Modern Fertility
Setting a new standard in personal health
Fertility is an essential part of our health, but still a black box for many. Driven by the conviction that having more information about their fertility gives people greater control and more options, two former Uber and 23andMe executives set about building a direct-to-consumer at-home test. It’s the same one offered in many fertility clinics, but it comes at a fraction of the cost and results are easy for anyone to understand. As part of the growing femtech and personalized medicine sector, Modern Fertility wanted to signal a fundamental shift in democratizing health information, as opposed to just delivering tech-enabled convenience.
A path to growth
The challenge lay in humanizing the clinical and impersonal aesthetic that dominates healthcare. This required breaking taboos around fertility, reframing it as an integral part of overall health, and transforming it into something proactive rather than reactive. Also, as a startup seeking additional funding, Modern Fertility needed their brand to convey a powerful value proposition and dynamic path to growth. The brand needed to feel inclusive for a broad range of users and circumstances: women wanting to preserve their options, but not yet ready to have children; same sex-partners making decisions about fertility treatment and couples struggling to conceive. It had to exist as an intimate community, open to everyone.
The visual language is an intentional departure from healthcare’s dated graphic devices. The ‘M’ mark is hand-drawn – calligraphic rather than mechanical – to convey trust and invite exploration. A fluid ‘u’ is buttressed by strong vertical lines to emphasize a focus on the individual, and reinforce Modern Fertility’s role in supporting people through their fertility journey. The gender-neutral design is anchored in a color palette of tans and blues, echoing skin and sky tones and symbolic of bodies and moments of reflection. The decision to move away from photography sets the brand apart from the prevailing visual language in women’s health. Instead, organic shapes and illustrations represent the singular moments people experience when considering fertility.
Scaling a startup
Modern Fertility saw $70,000 in pre-orders at the initial brand launch and received extensive press coverage including in TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and Refinery29. Having initially raised $1 million from famed venture capitals firms First Round Capital, Box Group and Y Combinator, it secured an additional $6 million in funding a year after launch, as reported in Fast Company and Forbes. We're proud to have partnered with a brand that is making fertility simple and accessible for all, and we can't wait to see the progress that Modern Fertility continues to achieve.
