Many people who want to have children cannot or should not get pregnant for various reasons. Gestational surrogacy can be a great option for these individuals if they can tolerate long wait times and can afford the high cost of services. New York-based Nodal aims to make this process cheaper, more transparent, and faster.
Nodal is a marketplace for matching prospective parents with vetted surrogate mothers. Dr. Brian Levine, founder and CEO of Nodal, told TechCrunch that his company wants to solve supply and demand problems in the industry.
Dr. Brian Levine is the founder and CEO of Nodal. Image credit: Nodal
Levine said Nordle is taking the same technology-driven approach as life insurance companies to vet potential surrogates, speeding up the process and making more surrogates available. That's what it means. The marketplace approach also provides transparency that gives parents more control over which surrogates they work with. Nodal also cuts intermediate costs and works with fertility benefit companies such as Carrot, Maven, and Progyny to lower costs for prospective parents.
Levine said Nodal is designed to reduce costs even for people who pay out of pocket. Users pay a monthly fee of $500 until they find a match. You will be paid $15,000 in brokerage fees for the match, and these monthly payments will chip away at the total amount. If a user wants Nodal to act as a case manager, those services start at an additional $10,000. While still expensive, patients were spending up to $180,000 on all of this before Nodal launched, Levine said.
“We were able to save eligible parents more than $5 million in fees,” Levine said. “Our average response time is 45 days, which has saved our customers wait times for over a century. The American average is 9 to 18 months. Nodal's competitors' wait times You can have a baby on the Nodal platform before it gets delisted.”
As a practicing physician who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, Levine knows the field well. He came up with the idea for Nodal back in 2021, when New York became the 48th state to legalize surrogacy. Only Louisiana and Nebraska still do not allow the practice. Levine was initially excited that the ruling would open up opportunities for patients in the state, but that's not what happened.
“I was completely fascinated by this whole thing,” Levine said. “We quickly realized it was a truly broken system. Costs went from $75,000 to $150,000 overnight. The reason why it was so expensive is because supply and demand took hold. We… is the largest market for infertility treatment in the United States, and has literally driven up prices across the country.”
The price hikes did not benefit surrogate mothers, but rather lined the pockets of marriage agencies. Levine thought there had to be a way to use technology to make the process better for both parties, which led him to work on Nodal. It is named after the protein that needs to be present in the uterus in order to grow a baby.
The product officially launched in September 2022, is available in all 50 states, and has since matched 108 prospective parents with surrogates. The average clinic makes 25 matches a year, Levine said.
The startup has now announced a $4 million seed extension round led by NFX, which brings the company's post-money valuation to $15 million. Participants in this round included Amplo, Liquid 2, Myelin VC, and others. The company raised a total of $8.7 million.
Levine said Nodal wanted to reach $10 million in annual recurring revenue before raising the Series A round. He added that while he didn't actually need to raise this money, he thought it made sense for the reproductive health company amid the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of Tuesday's U.S. presidential election.
“I didn't know how this election was going to turn out,” he said. “It would be short-sighted not to raise money for women's health care before the world's potential changes at a very difficult time for reproductive health.”
Levine said the company plans to invest all of its funds into the technology. Nodal also wants to strengthen its partnerships with fertility clinics to make it easier for more people to refer to Nodal when they are looking to start a family.
Despite the demand, Nodal doesn't seem to have any direct competitors outside of traditional surrogacy agencies, and we're just scratching the surface. Levine estimates that the current system satisfies less than 10% of total surrogacy demand, meaning Nodle could gain significant market share. But there is a long way to go.
“From an overall perspective, what I want people to understand is that this company is completely focused on transparency, speed and safety,” Levine said. “It's unfortunate that the industry has become what it is today: opaque, analog and clunky. We recognize that we have an opportunity to truly help people.”