“Women represent half of the planet’s population. ... Tapping into that spending power, a multitude of apps and tech companies have sprung up to address women’s needs.” -The New York Times
Given the ballooning interest in mobile apps geared toward the unique needs of women — a fascinating subgroup representing 58% of the population — Silicon Valley’s best and brightest engineers have assembled a comprehensive presentation of the valley’s most promising app pitches that we're confident will meet the needs of you mysterious, divergent beings.
But before we get into our pitches — and trust me, I wasn’t even a little tempted to say “bitches” just then — Silicon Valley wants to emphasize just how we feel about women. So let us be emphatic: We acknowledge women. We see women, with our eyes, every single day. Heck, some of us even talk to women. So let us assure you: when virtually every major tech executive attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration, that did not represent the values of Silicon Valley. Also, Silicon Valley is, ultimately, a piece of land, and we’d encourage you not to get hysterical and start demanding that even the ground soil agree with your politics. That’s no way to make a friend.
Let us demonstrate our genuine commitment to women’s health and well-being with this first pitch: PINKLEAF. It’s like DoorDash, but an uncomplicated version of DoorDash that only delivers salads, beef tallow and compound GLP-1s — all without needing a credit card! We'll just need your name, home address, and the date of your last period. That way, we can send over a complimentary kale Caesar at the start of your monthly cycle! Right? Isn't that great? Ugh, we're so glad you get it, and that you're not one of those women who makes everything complicated. Because obviously, the name PINKLEAF is nothing more than a playful, feminine nod to leafy greens. And while Peter Thiel does own a minority stake in the business, anyone who thinks the name reads as subtextually vaginal is, frankly, probably spending a little too much time re-watching The Handmaid's Tale. Because Thiel is only interested in two things: delivering low-cal meals to sleepy women, and having full access to our raw data sets, purely for a personal project he’s really excited to talk about in a different regulatory landscape.
Oh, wow. We're losing some of you. But trust me, this next one is really exciting. It's called PROFITTE, and it’s a financial planning and investing app, explicitly for women, offering a suite of personal finance calculators and investment tools for the common girlbosses: retirement and tax deduction calculators, automated investing tools, rigorous spreadsheets demonstrating how much more you'd truly be earning for your time by leaning into your innate homemaker within, leaving behind the frankly oppressive expectation that you participating in society and the flow of commerce. Think about it: you’ve got a roof over your head, three square meals a day, you’re working zero hours a week, and aside from your constant caretaking of several humans with barely-developed brains, you're in total isolation? And your husband only goes out with his work buddies four nights a week? Seriously. Think about it. (If that isn’t too strenuous!)
All right. Let’s shift to rapid-fire mode — I’m sensitive to the fact that you ladies likely have one of those fun little MLM mixers to run off to.
- TREVOR: He’s like Clippy, the animated paper clip assistant from Microsoft Word, only TREVOR lives in women’s phones and corrects any spelling errors with the proper spelling, followed by what TREVOR thinks would be a better way to phrase that.
- WINMO: It’s Venmo, only, each woman’s spending power is unfortunately correlated to their wage gap: a sobering reminder for every woman to never, ever stop leaning the heck in — because eventually, they’ll WIN-MO.
- NAILED: An app that reminds women to treat themselves to a manicure — and, yeah, splurge for the cuticle treatments! (Consultants have advised us that NAILED could represent an invaluable data asset for Russian government hackers, making it a “Level 2” threat to American democracy. Equity funds said they’ll pour billions into the idea.)
- LUVSTOCK: Finally, a dating app with only the essential filters! That’s right: just a place for the ladies to enter their measurements, egg count, and tolerance for emotional abuse From there, let the queries roll in.
- OUREOLA: An app that reminds women to give themselves weekly breast self-exams, film it, and upload the video to our database, where OUREOLA’s citizen scientists can investigate the documents for anything medically or sexually significant that they feel compelled to follow-up with you on. After all, it’s not your areola – it’s ours.
- PEACHES: The same thing as the breast cancer app, but for butts.
All right, ladies — have we gained your trust? Or, at least a small portion of your trust? You've proven your collective spending power with phenomena like the Barbie movie, the Eras and Renaissance tours, and a company I can't say enough good things about, Shein. Women represent nearly $32 trillion in global spending power. Even if we captured a single percent of that, we'd be looking at a $320 billion market. So to anyone who doesn't think these femtech apps represent the future, I say: Great. Be that way. FaceMash certainly had its fair share of haters back at Harvard, but look at Mark Zuckerberg now. How many of you are planning to unfollow me on your Instagram accounts? Exactly.
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