I personally curated this panel because I really wanted to bring together a group of people representing businesses that are using technology to make fitness, well-being, better health care more accessible. We live in a world where there's a lot of toys and apps and clothing for the few. And what we wanted to do here is think about ways that you're using tech to make these things more accessible to the many. Well, before we get into the conversation, we're going to throw a poll up to talk about the gadgets that you may or may not use to stay fit, track your steps, track other things in terms of your well-being. So if you would not mind, we'll come back to the polling results in just a minute. But I want to start with you, Mona, in the middle. I want to talk about the athletic apparel that you focus on over the last decade or two. We've in this new category entered the athleisure. There are so many brands out there that are aimed at helping people stay fit and new apparel that's pretty cool, pretty fashionable. What made in the midst of that? What made Kosoni, your company, necessary?
Thank you for the introduction. I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota. My name is Mona Muhammad, of course, is up there. I designed my business called Kosoni, which means confidence in my language. I realized playing basketball, I was a semi-pro basketball player and a youth basketball coach for over 11 years and realized a lot of apparel industry, specifically in the athleisure and the athletic wear, don't cater to those looking for a modest fit and realized that we needed to make a difference in this. And if you guys are wondering like what the industry looks like, the modest fashion is about 365 billion, and it's a really untapped market for those who really are looking for more loose fitted clothing. And when I was when I go shopping, I usually went shopping in the men's section to kind of find that fit. And I kind of got really tired and sick of going to the men's section shopping. So I was like, we need more fashionable clothing for not only those who look like me, but anybody who may look for long sleeve clothing, who may have skin conditions, women who are more modest and decided to use my advanced biomechanics background to understand body types and understand different movements to create that for women and girls.
Great. And I'm looking forward to coming back to you in just a moment to talk about the technology that goes into your clothing. Rhiannon White, CEO of Clue. Clue was founded more than a decade ago when there were fewer applications available for tracking menstrual cycles. There's many more have come to the market. We identified one of UK startups to watch. What are you doing to stay competitive in a world where apps are starting to proliferate?
Yeah, it's not even that they're starting to proliferate. They have proliferated. I think I was looking in the App Store this week and there are over 225 apps doing very similar jobs to what we look to do. I think there's two things around that to your point around competition and differentiation. But also for me, the bigger point is that actually the market or you know, we like to talk about software, the TAM, the total addressable market is so huge because when we're talking about women and girls and people with cycles, that is biologically determined. So everybody on this planet with this biology at some point needs to track and understand what's going on with them. Then the market is really huge and that's why there are so many people, I guess, looking to serve that need. For us in terms of why and how do we seek to differentiate. I think it's I don't have a fancy answer. The real answer is that we just really, really passionate about the people who we serve, and we're really passionate about being very close to women and people with cycles, needs and understanding their problems and understanding what they're trying to do. And every every day of every week caring about that really deeply and pouring that love into the product. And I think I think we can see that in terms of the product and our user community. Because for us, if you just are constantly listening, then then I think that pulls your head. And you can probably hear from the funny accent, I'm from New Zealand and we don't do very well in swimming in the Olympics, but we did have this guy win a gold medal once and at the end of the race I said to him, you know, what was your fancy strategy like? Why did you win? Normally New Zealand doesn't win. And he said, I was just trying to keep up with the camera on the bottom of the pool. And I feel like if we can just keep up with users and the huge need that people have out there, then we will continue to make a really good product.
And how has your own personal experience informed the way, the passion that you bring to this work?
This is very personal for me. I have three wild and wonderful children who centre my husband and my life. But as for many people, you know, I spent years thinking, oh, when it's time for us to have a family, no problems, you know, I'll just look at my husband, then we'll get pregnant. And unfortunately, it didn't work that way. And actually it doesn't work that way for a really a lot of people. And as we were going through our fertility struggles, it was it's very isolating. And you feel really alone. And, you know, for us, for me, this kind of vision that I had for us as a family and what we thought our future would be was it was at risk. And, you know, there's a lot of people who have that experience, you know, talk about things like, you know, crying in the toilets at work because once again, you've got your period and once again, you're not pregnant and this is what you really want. And so we struggled for quite a while and we were living in the US at the time, and God Bless America and the liberal approach to fertility treatments and drugs. We were lucky enough to get pregnant with our first baby. But as we were going through that process, I kept, you know, the back of my brain, the product part of my brain was going, hang on a minute, this is all about data. And look at all the stuff that I don't understand and that I should have known about myself. And so I became really focused on I want to take control of this and I want to understand and we wanted to have more kids. And so I tracked and managed very closely in terms of cause I was no spring chicken by the time we were able to finally have our son. And so, you know, we really focused in on that, and we were lucky enough to have two more kids. And so for me, this I don't I don't mind what people want. Like, I don't that's not to say that I think everyone should have babies. I just think that everyone should have the ability to have control over their health. And that's what I want us to do with our product.
Thank you. Tom, CEO of Oura, the smart ring maker. As you can see from the polling, there are a lot of people who use a lot of different devices, more than one device. We have lots of devices, lots of gadgets that we can use to track our fitness, our well-being. Talk about, you know, why you believe the people that or believe that rings are a better alternative than a wristband than some of the other devices you can use?
Yeah, it comes down to this location on the human body. This is the best place for a wearable because it's more accurate. You get a stronger signal coming to the pulse if you think about it. You have an artery that runs right underneath this sort of uniform piece of tissue right underneath the ring. Whereas on the wrist you're getting return flow, capillary action. There's hair, bone, sinew, all sorts of things that can be on the signal. Think about if you ever go to a hospital. Where do they place the sensor? They put it right here at the tip of your finger. That's the same technology, probably plus mammography. It's the same thing they do. They do that because it's more accurate. So the premise is that a smart ring, unlike a smart watch, which is constantly asking for your attention, it's another digital mouth for you to feed. You have to charge it frequently. You're constantly being asked to look at it to see what the latest Tom Giles post is on Twitter. You're really engaged with it, but at the same time it draws a lot of battery and so you're charging it. I know where my smartwatch is. It's on the battery charger on the side of my bed when I go to bed. So a smart ring has a particular advantage. It's light, it's small. It doesn't ask for your attention. It also has a very long battery life and as a seven day battery life, because it's very efficient in its use of the battery, it's more accurate. It also is something that you can just take with you wherever it fits into your life. It's something that looks just like a piece of jewelry that's a little bit novel than, say, a giant, you know, cellular phone on your wrist. But that's only part of it. The real important part of it is that if you're collecting data continuously and if you're looking at it at night, it turns out, you know, at night your body is in the same condition. You're in bed, you're at rest, you have a greater ability to detect deviations in your physiology. And those deviations could be you're getting sick. Those deviations could be you're about to experience your cycle or be ready to conceive. Those deviations could be something more serious, like a long term health change. And so I think while many people think of a wearable as like a fitness tracker and, you know, whether you do fitness or not, that's only one of the use cases and maybe not even the most important one or the most durable or the most valuable one. Health turns out much more valuable because you want to know how you can live a long, healthy life. And something like Oura, the software, the technology, the hardware, the AI, all those things are help you to live a healthier life.
Oura made a decision in the last few years to add some features that would make the offering, which traditionally historically was appealed toward a lot of men, to make it more attractive to female users. Talk about the impact that's had on your business, on your user base.
So obviously the opportunity is huge. It has surprised us. Even in our greatest and wildest dreams. We did not expect the impact that we've had. You know, we've grown the business triple digits. We're now 500 million, as reported by Bloomberg. Thank you very much. We are we are at a good scale of business growing incredibly rapidly and profitable for the last 12 months. That is all on the the changes that we have made to appeal to women. Obviously, a ring is appealing in some sense as a piece of jewelry, but the functionality that enables people who are trying to conceive just just as your story was like it, it is a really powerful story and highly motivating for a young couple trying to conceive. But on the other side of it, it's just being aware of your body. For people going through menopause and perimenopause. Understanding your physiology, being able to get some guidance and some some compassion for that is really powerful. That has driven our business. Like I honestly, I couldn't even describe to you. It's shifted the demographics of our base and grown our business. You know, the female portion of our base has grown over 250%.
Mona, your background is in kinesiology, in addition to being a semi-professional basketball player. Talk a little bit about how you use physiology biomechanics in the design of your athletic wear.
Yes, definitely. When I was doing R&D and product design, I realized that a lot of the designs in activewear that are out there are not kind of fit that modest need that we wanted. So I kind of used our research, my research background, working with the University of Minnesota to start looking at how our body moves, making sure that the product that we're creating has a high level of comfort for those, whether they're walking or playing basketball or any type of activity, ensuring that our products allow them to stay comfortable. And it's really interesting when looking at product testing for if you don't know what I'm wearing on my head, it's called the hijab, the head covering. And a lot of people haven't dipped into that part of product design. We have seen other companies create hijabs, but it's like not a one size fit fashion, especially for women. We like to create our own designs, have our own storytelling, and realize that we really needed to focus on different variety of sports, hijabs and headwear that's specific for different sports so that they stay secure. So it was really fun getting some of our athletes out there doing, trying different sports, wearing the hijab, seen it come off, redesigning us. So really using advanced biomechanics to really figure out ways to keep the hijab and our products staying secure so folks can be athletic and fit.
I started using the Oura ring during COVID when it was part of a research project with UCSF. They were looking at whether you could use wearable technology to predict the onset of COVID. So I subjected myself to this study. I was the most boring subject of all because I got no COVID during training. Exactly. So, but to summarize a little bit about what has been learned from Oura in terms of predicting diseases. So first of all, this was an extraordinary study. We had 70,000 people participate in it. 9,000 of them actually did get COVID. And they had given us consent to look at their data so we could go back and see for the people who had a confirmed COVID case, we could actually see what the deviations in that baseline of their temperature, respiration, heart rate variability and heart rate was. And the signal was so clear two and three quarters days before people had a confirmed PCR test or reported symptoms, we could see deviations in their temperature and respiration, heart rate and heart rate variability published in Nature. This has been a huge thing in Sensors magazine. People are understanding that if you have this kind of fine grained high signal data, you can make predictions that are incredibly powerful. Now, of course, this led to the NBA adopting the ring during the bubble when they wanted to have people be able to understand like what they were potentially exposing themselves to. This kind of capability, I think, is really novel, and it's a function of a continuous wear wearable tonight. It's not something that you're going to get with a device you take on and off because you won't see those deviations.
The key here, and this is a thread across all three conversations, is that people are not the same. Whether it's medicine is practiced on the average or athleisure is sort of like targeting the largest market and what the sort of base use cases of being comfortable while doing sports as opposed to something that's more inclusive or more directed, or whether it's understanding that not all women are the same and have had different journeys as it comes to contraception and conception, that is actually, I think, the thread to pull through here, which is that in order to do personalization, what you need, you need data. You need machines to look across that data to make that personalization happen. And I think that's sort of maybe the twisting point that we're at is that we're starting to see kind of the benefits of that for health care, for wellness, for women's health, for sports. It's just I think it pulls all the way through. Rhiannon, your product is also used in research. Talk a little bit about that and are there anything, any new frontiers that you're embarking on these days?
Yeah, and I mean, I completely agree with Tom's point around the criticality of the data and large scale datasets to enable the breakthrough. And this afternoon, women's health, we talk about the research gap or the but really it's a gaping crater. And we've just completed and publishing at the moment, a study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University around looking at the connection between GI symptoms and mood and the menstrual cycle. There's been quite a lot of research that's shown and improved a link between GI symptoms and mood in folks with severe depression. But this was a very large scale survey. We looked at 33,000 cycles over four years and were able to draw a very strong positive association between the GI symptoms and the mood symptoms at all points in the cycle, but even more pronounced during the PMIs phase. And for folks who suffered from PMS, they have even more pronounced GI symptoms and more pronounced mood symptoms. So there's a really interesting validation. They're using these large scale datasets. We can validate women's experiences and then hopefully push that through to better health care, better support in the health care systems, because what often happens for folks is that they they think something's not right, but because the little bit is understood about the cycle, people go to the doctor and they like, oh, it's just normal, just put up with it. It's just your cycle and people get brushed off. But you know something's not right. And these large data sets can actually help us push past that barrier.
