San Diego Startup OvaPal Gets Angel Ovation for Ovulation Tracker

A San Diego startup that developed a wearable wireless sensor that enables a woman to track her ovulation cycle and optimize the odds of pregnancy was declared the grand-prize winner last night at the San Diego Tech Coast Angels Quick Pitch competition.

As the overall winner, OvaPal co-founder and CEO Giovanna Scheidler (pictured above), also accepted an oversized check for $20,000 from the John G. Watson Foundation. (The foundation was created with a $1 million bequest from the family of Watson, a former pharmaceutical executive, biotech CEO, and member of the Tech Coast Angels who was murdered in 2010.)

OvaPal’s Scheidler was the last of 10 startup founders to give a 2-minute quick pitch in the competition, but she also was first with more than 400 people in the audience, who used their cell phones to vote for their favorite presentation. OvaPal is an early stage startup that uses an adhesive patch to track body temperature and other data that are transmitted wirelessly to a mobile app. The software uses reproductive science and a predictive algorithm to create an overview of the user’s fertility and a personalized calendar that shows the date with the best chance for conception.

Seven judges who offered feedback after hearing each of the 2-minute pitches also awarded a prize for “best content” to Abreos Biosciences founder Bradley Messmer. Abreos has developed a line of lateral flow immunoassays that can be use by nurses and other caregivers to determine whether biologic drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies used to treat cancer, are authentic.

The judges, who volunteered from the ranks of San Diego members of the Tech Coast Angels, also awarded Rock My World founder Adam Riggs-Zeigen the prize for “best style.” Rock My World is a sensor-based health and fitness platform that uses smartphones and wearable health and fitness devices to motivate users with music while they exercise.

More information on all 10 finalists is here.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.