Future Fertility CEO Christy Prada shares lessons learned from scaling a Toronto-headquartered healthtech startup into a growing global business
Expanding a startup to a global business is no easy feat. From navigating cultural nuances to overcoming regulatory hurdles, the challenges can seem daunting for even seasoned founders and executives. However, a strategic and adaptable approach can help pave the way for successful international expansion.
Christy Prada, CEO of Future Fertility, sat down with us to share insights into the company’s global growth journey, as well as advice for other startups looking to expand beyond domestic borders. From establishing core functions to handling regional differences and forming an advisory board, the strategies discussed offer a roadmap for founders navigating the complexities of going global.
Future Fertility is a pioneering medtech startup that uses the power of AI to help fill a critical gap in fertility care: assessing egg quality. While founded and headquartered in Toronto, Future Fertility has established a strong presence in multiple regions around the globe and continues to expand at a rapid rate.
Below, we dive into key elements that helped put Future Fertility onto the path towards becoming a global success.
Establish core functions to support your global expansion
As the saying goes, you have to walk before you can run. When Future Fertility looked to scale its technology globally, Prada recognized the need to establish core functions that could support the company’s growth ambitions. Prada spent her first year with the business “working to understand existing company capabilities and build up the core functions I thought were needed for us to truly go to market in a coordinated.” This included building out teams for marketing, client success, and product development––functions that were previously either non-existent or not formalized in the organization.
“We didn’t have a marketing function, we didn’t have client success, we didn’t have a product function,” says Prada. “So building out teams and structures in these areas was crucial.” The massive to-do list also included defining Future Fertility’s mission, vision, and values, and a strategic plan. It was only once these pieces were in order and the entire organization was on the same page was the company ready to grow its international footprint.
Future Fertility CEO Christy Prada
The next phase of that work was to carefully consider the right balance between local resources and centralized operations to ensure efficiency and scalability. Regions that require the most customization or hands-on support receive the most local resources. Beyond that, Prada’s strategy is to strike that delicate balance by grouping markets by time zone. While not every locale or country has dedicated team members, someone should always be available in the same or a similar timezone from a technical and customer support standpoint.
This hybrid model allows Future Fertility to provide localized support and expertise in key regions, while also benefiting from the efficiency and coordination of centralized teams.
Tap local opinion leaders to bridge cultural differences across regions
When expanding globally, startup founders and executives must learn to navigate the nuances of different markets, both in terms of cultural practices and regulatory environments. In Future Fertility’s case, the company has to tackle regional differences in how IVF is practiced, how labs operate and medical regulations.
“The way we typically get into a region is by partnering with a key opinion leader in a strategic and scientifically credible clinic.”
One key strategy Future Fertility employs is partnering with local experts and key opinion leaders in each target market. “When we go into a region, we’re not just like, ‘hello, we’re here, please buy our tech,” says Prada. “The way we typically get into a region is by partnering with a key opinion leader in a strategic and scientifically credible clinic in that region to do a study. Sometimes it’s just a small one, to prove out a new clinical use case or an advantage of using our technology, but the goal is to get them on board with using our products and starting to use them with patients and clients.”
This approach has the dual benefit of helping Future Fertility’s team better grasp regional nuances and, in Prada’s words, “framing the technology appropriately for local contexts.” It also ensures that the AI model is robust and generalizable to new regions with different clinical protocols, patient populations and other factors that could impact predictive capability. By leveraging the insights and research of local experts, Future Fertility is able to adapt its messaging and product to fit within established clinical workflows and navigate regulatory requirements in each market.
Tapping into established opinion leaders with local influence also creates a word-of-mouth effect that functions as invaluable marketing within a niche and well-connected sector like fertility care. “The word kind of spreads in that region. Fertility is a small community; everyone knows what everyone’s doing. So if we’re implemented in one clinic, the other clinics nearby will know that they’re using us. Then we layer on top of that with marketing and then also presenting at conferences, so people see and know what we’re doing,” says Prada. Choosing to work with the right individual or clinic can function as an effective gateway into an entire country or region.
As for regulatory hurdles, Prada notes they can be a significant challenge, particularly with the FDA in the US. However, Future Fertility mitigates it by building a “robust quality management system” to meet the standards of different regional authorities, from CE marking in Europe to Health Canada approvals. This has allowed Future Fertility to continue expanding globally, even as it works to overcome the regulatory complexities in certain markets.
Leverage an advisory board for strategic guidance
As Future Fertility navigated its global expansion, the startup recognized the value of assembling an advisory board with diverse expertise across the fertility and innovation sectors.
Future Fertility’s advisory board was carefully curated to bring a range of perspectives to the table. Prada says it includes “some fertility specific clinical, and academic people, like embryologists, researchers, doctors, and then we have some more generalized people, like someone from Merck who brings a global industry lens and someone from the Rotman School of Management, who can help us think about adoption of AI and potential business models.”
To ensure the advisory board was truly effective, Prada set clear expectations and engagement models with members. “I was really intentional in saying, it’s going to be a max of this amount of hours (which may be different for different people) and here are exactly the types of things I want you to weigh in on.”
By establishing these parameters upfront, Prada was able to foster meaningful and productive interactions with the advisory board. Rather than just holding periodic update meetings, she and her team are able to pick board members’ brains one-on-one for advice on specific product development or strategic initiatives to drive Future Fertility’s global growth efforts.
“Being intentional about expectations with your advisory board is really important because it sets everyone up for success.”
“I see a lot of companies that have advisory boards, but often they just throw members’ photos up on their website to show ‘look how great our advisory board is,’ and it’s not super clear how they’re engaging them or what they’re doing,” she says.“But being intentional about it is really important because it sets everyone up for success. They’ll know what’s expected and the best way to contribute. They’ll keep you top of mind and come to you proactively with opportunities. It also makes you feel less worried about reaching out to them and being a burden on their time, because expectations have already been agreed upon.”
In just over a year, Prada says the company has benefitted from input and feedback from each member of their advisory board, and the leadership team has a clear way to derive more insights over the coming year.
Future Fertility’s global journey is just beginning
Looking ahead, Future Fertility’s near-term roadmap is full of exciting new plans, such as refreshing its early product offerings, introducing new “mini products” with enhanced capabilities, and gearing up to commercialize an entirely new product focused on optimizing embryo transfer timing. As the company continues to push the boundaries of fertility technology, its global expansion efforts will bring these advancements to clinics and patients worldwide.
By establishing core functions, adapting to regional differences, and leveraging the guidance of an experienced advisory board, Future Fertility has been already able to establish a strong foothold in multiple markets around the world. As Future Fertility continues to innovate and expand its product offerings, its strategic approach to global expansion can serve as a blueprint for other startups looking to scale their impact on an international stage.
If you would like to learn more about Future Fertility, visit their website: FutureFertility.com
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