Robbi Katherine Anthony
Empowering the transgender community, one app at a time
GIVING BACK CONTROL. One of the biggest hurdles for transgender individuals is often having control over their agency and dignity within the process of navigating gender transition. But as Robbi Katherine Anthony, or Kate as she goes by, we have the ability to transform this landscape into something more manageable and beautiful through technology.
“Technology is a great equalizer. Everyone owns a smartphone. Because 42% of trans people–people like me–attempt suicide at some point...But this doesn’t have to be the future.” As the Founder and CEO of Euphoria, a technology company developing app-based platforms to empower the transgender community through every facet of their lives, Kate and her ally business partner Patrick McHugh, have built the largest platform on earth for the trans community.
The entrepreneurial bug had bitten Kate at a young age too, having started her first business at 15 years old, forming a t-shirt company. “I fell in love with just the idea of business, the exchange of money, providing a service, being really proud of giving someone something I created."
BUILDING A LAYERED APPROACH TO DYNAMIC NEEDS. One day Kate had the opportunity to participate in an LGBTQ hackathon, where the opportunity arose to pitch the earliest ideas behind Euphoria and then what has now become the subsequent five apps associated with the company: Solace, Bliss, Clarity, Devotion, and Windfall.
“Sometimes people will be confused why we’re a company that builds apps instead of just being one thing or one single platform. As I like to contextualize it, it’s like how Adobe makes a variety of professional software for different needs. Euphoria does this too. Different apps for different needs or different phases in the trans experience... It’s really not that complicated.”
In fact, when you look closely, it’s extraordinarily well designed. The Clarity app is designed for those who are just beginning gender transition, the Bliss app is designed to help those choosing gender transitions to help plan and budget their needs, and the Solace app, helps bridge gaps between some of the largest and most taxing part of the trans experience, offering information from learning how to change your name legally to seeking legal support and how to find the best health insurance and job support.
But even intelligent design can’t solve every problem an LGBTQ founder often might face. “There was a point in my life where I walked into every room with a certain sense of privilege. But after I came out, and truly found my calling as an entrepreneur, the chasm in which the differences were experienced and how people sometimes treat me are much larger than I anticipated.”
This in many ways, pushed Kate to truly refine and define what she was doing with Euphoria to brand new heights. “I had to stand taller. I had to prove myself at a much higher level of expertise to be taken seriously. I needed to bootstrap my ideas to truly prove what I was doing and who I was as a leader and founder, wasn’t just a good idea, but sound and worth someone’s investment.”
