Mobile apps now help women track and prepare for almost every stage of pregnancy: how big is the fetus, what symptoms should I expect, when to expect the baby to kick, and how to time contractions, to name a few.

But for expecting women who want to keep moving and taking care of themselves, the answers are coming from a handful of apps and can feel disconnected. One app tracks the baby. Another offers general fitness. Another focuses on meditation. Each might help, but women are often left piecing together what is safe, trustworthy, and centered on their own bodies.

That is the gap Madison Dent kept seeing, and it’s a problem she thinks she has an answer for.

Dent (COM’26), a graduate student in COM’s MS in Media Ventures program, is developing Bendi, a digital wellness app built around the idea that wellness support during pregnancy should feel safe, accessible and centered on the women using it. She and her app have been accepted into Innovate@BU’s Summer Accelerator, and she’ll present Bendi at the Media Ventures Pitchfest in Los Angeles in July, where students pitch their thesis projects to industry professionals and investors.

“Bendi is a holistic wellness app for every stage of pregnancy,” Dent says. “We offer prenatal yoga, guided meditation and community support for a new generation of digitally aware, wellness-minded women.”

Dent says getting into the 10-week accelerator—where students and recent alumni building early-stage ventures receive mentorship, workshops, and up to $10,000 in funding—gives her the time and support to focus fully on Bendi after months of developing the idea through classes, pitches, and customer interviews.

“It gives you such a great advantage and such a great ability to just be like, ‘OK, I can go in 100% on this and really see how far I can take it,’” Dent says. “It’s personally, professionally validating, and is a big step in the right direction.”

The Roots of a Business

The idea for Bendi started before Dent came to BU. Her mother, Lisa Dent, ran a yoga and Pilates studio, exposing Madison Dent to wellness and entrepreneurship from an early age. 

“Madison didn’t just hear about entrepreneurship, she lived inside of it,” Lisa Dent says. “At the time, I don’t think she fully grasped what it meant, but she absorbed it.”

Later, Dent would launch a business of her own, Madison Louise Yoga, a business built around yoga, meditation and holistic coaching for women. Dent says she began hearing from prenatal clients who were unsure what kind of guidance they could trust during pregnancy.

“‘There’s stuff on the internet, but nothing feels like it’s speaking to me right now,’” Dent recalls a client saying.

Because she was working with the client one-on-one, Dent created personalized mantras, meditations and safe yoga practices. But the question stayed with her: “If she has that fear, a lot of other women probably do,” Dent says.

As her work with clients grew, Dent noticed that many of the women coming to her were mothers or expecting mothers. She says pregnancy stood out because women’s bodies change quickly during that period, and many look for reassurance during an emotionally sensitive time. 

“It’s such a time that’s worthy of comprehensive care,” she says. “And it was what I knew how to do, and it’s what I’m passionate about.”

Dent thinks about Bendi not only as a pregnancy app, but as a way to focus on the women carrying babies.

“People know how a baby goes from acorn to a walnut to grapefruit, but those changes are also reflected in the body of the mother,” Dent says. “So there are not a lot of apps that do that.”

The BU Boost

Dent says she arrived at BU with the seed of the idea, but the MS in Media Ventures program helped turn Bendi into a fuller business concept, with a target audience, pitch deck, prototype, business model and marketing plan. The 12-month, three-term master’s program teaches students to develop new media businesses, products and services, with a fall semester in Boston and spring and summer terms through BULA.

“I began to develop it throughout the course of the program,” Dent says. “Every Friday, we were able to all come together and develop out the idea, what would this look like, who would this help and what would the market be for this.”

That process also pushed Dent to think beyond the wellness content itself. Because Bendi would deal with pregnancy, she says safety and medical accountability had to be part of the platform from the beginning. Dent says Bendi’s resources are being shaped with input from obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYNs), doulas, and instructors trained in prenatal yoga.

“I knew from the start that if we were going to do this specifically for pregnancy, an area that is so often ridden by fear and safety, we needed to have that credibility,” Dent says. “I think that combination between holistic wellness and credentialed medical expertise is the magic.”

Jodi Luber, senior associate dean and associate professor of the practice in media innovation, says Bendi stood out because her idea addresses a market where many resources were still scattered.

“Women shouldn’t have to piece together trusted resources from five different platforms and five different apps,” Luber says. “Bendi is about convenience [and] continuity during this very important time in a woman’s life.”

Luber says that ability to understand the customer is what has made Dent’s work stand out.

“She saw a fragmented market,” Luber says. “She understood her customer deeply, really deeply. She saw a solution with real purpose, and that’s what great founders do.”

Dent will use the accelerator to film content for the app, seek additional investor funding, and prepare Bendi for its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) beta launch in the fall.

After she presents Bendi at Pitchfest in July, the app will be on display again at the Summer Accelerator Demo Day in August.

All of it builds momentum behind a platform Dent hopes will eventually expand beyond pregnancy into postpartum and fertility support.

“I run consumer-centered businesses,” Dent says. “I’m listening to the audience more than anyone else, and so I need to make sure what we’re doing is resonating.”