So Jonathan, tell us a bit about yourself and Selectivity.
Before anything, I am a life lover and the most important thing that has happened to me is becoming a father three years and a half ago. I am passionately connected to Selectivity and its mission after experiencing two miscarriages with my wife while trying to conceive our second child.
At Selectivity, we help others to build families by bringing access to fertility treatments to every couple (or single mother) in the whole world.
Stood up over our two main medical devices, a patented biomimetic membrane inside our sperm selection device and an assisted insemination device, our ultimate goal is to develop an integrated medical device that allows couples (or single mother) to perform a sperm selection and intrauterine insemination comfortably at home. As simple as, collect the sperm (or thaw it), load it to our device, incubate it for a few minutes and perform the intrauterine insemination with our device as well.
What motivates you in your work at Selectivity?
Carrying Selectivity’s flag everywhere and becoming the spokesmen for our dream of diminishing the heavy journey patients are going through while trying to build a family are my key driving forces. This alongside being a father and miscarrying two pregnancies have really set the priorities and the important goal: family goes first.
At Selectivity we want every couple or single mother has access to fertility treatments and the possibility of building a family.
Our co-founder, Herberto Repetto, has more than 30 years of experience in the fertility domain. He has been looking for a non-invasive solution to select sperm until he got it. He has registered and patented the idea.
With this technology and its main advantage of being possible to select sperm anywhere, we have dreamed of giving couples the possibility to reduce the stress, anxiety, anguish and fear attached to the fertility treatment process and giving them the option to perform the treatment comfortably at home to fulfil their dreams and build a family.
Starting a global company up with these ambitious goals is tough work, a lot of effort and commitment. Thus, each step forward makes us feel more passionate as we are closer to the set objective. Our objective? Bringing fertility access for everyone.
The key to achieving that is waking up every day, paying attention to the long term goal and performing in the short term thinking of that goal.
As a company what are Selectivity passionate about?
We are passionate about technology, medical devices and providing solutions for anyone in the whole world. We want to make a positive impact in people’s lives and more particularly in the patient journey because they often feel a lot of anguish, anxiety and fear.
Nowadays, 3 out of 4 couples in childbearing age who are struggling to conceive (around 50 millions couples), do not have access to treatment. This must be changed!
Going further, there are 23 nations worldwide (Japan, Spain, Italy, among others…) whose birth rate indexes are below 2.1 children per family. If this index keeps on this path, by year 2100 these nations would halve their populations. It means that we are facing a deep problem and we are losing our reproduction capability as human beings.
These drivers are deeply moving us to arise an easy and cost-effective solution for couples and single mothers to build families.
What are your dreams for Selectivity?
We dream to be selling our sperm selection device worldwide, decreasing fertility treatments costs (as our medical device allows any OB-GYN to perform a fertility treatment). Also, we will be commercializing our home intrauterine insemination device unlocking every person’s ability, doctor, couple or single mother, to perform a fertility treatment wherever they are.
Developing medical devices is a continuous challenge because it requires going through regulatory approvals in order to get devices to the market. It demands time, energy and financial resources to achieve the goal.
On the other hand, as entry barriers are quite high, the opportunities are also huge! We would like to be the new gold standard technique applied to sperm selection to perform a fertility treatment and also for our home intrauterine insemination device to become an analogue to a pregnancy test at which couples (or single mothers) do not hesitate to acquire it and use it.
We dream of reducing the stress, anxiety and anguish associated with people trying to conceive.
What’s the most important lesson you have learned since being in Selectivity?
Our medical device is going to be a game changer for every person with difficulties trying to build a family.
As you may know, when you are trying to conceive and it’s not possible, this problem affects you wholly. Imagine now that you do not have the access or resources to fertility treatments and even worse than that, your everyday job does not allow you to take the time to travel and become treated. It becomes all you can think about!
From this point of view, this is our inspiration and motivation. Just for a second, if you’ve gone (or someone’s you know has gone throw this), you would understand what it means. It means it everything!
What would you tell people who say FemTech raises issues that are private matters or worries only feminists have?
No way. This is a two-gender problem. I would recommend these people read Shanna Swan’s book “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race” and learn from there why this is not a private matter or feminist worry.
Selectivity is part of FemTech Lab’s Spring 2021 Cohort. You can keep up to date with the latest updates via our news page.
