Find Espejo, a health and wellness app for teenage girls designed to help them navigate adolescence. The app allows teens to ask questions about their health and well-being and get answers from experts. It also allows them to track their periods, moods and skin. The London-based startup appeared on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 today to detail its mission to educate and support teenage girls.
Espejo is the brainchild of best friend duo Jas Schembri-Stothart and Jo Goodall, who came up with the concept for the startup as part of an assignment during their MBA program at Oxford.
As part of their coursework, Schembri-Stothart and Goodall were required to form a team, find a problem, come up with a concept, and then pitch it to mock investors. They were allowed to choose their own teammates, and Schembri-Stothart told TechCrunch that she wanted to make sure she built a team of talented women.
After teaming up with a few other women from around the world, the group began talking about the health issues women were experiencing in their 20s and 30s, and the conversation returned to the fact that they had been lacking information. about their health in adolescence.
They all agreed that if they had learned more about the warning signs around women's health when they were teenagers, they would have been able to cope with adolescence and adulthood more easily.
The group came up with the concept of an app that would help teenagers in their health and wellness journey during puberty. After presenting the concept to their teachers, they received positive feedback. Although the duo remained focused on their studies and put the project aside, they revisited the concept during their summer vacation and thought about bringing it to life.
Schembri-Stothart and Goodall decided to revisit their old high schools to create focus groups with teenagers to get their perspectives on their concept. The teens told the duo that they were facing a misinformation crisis and didn't know what was current or false because they were getting most of their information from TikTok.
They also noted that the education system was not helping them learn about their health and their bodies.
“We came out of these sessions and people were emailing us, like, 'Hey, where can we download the app?'” Schembri-Stothart said. “We think there is clearly a demand for this and there is a huge opportunity here that no one is taking advantage of, and if we don't do it, someone else will and we will be shooting ourselves in the foot. So we decided to do it.”
After graduating from their MBA program in 2021, the duo created the app and launched a simple version in November 2022 that they shared with teens who attended their focus groups. Since then, the company has been developing the app and adding new features based on user responses.
Espejo allows users to ask anonymous questions and get answers from experts such as universal practitioners, gynecologists, dermatologists, academics, and more. All questions are anonymous and you can check and read other users' questions in the app.
To date, 100,000 members have asked nearly 45,000 questions on the platform. The startup is using AI to quickly answer questions that have already been asked on the platform.
For example, if a user asks how to improve skin and a dermatologist in the app answers, their answer will automatically be used to answer other users who have asked the same question. This way, medical experts don't have to spend time answering each question individually and can focus on providing new advice and ideas.
The app features a series of questions that it asks users every day to start tracking how they're feeling, while also recording their periods, skin, sleep, and more. Each month, Espejo provides users with a report that gives them information based on what they recorded. The app will encourage users to adopt healthy habits and consider talking to their doctor about certain things, such as heavy and consistent periods.
Espejo also has a “Learn” section where users can learn about specific topics related to things like body positivity, work anxiety, relationships, and more through articles and videos from experts.
“I would like Espejo to be in the pockets of teenagers around the world, enabling a more educated and empowered generation of women, and not only helping teenagers, but also their parents, because I think there is a huge untapped opportunity.” to support parents. “We see a lot of it prenatally and in newborns, but then it tapers off when it comes to high school.”
The app works on a freemium model where users can access all parts of Espejo for free, but then have a usage limit at a certain point. Users can pay €2.99 per month for unlimited access to the app.
The startup has raised €1.4 million in funding to date and has received investments from several angels and funds, including Syndicate Room, Octopus Ventures, Moonstone, Jade Ventures and Incisive Ventures.
Espejo is available worldwide, except the United States. The company wants to launch in the United States next year after ensuring it has the best possible product to take advantage of the huge market opportunity.
Espejo is available on iOS and Android.