Last week there were a bunch of very angry articles about some douchebags who want to make vaginas smell like peaches, implicitly because the current smell is gross, which is why they grouped it with their product to make pet shit smell like bananas. Aside from all the body shaming, I heard “vagina” and “peaches” as “yeast infection” and my legs immediately slammed shut. Vast swaths of people immediately jumped on the company as misogynistic.
It turns out that Sweet Peach is actually a pretty cool company. It was founded by a “ultrafeminist” woman who wants to facilitate vaginal health by giving users individually-tailored probiotic supplements, based on a microbiome census. I love everything about this idea. She doesn’t want to make vaginas smell like peaches because that would be stupid, she named the company Sweet Peach because it’s hard to get a business checking account for Sweet Vagina.
The article didn’t misquote the speakers though. One was an investor in Sweet Peach, the other was the owner of a different company he invested in (whose end goal really does seem to be making pet shit smell like bananas). They definitely referred to Sweet Peach as their company, without even mentioning its actual founder Audrey Hutchinson. “Not mentioning Hutchinson as the founder or including a photo of her among his slides was a mistake”
This story may be the perfect microcosm of everything I think about Silicon Valley. You have this really cool idea pursued for altruistic reasons, and some douchebags trying to take credit for something that sounds awful. All you need is a mention of the cloud and it’s the total package.
Aceso Under Glass 