Nicole Daedone had a problem, and to solve it, she needed some willing and able women.

It was 2011, and Nicole was the co-founder and C.E.O. of OneTaste, a San Francisco–based sexual wellness start-up that sold courses on orgasmic meditation. O.M., pronounced “ohm,” was a mindfulness practice in which a man strokes a woman’s clitoris in a prescribed manner for 15 minutes exactly while both meditate on the sensations in their bodies. Nicole and OneTaste promised that O.M. would revolutionize its practitioners’ relationships and sex lives.