Chances are that you’ve got an app tailored to improve pretty much every aspect of your life, from diet and exercise to state of mind. So why not do the same for your sexual well-being?
This is the thought that guided the establishment of Sexence, a recently launched Tel Aviv-based AI-powered digital platform whose purpose is to enhance its users sex life and pleasure.
“My story with Sexence started out when, as someone who’s dealt with quite a few platforms in the world of wellness and self-care, also as an active user – I used lots of apps, in the field of meditation, nutrition and sport – I was looking for some information online on the sexual world,” says Roy Dror.
“I received information that was very general, not personal and that did not characterize your needs, where you’re at, at the right time,” he adds. “I identified potential, something very basic that probably everyone needs.”
A tech entrepreneur, Dror turned to sex therapist Shelly Varod and together the two founded the personalized sexual wellness platform.
“One day Roy called, left me a message and presented me with this idea of reaching even more people, of passing on this world of sexuality through an app,” Varod says. “I couldn’t believe that I was hearing someone approaching me with such an amazing idea.”
“I’m a certified sex therapist, I have three degrees, including clinical psychology, and I specialized in sex therapy. Other than that, I’m an entrepreneur in the field of sexuality,” she explains. “I really love this, I love making sexuality accessible, as well as the therapeutic aspect.”
Sexence, they say, is out to do just that.
Tips to improve your sex life
“We allow users to open a profile where they can ask whatever they want, anonymously or not, and they get an experience that is both personal and social within a self-care app. Within the app, we present each user with insights, plans and products to improve his or her sex life,” Dror explains.
“We ask you four very basic questions: how you identify, who you’re attracted to, what your status is and your age,” he says. “We know how to take people’s gender, their various fields of interests, their age, location in the world – we know how to predict what the user would like and create the best user experience for them.”
“You then get to a homepage that’s just for you, to give a very personal feeling. Each day you’ll have a ‘Daily’ button,” he adds.“On the Daily you’ll reach that day’s insight, a tip, a question or any topic that we’re discussing.”
“The technology that we’re developing is very deep,” he notes. “We know how to predict what the user would like best and give them the best user experience.”
Aside from the app, Sexence also offers a web-based community in which users can “pass it on,” ask and share the questions and receive expert answers. There’s also the company’s technological quiz, which users can fill in to discover personalized recommendations for sexual well-being products that all undergo review in the Sexence Lab by sexuality professionals and product testers.
Aside from ISRAEL21c readers, who can access the app via this link at Sexence’s invitation, the platform’s target audience is millennial Americans.
“They just want to know that they’re fine, that they’re normal. That you’re not broken, or faulty,” Varod says. “There’s so much mess and lack of knowledge. I feel that we need to teach things from the beginning because there’s so many things we think we need to do and then do them. There’s this sort of sexual screenplay that everyone is convinced they have to do.”
While there are plenty of other sex life apps on the market, Dror and Varod explain that theirs is unique because it’s not there to offer treatment but rather focuses on lifestyle and well-being.
Impacting your life
“The user experience really is special,” Varod says. “It’s very clean so that anyone can enjoy looking it up and taking a look to see whether they want to read anything.”
“The atmosphere is young and fun,” Dror adds. “The whole environment that we’re creating is for the purpose of improving the users’ sex life and improving their well-being. We’re very much focused in terms of content on the connection between sexuality and well-being.”
“We focus on the physical world as well as on the social and emotional ones,” he notes. “All these people who send in questions – imagine how it impacts their life. They can’t focus at work, in their relationships.”
Topics that users are interested in, Dror says, includes things such as heightened sexual pleasure, positive body image and first dates.
“Some single people are afraid to make contact after not having done so for a while,” he explains. “It’s also something that our machine-learning system can do – identity interest in the topic. We can identify a man or a woman who haven’t been in a relationship for a long while and who are likely to be worried about first dates or sexual contact and we can give them plenty of tips.”
The topics, he says, also stem from the fact that around 75 percent of the platform’s users are women. “We’re very on top of women’s empowerment, the whole issue of women’s health in the sexual world, we talk about it a lot,” he notes.
“We’re unique because our user experience is fun,” Varod adds. “It feels like a lifestyle app. We didn’t make anything look sexual.”
“But then again, every single cell in our body and everything we do in life can connect to sexuality,” she concludes.
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