Tim DraperFounder and Managing Partne, Draper Associate · I back the ideas that look crazy first

For 60 years, medicine failed mothers.

11 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this presentation, Ashley Crafton, CEO of Galena Innovations, speaks about the profound emotional and practical burden of preterm birth on families. She argues that for six decades, medical approaches—primarily medications and attempts to compress the cervix—have repeatedly failed to prevent early births and have even caused harm. She critiques the logic of using cervical compression, a method traditionally employed to induce labor, as a preventive measure, calling it "bananas." Motivated by personal responsibility to change the status quo, Crafton describes how she built a mechanical prototype on her kitchen table, then conducted a cadaver study that stiffened a woman's cervix within three minutes, which she describes as miraculous. This early success fuels her continued development of a novel solution to preterm birth.

Chapters

People don't understand, like, the emotional and familiar burden that it is to have these babies early. It's monumental. My name is Ashley Crafton, and I'm the CEO of Galena Innovations. We are developing the solution to preterm birth. I realized one day I was part of the problem, that if I didn't do anything about it, nothing was going to change. We've tried for the last 60 years medications that cause harm and don't work, and we've tried them over and over and over again with the same outcomes. And we've tried to compress cervix closed in order to stop early cervical change, which was very backwards to me because it's actually a technique that we use to induce labor. So thinking it would ever prevent a baby from coming out was bananas. I built something on my kitchen table and used those prototypes that I built to go do a cadaver study, and we stiffened this woman's cervix within 3 minutes, and it was just kind of miraculous, and we just kept moving forward.