Apple and Facebook were the first major companies to offer egg freezing as a benefit for their female employees two years ago. Earlier this year, Pentagon, in a rather unexpected move to retain troops, launched an initiative that pays for both sperm and egg freezing. This procedures cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 (and another $10,000 for in vitro fertilisation or IVF), but now a new startup, Prelude Fertility, is armed with $200 million and a mission to take egg freezing mainstream. The company’s value proposition is rather simple: the Prelude Method will consist of 4 steps. Firstly, the egg will be frozen and preserved, then the embryo will be created when the woman is ready, with a consequent comprehensive genetic screening to exclude congenital diseases and chromosomal abnormalities, and lastly Prelude will ensure so-called the ‘single embryo transfer’, a procedure to virtually eliminate the chances of conceiving twins or triplets, a risky possibility of IVF. Single embryo transfer is possible due to embryo imaging technology, which will also improve the success rate for the best candidates for implantation (the majority of women have a 20% to 35% success rate).
The man behind the Prelude Fertility is Martin Varsavsky, a serial entrepreneur with six successful creations under his belt. His most successful ventures are probably Jazztel founded in 1998 and now Spain’s second largest publicly traded telecom operator and Fon – the largest WiFi network in the world. Prelude Fertility is his seventh venture and coincidentally, the first Prelude baby is Martin’s seventh child.
Prelude Fertility is targeting women in their late 20s and mid-30s, offering them a world where their decisions about family and career are not ruled by their biological clocks. The company is going to offer the procedure for a lower upfront price, however the egg preservation will be quite expensive – starting at $199 a month. This is a revolutionary pricing strategy for the infertility industry, a sort of razor-blade model if you will.
However, Prelude Fertility is not the first startup to target this industry. In 2015 Progyny, the self-proclaimed ‘Uber of the fertility industry’, was created through the merger of Fertility Authority, a NYC-based fertility matching and financing service and Auxogyn a fertility tech firm. Progyny offers an app where patients can find doctors and book appointments and even arrange the financing. Moreover, for large companies Progyny offers complete fertility preservation solution packages as benefits to their employees.
Another NYC-based tech company, Celmatix, uses big data and predictive analytics to help women understand and utilise their fertility potential to the maximum. Through collaboration with fertility clinics, the company is able to obtain valuable clinical data and, while basing the models on more than 200,000 treatment cycles, offer an impressive 80% accuracy of its models. With these models, doctors can recommend better treatments based on their effectiveness for the patient’s demographic peers.
Considering how lucrative the fertility industry is, projected to reach $21.6 billion globally by 2020 with more than 10% annual growth, it is safe to assume that more and more tech startups will be targeting this industry. There are many ways in which they can help this industry, mainly big data analytics can help with predicting the likelihood of pregnancy through various methods.
But will one of them be the leader in fertility industry and stop the biological clocks for good?
Sources:
‘Fitbit for your period’: the rise of fertility tracking
Meet Prelude Fertility, The $200 Million Startup That Wants To Stop The Biological Clock
I think companies want to create equal opportunities for men and women. At they same time they also do a cost benefits analysis (how crude this might be). People are more productive in their 20-30s than later on. So for the companies it makes sense to help women delay the choice of having children.
Hi Mikayel,
Thanks for your interesting post! I think this industry will become increasingly important, considering that more and more women are ‘stepping into the business world’ and making a career. My only concern is that the ‘razor-blade’ pricing model seems unfair to women who don’t want their career ruled by their biological clock. Will the low upfront cost be enough to convince women to keep paying the higher monthly cost? As the need for this industry is growing, the potential profits will attract more competitors to the market, which will force firms to keep prices down in order to stay competitive. Although this razor-blade pricing strategy works currently, I wonder whether it will be overruled by another competitor with a better pricing strategy in the long-run.
Hi Shannon,
Thank you for your comment.
In my opinion, the razor-blade strategy is actually much more affordable to greater number of women. The procedure costs on average $10000-$11000 in the US, therefore not many people can actually invest so much money upfront. I think the monthly cost (as long as it is in an acceptable range) is easier to pay, although it will lead to a higher total cost.
I am sure that in a year or two, this industry will be disrupted as the current business models overall are quite outdated. There is a lot of room for improvement and pricing is one of them.
Dear Mikayel, thank you for your blog. While for some people egg freezing might sound like a great opportunity, I myself am not convinced yet. I am curious: what do you think about all of this? Are you pro freezing your eggs and going against the biological clock, or do you think we should let nature have its way?
Hi Ananda,
Thank you for your comment.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, it is great that women nowadays have the option of freezing their eggs so they can focus on their career first and still be able to have children when they are ready. On the other hand, it is quite disheartening that women have to choose between career and family in the first place. I am all for equality and I firmly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to make their own choices, however many women have felt some sort of workplace discrimination during the pregnancy or after returning from the maternity leave. Therefore, I also do understand women who opt for freezing their eggs. However, as a man, I do not think I can comprehend the full complexity of this issue, the difficulty of making such a decision and thus it is for women to decide.
Here you can find an article about the workplace discrimination working mothers experienced:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/25/half-working-mothers-discrimination-work-study
I appreciate the medical benefits of egg preservation, especially in cases like serious illnesses that would normally prohibit a woman from having children. However, I find the direction of this industry rather creepy. Especially the part where the solution is first offered to companies so they can offer egg preservation as a benefit for their employees. The idea that companies have so much influence over our procreation is disturbing.
Now, instead of encouraging healthy work life balance, companies rather enable their employees to postpone having children. I find it ironic that Facebook offers this to their employees too, while their COO, Sheryl Sandberg is all about combining children with your career.
Someone could argue that employees do not have to exercise this option, but in today’s world, where there is so much focus on climbing the career ladder fast, it is a convenient solution that many people will take. I am just not sure if it is that good for our future as humanity.
Hi Eva,
Thanks for your comment.
The fact that it is offered as a benefit is probably to help the female employees finance the procedure should they want it. Although it is a strange benefit to offer, I have to agree.
Given the crazy war for talent, companies value their employees and will try to keep them for as long as possible. However, many women actually do not want to go back to work after giving birth and that is a very unfavourable situation for the companies. Therefore, the egg preservation gives them some sort of certainty that the female employees will stay with them for longer.
While Sheryl Sandberg might be all about combining children with career and Facebook I am sure has quite a good work-life balance, the problem here is more the workplace discrimination that working (future) mothers experience. In some sectors, such as investment banking, the stories women tell are horrific (not sure if I want to post the link to that article, it is really disturbing).
As I mentioned in the previous comment, I am very disappointed that women are still forced to choose between career and family. I firmly believe that in future, better solutions will be created and they will result in a true workplace gender equality. For now, I think it is great that women at least have some options they can choose from.