How One Startup Is Making Egg Freezing More Affordable and Equitable

Cofertility, a Los Angeles-based startup aimed toward making family-building extra equitable and accessible, closed a $7.25 million Collection A funding spherical this month. The financing spherical — which brings Cofertility’s complete funding thus far to $16 million — was led by Subsequent Ventures and Offline Ventures.

The corporate launched in 2022 to make egg freezing extra inexpensive by tying it to egg donation. Cofertility affords girls two packages: Maintain and Cut up. With Maintain, girls will pay to freeze their eggs and retailer all of them for their very own later use. The Cut up program permits girls to freeze their eggs at no cost after they give half to a household who can’t in any other case conceive.

By bringing egg donation and egg freezing collectively at scale, Cofertility is addressing a number of key points in fertility, mentioned CEO Lauren Makler — a former Uber exec who based the corporate’s well being division in 2017.

First, probably the most vital points within the fertility business is the exclusionary prices related to egg freezing — which usually run between $12,000 and $20,000, she famous.

“This makes it merely out of attain for most girls, particularly contemplating the very best time to freeze your eggs is commonly once we can least afford it and once we’re least prone to be interested by it,” Makler defined.

There may be additionally stigma round egg donation — and that’s largely rooted within the money compensation mannequin, she added.

This stigma not solely prevents girls from pursuing one thing they could genuinely need (serving to one other household develop), but it surely additionally limits choices for meant mother and father. This conundrum disproportionately impacts the LGBTQ neighborhood, for whom egg donation is commonly important to constructing a household, Makler identified.

She additionally famous that there’s a substantial lack of ethnic variety amongst donors, which leaves potential mother and father with out ample choices for rising a household that displays their background. Greater than half of Cofertility’s donors determine as girls of shade.

“Cofertility exists to vary all of this. Our built-in method makes fertility preservation extra accessible, tackles the dearth of racial and socioeconomic variety in egg donation, and makes the method much less transactional — attracting girls who won’t have thought of it in any other case,” she declared.

The startups’ platform and egg donor database streamline the whole egg donation course of — from recruitment to matching to cycle coordination, Makler mentioned.

Meant mother and father can browse donor profiles, which provide insights into every donor’s character and motivations, together with images and movies.

“We needed a platform that may praise our human-centered method and supply schooling, help and personalised steerage alongside the best way. It was created to really feel as private, intimate and genuine to the individual as rising your loved ones needs to be,” Makler remarked.

As soon as meant mother and father are matched with a donor, all of them obtain entry to personalised dashboards the place they’ll monitor precisely the place they’re within the course of, she added.

Cofetility will not be disclosing its complete variety of customers, however Makler mentioned the corporate has helped “hundreds” of members on their family-building journeys. She additionally famous that the startup has seen an 80% year-over-year enhance in matches between potential mother and father and donors.

Whereas there are a small variety of clinics world wide which have egg sharing choices, Makler declared that no different firm is pulling it off at scale.

“We’ve reimagined egg donation and egg freezing as a part of a single ecosystem, not siloed companies. We’re not simply one other egg donor company or fertility clinic. We’re a platform that empowers girls to take management of their reproductive futures whereas additionally serving to meant mother and father develop their households — all with transparency and empathy throughout each a part of the journey,” she defined.

Photograph: Flicker person Nils Soderman