Welcoming Alife to the Maveron Portfolio

---

For me, entering the world of fertility treatments was riddled with shame, confusion, and emotional strain. And I was a healthy, 30-something, well-resourced individual in San Francisco with a supportive spouse. I’ve had conversations with many people who don’t fit that bucket, whether they are entering the journey on their own, doing it with limited financial means, or starting off with a chronic health condition that makes fertility treatments even more complex. I was lucky — just one IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycle and four years later, I have one healthy, happy toddler and another baby on the way. That is not the case for everyone. In fact, the average woman requires 3 to 5 cycles of IVF for one child. The average cost for one round is $15,000–30,000 in the U.S. (yes, there is that much variation) with drugs costing up to 35% of that. This does not include the cost of sperm or egg donors, or surrogates, should that be required. Furthermore, egg freezing is ridden with misinformation; few women seem to realize the steep drop off between freezing eggs and having a healthy, viable pregnancy. Too many women enter the egg freezing process without full knowledge of how quickly the numbers deteriorate. Another function of the lack of information and opacity in this industry.

So what can we do about it?

There are a number of well capitalized and scaled companies tackling egg freezing and IVF from different angles, not to mention the broader category of fertility and reproductive health. Which feels like the norm in fertility these days. Companies like Modern Fertility (full disclosure, Maveron is an investor in it), Maven, Kindbody, and others have made great strides in changing the conversation around fertility, but there is still a long way to go.

As a consumer healthcare investor, what I have been on the hunt for is a company that uses technology to create a meaningful, step function change in ART, or assisted reproductive technology, putting the patient at the center of the journey.

Enter Alife.

Alife is a company at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare, leveraging AI to bring to market a better IVF experience for everyone. I first met the founder, Paxton Maeder-York, early this year. There’s nothing quite as magical as a first meeting with a CEO when you feel intellectually and emotionally aligned with them. That was my experience with Paxton. Outside of his impressive and relevant educational and career background, Paxton is an empathetic, thoughtful individual whose life mission is to make having a biological child, should someone choose to want one, accessible to everyone. This goes beyond heterosexual couples who are experiencing fertility challenges to single parents by choice, same-sex couples, and other folks who, for whatever reason, might not be able to have biological children naturally. After several more meetings, it became clear to me that Paxton’s company, Alife, was exactly what I was looking for in the fertility space.

In the grand scheme of things, the field of IVF is still relatively new — the first IVF baby was born in the U.S. in just 1981 — so technology and specifically data has not influenced it in the same way that it has in other fields of medicine. The impact that technology and data can have on this treatment protocol is significant.

There are a number of reasons for why this is needed today

1. The fertility space is big and growing: the global IVF (this includes fertility treatments and elective egg freezing) market set to reach $37B in four years
2. The category has a strong supply and demand mismatch with opportunity to thoughtfully expand supply: There are 450 IVF clinics in the U.S. supporting over 60,000 IVF births a year. Good clinics are overbooked with long wait times. Increasing supply by making existing clinics more productive without compromising quality is key
3. There is a clear technological Why Now for how Alife can exist today: advances in computer vision and AI, coupled with a growing international data set around IVF, allows for technological intervention to optimize the process

Alife is building an end to end software solution for IVF and egg freezing. I envision that clinics will use Alife to better streamline their operations and to drive better outcomes at more affordable prices for patients. And also imagine that the software will help clinics help more patients. Consumers will use Alife as a trusted resource and app as they consider and enter the IVF process. Think of Alife as the co-pilot from start to finish for patients and an AI enhanced assistant for clinicians.

Today, I am excited to announce that we are co-leading Alife’s Series A along with our friends at USV and Lux. What is even more exciting is the opportunity to work with my two long time friends, Rebecca Kaden and Deena Shakir, from those respective firms. We are three venture capital moms, locking arms to fund and support this company as Paxton and his team work to become the go-to brand for IVF. Welcome Alife to the Maveron portfolio!

back to insights & news