The Shower Sponge That Could Save a Life

Josefa Cortés didn’t set out to become a founder. She just couldn’t stop thinking about the friend who didn’t catch it in time.

It was her final year at university in Chile, and Josefa—then a design student—was working on her thesis when someone close to her found a lump in her breast. At first, they assumed it was nothing. A fatty lump. Maybe just scar tissue. But at a routine checkup, the doctor said something very different: stage 4 breast cancer.

Josefa couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not just the diagnosis, but how late it had been caught. “She was already touching the lump,” Josefa says. “She just didn’t know what it was.”

That moment changed the course of her career—and her life.

“I wanted to design something that could help women get to know their own bodies better,” she says. “Something that could help them detect changes earlier. Something simple.”

She didn’t want to build a medical device. She wanted to build a habit.

And that’s exactly what she did.

Josefa created Palpa, a breast-shaped sponge for the shower with a built-in simulation of a malignant tumor. The idea is as elegant as it is powerful: teach people what to look for in the safest, most natural environment possible—their own daily routine.

You fill the sponge with liquid soap, close it, and as the water warms and the soap releases, you feel the density of the material and learn to locate the hard, unmoving lump inside. Then, you check your own body. The product doesn’t detect cancer—it educates. It trains. And, in doing so, it could save a life.

Josefa didn’t just design the sponge. She spent a year interviewing 100 women, testing prototypes, and refining how it worked. By the time Palpa launched in 2021, she had built something people immediately connected with.

“It’s not a tool for experts,” she says. “It’s for everyday women. Especially those under 40, who don’t get regular mammograms.”

That clarity of purpose made it easier for companies to get behind her. When Palpa first launched online in Chile, corporate partners reached out almost immediately. They wanted to buy bulk orders and give them as meaningful gifts to employees. Not branded water bottles. Not pens. Something that could actually change someone’s health outcomes.

From there, Palpa began to scale. She raised a family-and-friends round. Moved production outside of Chile. Built infrastructure for growth. And started expanding beyond breast health.

“In Chile, some of our partners asked if we could create similar tools for other women’s health topics—menopause, the menstrual cycle, even skin cancer,” she says. “So we started building educational workshops to go with the products.”

That mix—tactile tools plus storytelling and education—became the DNA of Palpa. It wasn’t just about selling a product. It was about changing behavior.

But Chile is a small market. To make the kind of impact she envisioned, Josefa knew she’d have to go bigger.

So she did.

Palpa expanded to Spain after being nominated for a health innovation prize. They launched with an influencer campaign, hoping to go direct-to-consumer. But, once again, it was companies who came knocking. “We didn’t expect it,” she says. “But people reached out, just like in Chile.”

They started selling Palpa to companies as an employee health benefit. And when they realized Spain was responding just as well, they decided it was time for the big move.

The U.S.

Josefa and her husband now live in New York City, where he’s studying at Columbia and she’s laying the groundwork for Palpa’s U.S. launch. It’s unfamiliar territory—but the mission hasn’t changed.

“In the U.S., we want to find a bigger partner,” she says. “Ideally in pharma or insurance. Someone who sees the value of educating women before it’s too late.”

Palpa already holds a patent. There’s nothing like it on the market. And they’ve proven demand in two countries. But Josefa’s thinking bigger than B2B sales. She wants to run a national campaign—one that reaches hundreds of thousands of women. And she wants a digital layer too, something that helps track behavior and offers next steps when someone finds something suspicious.

“We’ve already heard from over 15 women in Chile who found something because of Palpa,” she says. “They wrote us directly. But we know that’s just a fraction of the impact. If we can measure it, we can do even more.”

She didn’t get here by accident.

Josefa grew up surrounded by entrepreneurs. Her dad started one of the largest fly-fishing businesses in Chile. Her siblings all run their own companies. And she herself launched two businesses before Palpa—a flower delivery company during the pandemic, and a cleaning-on-demand service she built with friends in college to make extra money after parties.

“I think it makes a big difference when you grow up seeing that it’s possible,” she says. “It doesn’t make it easy, but it helps you believe it can work.”

And that belief is what’s powering her now. Palpa isn’t a side project. It’s not a piece of merch. It’s a mission. And the more people who learn about it, the faster that mission can spread.

“Every time I explain what Palpa is, people say the same thing: ‘How did I not know about this before?’”

Josefa’s goal is simple: make sure no one says that again.

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