Tummily co-founder Alison Williams celebrated the launch of the app and birth of her son. Photos: Supplied/Tummily.
A Kiama mum has simultaneously welcomed her baby boy into the world and her other ‘baby’ – a medical app, with her impending motherhood motivating her to meet a hard deadline to create a product with significant potential to improve health outcomes for Australians.
For many families, the weeks leading up to the birth of a child are designated for relaxation and preparation.
But for Alison Williams, it was crunch time for the launch of an app years in the making.
“It was busy, it was really busy,” Alison said.
“All of my friends were like, ‘You should take this calm birth class,’ ‘You should read this book’ or ‘Have you thought about this’ and I was just like, ‘I don’t have time’.
“I had my baby in Wollongong Public and I was sitting in the waiting room, preparing myself for a C-section with my laptop open with an Android and an Apple phone on my lap looking at the latest designs and marking up feedback and thinking, ‘This is the last time I’m going to get to do this.'”
The app designer, business owner and Tummily co-founder had been chipping away at an idea for years to help people with IBS better track and communicate their symptoms to health professionals.
“I had a personal experience with my partner at home who was trying to identify his personal gut health triggers and manage them,” Alison said.
“Being an app designer myself I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if there was a tool that made this whole thing easier?’
Alison partnered with IBS dietitian Chelsea McCallum to bring the app to life.
She created some early prototypes and partnered with leading IBS dietitian Chelsea McCallum who shared her vision of the app, but with both female founders also running their own businesses, progress wasn’t always quick.
“We discussed what we wanted to do, we had plans, we had a vision but we were sort of not taking as much action as we could’ve,” Alison said.
“Because we’ve bootstrapped this company and we’re self funded, there’s kind of not been a whole lot of motivation to hit the go button and accelerate things.”
But everything changed just before last Christmas, when Alison surprisingly discovered she was pregnant.
“That same day that I took the pregnancy test I had a call scheduled with my cofounder to try and tee up some of the final details, we were signing our shareholders agreement and that was also the day that we were tying up our partnership agreement,” she said.
Faced with a crossroads, Alison debated delaying the app launch but ultimately decided to push ahead on the project she had already given so much to.
“My dear friend gave me the advice, she said ‘You’ve got eight months until baby’s coming; you’ll never have as much time ever again as you do in these eight months, so use them well’ and I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to put my head down and build this product.’
“The world is changing so quickly with AI and development and technology is evolving at such a quick pace and I just didn’t want the opportunity to pass me by.”
Alison is still working on new features for the app.
The app and the pregnancy became intertwined, with the due date determining the immovable timeframe.
“I think it really put wind in our sails because we had less than nine months,” Alison said.
“We knew that we needed to get the product built and get into market before the baby came, so it really gave us a vision and a deadline.”
While the process might have looked a little different if there was more time, Alison said the approach was a “blessing in disguise”.
“I think had we not had that deadline, I would’ve probably spent another 12 months just tweaking and editing and making little changes,” she said.
“The way we were forced to do things was to get in market, get real user feedback and make really quick changes on the fly.
“I actually think that was a really good thing because it gave us an edge and helped us figure out what our users wanted and not just me making assumptions about what they wanted.”
Then in September the world was introduced to both baby Julian, and the Tummily app.
The app could be a gamechanger for the one in five Australians who live with IBS, with Tummily a single place to track symptoms, meals, medications, stress, sleep, and bowel habits.
But there’s more to come.
“We’re working on a solution for IBS which is to make the low FODMAP diet easier,” Alison said.
“We’re working on products now that is going to hook users up with personalised meal plans so they’ll be customised to their food and diet preferences.
“That’s what I’ve been doing with my days while breastfeeding – I’ve got a baby on my boob and a computer on my lap and my mother-in-law taking him for cuddles in between.”
The Tummily tracker is free to download and already cracked Apple’s top 100 medical apps, with the new features expected soon.
“Then I can have a really good break,” Alison said. “I’m hoping just to focus on my baby for a few months.”
To find out more or to download the app visit the Tummily app website, Facebook or Instagram pages.
