RTL Episode 46: Modern Fertility with Afton Vechery
RTL Episode 46: Modern Fertility with Afton Vechery
On today’s fertility episode, I am joined by Afton Vechery. Afton is on a mission to integrate the growing and buzzy fertility sector more broadly into women’s culture and mainstream wellness.
Her company, Modern Fertility, offers an at-home hormone test—the same one given in fertility clinics, but for a fraction of the price. It’s designed to get women to think more proactively and earlier about their reproductive health.
The company recently expanded into ovulation and pregnancy tests and launched an app that helps read and track test results.
Afton co-founded the company in 2017. Afton herself was featured on Forbes 30 under 30, and just recently Fortune 40 Under 40 list as well.
To learn more about Modern Fertility’s offerings, go to: https://modernfertility.com/
https://www.instagram.com/modernfertility/
https://www.facebook.com/modernfertility/
https://twitter.com/ModernFertility
Today, Afton and I will discuss:
PCOS
Egg freezing
How to use the Modern Fertility test
Episode 46 Transcript
Josephine Atluri:
Welcome to responding to life, a podcast where we talk about issues relating to health, fertility, and Parenthood. On today's episode, I am joined by Afton Vechery. Afton is on a mission to integrate the growing and buzzy fertility sector. More broadly into women's culture and mainstream wellness. Her company, modern fertility offers an at-home hormone test, the same one given in fertility clinics, but for a fraction of the price it's designed to get women to think more proactively and earlier about their reproductive health. The company recently expanded into ovulation and pregnancy tests, and then launched an app that helps read and tracks test results. Afton co-founded the company in 2017 after and herself was featured on Forbes 30, under 30, and just recently fortune 40 under 40 list as well to learn more about modern fertility, go to modern fertility.com. Welcome to the show Afton. I've been so excited to have you on the podcast to talk with you about the revolutionary way you are empowering women to take control of their fertility planning. So thank you so much for joining me here.
Afton Vechery:
Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Josephine Atluri:
So let's dive right in. You know, let's start with the impetus for why you co-founded the company modern fertility.
Afton Vechery:
Yeah. So that, that is a perfect place to start. So, Oh gosh. My introduction to the whole fertility and fertility space was actually in my first job. After graduating from college, I was working in new or living in New York city, um, working and doing a fun reverse commute out to Greenwich, Connecticut. And, uh, my job was in finance. Uh, I was basically tasked with identifying sectors of healthcare that were interesting growing, uh, had some consolidation potential ended up spending time in women's health because of my, uh, personal interest in the space stumbled on kind of fertility and infertility, which made a lot of sense from an investment perspective, because these were unfortunately rapidly growing, uh, spaces where a lot of the payment happened, uh, out of pocket. And so I just, yeah, ended up spending time there learning the business, learning the science, uh, but it was really the emotional that stuck with me.
I just was talking to so many women and in fertility clinics that had just never been told that fertility decline with age, or had never been told that IVF wouldn't work for every single person. And so, you know, fast forward, um, I ended up leaving, um, finance and working at a variety of personalized medicine and women's health companies. Um, most recently 23 and me, and when I was at 23 and me, I remembered these baseline tests that I had learned about back in private equity. And I realized that I was waiting until later in life to start my own family. So I tried to get those tests done. Um, my OB GYN said no that I wasn't trying and failing to conceive. So she wasn't going to order the tests, uh, and to make a very long story short, I ended up getting them done.
Uh, just found out so much about my body, uh, ended up getting diagnosed with PCLs along the way, but I think, you know, most importantly, it just had a conversation with myself and my partner, uh, my doctor about just my, my timeline, um, and the, that kind of aha moment for starting modern fertility was being fairly open about this experience and just realizing that so many of my peers just had questions, uh, and the fact that there were better or predictors of future fertility available, um, that we had more to go on than just age modern fertility became all about, uh, really starting as a fertility information company to kind of empower women to have that, that starting point, that baseline that information, uh, to begin a dialogue, but to also empower them with more, uh, personalized information to, to make it happen. And so, uh, yeah, that was the launch I should mention. I was billed a $1,500 out of pocket for, uh, the, those initial tests. Uh, and so a big part of what we tried to do was just take technology, take economies of scale, bring it to these products that just haven't had enough investment before and just pass on those savings to all of our customers and offer it at a much more accessible price point and, uh, make it really easy to test. We have a test that you can take at home with just a simple finger prick, like what diabetics use
Josephine Atluri:
Oh, amazing. You know, we were, before we even started recording, I was telling you how I just loved the idea behind your company because of just the idea of empowering someone with that knowledge of their fertility and what, you know, what they have sort of looking ahead and being able to plan their lives with that information. And I was telling you how I, that's kind of how I approach, um, my mindfulness, my fertility mindfulness teaching is just empowering people with, with the tools to sort of take back control of a situation that can feel like you don't have any control in it. And, you know, it's so very reactive when you're trying to like plan for a baby or plan for the future, but you don't have information readily available. So I love that about your company. And so for those that aren't familiar with modern fertility, can you walk us through the process of what, you know, after they do that finger prick? Like what happens next?
Afton Vechery:
Yeah. So, um, well first I appreciate you sharing all of that. I think that that is spot on. And I think, you know, every single one of us wants a better, uh, a predictor of fertility. We want a crystal ball that tells us, uh, when we should start trying and if it's going to work or not. And unfortunately the science isn't there yet. Uh, we have a big R and D initiative and are working, um, and actually enable our customers to consent, to have their anonymized data use for, uh, that, that type of research. So we can look up and research better predictors of future fertility than just these hormone tests alone. Um, but right now this is, um, the best that we have this and self-reported medical information and, and age. And our goal is to really, uh, from the point of that finger stick onward, kind of give you all of our customers that fertility baseline.
So what we do is we test for between two and eight hormones dependent on the type of birth control any of our customers are taking. And so we do all of that customization on the back end, uh, and then, uh, you get access to the modern fertility experience. And so what we're able to do on our side is, uh, we've worked with physicians all across the U S to customize this experience based on your, uh, hormone levels, as well as self-report and medical information. So you get access to that modern fertility, uh, experience with customized reports on all of your key fertility hormones, as well as other fertility information, you get access to a weekly webinar that we call an ANR. So if you like listening to podcasts more than, um, uh, reading a report, you can tune in and ask your questions, live to a fertility nurse.
Uh, it also comes with a one-on-one consult with a fertility nurse. So if you still have additional questions after going through the whole experience, we want to make sure that every single one of our customers is supported. And then we also have a community, uh, where you can connect and chat with other women. It was, uh, just something we realized that, that every, uh, experience around thinking about having kids, having kids, not having kids is just so different and to be able to talk to other women going through things that are similar or different, it's just a important part of the puzzle. And so, um, yeah, we have kind of all of that and this really, uh, easy to access, uh, format with, with support, uh, the whole way.
Josephine Atluri:
I love that. I love that you have not just the test and then the information that's given, but then all of the, the support afterwards, and not just from a nurse, but also from a community, which is what I've found you as I've delved deeper into the fertility community, especially on social media, is that community really is so helpful with, um, with going through the process and also trying to find your group of people who sort of understand where you're coming from and what your approach is. And, um, just walking that journey with you. So, you know, you also know that, um, TCOs, you mentioned that you were diagnosed with it, and you also mentioned on your website that you are able to at least give some information about, um, factors contributing to PC O S uh, I'd love for you to talk about your own diagnosis and then also how your tests can help with that.
Afton Vechery:
Yeah. So, um, I am very passionate about PCLs, uh, and POI premature ovarian insufficiency, uh, but starting with POS POS that's much more common, uh, impacts one in 10 women. And what was crazy to me is it took literally starting a fertility company to get diagnosed with PCOM. So I've had a regular periods my entire life. Um, I am a type a person I'm pretty stressed. Uh, the majority of the time, I wouldn't have it any other way, but I just thought I I'm stressed. And that's why I had irregular periods. And, um, just all of these, these different symptoms, um, that, that tie with PCO, uh, I, uh, do not have a high BMI, um, but I do have, uh, excess, uh, hair. And when you look at the Rotterdam criteria, uh, I, I checked some of those boxes, but I just never had a physician think to look for PCOS.
And so, uh, when I was going through and actually getting my AMH and testosterone tested, both of them were high. Uh, and then as part of my consult in an infertility clinic, uh, got a, uh, trans vaginal ultrasound where they were able to see a lot of, of SIS. I got a formal PCFS diagnosis and, uh, the kind of great part of that process was I was able to, to have that information, uh, but the not so great part of that process was that the physician that diagnosed me with PCOS, uh, told me that I would never be able to get pregnant naturally, but it was okay because they could help me with that, uh, which was just not the right way in my opinion, to communicate a PCUSA diagnosis. And so, uh, I later learned that, uh, of course that that's not the case that women with PCOS can get pregnant, um, all of the time.
Um, but you do need in many cases, the support of your physician, um, to, to do that. But I think part of starting modern fertility was really to empower women to have that conversation with their doctor to ask the right questions. And so what we do is within, um, our, our hormone testing, we test for, uh, AMH, um, and sometimes testosterone. And so by looking at your AMH levels, often high AMH, um, and above a certain is often, uh, indicative of CCOs. Uh, we also have a PCs report that talks about all of the symptoms of PCOS. So you can kind of look at at modern fertility as your kind of baseline information. We don't provide medical diagnosis. Um, but what we do is we empower our customers to have that information, to have a more informed conversation with their doctor. And I think that there are just a handful of cases of, of where this can be helpful.
Um, one is, you know, we have lots of customers that are on birth control, uh, their entire lives, they go off birth control and they don't know if they have an irregular period, if they have PCOS, if they're ovulating, if they're not ovulating. And so just understanding your hormones and how they play a role in the equation can be really helpful. Uh, and then we also have have other customers that may not have the typical symptoms of PCOS are not taken seriously by a doctor, might not have a doctor that's educated in the, the nuances of, uh, are things that should not be nuances, just, you know, women's women's health. And so often this information can empower that conversation with a physician. So, um, yeah, I think PCO S uh, just needs a lot more advocacy and education behind it.
Josephine Atluri:
It really does. It's amazing how many women are affected by it. And yet it's not something standard that is just part of your OB GYN, the visit to just have it tested along with, with all the money, other things that they test for. Um, so that's, uh, it's wonderful that it's part of the conversation with your, um, with your testing kit. Another thing that was interesting to me when I was looking through your website was about egg freezing. And, um, going through that with your testing, is there something that then gives people information about whether they are eggs are viable for freezing in the future? Um, how does that work?
Afton Vechery:
So that's a great question. So unfortunately there is no test for aid quality today. The only way that you can measure the quality of eggs is, uh, I guess age is, is kind of a proxy of age quality. Unfortunately, the quality of your eggs goes down as they stay in your body for longer, and you get older, uh, but we can measure the quantity of eggs that you have. So anti-Mullerian hormone the same hormone that we were talking about with, uh, PCLs, uh, really helps you, you understand a lot of things about your fertility. So, uh, anti-Mullerian hormone and H is secreted by the cells that surround the follicles in your ovaries. And so by measuring the amount of AMH you have in your blood, it's a proxy of how many aides you have in your ovaries at that time. And so, um, there have been studies done that actually showed that AMH is a better indicator of ovarian reserve.
The number of eggs you have in your ovaries, then even a trans vaginal ultrasound, and trying to count those eggs, because it's just a, a more reliable measure. And so what, uh, we are able do is look and see what your AMH levels are, how that ties to your age, and then help you understand how for your age, you can look at the target number of acres that you would want to get for every egg freezing cycle and use that as kind of a, to, to empower, uh, the decision making process around thinking of all of your reproductive health options. So we find that a lot of cases that, uh, people with ovaries might need more than one cycle of a freezing to achieve their family planning goals. And they might be thinking about it differently based on a lot of those odds. Uh, and so by having all of that information upfront by just walking into that consult with that baseline of information, we find a lot of our customers and women are just empowered to have that, that deeper conversation and, uh, understand that kind of, um, checklist of, of what they should be talking about if they do choose egg freezing or IVF as a next step.
Josephine Atluri:
Yeah, no, the great thing about all of this is just that, uh, that knowledge piece and that empowerment piece, because often through, as I I've found going through this process, you don't know what to ask if you just don't know. And so by having this panel of information already walking into a consult, it's a great way to just start very meaningful conversation and get, you know, get some sort of planning versus sort of just being, feeling like you're just at the mercy of the doctors and what they think, at least now you can have this really informed discussion because you have something, you know, at your fingertips. So that's, you know, I love that about this whole process. And is this something then that one would have to do, you know, every, if they're not ready to have children and just want the information that they would have to repeat over a number of years, is this something that's just like a one-time thing? How does this, how do you approach it in terms of selling it to your customers?
Afton Vechery:
Yeah, so, you know, we really see routine, uh, fertility, hormone testing, just like you would think about getting your cholesterol tested or getting a pap smear. It's something that, uh, the information can change. Uh, information will change every year. So we recommend retesting your fertility hormones every nine to 12 months dependent on your age. And so, uh, we have done all of the heavy lifting on our side. So turns out, uh, for AMH, for example, there's an average amount of decline that you should expect every year for your age, but if you are declining, uh, more or less rapidly based on your age, that can also give us insights about your, your fertility curve. So just like every woman has a different metabolism. She has a different fertility curve. And by continuing to test your fertility hormones over time, we can give you more information on what that looks like.
So basically over time, your AMH, your overall ovarian reserve will go down. FSH will continue to go up over time because your pituitary gland has to work harder to kick off obligation every month. And then for a variety of other hormones, such as your thyroid level, uh, we have those as a part of a panel and we're looking for just a thumbs up or thumbs down. Is it good? Um, is it still good? And so basically that, that overall, uh, for Tiffany snapshot gives us that fertility picture and we help you understand what those insights mean on a year to year basis.
Josephine Atluri:
That's fantastic, you know, and listening to you talk, I felt like I was transported back to my fertility clinics, like the doctor's office, and just listening to them, talk about all those different things that you were just, um, you know, giving us information on. Um, so, you know, what do you see then, you know, looking forward and looking at the whole space of, of the fertility, um, market, what, where do you see modern fertility headed in terms of its offerings and how it continues to empower women with, with knowledge of, of themselves in their health?
Afton Vechery:
Yeah, so I think what was really important to me and my co-founder Carly when we were starting this company, is that we just developed a relationship with our customers. We wanted to hear from them through our Instagram, through our customer experience channels, through our community. And we wanted to really listen, listen, and understand what their needs were. And so, uh, over the course of the past few years, we kept just getting questions, questions about a lot of things, but a lot of questions around kind of the next steps in your fertility process. So a lot of our customers take, uh, the modern fertility hormone tests before, uh, about one to three years before they're actively trying to conceive and others, uh, try to take it as they're trying to conceive for just more data points, more information. And so, um, often they would ask us about ovulation testing and pregnancy testing.
They would ask us which brand to buy, and they would ask us, or tell us that, Oh, you know, ovulation tests just don't work for me. Um, I I'm trying to get information other ways. And so we ended up digging, deeper working with our medical advisors, working with our, our community members, um, and, and really just spending a lot of time around ovulation testing. And what we realized is that the majority of tests on the market were kind of these threshold based tasks that if you, um, got, uh, LH luteinizing hormone in your urine to a specific threshold, and you get a smiley face on your test to say that you were populating, and if you didn't hit that threshold, you wouldn't get the smiley face. And it would just say no, but for a lot of women, they either never hit that threshold, or they're always above that threshold.
And so we brought to market a semi-quantitative observation test that would actually measure the amount of LH in your urine. Every day, we brought it to market at a super low price point and a major discount to leading brands, and we paired it with a free app. So you could scan your test every day and track it and a cycle tracking app alongside your cycle and other data. And so, uh, we are just so excited to be in the position where we can hear from, uh, people with ovaries. We can hear what they want, where they want us to do more and listen to that and actually bring new products, services, tools to market. And so the launch of our pregnancy tests and ovulation tests last year did just that. And I think what was super cool with that launch is that, uh, we, we have other people noticed, uh, so we went live and, uh, 1500 Walmart stores across the country, uh, shortly after that launch.
And I think it's just amazing to now see people kind of coming to our website, people shopping at Walmart and all of these products coming with the free education tools and support that all of modern fertility offers. And so, uh, to, to get back to your question, I think, um, I am very, I feel like we're just getting started with the modern fertility hormone tests. We truly see this as something that women deserve, uh, that should be as routine as a pap smear. We have to have access to this information. Uh, but we really see that as a starting point for modern fertility to have a relationship with her and support her, uh, in any way that she, she needs across her, her reproductive career. And so, um, I am very, very excited to be in the position to start the dig in there.
Josephine Atluri:
I love that. I love how you're expanding and listening to your customers and what they need, and, and then evolving into that. And that kind of leads into one of my final questions, which was, you know, based on all of the information that you've gathered from your client's experiences and speaking to them, um, you know, if you could share a last piece of advice on, you know, advocating for oneself access to information ways in which to empower one's health, any piece of information or advice that you can leave with our listeners that we would love to hear it.
Afton Vechery:
Yeah. You know, I think it sounds corny, but information really is power. And I think that, uh, the, the only person that is going to think about your future think about your timeline is you. And so, uh, my, my hope is that monitor fertility offers the option to be a part of that self discovery process, a part of that planning process. Um, but really I think that, um, having this conversation with each other, with more women, that is the best thing that we can do, uh, by talking about this information openly talking about reproductive health, making it less stigmatized, bringing it out into the open and talking about the options that we all have as women to empower ourselves with information, whether it's through a test or just a statistics, or just starting the conversation earlier, all of that is just so needed. Um, so yes, I'm, I'm just, I'm excited to be having this conversation to today and hopefully kickstarting it for anybody tuning in.
Josephine Atluri:
I love it. Thank you so much for that, that piece of advice, because information definitely is power in all aspects of life, but definitely, um, important for something that's. So time-sensitive as one's fertility and family planning. So I always like to add my podcast by shifting into a state of positivity, and we do that with sharing our gratitude. So I'd love for you to share yours for today.
Afton Vechery:
Oh, that's such a nice, a nice note to leave things on.
You know, I am very grateful for the modern fertility team. Uh, we do this, um, fun, um, fun exercise where we're randomly paired with a member of our team. And today I got, uh, paired with somebody on our, uh, product marketing team who just, um, is fantastic at her job and just, uh, was telling me how much she loved working at modern fertility. And so I am grateful to have the opportunity to think about fertility and work with amazing people every day. Uh, I, I feel like I have the best job in the world. And my, my hope is that, um, that that gratitude can propel, uh, modern fertility can propel all of us and to just building better solutions for women.
Josephine Atluri:
That's a wonderful gratitude. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and in the spirit of giving and receiving, I'd love for you to share how our audience can learn more about modern fertility's testing kit and where they can purchase your products.
Afton Vechery:
Yeah. So we have everything available at modernfertility.com. You can find us on Instagram @modernfertility. Uh, you can message us DMS. Um, just everything we want to hear from you answer all of your questions and just really, truly appreciate this.
Josephine Atluri:
Wonderful. I'll be sure to include that in the episode summary. And thank you again, Afton for joining me today for normalizing this such an important conversation.