In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing.
But the steep cost of the procedure, estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 per attempt, means many women can’t afford it during their most fertile years: 20s and early 30s.
Cofertility, a startup founded by former Uber executive Lauren Makler and health tech angel investor Halle Tecco, offers women no-cost egg freezing in exchange for donating half the retrieved eggs to those unable to conceive.
The three-year-old startup just raised a $7.25 million Series A round led by Next Ventures and Offline Ventures, with participation from Initialized, Gaingels, and several other investors. This financing round brings Cofertility’s total funding to $16 million.
The idea for Cofertility stems from Makler’s fertility and health scare. A 2018 diagnosis of a rare abdominal disease led to multiple surgeries that threatened the loss of her ovaries.
In such situations, doctors sometimes suggest egg freezing for young women who want to have children, but that was not an option for Makler.
So, she started to learn as much as possible about egg donation.
She knew donors were compensated for their eggs, but she was shocked to learn how expensive the eggs could be. If she wanted an egg from a Jewish donor to match her background, it would cost more. The price increased further if she sought an egg from an educated woman.
“It felt sort of like surge pricing for egg donors, which felt icky to me,” she said, referring to Uber’s approach for charging for rides during peak-demand times.
Luckily, Makler ended up conceiving a child naturally, but that experience led her to want to build a business that matches young women who wish to preserve their fertility with people who need a donor egg.
While the concept of egg sharing is not new, Makler claims that Cofertility is the only company that offers eggs at scale through its “Split” program.
“At any given time, we have hundreds of donors that are available for intended parents,” Makler said, adding that most clinics will have only a handful of donors, which is unlikely to result in a match.
Makler says that Cofertility’s egg donors come from diverse backgrounds and that about 55% of them have graduate degrees.
Intended parents cover the egg retrieval costs and Cofertility’s coordination fee, similar to standard egg donation. However, they don’t have to compensate the donor, lowering their out-of-pocket expenses.
While Makler doesn’t want to call Cofertility a marketplace, she agrees that it works like one and that her company is solving a big structural problem.
“The big vision and the goal is removing the taboo of egg donation,” she said, “There is zero shame in however you become a parent. Doing that with the help of a donor who’s also interested in freezing her own eggs is a really exciting option.”
