This trio is breaking taboos on sex-ed with a kickstarter card sport | Whole Tech

Card video games are in all places nowadays: playing cards towards humanity are a enjoyable method to make everybody chuckle, and video games like saboteur and exploding kitties get everybody excited with a way of pleasant competitors.

There are additionally extra severe video games, like We’re Not Actually Strangers, which mixes enjoyable with heartfelt and heartwarming moments as everybody explores the significant connections they’ve with one another.

However what if these card video games might be used to handle extra taboo subjects like sexual well being and wellness?

And that is precisely what Charmaine Tan, Junel Seet and Ruth Ong got down to create: their very own card sport, with a deal with sexual well being and wellness (SHW) for Singaporeans.

At the moment, the three began a card sport known as A Yr Of Us (AYOU), with the categorical purpose of serving to {couples} all over the world construct higher relationships, and are already planning abroad releases for the sport and different merchandise. .

Beginning as college students

Regardless of the success AYOU is seeing, the sport itself is the product of many experiences and a fairly unconventional route. For one, Junel and Charmaine met once they had been in school corridor, whereas Ruth and Junel had been former co-workers throughout their time at Shopback and Seedly.

When Junel and Charmaine launched into the NUS Abroad School program in New York collectively, they had been captivated by how open individuals within the US had been to speaking about SHW.

“We noticed advertisements for firms like For Hims and For Hers on billboards in Occasions Sq.. Once we in contrast it to how arid Singapore’s SHW scene was, he bought us pondering. Regardless of the identical anatomy and bodily wants, why was it okay to speak so brazenly about SHW within the US, whereas in Singapore it was handled as taboo?

-Charmaine Tan, co-founder of AYOU

Realizing this, Junel introduced on board an previous colleague she had identified at Shopback: Ruth, as a co-founder.

The three then pitched their startup idea as a telehealth platform to NUS’s Abroad College Enterprise Startup Program, which finally offered them with $10,000 to proceed the concept.

With this primary vote of confidence, his first enterprise, known as Shy, was born in 2019.

However who in Singapore talks about SHW?

Shy initially bought off to a promising begin. His first occasion was to carry a sexual well being day marketing campaign, throughout which they acquired over 100 questions on SHW from their viewers.

With this primary success, they determined to launch their very own SHW discussion board to capitalize on this success, believing that there was a mature marketplace for this kind of dialogue.

The purpose was to handle the knowledge hole within the Singapore SHW scene and begin one thing that would supply localized and factual content material for Singaporean youth.

Nevertheless, to their dismay, the discussion board acquired solely a lukewarm response and the staff was pressured to rethink how they might assist break the taboo on SHW in Singapore.

Nevertheless, the staff was nonetheless decided to show their thought into one thing profitable and took the time to grasp why the discussion board was not actively used.

As former startup workers, in addition they drew on their experiences and realized they wanted to be extra strategic with their choices.

“As a small staff with restricted sources, it is particularly essential for us to distinguish between what we need to do and what has essentially the most impression for finish customers. We realized that the discussion board failed as a result of it did not clear up an actual drawback.

Going ahead, we determined they must be extra data-driven and intentional about getting person suggestions and testing hypotheses, for every part from how we market our merchandise to planning forward for brand spanking new releases.”

-Ruth Ong, co-founder of Shy and A Yr of Us

With this in thoughts, the staff determined to show to offering academic workshops.

“I used to be particularly obsessed with youth schooling, and we had been in search of a method to immediately impression extra of our audience. When the chance arose, we had been thrilled to have the ability to curate related content material for our audiences!”

-Junel Seet, co-founder of Shy and A Yr of Us

These had been paid engagements the place the founders hosted periods with consultants corresponding to medical doctors and well being consultants on sexual well being and wellness, and their purchasers included giant multinational firms like Airbnb.

These retailers finally proved to be sufficient to assist Shy’s working bills, and with this new supply of earnings, the trio determined it was time to construct one thing even higher.

Creation of a card sport for {couples}.

In keeping with Ruth, the genesis of her new thought got here from the trio’s private experiences.

“The concept got here from a private ache level and through conversations with our household and shut associates. After working Shy for a number of years, we additionally felt it was time to refine our mission and realized that enhancing relationships was on the core of our group’s need.”

Charmaine Tan, co-founder of Shy and A Yr of Us

They realized that the majority relationships progressed by means of a number of phases: the chase, the consolation, and the cruise mode. After {couples} make an effort to get to know one another through the chase, they get comfy and go into cruise mode as the connection progresses, and that is the place the boredom units in.

With this in thoughts, the founders needed to discover a method to encourage {couples} to at all times stay curious and got here up with the concept of ​​a sport to assist {couples} “discover, uncover and rediscover themselves”.

Noticing the viral success of card video games like ‘We’re Not Actually Strangers’, they determined to embrace card video games as a method to assist {couples} in all levels of their relationships.

“I bear in mind the fixed doubts I lived in and all of the sleepless nights I skilled throughout a poisonous relationship. It lowered me to a shell of my bubbly self, and I continuously questioned my self-worth. Trying again, I used to be questioning how I put up with it for nearly a full yr.

A number of months after relationship my present associate, I spotted what a wholesome and nurturing relationship seems like, and the way it strengthened me in each doable method.

Constructing a relationship takes fixed work, and my associate and I assumed: why not crystallize these learnings and share them with our viewers? So we mixed the information that our Shy viewers needed to be taught with card video games, and AYOU was born.”

-Ruth Ong, co-founder of Shy and A Yr of Us

To fund this new enterprise, Ruth, Junel, and Charmaine determined to launch an preliminary marketing campaign of roughly $4,300. In a brief time frame, they’d collected simply that a lot, and extra, not solely from native shoppers, but in addition from shoppers within the US and overseas.

Earlier this yr, they launched their pilot for AYOU and it bought out in three weeks.

The cardboard sport itself is designed to be performed over the course of a yr and options 52 questions for {couples} to reply and 52 actions to get pleasure from collectively.

Recognizing that every one relationships have bumps alongside the way in which, the founders additionally included battle decision prompts to assist them enhance their relationship in tangible methods, impressed by Tom Bilyeu’s relationship principle podcast.

This success was not straightforward, and among the many challenges the founders confronted was coordinating their schedules. Whereas Ruth relies in Singapore, Junel and Charmaine are primarily based in Los Angeles and New York, respectively. Discovering an appropriate time for his or her weekly calls was tough, contemplating there have been vital time variations between the three places the founders labored from.

Nonetheless, they handle to search out time to work collectively.

“I’m an early riser, whereas the opposite two are night time owls,” remembers Ruth. “That helps us tremendously as a result of I can rise up early for calls, whereas Junel and Charmaine can keep up late. It ensures that we’re at all times updated and that we all know what to do every week.”

Presently, AYOU have listed their sport on Shopee to convey their sport to a wider viewers, although they’re additionally “trying to work with different couples-focused retailers.”

“We acknowledge the enchantment of on-line marketplaces and want to listing merchandise on-line to achieve a broader group of audiences. As well as, we additionally associate with a number of native companies with couple-focused merchandise and actions. Finally, our purpose is to be the Asian equal of We’re Not Actually Strangers.”

-Ruth Ong, co-founder of Shy and A Yr of Us

And given the curiosity the sport has attracted, the staff is already planning a US launch to convey AYOU to extra {couples} all over the world.

From start-up workers to founders of their second firm collectively, Ruth, Junel and Charmaine’s journey has definitely not been your common one. Nevertheless, it’s exactly as a result of they’ve taken the street much less traveled that they’ve created one thing distinctive, which fills a necessity for Singaporeans.

Featured Picture Credit score: Shy