Get Pregnant with This App or Your Money Back?

Pregnancy test photo via Shutterstock.

There are a lot of pregnancy apps out there, but only one with a money back guarantee.

Max Levchin, the 37-year-old cofounder of Paypal created a pregnancy app called Glow, which uses “data-driven science to help you create tiny miracles”. The website says that it uses “state-of-the-art ovulation prediction” and uses measuring tools like the length of your menstrual cycle, your temperature, weight, and mood, to help you conceive. But Levchin is so confident that his app will get you pregnant that he is offering monetary compensation if it fails.

The app has a side program called, “Glow First” which tries to help make fertility treatment affordable if you don’t get pregnant the old-fashioned way through using his app (and having sex, of course). By letting you “pool” your risk with a large group of healthy couples, you can earn money towards fertility treatments, which are notoriously expensive.  A couple contributes $50 a month for up to 10 months. Couples that don’t conceive in the 10 month time-trame will split the pool. When you get pregnant, your contributions stop.

Slate explains the “pool” further:

It’s also good business. The insurance-pool idea may seem like a gambit, but it’s actually quite brilliant. One cycle of in vitro fertilization runs about $12,000, and currently only a handful of states require insurance companies to cover all or part of the cost of fertility treatments. Of course, in order to work, Glow needs a large pool of earnest, honest, diligent people, but that is the app’s natural audience. These are people willing to place a bet. (And should someone be not so honest, faking answers to claim the treasure chest, it won’t work: The money goes straight to a Glow-approved fertility clinic, not into your grubby thumb-powered hands.)

A similar app called Ovuline, which is based in Cambridge, also uses algorithms and a variety of data points to help women figure out when the best time for them to conceive is, but without the monetary incentive. But because Massachusetts was one of the first states to require insurance to pay for IVF, the monetary incentive for Glow may not be needed here, depending on your insurance coverage. So far, Ovuline has been used by more than 55,000 women which is a pretty extraordinary number.

Have you tried a fertility app? How did it work for you?