Iman Clark, CEO of Prickly Pear Health, says she had an epiphany that ultimately led her to TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
It was round 9 years in the past. She moved from Tunisia to the U.S. for grad college, then joined an organization that created gamified experiences for folks with neurodegenerative situations, like dementia. This was carried out by giving them a pill or a pc and letting them play video games whereas medical doctors collected information on them, like their danger of falling and general vary of movement.
“I realized that most people, 75-plus, have two to three chronic conditions, and no matter what we did, it is always going to be hard,” she instructed TechCrunch. “Then I went back to the research and saw that like, 70% of the Alzheimer’s population are women.”
She dug deeper and located that girls had been twice as more likely to be recognized with melancholy and anxiousness, and three to 4 occasions extra more likely to be recognized with migraines. “That’s when I realized we are not really solving for women’s biology, and that is costing us lives and dollars.”
So she created Prickly Pear Health, which gives medical assist for ladies’s mind well being, a voice-first, AI-powered companion that helps ladies of their 30s to 50s navigate the hormonal adjustments that have an effect on mind well being. The product lets folks report fast reflections all through the day utilizing their voice and Prickly Pear’s AI know-how analyzes their language and context to trace any cognitive adjustments.
Prickly Pear Health will present of its tech at TechCrunch Disrupt, which runs October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
It additionally pulls in sleep information, coronary heart price exercise, and different metrics from trackers like Apple Health, Oura, and Garmin to assist supply personalised insights on how they will take higher care of their well being.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
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October 27-29, 2025
Clark stated there’s a collective settlement that girls’s well being is an area ripe for innovation, and that girls need to be founders, need to be prime voices, and are bored with being within the again seats of their very own lives.
Clark formally launched a free model of her product in Could and is gearing as much as launch the premium providing in October, for Psychological Health Consciousness Month and Menopause Consciousness Month.
She began doing focus teams at Arizona State College and located that girls of their late 30s to early 50s had been reporting a whole lot of mind fog and psychological fatigue, however it typically took them till their 60s to understand it needed to do with hormonal fluctuations, menopause, and even an onset of one thing deeper. It was right here that Clark realized she needed to give attention to this age vary.
“They’re often dismissed or misdiagnosed when symptoms like brain fog, mood shifts, or irregular cycles first appear,” she stated of ladies of their 30s to 50s, including that these midlife years are crucial to mind well being, however conventional care is failing to attach the dots.
“We’re addressing that gap. Helping women recognize and act on early signals before they escalate into more serious health challenges later,” she stated.
Arizona can be the place the inspiration for the corporate’s identify got here from. She grew to become fascinated with the cacti, how they stand regardless of the warmth and produce wholesome fruit. “That’s when Prickly Pear came to life because that’s the fruit that grows in the cactus tree, and it was an inspiration of thriving in harsh conditions and joyful resilience,” she stated.
She considers rivals in her similar area to be present menopause apps, which, she stated, are extra like symptom trackers. “We believe it’s important to understand symptoms, but we believe that those approaches are reactive approaches, while for us, we are there to be able to detect things.”
She raised a $350,000 pre-seed spherical and stated it was “really hard,” particularly as a girl of colour. “We had to be so good that you cannot be ignored,” she stated. She sought to construct relationships with traders earlier than beginning her pre-seed, which, she stated, actually helped when it got here time for the ask. “That’s a popular thing we say: ‘Ask for advice and you get business, ask for business and you get advice sometimes,’” she stated.
Some recommendation she acquired was to use for Startup Battlefield, with pals telling her to be loud and proud about being a part of the most recent startups to pitch throughout the competitors.
“Disrupt is the ultimate stage for new ideas,” she stated. She’s excited to highlight ladies’s mind well being, be taught from different founders, and, after all, “connect with investors and partners who believe, like we do, that women’s health innovation is not niche, it’s the future of healthcare.”
If you wish to be taught from Prickly Pear firsthand, and see dozens of further pitches, precious workshops, and make the connections that drive enterprise outcomes, head right here to be taught extra about this 12 months’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
