Mayra Hurtado is a co-founder of Hormony, a hormone-measuring and monitoring tool for women in perimenopause. I’ve talked to her about why she started Hormony, what it does, and the tech behind it. Join our conversation.
I’m Sara Janasz, a writer for TechTruster who also runs SJ Copywriter. I help FemHealth brands share their customer success stories to reach more women and grow their business.
Sara: So, Mayra, tell me a little about your background.
Mayra: I started my career in finance, operations, and logistics in Mexico’s manufacturing industry. In 2008, I moved to Singapore to do an MBA. After my MBA, I worked in a biotech startup. During my MBA, I did an internship with Adidas, and then I spent 10 years with them.
Around 2019, I suddenly gained a lot of weight despite eating healthily. Even when I started exercising, I could not shake it off. During the pandemic, it just got worse. I had anxiety, I couldn’t sleep, and I started having migraines.
I was around 38 at that point. We are very blessed in Singapore because you have all kinds of well-regulated doctors, from Ayurvedic to Chinese and Western medicine. I saw all of them and spent so much money.
I finally met a nutritionist who sent me to do lab tests. But they had to be sent to the US, and I had to send them twice. It was an expensive and lengthy process. Ultimately, I got a piece of paper with a word I had never heard before: Perimenopause.
Sara: How and why did you start Hormony?
Mayra: After 10 years with Adidas, I was going to take a break. But then, I was introduced to my co-founder, Dr. Sarita, a biochemist with a postdoc from Stanford.
If you looked at Google Trends two or three years ago, nobody talked about menopause. Sarita was in her early 50s, and I was in my early 40s. Based on our own experiences, we realized there was a huge opportunity, and we just jumped onto it.
We didn’t plan or think it would be a challenging topic or space. We wanted to fix the problem.
Sara: When you started your business, what were your biggest challenges?
Mayra: The biggest challenge we faced was that people were not aware of perimenopause. Awareness is a big part of solving a problem. The word perimenopause was not very well known. It was a taboo topic, and people were scared to talk about it, even for women. Female investors asked me to remove the word from my pitch deck. So, it was challenging.
In the last few years, more people have discussed it, and it has started gaining momentum. Now, we have reframed that scary word to be about a club to which all women will eventually belong. So, we’re excited because things have changed very quickly.
The other thing is that the industry still sees women’s health as a niche issue, even though we make up 50% of the population. Perimenopause is not a choice. We will all go through it. In terms of investment, there’s so little allocated to it. We’re a large group of companies doing really good things, but there’s not enough money in the pot.
Investors have a checklist, which might not necessarily fit some tech companies. So I think it’s about the industry catching up with the trend. We now have people interested in the solution, but the investment part is still trying to catch up to that demand.
Sara: How have these challenges affected your business?
Mayra: It definitely took us longer to get there because research and development of a health tech product is very cash-dependent. We’ve been super lucky and are grateful to friends and family who jumped at the opportunity and supported us.
I tell people who want to enter this space that it’s a fascinating journey. However, they must also be aware that it’s more challenging than a typical startup because there is an additional layer of deeper and more personal conversations. The space is also still very new.
Sara: Hormony is a hormone -measuring tool. How do you use it?
Mayra: To use Hormony, you download the app and are prompted to create a profile and do a test. Using a small tube with a sponge, you collect saliva. Once it’s full, you put it into a liquid that separates the hormones from the saliva. You then add a couple of drops of the liquid into something that looks like a COVID test.
The test strip will show a couple of lines, like a pregnancy test. When you take a picture of the strip, the algorithm shows your hormonal level. With your personal information and test results, Hormony builds your hormone profile over time and creates a personalized protocol.
Sara: Can you tell me about the app’s AI and privacy aspects?
Mayra: The femtech industry has a problem with a lack of data. If you search for pregnancy or fertility, you’ll get 1,1 million research papers. If you search for menopause and perimenopause, you’ll get 90,000. So there’s a huge lack of data.
When you test your base levels at a lab, they will be compared to the base levels of a population. But you might be different. If you’re an athlete, your stress level will be higher, which is normal for you. But not for me if I have a desk job.
The AI helps us to understand your profile. It’s personalized. Using anonymized data across many users, we can inform the algorithm to help us deliver better outcomes.
One of the things that we need to ensure as humanity is that data is used well and that users have the power to decide what happens with their data. You have the choice to share your data to inform this universal algorithm. Your data will be anonymized and not used for anything that could be harmful to you.
Sara: Would you include data from wearables like watches and rings in the future?
Mayra: Yeah, absolutely. This is quite interesting. When we use any health app, we get asked questions. Now, we also have wearables that have a degree of certainty. But what is really exciting is that when we marry this data from these data points with the questions, they’re actually biomarkers. We can have really interesting correlation points to confirm or deny things.
Sleep is a great example. We can now track our sleep, but we don’t understand what it means or what it is related to. Once we start adding more data points, we can identify which hormones are the problem and what we can do to fix it. I think that’s a fascinating part of it.
Sara: How accurate is the Hormony test compared to sending the saliva to a lab?
Mayra: We realize that spitting is troublesome because many people lack saliva. Then, you still need to clean that saliva. Our tube collects enough saliva very quickly. It is much more accessible and helps us filter out the dirt in the saliva to have more precise measurements. That’s the first step.
The second step is to put the saliva into a liquid. Once it enters the liquid, it enters the second separation process. This allows it to be pure, which is very important for accuracy. Saliva is very hard to test because it’s very dirty, so it’s usually preferred to go to the lab.
With Hormony, there is lower sensitivity because it’s an at-home test, but not by much. But because you’re testing more often, the margin of error decreases because you have more data points. Not only that, it’s also your data and not the population’s data. We’re basically using a method that athletes have used for years.
Sara: Can you tell me how it works when you take a picture of the line?
Mayra: Athletes use a point-of-care device, which they put on top of a strip, to read a line and measure hormones. The reader has a specialized camera that removes shadows, light, etc. Then, it reads how dark or light the line is compared to the benchmark line. It’s been used for many years, but it’s not very accessible, and it’s an expensive device.
We built this reader into your phone, so our AI does the same. The algorithm helps you clean the image and then provides the results. It looks at the line and how dark or light it is compared to the baseline. Then, it gives you a value—not a yes or no, but an actual value.
Sara: When you have the results, what guidance do you get through the app?
Mayra: First of all, we map your hormones, and education is a big part of it. We want to help you understand the connection between the hormones and how they impact your overall system. Studies have shown that just knowing improves outcomes significantly.
Based on your profile, you will receive lifestyle management recommendations. We create a nutrition plan with foods you can eat at specific times of the month. For example, certain foods can help you process estrogen faster when you need to flush it out.
Then, there is exercise routine. Different times of the month require different intensities. Then, there is stress management. Sometimes, we must teach ourselves how to manage stress again because it significantly contributes to hormone changes. Then there are supplements. A lot of us spend so much money and effort taking supplements, but we don’t know if they work and if they’re what we need. So we help you understand what you actually need and for how long.
Sara: What’s your dream outcome for Hormony?
Mayra: My dream outcome is that Hormony is available in every pharmacy. I want women to have the choice to learn more about their bodies and what to do, and take action. Right now, there’s a lot of action when things are already bad. Like when women are already in the hospital, have cancer, Alzheimer’s, or osteoporosis. My dream is that there will be less of that and more preemptive care so women can live healthier lives.
Hormony will be released later this year.
TechTruster has no association with Hormony, and this interview is written independently.