Today we’re thrilled to feature Adriana Vazquez on The Mag. Adriana is the co-founder of a newly launched massaging bra company, Lilu, the first hands-free pumping/massage bra. Learn more about Adriana, her business, becoming an inventor, and much more!

Introduce yourself, your family, and brand.

Hi! I’m Adriana, I grew up in Mexico City. I’ve been a pescatarian since I was 11, I love running, cycling, & sort-of speak 4 languages. My husband, Cyril is from Lebanon. When not working, you can find us exploring new mountains trying to become better snowboarders, at the beach with a coconut or visiting family in our respective home countries. We live in NYC with Cody the cat. I started Lilu in 2016 with my co-founder Sujay who is from India and whom I met while studying at Penn. He’s Lilu’s COO and CTO, a great leader and an advocate for women’s health - and the rest of the Lilu fam, advisors and mentors are spread throughout the world in Los Angeles, Cartagena, Hong Kong, Philly among others - so very remote-friendly! We're a women's health company building smart garments to make life a bit easier in the early stages of motherhood because we believe that moms deserve more.

What inspired you to make Lilu? And why is breast massage such a good thing for women who are pumping or experiencing clogged ducts?

I’m an MIT alumna where I studied Math & Computer Science and I got a Masters in Integrated Product Design from the University of Pennsylvania where I began working on the idea of better products for new moms. I’ve been interested in technology and how we interact with it in our daily lives to help us be more efficient since I was growing up. After witnessing multiple coworkers struggle after returning from maternity leave, I felt a bit surprised (and slightly disappointed) with the technology and support available to women at such an important time of their lives. I realized there was a need to design products to help new moms, designed with the input of women pumping in the context of modern motherhood.

We zeroed in on breast massage because there’s a plethora of evidence on how it can be beneficial to breastfeeding and nursing moms - and yet many moms either don’t have the time, knowledge of it - or enough hands, literally - to do it and get the proven benefits of breast massage - so we designed a way to do it hands-free, guided with the input of hundreds of moms that volunteered their time, feedback, pumping routines, as well as lactation experts from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We’ve had moms open up their homes, hearts and share stories of why they chose to pump, why it matters to them, their determination to make it work and in many cases, why massage is an indispensable part of their pumping routine. They say lactation is all about “supply and demand” and a lot of moms know that - yet the real understanding of how milk production works is not really known until moms find themselves struggling with it - we think that should change to help prevent so much stress and anxiety - so in short, it’s all about how well the breast is emptied and because pumps only use suction to get milk from the breast, as opposed to a healthy baby feeding at the breast where there’s so much going on - the baby’s tongue, warmth, jaw movements and their little hands often kneading at the breast - you need all that stimulation to help remove the milk from the breast, and that oxytocin release - and massage helps with all of that!

Did you have a background in design or engineering? If not, what were your initial steps in going from a concept to an FDA Class I device?

With a B.S. in Maths with C.S. and a Masters in Integrated Product Design - I’m not quite an engineer. But I am familiar with many of the engineering principles - and in fact, from algorithms to software development, to product design there’s a lot of common frameworks and patterns that can be applied to bring a product to market. Starting with the user research and then going through the steps of ideation, prototyping, testing and manufacturing process - implementing modularity and constant iteration into the design process is pretty much what you learn while creating and testing algorithms and design thinking as well! What’s ultimately most important is to make room for user feedback throughout the process - and to know that the product is always a work in progress and will continue to evolve - we talk a lot in software about “feature creep” and in the physical or hardware product world the risks are the same - build too much into a product and you may never launch it or it may do too many things but none too well. In designing the Lilu Massage Bra we focused on one and one thing only - efficient, portable, automated massage. We want to eventually add more features to help moms (and researchers) understand when breasts are sufficiently emptied, when there’s risk for clogged ducts, etc - but we knew we had to start somewhere and we picked massage because of how compelling the evidence is that massage can help moms empty their breast better, and the necessity of emptying the breast sufficiently to have a steady milk supply.

How has the pandemic affected your business - positives and negatives?

We had launched the first version of the Lilu Massage Bra at the end of 2019 and were hoping to go to trade shows, do workshops, host in-person breast pumping 101 sessions and attend pitch events and more! Positives were that we were able to step up to help our community of moms, many of whom trust us as a guide or filter of highly vetted breastfeeding and maternal health resources - so we hosted events virtually, provided answers to FAQs around COVID and breastfeeding vetted by lactation experts and shared the work of other amazing companies in the space that rose to the occasion to help new moms - yet even though we were shining the light away from Lilu - we felt and knew we could be helpful to moms. I think that enabled us to continue to build a loyal base of followers - and because moms need to pump for a myriad of reasons, not only because of returning to work to a “normal” office setting - moms continued to help us spread the word and recommend Lilu to other moms in their circle. So that was the positive - the negatives, I’d say is just how the pandemic continues to affect people's lives in ways we sometimes don’t imagine - like moms who had to give birth without their partners, some moms who’ve been isolated from the world and their loved ones for a year almost - people not being able to meet their grandkids -and of course, the immense loss some families have experienced from losing a family member - because we are in the loving and supporting moms business and moms often open up with us - even on customer support calls - we realize that moms are craving support and human connection and that sometimes gets to us - but it’s also a big driver to keep pushing forward - improving this product, growing the product line and one day hopefully being able to offer products that address physical pain but hopefully also help with mom’s emotional wellbeing.

As a small business owner, can you tell us about one of your biggest learning moments so far in the Lilu journey?

There’s been so many! But one of the recurring themes and learning’s throughout is to appreciate the generosity of people - we are so grateful for how much people want to help. For the most part of this journey, officially it’s been only Sujay and myself working full time on this - but in reality there’s been hundreds of people who have built Lilu. From the first moms to try the Frankenstein prototypes, to the workers in the factory in China, our advisors and mentors who have given us hundreds of hours of their time and the network we’ve grown over time. So we always say, ask for help - and when help is asked of us we try to reciprocate as best we can too because we want to pay it forward.

Name up to (3) small businesses that you admire.

https://kegg.tech/ (intuitive fertility tracker - FDA class I)

worldwidebuddies.com

http://notabene.id/ (crypto compliance)

For their founders' vision, innovation, grit - their amazing women-led stories, why they started their company, what it is being a woman business owner breaking through in their own fields and all revolutionary in their own way.

Anything else you’d like to add?

For Lilu we hope this is just the beginning - we know there’s many untacked problems for maternal health, and many issues are also related to systemic issues that range from social, education and racial disparities - we can only do one thing, for now, product-wise, but we can also use our voice to raise awareness and advocate for more resources and funding for maternal health.

Thank you, Christianne and Callie, for giving us an opportunity to share our story!

And finally, where can we find you?