Abby Mercado has always had the entrepreneurial bug.
After graduating from Vanderbilt University, the Texas native went to Wall Street in the late-2000s to work in investment banking.
She hated it, and wanted to latch on to a startup to scratch her business itch. She found an opportunity to work for a Denver startup in the energy space and moved to the city sight unseen.
With an evolving interest in entrepreneurship, Mercado became drawn to software, specifically in how integrating it could make the energy industry better.
She transitioned into the investor space, working as a venture associate for Denver’s Altira Group, a venture capital firm that invests in technology-advantaged oilfield service companies.
While there, the entrepreneurship bug remained.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be an investor for life, I’ve been an entrepreneur at heart,” she said. “I was looking to join a team or start my own thing.”
Then, a life-altering moment led Mercado to a new idea that would consume her.
When she and her husband Sean decided it was time to start their family, they faced an unfortunate reality that impacts one in eight American families: infertility.
A couple of weeks after starting their first IVF round, Mercado unexpectedly became pregnant naturally.
Unfortunately, that pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage, which she later learned was likely caused by a mistake she made in administering a certain fertility medication.
Some months later, Mercado was pregnant again with twins and was driving through Texas with her husband. The two were reflecting on their tragic experiences of the past year, brainstorming ways they could change the IVF experience for the better by utilizing software.
Somewhere between Fredericksburg and Brenham the two conceived the idea for Best Shot.
The healthtech startup is a digital companion in fertility treatments, with a focus on patient engagement, medication management and mindfulness.
Best Shot offers a variety of resources for patients and clinics, aiming to bridge the gap between the fertility clinic and the specialty pharmacy.
The application helps patients find an IVF clinic best for them, while offering ample information on the medical team. From there, it helps patients with the medication ordering process, locating specialty pharmacies that can fulfill their needs.
Once the patient has received the medication, Best Shot’s app educates them on what they’re taking and what it is doing to their body. It also creates a medication plan for the patient that walks them through what to take and when, in an effort to eliminate errors.
Based on her own personal experience, Mercado is keenly motivated to eliminate the potential for medication errors.
“Somebody is losing a lot of money, whether that’s the patient, the employer or the payer, somebody is losing $30,000,” she said. “On top of that, it’s not the money, it’s the heartache.”
Best Shot recently graduated from the Techstars Boulder 2020 cohort, closed an oversubscribed, undisclosed pre-seed investment round and is hoping to grow its 3-person team in the next few months.
The company is also preparing to start trials with three fertility clinic partners, including Conceptions Reproductive Associates of Colorado, a clinic with five locations in the Denver metro area.
Mercado, now a mom of IVF twins, is passionately driven by her past experiences.
“Infertility was the hardest thing to face. Everything you ever thought about your life is turned upside down,” she said. “This company is the story of my life.”
