Diagnostics · Reproductive health
Modern Fertility
A finger prick hormone panel sold to women who were not trying to conceive. It reached a reported $225 million exit in four years, selling a measurement the two largest bodies in American reproductive medicine had advised against using this way.
A $1,500 bill and a no from her doctor
Afton Vechery was 27, a product manager at 23andMe, when she asked her gynecologist for a baseline panel of reproductive hormones. She was not trying to get pregnant. She wanted a number.
The answer was no. Insurance would not cover it, and the convention was that testing follows a year of trying without success. Vechery booked an infertility clinic consultation instead, paid $1,500 out of pocket, and spent three months coordinating a draw on day three of an irregular cycle. The results came back with something she had not gone looking for: polycystic ovary syndrome.
She quit in 2016, shadowed doctors, interviewed hundreds of women, and paid for a clinical study out of her own savings before she had a co-founder. “I put all of my money, all of my savings, into Modern Fertility,” she told The Helm in 2021.
What a hormone panel can and cannot say
The hormone at the center of the product is antimüllerian hormone, or AMH, secreted by the granulosa cells around small ovarian follicles. Its level tracks the size of the remaining follicle pool, which is why fertility clinics use it: AMH predicts how many eggs a stimulation cycle is likely to yield.
It is a count, not a forecast. In 2017 the NIH funded Time to Conceive study followed 750 women aged 30 to 44 with no infertility history and found low AMH did not lower the chance of conceiving within six or twelve cycles. In April 2019, ten months after the kit went on sale, ACOG issued Committee Opinion No. 773 on exactly this population. ASRM followed in 2020.
Reproductive endocrinologists were not unanimous. Natalie Crawford published a public objection in June 2019, arguing that a woman planning to delay childbearing is entitled to the number even if it promises her nothing. That is the fault line the company was built across.
Two founders and a deliberate search
Vechery double majored in neuroscience and business at Wake Forest, then analyzed fertility clinics at a healthcare private equity fund. She has said the economics were attractive and the emotional reality was not, and that the gap between them stayed with her.
She then ran what she calls founder dating, paying candidates out of pocket to produce real work first. Carly Leahy, a creative strategist brought to California by Google in 2014 who had spent two years at Uber, joined as co-founder and chief creative officer in 2017. Leahy built the brand voice that made a blood test feel like a magazine.
Launch to exit in four years
The company went through Y Combinator in summer 2017 and raised $1 million from First Round Capital and Box Group. Preorders opened that October at $149 and, by Vechery’s account, brought in $70,000 within weeks. The kit shipped on May 31, 2018 at $199, alongside a $6 million seed led by Maveron and Union Square Ventures. A $15 million Series A led by Forerunner Ventures followed on June 11, 2019, with Kirsten Green taking a board seat and the price dropping to $159. Venture funding reached $22 million and stopped there.
On May 19, 2021 Ro announced the acquisition. TechCrunch and Fierce Healthcare both put it north of $225 million; Axios estimated $225 million in a majority stock deal. Vechery became president of women’s health at Ro, Leahy vice president of brand. Vechery left a year later, effective May 18, 2022. The product is still sold under Ro at $179.
One quiet detail tracks the science. The panel was advertised as ten hormones in 2017, nine at launch, eight in the 2019 validation study, seven by 2021, and today two to seven depending on birth control. A proprietary fertility score promised in 2017 never shipped.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Sampling validation | Obstetrics & Gynecology, February 2019. Matched fingerstick and venipuncture samples from 130 women aged 18 to 40, cycle day 3, eight hormones, correlation 0.99 to 1.0. Sponsored by Modern Fertility. It drew a letter to the editor that August. | Public record |
| What it did not test | TechCrunch, June 2019: “As for the study, which Modern Fertility sponsored, it doesn’t actually prove anything about the power of AMH testing”. A drop of blood matches a vial. That is all. | Independent |
| AMH and contraception | Two company funded studies: 27,125 users in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2021 (combined pill 23.68% lower, copper IUD no difference), and 42,684 in Fertility and Sterility, 2023. | Public record |
| AMH and time to pregnancy | Fertility and Sterility, December 2024, with Vechery as co-author: 3,150 customers, 42.1% conceived. “Low AMH levels (<1 ng/mL) are independently associated with a modest but significant reduction in the chance of conception.” Adjusted hazard ratio 0.77, 95% CI 0.64 to 0.94. | Public record |
| ACOG Opinion No. 773 | April 2019: AMH assessment “generally should not be ordered or used to counsel women who are not infertile about their reproductive status and future fertility potential.” | Public record |
| ASRM opinion, 2020 | “Markers of ovarian reserve should not be used as a fertility test for women who are not infertile or who have untested fertility.” And: “Age is a much stronger predictor of reproductive success than is ovarian reserve.” | Public record |
| Time to Conceive, JAMA 2017 | 750 women aged 30 to 44: “These findings do not support the use of urinary or blood FSH tests or AMH levels to assess natural fertility for women with these characteristics.” | Public record |
| ACOG Statement No. 22 | November 2025: measuring AMH “may be a useful, albeit imperfect, predictor of ovarian reserve”. Softer than 2019, still framed around counseling by a clinician. | Public record |
| Regulatory status | No FDA clearance or approval. The panel runs as a laboratory developed test in CLIA and CAP accredited labs. FDA’s 2024 oversight rule was vacated on March 31, 2025. | Public record |
| How it is sold | The product page calls it “The same fertility hormone test typically offered in clinics” and “Validated with a clinical study”. True of the assay. Neither addresses what the number means in a woman who is not infertile. | Claim outruns the record |
| Registered trials | No ClinicalTrials.gov registration, FDA submission, NIH award or SEC Form D found as of September 23, 2026. | Not found |
Read plainly: the company proved what it could prove. A finger prick gives the same hormone numbers as a blood draw, and it published that first. It then built the largest AMH datasets in the literature on women who were not patients, a real contribution to a field that had studied almost nobody except the infertile. What it could not prove is the thing customers came for. Its own 2024 paper found AMH below 1 ng/mL moves the twelve cycle odds by a modest margin. A signal, not a crystal ball, and Vechery has said so in public.
What to watch
- Whether Ro keeps publishing. The research ran 2019 to 2024 and the last paper is the most useful of the set.
- Whether ACOG’s softer 2025 language becomes an endorsement of proactive testing or stays confined to clinician led counseling.
- The regulatory floor. With the FDA rule vacated, oversight of this category rests on CLIA and state law.
- Pricing and panel drift, from $149 to $179, and from ten hormones to as few as two.
In their words
“Fertility hormone testing should be as routine as a pap smear.”
Afton Vechery, co-founder and CEO, The Helm, 2021 · Interview
“not an indicator of your ability to get pregnant right now in this moment”
Afton Vechery on AMH, TechCrunch, June 2019 · Independent
“They’re not crystal balls, but there’s more that we can do to learn about our bodies.”
Afton Vechery, TODAY, May 2020 · Interview
“AMH is not a marker of whether you can or cannot become pregnant.”
Zev Rosenwaks, MD, Weill Cornell Medicine, quoted by TechCrunch, June 2019 · Independent
“There’s a pervasive misconception that AMH predicts fertility and is a measure of egg quality”
Evelyn Mok-Lin, MD, UCSF Center for Reproductive Health, to Healthline, October 2017 · Independent
“AMH screening gives women the opportunity to evaluate their reproductive life and weigh the options that may be best for them.”
Natalie Crawford, MD, reproductive endocrinologist, June 2019 · Independent
“Serum antimüllerian hormone level assessment generally should not be ordered or used to counsel women who are not infertile about their reproductive status and future fertility potential.”
ACOG Committee Opinion No. 773, April 2019 · Public record
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordCommittee Opinion No. 773 on antimüllerian hormone
- Public recordCommittee Statement No. 22, ovarian-factor fertility decline
- Public recordBiomarkers of ovarian reserve and infertility, Time to Conceive
- Public recordConcordance of Fingerstick and Venipuncture Sampling, PMID 30633131
- Public recordAnti-Müllerian hormone among contraceptive users, PMID 34126087
- Public recordContraceptive-specific antimüllerian hormone values, 42,684 women
- Public recordAntimüllerian hormone and time to pregnancy, PMID 38964587
- Public recordTesting and interpreting measures of ovarian reserve
- Public recordLaboratory Developed Tests rule status
- IndependentNewly funded startup helps women gauge reproductive health
- IndependentModern Fertility raises $15 million to sell its hormone tests
- IndependentRo acquires Modern Fertility in a deal north of $225 million
- IndependentRo will acquire Modern Fertility in $225M deal
- IndependentModern Fertility co-founder leaves Ro
- IndependentNew At-Home Fertility Test Worries Experts
- InterviewHow Afton Vechery Sold Modern Fertility for $225 Million
- IndependentDear ACOG, No.
- CompanyRo acquires Modern Fertility
- InterviewGetting There, Afton Vechery
- CompanySeries A announcement
- CompanyHormone test product page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
