Are you ready to take control of your fertility?
That's the question Jessica Bell van der Wal and her husband Corey van der Wal wished they'd have been asked as they began their own fertility journey. And the one they're asking other women and men with the development of fertility assessment platform Frame Fertility.
"The genesis of the product and idea came from going through our journey," Jessica Bell van der Wal said. "The end of the story is positive, but the journey was not easy."
Frame Fertility acts as a personalized fertility advisor, offering women and couples coaching and tailored educational content to help them prepare for discussions with their health care providers. The startup works to understand a patient's lifestyle and medical needs and helps map a plan for their fertility goals.
The couple, who welcomed a daughter just a few weeks ago, tried for almost a year to have a baby before Jessica Bell van der Wal became pregnant, but she said the journey began years prior to that.
She said they wanted to plan ahead, so they began talking with doctors about fertility. The advice they received, time and time again, was, "You're not going to know until you start trying."
"The conversation has evolved somewhat since then, but the only other option is freezing your eggs, which is highly invasive and costly," Jessica Bell van der Wal said. "So we waited those few years, and when we did start trying we ran into a lot of issues that were preventable."
Before moving back to Charlotte and founding the startup, she and her husband lived in San Francisco and had careers selling, developing and building products in digital health. It was that professional knowledge, paired with their personal fertility experience, that inspired the pair to develop Frame Fertility at the beginning of 2020.
"We took a step back and realized there’s still no one playing in this space of preventative care for fertility," Jessica Bell van der Wal said. "We thought we could actually develop and build that platform to help people in that capacity."
Frame Fertility has been up and running since May, though Jessica Bell van der Wal said the platform is only offering limited services. They're building a detailed fertility assessment for men and women that aims to help them understand their risk factors and how they're progressing toward their personal fertility goals, she said.
"We don't just look at the typical things like age. We look at finances, lifestyle---bigger picture, and that helps them think about their goals holistically," she said.
Corey van der Wal said the decision to limit the platform allows them to offer a quality product early on in the pilot as they work to build out the concept.
"We really want to make sure we’re delivering value and not steering anyone in a direction that isn’t proven. We look at it as iterative---trial, improve, grow," he said. "We have confidence in building out from the feedback we’ve gotten, and we’ll sort of be looking to grow more next year to become generally available."
Jessica Bell van der Wal said eventually the platform will provide follow-on support services that will include educational content and a plan to help couples and individuals achieve their fertility goals.
And interest in the platform gained traction more quickly than expected, which she said is due, in part, to Covid-19.
"People are at home and have had time to think about this. We saw more interest than we ever expected due to... people’s reprioritization of their lives," she said. "Because the fertility world was kind of shut down, we also got more time and attention with fertility experts, and we were able to build out the algorithm quickly."
