Jan. 18, 2021

492 - Madison Campbell (Leda Health) On Building Sexual Assault Prevention Solutions

492 - Madison Campbell (Leda Health) On Building Sexual Assault Prevention Solutions

Madison Campbell is the cofounder of Leda Health. Leda Health transforms existing systems of sexual assault prevention, care, and justice to better serve survivors and the communities in which they live.

Madison Campbell is the cofounder of Leda Health. Leda Health transforms existing systems of sexual assault prevention, care, and justice to better serve survivors and the communities in which they live. 

 

Transcript

 

All right, how's it going everyone. And welcome to another episode of forward-thinking founders, but we talked to founders about their companies, their visions for the future and how the two Kaleida today. I'm very excited to be talking to you. Madison Campbell, who is the co-founder of Leda health.

Welcome to the show. How's it going? Great. How are you doing you ready for 2020 to be over? I am. Yes, I am. And it's, it's crazy to think that just in a few weeks, like I will be like the year, although it was, you know, pretty, you know, insane it fully by hopefully next year will be way better. You know, and you know, hopefully next year you make a lot of progress on Leda and for people that don't know what lead to health is I'd love to hear kind of what are you working on and kind of what, what is lead the health?

So we're a little bit of a controversial company, but what we're doing is creating the first ever ad home rape kit. So sexual assault survivors don't have to go to the hospital if they don't feel like they have the ability to really offering, you know, the survivor, the opportunity and the, you know, empowerment to collect evidence within the comfort of their own home takes 15 minutes, and then also provide them with a slew of other services, whether it's mental health support.

Community or medical support, you know, throughout their journey of being a survivor. So can you kind of, kind of walk me through, let's say someone is listening to the podcast and they're, and they're they align or something that they could use, or maybe they know someone that pretends to use.

That's what it can kind of walk me through, like the quote unquote, like UX, like what is the product? What's the, what can they do with it? Things like that for people that might, you know, it might be a very useful for them. Yeah. So after a sexual assault, usually what you have to do is go to a hospital to get a rape kit done.

You know, the majority of folks don't feel comfortable going to a hospital or even leaving their house. So what we'll be doing both from a B2B to C and a direct to consumer lens is selling an at-home kit. Very similar to 23 in me allows you to collect evidence orally vaginally penalized, as well as an anal swab and the underwear you were wearing.

You can package that up in 15 minutes, send to a lab and actually get the results back to eventually utilize in a court of law, whether it's civil or criminal, if you would like to pursue justice. And I'm kind of curious for, for this, you know, this is obviously a massive problem. And when did you kind of decide you wanted to tackle it with Leda health or I guess in other words, what's the origin of the story here and why'd you decide to build a company out of it.

Yeah, I, myself am a sexual assault survivor. I chose not to report my sexual assault, you know, for a multitude of different reasons, being incredibly scared of, you know, actually going through the process and didn't want anyone to touch me, poke, prod, anything like that. The only thing I had the capability of doing was actually going to a pharmacy and buying like black hair dye.

And I dyed my blonde hair black. And so, you know, I think about the moment where I could at least pick myself up and go to a pharmacy and then thinking about our product, you know, being there you know, kind of in the aisle of. You know, sexual wellness and health and actually, you know, giving me the opportunity to do something about it when I did not feel the opportunity, you know, to really go to a hospital.

And as you're working on this I'm kind of curious, what's your, like, what's your day to day? Like, are you, you know, spreading the word or are you kind of ultimately letting people know you exist so they know that you're an option. Are you, you know, fundraising shipping code, if there's a technological part of it, like what what's an average day, like for you.

So as CEO, I do two things. One, I either sell stock or sell product. So I'm you know, constantly either fundraising or selling the product or trying to get, you know, business development opportunities. You know, my co-founder is kind of doing a lot of the product based stuff. A lot of the technology we've actually built a backend.

I'm using blockchain, Ethereum to create an immutable, timestamp and record for each of the collection you know, kind of opportunities. So, you know, creating that, shipping out new technologies, her domain, and then my domain is. To be on Twitter, basically, actually. So because for people on, you know, for people listening that are, that are on Twitter, by the time you're listening to this, it would have been a few weeks ago.

But like, you know, I announced on Twitter a few weeks ago that, you know, the podcast will soon come to a close, but like why to dude on Twitter, right? Why didn't I do it on. Log-in and why'd you just say Twitter, right? There's something about Twitter, which I think is really interesting. I want to make sure people know, why are you on Twitter?

Isn't it just a social network. That's you know, what's, what's, what's going on with Twitter that makes you want to spend time. Yeah. So I used to not be on Twitter until maybe like two or three months ago. And my co-founder who was like, You know more technologically savvy than I am said, Hey Madison, like you're snarky.

And you know, you have a dry sense of humor. You should probably spend that on Twitter instead of, you know, in Slack to me. And so I've been, I've been working there and I've actually found a lot of investors off of Twitter, a lot of business development partners now, you know, it is so amazing what Twitter has been able to give me in terms of like business relationships, where I used to make fun of it.

To be honest, I really did make fun of it. Did not see the use of it. I saw it as like a time suck where I could be actually working. But realized that I used to spend like a lot of time on like LinkedIn with like really no great success either. And so, you know, it's, it's switching one for another. I like to say that Twitter is, is the, is the new LinkedIn and that without, you know, without anyone really realizing it yet.

Cause yeah, I, I made so many relationships off of Twitter and it's great.  So if you were to kind of like, look at what you're doing now and zoom out. Five years, 10 years, 15 years. What do you kind of see for the health then, or I guess in other words, what's the big vision here and what you're actually new rowing and what the company?

I think horizontal integration is very easy for us, right? Being able to offer everything in the sexual assault lifecycle, whether it's the testing and the first 24 hours to STD prevention to mental health care to community, right. That horizontal integration on the sexual assault industry is very easy.

Where I'm very interested in is the vertical integration actually purchasing a lab running a database, you know, of, of all the information that we're gathering as well as, you know, kind of completely revolutionizing the criminal justice system. As we know it, I mean, I think a lot of the news recently has been about defund the police, right.

And a lot of folks have been like, okay, well we're defining the police, but what are we doing? And you know, for me, I've viewed the criminal justice system is like a hose. With a lot of holes in it, right. And when you get a hole in a hose, you get, you know, duct tape and you put duct tape and you hope that it, you know, no water spurts out.

I think that's the criminal justice system, as we know it. And the police do an extent. And so instead in my opinion of, you know, continuously putting tape on the hose, I went to replace a hose. And that means, you know, being able to prioritize its entire industry, being able to do community activism, transformative justice, which, you know, no privatized company is even thinking about like, what do we do with this big momentum of replacing, you know, the systems at B.

And, and I really see it as us. And then one more question before we kind of go to H how, how the community can help. You mentioned that you're using like blockchain technology, which I think is rad. Can you just kind of like blockchain is one of these things where I know the concept I understand, but I don't understand kind of how it works.

A lot of its applications. Do you mind sharing just like one or two, even basic things about like how you're using blockchain? Because I think that I think listeners might appreciate it. Cause a lot of people don't really know, you know, applications for, and even though there's several. So chain of custody was hypothesized in blockchain technology.

I mean a good, probably five or six years ago in terms of transporting luxury goods. Right? So you are Gucci, right? You have a luxury goods from a manufacturer in China. Who's to say that the, you know, the good, when it finally gets to America is actually the luxury good that was created, right. Maybe it was switched, you know, for fake.

And so blockchain has been, you know, utilizing kind of luxury goods, pharmaceuticals to an extent. And so we take, we took the same idea and apply to differences. There's a very you know, it's a question that keeps coming up over and over again is around chain of custody. You know, chain of custody in America was created for the government to behave.

Right. And, and right now we know for a fact government doesn't always behave. They lose things. They don't know where it is. You know, tracking is off. And so why we're using custody through blockchain is actually to create records that can't be changed or altered, you know, not even by a system that we, you know, think that we trust.

And so the way that we're doing it, you know, to start with is in a very basic way. So each individual, when they're using the software that goes alongside our kit, they're taking a photo, scanning the barcode on the swab that then starts an internal timer. So it's timestamping and all those timestamps are held on the blockchain.

Eventually we'll be using it for identification purposes as well, and then broadening the use, you know, to the entire system. That's pretty rad. I appreciate you sharing. I appreciate you sharing that, you know, in order to, to grow the company, make your, make your vision happen and solve, you know, a massive problem.

You're going to need some help, right? Like it takes a village to make a startup work. So my question for you is how can the forward thinking founders, community help? Are you hiring? Are you looking for capital looking for, you know, anything, any partnerships? How can we help? I'm always looking for B to B  partnerships.

So whether corporations kind of want to offer these services to their employees, universities, or anything that you can think of in the medical field from a hiring perspective, Always really love to talk to growth marketers. I think they're really great as well as looking for our first full-time hire from a B2B standpoint.

So being able to actually deal with like sales cycles of universities, corporations, and somebody who truly does have a passion for social impact. And then, you know, I think we'll always have our door open and we'll always talk to investors. So any investors, you know, who are interested in this phase, You know, interested in kind of, you know, changing the criminal justice landscape or has any Intel, it would be great to connect with.

And then for my last question, if someone, you know, wants to connect, wants to learn more, wants to find your website, what's your URL, you know, are you on social or do you have an email? How can someone reach out if they want, please reach out to me, slide into my DMS on Twitter. It's kind of, my username is kind of funny in a way.

So my name is Madison and a lot of times. I think people pay me as a martyr in terms of, you know, talking about this stuff. So my name, my username on basically every social was martyr Dyson, which is martyr and Madison together. So M a R T Y R D I S O N. I feel free to connect with me DME or just Google Madison Campbell.

And I should come up alongside all the articles on all the controversy I've ever created. So easy. Absolutely. Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on to the podcast and sharing what you're working on and best of luck building out Leda health. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.