Why I Built Probya — And What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Years Earlier

I didn't set out to build a femtech company. I set out to understand why my body kept giving me signals that something was wrong — and why no one in the medical system seemed to have a useful answer.

For years, I cycled through the same experience that I now know millions of women share: discomfort, irritation, a feeling that something was just off — followed by appointments where I was told everything looked normal. I was handed prescriptions. I was told to switch products. I was reassured.

But I wasn't better. And nobody was asking the right questions.

"The average OBGYN appointment is seven minutes. In seven minutes, a doctor cannot assess your Lactobacillus populations or evaluate whether your products are disrupting your intimate ecosystem. You did not need a different body. You needed better information."

That realization changed everything for me.

The Information Gap Nobody Talks About

When I started researching the vaginal microbiome, I fell into a rabbit hole of peer-reviewed literature that almost nobody was translating for everyday women. The science was there — years of research connecting Lactobacillus-dominant ecosystems to immune defense, pH stability, and protection against infection. The connection between common product ingredients and microbiome disruption was documented and measurable.

But the average woman standing in the drugstore aisle had no access to any of it. She was choosing between products based on packaging, scent, and marketing copy written by the same brands selling her the problem.

I had a computer science background. I understood data. I understood systems. And I could see clearly that what women needed was not another product telling them their body needed fixing — they needed a tool that treated their body as an intelligent system and gave them the information to support it.

What Probya Actually Is

Probya started with a simple question: what if you could scan any intimate care product and immediately understand what it would do to your microbiome?

Not a generic safety rating. Not a broad "clean beauty" label. A score built specifically around vaginal microbiome health — grounded in peer-reviewed research, scored by a credentialed scientist, and translated into something a real woman can act on in thirty seconds.

Every ingredient in our database has been evaluated against published research and assigned an impact score — from Strongly Beneficial to Strongly Harmful for Lactobacillus-dominant ecosystems. Products are scored on a 0–100 scale across three tiers: Microbiome Friendly, Use With Caution, and Not Recommended. No marketing language. No brand partnerships. Just the science.

We built this because the information gap is a health equity issue. Women who have access to functional medicine practitioners or specialist care may eventually get answers. But most women don't. Most women are making decisions about their intimate health based on a seven-second glance at an ingredient list they were never taught to read.

Probya exists to close that gap.

The Harder Part Nobody Tells You

Building a science-first company as a solo founder is not a straightforward path. I navigated manufacturer transitions, ingredient formulation decisions, legal complexity, and the very particular challenge of talking about women's bodies in a content landscape that shadowbans the word "vagina."

I learned to speak in the language of ecosystems, microbiomes, and intimate health — not because I was softening the science, but because I was committed to reaching the women who needed this information through every platform available to me.

And every time I almost stopped — every time the complexity felt like too much — I came back to the same thing: there are women right now buying products that are disrupting their health, and they have no idea. That's not acceptable to me.

"Your body is not the problem. It has never been the problem. It is an extraordinarily intelligent system — and it deserves products and information worthy of that intelligence."

Where We Are Now

The Probya scanner is live. You can scan the products in your bathroom right now and get a microbiome health score backed by real science. Our ingredient database is built on published research. Our scoring methodology was developed by a credentialed scientist with a background in peer-reviewed literature.

We are also launching Probya's probiotic intimate wash — formulated specifically to support Lactobacillus-dominant ecosystems, free of the preservatives and pH-disrupting ingredients that show up in most products on the market today.

This is just the beginning. The database will grow. The science will deepen. The community of women who understand their intimate ecosystems will expand.

But it starts with information. It starts with one scan. It starts with knowing what you're actually putting on your body.

Thank you for being here at the beginning.

With honesty and science,

Samira Masri