Her Doctor Said She Was Too Young for Perimenopause. She Wasn't.
Yulia Pimpe spent two months blaming her diet and her blanket. Now she's building SimplYou, an AI companion app already in beta and available on the App Store, so other women do not have to figure it out alone.
Yulia Pimpe turned red on a work video call before she understood what her body had been trying to tell her for months. Heat surged through her in seconds, then flipped just as fast into cold. Until that moment, she had blamed the night sweats, broken sleep, and sudden waves of heat on the wrong blanket, the wrong window, the wrong routine. Then the pattern snapped into focus: this was not stress. It was perimenopause.
That experience now sits at the center of SimplYou, Pimpe's AI-based menopause companion app, currently in beta and available on the App Store. Built for women navigating perimenopause and menopause, the app helps users track symptoms, spot patterns, ask questions in plain language, and come to medical appointments with more than a vague memory of what has been happening.
Pimpe did not arrive at this work as an outside observer. She arrived as a woman in her early forties whose symptoms were real, disruptive, and, at first, dismissed.
When the body changes before the system catches up
By the time her first hot flashes started at 43, Pimpe had already spent more than twenty years in corporate leadership. Her days were full in the way many women's are: work, family, friends, constant motion. There was very little room left for the small signals coming from her own body.
At first, she did what many women do. She assumed she was doing something wrong. Maybe she was eating badly. Maybe she was sleeping badly. Maybe she had chosen the wrong blanket or opened the window at the wrong time.
She lived like that for about two months, trying to fix herself while continuing to show up for work. The moment everything clicked came during a video call. She watched herself turn bright red on screen, felt the heat rise fast, and then felt the hard swing into cold. That was the moment she recognized the pattern she had been explaining away.
When she went to a gynecologist, she expected guidance. Instead, she got disbelief. She remembers being told that at 43 she was too young, that there was nothing wrong, and later that she still looked “very fertile” — as if fertility ruled out the early symptoms of perimenopause.
For three months, she followed a plan built around supplements. Nothing changed. Eventually, she pushed for hormone therapy, then had to navigate side effects, bleeding, and a mismatch with that doctor before switching providers. Looking back, what still shocks her is not only the delay, but how familiar the story has become once you start listening to other women.
Only 7% of women aged 45 to 51 had a documented diagnosis of perimenopause or menopause
Evan Woodard, MD, Senior Clinical Product Manager
Evan Woodard, MD, Senior Clinical Product Manager
Building the app she needed
SimplYou is not positioned as a diagnostic tool. Pimpe describes it as an AI companion: a place where women can log symptoms through chat or voice, get guidance in normal language, understand what may be connected, and prepare better questions for a doctor.
That clarity matters because the product is more than a symptom list. It is an app designed to connect what often gets treated as isolated complaints — hot flashes, sleep disruption, mood changes, cycle shifts, joint pain, emotional overwhelm — into a fuller picture of what may be happening during the menopause transition.
Pimpe says one of the core ideas behind SimplYou is that women should not have to adapt themselves yet again, especially not in midlife. The app is built to adapt to the woman using it: her routines, her habits, her way of speaking, and the kind of support that actually helps her in the moment.
Apps expert system is trained on multiple knowledge bases, including gynecology and sports coaching for this stage of life. Instead of forcing users to jump between trackers, notes, and search tabs, SimplYou is meant to make one interaction do several jobs at once: capture the symptom, organize the data, and answer the question.
What makes the product different
One of Pimpe's clearest product observations came from her own cycle tracking. In perimenopause, she says, it is not enough to mark only the first day of bleeding. The last day matters too. Duration, timing, and bleeding patterns can shape how a woman understands risk and when she should speak to a doctor.
That is why the app includes prompts that follow up when something looks incomplete or potentially off. If a user does not log the end of a period after more than seven days, the system checks in. The point is not to diagnose, but to catch what busy people often miss and direct attention where it belongs.
Pimpe also believes privacy is part of the product's value. She recalls watching a conflict unfold in a supposedly private Facebook group after one woman realized that personal health information had traveled beyond the space she trusted. For users who want support without exposing intimate questions to acquaintances, neighbors, colleagues, or family, a private app can feel very different from posting in a group.
She describes SimplYou less as a machine that delivers answers than as a companion that remembers context. If she has had a long week, missed her sleep window, and fallen into a stress spiral, the app may suggest something practical it already knows works for her — including something as simple as walking the dog.
The bigger gap behind the story
Pimpe sees SimplYou as a response to a larger structural problem. Women are often sent first to a gynecologist, but many symptoms tied to midlife hormone change overlap with issues that reach beyond gynecology. In her view, fragmented care means the loudest symptom may get addressed while the bigger picture gets missed.
That concern shapes how she talks about the app's long-term potential. Beyond helping individual users, she and her team are building around a data cross-section that links menopause symptoms with symptoms of related conditions rather than storing them in separate silos. She sees real scientific value in that kind of anonymized patterning, especially in a field where women's health has historically been under-researched.
Women with early menopause, defined in one Lancet Public Health study as menopause before age 45, had a 50% higher risk of developing ischemic heart disease. Pimpe's point is not that every symptom signals a major condition, but that women deserve tools that help them notice patterns early and arrive in the right office sooner.
Future: what she wants for femtech and women
SimplYou is currently in beta and can already be accessed through the App Store. That matters because one of the most immediate questions readers may have is whether this is still an idea or something women can actually try now. It is already in users' hands, even as the product continues to evolve.
Pimpe is building the company alongside Liudmila Fedoseeva, SimplYou's CFO and co-founder, who brings 20 years of experience in finance and public work. Together, they frame the mission in simple terms: make life after forty happier for women, and by extension, better for the people and systems around them.
Pimpe talks openly about scale. She wants SimplYou to become a unicorn. But the emotional goal underneath that ambition is more intimate than the business language suggests: she wants women to feel less alone, less dismissed, and less likely to think they are failing when their bodies are in transition.
Her story lands because it starts where so many others do — not with a clean diagnosis, but with confusion, self-blame, and a sense that something is off. The difference is that she turned that experience into a product meant to help other women name the pattern sooner.
FAQ:
1. Can AI diagnose perimenopause or menopause?
No. AI can help organize symptoms over time, highlight possible hormonal patterns, and prepare you for a better clinical conversation, but it cannot diagnose perimenopause or safely rule out other causes of similar symptoms.
2. Why are symptom trackers useful if they do not diagnose perimenopause?
A symptom tracker turns a vague feeling that “something is off” into a usable timeline. That record helps you spot patterns, ask better questions, and decide what kind of clinician or screening may be most relevant.
3. What does the SimplYou app actually do for perimenopause and menopause support?
SimplYou is positioned as an AI-powered perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause companion that helps women track symptoms, notice patterns, understand what may be hormonal, and prepare for more informed conversations with clinicians.
4. How does SimplYou’s AI help with my symptoms, what are its limits, and is my data private?
SimplYou’s AI is meant to support pattern recognition and symptom organization, not replace medical care or make a diagnosis. SimplYou's AI is designed to support pattern recognition and symptom organization, not to replace medical care or provide a diagnosis. Its responses are informed by scientific evidence and the information you choose to share with the app.
