Written by Olivia Orchowski, Founder & CEO Kyri Cycles
I didn’t create Kyri because I wanted to be in tech. I created Kyri because I was sick of watching women get dismissed, misdiagnosed, or misunderstood when it came to their health. The final push was lived experience. Mine. My friends’. My clients’. Story after story of someone knowing something was off with their body, only to be told it was “normal” or “just hormones.” Yet, those same hormones were never properly explained, never tracked with any real precision and never given the respect they deserve in modern healthcare.
Kyri began as a response to a gap so glaring I couldn’t unsee it. We were being handed devices that tracked our steps, our sleep, our stress – but when it came to understanding menstrual health, it felt like a checkbox. An afterthought. A feature, not a foundation.
And the companies doing “female-focused tech”? Many of them were hyper-focused on fertility ovulation windows and baby-making. Important, yes. But what about the rest of us? The athletes, the students, the career-driven women, the people recovering from eating disorders, navigating PCOS, managing chronic pain, or simply trying to understand their cycles as a vital sign?
That’s where Kyri was born. Not from a desire to make another wearable, but from a need to make space for women who felt like no one had ever designed for them.
We didn’t want to compete with the big names by shouting louder. We wanted to go deeper. We built Kyri to be intelligent without being intimidating. A smart ring without the strings of subscription models. A tool that respects your privacy, doesn’t condescend with pinkwashed UX, and most importantly – centres your cycle, not sidelines it.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that knowledge is power – but, accessible, non-clinical, and compassionate knowledge? That’s revolutionary.
I created Kyri for women like me. Women like the teenage version of me, too. Women who felt gaslit in doctor’s offices, who couldn’t articulate their symptoms but knew something was wrong. Women who were told to “just go on the Pill.” Women who bled too much or not at all. Women who were handed diagnoses like PCOS, endometriosis, or hypothalamic amenorrhea with no roadmap and no support. Women who wanted to train, perform, plan, or recover – in sync with their body, not in spite of it.
I created Kyri for the coach working with peri-menopausal clients who can’t explain why their training results have plateaued. For the 19-year-old on a uni campus feeling overwhelmed and out of touch with her body. For the new mum trying to reconnect with a cycle that’s shifted postnatally. For the women who want to understand – not suppress – what’s going on inside them.
We’ve made it this far without caving to industry norms that didn’t sit right with us. We’ve stayed true to our voice: strong, clear, and unapologetically female. We’ve never reduced the menstrual cycle to a fertility tracker or a pink calendar. Our community trusts us; trusts that we’ve created something real, not just marketable.
But I’m not going to sugar-coat it. This journey has been hard. Hardware is hard. Manufacturing timelines, firmware bugs, supplier negotiations – it’s not glamorous, and it rarely moves at the pace you want. Fundraising while postpartum? That’s another story entirely. There were days where I was breastfeeding one-handed and refreshing pitch decks with the other. There were moments where I wondered if people would “get it”, if we were speaking too niche, if the industry was even ready for what we were building.
But we kept going. Because every time we got a message from someone saying “I finally feel like someone built this for me,” we knew we were on the right track.
Kyri is not just a product. It’s a reclamation. Of data. Of understanding. Of autonomy. It’s a way to say; we’re done waiting for the system to catch up. We’re building our own.
And we’re just getting started.
Kyri Ring: $354
Available for pre-order at kyricycles.co
Shipping late July.
