I think credibility is the key to success for businesses big and small. I also think it’s one of the biggest things that small companies wait to take advantage of during the early stages of their journey.

Yes, building credibility takes time. But partnering with the right company can help you build credibility and be the catalyst for the growth you’ve dreamed of.

I founded Motherocity during the Covid shutdown in Austin, Texas, initially armed with just a business email and an email campaign. Little did I know that in less than two years, this humble beginning would evolve into our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and ultimately transform into an app that can be used 24/7 by expectant mothers and new parents worldwide, supporting them from late pregnancy through the first year after childbirth.

My journey with Motherocity began from a deeply personal place, driven by an urgent need to fill the gaps in postpartum care that I and many other mothers experienced.

I had my first child at 33, in 2018, and throughout my entire pregnancy, not once was the word “postpartum” mentioned to me. When I did experience postpartum difficulties for four years after giving birth, I felt like I was slowly dying.

Driven by my own struggles, I began researching postpartum health. I found that there was a whole world of information that was unspoken and largely forgotten, particularly concerning new moms who were navigating this period of recovery in silence.

As the daughter of a small-town schoolteacher, I learned early on that community matters. This ethos guided me into maternal health services, focusing on postpartum care and ensuring that every mom could navigate this critical period with the support she needed, and thus, Motherocity was born.

For a year, I tried different things to grow the company. First, focusing on providing nutritional information, and then even developing healthcare products. Scaling that iteration of the company seemed impossible, Then, everything changed.

Last year, I pitched a new version Motherocity at the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas. This led to a partnership with IBM, which has been instrumental in scaling our business.

As a member of IBM Partner Plus, my team and I have access to the IBM Ecosystem, a network of tens of thousands of partners of all types, digital marketplaces, developers, and more, leveraging joint strengths to solve the most complex challenges in business and society for clients like me with hybrid cloud and AI.

Today, Motherocity is what I call a super-app for moms.

You can open Motherocity and start telling the app adding little notes about your day. You can connect with other moms. You can find local healthcare providers. The app can help you detect where you are in the postpartum period, identify red flags, and provide steps to help you navigate your journey.

Integrating IBM watsonx Assistant chatbot technology was a game changer for Motherocity.

Built with IBM Granite Large Language models, IBM watsonx Assistant is a conversational AI toolthat helps automates our customer self-service with AI capabilities.

We've been very, very careful about how the research and data we've collected over the years has been able to be computed into output. Now we get to grow with the help of IBM technology, and we are very excited about that.

From a functionality standpoint, thanks to IBM watsonx Assistant, moms who use our app can get answers to many of their questions 24/7 by simply typing their question in the chat function. It can also help connect them to a maternal health specialist within their zip code if needed.

This functionality has been instrumental in scaling our business. In the first month after deploying IBM watsonx Assistant we saw an increase of 30% in customer engagement, a 71% increase in CSAT (customer satisfaction) and we reduced our operational costs by 47%.

I like to say that Motherocity is like having a friend at your fingertips, but that this friend is powered by industry leading AI and machine learning.

Being an IBM partner is invaluable for a small company like ours. It opens doors to investment, growth and new opportunities.

Motherocity is more than just an app; it’s a movement towards better postpartum care. By combining advanced technology with our compassionate support, we aim to revolutionize how new mothers navigate this critical period.

This is just the beginning of our journey, and I am incredibly excited about what the future holds.