The standard vocabulary of startups is to disrupt, revolutionize, reimagine. All admirable goals, looking to attack the parts of society that have become complacent, holding back the innovations that allowed the growth of sectors and brought market-defying ideas into common nomenclature.

But at Giddy, we had to take an additional verb to task: destigmatize.

A decade ago, when you looked at the marketplace for erectile dysfunction treatments, it more or less felt set in its ways. There were pills, a few variations of devices that underwent minor changes in their lifespans, and then — in the most extreme cases — surgeries that implanted devices along the penises of men who had no other options. For a new device to come along and offer a way to help men maintain erections, it had to not only be proven effective, but had to make inroads into a sector that had a hard time talking about itself in public.

Millions of men in the United States experience erectile dysfunction. That’s why football games are wrought with their prescription advertisements, and seemingly every gas station in the country has shady pill dispensers. It’s no shock that a new company would come along to address ED with an innovative bent, and our device, Eddie, did just that.

And our growth as a company — even through one of the most challenging economic periods of memory — seems to back up our overriding belief that there’s more to be addressed in the ED sector than just helping men maintain an erection. To meet demand we’ve increased our production capabilities from 10,000 devices per month at the beginning of the year to 1.3 million devices per month. Our staff has grown from the teens at the beginning of the year to nearly triple that, all just to keep up with growth.

Yet the stigma surrounding our work remains one of the biggest challenges we face.

When Giddy came to be, the question we first had to answer was: Why us? With treatment options already at the disposal of men in various forms, what could we bring to the table that wasn’t already there? How was Eddie, our device, designed to push the industry forward instead of being lost among the ever-growing list of options?

Easy: by actually addressing what causes erectile dysfunction, not just focusing on the symptoms.

Current ED treatment options might address the physical manifestation, but the problem is that they only address that part of it. When the cause of erectile dysfunction is so varied from person to person, the idea of offering a one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t make any sense. The reason why a man with diabetes is experiencing erectile dysfunction is different than the reason someone with PTSD is having intimacy issues, and each of them are better served by specifically attending to their needs — not just a device that gets the job done.

The medications available have been around for decades. Pumps and rings date back to patents from the 19th century. Men may be able to address their inability to get an erection with them, but Giddy had the clean slate to go beyond the surface-level issues.

We utilized body imaging technologies that weren’t applied to diagnose the physical nature of erections before. From them we could design Eddie using input from urologists and mathematicians to make a device that would supply the optimal amount of blood flow to the penis to maintain an erection without complete constriction.

The materials we use for Eddie, an advanced polycarbonate/ABS alloy coated in a medical-grade thermoplastic elastomer, went well beyond the crude metal rings that many had previously associated with constriction rings. And by utilizing two different strengths of tension bands, men could customize which level of constriction they preferred.

And if that was all Giddy offered, it would put us right alongside the litany of other ED devices. But by supplementing every Eddie purchase with access to our ED Guide Video Series, we’ve given men the ability to learn how to address the areas in their life that could be causing their erectile dysfunction. Urologists, psychologists, nutritionists, and relationship coaches all lend their expertise in easily-digestible videos, putting the power to make real changes back in the hands of the individual — there isn’t a pill that makes you a better communicator with your partner, no vacuum pump that teaches you how to manage PTSD.

Millions upon millions of men experience ED every year, yet to bring up the topic is still a social taboo. It’s the problem men don’t want to seriously address without some sort of caveat, some sort of qualifier that puts them at arm’s length of the issue. To admit that you’re suffering from ED is to say that you’re less of a man than you could be, and to seek out treatment options is to admit that you have a problem in the first place.

We’re not interested in being just another company that makes a big promise and doesn’t deliver. We’ve grown because we’ve proven our commitment to the space, well beyond what was already there for us, and put ourselves in position to grow with the marketplace again and again.

Special policies had to be instituted by Lloyd’s of London, as none of their existing policies could adequately cover our scope. Our device received patent protection in more than 90 countries outside the United States, and we’re seeing government contracts come to be both at home and abroad.

There’s always a way to innovate what already exists. For us to truly break down the last barrier, to disrupt the discussion around erectile dysfunction, is to take on the stigma of seeking out help. We’re here to keep that discussion going forward.