Office Hours: Healthcare and Technology — with Aagya Mathur

Aagya Mathur, the CEO and Co-founder of Aavia, joins Scott to answer a question about integrating health apps like Aavia with primary care. They also discuss how blockchain can be applied in the healthcare industry, and how the pandemic has accelerated trends in the space. Follow Aagya on Twitter, @aagya320. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Northwest Registered Agent. Your business identity is everything that makes your business legitimate and professional. With Northwest Registered Agent, you don't just form a business, you start a complete foundation built for privacy, credibility, and growth. That includes registered agent service, a business address, operating agreement, domain, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. In other words, your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:27Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the Prop G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. Today, we're joined by Agia Mathur, who's here to help us answer your questions on the intersection of healthcare and technology. Agia is the co-founder and CEO of Avia, a hormone health platform working to help women optimize their physical and mental health. Why is Agia here? Because I was so fucking freaked out and horrified by that legislation, the heartbeat legislation, whatever you want to call it, let's send women back to Old Spain legislation in Texas. I thought it would make sense to bring some attention to some of the very interesting startups and entrepreneurs attacking...

• 2:13Scott Galloway?

  I shouldn't be attacking helping or addressing women's health. All right, Agia, where does this podcast find you?

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Hey Scott, thanks so much for having me. I am currently in Brooklyn, New York.

• 2:23Scott Galloway?

  Brooklyn with all the cool kids. So walk us through how, is it Avia or Avia?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Avia.

• 2:29Scott Galloway?

  Avia. Tell us how Avia works, other than you needing to change the name. Go ahead.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  So Avia is a hormone help brand and we're guiding people on a health journey that's better than their mother's. And that's not just by adding like pastel colors into our color palette or anything like that, but really helping them to understand their personal hormone cycle and how it's uniquely impacting them day to day and then what they can do about it. So our ovarian hormone cycle impacts everything from our quality of muscle toning to our quality of sleep, skin, mental health, you name it. And so we're really helping people map that, understand what they can do about that day to day to really optimize their quality of life and all things beyond that. The other thing is that for birth control pill users, which is also a hormone, we have a smart case

• 3:18Speaker 02

  with patented sensor technology that knows when you've actually taken your birth control pill and reminds you until you actually take it. And the case is connected to the Avia app via Bluetooth and automatically records what time you took the pill so we can learn and improve upon your behavior. The average person misses 20% of their birth control pills every month. And that means in the US alone, this is a million unintended pregnancies each year. And mind you, there are only four million births in the US each year. So as there are these terrible abortion bans, as you were alluding to or talking about Scott earlier, that are being put into a place in our country, not everyone has the ability to terminate these unwanted pregnancies.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  So we are another line of defense there and taking the pill on time means higher efficacy, which means less need for abortions. In fact, right now, when anyone purchases a case or donates money, we're sending a free case to a Texan pill user and we're really standing in solidarity with Texans and we all deserve the same reproductive freedom.

• 4:22Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, so it's fairly common knowledge that men's healthcare gets much greater funding, much greater attention. It strikes me that the perfect analogy is that the health tech company that got all this attention was called Hims. And then all of a sudden, two years later, they go, oh, wait, Hims and Hers. That, to me, summarizes sort of all research around healthcare in terms of a gender bias. I love the term femtech, and it's a growing industry with a huge market or market potential or TAM or whatever you want to call it. Revenue from femtech is expected to reach over $1 billion by 2024. Can you tell us about some of the market leaders in this space right now? We want to bring some oxygen, not only to Avia, but some of the other companies in the space.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so one thing that's really important to note when it comes to healthcare of people with ovaries is that it's not just things that are OBGYN related, right? So this is where we have to keep in mind that we have different chromosomes, and this impacts our cells in every way possible differently. So even things like heart health. So there's a company called Bloomer Tech that's really taking into consideration that heart disease impacts women differently than it impacts men. What we need to do to treat that needs to be differently. The adverse effects of the medications that come to us is different. So they have a smart bra that is helping to collect the data and to help improve the

• 5:51Speaker 02

  research that's out there so that we can better treat them. There's a company called Electra Health, also MIT founder, good friends of mine now, where they're helping to smash the taboos when it comes to menopause. They're using education, technology, services, and community in that space as well. There's a company called Lita Health, which they're actually helping with sexual health survivors, where you can have an at-home kit instead of having to wait to go to the hospital or to do all sorts of different things in that way as well. And then another thing that we're really seeing come together quite a bit is mental health and emotional wellness as well coming together.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And that's where you're actually seeing this across the spectrum of all of the women's health companies, is that we're actually looking at a holistic health, where there's a blending of mind and body, rather than just one element here, one element there, this doctor for that, and that doctor for this.

• 6:52Scott Galloway?

  So we're going to take one quick break and when we're back, we'll answer a couple of listener questions on the future of healthcare and tech. Stay with us.

• 7:02Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Built. Most of us work hard to earn our keep, but usually there's no one around to hand you a cookie when you successfully pay your monthly housing bill. No one except Built, that is. Built has expanded from their original rental rewards program, and they have a lot more going on for members now. For example, members can earn points on mortgage payments, too. Every housing payment gets you points that get you a lot more than baked goods, such as flights with top travel partners, including United and Hyatt, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much, much more. Here's another benefit of Built membership. You also get access to what they call a neighborhood concierge. You can make restaurant reservations, book fitness classes, and find new local spots, all while rewarding you at more than 45,000 merchant partners. It's simple. Being a renter

• 7:44Scott Galloway?

  and now owning a home feels a lot better with Built. You can download the Built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com/profg. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com/profg. Use our link so they know we sent you.

• 8:01Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The Regentech Trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude

• 8:44Scott Galloway?

  or Cursor. Want proof? Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prop G for $1,000 off.

• 9:09Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back to Office Hours with Agia Mathur, the CEO and co-founder of Avia. First question.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Hi, Prof G. This is Mark from Seattle. I was curious with Avia if they had plans for integrating with other apps in the digital space and particularly primary care. How can we link what you do in an app like Avia with your overall healthcare experience? Thanks so much.

• 9:34Scott Galloway?

  Agia.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is such an important concept as health and wellness traditionally has been pretty siloed, going to this doctor for this and going to that place for this other thing. But Avia truly sees it as holistic health where mind and body are really working together. So while today, actually, our members are already taking data from Avia to their doctors where primary care or to psychiatrists or to OB-guines. And that's where we've already seen a lot of impact. For example, one of our members took their data to a psychiatrist and she realized that, you know, she'd been diagnosed with clinical depression, but the symptoms that she was

• 10:16Speaker 02

  recording, the times and things like that, really led to her having PMDD, which meant that she now has a different diagnosis, different treatment plan, and just a different way of viewing it too. And we can't wait to see more of things like that. And Avia is going to be even more powerful when we take it to the next level by integrating this with other wearables, their wearables such as Whoop and Apple Watch. And that really are providing already these health insights. And when we can now layer this on with the health insights specific to people who have ovaries at the intersection of mental and physical health, it's going to be really powerful because, you know, when you think about primary care, you're going once a year, maybe twice if you're getting sick.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  This is an opportunity for us to really be proactive and be looking at things 365 days a year rather than just that once. And ovarian hormone cycles really do impact everything, and that's why we will continue to expand upon that.

• 11:13Scott Galloway?

  Next question.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Hi Prof G, my name is Derek and I'm talking to you from Cape Town in South Africa. My question really is related to blockchain and healthcare. I have listened to your show recently and you've talked about how blockchain can be applied to the music industry and various other industries. So really, I would like to find out if you've thought about how blockchain can be implemented or used in developing healthcare. I work in the managed healthcare industry for medical insurance. And so I'm looking for a way where, you know, in the future blockchain can be used to, to, to improve the service, to make sure that benefit is evenly shared.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  And at the same time, blockchain and the whole crypto industry is blowing up and we can see a better way to implement strategies to make healthcare work better for everyone. Thank you.

• 12:14Scott Galloway?

  Agy, any thoughts on blockchain and healthcare?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a lot, so let's see how, how far we can get here. So I actually love the specificity of this question. I have two good friends who I nerd out about this with Devon Walsh and Jimmy Comfort. And I think one of the biggest things that the listener asked was around how can it be used or implemented? And the hardest part of it isn't actually going to be the technology itself, but just like most other things in healthcare, it's really going to be figuring out who has incentives to actually implement it and then getting through political, organizational, regulatory hurdles that really hold up everything else. So that being said, though, broadly speaking, the most common use of blockchain and healthcare

• 12:59Speaker 02

  that people think about is for you, yourself, to really maintain the personal health record. And blockchain really is ensuring that the data can't be corrupted and that it can be private, but also publicly verifiable. And that way you know that your medical data isn't piecemeal, but you actually have the full look at it. You don't have to rely on others to protect the data. You can share it how you need to, rather than worrying about it being shared with That your consent and you know, the list kind of goes on there. Then you can also build applications securely on top of that so that your data is still secure. But I think more specifically also to the question. Typically, when it comes to healthcare and payments and healthcare, there are three players, right?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  There's payers, providers and patients, sometimes more. And when it comes to money moving for this patient care today, the record of the payment or the record of the actual care as well as the payment for each of these is really done at different times and different places, stuff like that. So there's really an opportunity to use things like smart contracts, Ethereum, to really apply the right rules and to then move the money in a single transaction and have the record of it in one place. That's an oversimplification of what really happens under the hood. But if we're keeping it at a high level, that's really what we're looking at, right? And just like cutting out so much of the administrative overhead.

• 14:25Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it seems that basically if you're talking about a ledger, the ability for it feels as if record keeping is sort of a no brainer. I wonder if HIPAA compliance and trust of having all of your data. It's like initially people didn't trust the internet. I wonder how consumers feel about having their, you know, people are especially and understandably concerned about their data as relates to their, their, um, their health. The, the thing I've been thinking a lot about is what if Stanford Medical Center, Cedars or Langone or one of these great healthcare institutions or hospital networks basically says, we're issuing a coin and we are Cedars. And we have pretty much offer everything from cradle to grave, literally OB GYN.

• 15:10Scott Galloway?

  We deliver the baby, we manage, we can manage all your healthcare and we're going to take the, the level of service to the next level. We have a great brand and we're issuing 10,000 coins or 100, they could probably do 100, 100,000 coins. And it costs, every one of them costs a certain amount of money and you never pay anything, no insurance, no administrative bullshit, take out the bureaucracy, the complexity, the fundraising, we're just going to capitalize or over capitalize the institution. And we're going to implement technology and if you have any pain, anything, a rash, you email text and you get the best service from one of the best hospital or medical centers in the world. I wonder what that coin would go for. I bet, I bet.

• 15:53Scott Galloway?

  That that coin would go for between $100,000 and $1 million. And overnight Cedars does an ICO of 10 to 100 billion dollars. It would create greater income inequality. You could have people buy a coin and then donate it to middle or low income families. But I think some of these institutions, medical centers and universities, I think Stanford is going to do this at some point, have a Stanford coin and just say, as long as your kid meets certain criteria, as long as you want to stay involved, come to football games, network, be a part of our community, have someone in your family, go to one of our schools or graduate schools, we're issuing a Stanford coin and we're only issuing 100,000 of them. I think people would pay up a million bucks for that coin.

• 16:35Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, I think there's big opportunities. I think the medical industry has very underrated or under monetized brands. I wonder if a way to capitalize or factor or securitize that brand equity might be through some sort of coin offering. Anyways, question number three.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  I'm really interested in your thoughts on how healthcare industry is going to be disrupted and how this disruption is going to be accelerated with the merging technology and COVID pandemic. I love healthcare, but I'm looking to get into opportunities that are more forward looking and have potential for explosive growth versus climbing one more rank on the corporate ladder. I want to take some risks and I'm able to afford to. What should I consider? Thank you so much.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  I love this question. We could be here all day to talk about everything that is going to be changing and accelerating, especially with this pandemic and tech coming about. So a few things that are coming to mind off the top of my head are consumers are really just demanding more from healthcare, whether it's ease of access or it's continuous care from the healthcare system. Earlier, we were actually talking about continuous primary care instead of just going for a physical once a year. And this is everything from wearables, which adoption has really skyrocketed during the pandemic. There's a company called Whoop, which was able to actually

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Somewhat detect and also suggest if you might have COVID before the symptoms even appear. There's a company called Levels, which is doing continuous glucose monitoring, or Everly Health, which is doing at-home testing for everything from food sensitivity to cholesterol and more. And these are things that are making things both easier, but then also more continuous so that you're not just having to go into the doctor for each thing or one time a year. We also talked about regulations earlier being a big barrier when it comes to technology advancement. However, during the pandemic, we did see that the regulations for telehealth had to be loosened so that we could do these virtual visits. This is something that we're now seeing cascade when it comes to mental health as well.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  And there are companies that are really building technology on top of that in order to make it even more seamless and to provide the type of care that we need, that we would have in traditional care settings. And so that people can have better treatment as well that's also affordable. The other thing that I'm very much excited about is just the use of AI and machine learning. Very broadly speaking, better abilities to diagnose individuals, spot health trends at population levels, exciting things there. And then there's also a lot more that is happening when it comes to just digitizing healthcare in general. And that's where we're seeing different companies that are able to

• 19:38Speaker 02

  use the technology, use machine learning, use AI, and be able to do things like cancer drug discovery. There's a company called One Three Biotech that's doing this. And also just in reducing administrative overhead, things like that too.

• 19:54Scott Galloway?

  What can we do to be more supportive of femtech?

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are lots of ways to support these companies. First of all, people can get started by educating themselves to understand that people with ovaries are not little men. And biologically, everything really works differently for us. We're talking about half of the world's population whose health has been largely ignored. And there is such little attention to this because women's health is typically underfunded, both privately and publicly. So make that wire into these private companies and fund the public research. And then also make these strategic connections, right? Whether it's to an executive at a health plan, it's a provider who should know about the services we're providing, it's an investor, whatever it may be.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  And if after this, you're still looking for ways to help, definitely feel free to message me and I'm happy to help out in that way, too.

• 20:48Scott Galloway?

  Agia Mathur is the co-founder and CEO of Avia, a hormone health platform working to help women optimize their physical and mental health. She joins us from Brooklyn, New York. Thank you so much, Agia. Best of luck on what you're doing. Take care.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me, Scott.

• 21:07Scott Galloway?

  That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please visit officehours.profgmedia.com. That's officehours.profgmedia.com.

• 21:19Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Thursday.

• 22:03Speaker 06

  They're running a Cover 2 defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go-to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.