Cultural shifts and norms are leading people to start families later in life when compared to previous generations, and Extend Fertility wants to provide women with the best family planning options through its cryopreservation (egg-freezing) services. This leading fertility service company allows women to freeze their eggs during the prime of their reproductive health, so they can wait until the right circumstances and moment in their life to start a family. The company has scaled since its launch in 2016 to become one of the largest providers of egg freezing in the country fueled by technology and innovation, such as using algorithms to predict a patient’s egg yield, that’s never been seen before in the industry.
AlleyWatch spoke with CEO Anne Hogarty to learn more about Extend Fertility is providing accessible and top-notch fertility services, the company’s expansion plans, and most recent round of funding, which brings its total funding raised to approximately $25M.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Extend Fertility raised $15M in a Series A investment from Regal Healthcare Capital Partners.
Tell us about the product or service that Extend Fertility offers.
Extend Fertility is a leading fertility services company disrupting the way fertility treatment has traditionally been provided. We were founded in 2016 as the first company designed specifically for women looking to preserve their fertility, and our team, process, and environment were built from the ground up for this specific purpose. In doing that, we have created an innovative care model for a population of people with needs that weren’t being met before and whom we help to leverage an amazing new technology, vitrification, to give them more options of when to start a family.
Thanks to our innovative model, we have become quickly one of the largest providers of egg freezing (cryopreservation) in the country—performing over 1,000 egg freezing cycles in 2018.
Last year, we also expanded our services to those experiencing infertility issues with the launch of Expect Fertility, which offers a full range of infertility services, including IVF and IUI. We are excited to continue our expansion with a deep commitment to helping all people build families on their own timeline.
What inspired the start of Extend Fertility?
Extend Fertility was founded in 2016 by Joshua U. Klein, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Ilaina Edison, board member. Before we were founded in 2016, the fertility industry focused first and foremost on people struggling with infertility and trying to conceive immediately.
Most of these long-standing institutions considered egg freezing a “side business”. In his experience working as an IVF doctor, Dr. Klein recognized the potential for egg freezing to help women proactively preserve their fertility and potentially avoid the struggles with infertility that older women often face.
I joined Extend Fertility because it aligned with my personal and professional values. On a professional level, I am drawn to working for emerging companies that are challenging the status quo in staid industries.
Personally, I believe passionately in Extend’s mission: to help people build families when they’re ready. In the past three years, many of my best girlfriends who were not ready to start families during their peak reproductive years have frozen their eggs. I am so grateful and excited that they could leverage this amazing technology, vitrification, to increase their chances of becoming mothers someday. Through Extend, I want to help as many women as possible understand their options.
Many positive societal shifts over the past century have also fundamentally affected family planning. Women are now encouraged to seek higher education, pursue a career, and end up with the right partner, not just any partner. That has led many women to not start families until their 30s instead of their 20s and, unfortunately, one thing that has not changed in that time is the biological clock. That’s where Extend Fertility can help.
Have you seen that more and more employers are supporting managed fertility as a benefit to their employees?
Companies are beginning to recognize the increased interest in fertility and infertility services benefits. According to FertilityIQ’s 2017-2018 Workplace Index, the number of U.S. companies offering an IVF benefit grew by approximately 10 percent in 2017. Unfortunately, it’s much less common for insurance to cover egg freezing. Across the board, we see the need for continued progress in the number of companies offering benefits for both fertility and infertility.
How is Extend Fertility different?
We built our service specifically to meet the needs of women looking to freeze their eggs and there are three main factors that set us apart.
Clinical excellence – We were built from the ground up to align with the latest technological advances and create successful outcomes for our patients.
There are two critical components to providing excellent fertility care. One is experienced doctors who are fertility specialists. All of our physicians are reproductive endocrinologists, and hail from some of the top educational institutions for medical training and IVF practices in the country. The second is an excellent lab, and we built our lab from the ground up just two years ago with the latest, cutting-edge technologies, including a specialized air filtration system and single-chamber benchtop incubators.
A hospitality-based approach – We have embraced hospitality for our patients – we don’t want them to just have clinically excellent care, we want them to feel good about the process. We established the concept of a fertility advisor who serves as a single point of contact and care to guide patients through the process.
Accessibility – We want to help as many people as possible be able to build families when they’re ready. The two most critical parts of that for us are one, making information on fertility easy for women to obtain, and two, keeping prices as low as we can sustain from a business model perspective. We put a priority on providing women with the information they need to make informed decisions about their fertility. From our Egg Freezing 101 sessions to our dedicated Fertility Advisors, we offer an informative, transparent and compassionate experience without confusing gimmicks. We also offer patients a Fertility Assessment, which is entirely free – no strings attached. It’s an opportunity to have an honest discussion about fertility goals and ovarian reserve so that women can feel like they are making informed decisions. We also believe in pricing transparency and accessibility. Quite often cost is the biggest deterrent in the process, and we’ve worked hard to make fertility treatments available to more women.
What market does Extend Fertility target and how big is it?
Extend Fertility offers services to anyone looking to expand their fertility options, whether that be through planned egg freezing or infertility treatments.
Thanks to our innovative model and ability to meet a growing need in the market, we have become quickly one of the largest providers of egg freezing (cryopreservation) in the country—performing over 1,000 egg freezing cycles in 2018.
What’s your business model?
We are a fertility services company, with a tailored offering for people with needs that weren’t being met before.
What was the funding process like?
We just closed a successful $15M Series A round with Regal Healthcare Capital Partners after launching in 2016 with seed investments of around $10M. We’re disrupting an industry and addressing a challenge that most people didn’t know existed so of course, it was a challenge to bridge the knowledge gap when we were first looking for funding. That said, when seeking funding for our Series A, we were so pleased to connect with Regal, who really understands what it means to challenge the status quo in healthcare.
Regal’s team consists of Dr. Kim (cofounder of Premier Care Urgent Care, which he merged with CityMD and helped grow into the leading urgent care company in the Northeast) and Jon Santemma (a leading healthcare investment banker on Wall Street and former Global Head of Healthcare Investment Banking at Jefferies LLC, the largest healthcare investment team in the world).
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Regal Healthcare Capital Partners recognized how we created an entirely new model for egg freezing based on an unmet need in the market, and as a firm seeking to advance healthcare practices, they felt Extend Fertility was a natural partner.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We plan to deepen our commitment to new business lines and expand into new geographic markets. To start, we’re slated to open a West Coast location in early 2020. Through our Expect Fertility practice, we offer IVF, IUI and other treatments for those experiencing infertility with the same thoughtful, personalized approach to care that we’ve become known for.
One of the innovations we’re most excited about is our proprietary clinical algorithm, drawn from our uniquely large dataset of egg freezing patients, that helps us predict a patient’s egg yield. This tool allows our physicians to provide optimal counseling to prospective egg freezers about their potential outcomes, so they’re fully informed of their options and can make a decision that best supports their goals.
One of the innovations we’re most excited about is our proprietary clinical algorithm, drawn from our uniquely large dataset of egg freezing patients, that helps us predict a patient’s egg yield. This tool allows our physicians to provide optimal counseling to prospective egg freezers about their potential outcomes, so they’re fully informed of their options and can make a decision that best supports their goals.
We’ll continue to test and iterate over the next few years and apply our learnings to our overarching purpose – to create options and choice in fertility planning, and act as advocates and standard bearers for truth and transparency in the fertility process.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Focus on finding investors who not only want to give you capital but also have experience that will be valuable to you as you grow.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Ultimately, Extend Fertility will continue to be at the forefront in creating options and choice in family planning, and will continue to be advocates for information, accessibility, and transparency in the fertility process. With great technological breakthroughs comes great responsibility – fertility is nuanced, and we want people to have the information they need to make the decisions that are best for them. Extend Fertility gives people have the option to have a family if they choose and when they choose. We want to continue to break the standards by which individuals consider and pursue their fertility options.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
The Little Owl
