Welcoming Denise Franklin as Kindara’s New CEO

I have some big exciting news to share. Today I handed over the job of of CEO at Kindara to Denise Franklin. Denise is a talented and proven startup executive and Kindara is going to kick serious butt under her leadership. We are exceptionally lucky to have Denise on our team, and this is great news for Kindara’s future. I will be transitioning from CEO to VP of Product (a role I’m already doing) so I can keep doing what I love: ensuring Kindara makes the coolest products in the world to help women manage their health.

When Kati and I founded Kindara in 2011, we dreamt of creating a company that would help millions of women all over the world take ownership over their fertility and get better results with their reproductive health. To large degree this is happening. We recently passed 1 million downloads. Wink, our connected basal thermometer is shipping in a few weeks. We’ve helped more than 100,000 women conceive. We’re the number one fertility awareness app in the world, and we hear from women every day who have used Kindara to figure out health problems that previously stumped them and their doctors. We’re making a difference and it feels great.

However, over the last few years I’ve been wearing both the CEO hat and the VP of Product hat at Kindara, and as we’ve grown, I’ve found myself enjoying the job of CEO less. My passion is working on our products, not managing people or fundraising. This summer I started thinking about hiring a CEO. I wanted to find someone who felt a calling to advance Kindara’s mission of body literacy and empowerment, with the skills to grow us into a global juggernaut.

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be introduced to Denise thanks to Sue Heilbronneron our board. Denise and I had great chemistry from the moment we met and I was impressed with her accomplishments (two of her previous companies sold to Google and as VP of Revenue, she grew SendGrid zero to over $40M in revenue in four years). I learned that Denise is passionate about women’s rights, and through interviewing each other I experienced her empathic, approachable and thoughtful leadership style. Eventually it became clear to me that I wanted her to lead Kindara, and as luck would have it she felt the same.

So please join me in welcoming Denise Franklin to the helm at Kindara. If one of the keys to startup success is hiring people smarter and better than you, I have surely succeeded in this case. I’m looking forward to learning from Denise and working alongside her to grow Kindara’s impact on the world.

P.S. Denise wrote a blog post today too. You can hear from her here.