When you walk down 5th avenue in New York, it’s almost impossible to miss Kindbody’s flagship clinic. With a bright yellow sign and a welcoming lobby, Kindbody opened its doors in September 2019 to provide fertility and women’s health services. It grew rapidly and expanded to two other locations in L.A. and San Francisco. The Pulse sat down with Chief Financial Officer Debbie Markowitz to learn more about Kindbody’s mission, the company’s aspirations, and the boom in FemTech.

Kindbody’s Flatiron Flagship Location, Photo Credit: Forbes.com

The Pulse: Your background is non-traditionally healthcare—Equinox and Exhale Spa more recently. Could you talk about your current role and how you’re applying your past experiences at Kindbody today?

DM: I started out in investment banking and joined Equinox during an explosive growth period. Equinox was my first entry into wellness as a whole. From there, I went to Exhale where we focused on total mind-body wellness. I have always been drawn to mission-driven companies and the ability to further the well-being of those we touch. Executing on Kindbody’s vision was an exciting extension of my past experiences.

The Pulse: Can you talk more about the mission-driven nature of the company? Why was there a need in this space?

DM: Our mission is to reinvent healthcare for women, primarily around accessibility. We offer the full continuum of women’s healthcare, initially focusing on fertility treatments. The problem is that fertility can be a scary process. For the most part, people start the journey alone, without support from a broad network of caring healthcare providers. On top of this, treatment is expensive. As a company, we focus on expanding access to many more women and creating transparent and accessible pricing combined with welcoming environments that feel more like your living room than an exam room.

The Pulse: Today, Kindbody can provide lower cost services relative to many of the traditional in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics ($12.5K vs $20K for a single IVF cycle). How is Kindbody able to achieve this?

DM: This is the basis of consumerized healthcare: improving patient experience and outcomes at reduced costs. Accessible pricing is a function of operating efficiency, with the belief that the savings should be passed onto the patient. At Kindbody, our phenomenal care providers are supported by strong teams in product, engineering, strategy, and operations, with everyone fully aligned around the mission. Our technology and processes are designed for efficient, data-driven scale. We are meeting women’s need more directly by providing affordability and accessibility without compromising on quality.

The Pulse: Kindbody also implements a subscription model in healthcare where women pay an annual fee and can be seen by one of your physicians. Can you talk through how you all thought of the subscription model in healthcare?

DM: Our founding physician is an OB/GYN, and our mission is to reinvent women’s healthcare broadly. Our membership enables us to provide full well-woman services, including annual GYN visits, nutrition, and mental health services. Fertility is one step along a woman’s lifecycle; our goal is to be there for her throughout a larger portion of her journey. Our members know that they will have a high-touch experience, with a team that is a committed to total wellbeing.

The Pulse: Part of the Kindbody experience is also access to a patient-facing portal. What were the drivers for offering this type of product?

DM: It’s so strange to me that it’s this difficult to book doctors’ appointments today. Especially when you are going through an egg-freezing cycle or IVF, it requires a lot of communication with the physician and the nurses. We knew we needed to make this easier for the patient— the process is already tough and time-consuming. Through the patient portal, patients can book appointments online and communicate with their providers. This really helps extend care outside of our walls. This all comes back to our thesis of using technology to drive efficiency to offer the prices that we do to our customers.

Our product team is fantastic and has built out this tool for providers as well— all of our providers have access to the same data and can see all information from various visits in an easy to use and intuitive way. This allows our care team to coordinate behind the scenes to determine who the right person is for a patient to see at the right time.

The Pulse: It sounds like Kindbody has taken healthcare services and made it more patient-centric. There’s a sentiment that healthcare should not be like any other consumer industry. How have your providers adapted to this change in mentality?

DM: The answer to this is pretty easy- we only work with providers who share our vision and believe in our mission. Building the business from the ground up lets us partner with the people who care about changing the same issues in healthcare as we do. Without finding these providers, we wouldn’t be able to achieve our mission.

The Pulse: Taking a broader look at the industry, FemTech and Women’s Wellness has expanded rapidly over the last few years and is expected to have a $50Bn market size by 2025. Why do you think this is happening now?

DM: It is a lot of positive forces colliding to help this industry move forward quickly. We have women-led businesses, and women are being more entrepreneurial and fearless in pursuing their passions in a way we haven’t seen before. With women leading the charge, they’re going to be solving the problems that they have. I always believe that you need to know what the problems are to actually solve them.

The Pulse: Given that VC tends to be a male-dominated field, how have the VCs you’ve been working with responded to Women’s Health?

DM: We know that women have a tougher time raising VC money relative to men. With Kindbody, we do have a very experienced management team which helps in these efforts. In addition to this, with our product, the people we spoke to, regardless of gender, just got it. We have an all women board and it was important to us to have a partner from the VC that was a female. Even when this wasn’t the case, because fertility is a personal story, so many of the men we talked to said they went through this with their wives, brothers, and sisters. Everyone knows somebody who has been through it, and it was therefore easy to get them on board.

The Pulse: Kindbody has grown rapidly over the last year. What can we expect from Kindbody in terms of growth?

DM: Our big lever for growth right now is penetrating the direct-to-employer business. What is really exciting is that starting January 1st, New York state is mandating that fully insured plans with over a hundred employees will need to cover three IVF cycles. We expect this to increase our demand exponentially. We are also always thinking about other ways to expand our continuum of care and thinking about the full lifetime of the patients.

The Pulse: What are you most proud of at Kindbody?

DM: I am proud that our company is fundamentally based in kindness and acceptance. There are many same-sex and transgender couples that come through our doors. Fertility is not just a single type of person issue: it affects everyone. Being able to touch so many different types of people is truly special. When people come to our clinic, they feel loved.

Interviewed by Mosum Shah, November, 2019