贝宝创始人推“好孕”应用

    知名企业家麦克斯•列夫琴最近的一次创业竟然是为了帮助女性怀孕。他创立的Glow First是一家非盈利性机构，通过移动应用提供服务。它的Glow应用能收集关于女性生育健康的大量信息，Glow First基金则是要帮助那些不孕症患者。

    列夫琴在最近一次访问《财富》（Fortune）纽约办公室的时候表示，Glow是一种“自愿互动式健康金融产品”。这可真是一个新颖的概念。

    麦克斯•列夫琴也是知名网络服务贝宝（Paypal）和Slide的创始人。最近，他与前谷歌（Google）高管麦克•黄合作开发了一款“催孕”应用。他们认为这款应用的能力超过了消费者现在能接触到的其它应用。他们希望通过收集大量关于女性月经周期、性行为、饮食、情绪等方面的数据，来告诉女性什么时候怀孕合适，而且能够警告这些女性是否存在子宫内膜异位等早期问题。随着时间的推移，还可以通过收集大量以前无法收集的数据，来掌握一名女性的基本健康状况。

    这个理念吸引了不少投资者的关注：8月8日，Glow宣布该机构已经获得了创始人基金（Founders' Fund）和安德里森•霍洛维茨基金（Andreessen Horowitz）投资的600万美元。

    根据美国疾病控制与预防中心（Centers for Disease Control and Prevention）的数据，在15到44周岁的妇女中，遭遇生育问题的人达到了11%。但是美国医疗保险对不孕症的报销比例却参差不齐。要想快速解决不孕不育的烦恼，成本也很高，做一轮试管授精的费用大概是12,000到15,000美元。有鉴于此，列夫琴和麦克•黄把这款产品定位成了一个能简单有效抵消这些成本的保险产品。

    它的原理是这样的：只要是近期想要怀孕的女性就可以注册这个项目。申请接受后，只要每月缴纳50美元的费用，连续缴纳5个月，系统就会追踪记录你每天与健康有关的数据。这些资金会存入一个资金池。列夫琴和麦克•黄认为，大多数夫妇会在10个月的窗口期内正常受孕，而他们缴纳的费用将成为已扣税的慈善捐款，如果在10个月后仍有女性无法正常受孕，资金池就会出资对这些女性进行医学干预。（这样你就不用带着现金去看病了，只要你出示Glow First的内部审查结果，Glow First就会替你向医院付钱。）

    当然，对这家公司来说，这是吸引用户的好办法。女性输入的关于生育周期的数据越多，公司团队就能通过机器学习程序，对女性生育生产获得深刻的理解，更好地指导准爸爸准妈妈们怀孕。（有时Glow也会问一些隐私的问题，比如夫妻在尝试受孕时的性爱体位等。）    

    The most interesting thing about Max Levchin's new venture to help women get pregnant is Glow First. It's a nonprofit fund offered as a premium service for the mobile app. If Glow is the mobile application that collects copious amounts of information about a prospective mother's reproductive health to help her get pregnant naturally, Glow First promises to help women pay for the science when nature doesn't work on its own.

    Or, as Levchin said during a recent visit to Fortune's New York offices, it's an "opt-in mutual health financial product." Yeah. That. It's a truly novel idea.

    Levchin, who founded both PayPal (EBAY) and Slide, has teamed with former Google (GOOG) executive Mike Huang to launch Glow, a fertility app that, they believe, goes a step beyond apps available to consumers today. They hope to be able to amass enough data about women's menstrual cycles, sexual behavior, mood, and diet that they can help any woman know exactly when to conceive, warn her about early problems like potential endometriosis, and over time, promote better health care for women in general by collecting large amounts of information that hasn't been collected before.

    That's the idea that has drawn attention and investors: On August 8, Glow announced $6 million in funding from Founders' Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.

    But roughly 11% of women aged 15-44 have trouble getting pregnant, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). And insurance coverage for infertility treatments is spotty at best in the U.S. It can get expensive fast: One round of in vitro fertilization can cost $12,000-$15,000. So Levchin and Huang have set up Glow First as a very simple insurance product to help offset that cost.

    Here's how it works: Women planning to conceive can apply to sign up for the program. Once accepted they agree to pay $50 per month for 10 months -- and to keep an above-average amount of engagement on the Glow app, which invites users to track health-related signals every day. These payments will enter a pool along with payments from other women who signed up at the same time. Levchin and Huang are betting that most couples will conceive naturally within the 10-month time frame, and their economic contributions will count as tax-deductible donations to the pool. After 10 months, the pool will be split among any women who aren't yet pregnant to be used toward medical intervention. (You don't just walk with the cash; Glow First will pay your infertility clinic once you submit proof of initial screening.)

    Of course, it'll be a great recruitment tool for the company; the more data women enter about their reproductive cycles -- and Glow gets personal: It asks about the sexual positions couples use while attempting to conceive, for example -- the better Glow will work as Levchin, Huang, and the team apply machine-learning to the information to develop a deeper understanding of how to advise future users on how and when to conceive.