PayPal co-founder Levchin helps birth new start-up
Glow Genius.(Photo: Glow)
SAN FRANCISCO – Max Levchin has birthed another tech startup. Really.
The serial entrepreneur behind payments processor PayPal and social-gaming site Slide has been pouring his energies into Glow, a fertility app that debuted in August and was updated Sunday on Apple's iOS computing platform. An Android version is in the works.
"We are swimming in particles of data," says Levchin, a Silicon Valley legend of sorts for his leveraging of data to serve consumers. "Look through my checkered past. There is a thread" dating to his days at PayPal and Slide.
Glow's goal is to help women get pregnant through the analysis of their personal information — such as sex, body temperature, cervical mucus, and physical and emotion discomfort — on a daily basis. The app analyzes data to give women an estimate of their fertility window over five to seven days via a calendar, and their percentage chance of getting pregnant. The service includes a "companion" app for the woman's partner.
Glow is tackling an increasingly taboo topic in fertility, as more women have children later in life. Most insurance companies don't cover infertility treatments, which leads to a need for treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars, Levchin explains.
"It's a topic dear to my heart. My wife and I went through it," says Glow's other co-founder, Mike Huang. The couple's daughter recently turned four years old.
Though it faces competition from apps like BabyBump and Pink Pad, Levchin says Glow is distinguished by "machine learning," a form of predictive analysis that parses 9 to 15 data points daily (morning temperature, vitamins and cervical mucus). The same analytical model underpinned Levchin's work at PayPal and Slide.
The 9-person startup has plenty of early advocates. It's raked in more than $6 million in funding from the likes of Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.
Levchin kicked in another $1 million in crowd-funding.
Under Glow's nonprofit fund, Glow First, those who participate pay $50 a month for 10 months into a pool with a cohort who joins at the same time. Those who don't conceive naturally after 10 months using Glow's app, will get money from the fund to pay for fertility treatment.