In this episode, I am joined by Lauren Makler, co-founder and CEO of Co Fertility, a transformative fertility ecosystem that seeks to revolutionize the processes of egg donation and preservation through a model grounded in humanity, equity, and transparency.

Our discussion delves into the unique challenges women face in the realm of reproductive health and how Co Fertility addresses these issues by providing women the opportunity to freeze their eggs at no cost, thereby fostering accessibility and ethical practices in egg donation.

Lauren shares her personal journey, which includes overcoming her own fertility challenges and how they influenced her drive to create a more compassionate family-building experience. We explore the concept of "falling in love with the problem," emphasizing the necessity for founders to remain resilient and committed to their mission, even in the face of adversity.

Through this conversation, we aim to illuminate the vital importance of amplifying women's voices in business and healthcare, underscoring the transformative impact of women-led enterprises.

Our Guest This Week:

Today we have a Bold Builder of Better Futures in our midst!  

Lauren Makler is the Co-Founder and CEO of CoFertility, a groundbreaking fertility ecosystem reshaping egg donation and preservation with humanity, equity, and transparency. Before launching CoFertility, she was the founding General Manager of Uber Health, where she built and scaled the company’s healthcare arm from the ground up—expanding access to care for millions. After facing her own fertility challenges, Lauren combined her healthcare innovation experience and product leadership with personal conviction to create a more compassionate model for family building. Under her leadership, CoFertility introduced the revolutionary “Split” program, making egg donation more empowering, ethical, and accessible. Featured in Fast Company, Forbes, and TechCrunch, Lauren is a visionary proving that when business is led by empathy, it can scale with power, purpose, and transformative impact.

Takeaways:

• In the realm of business, it is imperative to amplify women's voices and experiences, particularly in leadership roles.
• Lauren's innovative approach at Co Fertility seeks to transform the fertility landscape through equity and transparency.
• The significance of empathy in business practices is paramount, as it fosters a compassionate approach to customer experiences.
• Understanding the barriers to fertility access is crucial, and Co Fertility aims to address these challenges through their unique service offerings.

Chapters:

00:15 Introducing the Host

06:02 The Journey of Empowerment and Transformation

11:18 The Journey of Egg Freezing and Donation

14:01 The Journey of Building a Fertility Startup

22:46 Navigating Challenges in Business: Resilience and Accountability

29:25 Understanding Fertility Challenges

31:23 The Role of Women in Reproductive Health and Equity

Burning Questions Answered:

1. How do you build a business model that serves two completely different audiences — egg donors and intended parents?
2. What do you do when something goes wrong inside your company?
3. How do you navigate doubt while building something bold?
4. Why does empathy matter in business?

Guest Offers & Contact Information:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenmakler 

LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cofertility/ 

Instagram: http://instagram.com/cofertility

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/cofertility 

Website: https://www.cofertility.com/ 

Follow the #WisdomOfWomen show for more inspiring stories and insights from trailblazing women founders, investors, and experts in growth and prosperity.

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Amazon Prime: https://tinyurl.com/366syddj 

Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/bdhananz 

RSS Feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/womengetfunded/ 

Coco Sellman, the host of #WisdomOfWomen, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s upcoming book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.

Learn more about A Force for Good:

Website: https://aforceforgood.biz/ 

Are Your GROWING or PLATEAUING? https://aforceforgood.biz/quiz/

FFG Tool of the Week: https://aforceforgood.biz/weekly-tool/ 

The Book:  https://aforceforgood.biz/book/ 

Growth Accelerator: https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/ 

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host Coco Selma.

I'm founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises by amplifying, amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

So today we have a bold builder, better futures in our midst.

Lauren Mackler is the co founder and CEO of Co Fertility, a groundbreaking fertility ecosystem reshaping egg deletion and preservation with humanity, equity and transparency.

Transparency.

Before launching Co Fertility, Lauren was the founding general manager of Uber Health where she built and scaled the company's healthcare arm from the ground up.

Amazing.

Expanding access to care for millions.

After facing her own fertility challenges, Lauren combined her healthcare innovation experience and product leadership with personal conviction to create a more compassionate model for family building.

Under her leadership, Cotility introduced the revolutionary Split program We're going to unpack making egg donation more empowering, ethical and accessible.

Featured in Fast company, Forbes and TechCrunch.

Thorn is a visionary poor proving that when business is led with empathy, it can scale with power, purpose and transformative impact.

Welcome Lauren.

Thanks so much for having me.

Coco, I'm so happy you're here.

I love hearing you read that.

I'm like wow.

Thank you for doing this and for for living out this mission.

I think it's so important.

I agree that we are on a similar path to help empower women and bring women led issues into the forefront with business and equity and healthcare right where you're both in the healthcare space.

As you know, I love to always talk about a book any books like so so many books in the business and leadership space in your book does not have to be in the book in the leadership space.

The ones that make it to the top of the your times bestseller lists are typically men.

Only about 10% are women.

So it's important to always bring light to the voice of wisdom.

What's a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?

There is only one book that could possibly be the answer to this question.

It really has had such an impact on my life and my career.

It's called Super Attractor by Gabby Bernstein.

I felt stuck.

I had been at Uber for seven years and I knew that I was meant to do something.

I started Uber Health and had grown Uber Health and felt very fulfilled by that journey.

But I felt really stuck thinking about what was next and didn't know where my path should go.

And also was in a, you know, didn't know if I'd be able to have kids someday.

Which is something I'm happy to share more about too.

That book helped me to frame my thinking and reframe my trust in what was coming and helped me to sort of think about how I could co create my future with the universe.

So it's a bit manifestation type book, but also about taking really clear action steps for yourself in your future serving like what is of the highest good for all.

And so that book came for me at a moment where I really needed it and has since been something that I have reread several times and have very much taken the principle of the book and put them into action.

I buy that book for everybody.

I recommend it for everyone.

I have since become very good friends with Gabby Bernstein.

I think I manifested her into my life.

I'm not even kidding.

I just highly recommend it.

And I think the last piece I'll say is that you can read any and every self help or leadership book that you want, but you have to be open, open to it impacting or changing your life for it to do so.

So it's on you, it's not on the book.

Totally.

I couldn't agree more.

And you know, I haven't read this book and I've read a lot of these books so it really makes me want to go read it, which I will.

There is another book by Gabby Bernstein.

The universe has your back.

Yes, yes, yes.

And New York Times bestselling books.

Holy moly, right?

She knows how to super attract, right?

It's the deck of cards that accompanies the book.

I like to pull, pull a card every day that has one of the messages from the book in it.

So cool.

I wonder if she has some online programs.

Oh yeah, whole plethora, right.

We recommend.

Yeah.

Well that's wonderful.

And so for everybody listening, check it out.

Super Attractor by Gabby Bernstein.

And so you started to tell us a little bit about a moment in your life that was challenging.

Family forming year.

And so a question I always like to ask is about those big moments in your journey, in your life.

And you know, they could be personal, they could be professional where things either were really, really hard and you had to overcome or where you had a Big moment of success or you just made a choice and you just everywhere in the rest of your life you said yes.

I'm so glad I made that choice.

Right.

So I'm wondering for you.

Here you are, you know, have it.

Having left a really successful endeavor with Uber Health and now off on your own and with a wonderful co founder.

How did you get here?

What are those moments that led you to this place?

I ask myself that so often.

Like, how did I get here?

How did this happen?

It's interesting.

I actually to to shout out another book that I think really taught me something I read Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima, which I also really recommend.

She and Gabby did a podcast episode that if you don't know either of them, I would check out that episode.

But she says that our setbacks are our setups.

And that hit me so hard because that has really been the truth for me in so many aspects of my life, especially as it relates to CO Fertility and where we arrived here.

I'll just explain what CO Fertility does just so people understand that as they hear the context of this story.

We and you mentioned our split program, but essentially CO Fertility split program enables women to freeze their eggs for free and store them for free for up to 10 years when they donate half of the eggs retrieved to intended parents that can't otherwise conceive.

So that could be some struggling with fertility challenges.

Same sex male couples, cancer survivors, right?

People who need the help of an egg donor to have a baby.

There are so many different reasons.

And what we're ending up doing is making egg freezing more accessible and egg donation less transactional and more ethical at the same time.

My own journey, you know, pretty major setback was that a couple months after I had pitched Uber Health to our executive leadership team at Uber, I had just met my now husband when I woke up one morning with a pain in my side and was like, huh, what's this?

Feels like someone kicked me, but I have not been kicked.

What is happening?

And so I pushed for some testing and then they gave me even more testing.

I had a diagnostic surgery and we found that I have an incredibly rare abdominal disease.

One of 154 people on the planet to ever get it.

I had masses growing everywhere throughout my abdomen and pelvis.

And they said that I would have to have a number of surgeries to remove the disease and that it was very likely.

I Would lose my ovaries in the process.

And as someone who has always wanted to be a mom, I should have asked, will I live with this disease?

But instead, I was like, how am I gonna have kids?

Just tell me, how am I gonna have kids?

And they were like, well, you know, at the time, egg freezing wasn't an option for me because of how rare my disease was.

They were like, ooh, we're not sure.

So they said egg donation might be my best bet for becoming a mom someday.

And so wasn't ready to have kids, but, like, to know what my options are, I started learning everything I possibly could about egg donation.

And I was super off put by what I saw.

I could not believe that women were paid 10,000 to $100,000 to donate their eggs, Depending on their background, right?

Could be their heritage, their education, their career, Any number of things felt really transactional, Basically, like surge pricing for egg donors, right?

The more in demand they are, the higher the compensation amount.

And it just felt really icky to me.

I also thought it was crazy that these women were billed as anonymous donors, right?

In a time where at home dn exist.

There is no chance that if that exists today, 18 years from now, when a child grows up, that, like, a donor wouldn't be found.

So I felt like this whole space was really antiquated and outdated, and I was just like, ugh, like, nothing about this is how I want to grow my family someday.

And so my incredible sister decided at the time that she would freeze her eggs and donate them to me ahead of my surgeries, that if I woke up from my surgeries with no ovaries, I could have the peace of mind of knowing those eggs were there for me.

And that's what we did.

And so I ended up having more surgeries with very long recoveries.

Miraculously, did not lose my ovaries, which is still sort of a shock to me.

Did get to live my life with the gift of frozen eggs.

So I got to make decisions about my career without worrying about my biological clock, and I got to make decisions about my relationship without worrying about my biological clock.

And I could live my life on my own terms.

Right.

Ultimately, when my husband and I got married and we decided that we were ready to have kids, I was able to do so without using my sister's eggs.

And I gave birth to my oldest about four years ago.

And the minute I held her in my arms, actually, like, remember a moment, I think it was very late at night, and I was nursing, like, you know, two in the morning and I was like, I am ready to move on from Uber and I must build something in the fertility space.

I deeply had this conviction if I have this miracle baby in my arms, like, I don't want to spend my time doing anything else than helping other people have this feeling that I have right now.

And so for me was a very motivating experience in my life.

And something that I find that when something is off putting or frustrating or not the way it should be, that's what motivates me.

Go do something differently.

That's beautiful.

You know, and I do.

We talked about this a little bit before the call.

Like, you know, I believe that when.

You have a purpose, it's so much bigger than money with something bigger than you, that it drives you as an entrepreneur totally.

Instead of falling in love with some solution that you're putting out in the world, you have to fall in love with the problem that you're trying to solve.

Because you don't.

You might have to change the solution ultimately, but you have to be obsessed with fixing the problem.

It has to be the thing that you are wanting to talk about at every single dinner party you go to.

It has to be the topic that you're thinking about when you're walking your dog or taking a shower.

And that's very much how I felt about helping more people have babies, whether that is someone who wants a baby today or someone who wants a baby some.

That's the problem I'm obsessed with solving.

And that's what gets me out of bed every day.

Look, I know.

And what you said about falling in love with a problem is so, so elemental.

It's easy for us to create something as sort of an artist coming in.

Like I'm an artist and I created this business and we have this product and it's so amazing.

But we're not focused on the right thing.

Right.

And then, you know, and then we get hung up and take things personally and want it to be our way.

But when we're obsessed with the problem, we kind of don't.

We're.

We don't care about this.

Yeah.

We just want a solution.

So it makes it a lot easier to be flexible on the how in.

The moments when things are hard.

You had any hard moments?

Tell us about some hard moments along this journey on growing a company.

So tell us.

Let's give our listeners a little more context.

When did you launch?

Give us a sort of.

Give us where.

Where you were and how.

So what's interesting is I decided I wanted to build something in this space.

I gave notice at Uber at the end of my maternity leave without a plan.

I had to let go of almost nine years at Uber to like, let something else come in.

And so I gave notice and within 24 hours, I had a DM on Instagram from Hallie, my co founder, who was like, hey, I heard your fundraising.

How's it going?

And I was like, I'm not fundraising, but I did just leave Uber.

If any of your portfolio companies are hiring, let me know.

And she was like, you're on the market, I have an idea.

I was like, what?

She's like, what's your phone number?

And she called me and she's like, I've been sitting on this idea on the egg freezing and egg donation space.

She explained it to me, not even knowing that my sister had donated eggs to me.

So that happened.

I'm blown away by this concept of egg sharing and thought, wow, that's the future of egg donation.

That's the future of egg freezing.

Like, we must do this and we have to do it now.

I felt this sense of urgency and I attribute so much of that to her.

She's like, knew this is the moment.

Just last year, egg freezing cycles grew by 40% when we know that cost is the number one barrier, right?

Women want to freeze their eggs.

They just.

The best time to freeze your eggs is when you can least afford it and you make it more accessible.

And so we were off to the races the minute we had that conversation.

But I wanted to know that this was something women in this age group wanted and would participate in.

And so we put out a survey.

We had a handful of influencers on Instagram posted to their stories within 24 hours.

We had almost a thousand women respond.

And 66% of them said yes or definitely yes in terms of being interested in this model.

And so that to me was enough to go run at this and also really help support our pitch.

When we met with investors, within two months we had raised a $5 million seed round.

We took about nine months to really get deep on the problem so that we could come up with what our go to market path would look like.

So just under a year.

And then we just this past April announced our Series A.

So we have been, you know, generating revenue since the same quarter we launched, which is super exciting.

And we've now done egg freezing and donation cycles with over 150 fertility clinics across the U.S. we've helped women freeze their eggs and we are starting to see intended parents with their co fertility baby.

They're sending us baby photos and it's the best in the world.

So it's working and now we just got to keep scaling it.

Yes.

I mean, okay, sold the horses here because this doesn't just happen, right.

You came with a whole lot of experience and you knew what to do from the start.

And Halle, it sounds like, came from a different set of experience.

What were some of those things that you just knew as you were raising money?

What were you even raising money for and how did you know what the MVP was going to be?

Halle's background.

Halle started Rock Health, which was the first digital health fund and has invested personally and professionally in like a hundred companies.

Right.

Like, she taught me how to fundraise.

Right.

She explained the process to me and she mystified it in a way that I am very grateful for.

Now I do my best every opportunity I can, like, share that wisdom with other founders because it's hard.

I also just like, have found like on the Internet, how do I do this?

Right?

Like what, what is expected in a meeting like this?

Thankfully, the VC community is big on documenting and sharing and, and, you know, putting content out in the world that does help demystify it.

But Hallie really played a huge role in that for me.

She all had started a company called Natalist, which made pregnancy tests and ovulation kits.

She sold that company to Everly.

Well, and so in terms of like, how do you incorporate a company?

What are you like, like the steps of like, yeah, you need a payroll provider, Lauren, you need to like, get, you know, liability insurance, like those types of things.

Her having done it before definitely was a cheat code, like, help me move faster.

I think the biggest challenge though was with, not to diminish anyone's company at all.

But she, you know, in her first company was selling products.

Selling pregnancy tests is really different than screening and qualifying potential egg donors, finding in person clinics and seeing them with intended brands.

Right.

It's a really different model and it's kind of a marketplace, right?

Supply and demand.

And so that's where the Uber experience really came in.

How are we going to match one side with the other side and manage an experience that we are not physically present for?

And that's something that Uber was very much similar.

Like you can connect a rider and a driver, but you're not in the car.

I did have this experience with Uber Health, what are we trying to do?

And we've never done this before and how do we figure it out?

And you have to ask a million questions of people who know better than you do and you have to think about how you want to solve a problem in a different way.

And so we took my sort of operational 0 to 100 experience and combined that with Hallie's expertise and that led us in the right direction, that helped us get this thing off the ground.

And we also have an amazing team who is deeply passionate about what we're doing and wants to have a best in class experience.

From an operational business standpoint, but mostly for the member experience.

We call it the big sister effect.

We think we are the great first stop on someone's fertility journey.

When going to a fertility clinic can feel really intimidating and daunting, or if you're someone who's long time struggled to grow your family, coming to us feels like more of a hug in the process than going somewhere really clinical.

We hold ourselves to that standard and we're like, how are we showing up in this interaction with our members?

Does it feel like you're coming to your big sister with a problem?

And my own sister who donated eggs to me, really the actual physical embodiment of that for me and helps me think about that on a regular basis.

I love the way you told this story.

This week I'm doing a whole session on market positioning and things like language and tone and journey.

In the particular challenges you're trying to overcome in order to create a business that has a unique place in the market, you just, just do it so well.

The language you choose, the bringing, you know, the family.

It's such a impeccable example of how you've really fallen in love with the problem and created a whole journey around it for founders who are going, well, I've been trying so hard, right, to like get the first investor.

I've been trying so hard to get my product off the market.

You know, Sometimes I'm a 6 time founder now and my first few weren't quite so successful.

We have to go through some moments and you've skinned a few knees along the way and now here you are.

Can you say a little bit about that?

About how.

Because your, your partner also as a, as a venture capitalist herself understands that from a perspective maybe.

Totally.

Yeah.

I think, um, you can't be afraid of failing and you can't be afraid of what it looks like to mess up.

I think that even this morning my team called me about something that went wrong, and they were really scared to tell me.

And I was like, did we diagnose what happened?

Did we fix it?

Do we know how we're gonna prevent this from happening again?

Right.

And they were like, well, yes and yes and yes.

And they were like, but.

But we can't believe it happened.

I was like, hold on.

You are super accountable right now.

You are punishing yourself.

I don't need to punish you, too.

Let's just learn from it and move on.

Seeing those things as learning opportunities is one thing, but at the end of the day, when it comes to starting things, you just have to be resilient.

At one point, I remember Halle said to me, at what point do we just, like, give up?

When I was like, not now.

Certainly not now.

Right.

Like, we're.

This is the moment where most people turn back.

We just have to keep going.

Call me delusional, call me crazy, but when we get to the other side of this, you're going to tell me I was right.

Yeah.

And so I think, like, just being relentless, it's like relentlessly relentless, you know, like, you just have to.

If you have that conviction, you just have to trust it and keep going.

Most people never do this because they turn back too soon.

Yeah, it's true.

You know, and.

And, you know, I think that while you have experience and I have experience, we also started at one point without any experience.

It's not the person who has the most experience who wins.

The person who keeps stays at it the longest.

And, you know, I. I remember with Illumina, my healthcare company, me and my.

My leadership team, we had a mantra which is for a while that was, failure is not an option.

We have come too far.

We are going to figure this out.

And you do.

I think that's the most important piece.

Just keep figuring things out.

Right.

One of our core values is everything is figureoutable.

I think there's a book, right?

Yeah.

Marie Forleo.

Yeah.

I hate coming to a meeting where people are like, oh, well.

And I'm like, no, no, the drawing board with that mentality.

So I'm going to ask you a question.

All these other companies have always charged all kinds of money up front.

And you said, well, the target market that needs this can't afford it.

And so I'm going to make this available to freeze your eggs for free.

Right.

And so I think that's extraordinary.

I mean, obviously you had to make a business model that worked out of it, because now half your eggs are going to go to somebody else.

And that person will probably buy it.

Right.

Is that your model?

How does it work?

Because then you also have a whole path for the mom who is not sure who wants to freeze her eggs, and then you have the person who would like an egg donor.

Yeah.

So two separate audiences.

One is for the person who's interested in freezing their eggs.

Right.

21 to 34 is the age range that they can qualify to participate.

This is for.

Typically, we're seeing women who are incredibly ambitious, incredibly educated, incredibly thoughtful about planning their life.

Right.

They are prioritizing other things in their life before having a baby.

Right.

We see a lot of med students, business school grads, things like that.

Right.

They're like, huh, I'd like to have two to three kids.

But I know that I'm not going to start having kids until my mid-30s, and I want to plan for that.

I hear a lot of women in legal.

I'm not going to have kids till I make partner.

Right?

But if I have kids before I make partner, I'll never make partner.

Right.

I mean, not to.

Not that that's true, but.

But that's the body, right?

And so freezing eggs is a way to have more optionality later in life.

It is not a guarantee, it's not an insurance policy, but it is a better chance at having children later in life than if you don't freeze eggs.

Right?

And so that's who we're seeing on one side, and then that's who applies to our split program.

And then we have intended parents on the other side who come to us because they need an egg donor.

They are people who met their partner later in life, and by the time they're ready to have kids, they have diminished ovarian reserve and need the help of an egg donor.

People who've been through several failed rounds of IVF and no longer have the option of doing so with their own eggs.

Right?

You also see people who have, like, genetic conditions that they don't want to pass down or early menopause or any number of reasons.

And people are having children later in life, so they need the help of an egg donor to have a baby.

And then we see members of the LGBTQ community who always knew they needed the help of an egg donor to have a baby and are looking to do so in an option that feels more ethical, less transactional, and more human.

Right.

We give them the opportunity to meet one another as part of the process so that it's not some black box where you got your eggs or where your eggs are Going, this has really brought forth a solution for both sides that works quite well in the business model of CO Fertility, the intended parent is essentially sponsoring the cost of the egg freezing cycle for the woman on the split program side in traditional egg donation, not only would they be paying for that egg donation cycle in the same way, but they'd also be paying her cash compensation.

It is not they're typically paying for it, it's just they aren't paying cash compensation, which is great.

And so it is something that I think intended parents feel prouder to tell their future child someday in terms of how they brought them into the world.

I love that it's beautiful.

And so you have a baby guarantee?

Yes.

Yeah.

What is that?

Yeah.

So it's really.

We felt strongly that we wanted intended parents to know that when working with co Fertility.

To us, this isn't just like a one and done.

You pay us and we don't care what happens.

Like, we felt strongly that we needed to have a best in class sort of guarantee program that says, hey, we're with you until you have a baby.

And so if it doesn't work out that an intended parent has a baby through their journey with CO Fertility, we will rematch them with another donor at no additional cost.

They would pay for the cycle.

We can't cover the cost they pay to the clinic, but we can cover the cost they would pay to CO Fertility.

That's important to us, especially as a newer company.

We wanted them to feel comfortable working with us.

That's one of the ways we can help ease that for them.

This idea of making that kind of promise, it humanizes the whole experience.

Exactly right.

And Sassen's the edges.

I get the feeling as I go.

Through your website that you really care.

To say the least, that someone actually once said to me that covertility felt like a hug of a brand.

And that's what it feels like at every touch point because that's what the people on the other side are giving to you, you know, And I think there are a lot of egg donation companies, sadly, that won't even put the leadership team of the company on the website.

Like you don't know who owns it.

And I hate that.

Right.

Like it's a really personal thing.

It's a really personal decision.

I'm glad that comes through.

I just found that to be remarkable.

Thank you.

When you're going through it, and I haven't been through it, but my husband and his ex wife went through fertility challenges when getting pregnant with Amelia, our oldest, who's 23.

It's just so hard when you're going through those motions and everything.

It just feels there is no guarantee.

And yet here's co fertility who is doing whatever they can to give you a guarantee and feel like that's understanding at the depths of the soul of that mom and husband or whatever.

Two parents or whatever.

Single parent, like what they're longing for.

Yeah.

And I, you know, to have my second child went through secondary infertility, which is something I wish more people knew about.

It's this idea that you get pregnant with your first no problem.

You stay pregnant, no problem.

And so you sort of have this false sense of security that you're not someone who struggles with fertility issues.

And then by the time you're trying for number two or number three or a subsequent pregnancy and it's harder to get pregnant and stay pregnant.

Ultimately I had success doing IVF with my own eggs.

Literally to have one.

I had one embryo and now his name is Jonah.

He's snapping upstairs.

That experience going through IVF myself helped to think about and understand our members in a different way than I did before.

I think the more founders can build in spaces that they deeply understand, having gone through to some extent themselves.

I think it shows absolutely that level.

Of empathy and understanding.

And then you really are in love with the problem, as you said before.

Yes.

This theme of being in love with the problem.

So women's health is a big area.

Right.

We've neglected it as a society for a long time.

Forever.

And so what do you believe the role of women and women led companies have in shaping our future of reproductive health and equity?

Yeah.

You know, I just bought a T shirt that says fund women's health.

I wear it proudly because it's such an underfunded space.

I have never.

I'm so blown away by the amount of people and caliber of talent who want to work in women's health.

Every time we post a role, we get hundreds of applications of people who are desperate to work in women's health.

I just wish there were more opportunities.

We have really smartly bright people who want to solve problems in the space.

We need more people who are willing to step up to the plate to start these companies, get out there for venture funding in this space and go for it.

It's really daunting.

It's scary.

It's hard, especially when you see how little funding goes to it.

But I purposely wore that T shirt to our most recent board meeting because I wanted our investors who are on our board to just Be reminded that, like, keep putting your money into women's health, because look what it's doing.

We have a huge responsibility to move the needle and make change.

And I think we're probably as startups, you can be the.

And you can move the fastest and you can like, solve the right problems.

So get after it.

Honestly, I was at a dinner recently where we were talking about how to bridge the women's health gap.

And we had a lot of private equity partners there.

They were saying that their biggest challenge right now is there's just not enough companies in the pipeline that are big enough.

So, you know, like this pipeline problem of.

Part of the problem is that, like, to go from a seed stage company to series A is super challenging.

Then even more trying to get to series B because these.

Sorry, I should, but, like, the VCs are basically like the amount of times I got asked, like, well, like, why, why wouldn't, you know, progeny or kind body or maven, just build what you're building.

And I'm like, are you saying there can literally only be 3 company space?

Would you say that in every other space that you're fueling multiple competitors in any given sector?

Yes, that's right.

That's right.

One hand, they're saying there aren't enough companies that are big enough, but they're not funding.

Right.

That want to get bigger.

Exactly.

And so this was kind of.

My point is that there's your company, you've received series A funding.

Yeah.

And there's.

There are more getting seed and precede, but we see a dearth when it comes to series A and B. Yeah.

That scaling.

So there are fewer women in those series A and B, the bigger funds that can make those bigger investments.

You are a unicorn in the making for sure.

And you're showing us the way to do it and that it can be done.

And we just need to keep going.

Right.

You must meet founders all the time in your space who have ideas that gonna make a difference.

Yes, they totally do.

And that's why I'm like, let's figure out how we raise this money.

How do we do it?

We're in it together.

All right, so if you could give one piece of truth into the ear of every woman founder listening right now, and especially those navigating doubt, what would you say?

Just keep going.

Just keep going.

Yeah.

Keep going.

Yeah, I love that.

And so listeners can learn more about co fertility@cofertility.com right.

Anything else you would like to add.

Follow us on Instagram at cofertility or follow me at Lauren Mackler, M A K L E R and really keep going.

The only way out is through.

Let's go.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you Lauren.

Thank you so much for joining us today on the Wisdom of Women Show.

Thank you for illuminating the path to unlocking opportunities for growth and prosperity for women led enterprises.

We value your experience and wisdom and your incredible progress.

Thank you so much.

It's really fun.

Thanks for having me.

So for everybody listening, thank you for being here.

And be sure to follow like share the Wisdom of Women show on whatever platform you enjoy listening to or watching.

And be sure to infuse more of your wisdom into your business because that's really what your business needs more than anything.

And to find out what where in your business you need your wisdom, take the Growth Readiness quiz and of course for Goods quiz and uncover where your insight side is needed most.

The world is made better by women led business.

So let's all go make the world a better place.

Cheers.