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

What if your period could save your life? 🤔🩸

20 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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A technology harvests stem cells from menstrual blood at home, yielding over 500 million cells per period. The cells can be frozen indefinitely and cost about $1,000 per batch instead of $100,000, potentially serving the 800 million women who menstruate daily.

I learned that there were stem cells in menstrual blood, and women are releasing millions of these cells every month, and they're actually superior to our current sources of stem cells. Our tech captures these stem cells noninvasively in the privacy of your own home, and we're aiming to reduce the cost of cells from $100,000 to just $1,000.
So you get the menstrual blood, can you store it indefinitely? You freeze it, or what do you do?
Yeah, so the cryopreservation allows us to store it pretty much indefinitely.
It's brilliant. It seems genius to me. I mean, you're gonna have your menstrual session every month. A lot of them already use menstrual cups.
One period collection can yield over 500 million cells. Every day, there are approximately 800 million women menstruating.