Glow如何幫2.5萬女性成功懷孕

One year after PayPal founder Max Levchin helped launch Glow, the fertility app has some impressive results: the service takes credit for 25,000 pregnancies. As notes stream in from excited users, often accompanied by photographs of astonished newborns, it’s hard not to get the warm fuzzies.

一年前，貝寶（PayPal）創始人麥克斯o列夫琴參與推出了“好孕”應用軟體Glow。現在，這一應用已經帶來了可觀的成果——2.5萬名女性通過它成功晉級準媽媽。興奮不已的使用者發來的感謝信如雪片般飛來，不少信函還帶有新生寶寶表情驚異的照片，這不免讓人覺得心裡暖烘烘的。

Helping people become parents, it turns out, is just the start for Glow. Its founders have a bigger vision in mind: to add research to a field where data is lacking. They want to use the information Glow collects about reproductive cycles to improve women’s health more broadly. This has led to several new ventures, including launching a new post-conception app and gathering anonymized user information for use in studies for the medical community.

事實證明，幫助使用者升級為父母只是Glow公司邁出的第一步。它的創始人懷揣著更大的願景，那就是把研究引進一個缺乏資料的領域。他們想用Glow應用收集的生育週期資訊來更全面地提高女性健康水平。這種抱負已經催生了一些新的專案，包括推出一個新的懷孕後應用軟體，收集匿名使用者資訊供醫學界進行研究。

For the unfamiliar, Glow collects information about reproductive cycles. It uses algorithms to track the progress of a woman’s period, calculate when she’s ovulating, and ultimately predict when the next window of fertility opens. The app is free, though there is a paid option called Glow First. (Fortunefirst wrote about Glow a year ago.)

對不熟悉它的人來說，Glow的功能就是收集生育週期資訊。它用演算法來跟蹤女性的經期，計算她們的排卵時間，從而最終預測下一次受孕機會視窗從什麼時候開啟。這是一款免費的應用軟體，同時也提供一個名叫Glow First的應用內購買專案【《財富》（Fortune）一年前率先對Glow進行過報道】。

To accomplish its research goals, Glow must market to a broader group of women and not just those who are trying to get pregnant. Today, Glow reports that half of its users aren’t even trying to get pregnant—they use the app to take advantage of the insights it can provide, such as warning signs for endometriosis. (The company won’t say how many people in total are using it.)

為了實現研究目標，Glow必須獲得範圍更廣的女性使用者，而不僅僅是那些正在設法懷孕的女性。該公司表示，目前一半的Glow使用者都不是為了受孕，而是用它來了解自己的健康情況，比如是否有子宮內膜異位的跡象（該公司沒有說明Glow的使用者總數）。

“We’re able to just get the data and apply information so that we can return something useful,” says Mike Huang, Glow’s chief executive.

Glow公司執行長麥克o黃說：“我們可以獲得資料並且運用這些資訊，然後把一些有用的東西反饋出去。”

This was the plan from the start. After launching Glow in last August, Levchin (who serves as executive chairman) and Huang made modifications to appeal to women who weren’t trying to conceive (often shortened to the acronym “TTC”). Glow 3.0 launched in January, with new features intended for women who only want to track their periods and better understand their menstrual cycles.

這就是最初的計劃。去年8月份建立這家公司後，列夫琴（現任該公司執行董事長）和麥克o黃做出了一些調整，目的是吸引那些並未嘗試受孕（通常被簡稱為TTC）的女性。1月份推出的Glow 3.0版專門為那些只想追蹤並更好地瞭解自身經期的女性提供了一些新功能。

In July, the company took another step. It launched Glow Nurture, a separate mobile application tailored to pregnancy rather than fertility. In essence, the new app intends to answer the question, “We’ve conceived. Now what?”

7月份，該公司又向前邁進了一步——它推出了另一款移動應用軟體Glow Nurture，物件是準媽媽們，而不是想受孕的人群。這款新應用的核心就是回答一個問題：“我懷上寶寶了，然後呢？”

“We’ve been getting tons and tons of requests over the past several months for the same data-driven approach [as the original Glow app] with a high-quality, warm design,” Huang says of the new app.

對於Glow Nurture，黃表示：“過去幾個月中，許多人都希望我們推出同樣的資料驅動型軟體（就像Glow一樣]，而且質量要高，設計要貼心。”