The 'Soulcycle' of fertility clinics just got a $10 million boost from investors led by Alphabet's venture arm
- Kindbody, a fertility clinic and benefits provider that's been dubbed the "Soulcycle of fertility," just raised an additional $10 million from investors including GV, formerly Google Ventures.
- The new funding comes as the startup is selling its services to companies, so that they can offer fertility benefits to their workers. To date, CEO Gina Bartasi told Business Insider, the company has signed on 17 clients.
- Kindbody, which got its start offering fertility assessments and egg-freezing services, uses a mix of retail clinic locations, mobile visits, and virtual care to offer women of reproductive age everything from annual exams to fertility treatments.
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Kindbody, a startup that's been dubbed the "Soulcycle of fertility" made a splash with its first pop-up in New York's Flatiron district last year.
Joanne Schneider, Kindbody cofounder and head of product, recalled how women formed a line that extended around the block from the company's bright yellow van, waiting to get free blood tests to determine their fertility
"We knew we needed to lean into that to get into the market," Schneider said.
The goal of the vans and the free blood tests was to help women get a sense of their fertility and present them with options - especially egg freezing.
Since its initial days, Kindbody has expanded beyond fertility services like egg-freezing and in-vitro fertilization (IVF). It now has ambitions to work with women ages 25-45 and offer mental health services, wellness and nutrition, and gynecological care like annual exams.
Kindbody just raised $10 million, bringing its total funding to $32 million
Now, the startup's looking to to sell its services to employers, so that they can offer fertility benefits to their workers.
To bolster that effort, Kindbody just raised $10 million from investors including GV. GV partner Frederique Dame led the investment, and also led the fund's investment in The Pill Club with the intent of getting into the employer business. It's a continuation of Kindbody's series A fundraising that brought in $15 million in April. In total, the startup has raised $32 million.
"We believe the company can serve a large market for accessible gynecology and fertility services with an entirely new approach," Dame said in a statement.
With an Instagrammable yellow van and later a flagship location on Fifth Avenue, Kindbody is trying to present going to the doctor for fertility treatments as convenient and consumer friendly, just like popping into a cycling class at Soulcycle, a brand founder Gina Bartasi told The Verge she keeps in mind when sending out Kindbody's mobile clinics.
In recent years, the fertility space has exploded, with companies tackling everything from benefits like Carrot and Maven, which offers fertility and maternity benefits via virtual care, to testing and egg-freezing clinics.
What Kindbody does, from checkups to egg freezing
This isn't Kindbody cofounder and CEO Gina Bartasi's first foray into the employer-funded benefits market. Bartasi is the founder and former CEO of Progyny, the fertility benefits company that went public in October.
Bartasi wasn't a fan of the fact that the company couldn't work directly with fertility clinics, instead having to rely on insurers to manage the fertility benefit. So, when setting out to build Kindbody, she wanted to include the clinical portion as well, owning the care as well as the benefit. That way, she said, she could offer comprehensive care rather than specific services.
It's also what attracted Schneider, who prior to Kindbody worked at cancer technology company Flatiron Health. There, she worked with the company's electronic health record to equip oncology centers with better technology.
"One thing that was limiting is we were the technology, but we weren't the provider," Scheider said. "And so you don't have that true ability to impact the actual workflow that the customers wanted."
In addition to online booking, the startup lists prices for its services on its website. For instance, egg freezing costs $6,500, not accounting for blood work and medication. Storage is an additional $600 per year. In some cases, the services are covered by insurance.
Kindbody has four clinic locations so far - two in New York, one in the LA area, and a new San Francisco location.
Fertility clinics are typically measured by their success rates for procedures like IVF. Kindbody, which was founded in 2018, has not had any live births reported yet. The company does list the success rates for its chief medical officer, Dr. Lynn Westphal.
Egg freezing is a relatively new procedure. As recently as 2012, it carried the classification of "experimental" by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. But in 2018, the ASRM came out with updated guidelines on egg-freezing, calling the process "an ethically permissible medical treatment that may enhance women's reproductive autonomy and promote social equality."
That said, the ASRM cautioned, there's still a lot we don't know about how well egg freezing works and for how long.
Tapping into employers
Bartasi said it was "always" the plan to sell Kindbody's services to employers.
But first, the startup had to prove that the model worked in the consumer market, she said. "You have to have a sufficient infrastructure in place to really solve these pain points," Bartasi said. Building up that infrastructure takes about 12-18 months, she said.
Bartasi said 17 clients have signed on so far.
More companies are getting interested in offering fertility benefits. At first, tech companies like Facebook and Google paved the way, offering fertility benefits for services its employees would otherwise have to pay for directly. Since then, coverage has expanded to other companies across industries.
"Today we have financial institutions and media companies and consumer product goods companies and other healthcare companies that want to add fertility family building benefits," Bartasi said.
For instance, on Tuesday The Wall Street Journal reported that private equity firm Carlyle Group is working with Progyny to offer fertility benefits to its employees in 2020.
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