Lea von Bidder is one of the co-founders of Ava. Started in Switzerland in 2014, Ava is a medical technology company dedicated to bringing innovation to women’s reproductive health. Their first and currently only product is a bracelet that is worn at night to monitor and predict fertile days.
Ava is mostly focused on couples of who are trying to get pregnant although Lea says they are moving from being a fertility company to a women’s health company. Lea explained, “there are so many areas we feel we can help, such as pregnancy monitoring, contraception, menopause, so many areas we can contribute to with new products”
When asked about how the name Ava came about, Lea enthusiastically stated that she and her co-founders are in love with the name. Although, in her own words Lea insists, “the story behind how it came about is a little boring!” Basically, women’s health products are often called women’s names and they wanted to continue this trend. Ava was the most common female baby name in the US and thus, Ava the company was born!
Lea continues to talk about how women today demand more information about their health. They want to have access to data, they want to be more informed than their health care provider and they don’t want to rely solely on the medical system.
“Our product should proactively help women and empower them with the data they need. We wanted to be much more uplifting and empowering” emphasized Lea.
Although they didn’t start out with this as a marketing goal, Ava has become good at influencer marketing. “I think it’s because we are in a topic that is so highly stigmatized and that no-one really wants to talk about. We found that influencers are the best way to informed the community” Lea stated.
One of their other success stories is their communities. Lea says their community groups are a wonderful team of users who become a support group for everyone trying to conceive. “We don’t have the resources to organize events but a lot of our users do that”, she says. With an online map of users’ locations, members of the communities have started meeting up in the real world.
Visit their website to learn more about Ava:
Timestamps
00:22 Congratulations Lea on making the Forbes annual “30 under 30” list for 2018
01:10 What is “Ava”?
01:33 Ava is women’s health company focused on giving women different insights about their bodies across all different stages of their productive life.
02:14 Leas entrepreneurial journey.
03:35 What’s in a name? How did Lea come up with the name Ava?
04:12 Brainstorming the brand.
06:51 Product development. What went into the planning?
07:49 The clinical research and the science behind Ava.
09:33 Influencer marketing. Even one of the Kardashians is supporting Ava!
11:34 The biggest challenge? The clinical research.
15:53 What else for Ava?
18:23 Massive changes in health. Consumers want to be more empowered on their own.
19:09 What inspires Lea? Lea finds inspiration everywhere.
20:28 Learn more about Ava.
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