Portrait No. 001
Anna McMaster
Founder & CEO
Amie
Amie is the first digital pelvic floor physical therapy platform for pregnant and postpartum women, combining a self-guided app with on-demand access to licensed pelvic floor PTs. Unlike generic wellness apps or traditional PT (months-long waitlists, limited availability), Amie delivers clinical-grade care at home, on their schedule. After treating 3,000+ patients and helping scale Origin from 1 to 17 clinics, I watched the same pattern: women waiting months for care, driving hours for appointments, then dropping out because life with a newborn made consistency impossible. The consequences aren't just inconvenience—untreated pelvic floor dysfunction leads to chronic pain, prolapse, and incontinence that women are told to accept. When I became a mother, I saw the system's failures from the other side—dismissed symptoms, fragmented care, impossible logistics. I built Amie because early intervention changes outcomes, and accessing it shouldn't require winning a geographic lottery.
In her words
“I built Amie because early intervention changes outcomes, and accessing it shouldn't require winning a geographic lottery.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
The hardest part isn't learning to code or building without a technical co-founder. It's doing all of it while raising my 4-year old daughter. Most evenings look like laptop in my lap, daughter next to me watching Bluey, trying to be a good mom and a good founder at the same time. The irony isn't lost on me: I'm building a company for moms while navigating the exact time constraints and mental load my customers face. I never feel like I'm doing a great job at either. But this is also my edge. I understand this customer deeply because I am her. Being a first-time founder without a traditional tech background means some investors dismiss me before I speak. But my decade of clinical experience and operator background at Origin is exactly why I can build this. I know what clinical excellence looks like and how to scale it. The traction speaks for itself: 150+ customer interviews, a completed beta with 30 women, paying customers, and three committed advisors including a former CPO and board-certified OBGYN. I stretch every dollar and I'm not waiting for permission.
Chapter II
Your vision.
I'm obsessed with the fact that we treat postpartum recovery as an afterthought. Women spend nine months preparing for birth and then get a single six-week checkup before being sent back into the world with no support and a body that feels foreign. When they report pain, leaking, or prolapse, they're told \"that's just what happens.\" It's not. These are treatable conditions that, left unaddressed, become chronic pain, surgery, and a lifetime of managing symptoms. We've just decided women's suffering isn't worth addressing. Amie exists to change what recovery looks like for every woman. I want pelvic floor PT to be as standard as a prenatal vitamin. I want to be part of the generation that stops letting society tell women that dysfunction is the price of motherhood. And I want my daughter to grow up in a world where that's obvious.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
In 30 years, I want pelvic floor PT to be so standard that my daughter won't understand why I had to fight for it. I want \"that's just what happens after you have a baby\" to sound as outdated as \"women don't need pain relief during labor.\" But here's what I really believe: when women are physically supported, everything changes. When we're not spending energy managing pain, dysfunction, and a system that dismisses us, that energy goes somewhere. We show up differently for our families, our careers, our communities. I want to be part of unlocking what becomes possible when we stop holding half the population back.