When Victoria Fritz realized she needed a surrogate pregnancy, she felt like she only had two options to find a match: pay $50,000 for an agency to help her find one, or surf through Facebook and Reddit, forgoing any form of background check. She didn’t want to do either.
So, Fritz thought of a new idea: Hinge for surrogacy, where parents and potential surrogates can post their profiles and match with each other in a transparent and ethical way.
“It brings a lot of clarity, transparency, and autonomy to the surrogacy industry, which sometimes feels very opaque and very behind-the-scenes,” Fritz said.
Fritz is now the Founder and CEO of Chapel Hill startup Baby Bumps. The company was part of this year’s RIoT Accelerator Program (RAP), which is a 12-week program for early-stage startups. By the end of RAP, Fritz hopes to have a minimum viable product (MVP) on the market.
Fritz began customer discovery about a year ago. Since then, she has also been a part of First Flight Venture Center’s pre-accelerator Propellor program, as well as the Idea to Entrepreneur program at American Underground.
To use Baby Bumps, parents and potential surrogates will log onto a website—similar to Match.com or Hinge—and create a profile by uploading pictures, videos, the number of children they have, personality notes, medical history, and other information. Users can filter which attributes they are looking for, such as location. For added privacy, users can also opt to have identifying information hidden from their profiles.
The website will initially be free to use. Eventually, Fritz said she may charge a subscription fee of about $500 per month, which she said is extremely modest compared to the tens of thousands it costs to pay an agency for the same process.
Fritz said she is also hoping to gain revenue from external actors within the industry, such as reproductive law firms or surrogacy insurance companies that may want to advertise or collaborate on the project.
Besides cost, one of the main problems with finding a surrogate through an agency is time. Fritz said even once the surrogacy agency receives the money, it can take about a year to find a match. If parents aren’t happy with the match, it could naturally take another several months to find another.
With Baby Bumps, parents and surrogates can message each other to figure out the best match for them. From there, they can move forward with medical and legal screening on what is called an “independent surrogacy journey.” Parents will choose and pay for their own attorneys as well as the surrogate’s legal representation. They can then present the surrogate’s medical records to their fertility obstetrician, who ultimately has the final say to approve the match.
Even with Baby Bumps, these legal needs and medical appointments will add up to high cost. But Fritz hopes the initial cost of the matchmaking will be a much smaller burden.
“I’m hoping with this app, the cost of the surrogacy match will be greatly reduced, and that will help more parents and more surrogates be able to find each other and have the children that they’re hoping to have,” Fritz said.
Throughout Fritz’s customer discovery, she said she has cleared up a lot of her own misconceptions about surrogacy. She learned that surrogacy is only for medical need, according to guidelines from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
She also learned that surrogates must be financially sound and able to securely support themselves; they are generally motivated by altruism, not money.
“They see life as a gift, and they enjoy being pregnant, and they want to help other families who are in need,” Fritz said.
Fritz is working on Baby Bumps full-time, and has hired a data science intern. She is also in the process of potentially hiring a fractional CTO.
Fritz and her husband are also currently going through the process of finding a surrogate for their own first child, and once Baby Bumps is up and running, they plan to use the matchmaking site to find a surrogate for their second.
