Mixing machine learning with fertility technology could be a science fiction plot. It can also be a company. Felicia von Reden started Ovom Care in 2023 to build software to make the often strenuous IVF process more efficient and more affordable. Ovom uses artificial intelligence to help doctors determine the right medication and dosage for each patient, and even identify the most viable eggs and sperm in a patient's body. “What makes this company unique is that we have two parts: technical innovation with AI and data, and medical care at the clinic,” she said. “Only if you bring the two together can you develop innovation that brings that value to the patient.” Valued at $22 million, Ovom has brought in $8 million in funding to develop the technology. Investors, including Alpha Intelligence Capital, have invested $8 million at a $22 million valuation. In 2024, it opened its first clinic and has treated more than 350 women.
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Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00We've finally gone an era of precision medicine. We finally are in a place.
00:04We're building the data models now that we're able to make decisions for you as an individual.
00:14We are here with Felicia von Leyen, the co-founder and CEO of OvomCare. Thank you so much for joining
00:20me today. Thank you so much for having me. So I want to talk about all that you're building in
00:24the IVF space. It's an industry that is very up and coming right now, despite having existed for
00:29so long. There's been so much innovation recently. Before we get into the nitty gritty of what you're
00:33building, I want to know a little bit about you. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself,
00:36kind of where you're from and who you are today? So my name is Felicia. I am one of the co-founders
00:42and CEO of OvomCare. I have a background in business. So very traditionally, I studied
00:47business administration in Germany and in Switzerland. And I knew super, super early on
00:53that I'm going to be building companies and, you know, building something that is changing
00:56status quo. So my mom, interestingly, she is an entrepreneur herself. And, you know, when I was
01:02growing up, I had my teeny tiny desk next to hers and playing baby CEO as she was taking calls. And
01:09growing up with her working while also still managing a family and, you know, being with the
01:16kids were super, super inspiring for me. So yeah, something that is in my blood and entrepreneurship
01:22itself. And while I studied, I wanted to build, I wanted to build a company earlier. My parents
01:27told me, no, no, no, you need to study first. You need to learn something first and then you can go
01:31into the world. And yeah, after studying, I started my first company in the space of veterinary medicine.
01:37And then approximately two years later, moved on to the space of fertility care,
01:42based on my own experience with infertility. Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you. What was the
01:46inspiration behind this? It's such a like important topic to so many people. And I feel like so many
01:50founders in the space have a personal connection or experience in it that made them want to innovate
01:55on it. So can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you? Absolutely. So I got myself diagnosed
02:01with severe endometriosis about two and a half years ago. That was something quite shocking at that
02:06point of time, because the doctor told me your reproductive age is at least 10 years older than
02:12your actual biological age. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. And he suggested that if I ever want
02:18to build a family, I should start to look into that right away. And for me, back then, I was 26,
02:25I think. I was not ready, right? I mean, I want to build a career. I want to build a company. I want
02:31to build something that, you know, changes the world. So I'm not ready for that, also from a partner
02:36perspective. Yeah. So I started looking into what my pathway would look like in building a family down
02:41the line. What are my options? You know, what can I expect? Is it impossible? Is there some chances for me?
02:46What is the right thing to do? So I started looking into fertility clinics and fertility solutions
02:51and got quite disappointed because it felt like one size fits all. It's like you have a standard
02:58package of care with, you know, stimulation or hormonal injections and everything, and that is
03:03thrown at you. And then you just go with it and you do a trial run of an IVF cycle or in my case like
03:07freezing cycle. And the lack of personalization, the lack of also personal touch and all of that,
03:14not feeling like a number, but feeling like a unique individual that is, you know,
03:18not like everyone else because, you know, every one of us has their own story. I didn't feel that.
03:23So I turned around and said, okay, if there's nothing out there that I feel really comfortable
03:28with and moving forward with, I'm going to be turning around and building what I would
03:32like to experience as a patient myself. And to be fair, I'm also, that was also driven. And that one
03:36was probably the most shocking aspect for me. Success rates in IVF care are so low.
03:41They are so incredibly low for the whole trouble, for the cost, for all the pain that you have to go
03:47through for one cycle of IVF stimulation. It's not high enough. So, you know, I'm more a curious kind
03:54of person. So I started looking into, okay, why is that so low? Obviously it's biology. So obviously
04:00it's a lot also in our bodies, but other ways to improve that. So I came to the point of precision
04:08medicine. In the end, personalizing fertility care to each individual human that seeks to build a
04:13family and really optimizing the care for each person by that actually boosting the success rates.
04:19With Ovum today, what exactly are you offering to ensure that it is personalized, more cost
04:23effective, more successful? What do the services look like? Yes. So Ovum Care is on a mission to
04:28empower every single human being that seeks to build a family to become a parent, right? That is like
04:33a sentence and this is what we're doing. This is built on three pillars. One is success rates. We
04:40are using technology and research to significantly improve success rates for both IVF but also egg
04:46freezing. The second pillar for us is accessibility. IVF shouldn't be something that is a luxury service
04:53around that. So we really focus on driving efficiency in the clinic without obviously on the cost of
04:58quality but really focusing on taking completely out the administrative work and giving the doctors
05:04and the staff time back for the patient while also with that reducing the cost for the patient.
05:08The other aspect on the cost component, we are based in Portugal with our second clinic,
05:14focusing really on areas in the world where we can have extremely high quality of care with
05:18technology and our doctors. At the same time, the operation costs are a little bit lower so we can also
05:23pass the cost benefits onto the patient. And pillar number three is patient experience. You know,
05:29when you walk into a fertility clinic today, in most cases, it feels like a clinic. It's wide,
05:34it's sterile, it doesn't feel like, you know, something that you can really feel comfortable going on
05:39that journey. It's something that is extremely emotional. We change that. So really for us,
05:44it's all about the patient making you feel seen as an individual, right? It's all about you,
05:49how you as a unique person. And by that, we do that with technology, obviously, being with you every
05:54step of the way through the app, you know, being with you. But of course, also through components,
06:00as for example, having images and videos to show to you transparently as your embryo or your ex
06:06essentially have been collected or slash with embryos have been developing. So we make you part of the
06:11journey and not just a bystand of the journey. So yeah, it's the three pillars that, you know, make us
06:17us essentially. How does then AI come into play? And like a new and emerging technologies, like you're
06:22saying, either with the app or with this imaging, there's a lot that you're using technology for.
06:26With AI specifically, how is that being implemented? So AI comes into play with two components of those,
06:31obviously for the first one with success rates and the other one with patient experience.
06:36Starting with patient experience, we are in an era now where we can use large language models and
06:41automated systems to really support you in the best possible manner without any timely delays and
06:45really being with you and, you know, seeing like already sensing you have a wish even before you
06:49actually know it. So this is on the customer experience side of things. More importantly,
06:55more dominantly, obviously, our focus is AI when it comes to personalizing fertility care, right?
07:01So we deploy artificial intelligence to personalize every single decision step through the journey.
07:06When it comes to what is the right medication, to the right dosage, to, you know, when you look at
07:11the X cells, it's not just about the quantity, but it's more importantly also about the quality of the X.
07:15So we have AI, which is assessing the quality, which is then ultimately informing the doctors
07:20and the umbrellas and making better decisions for you as, you know, as an individual and by that
07:25ultimately improving your success rates. Yeah, definitely. You are the CEO of this company,
07:29so you are deciding a lot of these like business decisions and like, you know, operationally how to
07:34implement these new technologies, all those sorts of things. But the healthcare side of it is obviously a major
07:39part of the company itself. What does your team look like to ensure that you can bring the business
07:44and the tech and the innovation while also having that really quality healthcare experience as well?
07:51What makes this company unique is that we have the two parts. One is technical, really innovation, AI,
07:59data, everything around that. And the other part of the company is really around the medical aspect,
08:04the operations of a clinic. Only if you bring the two teams together, you can actually
08:08develop innovation that brings that value to the patient. It's not just developing something in
08:13my corner, as you know, from the IT perspective, but you develop it in real time with the operational
08:19needs that we have. So for us, operational excellence and the patient care comes first,
08:24and that is informing then technology and what do we actually need from technology, which is then
08:28feeding back into operations, receiving feedback, okay, what do we need to do differently? So it's really
08:32the combination of having those two aspects together in this company as one and really talking to each
08:37up and working together. This is what makes us actually different. How big is the team today?
08:42We are today 23 people. Okay. And how has that been to grow that as, like I said, as the CEO,
08:47making these business decisions? How have you gone about picking the right people, finding, you know,
08:51the spots of the company that you need to fill and all those sorts of things you have to think about?
08:54Fortunately, I'm not on my own. I have a wonderful co-founder, Dr. Lenea Brayboy. She's a reproductive
09:00clinician trained in the U.S. and came a couple of years to Germany. And she is managing everything from the
09:07who to hire, what to focus on from the medical component, also what technologies to employ,
09:13what does actually make sense in the medical perspective. So she's focusing all of that.
09:17I'm focusing together with our wonderful CTO, Tom Krause, who has very, very experienced in AI
09:23space, who is really focusing on the technology side of things. And with him, I'm working together
09:28and really building the team around that. The AI space is obviously moving so quickly, same with
09:34many forms of technology, but the healthcare industry has been historically slower to adapt
09:40to things for, you know, a lot of reasons. But how do you walk the line of making sure that you're
09:45innovating quick enough, especially as a startup, while also having to deal with a maybe slower
09:49industry in a lot of ways? So the unique thing about our company is we are essentially two companies
09:55at the same time. We are a technology company. We're just really developing algorithms to personalize
10:00fertility care. And the other side, we are also a healthcare provider because we offer those services
10:04directly to the patient. And that's the key as we're both of that, because if you only develop
10:09technology and then wait for the market to adopt it, you have a time lag in there, right? And that's
10:13something that we wanted to bridge on purpose. So we develop technology and we bring it directly to
10:19the patient as we also are the care provider. So that way, we shorten that lag significantly and,
10:24you know, we work with the patient as we innovate, as we go ahead. So we shorten that time quite a lot.
10:30And is that a reason that you guys have your own clinics as well? Because I mean,
10:34theoretically, you could have just created the technology and then offered it to other providers,
10:38but I'm guessing that's why you wanted to keep it in-house? That's exactly as mentioned. It takes a
10:43long time for traditional healthcare providers, which has been in the market for 10, 15, 20, 30 years,
10:48to get them to adopt new technology. They're rather reluctant. The openness is growing,
10:53don't get me wrong. And we love to see that, but as to iterate faster, what works, what doesn't work,
10:58you know, how to actually go into the space and the new innovation, you need to be directly with
11:02the patient. So that's one reason why we actually have our own clinic and our own service provision
11:07within all of them. Yeah, that's super important, I think. And like you said, it just allows you to
11:12innovate a little bit faster. But the speed of things is just one of the many challenges that startups
11:17have to deal with and find a way to get past. What are some of the other challenges that you guys
11:23are dealing with and how are you jumping over those hurdles? Yeah. I think when it comes to the
11:27speed of things, I strongly believe in building on top of emerging technology. My perspective,
11:35my hypothesis, is bet on the technologies like TGPT, Lash-Lagman, that have been evolving in the past,
11:41build on top of that to grow faster together with them, instead of building everything on our own.
11:46So that is number one that helps us really to rely on existing technology, to build the layer on top
11:50as a care provider and also down the line as the operating system for fertility clinics.
11:56When it comes to other hurdles, we are building a fertility clinic right now in Portugal. There's a
12:01lot of hurdles on that side. What types of hurdles are they? Is it just in the physical space itself,
12:08in regulation across borders? What does it look like? Regulation is one aspect. Every single European
12:17country has a different set of regulations when it comes to fertility care. That's number one. So
12:21really going into the market, identifying what are the challenges, what are the benefits, you know,
12:24how do we work in this country? That's number one. But we chose Portugal for the reason of that benefit.
12:31The second one is a construction site always takes longer than you expect. So that one is really
12:37frustrating as you go through. But I believe that is part of business and also we develop the systems
12:42now internally. We're very experienced people from the inside and also from the outside to overcome
12:47those hurdles more and more and more. So it's becoming more of a modular approach that we're
12:50doing, making us also fast on that. So with everything that doesn't work, you learn how to do the next
12:56time better around and then apply that in the next projects. So you guys have helped more than 350
13:02patients with your services. What are the services that they're most often coming to you for?
13:07It is almost 50-50 egg freezing on IVF or IVF related services. It's really, really interesting
13:13to see that there's an increase in appetite for egg freezing and social freezing, right? Because it's
13:19not just eggs, it's also sperm freezing in there. So there's a lot of focus right now on preserving
13:24fertility for the future, which is, I mean, obviously encouraging given that we see decline in birth rates
13:29and we decide to, you know, build families later in time. So that's something that we see definitely
13:34increase in demand at the moment. That's super exciting for you guys, obviously as a company
13:39that's building around this, but I'm also, I'm sure it's also exciting for investors who are looking
13:44at you guys as somewhere to back. You have 8 million in funding. What has that funding journey looked like
13:49from your end? We have seen an incredible amount of support because this topic like two or three years
13:55ago was still not that big of a topic of fertility. So really in the last couple of years, it has been
14:01increasing, but everyone is seeing at this point that we need to do something in that space because
14:06fertility rates are declining all across the globe. We see, you know, people getting or people struggling
14:12with fertility more and more. Right now we have the amount of people which are not able to access
14:18fertility care is more than 95% of people which are actually infertile. So there is a huge demand.
14:24Demand is not the question for this industry, right? The question is rather for, especially for investors,
14:29how do you drive the change? How are you the change driver of that industry? And then going back to what
14:34I mentioned earlier is by combining the technology component by also being close to the patient and
14:39really delivering the value that we create on the technology innovation side of things directly to
14:44the patient and by that iterating super fast and moving forward. And are investors understanding this?
14:49I feel like especially in speaking with female founders surrounding female issues, a lot of times
14:55investors are men. Has this been a hurdle to get them to understand the importance of it or has it been
15:02pretty well received? I think I've been, we've been pretty lucky that we really identified investors in
15:08our close ecosystem which A understand the topic but also B understand the importance of that. So we didn't
15:16receive much pushback in terms of this wouldn't be a huge topic because it is. Interestingly, fertility is not
15:22just a female issue, it is also a male issue. Totally. So the topic of family building is equally relevant for
15:28for both sides. So that one we have been quite lucky and have very understanding and very, very bullish
15:34investors on the topic on our side. My last question for you, what are your predictions about what's next in the
15:41fertility space, especially with emerging technologies and you know more of this importance being put on the topic? What are you
15:47prepared for? We've finally gone an era of precision medicine. We finally are in a place, we're building
15:54the data models now that we're able to make decisions for you as an individual. You know, understanding what
16:01is the impact for example of your sleep patterns or your stress levels, what is the impact for example
16:06on how you react to medication when it comes to fertility care. We finally are on a stage where we make the
16:11care about you and not essentially applicable to everyone which is coming through the doors and that's something
16:16that's incredibly exciting for us because ultimately that means that we can enable you know people
16:20to build more families and be happier. Definitely. Well thank you so much Felicia for joining me today and
16:25walking me through all that you guys are building. I cannot wait to see what comes next for you. Thank you.