Baby Steps IVF hopes to create an app or website to guide individuals through the IVF clinic selection process. Our aim is to provide clear, data-driven insights into clinic success rates and tailor these insights to match user-specific profiles and needs, such as location, clinic services, and budget.
Initially led by @GeneSmith, the project is now under my leadership with Jordan Pole as my potential cofounder. We are actively seeking funding to cover operational costs, and implement marketing initiatives to establish the business until it can sustain itself.
Our progress to date includes developing preliminary predictive models, figma app mock-ups, a business and marketing plan, and some early adopters. We're also supported by several advisors, including Gene Smith, Steven Hsu, and Laurent Tellier, who bring valuable expertise from the IVF and genetics fields to guide our project's direction.
As a Data Scientist, I have experience in COVID Forecasting and am currently working as a Data Analyst at Nerevu Group. I will be leading the development of the predictive model for Baby Steps IVF. My references are Gene Smith and Reuben Cummings.
Jordan Pole, my potential partner, brings a diverse skill set with experience in startups, large language models, web app development, and SEO. He will spearhead the marketing and business strategy aspects of our project. Given his background in software, Jordan may also contribute to the front-end development of our app if we don't decide to contract someone else. His references are Steven Hsu.
We also have a couple of advisors who are very interested in seeing this product come to fruition and have been serving as an advisory capacity, specifically; Gene Smith (somewhat renown genenomic expert in LessWrong community), Steven Hsu, and Laurent Tellier (both co-founders of genomic predictions).
I'm on lesswrong, but not a very active poster: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/smokeandmirrors.Also here is my portfolio: https://scelarek.github.io/.I also lead the Portland Effective Altruism and Rationality community and met you briefly in July 2022 for the Rationalist Organizer retreat.
20,000
I'm going to include Gene Smith's old post on IVF success rates although it isn't updated with the latest model numbers: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yT22RcWrxZcXyGjsA/how-to-have-polygenically-screened-children
My base rate for startups succeeding is around 10%. I'm not sure I'd be willing to go up on that with my lack of startup experience, so 10% is my probability of business success.
Although even if this company fails capture enough of the consumer surplus it produces to survive, this will still likely increase the birth chances of several parents who would like to have children although the models aren't complete enough for me to estimate what the impact per individual this will cause (preliminary results say that some clinics increase average patient success by around 30%, but the model currently only explains ~30% of the variance).