After Dealing With Her Own ‘Maternity Care Desert,’ This Tampa Founder Built IYA to Help Other Moms
“I wasn't even pitching yet. I was just talking to other mothers about their experiences, and every single one of them had a version of the same story: overwhelmed, underprepared, and wishing they'd had more support."
Tampa-based mom and entrepreneur Khylir Patton knew her birthing experience was not unique.
But like countless pregnant women, Patton struggled to find trusted and vetted support.
“Doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, pelvic floor therapists — these providers exist, they're incredible, and most moms have no idea how to find them,” she told Hypepotamus.
The March of Dimes estimates that well over 2 million American women of childbearing age live in “maternity care deserts,” meaning they lack the important prenatal and postpartum resources.
After struggling late in her pregnancy to find a provider, Patton built a new startup to help moms build their own villages.
Building A Village
Patton’s startup IYA is a personalized pregnancy and postpartum support app. The app helps expecting mothers build personalized birth plans, find providers, scroll through educational material, and ultimately connect with other moms in a digital community.
“IYA is not about replacing clinical care,” Patton said. “We're about making sure moms can access the right support around their care. Every provider listed on the platform goes through our verification workflow before receiving a verified badge. We review credentials across specialties, including doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, pelvic floor physical therapists, and perinatal mental health specialists, so moms know they're choosing from a vetted pool of professionals, not just anyone with a website.”
IYA sets itself apart from other pregnancy care apps through its Agentic Doula, which Patton described as beyond a basic chatbot and more of a “proactive, culturally aware, information-trained doula that meets moms where they are, anticipates their questions, and provides guidance rooted in both clinical knowledge and cultural competency.”
This serves as a “bridge between a mom and the qualified professionals who can hold her through the entire journey,” she added.
Building in Tampa
Bootstrapped to date, the app recently launched its beta version in the Tampa community. The plan is to scale towards a larger release by this summer.
Patton said she knew she was onto a strong idea from the first conversations she started having with fellow moms.
“I wasn't even pitching yet. I was just talking to other mothers about their experiences, and every single one of them had a version of the same story: overwhelmed, underprepared, and wishing they'd had more support. When moms started asking how they could join before we even had a live product, that confirmed everything. And on the provider side, birth workers were equally hungry for visibility. They're doing life-changing work and they're buried. The moment I realized IYA was solving a real problem for both sides of that equation was when I knew we were onto something.”
The IYA team has already started hosting events for moms in Tampa, including an upcoming event happening at the end of April.
Tampa has been a “perfect home” for IYA, as Patton described. She is part of Embarc Collective, the startup hub for the city.
“Tampa did not just give me a place to build IYA. It gave me a reason to,” she added.
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