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Max Levchin brings Glow to the workplace

By
Jessi Hempel
Jessi Hempel
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By
Jessi Hempel
Jessi Hempel
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February 20, 2014, 3:00 PM ET

FORTUNE — Max Levchin wants to sell companies on the benefits of helping their employees get pregnant. On Feb. 20, the fertility application he backed announced Glow for Enterprise, a new product for businesses. A number of buzzy tech startups including Evernote, Eventbrite, and Domo (see: Josh James: The Wildest, Craziest, Most Death-defying Mormon Mogul on the Planet) will soon offer Glow as a perquisite for employees. “The employers get to look pretty bad-ass because they are self-declared extremely progressive,” Levchin says.

At work, Glow gets a foothold to a powerful distribution system: the human resources department.

Levchin, who founded both PayPal (EBAY) and Slide, teamed with former Google (GOOG) executive Mike Huang to launch Glow last August. There are plenty of fertility apps on the market. Glow, which has $6 million in funding from Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, goes a step beyond most by pulling in copious amounts of information — from exercise routines and diets to sexual positions (seriously) — to create a more personalized program to help women get pregnant. The company already boasts thousands of babies conceived with the help of its app.

MORE: Glow app branches out beyond conception

Glow also offers an unusual premium service called Glow First, which is designed to help people who seek fertility treatment cover the cost. Levchin likes to call it a “mutual assurance” product, though it works more like insurance. Women who sign up for and are accepted to Glow First agree to pay a monthly fee of $50 for 10 months and use Glow to track their activity. The payments enter a pool along with payments from other women who sign up at the same time. At the end of 10 months, the women who do not get pregnant can split the pool and use the funds to help finance medical intervention. (Glow First will pay your infertility clinic once you submit proof of initial screening.) And those who do get pregnant? They get the satisfaction of helping their less fortunate peers.

With Glow for Enterprise, companies will promote Glow to their employees as part of the health and wellness benefits they offer. It is free to use the app; corporate users can also sign up for Glow First without charge. The idea is that companies will foot the bill, and therefore be able to help employees offset the cost of any medical intervention women may need. (Initially, Glow is covering the cost of the bill to entice businesses to try the service.)

Of course, getting pregnant is not usually the kind of thing people talk about at work. Most employees would rather their boss not know when they are attempting to conceive. Glow says it will keep all of its user information private, and employees will verify their employer via e-mail using a unique verification code. Employers will know how many employees are using the service, but not who.

MORE: Max Levchin wants to get you pregnant

Levchin’s long-term goal is larger than just making babies. If it takes off, Glow for Enterprise could be a good strategy to help the fertility app maker collect more data about women’s reproductive systems. He hopes  to be able to amass enough data about women’s menstrual cycles, sexual behavior, mood, and diet so that Glow can promote better health care for women in general by collecting large amounts of information that haven’t been collected before.

About the Author
By Jessi Hempel
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