Prickly Pear Well being will exhibit how it is serving to ladies’s mind well being at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 by way of NewsFlicks

Iman Clark, CEO of Prickly Pear Well being, says she had an epiphany that at last led her to TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.  

It used to be round 9 years in the past. She moved from Tunisia to the U.S. for grad college, then joined an organization that created gamified studies for other people with neurodegenerative stipulations, like dementia. This used to be carried out by way of giving them a pill or a pc and permitting them to play video games whilst docs gathered information on them, like their possibility of falling and total vary of movement.  

“I spotted that the general public, 75-plus, have two to 3 persistent stipulations, and it doesn’t matter what we did, it’s at all times going to be exhausting,” she informed TechCrunch. “Then I went again to the analysis and noticed that like, 70% of the Alzheimer’s inhabitants are ladies.”

She dug deeper and located that girls had been two times as more likely to be recognized with despair and anxiousness, and 3 to 4 instances much more likely to be recognized with migraines. “That’s after I learned we don’t seem to be in point of fact fixing for girls’s biology, and that’s costing us lives and greenbacks.”

So she created Prickly Pear Well being, which supplies clinical beef up for girls’s mind well being, a voice-first, AI-powered spouse that is helping ladies of their 30s to 50s navigate the hormonal adjustments that have an effect on mind well being. The product shall we other people file fast reflections all through the day the use of their voice and Prickly Pear’s AI era analyzes their language and context to trace any cognitive adjustments.

Prickly Pear Well being will display of its tech at TechCrunch Disrupt, which runs October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.

It additionally pulls in sleep information, middle price job, and different metrics from trackers like Apple Well being, Oura, and Garmin to assist be offering personalised insights on how they are able to take higher care in their well being.

Clark stated there’s a collective settlement that girls’s well being is an area ripe for innovation, and that girls wish to be founders, wish to be best voices, and are uninterested in being within the again seats of their very own lives. 

Clark formally introduced a loose model of her product in Might and is gearing as much as release the top class providing in October, for Psychological Well being Consciousness Month and Menopause Consciousness Month. 

She began doing focal point teams at Arizona State College and located that girls of their overdue 30s to early 50s had been reporting a large number of mind fog and psychological fatigue, but it surely regularly took them till their 60s to comprehend it needed to do with hormonal fluctuations, menopause, and even an onset of one thing deeper. It used to be right here that Clark learned she sought after to concentrate on this age vary. 

“They’re regularly pushed aside or misdiagnosed when signs like mind fog, temper shifts, or abnormal cycles first seem,” she stated of girls of their 30s to 50s, including that those midlife years are essential to mind well being, however conventional care is failing to glue the dots. 

“We’re addressing that hole. Serving to ladies acknowledge and act on early alerts earlier than they escalate into extra severe well being demanding situations later,” she stated. 

Arizona may be the place the muse for the corporate’s identify got here from. She changed into fascinated about the cacti, how they stand in spite of the warmth and convey wholesome fruit. “That’s when Prickly Pear got here to existence as a result of that’s the fruit that grows within the cactus tree, and it used to be an inspiration of thriving in harsh stipulations and glad resilience,” she stated. 

She considers competition in her identical box to be current menopause apps, which, she stated, are extra like symptom trackers. “We imagine it’s necessary to know signs, however we imagine that the ones approaches are reactive approaches, whilst for us, we’re there as a way to come across issues.” 

She raised a $350,000 pre-seed spherical and stated it used to be “in point of fact exhausting,” particularly as a lady of colour. “We needed to be so just right that you can not be disregarded,” she stated. She sought to construct relationships with buyers earlier than beginning her pre-seed, which, she stated, in point of fact helped when it got here time for the ask. “That’s a well-liked factor we are saying: ‘Ask for recommendation and also you get industry, ask for industry and also you get recommendation from time to time,’” she stated. 

Some recommendation she won used to be to use for Startup Battlefield, with buddies telling her to be loud and proud about being a part of the newest startups to pitch all over the contest. 

“Disrupt is without equal degree for brand spanking new concepts,” she stated. She’s excited to highlight ladies’s mind well being, be told from different founders, and, after all, “hook up with buyers and companions who imagine, like we do, that girls’s well being innovation isn’t area of interest, it’s the way forward for healthcare.” 

If you wish to be told from Prickly Pear firsthand, and spot dozens of extra pitches, treasured workshops, and make the connections that power industry effects, head right here to be informed extra about this 12 months’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.