Hera Family Planning Featured by Bubble Launch Lab

Hera Family Planning has been featured by Bubble Launch Lab as one of its success stories — recognition of a mission to make family building more connected, transparent, and accessible. We designed and developed the platform and continue to support it, so this one means a great deal to our team.

The problem Hera set out to solve

Building a family is among the most significant things people do, and the journey is frequently fragmented. Intended parents, surrogates, and donors end up moving between disconnected platforms, hunting for reliable information, and managing legal, financial, and medical processes largely on their own.

Hera’s answer was a single trusted place to connect, learn, and navigate each step with more confidence and less guesswork.

EducationReliable information in one place, instead of scattered across forums and PDFs.

CommunityConnection with people further along the same journey.

Fertility servicesThe clinical side of the process, surfaced where people are already working.

Legal resourcesThe paperwork and process that most families are encountering for the first time.

Trusted professionalsVetted practitioners, discoverable rather than hunted down.

One platformAll of it together, which is the whole point — the fragmentation was the problem.

What Hera brings into a single place, and why that consolidation is the product.

Who the platform serves

The user base is unusually varied for a single product, and each group arrives with different needs, different anxieties, and a different definition of what a good experience looks like:

Intended parents beginning a process most have never navigated before
Surrogates who need clarity and support throughout
Egg and sperm donors with their own privacy and process requirements
Fertility professionals working across all of the above

Designing one platform that treats each of these groups properly — rather than optimising for one and tolerating the rest — was the central design challenge.

Why the build moved quickly

Bubble’s platform let the vision reach real users fast, including a native mobile app now supporting families across the country. For a product whose value depends on how it feels to someone in a stressful moment, getting real screens in front of real people early is not a shortcut — it is the only reliable way to find out what works.

1
Model the domain firstIntended parents, surrogates, egg and sperm donors, professionals — and the relationships between them.
2
Ship the core journeySign-up through to connection, working end to end, in weeks rather than quarters.
3
Put it in front of peopleReal reactions to real screens, with changes landing the same week the feedback arrived.
4
Native mobileA mobile app supporting families across the country, on the same platform underneath.
5
Keep buildingOngoing support and improvement — a live platform is never finished.

How the work sequenced, from data model to a shipped mobile app.

What our team contributed

South Bay Coders designed, developed, and continues to support the Hera platform. Our founder Omar Butler led the work, with Jada Butler and the wider team delivering across product design, development, and the ongoing improvements that keep a live platform healthy.

The parts that determine whether a platform like this earns trust are mostly invisible: the data model, who can see which record, how matching is explained to the people it affects, and how sensitive documents move through the system. Those decisions were made early, deliberately, and they are why the product holds up.

Recognition like this reflects the mission more than the technology. The platform is the means; helping families navigate this journey with confidence is the point.

What comes next

The Launch Lab feature is a milestone rather than a finish line. Hera continues to expand its educational resources, strengthen partnerships, and improve the experience for the families and professionals who rely on it — and we are still building alongside them.

Congratulations to the entire Hera team. Hera Family Planning is available on the App Store and Google Play.

Sources & further reading

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