 This is Startup Storefront. For the first time in 50 years, the average age to have kids has surpassed 30. Children are getting more expensive, people are living longer, and potential parents are focusing more on their careers. This poses a unique but very serious and personal problem. The older people get, the more likely they are to have pregnancy complications. The solution is to freeze eggs, but that's expensive and not top of mind for those in their 20s. Cofertility is creating an ecosystem that lowers the cost and increases the accessibility of egg donation. In today's episode we talk with Lauren Mackler, the co-founder of Cofertility, about why doctors are twice as likely to face infertility as the general public, launching Uber in states across the country, and how cofertility is reducing the cost of egg donations. Alright, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Lauren from Cofertility. Thanks for coming. Hi. Happy to be here. For people who don't know, what is cofertility? Cofertility is a new fertility ecosystem that gives women the opportunity to freeze their eggs for free when they donate half of the eggs retrieved to intended parents that can't otherwise conceive. So people who struggle with infertility, gay dads, cancer survivors, and more. Why is this the problem that you decided to tackle? What about maybe your story or just your avenue to, oh, this is a problem. I learned more about it. Yeah. What was the thing? Well, definitely have a personal story that I'll share, but I think I want to start by saying egg freezing in general is something that I deeply believe more people should have access to. Right? Like, it is no longer... Is it expensive? Is that the issue today? Yes. So it is on average between $12,000 and $20,000 in the U.S. to freeze your eggs, and that is not including yearly storage to keep those eggs. How much does that run? How much does that run? Does it run anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $1,000 a year depending on the geography? Is this a U.S. problem when you say the U.S. is it cheaper in like Europe? In some countries it's cheaper, in some countries it's not. But it's something that like the experimental label was lifted in 2012. So no longer an experiment to freeze your eggs. It is not a guarantee or an insurance policy, right? There's always a chance that it doesn't work out. But studies show that people who freeze their eggs and then later in life experience infertility have more of a chance of having a baby if they had frozen those eggs. Makes sense. So it's $15,000 on average. It's expensive. Yeah. Super expensive. And it's not easy, right? Like you still have to go through a process. It's a 10 to 14 day period where you're giving yourself shots and then you go in for like a 20 to 30 minute procedure under anesthesia to freeze those eggs. But it is an incredible way to not feel the pressure of your biological clock. And so there's like, it can contribute to gender equality, right? If women are not feeling constantly like, oh my gosh, I have to meet my partner, I have to put my career on hold, right? Like it can really give them more options in life. So access though really is the biggest thing, right? Because of money primarily. Yeah. Yeah. The best time to freeze your eggs is when you can least afford it. When you're like mid-20s. Yeah. Early. Yeah. Like you're paying for school or you have student loan debt or like... You're probably also not thinking about it at that point too, you know? Yes. Very low on the agenda, I would imagine. Yeah. Well, certainly like starting your family is low on the agenda, right? So like I think now it's like the highest or like the oldest age on average that women are starting families. It's like 30 for the first time in US history. So it's getting older, but like our biological clocks are not keeping up. So access and like awareness totally are the biggest things on the egg freezing side. And then on the egg donation side, there's a lot happening in that space that just needs to evolve and move forward. Like what? What's the problem with the egg donating? So, and my personal story gets into this, but in general egg donation in the US specifically has been something that is very much based and rooted in cash compensation for egg donation. So women are paid... And just sperm operate the same way? Yes. Okay. But it's a lot easier to get sperm than it is. There's not a 14 day procedure. Exactly. Literally a guy goes into a room. Yeah. Who knows what he does. Right. You know? But he makes something else. Yeah. Exactly. It can be... Yeah. It's a process, but it's rooted in cash compensation. So it can actually, it's like stigmatized to donate your eggs. It's like... What's the stigma? Like this idea that you're selling your eggs, right? You're being paid anywhere from $8,000 in cash upwards of like $50,000 to $100,000 depending on your education, depending on your like heritage, depending on like how much you can, how desirable you are to an intended parents. And our team feels that's something that's kind of icky and that is actually a turnoff to a lot of incredible women who would otherwise be totally down to donate their eggs and help grow another family. And so that like idea that cash compensation really turned some women off who otherwise would do it is something that we wanted to like dig into. It also means that there's a lack of diversity amongst egg donors, right? It's like off-putting to women of certain cultures to like get money for their eggs and that in turn leaves intended parents without adequate options on their side. So my team, we saw a lot of these pain points on both sides. And what's interesting is that egg donation doesn't exist without egg freezing. And yet they're still somehow like separated processes. So we brought them together. But I want to talk about the personal side of this if that is cool with you guys. Years ago, I actually, I had mentioned to you guys before we started this that I was at Uber for quite some time. So I joined Uber in the early days was launching new markets and then I saw an opportunity for Uber in the health care space to basically help people get to the care they need, right? Millions of people miss a doctor's appointment because they don't have access to a reliable ride. Uber had reliable rides in spades. I pitched a business line at Uber called Uber Health, which is now this massive arm of Uber that does patient transportation. But within like a month of pitching that business, I became a patient myself. I woke up one morning with a pain in my side and was like, hmm, something is not right here. Went to the doctor, sort of pushed them for more diagnostic testing, found that I had masses growing throughout my abdomen. And turned out I was at the time one of 154 people on the planet to ever be diagnosed with this like super rare abdominal disease. It ended up that it's like a benign condition yet it can be very troublesome in that it can like cut off the functioning of your organs, basically if left to its own like growth, right? So I learned very quickly I'd have to have a number of surgeries to remove the disease and basically keep an eye on it for the rest of my life. And I immediately thankfully was like aware of fertility and what that might look like someday. So I asked like, should I freeze my eggs? Should I do this before I have these surgeries proactively? And I actually was seeing a reproductive endocrinologist who like specialized in rare diseases. And he was like, look, your disease is so rare that I'd rather not because we don't have like data to support that like injecting you with hormones is a good idea. And so I was like, okay, like what are my options then? He was like, well, you know, if it comes to it, egg donation could be an option, right? If you needed that someday. And so I started looking at it and I was like, wait, what is this industry? Like it's a cottage industry. It's like so old school and transactional it just felt like icky, right? Like in some cases you're looking at these websites where it's like just like totally based on an egg donor's looks and you don't get to know them at all, like on a personal level. In other cases, it's like a clinic will send you a spreadsheet of donors and every woman is a different row on a spreadsheet and that's as much information as you get. Or if you're looking for a specific heritage or something like that, like as someone who's Jewish, I thought like, oh, what would it be like if I wanted a Jewish donor? The compensation for that donor just goes up and up and up depending on what you're looking for. And that just like did not sit right with me. So I at the time was talking with my family and very close with my family and my sister was like, can I donate my eggs to you? And so we started talking with the doctor and he was like, yeah, like she's in the right age range. She'd already had two kids. And so she froze her eggs and donated them to me ahead of my surgeries so that I could go in at least knowing that like if I woke up with no ovaries or if I woke up, like not being able to have a child myself someday at least had those eggs there waiting for me. And so fast forward, I ended up having three surgeries, very long recoveries, but felt comforted knowing like, okay, I could be a mom someday if that's the path I wanted. And I ended up, you know, got married, decided we were ready to have a baby. And my doctor said, okay, like try for six months if you're not pregnant at the end of the six months, like come see me, we'll talk about using your sister's eggs. And on the sixth month, I conceived my now daughter who is almost two unassisted without using my sister's eggs. And so I have this, you know, beautiful little girl and I remember like, I gave birth and it was like this immense immediate clarity that I needed to build something in reproductive health. And at the end of my maternity leave gave notice at Uber after eight incredible years there. And I didn't post it on LinkedIn, didn't post it on anywhere within 24 hours. My now co-founder Hallie who we were like in touch, we were like Instagram friends. I had immense like huge respect for her. She's like an amazing operator investor in healthcare specifically like huge advocate for women's health. She had sent me a DM and was like, I heard you might be building something. What's going on? I was like, I'm not like what, like, I can't believe Hallie Tecco is DMing me. And I was like, I gave notice yesterday and she was like, what's your phone number? I'm calling you. She was like, you're on the market. I'm like, yeah, like what, like are any of your portfolio companies hiring? Like, what's the deal? And she had actually just sold natalist this company that she started that does pregnancy test ovulation kits and things like that to Everly Well, like within a month of this call. And she told me about this business idea that she had been sitting on for years, actually, to build this like egg sharing concept at scale. And she had no idea my history with egg donation or everything like that. Yeah, I was going to ask if you were open about it on social media. At that point, no. Now totally like an open book. I think at that point it was like still so like fresh, you know, that I hadn't. But hell you no idea. And she's someone who, I mean, she's like remarkable in her own right as a builder and whatever, but her own journey is one where like she'll tell you like one of her biggest regrets in life is not freezing her eggs in her twenties. She has been through like the ringer as it relates to infertility, like multiple tons of IVF cycles, like miscarried the whole nine yards. And yet is now just like, how do we get more women access to freezing their eggs? And then how do we give intended parents more options, right? People who need an egg donor, like I meet intended parents all the time. No one's ever excited by the time they come to me, right? Like they're not like, oh, I'm pumped to find an egg donor. But how do we at least make them feel like they're not settling? Was her angle the same as yours? Did she see the problem the same way or was she attacking it from just her personal experience and maybe understood the difficulty of finding a donor? We had both like compared notes on like, what is it like to look at egg donation? And hers was more of a, I think a fresher experience at that point. And she was like, this is just insane that you could end up paying, you know, 50 grand in cash compensation for a donor who like maybe wants an anonymous relationship and that's another thing we could get into, but like it's so old school and outdated. And what's wild is that like there was a study that came out from Harvard in 2021 that surveyed donor conceived people that I think it was like over 60% of them found it troubling that their parents paid cash for their genetics. Oh, like the children found it troubling. That's interesting. Yeah. The offspring. And so it's like, if we know that, like, let's do better. All right. So then, okay. So you guys meet, you guys have synergies, you're attacking the problem, dream team. People don't know. Lauren, you were like, when we met in Boston for people listening, I would say like you were probably one of the sharpest individuals I'd ever met. And then you, like we were both dabbling, if you remember, right? We were both like trying to, I had the bow tie company. Yes. You were working on this like augmented reality Pepsi. Oh my God. Do you remember that? Yes. That photo app where you were definitely more intelligent than the founder. And he was crazy. And you were like, this guy is crazy, but I just remember you always had that thing, you know, that, that sort of that sparkle. And so you got a powerhouse team with you and your co-founder. And then how do you guys start thinking about attacking the problem? Like what's the thing that you're like, okay. Right now it's so expensive. How do we simply make it more affordable? How do we even do that? Why is freezing so expensive? What are the things that you're seeing like the levers for a sustainable business? So I think egg sharing is a concept that is used in pockets all over the world. So there are countries that like straight up outlaw cash compensation for donation and do egg sharing. There are some that don't and just like have to rely on the goodness of someone's heart to donate their eggs. There are clinics in the U.S. who offer egg sharing as a model. So we didn't like come up with that on our own. But what we realized was that the reason none of those programs have been so huge is because they are so limited by geography. They're like, you have to be within a 15 mile radius of this clinic. Where there's so much- Was that arbitrary or was there a reason for that? I mean, logistically I think it makes sense for that clinic, right? It's like, okay, we need to be near a donor. We need to be near an intended parent. The way we see it is that like, and I can't help but to look at everything through an Uber lens at this point in my life, right? Eight years is a long time. And like the early days, it's like in my DNA at this point. And so what we realized we needed to build was sort of a network effect, right? You have to have, if someone is looking for a donor who has like specific characteristics, whether it's their personality, their heritage, their physical attributes, like their height or whatever it might be, like they need more than one option to choose from, right? With Uber, we were matching riders and drivers, and they just had to be in proximity of each other, right? Here, and you know, we need to match someone that has a lot more to it, right? And so scale is what we needed, right? And so we realized that we had to build something massive to give people enough choice and enough options. It's specifically like a database of donors on both sides, or is it just the female side that you're attacking? So for now, it's just egg donation, so we don't do sperm donation yet. We don't know plans immediately, but we essentially find women who are interested in this. And we actually have two programs. So one is called Split, and that's where you freeze your eggs for free when you donate half and you actually get to store them for free for 10 years, up to 10 years, which is huge, especially. And that's if you're willing to donate them? Yes. Got it. So in that process, you have to clinically qualify to donate, right? Which not everybody does. Because what's involved in that? So you have to be happy, clear from a medical history standpoint. Your family medical history. You have to have both ovaries, not smoke cigarettes, like different things like that that are like set forth by like ASRM, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. And for women who don't qualify or who aren't interested in donation because not everybody is, and that's like totally cool. I would never want to pressure someone to do that. We have a program called Keep, and that's where you freeze your eggs. You keep 100 percent of them for yourself, and we help through different partnerships that we have lessen the financial load. So what is that? What is that instead of the 15,000? What does that turn into? It depends on the city. Let's say our listeners are mostly from, I would say LA, New York and Chicago. So like in New York, we could do it where including either five or 10 years of storage, which is insane. You could do the whole thing for 10 K. So we can or you could do it with less storage if you were planning to use them. Sooner we also have financing partnerships where it's sort of like a buy now pay later kind of situation, which is huge because a lot of people don't realize you can do that with proactive fertility treatment. So it depends on the geography, but certainly less expensive. And our team is working constantly to like find opportunities in the the process, whether it's through medication discounts or through the actual clinic. But the storage one, I think is. And is it like seamless or someone signs up? Obviously there are injections they have to take. You send them that. So it's so cofertility. So we match them with a clinic that's in. We usually will give them options, too, which is nice. We're like big on choice all the way around. We'll match them with a clinic. We'll work with that clinic to make sure they get the best rates on medication, and then we put them in touch with the financing partner if they want to do that and same on the storage front. So and they also on whether you do keep or split, we have a private online community for anybody who's going through egg freezing because and this is kind of obvious, but like studies also show that egg freezing can be very lonely and isolating, right? And that sometimes people do it because they're single or because they are like, I have no idea when I want to have kids, like a very daunting process. Also, like hormonally can have a lot of ups and downs. And so going through it with other people who are also going through it at the same time with the support of our team can be huge. And do you guys make money just by taking a fee on these services? Yeah, so not from no fee to the keep member and for the split member, the entire thing is totally free. Intended parents, when they do a donation cycle with us, they pay us a coordination fee, which is what they'd expect with any egg donation company to like manage the entire process and to find the donor as well. And what's interesting is like I see this as it's funny. I it's like I always compare the Uber model, right? And that like remember when we tried to launch Uber and when we did launch Uber in Rhode Island at the time, the state has a million people. And at the time they had 188 taxis to cover the population of one million people and the government was like, stay away, Uber. We don't need you. Like 188 taxis is like more than enough. Like no one complains. We're like, come on, right? We launched anyway. And like we were doing tens of thousands, if not more trips within like three months because more we were expanding the pie of people who were taking like short trips, right? So people who are otherwise just not you like we're driving themselves or we're like, you know, walking or we're not going out, we're doing it, right? And so here I see this. We open the pie of people who are taking those trips. Here we're expanding the pie of women who are interested in egg donation, right? So like there will always be people who I think want to do this for money and that works for them and that works for intended parents. But for the people that we're serving in this ecosystem, the intended parents are really happy knowing that, you know, for their donor conceived child someday for themselves and for the donor that they are really like empowering this young woman to like have access to her own eggs later in life. And the donor I think feels better about it too, right? And we're able to attract women who are super impressive. They're like, I think like 20% of our match donors are doctors. They are like really ambitious prioritizing their career, their education. And they're like, yeah, this makes sense. I get to do this for myself and help somebody else in the process. What do you think is that the hard part? So when you think about the hard part of your business. So in like the Uber sense, it's easy. And I would say easier, right? It's like person wants to get the point B, let's connect them with someone who's going to get them to point B. And you're setting it's almost like there's a societal shift that has to take place, a safe space. You're creating a safe space in some way. You have to remove the element of friction, which is cost. And so you can you've obviously it sounds like you can at least reduce that by half. But that's the hard part, right? Or like, what do you view as the hard part in that? Like you were an early adopter of Uber. The point of bringing that up is that like when I remember when we launched UberX, people are like, what? You want me to get in a car with a stranger? Right? Like, yeah, there's this is new. What we're doing is new. Egg donation is not new. Right. Like this has been happening for a very long time. You probably so egg donation to use the taxi. So egg donations, the taxi. No, this and this is just a different way of doing it. Right. And I think what's really cool too, is that and actually you had asked like, what did we do? Like Hallie and I came together. First we knew this is going to be like a marketing thing. Right. Like how do we rebrand egg donation in a sense and destigmatize it? So we brought on a third co-founder on the marketing side. So Ariel Spiegel joined us or CMO. But I wanted to make sure because my world is like a bunch of tech millennials. I'm like, are my friends going to do this? And I was like, wait, it doesn't matter if my friends would do this. We're too old. Like seriously, right? 35 is too old. Yeah. So we, my first Hallie was like, are you in? Are you going to be CEO? Like I hate being CEO, Lauren. You do it. And I was like, what? Like, no, you don't want me to be CEO. She's like, I definitely do. Like let's go. Um, and I was like, I need a survey. She's like, what? Like I want to make a deck. I'm like, I don't, I'm not there yet. Give me like a week. She's like, she didn't understand what I was getting at, but we designed a survey, put it in type form basically to understand like, would women in the egg donation age range be interested in this approach? Like, do they care about egg freezing? Do they care? Are they open to egg donation? And so I pinged like three or four influencers on social, like on Instagram and was like, Hey, can you post this in your stories? Like we're trying to make egg freezing more affordable. And they were like, yes, of course, I'll post this. And we had like close to a thousand responses in 24 hours. And it was 66% of people who, all within the age range of egg donation who were interested in this approach. So that was more than enough conviction than I needed to be like, okay, let's go. And so we put that in our investor deck and we went for it. Let's talk about that. And so you're raising capital for this. If you're talking to any man that probably like, what is she talking about? That's why I didn't. And you see only females. Yeah. Nice. Tell me about the. Yeah. Share that story. Yeah. So we put together, Hallie is like one of the most incredible executors I've ever met. And I remember I'm the only one of our group on the west coast at that time. And so I'd like wake up in the morning and like God knows what had been completed overnight. She had the bones of the deck together really quickly. We put together a list of like, who would our dream investors be and sent a few notes out, asked for some intros and we ran a tight, like short, like, hey, we're raising it's this very particular period of time. I think that's something I would encourage other founders to do is to like time gate their fundraise. How much time did you give yourself? I think like we had hoped to like get it done within like four to six weeks. And we had the first few meetings were with women. Investors who got it immediately. Right. Like I did not want to be in a scenario where I was like explaining egg freezing to someone. Right. Like you have like this. No, but like you have 45 minutes for an initial meeting. Right. And so finding investors that you know are going to understand the problem or at least like some part of what you're trying to do is better so you're not wasting the whole meeting educating them. And so we lucked out that some incredible investors so parl sing from initialized like immediately. I remember like watching her face on the zoom, like get it, you know, like you can just tell if somebody gets it, you can tell by their questions. Like she got it right away. Britt Moran from offline who, you know, I had known from her days at Britain Co. She has invested a ton in, you know, women's health and family oriented companies. So she immediately was like, what? This is so cool. Like this has to exist. Right. And so like you can tell if somebody deals that way. Do you find that these women have to have had a personal experience like yourself, or they just, they get it on the basis of what's interesting is that that, and it's almost like, I think the women that we talked to were like mid 30s, like you know, late 40s kind of age group, right? So these women had either, like maybe they had no trouble getting pregnant, but most of their friends did, or like they have friends who have donor conceived children, or they have, you know, like I'd hear often like, oh my God, my best friend just had, like he and his husband just had a donor conceived baby. And like, I told their journey was awful and like this needs to exist, which is interesting because what I found with the women who are now egg donation age, right? Like their late 20s or maybe mid 20s, they all know people who are either like part of either themselves or no people in the LGBTQ community who like need an egg donor or third party reproduction to have a baby, or they have friends who are like ahead of them who are like, oh my mentor told me I should freeze my eggs, right? Like people are just more open minded and get it now in a way that I think had we tried to pitch this company like five years ago, probably would have fell flat. So I think our investors' conversations got it, like you could tell, and the ones who didn't maybe they'd be like, oh, can we have another meeting? And be like, maybe, like, but like you stick with the ones who get it. And then what was great, we like purposely left a room open for angels and we didn't just want angels who were going to like write a check and move on. We wanted ones who like obviously like very much believed that this company should exist, but also who wanted to play like an advisory type role. We brought on to, I call them my like company crushes, FIGS and Hello Sunshine, the CEOs or CEO or co-founders of FIGS, Trina Speer, Heather Hassan invested, and then Sarah Hardin who's the CEO of Hello Sunshine also invested. And I feel like those are women that I can learn from and whose advice I like just like soak in as much as possible. And I think leaving room for that on your cap table is, yeah. I wanted to ask you in terms of people listening in terms of like, all right, if I'm, let's say there's listener right now, they're like, what age is the right age? When should people ideally start thinking about freezing their eggs? How long is that window? How big of a window? What if you can tell them all the good stuff? I mean, I don't think you're ever too young to be thinking about it. I mean, I don't recommend you freeze your eggs before you're 21, right? But like, if you are wondering, or maybe you're someone who knows like you're going to grad school or you have these like big ambitions, you're planning your life, like how many of us are planners, right? And if like having a baby is not in the immediate plan, but you think someday you might want that option, have that conversation now, right? Like it's never too soon to at least know what your options look like or to have some blood work done to know, like are you someone who has like, you know, a great ovarian reserve or are you someone who, you know, might have trouble conceiving later in life, right? I think that it's never too early. And I think knowing that there are options and ways to do it is like the best part. It's a 21 to what, what's the sort of the other book end? So like, if you want to donate, being under 33 is key, but I think, you know, they say there is, you know, at 35 is when your fertility starts to like go in the other direction. I think after 40 is when it's like for sure on a decline, but the sooner the better. So if you can do it before you're 35, I definitely would. In my preparation for this recording, I saw that the CDC had come out with a study and they had said that infertility is on the rise in the US, something like almost 20% of women, 15 to 49, are unable to conceive after a year of trying. And I was wondering like how much that factors into your planning, your pitch to investors and how does that like affect the model? They didn't give, it was, you know, it could be environmental factors. That was what I was curious about too, was like the reasoning behind it. Cause anytime I, you hear like CDC, I just think of COVID now. So it's not COVID related at this point at least. I do think the biggest factor for that is that women are waiting longer to start their families. We'll say infertility is not just a women's issue. Right, right. It is for sure. Two parts of the equation. Yes, and I think it's so overlooked on the male side, right? So that's definitely something that should be looked into and addressed and not overlooked. But I think age is really the thing, right? Like we believe, and women today, like I love to see it, right? We're empowered, we're like making choices about our career or where we wanna live or what we wanna do, we're like going for it. Like we're feminists, we're not waiting for life to happen to us, except that this is just one area where it is very much out of our control and our bodies haven't necessarily caught up to the times. Or it just sounds like they're finding out too late. Like let's say like my wife as an example runs her own business. And so for us, it was like, we're just starting to think about it. But at the same time, it's like interesting to go down that road. And then if you find out it's difficult, you've shortened that window for yourself without you really even thinking about it, right? And so it's just like, it's almost like if you're waiting longer, right? And you need treatments or who knows what? Or you just can't, you haven't found out until it's too late, yeah. So that's exactly it, right? Like I meet with intended parents all the time. And some of them are gay men who've always known that if they wanted to have a baby, they needed an egg donor, right? So that's one thing. And I think that's actually part of why this space is growing, right? And that more LGBTQ family building options are out there, which is awesome. But there are so many women who come to us and either they're coming because they have an infertility diagnosis that maybe they didn't find out about until they started trying. Or they're coming to us just because of age, right? And it's like heartbreaking to see, you see these couples get on the Zoom and their story is like, we met later in life, you know? Like we met when we were 41 and after these like amazing careers, like they are so accomplished and talented and amazing in their own rights. And yet this one part of their equation, this like deep desire to grow a family is just like left behind compared to the rest of their life because they met their partner late in life, right? And like just sucks that like 40 is considered late because of this only this one thing. Yeah. The other, I mean, talk about like doctors actually are twice as likely to experience infertility as the general public, female doctors. Is that because they're in residency for so long? And that's, yeah. So that's one reason, right? Like they're- You don't want to get pregnant during residency or prior, right? Yep, their training takes forever and their education takes forever. But also they're super hard on their bodies, right? They spend, they have long hours, they're stressed, they put so much focus and energy into like caring for other people that they end up not caring for themselves. And so that's one area where we're, and they like notoriously don't get paid well at that stage of their career and have really shitty benefits, right? So that's an area where I'm like really excited to provide more options for that population, which is why I was so excited when the founders of FIGS wanted to invest. And so for now the plant the flag is sort of getting the word out, making it okay on the donor side, on the freezing side, on the giving side. And then at some point, where does this go longterm for you, like where do you see maybe 2026? Maybe 2025. Yeah, yeah, like where do you see that going? I mean, I would love it. I mean, someday maybe 2026 is too soon for this, but I would love to get to a point where so many women have proactively frozen their eggs that they don't need egg donors, right? So that the only people we're providing egg donors for are like, you know, the gay men who are like excited to build a family. But I think, you know, this is not a US specific problem. I think there's a ton of opportunity globally to help intended parents and donors match and build families. I think there are other areas of their party reproduction that need to be looked at through a new lens. And I don't know, I'm very much focused, like my team here is all the time, I'm like, we cannot boil the ocean. Like let's focus, let's like address and crush this one particular area. Yeah, I don't know if this would ever be a thing, but I feel like in the moving political system, do you ever like when you go to bed at night, maybe you have a nightmare and it's always something has happened politically where your business has somehow become the target of who knows, right? I can just see where the right wing says, we can't have more gay children or something like that or like, hey, parents shouldn't be a thing. And then your company's front and center for being the bank. I think like any company who works in reproductive health has that fear, right? Especially lately. Yeah, like totally. We will like always be on the side of helping anybody who wants to have a baby, have a baby, whether that is today or someday. And like, if reproductive rights are like at risk here, like my company is the least of my worries. You know what I mean? So that for sure, like we're gonna like fight to support the families that, and individuals, right? Like. We'll tell people how they can sign up, tell them where to find you. Yeah, cofertility.com. If you are interested in either the Keeper Split program, there is a way to basically take a quiz to see like what you qualify for. If you are looking for an egg donor and you're on the intended parent side, you can very easily sign up for a free account to check out the incredible women that we have there and you can match with someone immediately. I am Lauren Makler and you can find me on Instagram at Lauren Makler. I love, like more than happy to talk to anyone individually or through DMs or whatever. Yeah, that's sweet. I love that. I love that story. I'll make this happen. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, thanks for joining the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode. So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month. This gets you access to one, the whole unabridged conversation. Two, you get the episodes on Monday, one day earlier. Three, you get two additional entries to our giveaways. Check out our Instagram to see what we've given away. And four, you get access to seasons one through three. 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