That’s a Wrap - A Year of Phase

16 Dec

A Summary of Year 1 of Phase

Phase completed its first year as a biology-based productivity app designed for menstruating women. The company launched on iOS (May) and Android (September), attracted thousands of users, secured £250k in funding, and was featured in publications like Cosmopolitan and Stylist. Key learnings: fundraising for femtech is challenging, most women lack basic cycle education, and user feedback proves productivity built around hormonal shifts works better than consistency-based systems.

We built a productivity app based on female biology, not hustle culture's fantasy of consistency. Thousands of women tried it. Fundraising was hell. We kept building anyway. Here's what happened.

The Ick of Founder Storytelling (And Why We're Doing It Anyway)

Founder posts are usually performative nonsense. "Our journey." "Lessons learned." "Grateful for this ride” and quite frankly they give us the ick. But celebrating how far you’ve come and what you’ve learned is important for growth.

So we’re sharing with you our wins and losses, but we’ll keep it short. This is a data dump on a year in the life of Phase. Interpret it as you will - you’re all smart enough.

What We Built (The Foundation)

We launched v1 of Phase on iOS in May and Android in September. Soon you’ll also be able to subscribe via web where the functionality is growing. We did what we set out to achieve this year - Phase is officially a multi-platform productivity toolkit, and people want to use it.
Thousands of women downloaded Phase. They tracked their cycles, synced their calendars, and scheduled deep work around their hormonal shifts, instead of pretending that Tuesday at 2pm is the same as Friday at 4.
We clocked-up some 5-star reviews. alongside nuggets of unsolicited feedback from women who suddenly had clearer insight into how they felt and why.
We were covered by Top Santé, FemTech Insider, Stylist, Cosmopolitan, Woman & Home and spoke on podcasts and panels. We started to spread the word that conflating productivity with consistency is a lie, sold by people who don't menstruate.
We partnered with businesses who get it, like Caveday, Femella, Work.Life, Mutu, Revol Cares. We educated, supported and encouraged women looking for a better way to work. It turns out, people are tired of being told to "optimize" themselves into burnout - this is a story worth hearing.
On the funding side, we closed an Advanced Shareholder Agreement for £250k. We’re looking to fully close our pre-seed round early next year, (but more on that below.)
We set a precedent for the team culture that we want to uphold and added key members to our clinical team to keep us on top of the newest research. We brought in experts where needed to support us with PR and social media. Thank you to Jess, Anne Marieke, Fran, Daisy, Julie, Jodi, Gillian.
And we had adventures. We walked, lifted and rock - climbed together. (Yes, we're aware of the "scaling" pun. No, we won't apologize for it.) Georgie continued to impress Sam by consuming alarming volumes of food in single sittings. We drank a lot of tea.

But what are we most proud of? We started on our journey to humanize productivity by helping women to do the right work, at the right time, for them.

What We Learned (The Uncomfortable but Important Stuff)

Being a founder means sharing your story. And it's ick.

We'd rather just build the product and write the copy. But no one trusts a faceless app telling them to restructure their workday around progesterone. So we talked about our cycles in public. We posted about it and made awkward TikTok videos, and well, that's just part of the game.

Every bit of data counts.

Not just user numbers. Every review, every question, every "wait, why am I good at this task today?" moment fed back into what we built. In the months when user volume was low - we still grew. Phase got sharper because users told us what mattered.

Most women don't know much about their own biology.

Not because they're not smart. Because no one told them. We heard *"I wish I'd known this 15 years ago"* over and over again. Women don’t know about the phases of their cycle, or the cliff, or how estrogen peaks your energy and progesterone brings reflection. This gap in education is not to be underestimated and we’ve got our work cut out to plug it.

Fundraising is not fun.

Pitching a female-focused productivity tool in 2025 meant explaining biology to investors who think "hormones" means "moody." Fundraising takes a lot of time and energy, which we could have spent on the business instead. We realised this quickly and decided to prioritise building.

We secured some funding. But honestly? If we'd waited for validation just from investors, we'd still be waiting. Our subscribers are a much more useful proof-point.

What's Next

The next phase of Phase (ha ha) is coming.

We're moving from educational to even more practical. Think - a productivity system that connects your biology to your workload, so you do the right work at the right time, for you. We’re integrating with your task managers so you can prioritise what you are doing based on your biological alignment today and in the future.

Want to know exactly which of your Notion tasks you should work on right now? We’ve got you. Want to jig your calendar, so you end the week feeling inspired not drained? We can do that.

We're expanding beyond the menstrual cycle (think sleep, stress, and readiness scores) and building more integrations with the tools you already use (Todoist, Linear, Notion, Apple Health). We're giving you more ways to work with your body instead of forcing it into someone else's productivity template.

We’re growing our audience and building out our partnerships. Working with people and businesses who understand that productivity isn't one-size-fits-all.

We're working with our clinical team to build the evidence base because this needs to be more than anecdotal. Biology-based productivity should be default, not fringe.

Why This Matters

Hustle culture pretends humans are machines. Productivity advice pretends biology doesn't exist. The menstrual cycle gets treated like an inconvenience instead of useful data.

Phase flips the narrative: Your body isn't the problem, but the system that ignores it is. And in 2026 the system is getting a shake up.

Welcome to a better way of working. Thanks for being part of the journey.

Georgie, Sam, and Maggie