Prickly Pear Well being will showcase the way it’s serving to girls’s mind well being at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

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

It was round 9 years in the past. She moved from Tunisia to the U.S. for grad faculty, then joined an organization that created gamified experiences for individuals with neurodegenerative situations, like dementia. This was accomplished by giving them a pill or a pc and letting them play video games whereas docs collected information on them, like their danger of falling and total vary of movement.  

“I noticed that most individuals, 75-plus, have two to 3 continual situations, and it doesn’t matter what we did, it’s at all times going to be laborious,” she instructed TechCrunch. “Then I went again to the analysis and noticed that like, 70% of the Alzheimer’s inhabitants are girls.”

She dug deeper and located that ladies have been twice as more likely to be recognized with despair and anxiousness, and three to 4 occasions extra more likely to be recognized with migraines. “That’s once I realized we’re not actually fixing for girls’s biology, and that’s costing us lives and {dollars}.”

So she created Prickly Pear Well being, which gives medical assist for girls’s mind well being, a voice-first, AI-powered companion that helps girls of their 30s to 50s navigate the hormonal modifications that have an effect on mind well being. The product lets individuals document fast reflections all through the day utilizing their voice and Prickly Pear’s AI expertise analyzes their language and context to trace any cognitive modifications.

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

It additionally pulls in sleep information, coronary heart price exercise, and different metrics from trackers like Apple Well being, Oura, and Garmin to assist supply personalised insights on how they’ll take higher care of their well being.

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

Clark formally launched a free model of her product in Could and is gearing as much as launch the premium providing in October, for Psychological Well being Consciousness Month and Menopause Consciousness Month. 

She began doing focus teams at Arizona State College and located that ladies of their late 30s to early 50s have been reporting lots of mind fog and psychological fatigue, nevertheless it typically took them till their 60s to understand it needed to do with hormonal fluctuations, menopause, and even an onset of one thing deeper. It was right here that Clark realized she needed to deal with this age vary. 

“They’re typically dismissed or misdiagnosed when signs like mind fog, temper shifts, or irregular cycles first seem,” she mentioned of girls of their 30s to 50s, including that these midlife years are essential to mind well being, however conventional care is failing to attach the dots. 

“We’re addressing that hole. Serving to girls acknowledge and act on early indicators earlier than they escalate into extra critical well being challenges later,” she mentioned. 

Arizona can also be the place the inspiration for the corporate’s title got here from. She turned fascinated with the cacti, how they stand regardless of the warmth and produce wholesome fruit. “That’s when Prickly Pear got here to life as a result of that’s the fruit that grows within the cactus tree, and it was an inspiration of thriving in harsh situations and joyful resilience,” she mentioned. 

She considers opponents in her similar subject to be current menopause apps, which, she mentioned, are extra like symptom trackers. “We consider it’s essential to know signs, however we consider that these approaches are reactive approaches, whereas for us, we’re there to have the ability to detect issues.” 

She raised a $350,000 pre-seed spherical and mentioned it was “actually laborious,” particularly as a lady of coloration. “We needed to be so good that you just can’t be ignored,” she mentioned. She sought to construct relationships with traders earlier than beginning her pre-seed, which, she mentioned, actually 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 enterprise, ask for enterprise and also you get recommendation typically,’” she mentioned. 

Some recommendation she acquired was to use for Startup Battlefield, with buddies telling her to be loud and proud about being a part of the most recent startups to pitch through the competitors. 

“Disrupt is the last word stage for brand spanking new concepts,” she mentioned. She’s excited to highlight girls’s mind well being, study from different founders, and, in fact, “join with traders and companions who consider, like we do, that ladies’s well being innovation isn’t area of interest, it’s the way forward for healthcare.” 

If you wish to study from Prickly Pear firsthand, and see dozens of further pitches, beneficial workshops, and make the connections that drive enterprise outcomes, head right here to study extra about this yr’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.