GUIDING LIGHT
How one man’s surrogacy journey inspired him to help others
ERAN Amir, 44, is the proud dad of two, but the stressful journey to get to that point led him to found a surrogacy advice company, GoStork.
“I always knew I wanted to be a father,” said Amir. “I knew that it would be difficult and expensive as a gay man, but this was something I’d hoped and planned for years. I was just waiting for a partner.”
He gave himself the deadline of his 40th birthday, in 2017. Still single, he threw himself into researching surrogacy and egg donation. As fate would have it, shortly after finding his gestational carrier, Amir met his future husband, Michael Gowen, MD, 32.
“While that part worked out well, the beginning of my journey was very difficult and confusing,” said Amir. “It took several weeks — countless hours, really — to research my roadmap ahead.”
There was no single platform that provided all the information regarding the process, so he made detailed spreadsheets to track and compare all the different agencies and egg donors.
Amir discovered that every egg donor agency has a limited number of donors, around 50 to 200 in his experience. After giving his information and selecting preferences with five agencies — some of which he had to pay — he was often left with no matches.
In addition, “my agency, gestational carrier and IVF clinic were all in different states from me, and from each other,” he said.
Amir and Gowen now have two daughters, Ariel, 3,
and Yael, 1, both born via surrogacy and egg donation. But these hurdles inspired Amir to leave behind his 20year career in product and technology to become an entrepreneur.
By March 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, GoStork was launched, inspired by the very roadblocks he encountered starting his own family. This online marketplace allows users to find, compare and connect with fertility providers across the country. They also debuted their egg donor platform, followed by one for surrogacy agencies. “Our vision is for anyone with a dream to start a family to have access to an inclusive, trusted, transparent resource,” Amir said.
On GoStork, you can compare surrogacy agencies across categories like experience (including number of years in business and babies born), services offered, average time to match with a gestational carrier, expenses and more.
In 2021, GoStork unveiled free concierge calls for oneon-one support, as well as applications for fertility financing. To date, GoStork has 10,000 egg donors and 50 surrogacy agencies, making them the largest free-touse online database of fertility providers.
Amir and his team hope to make all aspects of surrogacy simpler. As Amir notes, a typical surrogacy experience can cost anywhere from $70,000 to $180,000.
“The total cost for our first surrogacy process was about $200,000,” said Amir. “For our second journey, we used GoStork to compare all the agencies’ costs and offerings and saved $50,000.”
Amir learned firsthand how key it is “to understand all things that contribute to the surrogacy process like laws and insurance. Making sure the surrogate lives in a surrogacy-friendly state will ensure a smoother process of establishing legal parentage,” he said.
Amir and Gowen also faced heartbreaking lows on the road to parenthood, including their gestational carrier miscarrying during their second surrogacy.
“Because of the uncertainty of the journey, many intended parents keep things private, but anyone who has been through it will tell you it’s good to have an outlet,” Amir said, stressing the value of a therapist who specializes in this field, and leaning on loved ones.
He hasn’t lost sight of the lessons his own tribulations have taught him. “Surrogacy is both a beautiful journey and an emotional roller coaster,” he said.
“Our vision is for anyone with a dream to start a family to have access to an inclusive, trusted, transparent resource.”
— Eran Amir, founder of GoStork