- Legacy is a Harvard Innovation Labs startup that is addressing the core problems with male fertility
- Recently, Legacy raised $1.5 million in funding led by Bain Capital Ventures
- Legacy plans to use the funding to expand its suite of male fertility offerings including sperm analysis, improvement, and cryogenic storage
About 40% of couples are not able to conceive within six months and there has been a 50% decline in male fertility. Now couples can turn to Legacy for a straightforward and affordable option for at-home male fertility testing.
Legacy is a Harvard Innovation Labs startup — which is an incubator for alumni-led companies — that recently announced it raised $1.5 million in funding led by Bain Capital Ventures. This round of funding will be used for expanding the company’s suite of male fertility offerings including sperm analysis, improvement, and cryogenic storage.
Following extensive research, Legacy has been able to create a straightforward and affordable option for men to have their sperm tested, improved, and frozen without having to visit a clinic or meet with a doctor. And clients can have the Legacy kit shipped to their door before sending it back to one of Legacy’s partner clinics for clinical-level analysis.
Within 24 hours, every client is able to receive a full fertility report that analyzes volume, count, concentration, motility, and morphology. And there is an option to freeze the deposit at world-class cryogenic storage facilities.
“It’s time for us to change the outdated view that fertility is a women’s issue. Today, about one in seven couples are infertile, and 30-50 percent of the time it’s due to male-factor infertility. And with couples increasingly choosing to delay family planning, we’re seeing a compounding negative effect on fertility, especially as men face ongoing declines in sperm quality each year they get older,” said Legacy’s Head of Partnerships Daniel Madero.
Legacy is able to capitalize on its position as the leader in the rapidly growing male fertility space with its expertise in fertility, through its talented advisory board, and a background in rigorous data analytics. With the help of Harvard Innovation Labs, Legacy has been able to bring on data scientists who have developed a recommendation engine that analyzes over 50 data points per client and provides personalized assessments and lifestyle recommendations.
”We’re passionate about rebalancing the responsibilities of family planning, and this is a goal we strive towards every day. We’re not here to move fast and break things, but rather, to build a company that will be the market leader in 50- or 100-years’ time. Building a values-driven company is critical to building trust with our clients because we believe that in the future Legacy will be the norm,” explained Legacy CEO Khaled Kteily.
Legacy also has a clear stance on privacy and refuses to sell its clients’ data to external parties — which is in contrast to other health, wellness, and genetics companies. To do so, Legacy has taken several extra steps to ensure longevity for the company and its clients. Each client receives a unique CLIENTID to ensure their anonymity. And the data is encrypted end-to-end with multiple redundancies in place so that the company is at the forefront of HIPAA and GDPR compliance. Plus the company has created the “Legacy Standard” to ensure it only works with the leading providers and is the only company to divide its clients’ deposits into multiple geographic locations to protect against long-tail risks.
“Legacy was created as a direct response to the quickly growing and critical need for better male fertility options,” Bain Capital Ventures partner Yumin Choi commented. “Today the process of testing and storing sperm is exceedingly challenging for most consumers – it’s tedious, expensive and inaccessible. But Legacy’s technology-enabled approach allows consumers to access affordable sperm freezing services from home while also receiving personalized results within days and connections to local providers if needed.”
