But what, what were you looking at?

It was wildly outdated and antiquated, and now I actually jokingly, but not jokingly, call it Big Egg, which was this, this space where it really, yes, maybe the desire is to help people have a baby, but it also is very fueled by the financial piece of this.

What I realized was that traditional egg banks do it where they try to get a single donor to donate as many times as possible, and they divide those eggs amongst several families.

And so the number of biological half-siblings that are out there for a donor-conceived child could be, like, wild.

I also saw that they do what I now sort of jokingly refer to as surge pricing for egg donors, which is this idea where if a donor is harder to find based on her heritage or her education or her background, they charge more in cash compensation.

So there's, like, a value that's placed on each donor, which I found really icky.

And they also promise anonymity, which is impossible, right? If we have at-home DNA testing today that can help you figure out where your genetics came from, imagine 20 years from now when a child grows up.

Yeah

So just for

context, at Covertility, we help women freeze their eggs for free when they donate half of the eggs retrieved to intended parents that need the help of an egg donor to have a baby.

So we are both making egg freezing more accessible by making it free and making egg donation less transactional at the same time.

We call this concept egg sharing, which is very reminiscent of ride sharing.

And, you know, on a business model standpoint is also a marketplace, right? So there are certainly similarities with Uber and then Uber Health, which is a business that I built there and what we do at Co-Fertility.

I am really... really big on destigmatization, right? And figuring out like, how do we, how do we change something that needs to evolve? And so one of the biggest things, like you mentioned, is related to anonymity in donation.

And this is certainly for egg donation and in sperm donation.

Oh, I'm so

Mm.

Very hard for me, but I did it.

I did not put it on LinkedIn or Instagram or anything when I got a DM on Instagram from my now co-founder, who had...

We had met each other a few times in the space, in like the digital health space, and we, um...

She said, "I heard you're fundraising." I was like, "What?" She's like, "How's fundraising going?" 'Cause she's like an investor in her path, like whatever.

And I was like, "I'm not fundraising, but if any of your portfolio companies are hiring, like I really wanna build something in fertility or in reproductive health.

Um, I just gave notice at Uber, and I don't have a plan." [chuckles] She was like, "What? You're on the market?" I was like, "Yeah." And she's like, "What's your phone number? I'm calling you." And I remember showing my husband the phone and being like, "Oh my God, Halle Tecco is calling me." Like she is someone who I've long admired, like a total role model to me.

Their whole identity can be completely uprooted.

So just by way of introduction, tell us about Cofertility and why you founded the company.

Yeah.

So at our core today, we help women freeze their eggs for free when they donate half of the eggs retrieved to intended parents who need the help of an egg donor to have a baby.

So we are doing two really major things with this model.

One is we are making egg freezing more accessible.

Right.

So that, you know, we know that egg freezing is this incredible science that exists.

higher,

Interestingly,

The answer is yes, but not at that time in my life yet.

Okay.

So I remember I've always been someone who's just like weirdly relentless and I don't like taking no for an answer.

And so I remember like when I pitched Uber Health to our executive leadership team and it was after a lot of people told me no internally already.

Like I had heard like, oh, Uber's never gonna be in healthcare.

Get a new hobby, Lauren.

also building

For those who don't know, can you just explain what that is?

Yeah.

Basically a pregnancy test set like looks positive.

And then it's not.

It's like a little blip from your hormones that makes you think you're pregnant.

And then the next day you could take the test again and it's not positive.

And then you get your period.

How do couples navigate that pressure?

So I'd love to hear about how it all came together.

So while I was at Uber, it was actually like right around the same time I pitched Uber Health.

I had a pain in my side and knew that something was wrong, went to the doctor, pushed to see more doctors, ultimately was diagnosed with a really rare abdominal disease.

I'm one of 150 some odd people on the planet to ever get it.

I had masses growing throughout my abdomen and they told me I'd have to have a number of surgeries to remove the disease.

And they said it was very likely I could lose my ovaries in the process.

And I should have been asking, like, how do I live with this disease? But instead, all I could think was like, will I be a mom someday? And they said, you know, there's a world where that could happen.

Can you give the audience an overview?