On this week of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones is joined by Gabriel Bogner, co-founder of Mate Fertility—a leading disrupter in the IVF space.
Did you know—nearly 20% of the time, it takes more than two people to make a baby? And yet, only 1.7% of those dealing with infertility seek or receive the treatment they need. Gabriel and his team of fertility doctors believe the best science should be available to the most people. And at ma(t)e fertility, they’re working to make this possible.
Listen to the full episode to learn:
-How Mate Fertility is disrupting the IVF space with affordable, accessible IVF treatments
-How traditional OB-GYNs can get set-up with a Mate Fertility clinic in less than 6 months
-And what the future of Mate looks like for both IVF patients and clinic owners
Inside Reproductive Health is sponsored by EngagedMD. For technology that educates your patients with true informed consent, visit engagedmd.com/IRH for 25% off your implementation fee.
Gabriel Bogner:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielbogner/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matefertility/
Interested in adding IVF to your clinical services? Mate Fertility can help with that. https://matefertility.com/how-it-works/
Transcript
[00:00:53] Griffin Jones: Can non REI, OB GYN provide adequate fertility services, including IVF to the bulk of the infertility population. Right now we talk about that in today's episode, today's shout out is going to go to Lori Whalen, a nurse that many of you know, who's been on the show before and who also connected us for this topic.
So thanks to Laurie. Hope to see you soon and shout out to you. On today's episode, I've got Gabriel Bogner. He comes from the tech space. He comes from the venture space and is building a model in mate fertility that hopes to work with OB GYN in underserved markets to provide. IVF at a quality scale that is much more accessible because it's in these markets that are underserved and either consequently or subsequently more affordable.
So we talk about the inaccessibility in the marketplace as a whole, we talk about Gab personal journey of how he got to. This world, we talk about VC funding and Gabriel. He walks people through. For those of you that are still kind of fuzzy on the difference between private equity and venture. Gab does a good job of sharing what mate has done this far and what they're doing next.
And so I really hope that you enjoy this. I'm not the person that's qualified to say which models work and which ones won't. But I do see the need in the marketplace. I'm glad that that people have are going for it and I will be interested to follow up on the progress. So please enjoy this episode about male fertility with Gabriel Bogner.
Mr. Bogner Gab welcome to Inside Reproductive Health.
[00:02:51] Gabriel Bogner: Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited to be here, chatting with you all about a mate fertility.
[00:02:58] Griffin Jones: You made some splashes when you came into the marketplace a couple of years ago, and I'm interested in hearing about that. I want to get your story and why you decided to found this group, but I want maybe start with, tell us about the model of may and what makes it different. And then I'm going to start asking you why and about your story.
Yeah, definitely. So mate fertility is a really unique business model in the fertility space. And we really focus on three core tenants, which are affordability, accessibility, and quality of care.
And before I kind of dive into what the model is, I'll previsit by saying about eight to 10 years ago. If somebody told you to get in the back of a stranger's car and have them drive you somewhere, you would say you're absolutely crazy. I'm never going to do that and now it's the norm. We do it every single day with Uber.
If somebody told you to go and stay in a stranger's house six years ago, you'd say, I'm not doing that either and now we do it all the time with Airbnb. So it takes a little bit of disruption and uncomfortability to really push the boundary and create new disruptive businesses. And I like to think that's a little bit of what mate fertility is.
And so for our unique business model we're actually an MSO, which means management service organization, similar to a franchise model. And so what made fertility is, is we basically partner with really incredible high quality OB-GYNs in traditionally underserved fertility markets. So we're not going after LA New York, San Francisco, we're going after the cities that are often forgotten about don't get a lot of access.
Don't get a lot of high quality care and we partner with an enable OB GYN in those kinds of secondary and tertiary markets to open a mate fertility clinic and offer full service IVF, fertility care, surrogacy, egg, egg donors, PG TA the whole nine yards.
So you're a good fit on this show then, because one of the things that we talk about a lot is REI as being the bottleneck to care.
And I'm not qualified to say to what degree the bottleneck should be applied and shouldn't, but we have far more people that need fertility treatment than there are people to treat them at the moment. There's only 1100 REIs in the U S maybe a hundred or so in Canada. And so we're far under serving the populations that need to be served.
You've taken your MSO to work with OB GYN and these underserved markets. And that's another thing that every other show gave, I talk about how there's 44 fellows graduating each year. And they, it seems to me like 80% of them are going to 20 cities or fewer. And it's not, it's not, you know, in general w with obviously exception, but in general, it's not this smaller middle-market interior of the country cities.
[00:06:06] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and you hit the nail on the head there there's about 420 to 450 IVF clinics in the entire United States. The vast majority of those IVF clinics are located in top five, top 10 Metro areas with the rates of infertility just dramatically increasing over the past couple of decades, I mean men sperm counts have plummeted over the past 50 years. Women are having kids later on. My couples are having kids later in life. Women are wanting to freeze their eggs. All of this has just led to this dramatic and drastic increase in demand for these services. I mean, approximately 20% of people nowadays are diagnosed with some type of infertility.
That number is even higher when you factor in the LGBTQ community, as well as people who are. you know trying to Basically get out of the genetic diseases in their family. And, you know, some estimate that number to be as high as 30%. And there's just been zero shift in the supply curve. And unfortunately when market economics comes into play and you have a lot of demand and you have not a lot of supply.
You get price gouging and you get prices that are just continually hyped up to ridiculous amounts. And unfortunately the people that are left to pay the price are the patients.
[00:07:23] Griffin Jones: So, how do you interact with OB GYN in this model or utilize OB GYN who are not board certified REIS in this model, because some, our eyes might be listening thing.
There's no way that they can do what we do. Other people are listening and saying, you know, we've started to do this because we need, and by this, I mean, utilize OB GYN or utilized APPS so talk to us more about how do you utilize OB GYN.
[00:07:51] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, well, I don't want to give away all the trade secrets, but I mean OB-GYNs are very skilled doctors and providers, right.
And of course, going through an REI fellowship and being a reproductive endocrinology is extremely well-respected field. And, you know, at the end of the day, we're not trying to, we don't want to step on anybody's toes. You know, we see a world where we work together harmoniously and we're not trying to really tackle the super complicated cases, you know, we like to really go with the running the male infertility cases. And you know, we'd love to work with REI is to take some of the workload off of them. And some of the more simpler, straightforward IVF cases, you know, might say, go to a mate clinic where some of the more complicated cases go to REI, of course, but you know, for when we're working with OB GYN we actually go into their existing clinics and we will up-skill and train them to do IVF and egg retrievals and transfers.
We will actually build them an IVF lab from the ground up in their existing clinics. So. It's almost like a clinic within a clinic. A comparison that I like to make is if you've ever been to a PetSmart and you've seen the Banfield pet hospitals that are in the, the PetSmart locations, very similar where it's a clinic within an existing clinic.
And so those OB-GYNs they are opening a mate fertility clinic under their existing umbrella. They're expanding their services and you're right. We see OB GYN. Getting into this already. They're getting into vaginal rejuvenation, they're getting into liposuction, breast augmentations, varicose vein surgeries.
And so all of this has just led to these OB GYN is really searching for ancillary revenue streams. And you know, also OB GYN is really being able to take care of the whole patient because the first place a patient's going to turn when they're struggling to get pregnant as their OB GYN. And this anyways, they're not necessarily going to go to an REI the first time they struggled, they're going to go to an OB GYN. So imagine the patient experience. They go to that OB GYN that they know and trust, and they've been going through their entire life. And that OB GYN is like, yes, absolutely. I can do IVF. I can treat you all the way through. And so we train those OB-GYNs to do retrievals and transfers.
They go through a very rigorous process through the meat fertility academy. There's also a ton of hands-on training. There's a lot of didactic training. We are training their entire existing staff, but of course we want to make sure that there's quality with everything that we're doing too. And so we don't just kind of leave the OB GYN is train them and say, bye we're done.
Everything is overseen by board certified REI is on the backend. And they are the ones that are really kind of calling the shots on the stimulation management, because that's really where the complicated stuff comes in is, is this dim management and the medication management. And so REI is, are of course overseeing every single aspect of that and really calling the shots just on a virtual basis.
And we're also managing all of the IVF coordination. And so we employed the fertility nurses and they sit on the corporate team. And so there's virtual basically. IVF coordination. Very similar to how a lot of nurses do it today in the international space.
[00:11:13] Griffin Jones: So you're not going to give away all of your trade secrets here, that's fine. That's what people aren't expecting it though sometimes they might perk up there if they're, if they're hoping that someone does, but at a, at a high level, how, how are you building labs in OB GYN offices, where. Labs have traditionally been very expensive and very involved. And we have one client that just built a brand new center.
And that was a tremendous undertaking was with building this individual's new lab. And so talk to us about what you're bringing to the, yeah, not granular, but at a high level, what is it that you're doing to be able to do that.
[00:11:53] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, I mean, well, it's a partnership when we find people that are joining the ma(+)e fertility ecosystem.
So as much as you know, we're trying to sell them on ma(+)e fertility, they also have. to sell us And we have to really ensure that it's the right partner and it's the right location. So we do a ton of upfront work before we go into any partnerships with any OBGYN clinics, offices any other OBGYN NSS, we do a ton of up work on that specific clinic and location to make sure that we would be able to actually build a lab there.
And I think a lot of people love to over-complicate this stuff. And, you know, make it seem like it's the most involved thing in the entire world, but you know, at the end of the day, we've found tremendous partners in the equipment. We found tremendous partners for architecture and build out and we've kind of got it down to a science and we know exactly what type of size what's needed in the labs.
Like what the proper HVAC configuration is. And, you know, we just go in and yeah. And we built them. And I think a lot of people like to over-complicate things and it doesn't really need to be that complicated. I mean, we're getting brand new top of the line equipment on everything too. And you know, we did it, we, we built an IVF fully functioning IVF lab and about six months maybe less than that about five months actually I'm with all brand new state-of-the-art equipment.
[00:13:29] Griffin Jones: And I remember someone telling me about how all of this was, was possible. If someone else work on an affordable model, not the same, but about how there's this opportunity to. It create labs much more economically and efficiently, but I'll let me play the other side for a second is I can picture someone listening and saying, hang on.
It is really complicated. It is that complicated. And you mentioned that you have your team that trains the OB GYN. They're probably thinking, well, who the heck is training these people. So talk a little bit about your team who is training these folks.
[00:14:04] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, absolutely. So we've compiled a really tremendous team of people who have been in the space for upwards of decades.
And, it's really interesting because the beauty of our team is that we have a mixture of people who have been in the fertility space for their entire careers. And then we have a mixture of people who have. Been in the tech and the startup space. And so we both bring these very unique and interesting ideas to frankly, in an antiquated industry.
And so our provider team is made up of four REIs right now. Two of them from Stanford, one of them comes from Harvard. I'm not going to give away any names right now, just because I want to protect everybody's privacy. And then our nursing team is made up of one of our nurses, Lori Wayland, who's been in the space for 20 years. I believe she actually knows you Griffin. And then we actually just brought another nurse. Her name is Stephanie Parker. She's been in this space for about 15 years as well. And then leading up our operations is Tammy, Hickson, Keltner. Been in the fertility space for upwards of about 15 years.
And she ran operations for I believe I forgot the name that she run. HRC. She ran operations for HRC down in SoCal. So we have a really experienced and qualified team. We're not just kind of pulling people out of from the oblique, from out of the oblivion. And we're really making sure that we're partnering and we're bringing on people who understand the mission of what we're trying to do, you know, and at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of companies and maybe even companies in this space that are just trying to do it for the money or because the fertility industry is hot and there's a lot of investors coming in, but, you know, honestly, what we're really trying to do is solve the problem.
I think everybody can admit that there's a problem in this space. And that problem is that there's currently not enough treatment for the amount of demands. There's months, long waiting lists. People can get in to see doctors. And so, you know, ultimately the existing system that is in place today wasn't allowing us to do that. Wasn't allowing people who need care to get access to care. And so what we're really trying to do is increase access and solve this dramatic and huge problem that currently exists in the fertility industry. You know, and we're finding really forward thinking providers and doctors who live and see this every single day in their clinics, see people that can't afford treatment, that can't get in to see them. And they understand the need for just increased access for increased affordability. And you know, we're not, we're really not trying to. Take business away from existing practices or existing REI is, you know, I like to say, we're not trying to steal a piece of the pie.
We're actually trying to make the pie bigger because right now there's a lot of people who just aren't getting treatment.
[00:17:04] Griffin Jones: So a lot of people say that, but I do actually see you having a model that makes the pie bigger. I think it's really important to do, especially in those markets. I want to talk about how you select markets, but I want to talk about how you came to this problem.
You said you're here to solve a problem. You also mentioned there's lots of people coming into this field and many of them with lots of money because they believe that there's more. To be made here. And there is a lot of money going around here, but sometimes it's just shifting from one end to the ship, to the other as, as the waves go up and down.
Right. And I think there's some people here, there are some people that are clearly coming and adding entrepreneurial value to this space. And then there's many people that aren't and I get up in the morning every day and try not to be in the second group. I try to be in the first group.
And even if you have the purest of heart, it's not easy to provide value in business. It's a hard thing to do. We can have an entire podcast episode about that, but talk to me a little bit about why this problem, you're a businessman. You're an entrepreneur. You've been in the tech space.
You've probably seen a thousand problems and What was it about this one that made you say I want to try and tackle this?
[00:18:16] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, well relation to the fertility industry goes all the way back to my birth because I'm actually an IVF baby. So it's very full circle getting into this industry and the space for me.
I've always been really fascinated by the fertility space and I remember very clearly. My mom told me I was an obvious baby. My parents were older when they, when they wanted to have me. And so they just struggled to get pregnant. My mom was 38 and my dad was 37 and they just couldn't get pregnant.
And so they went and they, you know, went through treatment and they ended up having me. And so I remember when my mom said that, you know, you're an IVF baby. And I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that I was really fascinated by the industry and I used to run around and tell people I was a test tube baby, and I thought it was super cool.
And as I just delve more into the space that throughout my life, I really began to understand. The intricacies of the industry and what's wrong with it and why it's so inaccessible. It's a multi-pronged reason on why I wanted to go into the space. So that's the first one. The second reason is, know, I have had a long relationship, I guess, with the US healthcare system. As I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at a pretty young age. And so I had a pretty serious case, ended up having my entire large intestine removed part of my small intestine, I have the J pouch surgery, my J pouch failed.
I actually currently have an ostomy right now. And so I understand just the difficulties of navigating the healthcare system in the United States. I understand. The frustrations that patients go through on a daily basis because I've been living it my entire life. And so I've always wanted to go into the healthcare space, but from the business side to really help and make sure that, you know, the patient experience is better than what I have.
And, you know, although the fertility industry is not Crohn's, it's all the healthcare industry at the end and it's all, you know, patient experience. And of course the patient experiences is super, super important and flawed and broken in the us healthcare system today. And then third reason is I'm also gay.
So being part of the LGBTQ community, Third party reproduction and surrogacy has always been something that's been really top of mind for me, because I've always wanted to have kids, but I never knew how it was going to be possible for me to have kids. And of course, really just understanding the space a little bit more.
You really see how inaccessible. It is for a lot of people in my community. And honestly, how discriminatory a lot of the policies are around LGBTQ fertility care. You know, I think there's a lot of amazing clinics today that have done a really tremendous job in focusing on working with the queer community.
But I think there's, you know, a ton of work to still be done. And we actually just brought on one of our providers. One of our REI is who specifically works with, you know, the LGBTQ community. And so she's really going to be helping us build, build our programming fully out just around, around helping the queer community, especially when we're going after places like Oklahoma, west, Virginia, Kansas, these, these more conservative markets where a lot of fertility clinics and a lot of hospitals are backed by religious organizations. And so, you know, receiving care as a queer individual, as a trans individual, or even as a single woman receiving fertility care at a lot of these hospital back clinics is impossible and we've seen it firsthand in Oklahoma city time and time again.
[00:21:57] Griffin Jones: So you come into the field from, from an emotional roots of being an IVF baby, having a complicated history with the healthcare system. And being a part of the LGBTQ plus community and seeing a need for family building to be far more expansive than what it is.
How do you get from those three starting pillars to, okay, now we're starting to see a model. Like how did it come down further to like, okay, like, this is drawing me over to look into this area, but then how do you get from looking in to the reproductive health space to this is the need. How did you get there?
[00:22:38] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, well, it's actually looking out. So instead of looking into the space, it's really looking out what is the rest of the world doing? And you know, this business. A year or two years was really just like researching and understanding the space and really trying to grasp, how can we actually fix this industry?
How can we actually make a dent in the root of the problem, which is there's not enough clinics and there's not enough providers, how can we actually solve the root of the problem? And it took looking outwards to actually come to the solution. So when you look at the United States, 1% of our babies are born using art assisted reproductive treatment.
That number is incredibly low. You look outside Japan, Denmark, Israel, Australia. These countries have upwards of 10 to 15% of their babies being born using assisted reproductive treatment. And of course you ask the question. Why, like, why do all of these countries have so much more access? Why are so many more people using and turning to assisted reproductive treatment, of course, because it's a lot more affordable, but second, because OB-GYNs are actually the ones that are providing the care in these other markets. So they're the ones that are doing the retrievals and transfers. The whole REI kind of full fellowship doesn't necessarily exist in a lot of other countries.
And so OB GYN are often the ones that are doing the retrievals and doing the transfers and doing the stimulation management. And so, you know, looking at just how the rest of the world is doing it and why the United States is so far behind. It's like, why, why, why aren't we doing this here yet?
[00:24:22] Griffin Jones: So you start from looking out, you're seeing what other places are doing, and you think you might be able to close the gap by taking some pages out of the books of other countries, then how do you start to actually. Build this because yeah, I came in as an outsider. My story is very different from most other people that did come up as an outsider. When people come in as an outsider, they're usually coming in like either as a tech entrepreneur and coming in with some kind of VC backing or they're coming from private equity.
I came as you know, I was a marketer in my twenties and I lived out my twenties traveling. And I knew that I wanted to build a firm and knew that I wanted to subspecialize. And I started working with a couple of clients in this field and decided, okay, I'm just going to dedicate to this field and it wasn't easy.
And some people do a great job at, and some people don't and sometimes it is very much like I had one physician say to me that. He no longer felt this way, but it took him a while to get over people saying our field, as opposed when it's, when it's the physician's field. At least when we're thinking of in very pure purest terms of field of medicine.
And so there's that sentiment. So how did you start to come in to this field, knowing that you're looking outside and as you said, can be insular. What was that like?
We've been talking about things to expand care and reduce the REI bottleneck. And that always brings up Engaged MD for me. But in unlike the conversation where we're talking about using OB GYN and using other docs in other marketplaces, Engaged MD is a way to scale you to scale your team and to prepare your patients so that your patients have true informed consent so that they have true pre treatment education.
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They actually get the module to actually get the education, to actually get the true informed consent so that your staff doesn't need to track everything down for them. And then when they meet with you, when they meet with your staff, you can answer the questions that still remain for them or the parts that they're still hung up on, that they really need your help with because they've gotten the piece that they could get from anybody.
[00:25:55] And now they can get that tailor fit care custom to them from you because you used Engaged MD. If you're not using Engaged MD already, you're in the minority because so many people are using Engaged MD because they say it's the thing that has made the biggest difference in their practice in the last several years, at least many of them have told this to me over and over again. So if you're not in that group, if you are missing out, you can get on the train by going to engagemd.com/irh. If you mentioned that you heard them on Inside Reproductive Health, or you mentioned that you heard them from Griffin Jones, we get 25% off of your implementation fee.
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So how did you start to come in to this field, knowing that you're looking outside and as you said, can be insular. What was that like?
[00:28:15] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. I mean in actually like the business it was real. It was really just a matter of like for the first year or so. Just kind of going in stealth mode and understanding, okay, what is needed to actually do this?
Like. What is the training that's needed? Let's build that entire training. You know, what is the continuous management that is needed? How are we going to actually run that? What is the architecture that's needed? What is the lab look like when we're actually, you know, building it? What does, what are the specifics that go into everything?
What does every single piece of equipment that you need in a fertility whap and how do we get all of that? You know, how do we partner with lending services to make sure that we can provide these services to patients that can't necessarily afford it right out of pocket. It was really just understanding and researching and talking to people in the field for a really long time.
And then it was a matter of calling OB-GYNs around the country and trying to find OB-GYNs in the markets that we found attractive to partner with us. And, you know, there was a lot of interest in underst and actually being able to provide this type of care for their patients. And also of course the financial benefits that come along with opening a fertility clinic.
But, you know we talk to OB GYN all the time that say they're referring out 20, 30 patients a week to REI that this is something that is being talked about constantly. And so, you know, we have this initial hypothesis and then in continuing to discuss with people throughout the entire medical field though, OB GYN field, the fertility field, just really beginning to understand, like it just reinforced the hypothesis and continued to tell us that we were on the correct path and that this is something that's actually needed.
I mean, for our OB GYN, I'm giving up a massive portion of their potential revenue because they're not able to treat and take care of any fertility patients. And so, you know, finding really forward-thinking OB GYN that actually want to do this with us. You know, it wasn't as hard as we actually thought it was going to be.
And you know, that it was just a matter of signing that contract and, you know, beginning the implementation process and it wasn't without its difficulties and challenges. And a big part of that was surrounding ourselves with the best team possible. So surrounding ourselves with, you know, a mixture of people in the tech space, people in the fertility, industry, nurses, doctors, operations, people but it was really finding people who understand what the mission is. I think the mission of what we're trying to accomplish is very powerful. You know, finding embryologists. It's a draw to a lot of people in the industry who have seen, you know, this space for decades and have seen just the difficulties that a lot of patients endure. And you know, when we talk about main fertility or really.
A solution to a lot of the problems that exist. And so, you know, just being able to talk about the mission and what we're actually trying to do for the industry has been really powerful. I don't know if that fully answered your question.
[00:31:45] Griffin Jones: It definitely did with, especially you started talking about this, the staff, and maybe that answers my REI side question definitely answered the question for OB GYN it within that answer, I could see some resistance from REI. So how did you, you said you've got four board certified REI's working for you now and in some fertility nurses, how did you, how did you reach out to them? Because not so much anymore, because everyone's so busy, but even when I first got into the field, there was this concern that OB GYN would be taking.
REI patients and people didn't want that. I think now people are a bit more open to it, but you know, when you're talking about that, like wait REI is taking 20% of OB GYN business. Well, summary summarize might be thinking that OB GYN is now taking 20% of my business. So how did you extend that olive branch or build that, make those headways into the REI is that work for you?
[00:32:50] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. Great question. And I started my career as a sales development representative, so I was an SDR. So I was grinding. I was doing a hundred dials a day. I was doing a hundred cold emails a day. I was sending out hundreds of LinkedIn messages a day.
When you start your career, as an SDR or from the bottom, you understand what it means to get creative and how to get people on the phone and get people talking to you. And so literally it was cold outreach. It was sending messages on LinkedIn. It was utilizing people that we had connected with to make warm introduction to the best people that they know it was, you know, utilizing different drug reps, whether they're from EMD Serona to make introductions to various REI s and nurses that they had known who, you know, were looking for something new it's, you know, creating really, really good JDs that actually speak to the person, reading them and making your JD stand out.
And being able to, you know, have a really powerful JD that a lot of people actually want to apply to. I worked at LinkedIn before this, so I kind of understand like the, the recruiting space, maybe a lot more deeply than, than other people will do and how to, you know, send really powerful messages and get people on the phone.
And so that's really what we did. It was just a grind and, you know, once we were able to talk to REI, is that understood the mission? We didn't get, we didn't get pushed back in the way that we thought we were going to. I'm sure we will in the future. And I'm sure a lot of it is yet to come.
But you know, we were very specific or very intentional about who we were reaching out to and who we wanted to connect with. And, you know, once we got those people on the phone, it was just explaining to them what we're trying to do and how we're trying to, to build a better future for the fertility industry and for the patients.
[00:34:43] Griffin Jones: I can appreciate the sweat equity of sales outreach, or cold outreach. I started my career in radio ad sales. So that was the first five years ago, early twenties and mid twenties have a real job. And it was here's the phone book kid, like, and really intense yeah, really high levels of rejection.
But one thing that it taught me was just how to get people's attention and I forget the, what was the acronym you used for the sales rep position that you started?
[00:35:12] Gabriel Bogner: SDR, sales development representative.
[00:35:14] Griffin Jones: Sales development representative. Okay. So you mentioned that you mentioned LinkedIn, tell us more about your history.
Like how did you get to be an entrepreneur of this company that bridges tech and fertility people are thinking like, who is this guy? So what were the other things that brought you on this career path?
[00:35:33] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah I went to UC Berkeley, got my business degree. You know, always wanted to go into the medical space.
So I don't think it was a surprise for a lot of people when, I jumped into the medical field. I really wanted to go to a big company before. Went into the start-up space. I always knew I wanted to go into the startup space. I always knew I wanted to start my own company, except I wanted to get an understanding of what it's like to work at a big company before.
And so, you know, joining a company like LinkedIn, doing a rotational program, there really understood what it's like to build a company that has an incredible mission and has a really, really terrific culture like what it means to make people want to come to work every day. You know, what it means to build really incredible cultural tenants, what it means to be a really effective manager, how to effectively manage people, how to effectively have conversations, how to communicate with people, how to sell people on things.
You know, I learned all of this, just working at a different type of working at a tech company. And then you know, just made the jump into, into doing this and it was a lot of connecting with venture capitalists and, you know, VC we're backed by VC money. And so, you know, finding the right angel investors and venture capitalists who believed in this space as well and believed in what we were doing.
But, you know, I'm the first to admit that I don't know everything and you know, maybe I am a little, a little green in the sense that I am on. I am on the younger side except, you know, No one to step aside and let the people who have been doing this for decades and the professionals really take over.
But I can tell you, one thing is that I'm passionate about the space and I am hardworking and I want to make sure that. Patients to come in all aspects of healthcare, have a better experience than, than I did. And to really build a better future. I'm always been interested in like the nonprofit space as well.
So really wanting to build a company that has a really tremendous vision. And you know, I'm not the CEO of may fertility right now we have an incredible CEO. So I'm not the one that's running the day-to-day and calling all the shots. And, you know, I helped build this thing. I understand when it's time to, to bring in professionals and people who have been in this industry for decades to handle a lot of the intricacies that, but I am just not prepared you or haven't done in the past. And that's not to say that I'm not sitting and learning and taking in everything as the other people around me are doing these really complicated things. But you know, I want to make sure. At the same time as I am a leader, I'm also a sponge and I'm also a follower to bringing these people together who know that there's an issue and there's a problem.
And making sure that we kind of have this guiding light into what, what needs to be done, but the actual, how, and the actual specifics and what, you know I'm not the one who's doing the really difficult kind of fertility, heavy lift.
[00:38:40] Griffin Jones: So talk about how you raised money for this venture, because some of our audience, it comes not just from a financial background, but from a financier background, they're either data to work for VC funds or they're at PE firms. And, but many of our audience are practice owners and most of our audience is practice owners and many of, or younger docs, people coming out of fellowship. And many of them use private equity and venture capital. Interchangeably and they're used to, they're more used to private equity or many of them are because that's mostly who's buying practices that's established money coming in, buying an established business hoping to improve either profitability or efficiency or both, and then sell it at a profit a few years down the line venture being something different. So talk about talk about your background or mates history.
[00:39:39] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, definitely. Venture is different than private equity. Venture fuels innovation. So if you think about the companies that exist today, we wouldn't have some of the largest and most impressive companies in the world. If it weren't for venture capital money, we wouldn't have Netflix. We wouldn't have Google.
We wouldn't have LinkedIn. We wouldn't have Airbnb. We wouldn't have Uber. We wouldn't have Lyft. We wouldn't have. Pretty much any company that is in your phone today or that you use on a regular basis nowadays, we would not have without venture capital money. And so venture capital basically fuels innovators and fuels people with really great ideas without necessarily having to have a profit from day one.
So they're almost like the engine that starts something. And then. You will often people who don't have their own money or they don't have the resources to do it on their own. And you know, we found a it's it's a lot of just networking. Honestly. It's a lot of reaching out. It's a lot of pitching. It's getting it's literally saying the same pitch over and over again, day after day probably hundreds of times to get 10 people to move on to the next round. You eventually get one, yes, because you know, in a room full of nos, all you need is one, yes. And you know, we were lucky enough to get that yes from a venture capital firm that specifically specializes in seed seed stage companies called strep capitals.
You know, there's different levels. There's the angel round, which is usually smaller from friends and family. And then there's a seed round, which is the very beginning of your business where you're really trying to prove out product market fit. You're really trying to hire the best team.
And you're really trying to show kind of proof of concept down the line. And then there's series A series B series C and eventually there's going public getting bought There's a bunch of different exit options, but, you know, as venture capitalists come in, they are kind of taking a piece of the, the fertility pie, I guess, depending on what route they come in.
So obviously if you're coming in earlier, if you're coming in at a seed stage or a series A they're kind of getting more bang for their buck because it's riskier basically. So a venture capital firm that's investing in a serious. The company, they're not getting as much equity because that business as well established, and it's not as much of a risk.
And so, you know, we found risk-takers and a lot of people have said that it is the most innovative business model that they have heard either ever or in the healthcare space. And so that's what really is getting people interested. And then it's just really proving out what we've been able to do thus far and, you know, utilizing the existing relationships that we've made and, you know, utilizing the existing cause usually there's a lead investor and then there's follow on investors.
So somebody will write one bigger check and then that's kind of. The sign to other investors that might be interested that, okay, this is actually legitimate. I'll put in a little bit of money and then it's utilizing those investors to really. Honestly help you and to be that sounding board throughout your growing pains and growing experiences, and then use that existing network that you've cultivated to raise your next round of funding.
[00:43:08] Griffin Jones: So you did your angel round a cup, you close that out a couple.
[00:43:12] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah so, we've done an angel round. We did a seed round and then we did basically a CB or like a bridge round. And we are going out to raise our series a actually in the next. Hopefully month or so, we're gonna kick off what they call the road show.
[00:43:31] Griffin Jones: Lucky.
[00:43:32] Gabriel Bogner: Yes, very excited,
[00:43:35] Griffin Jones: Well, that's a grind, so I wish you the best with that part of it. How about the marketplace is first off, you know, well, you gave us a general criteria of the markets underserved. But why specifically, why did Oklahoma city become the first?
[00:43:50] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. So Oklahoma city is a fascinating market.
There's a Metro population of 1.6 million people. It is one of the fastest growing cities in terms of millennial population growth. In addition to the LGBTQ community the population of the queer community there is rapidly increasing as well. You look at income it's not super high, but it's also not on the, on the complete, lower end of the spectrum.
And we built a kind of proprietary market analysis rubric where we basically have a bunch of different criteria that we put into a spreadsheet and it spits out a grade for us. And, you know, we go after the markets that score, so it's a matter of looking out what are the existing competitors?
What are their ad spends? Are they spending money on ads? Are they doing Google, Google keywords? What is their SEO? Like? What is their other marketing? Like, what are their prices? What's the wait list? All of this has kind of a value on the backend. What's the population growth? There's a ton that goes into it.
And then we get a value out on the other side and we have a really top down approach. So any markets rank in a, for us then we're going after. And we're, list-building specific OB-GYNs, OB GYN aggregators hospital systems. And then we're cold calling.
[00:45:07] Griffin Jones: When should we expect to see you in other markets?
[00:45:09] Gabriel Bogner: I would say by 2020.
[00:45:13] Griffin Jones: So this year. And so talk to us a little bit more about, of just what else you want to see accomplish. What are you paying attention to right now?
[00:45:24] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. I think there's a lot of tech to be made in the fertility space.
And so we have a very unique approach, whereas a lot of venture capitalists, you think, oh, they're tech investors or, and a lot of them are unfortunately eliminated a lot of venture capitalists for us, but we're taking approach where let's really get the foundation of our business model.
Let's really make a dent in the market. And then let's build technology around that. Let's build technology around what we see as the need. We're already seeing the EMR space. You know, there's a ton of tech that that could be facilitated from, from that lens. And so, you know, we're, we are always keeping an eye out and kind of making a mental note of what type of technology needs to be built in the space to just facilitate a better patient experience you know, especially services around mental health too, I think is something that we're going to be super interested in. People going through are diagnosed within fertility is that embarrassing that people make is to oncology. It's the same as getting diagnosed with cancer, though, the rates of depression and the rates of anxiety that people experienced.
And there's not enough mental health resources around infertility it's, it's still very taboo. So, you know, breaking down a lot of those barriers and just education for the greater community and the greater public, I think. All the ton of companies out there kind body modern fertility that I've done a really terrific job in educating the population and educating the public about infertility.
And it's a common diagnosis. It's not as scary as you think it is. There are treatments, there are options. These companies have done a really terrific job in cultivating that type of brand and that type of not type of, you know, just information giving and, and we hope to, to do the same to just break down some of those barriers, especially when we're getting into some of the more underserved markets education there is lacking. And then, you know, what we'd love to do is just get to a point where the supply and the demand curve are, are equal, you know, as, as the demand is increasing, the supply should be increasing to you know, we also see a world where we have a mate fertility kind of academy is dotted around the United States where, you know, not only are mate fertility employees going there. Other fertility clinics are sending their nurses there or sending you their, even their doctors or their NPS to just get standard training. Because, you know, as everybody knows in the fertility space, there's a lack of standardization as well from clinic to clinic, could be getting something different.
And so, you know, there's a best practice that people should be following. And so, you know, creating centers of excellence around the United States to just facilitate an all around better standardization of care for everyone.
[00:48:10] Griffin Jones: What about the idea that, you know, the bottlenecks being REI, but what about the idea of just moving the bottleneck one wrong, further down the bottle that many people would say, well, BG LANs are swamped too.
So are we kicking? This can down three feet and, and if not, why do you think not?
[00:48:36] Gabriel Bogner: I think it's really simple because there's 1000 REIs in the United States and there's 30,000 OB-GYNs. So, you know, it might be kicking it down the wrong, but it's better than what we currently have.
[00:48:51] Griffin Jones: When you were talking about market size and I noticed in the show notes that you had sent over 90 total, correct me if I'm paraphrasing, but 90% of the centers are, or 80% of the centers are in the top 10 metro is that right?
[00:49:09] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah. I mean, so LA New York, San Francisco, Chicago, all these big metropolitan cities, there's an insane amount of clinics in these cities.
And there doesn't need to be any more clinics in these big cities. And, you know, that's why I don't think a lot of people, I guess, listening or see us as competition, really, because we're not trying to go after the cities where there are a ton of fertility clinics, we're not trying to steal market share away from any of these existing clinics.
We're really trying to go after areas where there's, there's just nothing or there's very, very few options and those options aren't great. And so we're really focusing on markets where care does not exist. Places like Alaska, you know, there's not a single IVF center in Alaska. And so that's the market that really gets us excited. That's the market where we want to be.
[00:50:04] Griffin Jones: You have plans to go to Canada, because as I'm thinking, Canada might have an even worse concentration problem than we do, that probably more than half of the centers are in the GTA or maybe 60% or so of the centers are in Southern Ontario. If you extend Toronto out, maybe like two hours further and there's some provinces that have none.
Any roadmap for our Canadian listeners? Have you planning on going up there?
[00:50:31] Gabriel Bogner: Not at the moment, but I absolutely see a world where this goes international a hundred percent.
[00:50:37] Griffin Jones: Gab how would you want to conclude? Like I said, most of our audience is practice owners, but some are embryologists that might want to come work for you.
Some might be investors that are, it was ears are perking up. Others might be docs that are kind of interested. How would you want to conclude with a mate's vision and what you want to see happen in the market place?
[00:50:56] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, I mean, what we really are aiming to do is create a better world, honestly, and create a better world in the fertility space.
I'm sure there's a lot of companies in the space right now that are solving one issue that exists and yes, that issue needs attention. But at the end of the day, it's not solving the root of the problem, which everybody knows exists. There's not enough providers. There's not enough clinics for the amount of care that is demanded in the United States.
And so what we're really trying to do here is actually make a day. In that huge problem by, you know, opening clinics in traditionally underserved markets by having care that is significantly more affordable than some of the legacy clinics and really standardizing and having high quality care at every single corner, by making sure that, you know, we're controlling a lot of those, a lot of those touch points you know, and if you are interested in and you want to learn more about what it's like to, to come join mate fertility then, you know, I definitely recommend reaching out to myself or, you know, just visiting our website. Should I get my email?
[00:52:10] Griffin Jones: You can give a plug if you want. Yeah. As long as you're not worried about Russian hackers spidering the internet.
[00:52:18] Gabriel Bogner: Maybe I won't give it, but you can find me.
[00:52:20] Griffin Jones: Or people can contact me and I will be happy to put them in touch with you if they don't, if they don't connect with you on Linkedin.
[00:52:26] Gabriel Bogner: Yeah, definitely.
I'm active on LinkedIn or you can reach out to Griffin, but you know, we're just trying to just solve a problem that we know exists. And we're hoping that a lot of people see and understand what we're trying to do and support us in doing that.
[00:52:39] Griffin Jones: I wish you the best of luck, Gab Bogner. Thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health.
[00:52:43]Gabriel Bogner: Thank you so much for having me.