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Megababe and Evvy make personal care and health-related products that, at some point, will be needed by at least half the population. But these companies have had to overcome one hurdle after another in the years since they launched. Despite the relative successes of their companiesparticularly with identifying markets for products that address taboo topics head-onthese problems still persist, the founders said during a panel discussion at Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies Summit in New York last week. We get banned on social media advertising all the time, said Priyanka Jain, cofounder and CEO of Evvy, a women’s health company thats focused primarily on the vaginal microbiome. We get banned, too, added Katie Sturino, founder of Megababe, which sells more than 45 products mostly aimed at addressing issues in the nether regions. While a hemorrhoid cream named Butt Stuff, in the case of Megababe, or Evvys use of the words vaginal microbiome or pelvic floor raise alarm bells for social media companies, the founders pointed out that advertising for erectile dysfunction medication and pornography seemingly do not. But both women are, by now, accustomed to convincing stakeholders of all varieties that theres a sizable and viable market for their products. The taboo and stigmatized areas are probably some of the largest opportunity spaces because, by definition, they are areas that have been underserved, Jain told the audience. You have to push past the uncanny valley or that difficult time, but then you actually have a higher upside on the other side because it’s likely an unserved market with a lot of need. ‘No one wants this’ By the time Sturino launched Megababe in 2017, she had amassed a social media following that was about 70,000 strong, and she would ask her community of followers each spring what products they planned to use for thigh chafe. Naturally, when she started the brand for that community, the companys anti-chafing stick was one of its first products. But she heard a common refrain from people in the beauty industry. It was a lot of: No one wants this, Sturino recalled. Megababe ranks No. 2 on Fast Companys list of the Most Innovative Companies in Beauty for 2025. Undeterred, she and her startup team created 20,000 units of products. And we actually sold through our entire first run of inventory in the first month we launched. Leading with education Meanwhile, when Jain cofounded Evvy about four years ago, she told the audience there were two challenges that proved to be an uphill battle. One was that we were building a women’s health company, which people inherently believed was niche, that it was a small market, Jain said. And then it was the fact that obviously we were starting a vagina company. Then, as now, Jain said Evvys marketing strategy is providing education informationincluding a stat she referenced that vaginal discomfort is the leading reason why women seek healthcare advice in the United States. When fundraising, she said she focused on how massive the market was for products that werent solving the real problem. Look at all of the money that women are spending on wipes, washes, suppositories, whatever will make their vagina smell like a flower because there’s this fundamental root problem that isn’t being solved for them, she said of those conversations. It was very much starting with the data, starting with the numbers, and frankly not talking about the moral rightness of investing in women’s health. Social media insights In its early days, Evvy started a TikTok channel and racked up millions of views because, Jain said, people were actively searching for information about vaginal health. Whats more, the company has used three guiding principles to inform its product lineup: Provide what patients actually want, identify the best science, and provide education when theres either a gap or stigma. While Evvys mission quickly resonated with consumers, Jain advised that entrepreneurs may need to take a different approach to connect on a business level with investors. Lead with the data and lead with the numbers. And even though Megababe is sold by major retailers, Sturino continues to lean on her community of social media followers, now numbering 800,000-plus on Instagram alone. Its there that she might test product ideas that will bring a solution to women who are already dealing with an issueincluding the aforementioned hemorrhoid cream. She said its helpful if other entrepreneurs with similar taboo-tackling business ideas are tackling a problem they know is real. You have to keep going and believing in yourself, she said.
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Air taxi maker Archer Aviation on Thursday said it raised $850 million in funding following executive orders signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to boost electric air taxis. Trump’s orders also focused on bolstering U.S. defenses against hostile drones, and supporting the development of supersonic commercial aircraft. Earlier this year, Archer secured $300 million in a funding round led by institutional investors, including accounts managed by BlackRock . In April, Archer unveiled plans to establish an air taxi network in New York City in partnership with United Airlines. The company has also been named the official air taxi service for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Reuters
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E-Commerce
In 1999, I got to work on a literally once-in-a-lifetime project. As the 20th century was wrapping up, the magazine where I worked declared the personal computer the most important invention of the last 100 years. It wasnt exactly a contrarian pick: The magazine in question was PC World. To celebrate, we put together an article looking back at 100 defining moments in computing history. I was assigned to write blurbs on several of them. One was among the most obvious landmarks, Apples 1984 introduction of the Macintosh, which brought the graphical interface and mouse to the masses. I had a scant 250 words to recount an oft-told tale. Not wanting to merely rehash its familiar elements, I decided to focus on the Macs roots and emailed the guy who came up with the project in the first place, Jef Raskin. This dusty memory resurfaced in my brain this week when I read my colleague Jesus Diazs article about Apples upcoming iPadOS 26 operating system, one of the major announcements at this weeks WWDC conference. By giving the iPad a new interface with floating, overlapping windows, the software upgrade pushes the tablet far closer to the Mac. Jesus argues that the shift not only overcomplicates the iPad but also violates Raskins decades-old principles about how to make computing easy and intuitive. It might sound strange to say that the iPad is getting both more Maclike and more removed from the original vision of the guy who initiated the Mac project. But both facts can coexist. Apples 31st employee, Raskin started at the company as its publications manager. In 1979, he got the go-ahead to work on an easy-to-use computer he namedwith a slight spelling modificationafter his favorite kind of apple, the McIntosh. He put together a team oozing with talent, including people who would become some of the most legendary Apple staffers of all time, such as Bill Atkinson (who died last week), Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, and Joanna Hoffman. Unfortunately for Raskin, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs not only took an interest in the Mac project but took it over. Under Jobs, the computer evolved into something only tangentially related to Raskins concept. After leaving Apple, Raskin oversaw the development of a short-lived machine that stuck closer to his vision, the Canon Cat. In later years, he continued exploring ways to make computing more approachable as a software designer, author, and teacher. He died in 2005. I no longer have the email I sent Raskin when working on that PC World article. But I managed to preserve the reply that landed in my inbox on August 16, 1999. Rereading it for the first time in years, I saw that it mentions me having asked about the degree to which the Mac was modeled on ideas developed at Xeroxs PARC lab, a font of inspiration for the entire computer industry. I also seem to have requested his take on the state of interface design a decade and an half after the Macs debut. Heres what he had to sayverbatim, except for the name of a publication he misremembered and some relevant Internet Archive links Ive added. Harry, For background, if you have not read my article “Holes in the Histories” (published in Interactions, also at www.jefraskin.com), you might want to take a look at it. My c.v., in case you need dates or references, is also at that site. The most accurate account of the Mac’s history that I have seen in print is in Linzmayer’s book Apple Confidential. So much for background. I do not think that the famous visit to PARC had much influence at all on the design of the Mac’s (and therefore Windows’) interface. What it did do was get rid of Jobs’ antipathy to interface-oriented design and allowed us to proceed without his earlier opposition to the Mac project. On the other hand, the migration of designers and engineers from PARC made the Mac interface more PARClike (and, in my opinion, harder to use, but spiffier and probably more marketable). Whether we would have had fewer such people if Jobs had not made his visit is not clear, because a number of us had been recruiting from PARC even before Jobs was on board with the Mac. You ask where we are, with respect to interfaces, in 1999: To put it briefly, in a mess. Our “personal” computers, whether PC or Mac, are more complex, larger in every way (except external physical dimensions), and more powerful than the mainframes and minicomputers we were rebelling against when the microcomputer revolution started. While today’s interfaces are far more pleasant and interactive, at least on the surface, than what they replaced, they are in fact convoluted, complex, opaque, and remarkably prone to crashing at the least provocation, or just out of natural inanimate perversity. The present GUI paradigm is inefficient, and has not scaled to today’s needs. It also violates much of what we know about how people can most effectively use computers. A complete rethinking is in order (some aspects of my rethinking of interface design has appeared in a number of articles, and a more complete account is the subject of my forthcoming book, The Humane Interface, to be published early next year by Addison Wesley.) To answer your question: Are we anywhere near where we should be? No. And it will take a company with guts and financial strength to stand behind the radical improvement we need. On the other hand, they stand to make billions if they do it right, and consumers will be standing up and cheering to be out from under the yoke of today’s (mainly, Microsoft’s) antihuman interfaces. At the time, I was probably most interested in Raskins stance that the Mac drew less inspiration from Jobs having seen PARCs work than conventional wisdom would have it. Now, 26 years later, what sticks out for me is his astringent view of where computing had gotten by 1999. Maybe it was pleasant and interactive, but it was also convoluted, complex, opaque, and remarkably prone to crashing at the least provocation, or just out of natural inanimate perversity. Thanks to Microsofts Windows XP and Apples OS X, computers got less crash-prone in the new century. Nothing else about them changed all that much in Raskins lifetime, though. As they bulked up with more features, they may even have ventured further astray of his ideal of streamlined, appliance-like efficiency. But in the 20 years since Raskin left us, new productshave never stopped fundamentally changing how people interact with technology. Reducing the cognitive load involved has nearly always been an overarching goal. Lets recap. The iPhone and iPad were conceived entirely for touch input. Googles Chromebooks turned the web browser into a full-blown computing environment. Amazon gave us Alexa, an assistant you could summon by talking to a speaker on the other side of the room. OpenAI turned its LLM into ChatGPT, a bot thats eerily adept at understanding typed requests and responding in fluid language. Yet what Raskin told me still resonates. The present GUI paradigm is inefficient, and has not scaled to today’s needs, he wrote. With iPadOS 26, Apple is applying that same paradigmresizable windows and menus, manipulated by a pointerto the iPad. In 1999, the company had just the Mac to worry about; at this years WWDC, it rolled out interface updates for computers, phones, tablets, watches, TV boxes, and headsets. Even if youre impressed by themI loved the demo I got of the Vision Pros VisionOS 26 and will write about it next weekthat sounds like the scaling problem Raskin saw in 1999, times six. And once a platform exists, it quickly grows resistant to the kind of complete rethinking he told me was in order. I dont mean to bash Apple alone. After giving Windows its most dramatic makeover ever with Windows 8 in 2012, Microsoft has spent the subsequent years trying to dial in an experience that somehow looks to the future while also pleasing people who might be satisfied with Windows XP if it remained an option. Chromebooks, which started out rejecting native apps as an idea before succumbing to the temptation to support Android ones, have wrestled with similar issues. Back in 1999, faced with cramming the prehistory of the Mac into a tiny write-up, I quoted Raskins point about Jobss PARC visit warming him to the potential of the embryonic Mac project, and didnt get into his harsh assessment of current interfaces. But even that didnt see print. Like most things that get published in dead-tree magazines, my Mac origin blurb was trimmed by an editor to fit the layout. I must have noticed that Raskins quote didnt make the final cut, and regret its excision today. At least Ive been able to belatedly share his entire email heresomething that wouldnt have even occurred to me was possible in the space-constrained days of computer magazines. In it, he posed a question about computer usability: Are we anywhere near where we should be? The answer, he said, was no. I dont presume to know how he might feel today. But the question remains a good starting point for judging new products. It always will be. And holding them to high standards, as Raskin did, is the best way to answer it. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Thanks to AI, the one-person unicorn is closer than you thinkAnthropics Mike Krieger believes AI is dissolving the boundaries between idea and execution, making solo founders more powerful than ever. Read More Mark Zuckerbergs superintelligence gamble: Can billions and bold hires save Metas AI ambitions?Meta is betting big on a new superintelligence lab, luring talent with massive paychecks and bringing in Scale AIs Alexandr Wangbut insiders warn that deep internal dysfunction could sabotage the effort. Read More Hinge is teaming up with Esther Perel to rethink dating promptsA batch of 10 new Your World prompts aims to bring Hinge usersspecifically Gen Z onescloser together. Read More Is telecom the new tequila? Why the SmartLess podcast is launching its own wireless brandSmartLess Mobile is a less-than-obvious spin-off for Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes. Read More 3 great sites for recycling or giving away old techHelp save the planet by giving that pile of dusty electronics a new home. Read More
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