Lauren Wright never intended on becoming an entrepreneur.
The 28-year-old Ph.D. student was focusing on preventative care solutions, but through research and interviewing mothers, came across a problem that she literally could not ignore.
"I sat on the idea for eight months and it just woke me up in the middle of the night," Wright said of a night in June 2017. "I was thinking of how to talk to women about the challenge, and thinking, 'I'm pretty sure this is the issue.' This is a product that can actually help babies born in the hospital."
The product is called The Natural Nipple, which will be a bottle that mimics a woman's breast for breastfeeding to help the baby switch between a bottle and its mother and help $300 billion worth of complications like drowning from the milk coming out of the bottle too quickly.
"The response is what really keeps me motivated," she said. "Being an entrepreneur is completely new to me, but every day I come across women experiencing this problem — they're doing things like offering to pay more [for the product, just] to have it earlier — so I'm motivated. The research is out there, to just how much we can save by helping women breastfeed."
Wright is a graduate from the University of South Florida and is in the University of Tampa's Lowthe Entrepreneurial Center until August.
Despite the product not hitting the preorder level until likely September, Wright has already racked up the fundings. The National Science Foundation gave Wright $53,000 to use in two phases and Florida Blue Healthcare gave $10,000 which went toward filing a patent. Johnson & Johnson gave the Natural Nipple $50,000 after putting out a call to anyone who is creating innovative solutions in a clinical space. Her eventual goal is to raise $250,000 but she will not begin seeking funding until she's in the beta testing phase, slated for this summer.
"Whirlwind, that's the best way to say it in one word," she said. "This is an issue men are typically uncomfortable discussing and the name is in your face, but yes, this is part of your body and it's a real issue families together struggle with. So having the opportunity to talk about economical implications, challenges and having a simple solution to fix that, is a blessing. It's a blessing to be taken seriously as an entrepreneur."
And she's already got her eyes on the next step for the Natural Nipple, which breaks into the tech scene. A sensor will be place on the bottle which will track the feeding pattern of the baby and have a flow rate controller, adjusting the flow based on the baby's age and weight.
"This is going somewhere big," she said. "And I hope when someone sees us exit in three to five years with Johnson & Johnson won’t say, 'I wish we would have invested.'"
