ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Khadesha Okwudili was only 23 when she was going through surgeries and procedures to deal with a heart disorder that caused her to go into cardiac arrest. She had to get a defibrillator put into her chest and a nerve removed to keep her heart calm.
"My husband, my boyfriend at the time, he would visit me in the hospital and spend all day with me and he would stay the night with me and we had all these deep conversations about what our goals for the future were and what we’d hope we’d become individually and as a couple," said Okwudili.
Surviving what she had been through, she had a thought: everyone needs to be asking these questions and having these types of discussions regularly.
"In reflecting back on that period, I thought 'why did it take almost dying for me to have these types of conversations?'” she said.
Her idea was to send questions to couples every day that would challenge them to do that.
“I think a lot of people if they knew that they would die next year, for example, they would ask a lot of questions and be curious about a lot more things,” Okwudili said.
She pitched this idea to University of Rochester psychology professor and relationship expert Ronald Rogge. Fast forward after some experimenting and interest from investors, the Agapé app was out by February 2020, the same month she got married to her husband.
The app sends a question to both you and your partner, and you cannot read your partner’s response until you answer too, or vice versa.
A year after its release, the app went viral on TikTok.
“Overnight we got over 100,000 installs which was insane,” said Okwudili.
Since then, Okwudili has grown her team, and the app continues to blow up on social media. Hundreds of reviews from couples of all ages, long-distance to living together, various sexual orientations, said the app has changed the way they communicate with their partner.
“Agapé is not really designed to help people fix problems in their relationship, but it does,” said Okwudili. “It’s like starting your day with a love note from your partner.”
Even though what she has gone through has been tough, she says she wouldn’t change a thing.
“Had that not happened, I wouldn’t see life the way that I do and I probably wouldn’t have started Agapé,” said Okwudili.
Okwudili said as a woman who is now leading a diverse but mostly male team, her advice to other women looking to turn an idea into something more is to not be afraid to experiment and get comfortable being uncomfortable.