actually, it's unbelievable. [12:31] Yeah. [12:53] The majority of that data still has the same issue. And how do we not just continue a cycle of the deprioritization of women's health in these new phases of health care innovation? So I'm curious, like, I'm sure you have thoughts around this. Like, what are the things that you think are necessary now so that we don't recreate the past, I guess? [13:13] Yeah, it's such, such a good question. And I think [13:16] I don't I don't know all of the answers today. I think one is [13:20] First, I mean, okay, I have tactical ideas. I think one is [13:24] really starting to interrogate what the unique signals are in women.

[13:29] that we should be including when we think about what are potential markers of health and disease. [13:34] So in addition to including data, right, whether it's specific biomarkers or different questions that you ask patients, just making sure that for whatever study you're running or question you're trying to answer, that you consider what about the female body could be unique in this situation. And we start to include those data sets. I would argue that in all of the areas I mentioned related to vaginal health, like if you're running a study on [14:00] menopause or PCOS or endometriosis or fertility or preterm birth or cervical cancer or obviously vaginal symptoms, like all of those things, we should be looking at the vaginal microbiome when we build algorithms to predict how to help patients in those different areas, right? I think beyond just the data that you put in, then the next question is how do you actually analyze the data to make sure that the results that you're putting out, they work equally as [14:30] actually test your algorithms to understand how they perform on different populations, and to optimize them so that they're just as accurate on [14:37] one population as they are in another, right? And I think, you know, the most basic version of this was when the NIH, so the NIH in 1993 passed the NIH Revitalization Act, or sorry, Congress passed the NIH Revitalization Act, which was when women were required to be in research. Also women and minorities, which is also interesting, meaning that we also never required different ethnic groups or racial groups to be in research before 1993. But then recently, I want to say it was in

[15:07] research that was federally funded to report on differences in outcomes as they [15:13] were seen in men and women. Right. And so even just looking at like, oh, was this drug actually, did it only work on men? Did it have the same effect on women? Did you see more adverse events in women? And so I think there's a lot of [15:23] tools that we can start to use as we think about what we feed into algorithms, making sure we're asking the right questions of women, both as it relates to testing and phenotypic questions. And then as we analyze the data to make sure that the results we're putting out are actually applicable to the audience that you're using them on. And unfortunately, I don't think those are like the standard in healthcare algorithms today. But I think that, um, [15:44] There are a lot of people, it's not just Evie, talking about women's health. And I really hope that we make a loud enough voice all together that we make a mark early enough in that journey. Yeah. It seems like there's a lot of work to be done. Okay. [15:59] So what areas of women's health do you think need the most innovation and energy? There's a lot that we're talking about here. There's a lot of progress that needs to be made across the board. Obviously, you guys are focused on vaginal microbiome at this point. [16:14] But I'm curious, what are the areas that you feel like are most urgent and need the most innovation at the moment? [16:20] Wow, what a big question. There's kind of two [16:25] two things I think about. One is like, [16:28] what part of the healthcare system are we innovating on? Meaning are we looking at [16:35] the standard of care itself, what is the diagnosis, what is the treatment, how does it work? Are we thinking about how patients access it? Are we thinking about how people pay for it? Are we thinking about the experience of going to it? So that's one piece. And then the second piece is,

[16:47] what are the topical areas within women's health that need help? So I'll talk about both of those maybe if that works. Great. I think first, I'm very excited to see that there has been investment in what I would describe as a lot of companies focused on access and experience within women's health. And what I mean by that is, you know, I'm sure you've seen the stat, it's something like 50% of counties in the US don't have an OBGYN, right? A lot of people are living in care deserts and far away from [17:12] specialty care that can help them related to women's health needs. There have been so many amazing companies focused on how do we create access to care, typically in a telehealth fashion for those patients that don't have access to great healthcare today from a location standpoint. [17:27] There's also been a lot of great investment to date focused on experience, right? So how do I go to a clinic where, frankly, it feels like we're in the 21st century when I walk in the door and people don't gaslight me. And like, that's amazing, right? Feels very table stakes, but unfortunately, women's health is not. Where I would love to see more innovation is actually on the basic science and research of women's health, right? And it goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, which is that even if I can access [17:57] We just simply... [17:59] the standard of care is just not good enough, right? Like we frankly just don't, our diagnoses are too broad, right? Why are so many diagnoses in women's health, do they end with syndrome, right? I'm like, okay, well that doesn't really tell you anything. Right? It's like, we don't even have the diagnoses, let alone the diagnostics, let alone the treatments that would enable

[18:18] women to have the healthcare experience that they deserve. And so I think, you know, in that world, one of the areas I'd love to see more dollars go into is actually the science and research that will unlock so many new diagnostics, so many new therapeutics. And I always say, [18:31] There's such, frankly, a large economic value in owning that basic science and then all of the downstream value that comes from understanding the basic science, right? Like what academic institutions frankly did for the 100 years previously. So I would love to see more investment there. Yeah. [18:47] And then the other bucket I would say is from a topical perspective, I think we've seen the majority of dollars in women's health [18:53] Well, first of all, just to orient us in the numbers, [18:55] of the money invested into digital health, [18:58] from venture capitalists, I think it's something like 3% goes to women's health specific areas. I think when you look at global biopharma spend, I think it's 1% of global healthcare R&D goes into women's health. So it's a very small percent generally. And even within that small percent, when you look at it from a VC dollars perspective, it's like something like 66% of all, or 67% of all of the funding has gone to specifically fertility and maternity focused products. [19:25] Very important, large gaps to fill there. But I always say like, also women are more than our ability to reproduce, right? And like, what about all of the heart disease is the number one killer of women? Or what about Alzheimer's being so much more prevalent in women or autoimmune diseases, or things that affect our quality of life and downstream health outcomes? Like, [19:42] vaginal health, right? I think those are areas that have been under invested in. And so I hope to see kind of further innovation and investment in the areas of women's health outside of just reproduction. And so

[19:54] Yeah, I think those are the two basic science and research in areas outside of just reproduction. [19:59] There's still work to be done everywhere, but I would say those are just very obvious gold lines, in my opinion. [20:04] Totally. Yeah, it's funny. I really didn't even think about [20:09] the distinction between reproductive health and hormonal health until like this year for me like i was always just like oh i don't really like plan on having kids it's not really that important to me like i don't really know my gynecologist i don't really care if she's great and then recently i find i found a gynecologist that i love and it's been like totally mind-blowing to me to be like oh my god hormonal health is [20:33] a much bigger topic than reproductive health. And obviously, all aspects of it are super important. And it's all connected to healthcare generally. But it's crazy to me that as a 32-year-old woman, that happened to me this year, that realization around how much hormonal care is... [20:49] different than reproductive care generally. Totally. Even the women's health space is trying to fight the battle to not be called the reproductive health space. Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. That is wild that we've defined women's health as reproductive health. And I think that the NIH [21:04] To this day, women's health funding comes out of the maternal and child care. Wow. [21:10] So like, I just think we have so far to go in terms of our understanding of [21:14] the breadth of needs in women's health. But I think because of that, there's so many opportunities, right? There's white space everywhere you look. And I always say like, we're spending so much money looking at mutations of genes for one type of cancer that affects a small percent of people. And I'm like, these conditions in women's health affect 30% of women. You know what I mean? These are huge opportunity areas that have no diagnostics and no therapeutics, right? So it's like

[21:39] I think that we're going to hopefully see a massive wave of innovation. And there will be a lot of value creation that I hope that [21:44] entrepreneurs and investors go after. Yeah. The other thing I'm struck by is there's [21:49] There's a huge commercial opportunity. There's so much money to be made here. It's like absolutely crazy. When you talked about fundraising, I'm like so much of what I had to do was just educate people. I'm like, people don't realize how large this opportunity is and the sets of opportunities are and how low. [22:05] the bar is in terms of what is today for you to create value. And I feel like there are very few areas where there is this much obvious white space. Yeah, totally. OK, so I think maybe part of why this is a topic that has been underfunded until [22:21] fairly recently is [22:23] There's huge stigmas around discussing, especially for women's intimacy health topics. What do you think about this? How do we like normalize it? What is the conversation that you've had to navigate around it? Curious around sort of some misconceptions that you've experienced when talking about vaginal biome health. [22:42] Let's get into that. We think a lot about stigmas, as you can imagine here at Evie. I mean, we talk about vaginal odor and vaginal discharge all day. So talk about stigmatized and taboo areas. I think it's so... [22:56] Oh, I have so much to say. I mean, obviously from an institutional standpoint, these things are extremely stigmatized, right? I think that we're worth, we think that these things are dirty. We don't want to talk about them. They're shameful. You know, we have so many patients that tell us that they don't want to go on dates because they're worried that they smell and they don't want to, you know, be around someone down there or people who don't even want to go to their office because they're worried that they smell because they don't want to be in the elevator with other people, right? I think there's so much shame around these topics that

[23:24] is so unfair and so frustrating given, again, how common these conditions are. Bacterial vaginosis, which is the most common vaginal infection, the number one symptom is odor. And 30% of women at any given time have BV, right? Like these are such, such common conditions and yet [23:40] I feel like most of the patients we talk to feel so lonely and isolated on that journey. I mean, that's something we work really hard to combat, both on a, we always say, we try to combat this on three different levels, right? [23:53] First is for our patients, they have one-on-one health coaching, people who just listen, [23:58] help them understand what they're going through and then provide them with the tools, resources to advocate for themselves in whatever situation. [24:05] We obviously do this through our product and all of the ways that, you know, we try to educate users within our blog and, you know, bringing people medical and scientific content related to their healthcare needs. But then also we have a phenomenal educational platform, both on our blog, but also on TikTok and on Instagram, where we are talking about vaginal odor and vaginal discharge and women's health research. And frankly, it does extremely well because here's the thing is that [24:35] the age of platforms like TikTok, where actually people, it's okay to talk about things that are pretty and perfect. I think that, you know, [24:43] a brand being built in the age of TikTok, it makes much more sense for stigmatized topics than brands trying to build in the age of Instagram in these areas, right? And so I think that by actually sharing content that answers people's questions,

[24:55] that doesn't just tell them, here's a product to make your vagina smell like a flower, buy my wipe cream suppository, you name it. But instead to say, here's information on your own body and you can and should know these things and you're not alone. And talking to health care experts about it and providing that education, I think, has really helped break down the stigma, because it's kind of the exact thing that you said at the beginning. It goes from being this kumbaya, [25:19] Like I'm in my online community feeling... [25:23] like there's no answers to bringing it into this is actually just science. This is just health care. This is just biology. And I think when you start at the layer of education, you really bring people on that journey. And I think that [25:35] So much of our brand is focused on destigmatization and destigmatization through humor. And I think that really has resonated with so many women who felt like they can't talk about these topics for so long. [25:47] yeah totally i can really see that i can see even in building boys club i think one of the [25:52] things that has been really fun about building this brand in the age of the internet that we're in right now is there's a real desire and attraction, I think, to things that are imperfect, things that are funny, things that have a real sense of humanity around them. And I think the same goes for what you're building and is perfectly suited for this time where people and similar to Voice Club, like there's a real desire to be like educated around specific topics in a way that feels perfect. [26:15] personable to them. And I think that you guys are doing a great job of that. And it's exciting to see it in an area where, yeah, it's been really taboo before and something that people feel really embarrassed to talk about. [26:24] Totally. Another thing that people care a lot about at Boys Club is data privacy. You know, a lot of people in the Boys Club

[26:30] sphere come from crypto have a lot of thoughts around data and how it's collected and what happens with it. So I'd love to talk a little bit about that. And with the increase in health data collection, it's a huge concern right now. What do you think companies can do to protect patient data while still advancing this research? [26:48] Such good questions. God, so many thoughts. I think one is involving patients in the process. [26:56] So what I mean by that is at Evie, when you sign up with an Evie account, you activate a test kit. One of the first things that we ask you is if you're interested in [27:04] your data being used for research? And do you wanna be a part of that? So I think the first thing is like consent, right? Involving patients in the process, giving them access to choose what they wanna do, right? To use Evvie product, you don't have to do that, but you can choose to do that, right? And actually, what's interesting is [27:19] in that kind of process where we have patients' consent, we share a lot about, like, this is the type of research we're doing. These are the ways that we think our data can close these gaps in women's healthcare. [27:29] And I think because of that transparency, and frankly, I think because of the frustration with the, [27:35] slow pace of innovation in women's health, I think it's something like 98% of our patients actively consent to being part of research. We get emails from patients all day, every day saying, what else can I tell you so that my daughter, my sister doesn't have to struggle with the same issues that I have, right? And so I think there's a little bit of like a community aspect to driving innovation in women's health where people are really interested in, [27:58] not just themselves, but really in like, how can my journey

[28:03] actually make it so that somebody else doesn't have to go through the same thing. And I think you see that in all these online communities where people are spending hours a day trying to help each other with whatever information that they have. Yeah. So all that to say, I think first things first is consent and kind of giving patients the option to choose what they want to do with their data. [28:19] And then there's like all of the things you can do once you have that data to protect it to the best of your ability, right? And I'm not the expert here. Our head of engineering is remarkable in this area and really thinking about both the ways that we store data and the way that tables access each other. Like just there's so many robust ways that we can make it so that God forbid if anything ever, anyone were able to ever get into the EV system that we have made it so that we could minimize any type of impact that could ever happen to patient data. [28:48] And then in addition to that, there's everything you do with the physical labs and how they store information. That's both compliant with regulation that they have to follow, but then also making sure that, like, they never have patient information. Everything's de-identified to numbers and letters, and very few people have the keys between all these different things. And so we've implemented a lot of kind of EBI-specific solutions to making sure that people's data, if people give us access to the data, that we protect it to the best of our abilities.

[29:18] innovating here. So if people have ideas or things that they feel like are really best in class, like we would always [29:23] We'd always love to hear it because we'd love to be always at the forefront of this issue. Yeah, I think it's interesting your point around this desire to see innovation around this and a willingness to participate as a patient of your product. Because I really feel that way. I'm definitely not like a... [29:42] data privacy maxi, especially now that I know some of them. I'm like, oh, well, people really care about this and I've never cared about it as deeply as they do. But I think that there's a real motivation when you think, oh, there's something that... [29:54] this is a priority of this business. And I think especially like, [29:58] Having heard you speak and your co-founders speak and the heart behind what you guys are doing, it feels really different to say, OK, like, here's my data. And, you know, as you guys are continuing to build products and develop products that are helping women at the forefront of this innovation, that feels really different than, I don't know, feeling scared about my period tracker and like where that information is going and like what that means for me, especially right now in the U.S. and in this election cycle. [30:28] and who it's being served up to. And just nice to hear how you guys are sort of approaching that. [30:32] No, I think that's so well said. And I think, you know, the the simplest way to even put what you just said is like trust. Right. You have to earn people's trust and then you have to prove that you're deserving of their trust every day. And so I think that there is [30:45] It's like we as a brand have to prove that we exist for certain reasons. We're going to continue to do the right thing and we're here to do the right thing. And then always learning and improving. And so I think that that's been our ethos from day one. We want to do the right thing. And so I think that our consumers hopefully can feel that from us as well.

[31:03] you [31:05] It's time for a more open, inclusive, and transparent financial system. A system that serves nearly everyone, everywhere, all the time. That's why we love today's sponsor, Kraken. Kraken is a crypto platform that provides a super simple on-ramp to the world of crypto with a 24-7 support team. Crypto transcends physical and imaginary borders. No matter where you are, you can send funds easily and quickly to almost any part of the world. Plus, forget about waiting times and waiting lines. You can send, receive, and trade crypto anywhere near instantly. [31:34] Kraken.com backslash boys club, not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to us customers through payward interactive Inc. No third-party transfers available. [31:46] Okay, I want to end here with a conversation around, and we've spoken a little bit about this, but how much hormonal health, gut health affects your overall well-being, your overall health, and then also how that relates to your guys' product roadmap around what's next for you guys, how that sort of feeds into all these areas of healthcare more generally for women. [32:06] Well, as I alluded to at the beginning, what's, and I'll talk about the vaginal microbiome first, right? Like what's going on in your vaginal microbiome is not just affecting your vaginal symptoms and your vaginal health, right? It's playing this really kind of amazing role in the rest of your whole reproductive system, which it turns out does a lot more for you than just [32:25] reproduce, right? It bothers me that it's called the reproductive system. It frustrates me so much how we don't think about our vaginal health until we have a problem, right? And frankly, by the time that your vaginal microbiome, we wait till it smells, I always say. And it's like, by the time we're there, the vaginal microbiome has shifted so far. Things have gone bad. Things have gone down bad tremendously. We could have done so much, so much earlier in that process, but that's just not something that we're taught to think about today, right? And

[32:51] And I always say, like, who decided that the things that we should measure at the doctor's office are vitamin D and cholesterol and whatever else is on our report, right? Those are things that were predictive of health and disease and the people that they studied. And I think that what we will start to see across hormonal health, microbiome health, et cetera, is that there are so many other markers that we should be paying attention to that are also predictive of health and disease. And more specifically at EBI, what we are now working on is, like I said, we, well, I didn't even mention what we actually do. We do a vaginal microbiome. [33:21] I actually like loved that about your intro. I was like, this is such a sign of a great founder because you're so vision casting. I was like, great. We're not even in like the product of it, which is amazing. That's like promo. Really great stuff. Anyway, continue. [33:37] Okay. Well, I, it is relevant to what we're doing. [33:43] We do, we have an at home natural microbiome test. We use whole genome metagenomic shotgun [33:51] look at the whole genome of bacteria and fungi in the vaginal microbiome, which allows us to give patients and providers a much, much more comprehensive picture about what's going on for a patient, how much good bacteria do they have, how much pathogenic bacteria, what type of pathogenic bacteria, what's it doing in the microbiome. And then using that, we can then predict what treatments and ingredients are most likely to help that specific patient. [34:14] And through that platform, we built the world's largest, most comprehensive data set on the vaginal microbiome. We discovered double the number of genomes that we ever even knew about in the vagina before Evie. And so we're doing all of this really exciting research on both. How do we continuously innovate on the ways to diagnose and treat patients so that people who come to us are most likely to get better, no matter where they are or what their problems are? And then, as you mentioned,

[34:37] Since the vaginal microbiome is playing a role in so many other areas of women's health, how can we take what we've done for vaginal health patients and translate it into ways that we can help patients who are pregnant or patients who are trying to get pregnant or patients who have an abnormal pap smear and wanna avoid that progressing or patients who wanna avoid getting an STI? How can we take [34:57] the same platform that we have around testing the biomarkers in the vagina and then optimizing it, and then do that for all of these other areas of women's health where we know that the vaginal microbiome [35:07] is playing a role in outcomes. And that's in addition to some of the exciting work we're doing around [35:12] molecular signature discovery, where we're looking at, are there actually potential diagnostic markers for overlooked or kind of underserved women's health diagnostic areas that we could actually find in the vagina so that patients can go to the doctor and get a simple vaginal swab that could help diagnose them with things like endometriosis or PCOS or menopause or pelvic inflammatory disease. And so it's an exciting time at Evie where we're both kind of scaling the consumer health platform that we have around vaginal health. [35:40] the number one reason that women go to the doctor, but then also using that data to really do the R&D that frankly just hasn't been done in women's health so that we can improve outcomes in all of the other associated areas as well. [35:51] Incredible. I love it. It's so amazing, the work that you're doing and so exciting to hear about it. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing. If people are excited about what you're building, where can they find you? What's the best place to get started? [36:05] Amazing. It's evvy.com, E-V-V-Y.com. And I will make us a discount code right after I get off of this. And it will probably be Boys Club 10, if that works for you. That's perfect. We'll drop it in the show notes too. Okay, perfect. So I will get on that, that we have that. But we would be honored to be a part of this community. And if anyone has any feedback or ideas, we're always all ears. Like you said, we built this for the patients and for the women who want more information.

[36:35] Thank you. [36:35] Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. [36:37] *music*