48 | FORBES ASIA NOVEMBER 2016
FORBES ASIA
END OF THE BIOLOGICAL CLOCK
the procedure, which can cost
$5,000 to $10,000 or more.
(Adding IVF can easily dou-
ble the cost.) Two years ago
Apple and Facebook became
the first major companies to
ofer egg freezing as a bene-
fit, and this year the Pentagon
launched a pilot program that
pays for egg and sperm freez-
ing, part of an initiative to re-
tain troops.
But Prelude aims to take
the idea mainstream, giving it
scale and Silicon Valley piz-
zazz. Varsavsky has already
put his war chest to work,
spending, it’s estimated, tens
of millions of dollars to buy
a majority stake in the larg-
est in vitro fertilization clinic
in the southeastern U.S., Re-
productive Biology Associates
of Atlanta (RBA), and its af-
filiate, My Egg Bank, the larg-
est frozen donor egg bank
in the nation. The acquisi-
tions anchor what Varsavsky hopes will eventually be-
come a national fertility brand. Rather than ofer servic-
es piecemeal, like egg freezing, storage, IVF and hormon-
al medications, Prelude will pitch a comprehensive pack-
age it calls the Prelude Method. It includes four steps:
egg freezing and preservation, embryo creation when a
woman is ready, comprehensive genetic screening for
congenital dis eases and chromosomal abnormalities, and
“single embryo transfers” to minimize the chances of
conceiving twins or triplets, a frequent occurrence when
women transfer multiple eggs during IVF. (Prelude,
which hopes to cater to couples who may not be ready
to have children, will also ofer sperm freezing for men.)
Prelude also plans to make the process more afordable,
ofering options with low upfront fees. Keeping the eggs
safe and frozen, however, will start at $199 a month.
Prelude is betting that young women will pay a few
grand a year to alter the equation between career and
family. “If you know that your eggs are safe and sound,
what decisions would you make about your life?” says Al-
lison Johnson, a former top marketing executive at Apple
who helped to launch the iPhone and who overcame her
own fertility issues with hormonal treatments. Her agen-
cy, West, is helping develop Prelude’s go-to-market plan.
“That what’s really exciting about this,” Johnson says.
“Go pursue that graduate degree. Wait for your soul mate.
Go travel the world. Your eggs
are waiting for you. For me
that’s as liberating for women
as the pill was in the 60s.”VARSAVSKY BEGAN
thinking about Prelude
around six years ago. A tech
entrepreneur who has long
had an interest in life sci-
ences, he hit a snag in his life
when he and Nina tried to
start a family. Nina, 31 at the
time, found out she was in-
fertile shortly after the cou-
ple married. They were able
to conceive their first child
through IVF—and froze their
eggs and sperm for future use.
They now have two healthy
children, ages 5 and 3, and
that third one on the way, all
conceived through IVF, but
the experience was wrench-
ing. (The couple also went
through a battery of genetic
tests, many of which will be
part of the Prelude Method.) And the Varsavskys knew
couples who weren’t able to conceive through IVF. The
data confirm their experience: 12% percent of Ameri-
can women ages 15 to 44 face diiculties having a baby on
their own, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Con-
trol & Prevention (CDC).
Ever since his childhood in Buenos Aires, Varsavsky has
consistently looked for unique opportunities in big mar-
kets. His family immigrated to the United States in the
1970s as refugees after his cousin David Varsavsky was
murdered—“disappeared,” in the euphemism of the time—
by the Argentine military government. While in graduate
school at Columbia University, he launched a real estate
company that converted industrial buildings into residen-
tial lofts. Two years later he and fellow Argentine César
Milstein, a Nobel laureate in medicine, cofounded a bio-
tech company called Medicorp Sciences, now based in
Montreal, that developed an early AIDS treatment.
In the 90s Varsavsky turned his attention to a string
of telecom endeavors. The first, Viatel, founded in 1991
in New York City, provided low-cost long-distance call-
ing. It went public within three years. In 1995 Varsavsky
moved to Madrid and subsequently started Jazztel, a pro-
vider of telecom and Internet services that went public in- He then launched Ya.com, a DSL provider and In-
ternet portal sold two years later to Deutsche Telekom.
Fertile career: FORBES GLOBAL profiled Varsavsky in 1999 as
he was taking his Spanish telecom company Jazztel public.