S7E4: How Jamie Norwood and Cynthia Plotch of Stix Are Transforming Women’s Health, Starting With How Women Shop for Their Health Essentials

In terms of the future of women's health, we're at this moment where nobody knows. And both of us, I think the team, I think probably every woman in this country, like, changes every day and every hour how we really feel. I think it has been unbelievable to watch women come together, people come together to try to create a better future.

Welcome back to the 7th season of The Room Podcast. If you've been here for a while, you might remember Claudia and me have been on a journey to navigate our early 20s careers in Silicon Valley. We started this podcast about 2 years ago now, which is pretty wild, in the middle of a pandemic, recording from our bedrooms. Since then, a lot has changed both in the macro economy as well as in our own jobs and careers. So let's get you up to date on what's going on with us. Since 2020, Claudia has left Uber and become a full-time co-CEO and founder of Pryve, a startup unlocking and disrupting recurring revenue for e-commerce brands.

And Madison is now a partner over seed investments at Defy VC, an early-stage venture firm in the Bay Area. Totally crushing it, and I'm so lucky to have her as an investor in Pryve. We're two women navigating our careers and asking the people who inspire us to shed light on their stories.

Unlocking Access starts with a conversation and context.

We open the door to moments in technology history that traditionally happen behind closed doors. Mads, can you tell us what to look forward to this season?

Absolutely. This season, you can expect a really exciting 8-person roster of founders that you've definitely heard of. First up is Spencer Raskov and his journey to building Zillow. Second, we have Kelsey Millard and her vision for the future of primary care, which is being empowered by the Sitka platform. We also have a look into the future of the modern data stack with Kashish Gupta, the founder of Highspot, where he's going to share his belief in the need for reverse ETL. And amidst a backdrop of a lot of macroeconomic turmoil, our guests are going to bring you into the room where they're making important decisions on navigating a downturn. In real time. Claudia, where can people find more about our key themes and guests each week?

Great question, Mads. Every week we launch a newsletter and related resources alongside the episode that helps our listeners get tactical. If you're local to SF, hit us up. We have an exciting schedule of in-person events, fireside chats, and pop-ups where we would love to meet you. Well, sounds like we're ready to open the door to this week's room.

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Welcome back to another episode of The Room Podcast. We are so excited to share another inspiring conversation with the founders of women's health startup Styx, Jamie Norwood and Cynthia Plotch. Styx is on a mission to provide judgment-free access to health essentials for women everywhere. It all started actually when Styx co-founder Cynthia was buying a pregnancy test at the drugstore and the unthinkable happened. She ran into her boyfriend's mom. When Cynthia told her colleague and friend Jamie about the awkward run-in, they realized that they both had terrible experiences buying women's health products. And when it came to learning about managing their health, there was much to be desired. They then started Styx to create a convenient, discreet, and judgment-free way to get the products that all women need. Styx today has raised over $6 million in venture capital to grow access to products like pregnancy and ovulation tests. Increasingly important in today's climate. In today's conversation, we chat about topics like the future of health tech, today's women's health climate, and what's next in data sci.

Jamie and Cynthia, thank you so much for joining us in the room today.

Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here.

We'd love to start at the beginning of your story. I know we're here to really chat about the two of you founding Styx, but sometimes it's really fun to dig into your backgrounds prior to founding the incredible startup that is Styx. Jamie, you went to Tulane University studying English and psychology, and then after graduation you went headfirst into marketing and customer experience. Tell us a little bit more about the first couple of years of your career.

My first role was a marketing coordinator at a healthcare startup, actually. Very different product than what we're working on now. We made software for eye doctors, so it wasn't the most glamorous, but it was a small team and I was thrown in headfirst and just had to figure out everything on my own. It was a really good experience and I learned a lot about what it takes to work at a small team. And then my next role was working in customer experience and product at Hungry Harvest, which is where Cynthia and I really got to know each other and work together. And that was super fundamental and really formative because we were some of the first hires. It felt like we had that in view of what it takes to start a company.

And how did you make your way to Hungry Harvest? What broke you into the world of direct-to-consumer?

I was actually a customer of theirs and I had only worked at the eye doctor company for a few months. And at that point I decided that I wanted to work at a company that I was a consumer of, especially in marketing. I felt like I couldn't understand what an eye doctor needed or I couldn't understand really how to truly speak to them. I got this produce box from Hungry Harvest every week and I was having all these ideas for them and I saw they were hiring and I, I reached out and A few months after I started, they were hiring for a role that I immediately thought of Cynthia for. We were connected through the Venture for America fellowship, and she joined, and we were the first two women at the company, and we were super tight-knit through that experience.

That's awesome.

We'll dig into sort of the story of the two of you finding each other and starting Stick shortly. Cynthia, you went to UPenn to study economics, and similarly to Jamie, you were a fellow at Venture for America, and then were the director of markets at Hungry Harvest. Tell us a little bit more about these first few years of your career and how that shaped you to start Stitch.

I realized in college that I was really passionate about this concept of social enterprise and the ability to do well and do good. I always knew I wanted to have a career based in impact, and I thought maybe it was gonna be politics and maybe it was gonna be nonprofits or community investing or whatever that was gonna be. I never really found anything that stuck until I found this like concept of social enterprise. And so joined Venture for America to find more, to figure out how my career could include social enterprise and what that might look like. Ended up joining this really small, like mobile app company that was not social enterprise at all. My first year out of college, I was able to just see a lot of different things and do a lot of different things. And while it didn't have the impact that I ultimately wanted to have out of my career, I realized that I love doing a lot of things. Things and that I never really want to be a specialist. I like being a generalist and being able to understand all the different things that can make a business go. And then Jamie doesn't give her bringing me to Hungry Harvest enough justice, but we had been friends from Venture for America and Jamie knew I was really excited about Hungry Harvest. I basically like did a ton of food waste stuff in college and I love food systems and I was like, this is where I'm meant to be. And I said, Jamie, if there's ever anything, you give me a call. And I was with my family in Vermont, pulled over at a rest stop. We must have been like buying maple syrup or swimming in a lake.

I don't even remember.

And I left my phone in the car and I come back to 10 missed calls from Jamie.

10.

And a bunch of texts and like a voicemail being like, "Call me. We're hiring in Philadelphia. You're perfect. Call me." She made sure that I was going to be the first application in. So I really have Jamie to thank for pulling me into the world of direct-to-consumer. When I got to Hungry Harvest, the company was operating in the Baltimore and DC area and like just starting out in Philadelphia. And it was my job to figure out like, what does it mean for me to be in Philadelphia and how do I make it grow? Ultimately, that turned into what does it mean for the company to exist outside of the DC Baltimore area? So in Florida and in Michigan and North Carolina and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and some other places. And I got to do the things that I really loved there, which is think about an entire system moving in order to grow something and use data to make that happen. And, but also be based in community and impact, which I think are things that like are very central to my core values. And it was my first experience leading a team and managing. And none of it would have happened without Jamie, not just even getting that job. Like Jamie said, we were the first two women there. And so we learned what it meant to be allies in a room of men and how important it was for us to be able to not just learn how to use our own voices well in those scenarios, but how to build up each other. And I think that is a lesson that has carried through to this day.

That's a super helpful deep dive into that early start and also very much a testament to the power of female friendships in the workforce. And so given that sort of bond, I don't think it was a far cry for the two of you to join forces and start Styx. But I'm curious about just you both individually. Did you ever think you would become founders?

I didn't. When we did BFA, a big part of that fellowship is preparing you to join an early stage startup in hopes that you start one yourself. And I think I just always, always wanted to be really close to a founder and help. And it wasn't until Cynthia and I were at Hungry Harvest and we saw the founders Starting the company, running the company, growing it, and it just became so clear that like we were capable of doing that for ourselves. But no, I think there are certain people who like are very sure in their gut that they're gonna start a company one day and work towards that. And with Styx, the idea came first and we just started working on it as a side project for fun, as like a weird hobby. And then we got a lot of traction and then it became more and more clear that like we were gonna do this. Full-time.

I didn't necessarily know I wanted to start something, but I knew I wanted to lead something. I was like, great, I want to be a CEO, that's what I want to be. But I think because of our experience at Henry Hermès, it's like, wow, founding something, that seems terrible. But now whenever I reflect back and I'm surprised, my partner always points out to me that in the moments I've been most unhappy with my career, the thing that I've done is not look for jobs but thought about what I could start instead. Madison McIlwain, I probably in some level did always know, even if I maybe was slow to accept it myself.

Totally.

I think it's really been interesting on this podcast to hear the variety of, yeah, I've been pumping lemonade stands since I was 3, like I am a founder, versus someone else who really has been an operator their whole life but has the true kind of spirit of a founder and then eventually couldn't run away from that. So that's awesome to hear both of your sort of journey to founder. Wanted to chat a little bit more about the joint decision to start Styx. So I'm hearing that it started out as a bit of a project. Tell us a little bit more about these early days and how you, Jamie, and you, Cynthia, came to each other and said, hey, I think we're going to do this full time.

Jamie and I, we knew that we wanted to really do something. Like, we didn't know exactly what it was, but we liked this idea of women's health. And we didn't have that many ideas, but we did like Once we figured out we're going to do something together, we did really know it. I always say that there's two things that we got out of our experience at Hungry Harvest together, a passion for creating better experiences for a female consumer and working together. And so I think we both had these just bad experiences being a woman and using our healthcare system. I was once buying a pregnancy test and ran into my boyfriend's mom. Jamie had a crazy experience on the side of a mountain in Mexico that she might tell you about if you're lucky. And I called Jamie after the experience with my boyfriend's mom and was in tears. But quickly it helped us understand just the magnitude of the problem that was existing. If this was happening to us, this was happening to a lot of people. And if this is happening for pregnancy tests, this is happening in a lot of different ways. And so we started Styx really with the support of Venture for America and a lot of their programming, but just started exploring the idea, like, is there something to this idea of direct-to-consumer pregnancy tests. That's really where we began thinking. Like, we did market research and we tried to understand what was going on. And like Jamie said, I think it snowballed pretty quickly from there. We had a lot of really great supporters pushing us along the way, and that was tremendously helpful for us. Jamie, do you want to talk about our decision to go full-time then?

You know, like Cynthia was saying, we had a passion for working together and we were excited about women's health, but when the idea for Styx became a reality, we were just so energized by it. I remember we were working full-time and we would get together after work and work super late, and we were doing like OKRs and really structuring the work. And we were just having so much fun that there was never a true moment where we were like, this is gonna be our career, but it just kept happening and kept energizing us. And then it got to the point where it was so much work. That was so fun. But we also had our full-time jobs and I was the first one to be like, I can't do Hungry Harvest anymore. Like we need to go full-time on Stitch. There's something here. Look at all this traction. And Cynthia is more, I'd say like practical and was like, we can't do that until we have like revenue or we can pay ourselves a certain amount of money. And we were 25 at the time. Like we were so young, like living in Baltimore and Philadelphia, we had very few expenses. So Cynthia and I met in the middle and we set some benchmarks, like once we have X number of signups on a waitlist, we'll quit our jobs. And then that kind of coincided very beautifully and serendipitously with a pitch competition where we met our first investor. And in a matter of one week, we got our first check from this angel investor and we got all these waitlist signups and we actually quit our jobs together a couple weeks after that. And took one week off, and then we've been working on Stick since. So that was 3 years ago.

I forgot about the one week off.

That was crazy.

Yeah, I know. Looking back, that's probably our biggest mistake is not taking like a month.

That is absolutely our biggest mistake.

I think Claudia relates. I remember when she left Uber to start Pride, there was very little break, if I recall.

I'm like, after this week, I'm going on my first vacation of the year and it's going to be 4 days long.

I'm very excited.

Yeah, once you start, there's no stopping.

I heard you say a couple different insights for someone who maybe is also thinking about who they should take this big leap with from a co-founder perspective. And particularly two things that stuck out to me is this shared experience across both the empathy side of the core customer that you're solving for, but also the shared experience of having built before at your previous company. And those two alignments really gave you both the confidence to be able to say, I think we can take this full-time together with some additional external support.

We got very lucky because not only did we enjoy working together and have this shared passion for the problem, but we are opposites. Cynthia's very data-driven and she was an economics major, and I like love branding and I was an English major. We're opposite sides of the same coin. So for us, it was always very clear who would work on what and that we were a natural team. But I've talked to some people who are considering starting a company and looking for co-founders. And I think that like Cindy and I have been really quite spoiled in the journey because we never had to decide to work together. It just happened. We got very lucky. So I personally think it would be so hard to start a company with someone you don't know or find each other at networking events. I think that's so cool, but like it is such an intense relationship and you have to to have so much trust.

Orienting ourselves towards the business itself, you shared briefly a bit about each of your personal journeys to get to why Styx needed to exist in the world. But from what I understand today, you are a platform that helps provide women with products that help them specifically on their fertility and health journey, such as pregnancy tests or ovulation tests. Is this correct about how you would describe Styx in your own words?

Yeah. So we started in the fertility space with the pregnancy test and we've expanded into vaginal health and now sexual health. We like to say that Styx helps you make confident health decisions and we have products from pregnancy tests to UTI tests to yeast infection treatment. We just launched an emergency contraception pill called Restart. In June. So we've expanded quite a bit.

Incredible. And there is a huge macro conversation happening right now about this particularly. But when you started this about 3 years ago, it was a different time. And still women were having this issue then that we are now around how we could get access to certain personal health needs across the spectrum. You shared briefly, Cynthia, about your own— sounds like somewhat traumatizing experience at a drugstore. But could you share a bit more about what the initial mission and point you guys are trying to solve for women across their healthcare journey?

When we first started, we were all about— I remember we had this phrase, accessible and empowering pregnancy tests.

Yeah. Affordable, accessible, empowering.

Yeah, that was the one I missed.

That was like our first website.

The idea was that buying a pregnancy test, which is really the only thing that we had in the first and earliest days, was bad because of the drugstore experience, because of price gouging, because brands didn't speak to women and made you feel bad. Our very first idea for Styx had to do with women taking pregnancy tests who didn't want to be pregnant because we felt like we were really left out from the market. It's interesting, even as we've grown and some of these ideas have changed around accessibility and what accessibility empowerment means to our customers and community, That really has held true now that we have, what, like 14 SKUs and a team of 12.

It's interesting that this word community is coming up because I think the old model of healthcare was really not geared towards building any sort of community. You maybe had this primary care physician that you'd see once a year, but there was no conversation in between. And if you had to ask a question, like maybe the internet, maybe you had a really cool aunt or sister or mom you trust. But this idea of you can build community around some of these needs and big questions across gender or across affinity group is something we're really seeing a lot that is spurred on by growth through technology. With the Styx community, what has been a really resonant problem that you've been helpful to solve for them or resonant experience they have with Styx specifically?

We started posting some blog posts a couple years ago and just answering some basic questions about sexual health in general. And we found that they super took off and people were really in need of answers to these health questions that they felt they couldn't ask their doctor. So they turned to Google and on Google they would find a really scary WebMD article or advice from an unverified blog. So we found this white space in sex and health education, and we've now launched this platform that we call Real Talk, and it has answers to your most Googled health questions. Everything is medically verified. And we're starting to think about how we can take that and build more community and engagement around Real Talk itself. But Real Talk has been one of the biggest drivers in our growth and really what makes Styx unique and Similar to how we founded Styx, it was serendipitous. Like we posted this article and it just really took off and we found that it was driving a lot of our website traffic just from organic search. People Googling things like, what does my discharge mean? Or what is this burning when I pee? That has been so important to our growth and our mission.

I would say women, maybe men too, but I would just say because of my experience as a woman has had that moment of Googling something you feel weird asking anyone else and then going, oh, I really don't like this answer. Does this make any sense? Just even in my younger journey on like having the internet at my fingertips from basically day one of my own personal journey, having trusted resources would have been so valuable. And I'm really grateful that Styx is out there today reaching younger women who are in the beginning stages of their journey or women who are making bigger life decisions based on some of the results.

The conversation in the zeitgeist these days is don't Google your symptoms, you're going to think you have cancer. In fact, We saw the healthcare company post a meme about this just the other day. And I think that misses the problem here, which is that our healthcare system is not set up to help us understand what's going on, empower us to have autonomy in it, and give us input and control in that process because there isn't that source of truth for information, right? You think you're gonna have like cervical cancer or you need a crystal egg dildo situation. And like, that's not true. That's not the solution to your problem. But at the same time, we deserve to know what's going on in our bodies. We have the right and now the need to know and understand our bodies deeply as women. And so I get very passionate, clearly, when talking about how important it is for all of us and how critical it is for Styx to really focus on education.

And Madison, you were saying maybe if you're lucky, you have a cool aunt or sister you can ask these questions to. And I love that because when we talk about our brand voice and how we want Styx to come across in the world, we say this is like word for word from our brand guidelines, like Styx is your confident older sister with a medical degree. That's how we want to show up.

I love that. And it definitely came through when we were doing some research for this podcast. So hopefully that's some positive signal for you. But taking a step back and thinking about really the central point of access, which is something that we talk a lot about on this podcast, technology has been in a really positive way a denominator that unlocks access for individuals across where they are location-based or otherwise. And with that, Stix has gone out to raise venture funding, I believe over $6 million in venture funding. So, first of all, big congratulations there to really unlock this access at scale. And so some of those partners include Resolute, SWAT Equity, and others. Making that decision to go down the venture journey is not something that everyone does. And was curious about what prompted you to go into the venture back startup world?

It was a decision that we made and we spent time debating it. We didn't just default into it. And I think a lot of founders say, I'm going to start a company, I need venture capital, but venture capital puts you in a very specific path with very specific requirements and very specific outcomes. And that's not right for every person or every company. Hungry Harvest had not raised a lot of capital and we saw what access to more capital could do for us. And we wanted to do more and do it faster.

I don't remember the exact conversation. We had a lot of conversations about it, but we were talking about how initially we didn't want to, we were like to build a healthy business, we should have revenue, we should have profit. We shouldn't raise a lot of money and burn it really fast. We started out very capital efficient, still trying to be, but we decided to, because we just thought that it was such a big opportunity. And we, as we did this accelerator called ERA, and as we talked to Mentors and investors just informationally, and we'd see their eyes light up and maybe this is like the right time to do this. And we knew that if we didn't raise serious capital, someone else would beat us to it and just do it. Also at Hungry Harvest, they were mostly bootstrapped and a lot of their competitors had raised serious venture funding and we just saw how quickly they were able to grow because of that. And it wasn't the difference of how smart the team was or how hard people were working. It was just having the resources. So we made that decision, like Cindy said, perhaps naively. I mean, it does put us on a very different path, but I think it was the right call. We definitely would not be anywhere near where we are today without the venture capital funding.

I would do it again if we were doing it over.

That's a good metric. I thank you for teasing that out. I do think a lot of times people assume venture is the only way to be a founder. And as a VC, I'm incentivized to have people believe that, but the reality is it is a really unique return structure and one that I think a lot of people don't quite realize the extent of both the timeline and then the expectations. Just to hear you guys share about the questions you asked, the intentionality you put into that decision is amazing. And more just taking it out a step from Styx itself, what advice would you have to founders who are thinking about specifically starting in consumer healthcare?

When anybody asks this, like, what advice would you give overall, no matter who the founder is? I give the same piece of advice first before I get specific, which is make sure to focus on taking care of yourself. Founding a company is really hard. And if you're not founding a company with Jamie Norwood, I bet it's 10 times harder. It's hard. It's hard physically. It's hard emotionally. It's hard mentally. It's a scale of rejection and failure, but also like excitement and amazement that you just never experienced in any other way in your life. And so I think make sure that you have what you need in place, whatever that is that you need to take care of yourself and keep yourself strong and resilient.

I think also just being really comfortable with rejection. We're rejected so No, so many times. And now it's a really unique skill that we have. We're not really afraid of rejection anymore or failure. You just have to like blindly put one foot in front of the other and keep pushing forward.

Taking care of yourself is such a big piece. It's really easy to get into this sort of mental mindset of like, oh, this competitor, we gotta work 10x harder than them. A lot of it is if you're not taking care of yourself, you're not gonna be able to operate in the long run and ultimately you're going to lose. It's like very nearsighted thinking to just hustle and grind, work 24/7 because you burn yourself out and then you don't have the perspective to be able to make strategic decisions. And very much to your point, Jamie, I also am so impressed by solo founders being able to have that trusted counterpart is kind of like critical for thinking things through. So, I appreciate you sharing those two pieces. You know, we chatted a little bit about this fundraise and this venture capital to accelerate your mission. I'd love to talk a little bit more about Styx actually going to market. You mentioned a waitlist, you're on direct-to-consumer channels. Tell us a little bit more about the strategy of actually getting this affordable product delivered discreetly into the hands of women who need it.

It's so funny now to think about what our go-to-market was because, and I think this was really smart of us to do, but we basically were like, we don't know how people are going to respond. We're going to put an MVP into the market of I mean, an FDA-cleared test that worked and we knew that part worked, but we're going to put it into market and see what the heck happens. It wasn't like we're going to raise millions of dollars and do this huge campaign. And that has actually been true for everything that we've done at Styx, constantly learning and going and learning and going and learning and going versus a traditional how people think about go-to-market for a lot of things.

This was because we were 25, and we were working at a bootstrap startup, but like we truly did everything ourselves. I made our Shopify site. Cynthia and I ordered from the supplier ourselves. We did the FDA clearance ourselves. Like we did fulfillment ourselves. We had label printers, we'd pack them together, drop them off at the post office every day. We were operating on such a small, tiny scale. It wasn't a year until we started working with a fulfillment center. So we learned so much and we both felt connected to every part of the business that Now, obviously we're at a much bigger scale. We have a whole team, we work with partners, but we still have this like fundamental understanding of the business because we truly did every single piece of it for so long.

Yeah, you went through those early innings of walking so that you can run. And from an operator perspective, you have such a superpower where you know how to like execute on a lot of those small details. It makes it a lot easier for you to manage a team around those pieces. That's super cool.

Looking back now and talking about those like early days, I'm shocked by how much work it was and how unfazed we were by it.

That's why it's so important to be deeply passionate about your mission. Those hard yards don't feel painful when you know you're moving the needle at the end of the day. So we chatted a little bit about the early days. I'd love to look a little bit more to today's climate and also looking into the future. As Madison McIlwain mentioned earlier on in this conversation, conversation. Today's climate has been certainly an interesting one on the topic of women's health. One of Styx's key messages is that women can now get their health essentials discreetly delivered. Tell us more about why this message is increasingly important in today's climate and how you think about the future of women's health over this year, next year, the next 5 years.

Discreetly delivered was always one of our key messages, and that came from early market research in the early days. And it has become more and more important. Like the Dobbs decision in June was this big national moment where everyone got really scared and discretion became so much more important. But like legislators have been chipping away at this for years, especially over the last 3 years. So we've seen how important that discreetly delivered private, like no judgments messaging is. And that's why we talk with our customers and listen to them because We've had moments where we are two very liberal women in large metro areas, and for us, discretion maybe isn't as important, but to our customer base, and even more so now and increasingly, it is so important. And it's been interesting to walk that line of advertising a discreetly delivered women's health product. We don't wanna stigmatize it even further, but we've seen that like with allowing people to get their hands on these products in a way that works for them, we're empowering them to make better decisions and more confident decisions, and that has been So inspiring to us and is another reason why like listening to your customers is so important. 'Cause so many branding and marketing advisors were like, don't do that, be loud and proud with it. And we are loud and proud with it, but in a way that works for our customers.

In terms of the future of women's health, we're at this moment where nobody knows. And both of us, I think the team, I think probably every woman in this country, like like it changes every day and every hour how we really feel. It has been unbelievable to watch women come together, people come together to try to create a better future. And I think that's true not just even with the Dobbs decision, but the consumerification of healthcare is a really amazing way to provide women better forms of care. I think there's a lot of talk about better listening to women and thinking about care for of color. And all of a sudden, like, people are talking about these things. So we're talking about maternal mortality, we're talking about vaginal health. I was on a call before talking about how all of a sudden now, like, influencers are willing to talk about yeast infections, and they were not just 3 years ago. In that sense, from a people perspective, you look at the referendum even in Kansas that happened a couple weeks ago, like, that part gives me such hope that people are pushing for real change from the smallest level to the biggest level. The flip side, it's really freaking scary to watch what state governments are doing. Obviously, already states have struck down access to critical care. 80 million women in this country have uncertain future access to care. But it's also scary to look at the lengths they may go, threats to things like IUDs and emergency contraception in a couple of very far-right states. So I don't know. But I think in this fight, like in a lot of things Jamie was talking about with sticks before, we just have to be one foot in front of the other and keep going.

Awesome.

Thank you for sharing that kind of forward-looking perspective. I think that's probably like the most honest answer. Like, we don't know what the future holds, but it's incredible that the two of you are really like forging this path ahead so that there are options, especially as the climate changes. I want to just chat a little bit about how you engage with your customers. So you're selling direct to consumer today. Looking into the future, what do you think the next D2C digital storefront or digital purchasing experience will look like?

That's a Jamie question if I ever heard one.

I thought you were going to talk about social commerce because you love that. I think that people expect and now demand better experiences. The pandemic really pushed that forward with just seeing how quickly we can get things. How people are now so familiar with at-home testing because of COVID tests and used to keeping up with like health news in a new way. My hope and dream, and also what like consumers expect, is to have one place to come to, to learn all about your body and your health, to make decisions, to get the products you need, talk to experts in a clear way. I think that something that is changing is how there's one brand for each product. You have your toothbrush brand, your mattress brand, your tampon brand. For Styx, we've been very clear from day one that we don't want to just be a pregnancy test. We could have launched a new brand for emergency contraception and we could have launched a new brand for UTI, but it was so important to us that this is done together because the people who are getting UTIs are sometimes taking pregnancy tests, they're sometimes taking emergency contraception, they need one place that they can really trust. So I think just like super streamlined, really personalized experiences, because as consumers, we're not settling for less than that. There's just so many options and so much access.

Yeah, I think this is going to continue to evolve. The pandemic leapt this into the future of who was willing to try digital first experience, but in many ways I think that is here to stay. And then as I look at the holistic landscape of how do people consume and purchase online, I'm really intrigued by the recent Amazon acquisition of One Medical because I do think that it is going to open up yet more footprints for this historically digital-first retailer to be just on every corner. I'm curious from your guys' perspective embedded in the healthcare ecosystem, what the One Medical acquisition means or what you think it might mean for these types of either true diagnostic medical prescriptions or more over-the-counter solutions.

One of the things that we've said about Stix for quite a long time is that part of our superpower is living in this intersection of the physical and digital world. We have Real Talk, our education platform, some more digital stuff in the works, but we also have these deeply physical products. But it's only by having both together that you can really understand what is going on by like being able to take a diagnostic and say yes or no, I have a UTI, but also read and be like, what is a UTI and why is it burning when I pee and what do I then do about it? It's that like connection that's very powerful. So as I think about the one medical acquisition, first of all, I think it's super exciting. I don't live in New York, and I'm excited to see them expand their footprint a little bit more. But I also think that nods to the power of both physical and digital together. I think we saw a huge wave of telehealth that was digital only. And that's really limited. It's really important. And it's great for some access, but in some ways, it can provide to extreme overprescription or not responsible prescription. It basically has over-the-counter-ified products that aren't meant to be over-the-counter for a reason. You're meant to have that physical moment of it. You're meant to have a doctor involved. You're not supposed to be taking antibiotics if you haven't done a test to confirm it's what you have. You shouldn't be using an antifungal unless you're sure it's not BV, right? There's these things that require this combination. So I think that's gonna, just gonna push that further.

I think it will be something we look back on for a few years from now and see just like Whole Foods, right? That happened 2017. Everyone was like, what the heck? What is what this is going to mean. So I think similarly with One Medical, it's going to integrate in interesting ways that we can both somewhat expect but also not predict. So excited to see where that evolves.

Jamie, you and I were always two steps ahead of Amazon. We were at Hungry Harvest before the Whole Foods acquisition based on Amazon acquisition. Like, we saw what it meant when Whole Foods was bought and then laid off all of its local buyers and bought everything nationally. Like, we saw what that did to the literal entire food system. So We'll let you know.

We'll have to have you back on. Claudia, do you want to wrap us up with our closing question?

It's the question that we ask all of our guests, and we ask that the answer not be your mom, even though that's often a very good answer. But the question is, who's a woman that has had a profound impact on yourself and your career?

My answer would change every day because I think there's a lot, but I'm gonna say my middle school math teacher. Miss Sable. I was always one of the only girls in school in all of the super advanced math classes. I am a math girl. I love a number. And I had parents who always encouraged me in STEM a lot. She was a teacher for the super accelerated class for all 3 years of middle school. And so I really knew her and formed this really deep relationship with her. And I think I saw what it meant to be a really cool woman and really smart woman who liked numbers. And that set me up for a lifetime of loving numbers in my life. I studied economics at Penn, which is like basically calculus. All my jobs have been deeply rooted in data and information and understanding and using those quantitative skills. So I'm gonna say Miss Sable.

Thank you for sharing that. And for you, Jamie?

Recently I have been very inspired by One of our advisors, Allie, she is maybe about like 10 years ahead in her career and she's just accomplished so much and she pushes me to be more of a leader and think like an executive. And at Styx, we started this company relatively young with as many years of experience as you could have at that age. And every time I talk with her, I like feel my brain open up. More and I think about things differently. So I'll say her.

Thank you so much for sharing that answer, but also for sharing your journey. This is a really authentic conversation that I think a lot of folks will really relate to, especially ones that are looking at starting something they're super passionate about. So thank you so much, Jamie and Cynthia, for joining us on The Room today.

Thank you for having us. This is great.

Thank you so much for joining us at The Room Podcast. If you want more from The Room every week, subscribe to our newsletter. At theroompodcast.com/newsletter. We'll be back next week with a new episode Tuesday, 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific.

See you in the room.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Defy VC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.