Medical Gaslighting Is Real: What Happens When Women Stop Accepting It, with Maria Haugen
We’ve all been there—the endless waiting rooms, the dismissive tone, the gut feeling that something’s wrong even when the lab results say “normal.”
In this episode of Roar, host Danielle Davies talks with Maria Haugen, founder of FOXX Health, about how medical gaslighting and ignored women’s symptoms inspired her to build a platform where women can finally take control of their own health stories.
After unexplained symptoms and medical gaslighting left her feeling powerless, Maria turned her anger into action. What started as a personal mission to make sense of her own health has grown into FOXX Health: a tool for women to track symptoms, prepare for appointments, and advocate for themselves in a system that too often dismisses them.
Together, Danielle and Maria talk about
💥 The moment Maria realized she was being dismissed—not diagnosed—and how it changed everything.
🩺 Why women’s health data has been ignored for decades, and how FOXX Health is changing that narrative.
🧠 What it feels like to be told “it’s just anxiety,” and how that phrase quietly breaks women down over time.
⚡ The balance between tech and humanity: building a tool that empowers, not overwhelms.
🚀 What it really takes to reinvent yourself after burnout and build something from the ground up.
Maria’s story is one of frustration turned into purpose—a reminder that systemic change often begins with a single woman deciding she’s done being dismissed.
“We can’t fix the system overnight. But we can fix how prepared we are to survive it.”—Maria Haugen
🔑 Key Takeaways from This Episode
Self-advocacy is essential: your symptoms are real, even when the system fails to see them.
Preparation is power: tracking your health and asking questions changes how you’re treated.
Burnout can be a beginning: what feels like collapse can become clarity.
Building change doesn’t require perfection—just persistence.
💬 Share this episode with a woman who’s ever been told “it’s just anxiety.”
Listen to ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture & Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New conversations every Tuesday.
Full Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly cleaned up. It may contain small errors.
House. Hi, I'm Danielle Davies and you're listening to Roar, a show that amplifies the voices of women breaking barriers, leading change, and making real impact. Keep listening for bold ideas and stories that inspire you to find your voice, and make some noise. Hi everybody and welcome back to Roar. I'm your host Danielle Davies.
Today we're talking about something nearly every woman has dealt with. Being dismissed when it comes to her own health. Whether it's symptoms brushed off as anxiety or years of misdiagnosis, the truth is we deserve better. My guest, Maria Halen, knows that story all too well. She's the founder and CEO of Fox Health, a platform built from her own experience of navigating a complicated, often invalidating health care system.
And instead of just pushing through it, she decided to create something new. Launching this September, Fox Health is designed to support women through every phase of their health journey with tools, tracking, and a sense of agency were often denied. In this conversation, we talk about the personal cost of being ignored, the leap it takes to become a founder, and what it looks like to build something that might just change the game for women everywhere. So, let's get into it. Welcome, Maria.
Hello. Thank you for having me. Oh, we're so excited you're here. And it's like it's something that affects every woman. So, I'm really I you know, some topics we talk about here are less universal, but I think it's universal for every woman to kind of want to take agency or ownership of her own life.
But you, what you're doing affects women everywhere. So, so we're really excited to have you. But before we even get into what Fox Health is, let's talk about who you were before this. So, because I want to talk about your transition into founder as well. So, who were you before you started this ambitious new journey?
That's a great question and I get it all of the time because I've purposefully stripped my LinkedIn of my past. So, I would love to tell you about it. before I was a founder, I was working in startups in chief revenue and chief marketing officer roles. I also have my MBA in supply chain and was doing big four consulting. I started my career in marketing working in traditional agencies at with brands like Campbell and Pepperage Farm.
So if you ever had a Milano cookie, I made the packaging for their holiday cookies. Oh, and we definitely have had a Milano cookie, right? Exactly. I figure most people have. So I am a explorer by nature and that included my career and everywhere I've been and all the experiences I've had have equipped me to be a founder and start Fox Health to be where I'm at today.
That's an awesome history and it's and it's very cool and I like how you kind of have been a little bit of everywhere and that gives you so much you know breath of knowledge and like wealth of experience. But let's talk about and your founder story can be found on Fox Health. I've read it myself. But let's talk about that personally because I'm sure you're because it's such a great founder story. But what was that moment that changed this from you?
What was the health struggle that turned into something or you know not everybody who starts a health startup is motivated by their own personal experience but I want to say a lot of women are. Yours in particular stemmed from your personal experience. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, absolutely. my journey that led me to Fox started on a Tuesday on my couch.
I was laying there and I was watching TV and then all of a sudden I started feeling my heart beating and I wasn't doing anything. I was just laying there and I felt my heart beating and then I felt clenching in my jaw and my left side and I felt my left arm starting to hurt and anyone universally heart attack. Yes, heart attack. " And I was I was so scared and I was home alone at the time and I was like, "I am going to die. " And I went to the ER.
I went there. They immediately, you know, hook me up to an EKG. " They immediately take you back. " And the answer was no, because they can tell from an EKG. And so, I left the hospital and they said, "Go to your primary care.
" And at the time I was in my late 20s, you know, 26, 27. And I was very healthy and I had never had a panic attack in my life. I was not taking any medication. And again, I wasn't doing anything stressful or strenuous. " And that freaked me out because I had never had one before.
So I took it out face down. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And it kept happening and it happened again and again and the pain kept getting worse and more severe and I you know I went back to my doctor and they said well stop working out and stop like being active.
And I'm like okay. And at the time I was cycling and I was doing CrossFit and I was like this is healthy and like this is a part of my life I don't want to just stop doing that but I did and it kept happening and it kept happening and they were like well it's probably anxiety so the best we can do is give you some anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. And I'm like the only thing giving me anxiety right now is you. There is nothing else in my life that is making me anxious. And I was asking to see a cardiologist and I was asking to see a specialist and they said no because that's no indication that it's your heart and they were more saying that it was really you know again anxiety and you know well women go through these cycles with their hormones and blah blah.
So, I started cold calling cardiologists and I was explaining to them what was going on and they're like, "Well, did you get an EKG? Is it problems with your heart? " So, while this is going on, it's been about 6 months and Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I'm stressed now.
I'm stressed. Okay. " But what happens when it's like the one that kills you? And I was so scared. I go to a cardiologist, first appointment, diagnosed with costtochondritis, something that happens regularly with women, and I was I started taking medication and it was gone within a couple months.
and I've never had a problem since. And what exactly is costtochondrondritis? Yeah, costtochondritis. So costtochondritis presents itself differently in women, but essentially what it is, the muscles over your heart are contracting and it has to do just with an irregular beat. And I was just talking to someone actually this week who had it and our symptoms were different and she was feeling a lot of pain in her rib cage whereas I was feeling mine more up towards my collar bone in my chest muscles.
And it's just that type of different presentation of symptoms. It's really just the irregular contraction of those muscles. And so by getting all of the extra, you know, your jaw hurting, your arm hurting, everything, it's because when those muscles are contracting over your heart, that is also causing spasms in other parts of your body, and that's how it's presenting itself. And is this something I'm sorry I cut you off. Is this something that a lot of women is this pretty common?
I mean, it sounds like you went in and as soon as they saw you, they could tell what it was. So it wasn't that difficult of a diagnosis to make once you could finally be seen, right? Correct. And in women, we don't know. Like a lot of times people think it's just stress, but that is an actual condition and it does happen a lot in women.
" Okay. So, women are taught to be anxious. We're we're taught that is the root of our problems. Right. Right.
Like so like that is in our head already. which I think is unfair. Yeah. And also because it can be anxiety itself can be blamed for so many other things. It's not that maybe I mean I'm anxious but that doesn't mean it's the root cause of everything that could possibly go wrong with me.
You know, like he values all the other things that can be wrong. Exactly. We're right. So, so tell me you have this experience. How does this make you see yourself?
Like because you said even, you know, you started off, you were totally fine. You're on your couch. You feel good. By the end of it, you are now getting stressed because you're in pain. You don't know if you're going to survive.
You don't know what's wrong. You don't know how serious it is. But how are you starting to view yourself? Is it is it changing your view of yourself? Are is it are you starting to already think, okay, we have a problem and I need to fix this.
Or is it making you kind of internalize? I'm just curious what was going on through your head be beside, you know, in your head besides this kind of external we need to have the answer to this. Yeah. I mean it made me doubt myself and it made me become very angry because I was like what am I so anxious about because I you know first instinct is to believe your doctor right and so I'm like it must be anxiety what am I anxious about and then I started questioning was I really happy was I okay and what's going on and I started looking at mortality in the face and I was like I don't want to die and that's a terrible thing and have I lived my life and it was a lot of internal back and forth because when was the next one going to be the actual heart attack and when was I going to drop dead? Who was going to find me dead?
Like I lived alone. So, and it a lot of questions that really made me question my own sanity but also my own longevity. And I had so much life in front of me. It was scary. I was terrified.
Absolutely. I would be terrified too. And I just think about how many women this kind of happens to. I mean, I'm I'm sure it happens to men as well, but women, you know, we have a for our listeners, and I'm sure a lot of people know this, you know, women were diagnosed with hysteria for any complaint we used to have in the past. And you could be locked up for this and it could be it could be something as simple as this and you saying no really and kind of demanding answers and really focusing on finding a solution that caused you to be deemed hysterical.
So I think that it speaks to so many women and so many women's experiences. But the thing that's interesting for you is that you did this you had this experience. You've gotten your answer. Now presumably you could go back to your regular life, right? go back to regular programming, but you've decided instead to switch paths entirely.
Can you tell me a little bit about that? Absolutely. Well, it took me some time after that happened to even believe I was okay. And I, you know, taking the medicine took some time to kick in, but I have been fine. But I waited I, you know, 6 months I was just kind of like, am I okay?
And then I started, you know, coming to terms with like I'm okay. And you have to reprogram the way you think because I had reprogrammed the way I think of like this is going to change my life forever. And it really wasn't like it was this simple fix. Life is still worth living. You're going to keep living, you know.
And so then I took some time to reflect and I was like, what the hell just happened? How was it this unserious but somehow so serious? like why was I not being taken seriously about my pain and what I was feeling? And I was like, there's got to be a better way. And I started talking to people and telling people what happened and just friends and family.
And then I started expanding it into more patients and doing research on social about patient stories and also speaking to doctors in the space. And for two years, I was having these conversations about what exists to make sure things like this don't happen again. And what doesn't exist and what didn't exist is Fox. And that's how it came to be. When I first started the company, it was just called Company XX.
And I had a deck and I would just add to it. Everything I found, I would just add to it. And like, oh, this is interesting. what if it could do this and this was interesting or you know this already exists and whatnot and that's how it really came to be. So it took 2 years before I even officially incorporated because I didn't have like the actual idea in my head yet.
I just knew something had to change and then I incorporated and got started. Well, now you were still working during all of this. So you were doing this and then you're doing research on the side for all of this. Yep. Wow.
And All right. Well, let's talk about it. What is the plan for Fox? What does it do? What's it stand for?
And I am nodding to the name as well because it started off as XX company, but what is it now? Cuz I really like I like what you're thinking about for the name. Yes, absolutely. So, Fox stands for only double XX chromosomes. And I want to be very clear because when I thought of Fox and I thought of that name, it was never a political statement.
And now it can be seen as offensive, as if I'm not including people who identify as a woman. And I want to be very clear that having it be for only double XX chromosome means that's how we're training our data. Everyone is entitled to use Fox and everyone is welcome to use Fox. I want everyone to be as safe and as healthy as possible. And by knowing that our data is being trained with research studies done for people with double XX chromosomes can help keep people safe, informed, and aware of their own health.
Okay. All right. That's great. And I like that a lot. And and it also clarifies like what you're what you're shooting for because you are well because you're saying you're training your model on XX chromosome, but let's talk about what it is that's being trained.
Absolutely. So what Fox is, what the features we have are is it's the new home for women's health. So I'll walk you through a user journey. You log in. What you can do is log your symptoms.
We'll prompt you a question for the day. Are you how are you feeling today? Good? No symptoms? I need to log something because sometimes no symptoms gives us a great indicator of what your good days look like and what they don't.
Once you do that, you can go in and you can either look at your checklist for an upcoming appointment. And the way that you can make that is go through a healthg guided assessment. So, for example, in my own situation, if I was going to see a cardiologist, what I could do is not only give my age, height, my weight, but any pre-existing conditions, I could tag the symptoms in from the past month if that was why I was going in. So we could look at the frequency, any medications I was taking, and what my goals were for the appointment. If I needed a diagnosis, I didn't know what was wrong.
And what we're doing is training our own AI model that has relevant women's health data, commercially available data that's recent that we'll actually run your information through. " Or, "You are taking these two medications together and they've never been studied. " What we want to do is prepare you for the conversations that you have with your doctor when doctors with existing patients only have 15 minutes and with new patients, they have 30. We don't want to villainize the doctor. We want to help them get to a correct diagnosis quicker.
And what that means is giving women the opportunity to show up better for our own self. Then when you're in the appointment, you can take notes. You can make sure that you have all of your questions. You can drag and drop and rank them so you know what you want to get out of your appointment. And ultimately, we want to make sure that you are getting the most out of your own health journey.
You know what to do, how to follow up, and you know what questions to ask. A lot of the interviews that I had with women were that by the time we make an appointment and then we're sitting on the table, we forget why we're there or it's not currently relevant and we leave going crap, I forgot to ask that question. And how are we going to expect a doctor to correctly diagnose us when we're not giving them the correct information? So, it's really how are we showing up for each other to decrease the statistic that women are, you know, in the past two years over 66% of women have received a misdiagnosis and on average it takes four years for women to receive a correct diagnosis. We need to show up and showing up means empowering ourselves with information.
And just for our listeners who maybe aren't aware, part of the history of women in healthcare is that women tend to live longer than men, but spend more of their lives in declining health than men. So it's really important and also that we don't have traditional we don't have the length of studies for women that we do for men and we you know we are not just different bodies. We have different heart attacks are experienced differently. there are different kind of preventable strategies that we can have and we're just not aware of all of it. So I'm just throwing that out there so people know why this is so important.
Tell me something when you mentioned like keeping track of the questions and stuff. So will this require will this require users to track everything like does it have a component where you know so for example sorry I'm all over the place. If I go in and I want to say I used N for a little bit and I want to track my food intake, but eventually like N has to deal with health and weight loss and how you're feeling and stuff, but there's like a lot of different tracking abilities. Is Fox tracking things like this? Do you have to input?
How does the inputting work? And what exactly are you tracking? Is it your o because health is huge, right? You can be tracking anything. So what can you tell me a little bit about what types of things you're you are tracking or people are going to be responsible for tracking on their own and I don't mean that as a negative I mean it as you know a positive something to be aware of.
Absolutely. So when I say tracking I'm relating it to symptoms specifically. So we won't have an ability to track like your exercise for that day or what food you're intaking but we can track for example if my chest was hurting I can go in and put chest pain. will have a person where you can actually select the region because what we don't want to do again is walk into a doctor saying I looked this up on WebMD or Fox told me this is what's going on a region and I can put if it's throbbing pain stabbing pain sharp pain if it's isolated pain or if it's movement how severe it is and how long it lasted and that way you can also write notes because by correctly showing the doctor telling the doctor what are symptoms are. That's also going to get us to a diagnosis quicker and more accurately.
And then what we're doing is, you know, you're logging your symptoms over a month, two months, 3 months, after our launch. So, this will be coming by the end of this year. We're going to have something called symptom wrapped, similar to Spotify wrapped. But what you can do is say, "Hey, that's awesome. " like because you don't realize it like day over day, right?
Especially if it doesn't happen every day. But if you're constantly checking up on yourself, you can see the bigger picture. And I think that's something that women tend to put aside because we're on the move. Women are on the go. So what do you mean you want me to tell you how many days I've had chest pain?
Like it comes and goes, but if then if I can see and be like, whoa, I need to talk to someone about this. And that came from speaking to women who experience migraines or experience all of a sudden a lot of women rece experience stabbing pain in their stomach or uterus area and then it goes away and they're like oh that's just part of being a woman and they just go on their day and that was something we were like that is not normal. How many days have you experienced that? And they're like I have no idea. It just happens sometimes.
And I'm like we should be talking about this. We absolutely It's funny you say this because I have my own personal health right now. I'm in pmenopause and so there's a lot of well first of all that's another thing like anxiety like pmenopause is like well everything can be attributed to pmenopause and many things can and so you have to be really careful and informed and really it would help to track these things but I had this problem with my foot and I think it's like the tendons this is based on my own research of course so is I haven't gone to the doctor and I and I called the doctor to schedule the appointment and that's what they said well how long has this been happening and I'm like a year. Like it seems outrageous that you would have a pain for a year and not get it looked at. But as women, like you said, we're on the go.
We don't have we don't necessarily make the time for all of these things. So, we have to be really well informed about we have to be able to see that data to say, "Hey, this is an extraordinarily long time. " If my one of my kids said it's been hurting for a year, it would be a cause for alarm. So, it's I think it's really helpful to have it for ourselves. Quick pause to invite you into the ROAR community.
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Every share helps bring more women's stories into the spotlight. All right, let's get back to the episode. Tell me a little bit about the feedback that you're having because like you said, you finished your beta round. So, what are you what is Can you tell me a little bit about the experience that some of your users have had? Yes, absolutely.
So, a lot of the feedback for our beta round had to do around how we're collecting the information because we while we're building it, we're like, we have to ask you this many questions and we were excited because we're like that will get us the best response and get people into it and yeah, someone's going to sit there and enter all this information. They're curious. That is not the case. User experience is they users want quick. They want something that doesn't interrupt their day.
And if they have time, yeah, they'll sit there and go through it. But how are we making it the most convenient? Because of what we just talked about. Women have so much going on. We Someone can't have time to sit there for 5 minutes entering stuff.
They want to log in really quick, be like, "Crap, my foot pain's happening again. 30 seconds. " And that was something where because the team is so close to it and we were building it that you don't think of because yes we'll be a user but we also built it and so it's a different lens to look through is using it versus building it. So that was big and then you know we changed some of really the visuals how it looked. People were saying that we have great branding and people know Fox and we haven't even launched yet.
And people were saying that our branding didn't match our design. They said, "I was so excited. " And that was also a wake-up call because we're obviously writing the copy. The questions you see have all been written by someone in Fox. And to have someone flag that, not only was it pretty amazing to have such a phenomenal group of beta testers to be that open and honest with us, but it really gave us a sense of we need to relook at this.
How would Fox say that? How would we say that as a company to enhance the experience? So with those changes, we've been able to change how it looks, what the user experience is, and really what your interaction will be at every single step. Okay, that's first of all, that's awesome. And as somebody who spent time in copywriting, I can really appreciate that you have to get the, you know, I mean, sometimes that you just have to start off with something, you know, the basics and then you can get your kind of your brand behind it and your voice and the voice that responds well the best to your clients.
But tell me a little bit about how so say I download this, you know, it's available. I'm going to download it on my computer. Can you tell me about what the first steps are for me for a user to take? like what's the obviously you're going to enter your name and stuff, but tell me about what kind of information I'm going to have to enter at the start. Kind of get yourself set up.
Yeah. So, that's interesting because we actually aren't requiring you enter a name. Oh, wow. Making it so you can enter a username and an email. And we want to do that because if a user feels as though they are at risk by putting their real health information on an app because of all the mistrust that's happened in women's health and what's going on, you know, publicly with, you know, different corporations, different startups, and even the government, we want to give them the opportunity to be anonymous.
So, you can use a username and then a dummy email. The email is just if you lose a password or we need to get a hold of you and you can use our app that way. But aside from putting that information in, you'll also be prompted, you know, why are you here? Is it to track your health? Is it to take the assessments?
Is it to better prepare for your appointments? Because we really want to know why people are utilizing the app. We do ask your age because that will also help prompt us to show you different partners that we have that will be featured in the app. show you, you know, hey, this would be helpful for you. And then also you'll be prompted just for do you want to receive notifications like, hey, check in today.
Do you have any symptoms? Do you not? It's as simple as that. If you want to put a toggle on your home screen of your phone, it's a very seamless onboarding process because then the journey is yours. How you want to utilize Fox, we'll have those features and we'll also have a community den which is it follows the Reddit model.
So through everyone's anonymous usernames, anonymous or not, it's up to the person. You can go into different dens. So fox dens and they'll be for different health. Yes. Be for different I like that.
Thank you. Be for different health concerns or areas. So there'll be a den for permenopause, for menopause, for cancer, for breast cancer. And that's where you can go and speak to other women. I think it's so important that women not only have doctors to lean on, but also other women.
We're all learning this together. You know, the research is on the way and other women's experiences can drastically impact yours and that's something that we're really passionate about at Fox's community. Oh, so that's that'll be an ongoing feature then. The Fox Dens, that's a like a social feature that will stay on there. Yes.
I love this. So, it's almost like I mean it sounds besides being a tracker, it's almost like a social networking for your health type of thing. And honestly, that kind of communication is the most helpful. Like knowing what other people have gone through. " So maybe I need that and maybe I don't.
But at least it arms me with the information to say to my doctor, hey, my friend was telling me about this. What, you know, what can you tell me? Is this something that will work for me? And you're not going to get that kind of information without you. Yeah, you can rely on your one or two friends, but with a community of women, I mean, that's that's great.
And I love the idea of setting it up, you know, on a Reddit model because that's just the best. more likely to share when they're anonymous and we want to give women the freedom to do so. And also with the questions, just like you're saying, you can take our assessment and add all these questions automatically, but we also have an area for free form because we want women to be able to add their own. So, it's like you write a medication down, you can still add it to a list because walking into your doctor's office, walking into your appointment, you're there for a reason. It should really be an equal conversation.
Whereas for so long, we've been taught to take the back seat in a doctor's office. And again, it's really the doctors aren't even in control of their own schedule. They're overworked. Less and less people are going into the profession. And we need to help them help us.
And showing up for ourselves is the first step. One thing we really like to say at Fox is we can't change the system overnight. We can change how prepared we are to survive it. And that's I love that. And you know, it's interesting because I was going to ask you about the fact that, you know, you're you're training AI, right, to do this.
You're using an AI model and it's which can feel for people who aren't necessarily so familiar with it really kind of like cold and not intimate, but you're bringing it into a very personal space. It seems like you're really navigating that tension well and you're really receptive to your listeners. Will there be moderators in these or or not necessarily moderators, but you know, is there a human aspect behind this or will there be a human aspect that somebody that's checking in on these forums or the dens? I love that you're calling them fox dens. will there because I mean it is so human and people are talking about it.
I'm just curious how that will work. Absolutely. So there will be moderators within the dense. a couple of our partners will have dens that they sponsor. So for example, we have a gut health partner we'll be announcing soon and they'll be sponsor the gut health den.
So you will have experts in gut health moderating there. We have a partner in you know we have a partner in sexual health. We have a partner in brain health and gut health. And then we also just it's not a formal partnership but we were endorsed by Cy Health which is a women's heart health. and they said that they're excited to be on this journey and provide their expertise.
So just as we started the call, whereas Fox is across everything, what we're doing is having partners and experts in every vertical to be active on our platform. So as much as you're tracking, you'll also be able to have these conversations in confidence that you are already speaking to an expert and it's not for diagnosis. it's just for do I need to go see a doctor for this or what should I ask and really giving you the tools you need. That's awesome. And I just am curious now.
So, you know how certain apps and how this would work for you especially because it is anonymous. So, certain apps like we talked about N or tracking you know maybe your Fitbit tracks and then you can tie it to your Apple Health and then you can tie it to different things. Will there be any aspect of that like where your partners are your apps can tie in or is it gonna live in a silo? I mean it's not a silo because you've got all these partners but will it just be its own unique space that doesn't doesn't take information pull information from another tracking device. Yeah.
So interesting conversation because we've looked into partnering or there are companies that exist that actually, not to get too technical, pull the APIs from all of the wearables that we can put into our system. So you can tie basically your Apple Watch, your Whoop, your Aura Ring into Fox and then take that and run it through our AI as well. Now, that's something that's going to be coming later this year because that takes time. But ultimately what we want to do is take that data and be able to still push it against the women's health data we're training the AI with which gives a better more full picture to you know if you have your symptoms your wearable data and all of your questions that you've answered that prompt the AI. I mean imagine what you'd be able to figure out and go to your doctor with.
That means that you're showing up and you're going to be able to have the full picture to really get down into what's going on and that's what we want to do. Wow. I love it. I think you're doing a great job with it and also can you tell me a little bit about the fact that people can still invest. Yes.
people can still invest and that is really as black and white as it gets. We're, you know, it's been a very daunting task, but we're going through our preede round. And first and foremost, investors hate BTOC. And the reason why is because it's a smaller price tag. We want it to be accessible to women.
We'll obviously we'll have a premium model with all of these features. You know, the AI is premium. Once we add in wearable data, of course, it's premium, but it's still affordable and accessible, and investors hate that. number two is with going direct to consumer, they want you to have launched. I think preede is misleading.
I've been able to speak to a lot of investors, angels, VC companies, people who say, "We invest in women at the preede, the idea stage. " And which is fair. it lessens their risk, but I think it's also unfair for them to call themselves preede and you know saying they want traction when we had a closed beta with 100 women who are on an advisory committee. We have 14 brand ambassadors. We have seven partners and we have women we have a weight list of you know close to 500 women and people want it.
We do have traction and so I'm focusing on the positive but I'm also focusing on launching. What I want to do is get to launch, but we are also looking for investors on the angel level. We're looking for women who are passionate about this. " That's that's great. And I'm hoping you're going to find them.
And I should I want to point out that we are recording this conversation in I'm like what month is it? July. But so it'll come out, our conversation will come out right around the time we're hoping to coincide this with the with your official launch. So that's exciting and we'll see where you are at that point in terms of investing. Will that stay open at that point once you're in September?
I know that you've got something on your website where people can for $2 a month you can basically become a lifetime user or $2 in is it $2 a month or $2 investment? $2 a month. and that's for signing up for pre-order, like getting on our weight list in a lifetime $2 a month for premium. So, while we're adding all of these features, which will admittedly make the platform costs go up, you'll lock in the $2. And the reason we're doing that is because we want women again to believe in what we're doing and show us, you know, showing traction to investors, but also showing traction to us.
Do we have proof of concept before we even launch? That's important. " I think it's worth it. Absolutely. And you know, I want to go back for one second and I don't want to keep you all day, but you know, you mentioned a lot of times like the questions that you have to ask a doctor and I don't know if you've experienced this, but I feel like this is all I ever hear from a doctor anymore.
If you have any questions, just ask it in the portal. I'm like, I'm in like 15 portals. there's just entirely too many entirely too many portals. So, this is kind of almost would act as an organizational hub for yourself so that you have this to go into each because I feel like when hospitals and health care systems set up portals, they thought those would be universal hubs, but unfortunately we all have doctors in different systems. It's just now you're just remembering more passwords and they're not user friendly at all.
I don't know who built them, but oh my gosh, like do one user survey. No one wants to use them. And we really see this and that's a big part of our evolution. You know, down the line once we have users on it, how can we incorporate into those portals because Fox has better UX, you know, we're always thinking about how we can innovate and actually be a benefit to the health care system because we don't want to further separate the patient to the doctor. We want to bridge the gap and I completely agree.
I think this would be a great opportunity for women to have a centralized location. and some of the questions are even like make sure you ask who's responsible for following up. " And then a month goes by, they don't hear anything and they call and you know the answer was well you were supposed to call us and your results are done. You need to schedule an appointment and they're booking three months out. So now 4 months after an appointment for test results that took 2 weeks to come in and it's just because they don't know like whose responsibility is it to call, whose responsibility is it to schedule?
How far in advance does this doctor book? Even having those types of questions will better allow us to take the control of our health. Absolutely. And I'm just curious does it this is so I'm a list maker. If you put in all of these types of questions and you and you've got it all would it is there a place where you could then say okay these are your action items based on all of the things that you've learned from your questions.
So, say you go to the doctors and they're like, "Okay, it's your responsibility and we need you to call this number on XYZ day and ask for this. " So, right now you can write notes under the questions, but you also have a note box and you can always go back to that. But one of the features we're looking to include for post-launch is we're working with scribe companies that are HIPPA compliant to you. So you can go in and record your conversation with the doctor and it will actually AI generate notes and action items from that then you can take with you. So we're still working with how that will work because you know of course all of the compliance with having a doctor you know record on a third party app and everything.
So, right now it's just through your notes, but we're already thinking about that because I completely agree that would be so much better. I'm also a list person. Fox was founded on me being a list person. " Just, you know, if I lose my list, we're done. Like, there's there's just no going.
I guess there's nothing to do. So, Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. I know.
My husband keeps it on his head. I'm like, I don't even know how you function in the world. Like, I have to have a list. I have to be looking at something. So, let me I want to go back to something else that you said and then and then I'll let you wrap this up or we'll wrap this up.
But you mentioned in the beginning that you stripped your LinkedIn of all your background this just as a woman in a professional space. Can you give me a little background about why you did that or and what your what your goal was from that? Absolutely. So it actually was partially not by choice. when I was working at the startup I was at before I started Fox, I was in a hybrid chief revenue chief marketing officer role and so I was doing a lot of outbound messaging and because of that my profile was getting flat and I ended up getting shut down by LinkedIn and they weren't letting me put it back up.
So at the time I was like ready to start Fox. So, I made a second profile while my profile was still under review. " So, I had to choose. Did I want to keep my Fox one, which at the time had 30 followers, 30 connections on it, or my other one, which had 3,500 connections, followers of one, a LinkedIn I've had since high school. Which one did I want to pick?
And that was like a huge fork in the road for me. And I said, "This background of mine no longer serves me. " And so all I have on here is that I'm the founder of Fox. And that's what I want you to focus on. I have my schooling on there, where I got my MBA and my undergrad.
And aside from that, if you want to know, ask. And I'm open about it. " And that was my goal. " So my goal was to hit 1,000, you know, followers on it and I did that last month. And that was a milestone because people believe people that other people believe.
So it was kind of power and numbers. And now, you know, no one really brings it up anymore when I'm just messaging them and whatnot. And it was a choice I had to make. I had to rebuild myself. and I don't have a medical background and I didn't want that to deter from the fact that I am qualified to start Fox and it's going to be successful regardless of if I've worked in the medical field before.
Well, yeah. And you've got and I should point out, you know, for people who are listening that you do have medical advisors. It's not like you're just running rogue, you know, you literally just me be like, "Oh, yeah. " I know we have the we have the lead medical adviser from Flow Health. We have the head NP of all the health big hospital system in Michigan.
And we also have someone who's the chief information officer of a massive health brand in the Southwest. So we have people and on our advisory committee we have 10 doctors on it. So it's I'm not just going rogue. I'm not I promise. And when I started it, people kind of thought I was and I was like, did really you think so?
You think I could make it happen like that? And so that's it was a journey because when I had 70 followers, you know, I incorporated last November and I didn't start hiring until February and I brought someone in for tech in Febru or March and we launched the beta in May. And so to find people who are re who resonate with this mission so much, you know, 13 people work at Fox right now and every single person is motivated by our mission, what we're doing. And the fact that all of these women are just so passionate about what we're doing is a testament to what how what we're building is going to work. And also a testament to how much it's needed.
Yep. You know, I don't think there's a woman in the world that hasn't experienced some type of dismissiveness or dismissiveness or Yes. There's really no other word for it. I'm like, you're dismissed at the doctor's office when you're going in for something that you're and the worst is if you feel very serious about it like you did. You're like, I could be dying.
You think you're dying. you're having all the symptoms of something that can kill somebody, but you're kind of being I don't want to say laughed off, but it's it's almost like you're being deemed hysterical, crazy. You're not to be believed. And it's really disheartening that we still face that in the medical community. But again, it's not necessarily the doctor's fault.
They're, you know, their time is limited themselves. So, I think what you're doing is a great thing. Thank you so much. We're very excited about it. And yeah, it launches in September.
And I was just telling the team, we have a weekly all hands on Mondays. And I was telling them that right now we're working with each other. And it's like just us in this little bubble. When we launch, it's all about the customer. Like the feedback we received in a closed beta will be different than feedback we'll receive from the masses.
And we're marketing right now, but we're marketing us as people and a brand. And now we're going to market to sell. And everything will change. And so we're kind of in like this happy little bubble because we're so excited and everyone's working so hard to build and what you know the fox we knew will completely turn in September. And that's also a part of the founder journey something that's the unknown.
So I'm I'm really proud of the team and excited for September. Oh well I'm excited for it too. and I'm going to sign up. Well, I'm already on your mailing list, but I'm going to I'm going to sign up as a $2 lifetime subscriber myself. So, $2 a month.
I want to make that clear. last thing I have for you. So a lot of the time I speak to women on roar and they are implementing something new or they've created an app or a program or they work in a field and a lot of times they do it because of their own experience and you know there's women who run for office because they it's not something you didn't wake up one day and say you know what I really feel like doing creating an app for women's health. it was out of necessity, right? You saw a gap, you created something.
A lot of women do that and that's awesome and I that's what we're highlighting here. " I mean, and you could have said this yourself. You could have said, "I'm not in medicine. I don't I don't know. " What do you want the woman listening maybe who's exhausted, dismissed, or doubting herself to hear from you right now as somebody who did have kind of the get up and go to go after it?
That is a heavy question. what I would want them to hear from me is if you want change, don't wait for somebody else because chances are you'll be waiting a very long time, if not forever. the other it is all of the self-doubt, it will only get worse as a founder. Being a founder is not for the faint of heart. So before you step into it, know that it will be the most empowering thing you do and it will also be the hardest.
And having a support system in place is so important in becoming a founder. You know, everyone talks about being a girl boss and everyone wants to be a CEO of their own company, but you can't do it alone. So, if you have an idea, talk to people about it because community and the people you can lean on are going to be your best asset to actually making it a reality. Awesome, Maria. Thank you so much.
I can't wait till this episode airs and I can't wait till I'm on Fox officially. So, thank you so much. And everybody, all the connections, all the links to everything Maria is talking about will be in our show notes, so be sure to check those. and thank you so much. Thanks so much to Maria Halgen, founder of Fox Health, for joining us today and sharing her vision for women's health.
Next week, I'll be talking with Stephanie Thompson, author of The Day My Vagina Broke. It's raw, it's real, and you don't want to miss it. If you like today's episode, share it with a friend, leave a comment, or sign up for my email list in the show notes so you never miss what's next. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
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