Fertility Planit is for people who are seeking to get pregnant and make a family. It's a social marketplace in the best sense: a global meeting place for exchanging views and reviews, purchasing goods and services and sharing experiences. Fertility Planit supports the desire to have a family regardless of gender, relationship status, religious background or sexual orientation.
Karin Thayer
Founder/CEO
Fertility Planit was founded by Karin Thayer in 2010. She is originally from San Francisco, earned her BA from Smith College and got her MFA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She's an award winning director, media producer and video journalist, working worldwide for broadcasters including the BBC, Discovery, PBS and Oxygen Media.
In 2007 Karin unexpectedly got pregnant naturally. But at 16 weeks her foetus was diagnosed with severe abnormalities and the pregnancy was ultimately lost. Her desire to conceive and start a family remained strong. Single and 36, she decided to pursue fertility treatments and "fly solo" into motherhood.
Thus began her journey with trying to optimize her fertility and conceive. This included: medical consultations across the USA and Europe; a second natural pregnancy that miscarried; two failed IVF treatments and four failed IUI cycles in Denmark; acupuncture, Chinese herbs, nutritional remedies and hypnotherapy sessions to boost fertility naturally. All the while, Karin searched for a social network that could provide dialogue between consumers and providers in the family building world. She wanted to do global searches by location and keyword for friends, resources, and unbiased user reviews, and to find deals on products and services.
Fertility Planit is the website Karin couldn't find. It's an efficient one-stop shop for people worldwide wanting to create a family.
In 2010, after being told by her fertility clinic that she was untreatable, Karin conceived naturally with a known donor. Her healthy baby boy was born in April 2011.
Branding & User Interface Design
Very worked closely with Karin to create the brand and website user interface for Fertility Planit. Very is a London-based creative graphic design studio owned by Alex Smith and JP Winter, who are passionate about the business. They take a thorough analytical approach to the brief and produce engaging original solutions that attract attention.
Very has grown through positive referrals. Clients like them because they are unpretentious and straight forward. Experience means they often have strong points of view, but they are always ready to listen.
Very don't like Chinese whispers - clients will have contact with one of the directors who will manage the client's project. Open communication is key to generating brilliant solutions. Very overheads are low and their rates are keen. Very deal with high profile brands and complicated projects but are equally happy providing solutions for small jobs that pose an intellectual challenge and require a creative solution.
For more information give Alex a call at the studio on +44 (0)20 7357 7712, email alex@verystudio.net or browse the Very website http://www.verystudio.co.uk.
Initial Web Development
The Fertility Planit web application was initially developed by student consultants at the School of Computing, University of Leeds. The School of Computing is the leading Computing department in the north-east of England. 80% of the School's work is confirmed as being internationally excellent and world leading by the UK 2008 Research Assessment Exercise definitions. More information is available at http://www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/comp/.
Lead Developer
Carmel is a freelance Django developer with a strong background in Computer Science. Since graduating from the University of San Francisco in 2008, she has taken lead development roles in building web applications such as FertilityPlanit.com and Indee.tv. With a passion for learning and an appreciation for innovation, she strives to keep up with the latest exciting technologies, and actively participates in the Django community. When she's not working, she's usually busy playing video games, watching sci-fi TV shows, or out experiencing the many wonders of the Bay Area. Or possibly Facebooking.
Funding
Fertility Planit is personally funded by the owner, Angel investors and loans. There are no commercial partners or investors to date.
