3 cost-conscious fertility startups that are making egg-freezing more accessible
From price-comparison tools to freezing eggs for free in exchange for donating some.
In today’s edition: a new boss at 60 Minutes, an approval process to watch at the FDA, and Fortune MPW editorial director Ellie Austin on three startups to watch in the fertility category.
I received so many messages from women in response to this essay. Some shared personal stories. One reader wrote that if she had decided to invest her money in her thirties, rather than spending it on three rounds of egg freezing that ultimately didn’t result in a baby, she would have around $155,000 in the bank by retirement age. Others explained that, having decided not to freeze eggs because of the price tag, they were now struggling to conceive and felt guilty for not prioritizing their fertility at all costs when they were younger.
Beyond the financial component, these experiences reinforce the mental load that women who want (or maybe want) children take on if, for whatever reason, they need to preserve their fertility. It’s a complex, rarely discussed issue, but there is reason for optimism: A handful of startups are employing different approaches to make egg freezing more accessible. Below are three of them, and unsurprisingly, they are all female founded.
Cofertility allows women to freeze their eggs for free when they donate half to another family. The startup recently closed a $7.25 million Series A round, bringing its total funding to $16 million.
Freeze started as a public Google spreadsheet that its two founders compiled while researching their own egg-freezing cycles. It is now a company built around its Compare Clinics tool, which gives women clear, detailed pricing information for over 500 clinics in the U.S. and abroad.
Gameto, a biotech company, is working on a “lightweight” version of IVF that uses an ovarian support cell technology to mature eggs outside of the body. The goal? To drastically reduce the number of hormone injections—and time—required for IVF and egg-freezing cycles in the hope of driving down the cost and invasiveness of fertility treatments. The technology resulted in its first ever birth at the end of last year.
These companies are bright spots in an industry that is sometimes accused of earning huge profits off women’s fears. Let me know if there are any other cost-conscious fertility startups that should be on my radar.
Ellie Austin
[email protected]
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
– Tough question. A Morgan Stanley analyst had a tough question for GM CEO Mary Barra after the automaker’s earnings earlier this week: “How does GM expect to be profitable with EVs when players like Tesla apparently cannot?” Fortune
– Top job. Journalist Tanya Simon will take over as producer of 60 Minutes—and will be the first woman to run the legacy program. The show’s last executive producer left after a clash with ownership over its handling of President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount settled with Trump for $16 million. CNN
– The show won’t go on. Artist Amy Sherald, known for her portrait of Michelle Obama, called off a show at the Smithsonian. She learned that one of her paintings—of a transgender Statue of Liberty—was possibly set to be removed from the exhibit to avoid the wrath of the Trump administration. New York Times
– Drug development. News from Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the company headed by Cindy Eckert that makes the drug Addyi, a pill that treats low libido in women: The FDA granted priority review to expand Addyi’s use to include postmenopausal women.
ON MY RADAR
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PARTING WORDS
“I was always choosing the photo I thought I looked the prettiest in, the vocal that I sounded the most beautiful in. For the first time with this album, I think I was just tired of chasing beauty.”
— Singer Laufey on unlearning the priorities we’re “taught as women”
