Reimagining Fertility: Building Cofertility with Lauren Makler

#31. Fertility is one of the most consequential parts of women’s health, yet for many women, it remains confusing, expensive, and difficult to plan around. What would it look like to give women greater clarity, choice, and freedom before they are ready to start a family?This week, Kate Yarbrough sits down with Lauren Makler, co-founder and CEO of Cofertility, the platform helping women freeze and store their eggs for free when they donate half to intended parents who need an egg donor. Before launching Cofertility, Lauren spent nearly a decade at Uber, where she founded Uber Health and helped build the business to serve more than 10 million patients. Her own experience facing a rare abdominal disease, and the possibility of losing her ovaries, ultimately shaped Cofertility’s mission.In this conversation, Lauren shares why the traditional egg donation model needed to be reimagined, how egg freezing can give women greater agency over their relationships and careers, and why fertility education should begin long before someone is ready to have a baby. She also reflects on building Uber Health from within a larger organization, staying relentless in the face of rejection, finding the right co-founder, and how motherhood has changed her approach to ambition, wellness, and risk. In this episode, we discuss:Lauren’s personal fertility journey and the experience that inspired CofertilityHow Cofertility is making egg freezing more accessible through egg sharingWhy the traditional egg donation model needed to be reimaginedThe biggest misconceptions surrounding fertility and egg freezingThe concept of “fertility longevity” and planning from a place of abundanceBuilding Uber Health from an internal pitch into a $100 million business in 18 monthsHow to introduce a new idea within a larger organizationNavigating naysayers, rejection, and the mindset of “just you wait”Finding the right co-founder and evolving responsibilities over timeHow Los Angeles has shaped Cofertility’s growth and communityThe ways motherhood changed Lauren’s relationship with ambition and riskIn this episode, we discuss: