Startup Grind is an intimate fireside chat with entrepreneurs from our community. These chats are a great way for fellow entrepreneurs to learn from an entrepreneur's journey, best practices, and prove to be a more candid look at what entrepreneurship means. We believe that storytelling is an essential piece of growth and Beth's story is important for all, including fellow entrepreneurs who may not see themselves represented in the current ecosystem. Drinks and food will be provided!
Bethany Edwards, CEO & cofounder of LIA Diagnostics, is revolutionizing over the counter women’s health products. She has combined engineering, design, and business acumen to create Lia: the first FDA cleared flushable, biodegradable pregnancy test. Since LIA’s founding in 2015, Bethany has transformed Lia from master’s thesis to tangible, efficacious product with significant brand traction.
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Prior to inventing and developing Lia, Bethany spent over a decade in advertising. Her unconventional roots and nontraditional thinking have guided the company, leading her to challenge and redefine the status quo of pregnancy tests everything from their outdated plastic form factors to their bulky, pink and blue boxes.
Combining techniques and materials from the textile industry with those used in medical devices, Bethany and cofounder Anna Simpson created a brand new category of at home diagnostics that biodegrade in 10 weeks and disperse like 2ply toilet paper when flushed.
In addition to developing patented, game changing technology, Bethany has taken the lead in directing Lia’s brand vision. The Lia test has been designed with careful attention to function and aesthetics, with branding and photography that reimagines the pregnancy test as eye candy rather than an eyesore. Lia’s allgreen, ultra slim envelope packaging is bold yet discreet, featuring an expletive graphic conveying that pregnancy testing has a different meaning for everyone, from exciting to terrifying, and everything in between.
2018 highlights include winning Fast Company’s Best in Design award, Women’s Health’s FemTech award, inclusion in TIME Magazine’s 50 best inventions of the year, and Bethany being named an EY Emerging Entrepreneur of the year.
MeetLia.com’s traffic rivals the #2 U.S. pregnancy test, and in the 4week period after announcing FDA clearance, Lia earned over 320M press impressions. With successful Series A funding completed in 2018 and a waitlist of nearly 30,000, Lia will launch this year.
Bethany leads with curiosity, leveraging her passion for well designed alternatives to landfill bound products to redefine the home pregnancy test for the modern age. She is passionate about health products that empower women and preserving the environment.
