Dear Tempdrop community,

One thing that I’ve learned early in the turmoil of startup life is that as long as you're moving forward and have faith in yourself, you will be able to achieve your goals. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I am only speaking from my own experience.

When your goals are personal, you’ll need to achieve them on your own and that’s harder because you have to break bad habits and get out of your comfort zone. Running a startup will force you to deal with them. If you don’t, you will hit a brick wall, get exhausted, or run out of money.

But, when your goals are big enough and there’s a vision that other people can identify with, it becomes much easier to keep moving forward. And this is the second most important thing that I’ve learned: there are a LOT of kind, heartful, and gifted people in this world who will use their strengths to help you. This is a blessing and gives you the momentum to keep pushing forward. And, while at it, you’ll get to meet more good people.

It’s been awhile since my last update. Now is a good time to take a breath and tell you: we are moving forward, people. I hope you're sitting somewhere comfortable because I have a lot to share! I finish with our acquisition of OvuView and what it means for you.

Production

The main reason for my silence was production. Only now, I feel I can breathe and mark this process as done. It started a year ago, when I went to China to find ‘our’ new plastic vendor after we all became aware that the vendor of our full turn-key manufacturing partner had too many issues.

Then, a few months later, I realized that the increasing issues (and our uncompromising customer support) might ‘kill’ the company, so I made the tough decision to stop all new shipping until we make the switch. It has been rough over the past months but, as long as we kept moving forward, I knew we would succeed.

We got the first batch of new parts just before the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2019) in January. A series of corrections and tests followed until we ironed out most of the issues, defined quality checks, and reached enough stock to fulfill previous orders and restock our warehouses for the upcoming months.

[https://ci6]The new parts are better and slightly more colorful. We also replaced the bottom sticker with laser printed graphics and added small arrow indications to help use the dedicated pry tool we provided that you’ll need to replace your battery.

The whole plastic manufacturing process is now better run because we're having ‘our people’ escort it from day one. So far, I’m very happy with the chosen vendor (Honfield). There are still minor, cosmetic issues that we will improve in the next batch but it’s not something most people will notice. As always, if any problem arises, you can contact support and we will take care of you.

Fulfillment

Our stocks in Europe, the US, and Israel are full so you can expect 1-3 days fulfillment and up to 1-2 weeks delivery (1 week in Europe, the US, and Israel and 2 weeks everywhere else).

New Battery Indications

We have been working on an exciting new in-app battery indication that will tell you when you need to replace Tempdrop’s battery. This will be released in an app update coming in a couple weeks.

The Acquisition of OvuView

If you updated the OvuView app after April 14th, you’ll see a long farewell message from OvuView’s developers, the Sleekbit team, followed by a warm welcome from OvuView’s new owners – your beloved Tempdrop. Yes, that’s right, we are now the new owners of the OvuView app. It’s a big step for Tempdrop and also a very natural one. Here’s why:

Early Partners

OvuView’s developers were the first to embrace Tempdrop when I reached out to app developers back in 2012, way before our Indiegogo campaign in 2014 (I can't believe it's been that long!). Up until our launch in 2017, they were also the only ones to integrate with Tempdrop. Above and beyond the integration, they helped us whenever they could because they also believed in the Tempdrop vision.

Throughout the journey, we maintained a great relationship, and I always thought they made a good app. I was sorry to find out that they were slowly giving up on it to move forward with other projects.

One example of this unfortunate fact is that OvuView still uses the depreciated Tempdrop API and not the one released in July 2018. Integrating that would have solved the time-zone bug to our users in Australia and New Zealand in addition to providing more advanced privacy standards. This is one of the first things we plan to upgrade once we take over the app.

FDA and CE Certification

Because of the integration, most of our Android users used OvuView to chart their Tempdrop data. The ability to validate Tempdrop’s measurements with user inputted data on cervical fluid and menses will allow us to officially validate and demonstrate our algorithm’s results, opening up the path to approach the FDA and CE.

We already know from our amazing community of users that Tempdrop works wonderfully as a life companion, both for natural contraception and conception, regardless of sleeping habits, travels or sick kids. Soon, we will be able to share this with the regulatory authorities as well for certification.

iOS App

Taking ownership of OvuView will allow us to provide our Apple users an iOS charting app based on OvuView to automatically sync their Tempdrops. This has long been requested by our users and we're obviously very excited. We are still in the initial phases, but as we know more we will update you with timing.

Expanded OvuView Customer Support

We hope to bring the same customer experience to OvuView as we provide for Tempdrop. OvuView, like Tempdrop, has a vibrant community and I know we can help it flourish. Just as we do with Tempdrop, we will listen to OvuView’s customers and shape the future of OvuView based on it.

New 3rd Party App Integrations

The fact that we became OvuView’s owners will not change anything in our mission statement. Our goal is to “give women the accurate data they need for the fertility apps they love” and we strive to integrate with as many apps as possible to serve your needs.

In addition to our work on OvuView, we now also integrate with NeoFertility on iOSand Android. NeoFertility puts proven elements from the Creighton, Sympto-Thermal, Marquette, and Billings methods on one interface, allows you to view up to 6 cycles at once, and works without a data or wifi signal. We’re very proud of our friendship and cooperation with the folks behind NeoFertility and invite you to try it if you’re impatient for an iOS option that syncs automatically.

If you want to learn about your body and cycle, we want to be there. If you want to conceive or prevent pregnancy naturally, we’re there to help you understand your fertility window. Tempdrop is built to become your true life’s companion and we believe you should have the right to choose your favorite method and app and input the most accurate information there is for the best predictions possible. Every day, we're getting closer and closer to making this happen. 

Thank you for being there with us,

Michael