New app helps track best times to conceive

NFP on your smartphone?

Sounds like it: 

Glow, the fertility tracking iOS app co-founded by Max Levchin, is making its debut in the app store today. The app was first introduced earlier this summer by Levchin to a surprised audience at the D11 conference, where the crowd was likely not expecting to hear the co-founder of PayPal and Slide discuss PMS symptoms and cervical mucus…

…Glow is backed with $6 million from investors includingFounders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. The company’s full-time staff, which includes about 10 people, is split between Shanghai and San Francisco.

There are two components to Glow, which is designed to be used by both of the people in a relationship that’s trying to conceive a baby. First is the completely free fertility tracker, which lets women enter detailed data about their menstrual cycles and the symptoms surrounding them to help predict their exact level of fertility each day. The Glow fertility predicting app can be used worldwide.

The second is Glow First, a unique “fertility funding community” for the U.S. market. This is an optional 10 month program into which users of the Glow app invest $50 per month. The money that has been pooled together will then pay for the fertility treatments of any couples who do not become pregnant by the end of that 10 month time frame, such as in vitro fertilization or intra uterine insemination. Levchin has personally seeded Glow First with $1 million of his own money.

It is certainly a huge step up from old fashioned fertility calendars, and any modern app in the fertility space that I’ve seen — it’s beautifully designed with very thorough tracking features. While the app is available only on iPhone for now, I’m told that the company has plans to release an Android version at some point as well.

Check out the rest, including a video.