How Flo Health, a Period Tracking App, Became a Unicorn - The Inside Story with Anna Klepchukova

[Music] Anna kova thank you so much for coming to our New London flow office flow health is

the most loved period tracking app worldwide and now Europe's first unicorn how does that feel like to be at the Forefront building this company it's

hard because we have to innovate every day and think outside the box and there is no one in the market we can copy I think it's with every product if you

have a dominant market share if you're a leader you need to look outside the box you need to think how else we can help people while if you're like a smaller

plan on the market you just try to take market share from a competitor when we started company we didn't have money for marketing at all the challenge was how to grow organically and we succeeded in

that as far as I remember Maybe the first 3 years we didn't spend a zero on marketing hello welcome to ftech India podcast we will discuss ftech and Women's Health today's episode is so

special we are recording with Europe's first ftech unicorn I'm thrilled to introduce my today's guest Anna kova who's a chief medical officer at Flo

Anna brings a wealth of expertise to her role hi Anna Hi how are you doing today good thank you so much for coming to our

new brand new London flaw office I thank you I hope you like the design I love the design I love the office and I think this is the first podcast we recording

yeah you're the the first people who came here to record the podcast so I'm like I'm really happy that's you guys

because look uh you're a female team right you're in a female U dominated company that works in a f Tech market so it's a perfect match yes absolutely

thank you so much and and I would love to know more about your background and um what inspires you to do and build for Women's Health every day yeah oh it's a

long story but I I'll try to be brief I don't want to be boring well um I'm Anna I'm a woman I am a mother and I work as

a chief medical officer here at flaw for almost seven years I started my career in bellarus um which that it's a country

in the Eastern Europe and I was a medical doctor I was a doctor um who was doing intensive care and

anesthesiology and then I I was kind of bored because the you know it became a routine although it's an emergency it

still can become a routine so I decided to change my life and I got a degree in marketing and I moved to Big Pharma and I worked for big Pharma for seven years

as a marketing manager right and then again and I got a bit bored okay uh and not only bored but also like I realized that um hospitals

and Pharma companies they're helping people too late when people are already sick where people already need interventions and I was looking around

thinking how can I make a positive impact and um join a company that helps to prevent problems that works with the

root cause right so so I met uh Dimitri who is a co-founder of flaw in my BX now and he just told told me about his idea

that he's very excited about preventative care about health education that he wants to help women and so on and he needed someone with a medical background business background and I got

so excited and I realized actually that it was always kind of my DNA to help women to help people to work was the

root cause and it was a perfect match but it was a very small company uh with i 10 people working in a very small

office not like this one a fancy place so um it was a big um a big change and a big risk for me

but I'm super happy I joined early because I made like I could I made a big contribution to the success of the company right no that's quite interesting and and I can definitely see

that flow Health has come a long way and you been part of the early team and of course now you know we're sitting in

your office in London which is great um tell me how does that feel of you know like really starting from like perod

tracking app and now flow Health going into literally covering everything for Women's Health

um I would say it's exciting and again I'm stressed uh I think I was reading an interview by this singer Adele that you know she's from London and she woke up

famous one day and then she was suddenly under huge pressure so I feel for flaw as well we've started from very humble

Origins we didn't have money it was a long journey and now like we're first F Tech unicorn in Europe all eyes on us

um expectations are very high like we are already a market leader but we need to reinvent ourselves we need to um kind

of build the future for female Health today here and it's very big responsibility and it's stressful so

that's how I feel I'm stressed and excited at the same time yeah I can imagine that uh you do have major role

to play now right um also like flow has such a huge database and user base from all around the world and when we talk

about you know digital technology and how do you keep that diversity and different culture values because literally you have a lot of users from

India as well um I've been using flow almost um 4 years now and was like really early user and the one thing I

really like is I love meeting our users to see real faces yeah and it's actually um has the best algorithm it's a honestly and and I feel I vouch for the

product for sure and there are so many organic user like if I check in my circle also like women around me they use flow like everyone literally uses flow because of the product so would

love to know a little more about you know when we look at the culture diversity or you know building for Global markets how do you keep that

element in place it's a big challenge it's like how to localize the knowledge for a particular Market especially now when we operate globally and we have

like 380 millions of users so how we approach it so the logic is this like this um we follow evidence-based

medicine approach so and it's kind of universal um like people handle themselves with different types of interventions some people like

evidence-based medicine some people have alternative use but like we picked what resonates with our own values so we follow evidence-based medicine approach

so there are certain medical guidelines and uh Publications that are relevant for the whole world like the period

lengths uh and how you calculate it is uh is a fact based on science so we use evidence-based medical guidelines and

science to provide information to women right that's about what we say how we say it yes that's a challenge because how

you phrase the same idea for different cultures is a is a huge Challenge and we have a localization team who tries to adapt the messages

it was a big surprise for me as a person from Eastern Europe when we just started that um the way doctors talk to patients

in Eastern Europe in the US it's different we are kind of in Europe especially in Eastern Europe we have more paternalistic model of medicine

right and um doctors say oh you're suffering from disease and when you say it to a person in from a different culture

um they they get angry because they're not suffering they're living with disease they're coping so even when you translate the Lang the the sentence that

is good in one language it might be like a complete PR disaster in another language so we've built a localization team right that helps us to adapt the

language and we have local doctors uh and local localization managers in main markets who help us um

polish the messages to make them appropriate because sometimes you have a good idea but no one would listen because you you phrase it in a really

inappropriate disrespectful way but it's a long journey we still have a lot of things to to do and improve flu health

is the most um loved period tracking app worldwide and now it's you know Europe's first uni cor how does that feel like to be at the Forefront um you know really

building this company um it's it's hard yeah because we have to

innovate uh every day and think outside the box and there is no one in the market we can copy so I think it's with

every product if you have a dominant market share if you're a leader um you you need to look outside the box you

need to think how else we can help people what are novel Technologies how can we adapt them while if you're like a smaller playing on the market you just

try to take market share from a competitor okay so for us the Big Challenge now is to find those next big

beds and innovations that we can provide to our users to continue grow um but again like what is the future for

us we will keep trying to improve health by educating women by empowering them by giving them understanding how their bodies work what's going on and we're

just hoping to use novel Technologies like AI uh variable sensors to to do what we can to improve their health so

tell me like what challenges did you face no the list might a very long story like it would take probably days to say to name the

challenges I would probably share my challenges as a manager right um because this is my personal story so the challenge was when when we

started company um we didn't have money for marketing at all so we the challenge was how to grow organically right and we

succeeded in that as far as I remember Maybe first three years we didn't spend a zero on marketing spent zero dollars and we were growing

organically uh so we had to kind of work with social media with App Store so like be very smart how to grow without

marketing dollars uh the Second Challenge was when we started exponential growth we needed more people to deliver more value to to build more features to

write more code right and we had to hire people fast and at some point we we had a kind of small office and we were

hiring maybe three or four new people in a day and we didn't have enough Furniture space to fill it yeah and I was managing a team of maybe like 50

people at that time and I was like okay guys um you're old this you work here for like half a year they're are newcomers we shouldn't discriminate them

so you all this will not have a table or you sit two or three people at the same table so newcomers will have a nice place until they become all these like

in the month so yeah there were days when we were basically sharing one table three people because we were growing faster than we could rent a new office

and deliver furniture um and then like in the medical side the challenge was when I joined I was the only doctor so I was reviewing everything at flaw every

article every letter but then the company event like was growing so fast that the the number of things that I needed to review became

too big so I had to start creating like a medical board right in like hiring doctors to join us to help me with like uring medical

quality but no one wanted to come so I was emailing doctors from the US from Europe please join our company work for us people wouldn't reply or some people

would say Okay I want to join your website is good and I was like oh God we are not a website we an app AB yeah so uh it was seven years ago there was

almost no F tech companies the health Tech Market was still very young right so doctors they I was trying to explain what we are doing and who we are they

couldn't understand yeah so it was a challenge to bring those first doctors to trust me and trust the company so they can make contribution but now it's

fine we have a medical board of more than 120 doctors working with using we have a scientific board so uh we managed to overcome this challenge but it wasn't

easy so you asked me about challenges I think working in a startup and in business in general is a challenge every day uh but as long as you remember what

is your mission what you're trying to do you can be flexible with how you do it so we always knew that we want to help women we want to use technology we want

to use evidencebased medicine to help them and then like whatever challenge comes we just try to you know deal with it overcome it uh but it takes a lot of

time and efforts no it doesn't and actually we always working towards the end goal and that's what just keeps us moving right like why we doing what we

doing but I'm sure you are very proud of what you build now I am I am yeah so you know flow Health also made announcement

um which is premium for 1 billion Android users worldwide that's a huge number and tell me more about that about

your pass on project uh I I think if you say if you ask me which project U I'm most proud of I think this one right

there was a decision to Grant access for free to people uh from different countries uh where we think health

literacy can improve uh lives of women and society and like just make a big change right so there is a list of

countries and probably we estimate as you said around 1 billion women who would start using flaw for free and learning things about their reproductive

Health you know contraception cycle pregnancy uh facts and um India is one

of those countries as well as uh Ukraine as well as Nigeria so there are like more than 60 countries where we are planning to Grant it we already granted

it for free um and I think that kind of you know they say that reproductive Health rights a basic right basic human

rights I think um access to Credible health related information is also a human right I've seen so many examples

how a simple fact about take folic acids or how to feed your baby or how to use condoms change lives literally lives and

destinies and careers of women so I'm a big believer that what we do can make a change and i w I wouldn't be a scientist if I wouldn't try to measure what we are

doing the positive impact so with pass it on Project where we are granting flow for free we also launched a research simultaneously to measure Health

outcomes so how health knowledge will improve how menstrual stigma will decrease how health awareness will improve and we are running a study and

we see preliminary data is very positive so like menstrual stigma is reduced by 10% health awareness increased by 20% so

we see that initial data is very promising and I'm big believer that uh it may change uh like like life with

like a whole whole millions and whole countries no of course I think it has a huge contribution to giving access to girls and women who are under

represented and to understand their health which is reproductive Health which is I think it's overall women's health is a basic human right but like

whatever we could do in terms of digital landscape I think this is really owering um and I personally love this initiative thank you I have also a personal story

to share when I was young uh no one told talked to me about reproductive Health periods my mom was a

teacher she was very Progressive but still it was kind of Taboo in easn Europe I I imagine it's still a taboo although I'm 38 now it's like 20 years

later it's still a taboo things hasn't changed much right and um but I was a book worm so I was reading books and we had lots of like encyclopedias books about health so I kind of learned

everything from the books and those books and the knowledge about how my body works how to use contraception right can I get pregnant

by sitting on someone's lap or not what does this mean what does that mean it empowered me and uh later in life when

kind of you know the boys were saying oh can we have unprotected sex I would say no go and have unprotected sex with yourself I'm not doing this and I had

kind of I was so empowered and confident to stand up for myself you had knowledge I had knowledge I know what is right I knew what is right and I was so kind of

big believer in this that I was like I I became a freelance consultant in my school and girls if someone wanted to learn something they would come to me

say no like can I get pregnant by just chewing someone else gum and I was like let me open my book but there was no internet at that time so I only had the

books that I had right and now I'm thinking like if it changed my life right um I think given even more knowledge because I had like three books

now we are giving access to chart boards that you can talk to you know ask any question we are giving access to like 5,000 articles validated by doctors I

think this this is a huge opportunity to women right learn about themselves and then stand up for themselves and say no to of course absolutely and I

think I can totally resonate because we think India is a very culturally diverse country and honestly my first period experience was also so horrible my mom

just gave me bads and I didn't know what to do and my auntie was just staring at me and giving me looks that I was like something did I do something wrong I

just got my periods and I had I had no idea how to manage myself and absolutely I've I'm self-taught person I've also learned everything through business to

my body to my health and learning everything my own and and I think now uh thanks to technology and companies who are who trying to build better access

for Women's Health and there's so much knowledge and empowerment that you know everyone should know and I think this is I always see technology has so many different ways of empowering us I'm so

glad things are changing maybe next 10 15 years yeah I'm a big believer So eventually if you ask me about my mission I want women to be leading this

world right um and to lead the world you need to lead your body own your health control your reproductive health because

if all of a sudden you caught by STI or an intended pregnancy you you kind of be very distracted by solving this problem

and you would lose professional opportunities you know like U creative opportunities so I feel if we want women to lead the world we kind of need to

help them of course just to yeah to help them own their house yeah we need to build the world women can navigate on transition in every stage in their life

even it's pregnancy fertility whatever is it right so they can get back on the track yeah so um I want to know more about your product and if you can tell

our listeners the premium uh features and of course in pass on Project also how does that Empower women or under

represented communities yeah so um we provide the same functionality uh in our passon premium access uh the same that

you know like here we have a part of subscription so what you will get if you would start using Flo today right uh period tracker so you can log your

periods and know when the next period is coming that was like our core functionality that we started from but we have much more so we have also

symptom panel so let's say you look um painful sex you log it you log it you log it several times then the algorithms

that we build together with doctors will tell you what are the possible reasons it can be like underlying health issues like endometriosis it can be that probably

you have like uh you are too stressed so we we have algorithms that help women to understand what they their symptoms mean

and then we have a Content that explains it uh it can be in the form of stories like an Instagram or an article or a

chat B and then as a separate part of our uh product we have a community that's the place where women safely anonymously discuss their health

concerns their health experience and it's a really nice place where you can um read what how women approach the same

problem and when I was pregnant um I I had NOA I I couldn't eat I was vomiting all day and I felt really bad right and

you know I would never believe that this would help I went to FL commun I tried to Google before watch YouTube but no one was talking openly about it and then

I kind of put in fla surch um NOA pregnancy and then I was reading how women were feeling how they were approaching it and actually felt

relieved because I wasn't the only woman who was vomiting six times today some women were vomiting 12 times so I already felt relieved because someone

was kind of in a better in a worse situation and then they shared tips so I think this this is really valuable maybe

in communities where women like you said like you couldn't talk to your mom right you couldn't talk to your auntie you might not be able to talk to your friends about

it Community that's the place where you can ask questions and then women from a different country from your community they can share their experience and you'll like you'll feel that you're not

alone with your health challenge so that's the feature I really admire right you I also like your feature where you can add your partner as well oh yes yes

so I think what's your take on um like overall I think um for Women's Health we need to build that support system around and your partner also needs to

understand um even if you're going through your pregnancy Journey or postpartum care um so what what inspired you guys to add that feature which is

like adding your partner and he could also maybe track your journey like how Journey uh it's really it's a journey the partner want is a journey we tried

to build it the idea that you know that probably we should connect um partner with the the flow user and

maybe build a feature that a woman could inform her partner about her period face or what how she's feeling and so on it

was like idea of like s years old right and six years ago we tried to launch it we did MVP and we launched a pilot but

there was very low interest maybe like kind of men were not ready right and then uh last year we were again kind of reevaluating our ideas what to do next

this kind of idea uh again appeared in the list and I want to be honest I was against I was saying no like men don't care about themselves they don't go to

doctor like why would they care about our health but the men actually in our like management team they were saying no we need it so they they voted for it and

we decided to invest in development of this feature and it became viral um so I think something has changed in the world

so maybe men are now more open more interested to learn to help yes uh and it for me it was a big learning that uh I was very rigid but actually the world

is better than I think so now um it's a really popular feature we're kind of investing more in it you already can share uh your like your symptoms how you

feel and your partner can read um read more and understand what you're experiencing what you're going through so this is kind of helps to build better

closer relationship because they would have more empathy course of course yeah so um let's see how this future again will change the world yeah no I love

that it's really great so um what are the new Innovations and features we can uh we can expect from flowing

future very very exciting topic thank you for asking um I think we again we need to follow our mission we need to

introduce new things that may improve health education health literacy and just Health in general for women globally and we looked around and we

realized that um we have several gaps so we definitely need to do more for women who are facing param menopause and

menopause I think we started as a product for younger audience right uh and then we now see that our users are

getting older like if you started floor using when you were 140 now you're like 47 48 you might be already uh facing

param menopause symptoms already entering menopause so we want to expand and like provide a better service for

older groups of users and then we there are two other things where we want to explore um data from variable

devices um since I think maybe since three years ago we've seen a m like a real raise in

uh interest among users to wear Smart Watch smart Rings continuous glucose monitoring patches you know saliva

trackers and so on so I think women especially like women over 30 they kind of want more control they want devices

that will measure objectively what they feel how their body is a working and we see this trend so we want to use uh we want to build more integration with

variable devices and use this data um to um provide insights how reproductive health and sleep is connected right how uh your you know like reproductive

health and glucose levels are connected and it's like a very novel area there is not much research there so we will do our own scientific research to

understand like what can we say based on variable data and the third area is AI I think like everyone is talking about

aiar large language models and there is a lot of hype but um if we just take out the hype and like the uh from

AI it's still large language models provide unique opportunities to um kind of make convers ation with user

empathetic AI as a algorithm that helps to calculate um kind of probabilities provides opportunities to um kind of

segment users better personalize information better um find patterns that a human and a

doctor couldn't find in data so AI uh large language models that's an area where we are looking into how we can use it to improve health and there comes a

challenge because how we can make it medically credible trustworthy uh and we would have to solve this challenge with my medical and

research team no that's amazing and I also feel variables are getting as common as smartphones I feel a lot of women wearing it and everybody wants to track

track the data so there's a definitely huge potential untapped opportunity if you're trying to build something really from ground up as you said there is no research on that as of now right very

limited companies are just starting to explore it they're just tracking mostly sleep right and even in sleep not much

research yeah yeah so tell me how does flow health keeps the latest research and developments in women's health and how quickly that get reflected on on your

app thank you for your question I I really like um when I'm asked about um medical part of the app because I'm

really proud of the processes we have in place so we have a medical team inh housee and we have also research scientists in house here in London so

they work um is to monitor latest updates in medical guidelines in research

Publications and then extract facts and findings that we can add to our app so we have a process where we receive the

news and reports about what was published are there any updates let's say in vitamin D dosage usage so we get

those findings and then we um integrate it in our content or in our features so we have a processing place and we try to

keep up with the latest science although I would say female health research is still very limited yeah even if you look on the

basic science around what is normal cycle lengths what is period lengths what are the symptoms of pericystic

Varian syndrome uh there is no there is not enough data available to make good decisions if look at diabetes it's

research like deep like from left to right from up to bot like we know a lot about diabetes and there are so many drugs available right uh but in Women

Health like situation is opposite um it's not much known about uh pregnancy it's not much known about periods andom

metriosis so um we that's why we invest in our own science so we try to go collaborate with researchers uh from all over the world

right and because we have the biggest data set selfreported data and Women's Health researchers come to us and ask us okay we are trying to

understand what is the most prevalent symptom of polycystic avarian syndrome in India like we had research like this compared to us right uh and we look in our

data and we tell researchers that answer and that results in a scientific publication so we try to use our data as

well to contribute to advancement on female health research in general right yeah I think PCS is one of the major

concerns in India because of the lifestyle um it's still a big mystery it is yeah how it happens prevention how to

treat it better so um we had several researchers uh related to this topic because we want to help Society to know

more about it to help women because that's the main reason of infertility later in life anator infertility that's why the fertility

rates are also declining right that's true yeah so with such a large user base globally and how do you manage with data

privacy and security of Health Data well we have a female Le data privacy and security team and we take data um

privacy and security very seriously because we operate in a very sensitive area no one wants their you know period dates

or symptoms to be shared with someone with the government or with you know like your partner your friends so I think the data that we deal with is as

sensitive or maybe even more sensitive than financial data I would probably be more ashamed if someone would know about my health challenges that was my financial

challenges so we invested heavily in building infrastructure for privacy and security and we got to I think we no we

are the only female app imp period tracking app that has dual ISO certification for privacy in security so

it means that we have very strict controls over how we deal with data um and how we process it uh we also have um

won an award for our Anonymous mode so that's the functionality that we build um for

women who want full security so it if you use this mode no one never in the

world would get access to this data even if you know we will be pushed by government to do something with it we we

can't trace it so uh it was a mode that we developed as a reaction to concerns

in the US market uh um based on their changes in legislation so some women felt insecure

so we decided that we need to invest in building the mode that will help them have full control and full safety over

their Health Data no that's amazing so um what's your vision for Women's Health overall and will you continue to expand Beyond reproductive

Health um our vision is uh Women Health needs to be improved and we hope that we will probably leave till a day where uh

we will have as much knowledge about women's health and as much Focus about women's health as of cardiovascular health and metabolic health and lens

Health right so and we hope that we will make a contribution in this um and in terms of uh expansion I think it's really hard to draw a line between

reproductive health and other health like with pcus you people people with politic avine syndrome they they face

challenges with fertility but also they have higher risks of getting um stroke or diabetes and so on so we kind of

think about natural expansions in the areas outside reproductive health because you know bad sleep uh bad nutrition impacts your reproductive

health and bad reproductive Health impacts your or other areas of health so right we already expanded from just

period tracking app into health and wellness tracking app into educational business so we would want to expand more

and serve uh more women and help them not only with reproductive health problem but with Wellness problem as I

said per menop menop so right I think uh overall if our Miss is to improve health of women uh we will try to do as

many we'll try to do as many projects as possible in as many areas as possible to like just to to keep doing what we are

doing no that sounds exciting um what excites you though the most what excites me

most novel Technologies I think data um as I said we have already real like the biggest uh self-reported uh data set on women's

health and for me as a doctor as a scientist I feel it's kind of a a pile of gold we are sitting on and not from

revenue perspective from scientific perspective um when you go to the doctor usually doctor knows about you

very small part of your health or tiny bits of your story we already have users who use flaw

for eight nine years so we know their story we could integrate with electronic health record variable data imagine we

would be kind of a tool or a place or a partner who knows everything and who can tell you okay

you're expecting a problem because you know six years you had recurrent headaches you might like this is the reason why stop drinking too much coffee

or we see you're not sleeping well because you're doing this run so I'm mostly excited about that now with the

rise of um ability to collect and store so much data with the new technologies that help

us to connect the data and merge the data from variables apps electronic health records and the new algorithm who can process it and quantum

computers so this is very exciting for me as a doctor and the scientist so the we will be able to provide much better

care not only as a flow as a company but the whole industry health stch I believe may make a revolution like you know the story was medicine there have been

several reol utions and medicine that changed dramatically the landscape of healthcare like anesthesia so when anesthesia was invented doctors

could could operate could start operating and people were not dying stop dying like you couldn't do heart surgery two centuries ago because there was no

anesthesia then antibiotics people stopped dying because of infections you know tuberculosis is not big it's still a big issue in some

parts of the world but it's not kind of killing people so much people as it used to be and uh people can survive um all

sorts of infections right and I think real world data AI variables electronic health records that's kind of it's a

thing that may lead to another revolution in healthcare where people would might not need a doctor they might have like an AI assistant who will help

them solve their health challenges the future is very exciting let's try not die before it happens yeah hopefully it's it's quite

exciting there's a lot of happening and I'm very excited about the AI as well how it's going to contribute to health overall that's

true yeah so can really help broader the impact and really serve communities there's nothing like it right I agree with you yeah so Anna what's your

message for our listeners um Flo has such a huge organic user base from India but we have listeners from 90 countries around the world so I will say what is

your message for women all over the world I think my message is the future is bright um

and technology that we are building May make this future is bright even brighter we already see how much

women are doing for the families for their societies that you know um there is a rise of women impact and women

contribution and women recognition and I believe that with the knowledge uh that we provide and other companies also contributing so with the knowledge with

the Technologies with empowerment women can change the world so my message is just learn stand up for yourself uh be

bold be brave uh and we'll see a different world and I I envy my sons because they will be living in a different world and marrying a different

women right who are smarter who are more self-confident who are stronger than than us so I'm

kind of very excited for the future and I hope this this is a good prediction no absolutely I love that thank you so much thank you so much for inviting me it was

a pleasure to host you and I hope to show you uh to to make a guided tour now yeah thank you so much it was so nice to have you and absolutely love what you're

building uh empowering more women around the world and uh do you have do you want to see anything for pass on project if anyone's listening and how they can

leverage that yeah if you're Android User just go to Android Google store and then like find flow and then you can get

access amazing perfect thank you so much Anna thank you so much um hope to see you soon yeah thanks