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Tech Topics In This Article: Atlanta startups, FemTech
“Privacy by default” isn’t a phrase you’ll hear often in the consumer tech and app space, since most players collect valuable data, email information, or other detailed records on each user.
But Atlanta-based Embody is taking a very different approach to user’s healthcare data. In fact, privacy is at the startup’s core.
Embody is a menstrual wellness app that lets users not only track their cycles each month, but gives users information about their health during each of their four phases. The experience for users on Embody is “phase based” and “immersive,” meaning the in-app experience is contextual to the user’s cycle and will change throughout the month.
The app does not require users to sign up with a name, email, or any other personal information. Any data inputted is stored and encrypted locally on a user’s phone. Newly-launched paid plans allow users to access encrypted data backup, where the person’s local device is the only one that has the key to decrypt the information.
What’s Up The The Cycle Tracking Space
Being “private by default” is as much a technical choice as it is a political one.
“If we get subpoenaed as a company, we cannot give anybody [user’s] data because we do not have a readable version of it at all,” CEO and co-founder Anna Hall told Hypepotamus.
That is particularly important after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Security experts and the FemTech leaders alike have warned that period-related personal data could be used to target women in pregnancy-related criminal prosecutions.
There are a lot of reasons for someone to track their cycle. That data is particularly important for those looking to get insights into their reproductive, sexual, and overall health, whether they are trying to get pregnant, trying to avoid pregnancy, or trying to better understand what their daily symptoms are.
While one in three women in the United States use a period tracker, privacy-first apps aren’t the norm. 87% of period tracking apps share data with third parties. And since menstrual data isn’t protected by HIPAA, data has been used in legal cases against women.
Meet The Embody Team
Raised in Tucker, Georgia in Metro Atlanta, CEO Hall is a public school teacher turned entrepreneur. She started looking into the world of cycle tracking and menstrual health when she was diagnosed with PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder ) in her early thirties. That opened up a whole new world of understanding into what was going on with her health.
Launching Embody was about helping more women learn about their own menstrual cycle.
“As I explain it to male [investors], you probably wouldn’t wake up at 3am to go work out. [Similarly], you maybe wouldn’t have your best time ever on a 10K race on day 27 of your cycle. Your body is different at different times in your cycle,” she told Hypepotamus.
Building alongside Hall is technical co-founder Dani Bonilha, a Sao Paulo-based software engineer.
A library of experts — including medical, wellness, personal trainers, and creatives — create phase-specific content on the app. Hall said that many of the experts are Atlanta locals. The app currently has five months worth of content, and Hall said the team is looking to partner with MDs and therapists who can help Embody build out its PCOS, endometriosis, and perimenopause content.
Embody has been a “labor of love” for Hall and Bonilha since they started working on the app in 2023. The startup is currently backed by the venture studio Thesis and several local angel investors.
The Embody team released the free version of the app in August 2024. It has reached 100,000 downloads since then.
Hall credits its organic growth to Atlanta-based promotional work at some viral TikTok moments.
Now with a paid and unpaid versions available, Embody is ready to scale in the growing FemTech scene.
“This is a very commonplace tool. It is not a niche area,” Hall added.