Tracy Pugh, an event planner based in Oakland, Calif., had a hard time breastfeeding her second child. So, when her third baby was just a few weeks old, she decided to invest about $ 1,000 into a “smart” breast pump from a Silicon Valley-backed start-up called Naya Health.
The story of Naya Health’s formation is right out of Silicon Valley lore.
The company’s founder, Janica Alvarez, is a former researcher at Genentech who saw an opportunity to develop a less bulky and more comfortable pump after breastfeeding her own children. Her husband, Jeff, a mechanical engineer with a background in surgical robotics, tinkered with a traditional pump in their garage and prototyped a model that resembled something that might come from Apple, stylish and white. The pair moved forward with the company, and made a splash with a hilarious marketing video, “if men breastfed.“
But Naya, which is now backed by almost $ 5 million in funding from angel investors and venture funds including Tandem Capital, apparently struggled to raise further financing, according to stories in The New Yorker and Bloomberg.
Alvarez told CNBC in September of 2017 that she was living off minimum wage to get the company off the ground. Despite that, she said, she’d booked more than $ 1 million in sales so far and put the market opportunity at $ 30 billion.
After that story, CNBC heard from two unhappy customers who complained that their pumps did not work. One said she felt victimized by the company. They offered to introduce us to several other moms who felt the same way.
Now, the company has gone dark.
As of October 2018, the product page where Naya sells its pump appears to be defunct. The customer service support page is dead and texts to the support number were not returned. When CNBC emailed a press contact email, it returned an “undeliverable response” error. An email to a contact listed as support resulted in an auto-response: “we are experiencing a high volume of emails and text messages right now.” Alvarez did not respond to several contact attempts, and investors Astia Angels and Tandem Capital were not immediately able to provide contact information or an explanation as to what happened to Naya.
Pugh is not the only mother complaining about the Naya pump. Several other women told CNBC their pump stopped working after a few months and received lackluster responses from customer service after repeated calls and messages.
Nancy Murphy from Alameda, Calif., was surprised to discover blood in her milk after using the pump. She later learned that she had burst a blood vessel because the vacuum setting was too high — a problem she’d had never had with the three other pumps she’d used. She switched to a Spectra pump after the incident and the problem didn’t occur again.
Another user, Cheryl Sew Hoy, bought the Naya when she was breastfeeding her first child because she wanted a high-quality pump to help her get back to work. Sew Hoy is an angel investor and advisor to start-ups. Given her background, she wanted support a fellow female founder.
But when she received her pump, the lights flashed once and then it stopped working entirely. She texted customer service every other day for months, and received an occasional response that they’d get back to her. But the company never sent her a replacement device.
The women all described the Naya as a major investment, as it’s an expensive pump compared to the alternatives including the Spectra (which retails around $ 160) and the Medela (as low as $ 199). Many of these pumps are considered hospital-grade and are covered by insurance.
The complaints extend to Naya’s Facebook page, which hasn’t been updated by the company since June. One woman wrote that month that the “pump stopped working and I’m desperate to be able to pump so I can go into work,” and another shared that hers was leaking water. One user wrote that she invested more than $ 1,000 into the pump and never got a response when it didn’t arrive.
The company’s Twitter account is protected, meaning nobody can see it unless they are approved by the account owner. On its Instagram, more women are sharing more complaints about problems with the pump in the comments section, including that they received “no response and no refund.” A Better Business Bureau listing for the company says it has received 23 complaints.
A Kickstarter page where Alvarez raised more than $ 100,000 for a new smart bottle is also filled with comments from users asking for an update on whether they’d ever receive them. There are no responses on the page for the last six months.
Investors say that women’s health companies like Naya do need more funding. Without that, companies can experience challenges with manufacturing and execution.
But they also stress that medical-technology companies need to meet a higher standard than their counterparts in consumer retail once they start shipping products. Failure can have more serious health and lifestyle consequences for users.
“This is an empowering consumer technology for women, but they’re complex medical devices, too,” said Nina Kjellson, a biopharma and medical-technology investor at Canaan (breast pumps are considered regulated medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration).
“Entrepreneurs need to solve for both, and capital is available if they’re ready to execute,” she added. Kjellson pointed to another new breast pump product, dubbed Willow, which has raised more than $ 42 million in capital and is getting rave reviews.
Sew Hoy, the start-up advisor, has given up trying to get her money back or a replacement device. But the company’s silence frustrates her.
“I wish the company would just apologize,” she said. “Everyone makes mistakes.”