With the power of community, SimpliFed grows in Ithaca

As a new mother, Andrea Ippolito found baby feeding extremely hard.

Then, she met a fellow mom at her daughter’s daycare in Ithaca who happened to be an expert in nutrition science and human milk.

“This is such an Ithaca story,” Ippolito said. “I learned so much from her about baby feeding, and that really got me energized around this topic.”

Ippolito soon discovered that she was far from the only parent who struggled with baby feeding. In the United States, 7 million women live in counties with little or no access to maternity care, and only one in four families meet the recommendation to breastfeed for a baby’s first six months. She also learned that under the Affordable Care Act, health plans are required to cover breastfeeding and baby feeding support.

“There was a mandate to cover these services, but there was such a huge gap in the maternal standard of care,” Ippolito said.

Ippolito, a Cornell University alum and an entrepreneur who previously co-founded a successful healthcare startup, recognized an opportunity. To address the critical lack of baby feeding support for families, she founded SimpliFed, a maternal health operating system for pregnancy, postpartum and baby feeding support, in 2019.

“I saw that this was a wedge to tackle the broader maternal health crisis and that there was such a vacuum of care postpartum,” said Ippolito, who is also SimpliFed’s CEO. “Baby feeding support covered by health plans was a great engagement tool to work with families and do other screening assessments and education to unearth other risks that often occur during pregnancy.”

SimpliFed has proven its ability to tackle the problem. The company is on track to serve 5% of all U.S. births in 2026 and recently raised $10.8 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round — all from its home base in Ithaca.

For Ippolito, Ithaca was the perfect place to build a startup. The innovation bred by the academic environment, the community support for working parents, and the strong entrepreneurship ecosystem make the small city a hidden gem for founders. Ippolito also enjoys access to workspace, mentorship, and networking opportunities as a member of Rev: Ithaca Startup Works, a business incubator located in downtown Ithaca.

“The on-ramp programs coupled with the angel community here create a much more accelerated path to start a company,” she said. “Most of my angel investors came from the Cornell entrepreneurship community, most of them based here in Ithaca. It’s all very accessible and approachable, and the community wants to support you. That is very hard to come by.”

She added, “This is a no days off, 24/7 gig being a founder. I’m glad to live here and have such a great foundation and support infrastructure to be a parent and a founder.”

When it comes to hiring, students and graduates from Cornell and Ithaca College make up a strong talent pool.

“You have this rich pipeline of super smart, intense, very curious individuals that are right here in Ithaca coming out of these universities,” Ippolito said, “and you have people like me that move back because of that environment and because of the quality of life here.”

Ippolito said Ithaca offers unique perks beyond the professional benefits. Her family are season ticket holders to women’s ice hockey at Cornell, which exposes her daughters to elite athletes — some of whom even become Olympians. The family also enjoys skiing and enjoying the area’s natural beauty.

“You have all of these things at your fingertips, whether it’s spring, summer, fall or winter, and it’s affordable,” Ippolito said. “It is very expensive to have a family right now, and when you are a founder, you are cash-crunched. This is a great place to start a family and do so more affordably than a lot of the country.”