Good morning! Marine Le Pen has her sights set on Macron, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser is optimistic about her turnaround ambitions, and a fertility startup brings concierge medicine to the masses. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
- Doctor on call. When Jessica Schaefer decided to freeze her eggs, she was sent home with a "brown paper bag full of fertility drugs," she remembers, as is standard for most women who go through the process. And while Schaefer was skilled in her chosen field of PR—she sold her firm Bevel to Avenue Z last year—mixing and injecting drugs at home was new to her.
"I ended up messing it up," she remembers. "I took the trigger shot early." Her doctor suggested she start the process over, but she didn't like that idea. "It just felt like my body was cattle and my time didn't matter," she says. She didn't get the results she'd hope for, and came away from the process thinking that there "had to be a better way."
After selling her firm, known for representing Silicon Valley clients like Greycroft and Acorns, Schaefer decided to try something new: building a concierge medicine-style fertility startup that would shepherd women through the processes of egg freezing and IVF, both digitally and in person. Lushi, launching today, raised $5 million from a cohort of investors, targeting angels with personal connections to fertility treatments, including Parachute founder Ariel Kaye, Schaefer says. Schaefer put in $250,000 of her own money and says she rejected an offer from a PE firm to fund the entire raise because she found the terms too predatory.
Rather than facilitating egg-freezing or IVF on its own, the platform aims to serve as a guide to the process. While at-home injections are rote for many in the medical field or with chronic conditions that require them, Schaefer is targeting people who find the process difficult. "Nobody likes needles," she says. She's hired a staff of 30, including chief medical officer Mana Baskovic.
Lushi offers a basic tier of membership costing $69.99 a month, providing access to an app with an AI-powered chatbot that answers questions about fertility treatments, including topics overworked doctors don't usually address, like the effects of diet and sleep or the mental health challenges of these procedures. The tiers go up from there, including telehealth injection training or a $5,000 membership that includes 10 in-person visits from an injection specialist. The service is launching its in-person options in five markets with a high volume of fertility treatments, including New York and Los Angeles. Eventually, Schaefer wants to open "injection bars" in the two cities for women to visit to do their shots.
While there are a lot of fertility startups out there, Schaefer believes that most—including category leader Maven, she says—mostly speak to couples rather than the "ambitious younger woman who hasn't found her partner yet"—the type of person who would visit a future Lushi injection bar.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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