Fertility services are prohibitively expensive for so many Americans, but a lot of that has to do with simple supply and demand.
There are 480 fertility clinics in all of the U.S., 80 percent of which are concentrated in just five markets. This means that individuals living outside those markets often have to travel long distances to access these services.
The difficulty of accessing fertility services is something Oliver Bogner learned firsthand. Bogner’s significant other discovered she was a carrier of the BRCA1 gene, a genetic variation that has a strong correlation with breast and ovarian cancer. For that reason, she wanted to pursue in vitro fertilization (IVF) because it would allow the couple to screen embryos for the gene. But the cost and accessibility of egg freezing services created a major roadblock for the couple.
Meanwhile, Bogner’s younger brother Gabriel Bogner leaned toward using IVF. Gabriel, an IVF baby himself, knew he was gay from an early age, and also knew that he wanted to start a family. Plenty of people in the LGBTQ+ community want to have their own kids, but many of them rely on fertility services to make this a reality, which means they run into the same roadblocks that the elder Bogner and his partner faced.
This is what led the two brothers to start Mate Fertility, a startup geared toward making fertility services more accessible and more affordable.
“I would call my brother and say, ‘I think there’s something to be built here,’” Oliver Bogner, the company’s CEO, told Built In. “It’s so inaccessible, but we went on this journey to find out why it’s so inaccessible. People say it’s too expensive, but that’s not the reason at all. ... Once you get outside of the top five metros there’s not a fertility clinic in sight.”
On Tuesday, the company announced that it closed a $2.8 million funding round led by Struck Capital. Other investors include former Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn, co-founder of Science incubator Peter Pham, Brian Schwartz of SIZE, angel investor Patrick Schwarzenegger, Rosecliff Ventures and more.
Like Mate Fertility, many of these investors are based out of LA.
“We’re super excited to be a Los Angeles-based company backed by Los Angeles-based funds,” Oliver Bogner told Built In.
This funding will help the brothers launch a chain of fertility clinics across the U.S. in underserved areas. Their first clinic in Oklahoma City is launching in March of 2021 with reservations already open. Mate Fertility also has plans to launch clinics in Anchorage, South Arkansas, Bakersfield, Lancaster, Austin and Portland. The duo has the ambitious plan to launch 1,000 clinics in the next 10 years — a move that would more than triple the number of fertility clinics open today.
Mate Fertility will also place an emphasis on how these clinics look. The company has tapped Heitler Houstoun Architects, which helped design the Drybar franchise, to make the clinics feel both “high-tech” and “artfully designed.” By making these clinics enjoyable to visit, the company hopes that it will help create a more comfortable overall experience.
At these clinics, the company is offering a handful of fertility services, including fertility assessments, genetic screening, egg freezing, donor and surrogacy services, IVF and other assisted reproduction services. These services are possible due to Mate Fertility’s team of medical experts, including co-founder and reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg and chief reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Cecilia Schmidt-Sarosi.
Another key tenet of Mate Fertility is making these services more affordable. The company can do this in part by increasing the number of available clinics and scaling back the high profit margins that other clinics employ (it’s worth mentioning that 62 percent of fertility clinics are owned by private equity companies that are looking to increase profits).
Another way Mate Fertility keeps things economical is by using technology to optimize certain aspects of the clinic’s operations, with things like a custom-developed EHR platform, payment solutions, e-pharmacy services, online patient portals, proprietary equipment and more. The company told Built In that it’s able to build fertility labs at a fraction of the price of other labs, and also accepts medical insurance when possible.
All this, the company claims, helps patients save up to 50 percent on services like IVF and egg freezing, when compared to traditional clinics.
The company’s new funding will be used to expand its network of clinics and help make its 1,000-clinic goal a reality. Mate Fertility also plans to use the capital to expand as a company. After operating in stealth for the past year, the company has grown to about a dozen employees, and it hopes to double over the course of the next year. This involves hiring people for both medical and operational roles.
As Mate Fertility expands its team, it hopes to attract people who have their own, firsthand experience with fertility services.
“The most important thing is hiring people who value and understand the patient experience, because that’s so important in the fertility space,” Gabriel Bogner told Built In. “And that’s what we are really trying to hone in on and make sure we can systematize as we scale.”
