Halle Tecco is no stranger to conception struggles. The Rock Health founder and former CEO has been public about her journey on social media, including two rounds of IVF, eventually leading to a healthy baby boy. Now, she wants to help others make babies, too.
To get there, Tecco has joined a class of new fertility tech companies that have popped up in the last few years. Taking from her years of experience building Rock Health, she’s now launched a new company called Natalist, which offers conception products “inspired by beauty and backed by science” to help those hoping to get pregnant in the near future.
You can pick and choose various products in Natalist’s pretty packaging or opt for the basic “Get Pregnant” bundle, which includes seven ovulation and three pregnancy tests, a one-month supply of prenatal vitamins and Omega DHA, plus the company’s “Conception 101” book.
Of course, that package merely provides the basics for any healthy woman with a regular period and no other fertility issues — and, besides the book, it’s all something you could find in your local pharmacy. But, as Tecco was quick to point out, not every woman is keen on going into their local CVS, grabbing a pregnancy test and taking it up to the register. In fact, many women Tecco polled before starting her company mentioned the need in the market for discretion. Buying online from a trusted brand would provide them with both privacy and security in the product.
While Natalist’s first offerings are the minimum for anyone trying to make a baby, Tecco has already raised a cool $5 million to build out products addressing more serious fertility concerns, like PCOS and endometriosis, which, combined, affect one out of every five women in their child bearing years and can make it a lot harder to get pregnant or make a pregnancy stick.
“We plan to use the funding to bring new products to market but we wanted to start with products that are sort of tried and true,” Tecco told TechCrunch, further explaining she’d like to see Natalist be more than just physical products and become more of a platform to help women through their pregnancy journey.
“We really want to have a support platform for women who have questions or concerns, really creating a great customer experience and helping them troubleshoot if things aren’t going the way that they want them to and also arm them with information and knowledge around getting pregnant,” Tecco said.
While she doesn’t see herself creating something like the app Glow, which both offers information and data through various stages of pregnancy and a community of women working on becoming pregnant, she does see the value of collaboration with these types of communities on various fertility apps and would like to reach out to those founders to see if there might be something there they can work on in the future as well.
For those interested in checking out Natalist’s products, the “Get Pregnant” bundle starts at $90 for a one-time purchase or $75 per month for the subscription plan. You also can add products from the site à la carte, should you want more tests or vitamins than what’s in the one-month package.
And for those of you TechCrunch readers interested in the funding details, Natalist took in seed money from Collaborative Fund, Cowboy Ventures, Fuel Capital, Rock Health and xFund, as well as several well-known angel investors, including Katrina Lake, Julia Cheek, Christine Lemke, John Doerr, Malay Gandhi, David Vivero and R. Martin Chavez.
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