Legacy, the Boston startup working to reimagine fertility through human sperm cryobanking, has just raised $3.5 million, TechCrunch reports.
The funding comes from Bill Maris’s San Diego-based venture firm, Section 32, along with Y Combinator and Bain Capital Ventures, which led a $1.5 million seed round in Legacy last year.
Legacy's model is to provide an easy and convenient way to deposit, freeze and store sperm. Once a client enrolls, Legacy sends them a discreet package with instructions on how to make a deposit. The company then arranges for overnight shipping to a clinic where sperm is tested and analyzed for viability, then shipped off to a cryostorage facility.
Incubated in Harvard University's Launch Lab X last summer, Legacy's goal is to reimagine family planning by getting men to think about their own, well, legacy. Traditional reasons for men to freeze their semen were mostly reactive: chemotherapy, vasectomy or gender transition, as founder and CEO Khaled Kteily noted in an interview with BostInno in October.
"There needs to be a rebalance of responsibilities in family planning, and sperm freezing creates that option value," Kteily said at the time. By then, in addition to completing its seed round, Legacy had made it to MassChallenge and Y Combinator and won TechCrunch Disrupt.
Legacy is one of BostInno's Startups to Watch in 2020.
