Jessica Schaefer: Founder & CEO of Lushi

Episode 640

In this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Jessica Schaefer, Founder and CEO of Lushi, a groundbreaking platform transforming fertility care. Inspired by her personal journey navigating egg freezing after a divorce, Jessica created Lushi to ease the physical, emotional, and financial challenges of fertility journeys. By integrating telehealth, concierge services, and community support, Lushi is modernizing the antiquated women’s health industry.
Jessica shares her journey of transitioning from a successful career in PR—where she built and sold Bevel, a leading PR firm—to founding Lushi. We dive into her mission to break stigmas around fertility, how Lushi addresses the pain points of egg freezing and IVF, and the steps she’s taking to modernize women’s health care. Jessica also opens up about raising $5 million in pre-seed funding from female founders who share her passion and how Lushi is building a supportive community for individuals navigating their fertility journeys.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, someone considering egg freezing or IVF, or simply interested in the intersection of healthcare and technology, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration. Tune in to hear Jessica’s incredible story and learn more about how Lushi is redefining fertility care. Now on The Kara Goldin Show!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. So, so excited to have my next guest here, Jessica Schaefer, who is the visionary founder, total badass CEO of an incredible, fairly new company called Lushi. So don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it. They just only recently launched, but it is a groundbreaking platform transforming the fertility journey inspired by her personal experience navigating egg freezing after a divorce, Jessica created Lushi to address the physical, emotional and financial challenges of fertility care, and by integrating telehealth and medication support and wellness programs, Lushi is modernizing how we approach egg freezing and IVF, and I cannot wait for her to share a lot more about this. So welcome, Jessica. How are you? Thanks, Kara, I’m doing well, very, very cool, and so honored to have you on. You’re a serial entrepreneur. Can you share a little bit more about what you were doing before founding? Lushi,

Jessica Schaefer 1:54
sure. So I started my career in 2008 which, if people remember, 2009 was the Great Depression, working in financial communications. So with Oppenheimer fund, Jeffries, RBC, RBS, and then I transitioned. I did my MBA in investment analysis. I wanted to go into investment banking, but people said, Oh, you have too much personality. You don’t belong behind a desk, so I think you should still do PR. I ended up working for Steve Cohen, who’s he’s the owner of the Met, and he runs a $30 billion hedge fund, basically, you know, reimagining his brand, and he’s one of the world’s greatest investors. And then I started my own PR firm, bevel, and we worked with a lot of early stage tech companies, companies, you you know, we really put them on the map. You hadn’t heard of them. They had major, you know, multi billion dollar access to Coinbase and Robin Hood. I would invest in those companies. And then I sold the business last year. So that’s

Kara Goldin 3:05
incredible. So let’s start with the origin story behind Lushi. Then how did your personal experience shape its mission?

Jessica Schaefer 3:15
Sure, so I’ve always prioritized my career. I was married, unfortunately that marriage did not work out, and I really wish that I had frozen my eggs when I was 25 versus 35 and you know, there are not a lot of people who are having conversations around family planning and your fertility, your OB GYN certainly is not going to do it for you, nor are they getting paid to and a lot of women wait until it’s too late, you know, and so you end up freezing your eggs. There’s a lot of pressure you try to find the right person. Or there’s a lot of women who are sort of, you know, I say in their second act, um, getting remarried, finding the love of their life, and they want to have kids with this person, and they’re in their 40s, and it’s too late, and so we really want to focus on educating women on taking control of their fertility.

Kara Goldin 4:14
So fertility care is such a personal and sensitive journey for people, for sure, I think that there’s so many people who might be going through it, to your point where you know, you don’t know that they’re going through it either, and and I think hopefully corporations are getting a little bit better, but I know people have taken their vacation time not wanting people to sort of know about this. How does Lushi create a sense of trust and support for its users? Sure.

Jessica Schaefer 4:44
I mean, so it’s taboo, right? As sort of like when you think about women and investing, not a lot of women do it, and it’s not because they’re not smart, educated women. They just don’t know where to start. And it’s very similar with fertility. So what we found. Around after we launched, we had an outpouring of people who came sharing their stories. I mean, I have pages and pages and pages of people’s personal journeys, and these are it’s not just women, it’s men too. They oftentimes go through IVF with their partners or their wives, and they do not have a good experience, because they’re usually the ones administering the fertility shot, and they, quite frankly, like zero idea what they’re doing. So with leshi, it’s a really beautiful tech platform, concierge approach to fertility, where we do everything for you. You have 24/7, support, care. You can hire an Injection Specialist to go to your house and administer the shots for you. We’ll train you and your partner. We have peloton like community features so you can see everyone else who’s also going through the egg freezing journey. A lot of women, they feel alone and they feel really anxious, like there’s something wrong with me. Why can’t I have kids? I can do everything else in the world, except for this, and so we’ve basically, you know, disrupted the industry and turned it on its head and re imagined the way that it’s done, so that when women do go through the process, they just feel really positive about it, and we’re creating better outcomes. So with my fertility plan, it focuses on your nutrition, your exposure to environmental toxins, and that’s just not something your doctors are talking to you

Kara Goldin 6:29
about. Yeah, definitely. So when people are signing up for this, they go to your website and they go and sign up. But are there some people that are that are looking into this, I would imagine, and then there’s other people who are like, I’m in right? And I want to, and I want to do this. Can you talk a little bit about the different types of people, and is it all you talked about men being a part of this process too? Is it, would you say a majority of your consumers are women? Are especially in the communities. Do you see a lot of men in those communities too?

Jessica Schaefer 7:10
Yeah, so the majority are women. But I would say it’s just as much of a male issue, and that’s even more taboo. There are rising rates of infertility. And the reason it’s like simple things, you know, we grew up. We’re the first generation where our exposure to micro plastics has been like no other. We’re on the soccer field with our plastic water bottle. We’re going and getting our peppermint latte that we all love, but it’s lined with micro plastics, and so you’re quite literally drinking plastic. And so we have the highest infertility rates among any generation, and it’s a real problem. So the US has the lowest birth rate it’s ever had. South Korea, the same we already see what’s happening in Japan, so it will have huge economic implications in the United States if we don’t take action. And we believe, at LA, it’s not just a woman’s issue, you know, you should not have to bear the financial, physical and emotional burden. And so we’re doing a lot of work with the new administration to focus on, you know, changing the insurance policies around fertility.

Kara Goldin 8:24
That’s awesome. So you’re starting this company. You were doing another company, bevel, so a service as well. But what was the first step that you had to take in order? I guess having the idea was probably the first but like, what did you do first, and how long did it take for you before you could actually launch?

Jessica Schaefer 8:51
So with both of my businesses, I really focus on building out the operations team first and hiring the talent that’s bringing in the revenue. And so with bevel, you know, obviously it was me when I when I left the hedge fund. But you know, our first clients were point 72 acorns, a trading technology company. We signed gray craft, Alan Patrick cough, who’s a legendary venture capitalist, right away, and so I just started hiring publicist, and I hired a finance person, I hired an operations person, I hired a recruiter. And so the business was never just me. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, when they start, they take it all on, and they’re very ambitious with their time. I don’t really know how they do it. But with Lushi operations, was my first hire, and then our chief medical officer, we’ve put a lot of money into our engineering team, and then we started building out the marketing, PR and those kinds of functions. We’ve scaled up our medical team and our model. Is very like, you know, economic friendly. So it’s Uber for nurses. A lot of nurses, like, want to make extra revenue, and the shots are done early in the morning or at night, and so it’s giving them an opportunity to make additional income. And it’s a model that we haven’t seen before. When you look at the fertility industry, a lot of it has been done traditionally, brick and mortar clinics. You have to drive to the clinic every single day, take the subway, you know, to the Upper East Side. And the modern person who’s doing back to back to back, zoom, you just don’t have the time. And so I think we’re going to see this like return to home type service in the medical industry,

Kara Goldin 10:42
I totally agree. So biggest challenge transitioning from leading a PR firm to founding a women’s health startup,

Jessica Schaefer 10:54
I think with selling a company, it was a challenge after you have an identity crisis? Well, at least I did right like, I’m so PR, that’s what everyone says. It was my identity. Everything was tied to that company, and so you have to do a lot of soul searching. I definitely went through a deep depression because I also signed a non compete and even though you make, you know, life changing money, that doesn’t solve for what you’re doing every single day. And so your friends can be like, Well, why aren’t you just retired? My brain never stops, right? So there’s no way I can just quote, unquote, retire, and I did the Bali thing and trained to become a yoga instructor. I had more facials and Pilates classes than I could imagine, and at one point you’re just like, What am I doing? I really want to contribute and have an impact. I think for my second company, it was really important for me that I was doing something that was bigger than myself, and something that I felt like I could really contribute and have something change society, unless she is that

Kara Goldin 12:10
definitely. And would you say in terms of kind of building the infrastructure? There’s a lot more infrastructure in this, in this startup, than I would imagine your last Was that pretty challenging to to figure out how to do that? Or how did you figure that out?

Jessica Schaefer 12:30
The PR industry attracts a certain personality type, so you don’t necessarily attract the smartest people to the operations side. I found with this company, working with doctors and top engineers from Stanford and Yale and Harvard, it has been so refreshing. And so I know how to build a high growth company. I know how to build teams and manage them. So if anything, it’s been a welcome experience. The thing that we’re focused on the most now is, how do we implement really effective paid and earned media strategies? Our customer is living on Tiktok and Instagram, and so we’re trying to target and not target, but really educate women who are younger, so that we don’t have to have the conversation anymore. And so many people we’ve spoken to have been crying when we’re even interviewing them for partnership roles or to hire them for the company or investors. And these are women who dedicated their career to something, and it was just too late and they couldn’t have kids, and they really wanted to. So,

Kara Goldin 13:40
yeah, awesome. What? What is the what would you say your your target market? Or, you know, your typical consumer age wise?

Jessica Schaefer 13:53
So our target market is 25 to 45 we’re targeting ambitious women, women who are at the top of their industries, if you’re going to college, if you’re getting your MBA and you’re working, which is not a surprise to anyone, right? Like women work now, but we have not changed the way that we’re having kids. And so I don’t know a single one of my girlfriends who didn’t use IVF for one of their kids, or who didn’t have multiple miscarriages, and running bevel, it was an all female led executive team. I saw firsthand the number of women who were really struggling, and we gave them paid time off if they had a miscarriage. That’s not typical. Most women hide it. They feel very ashamed. And so you have these women who just had a major surgery, and they’re in the office, and they’re just not going to be as effective at their job, right? And so I think employers need to do everything they can to normalize the conversation and really to support ambitious career women like you can’t work at Goldman. Trying to get that promotion in your 20s and 30s, and then wait until you’re 37 to have kids. I mean, you can, but it’s going to be challenging,

Kara Goldin 15:09
definitely. So you fundraised before you were starting. Obviously you This is you’re building out a platform that has technology involved. You did a pre seed funding, and I’d love to know how you found these investors. And I feel like the VC world often overlooks Women’s Health startups, and that seems to be, I think, access to capital for female founders is it’s not easy. So you were able to go and do it, any sort of words of wisdom? Yeah.

Jessica Schaefer 15:43
I mean, it’s definitely not easy. I was fortunate to have the VC network, but even myself, I thought it would have been much easier. I thought people would have been throwing money at this right away. And that wasn’t necessarily the case. You know, there are a lot of people in their 50s, where their wives, like, just had kids, and then they took themselves out of the workforce, right? And they’re the main breadwinner, running the venture capital fund, and they didn’t get it. Or there was the VC, who’s he’s 40, he’s not married. He’s dating a 26 year old Instagram influencer, which is great, but he didn’t get it either, and it’s okay that they didn’t get it, because there are enough people that did, and there are so many people, most people, if you’re twins or you’re triplets, you know, Michael Loeb had three babies, triplets through IVF, much later in life, our one of Our main investors and advisors. His daughter is going through IVF. Howard Morgan, his granddaughter is going through IVF. So you’re seeing that it’s sort of like this next generation. We found that men who were in their 60s were getting it just because people in their family were affected. And then we have Ariel Kay, who is the founder of parachute. She’s an investor in the company. She’s on our board and our lead investor. He’s a private institutional investor out of the Middle East. I met him at a longevity and wellness retreat, and he gets it. He’s really focused on how to like, how does he increase his lifespan? He wants as many kids as possible. He sort of has, like, the Elon Musk type vibe. You know, Elon also knows that this is a big issue. The new administration knows it’s a big issue. There are a lot of people who are starting to become more and more obsessed of not just, like, how do we have more children and preserve our legacy, but how do we optimize our sperm and egg quality? And that’s not something that people are talking about, at least in the US. So

Kara Goldin 17:52
as a founder, what lessons have you learned about building a brand? I mean, you talked about, and I feel like the storytelling and everything that you’ve done before this is so helpful in building a brand. But what would you share with people that maybe you didn’t know prior to starting? Like, where do you think we are today? You’re also educating a lot of these consumers, as you talked about too, and using social to do a lot of that. But what advice would you give to people today?

Jessica Schaefer 18:30
So I love building brands. I’m obsessed with it. And even at bubble, you know, we rarely. I mean, I would meet with probably three to four founders a day, and we would take on only 10% of the work we would really focus on, are you creating or doing something that’s new and different that no one has ever done before? So les checks that box. Is it a topic of interest right now in the media? You have President Trump championing this as the father of IVF. You have Robert F Kennedy Jr, who’s talking about how the toxins in our foods and the pesticides are leading to infertility, and so there couldn’t have been a better time to launch an IVF company. And then the third is the founder and the CEO, or the executive team. Are they crazy enough to do it? Let’s be honest, building a company is not easy. It is challenging. It’s for sure, not for everyone. Do you have the grit and the resiliency and are you going to put in enough reps? I mean, you have to sacrifice a lot, especially in the early stages of the business. And so I think working with founders who understand that, but from a storytelling perspective, really humanizing the issue. One thing we’re doing right now, money was a taboo topic when it comes to dating. Infertility is a taboo topic when it comes to dating. Now that I’m looking for my second husband and I have. Use this as opportunity, as an ad, as you know that it is to tell people I’ve been dating again, and some of these guys on the third date, they want to go and freeze their sperm and look at the quality of it. That’s a really interesting consumer story for the cut, right or health. And so we’re doing stuff like that. We have really fun campaigns planned. We have like, you know that that VC guy or the guy who you really don’t want to date, and you turn 30, and we have a billboard campaign that it like it doesn’t have to be him. You still have time, so making it relatable to people, versus focusing on infertility, we’re focusing on fertility and how to make babies and how to make, you know, a really positive experience out of something that’s not

Kara Goldin 20:51
I’m so curious on the modern, modern dating topic. So when do you when do you share that I’ve already done this, right, that this is, you know, this is a, I mean, I would think that it would be a plus, right for, I mean, you’re just dating somebody, but still, you know, I

Jessica Schaefer 21:16
was kind of nervous. I have to be honest, when I started the company, I thought, oh, no, everyone’s going to think I’m infertile. Just like, not the case. But it was quite the opposite. There have been so many guys are like, where do I go and freeze my sperm? I want to test the quality of my sperm. I want to see if I can improve it. So, you know, they always say, like, whatever you put out into the universe you attract. So I think it’s a good thing.

Kara Goldin 21:44
Yeah, definitely. And you are also on your platform, as you talked about you’ve actually you’re bringing community together to have more of these conversations so that people get more comfortable with it, too. I think it’s great. So what’s been the most rewarding moment for you since launching Lushi?

Jessica Schaefer 22:06
I really love the early stages of building a company. They are so fun to just go from, okay, let’s call the company Lushi. Why would we call it Lushi? And by the way, there were so many people, men who didn’t get the name, and I said, I don’t really care, like you’re not our target demo. So a Lushi is a rare chicken that hatches blue eggs, and they only have a limited supply of eggs, and women only have a limited supply of eggs. We hired the cartoonists from the New Yorker to create the Lushi mascot. It’s so cute, and then we invested all of this time and energy into the design of the platform and the engineering team. They actually, they’re like the Navy Seals of engineering. They created Snapchat. They were one of my clients at bevel, and it’s a beautiful once you see it come to life and you have all these people supporting you and your investors. It’s just like you cannot recreate that feeling. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 23:07
no, it’s, it’s so, so huge. So five years from now, looking back, what do you hope you’ve built for the consumer? I mean, what? What do you not only from a, you know, big platform, but you’re talking about, I mean, you’re dealing with, with laws and and all kinds of regulate, regulatory issues, which is super, super challenging. I’ve spent a good deal of time in Washington trying to change issues around clean water over the years, and although I’m not a lobbyist, you know, I’ve learned quite a bit about water from launching a water company and understanding all about states rights. It’s hard, and you you definitely, I loved the learning and all of my curiosity and puzzle building skills definitely came into play, but, but it’s it’s challenging. But what do you hope in five years from now, you’re really able to be able to look back on and say you’ve done

Jessica Schaefer 24:21
well, I hope in five years, the cost of fertility drugs are much cheaper. If you look at ozempic, it’s $40 um, follow stem. That’s one unit. That’s one of the many fertility drugs you have to mix up. Intake is $1,000 and so we’re in conversations with Mark Cuban with cough plus drugs, about how we can drive down the cost so that women are not buying fertility drugs on the black market. I think that’s just very unacceptable for women. I do not think you should be a do it yourself doctor at home. You would not go and get Botox and take. At home and inject yourself in the forehead. And so this is a very stressful process that we’re putting on women, on women’s bodies, on their mental health. And there’s so much room for innovation. We’re starting with fertility, because it’s a blank space. And you know, to your point, on the VC side, a lot of VCs, you know, their response was like, Oh, we made one bet in fertility. And it’s like, oh, well, I’m sorry you made the wrong one, but that wasn’t enough, you know, and there has not been enough capital put in. There are women, you know, crying on Tiktok and Instagram. It just should not be like that. And so we will extend to other areas of women’s health. I think there’s a huge opportunity here. We’ve trademarked leshe in the injection bar, and eventually we’ll be opening two flagship locations where we’ll fully have all the injection specialists, networks of experts, so that you can meet about your fertility. Because it’s not as simple as going in and saying, I want to have a baby. I think, you know, we all know that there’s a lot more to that, and this stress that we’re putting on our bodies and and what we’re eating is just really impacting our success.

Kara Goldin 26:14
Yeah, it’s massive. Where do you think your first locations would be?

Jessica Schaefer 26:19
New York and LA, probably,

Kara Goldin 26:21
yeah, New York and LA, awesome. LA, I mean, yes.

Jessica Schaefer 26:24
LA, I lived in LA for a long time. I feel terrible with what’s happening with the fires. I still have a home there, but we certainly will build something in LA

Kara Goldin 26:36
that’s awesome. So Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all about Lushi, everybody should definitely check it out, whether or not you are looking for a fertility platform to learn from or just to check it out, because I’m confident that you guys are going to be doing some really, really big, good stuff. So thank you again for joining us. Thanks everyone for listening. We’ll have all the info in the show notes as well. And if you know of anybody that is interested in this, I hope you’ll share this episode with them too. So thank you again, Jessica for coming on. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you, too, so feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.

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