Stork Club Launches to Bring Gender Equity to the Workplace and Save Businesses Money on Healthcare; Raises $2.7M from Bowery Capital and Slow Ventures

SAN FRANCISCO, May 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Stork Club unveils its comprehensive maternity care platform with the goal of modernizing maternity healthcare to deliver better health outcomes, tackling a $130 billion market. It is also announcing $2.7M in seed funding from Bowery Capital, Slow Ventures and angels Arianna Simpson (Partner at Andreessen Horowitz), Kevin Mahaffey (Co-founder of Lookout) and others. Loren Straub from Bowery Capital is joining the board. Stork Club will use the investment to expand its go-to-market capabilities and bring more inclusive maternity care coverage to enterprises.

Stork Club is the only enterprise solution consolidating all aspects of fertility and maternity care into one concierge-like experience resulting in better outcomes, while drastically reducing employers' healthcare costs. Unlike a perk or another app, Stork Club extends traditional healthcare coverage to historically overlooked, yet critical components of maternal health: diagnostics, egg and sperm freezing, IVF, surrogacy, adoption, childbirth with doulas and breastfeeding support. For a company with a few thousand employees, Stork Club can save up to $3 million dollars per year. 

Already providing services to thousands of employees from companies in the healthcare, finance, and technology sectors, Stork Club helps companies retain and attract top diverse talent, and help employees build families. 

The current health crisis proves our healthcare system is failing women, despite a rise in the expense. After payroll, health insurance is the second largest expense for an organization, costing over $1 trillion per year, and growing. Within insurance, maternity care is the largest expense, which costs companies $130 billion a year. Outdated, the healthcare model does not promote gender equity, LGTBQ+ families, or include support beyond pregnancy care. 

"Maternity care was designed 50 years ago for a young, heterosexual family where the mother stayed home. That's not today's family," said Jeni Mayorskaya, CEO and founder of Stork Club. "Stork Club modernizes care for families by integrating all maternity care into a simple, inclusive solution. By partnering with top providers directly and providing a continuity of care, we give people the freedom to have a family on their terms, guide them to better outcomes, and help businesses save millions of dollars per year."

"Healthcare is a cost problem for businesses, so much so, businesses are looking for alternatives. Businesses are shifting towards directly sourcing healthcare to reduce costs, and maternity care is one of their top priorities," said Loren Straub, principal at Bowery Capital. "Stork Club solves the cost problem while simultaneously helping businesses retain top talent and create a more inclusive and diverse workplace."

The Stork Club platform provides a continuity of care, treating every component of maternity care as together, not in siloes, like it's currently done. It begins with access to the best doctors and coverage for treatments and medications and continues with unlimited support on each stage of the family journey: preconception, pregnancy, postpartum and newborn care. 

"There is a lot of capital being put into rethinking our healthcare system as the value of healthcare has gone down. Premiums continue to rise, but there has not been a commiserate rise in the quality of care," said Will Quist, partner at Slow Ventures. "Within maternity care, a lot of the focus has been on improving acute treatments. What is compelling about Stork Club is that they are looking at maternity care holistically. Providing best-in-class access to IVF is important and can deliver better results at a lower cost, but Stork Club is asking 'have we done everything we can to avoid IVF altogether?'. Building a solution aimed at addressing the entire maternity journey has the potential to deliver the best outcomes at the lowest cost."

How Stork Club Works
Employers add Stork Club to their health plan to provide coverage for fertility and certain aspects of maternity care. Covered employees and their dependents access Stork Club desktop and mobile apps to get recommendations and care relevant to their current family goals: whether they plan to have a child later, now, are already expecting or returning back to work.

Stork Club partners with top medical providers across the US directly and incentivizes them for better outcomes through direct contracting. All members have access to vetted certified telehealth experts, as well as transparent payments integrated with their existing health plan. 

Learn more about the vision behind Stork Club.

About Stork Club
Stork Club is modernizing maternity care for today's modern family, proving it's possible to provide high quality, and inclusive, maternity care while reducing costs for self-insured employers. Stork Club is the first maternity care provider to offer an enterprise-grade end-to-end maternity care solution ? from preconception through to postpartum ? that offers better health outcomes while reducing employer's healthcare costs. Designed to provide care for any type of family, started at any age, for any gender, Stork Club helps businesses retain and attract top talent and helps people build families on their own terms. Stork Club provides services to thousands of employees from companies in the healthcare, finance, and technology sectors. To learn more visit https://joinstorkclub.com.

SOURCE Stork Club