More than 100,000 families and individuals in the U.S. are searching for sperm donors, but there are only about 1,500 registered donors who are available at any given time. This means families often have limited options and face long wait times.
A new startup called PreSeed Fertility launched on Thursday to fix this problem. The company is a recruitment and matching platform for sperm donors and is connected with male fertility company Upstream. It recruits donors from a variety of professional and demographic backgrounds using strategies like digital channels.
When a family comes to the platform searching for a donor, they work with a PreSeed concierge specialist to discuss what kind of characteristics they’re looking for in a donor. They then gain access to the database of donors with detailed profiles that include their values, personality traits, photos and background. This compares to a typical sperm bank, where a family only receives limited, “one-dimensional” details on donors, like eye color, hair color and height.
“The picture that you can build of this man, who’s the potential father of your kid, is actually very weak and insubstantial. One of the things we’ve focused on is: what’s the information that would be really substantive in making one of the most important decisions of your life?… Do you value the same things? Openness, for example, as a personality trait, has about a 60% heritability from parent to parent’s child,” said Gigi Brett, founder of PreSeed, in an interview.
Once the family chooses a donor, the clinic or agency that they’re working with will take over for sperm testing, genetic testing, psychological evaluation and contracts. If the donor passes the screening, he will meet the family and finalize terms, and then make the donation and get compensated.
PreSeed is integrated with Upstream, which was also founded by Brett. Prospective donors on PreSeed can complete a 10-week program through Upstream to improve their fertility before donation. The program uses lab tests and encourages lifestyle changes to boost sperm quality and reproductive health.
“Women have all of their eggs from birth. Men have sperm cycles [and] sperm takes 74 days to regenerate,” Brett said. “And so what that means, in tactical terms, is that men have these 10-week optimization windows. So sperm that starts getting made today will be ejaculated in 74 days’ time. If you can optimize that 10-week window, you can dramatically improve fertility.”
In launching PreSeed, Brett ultimately hopes to change the stigma around sperm donation. There’s often a perception that the process is “icky” and “weird,” but it doesn’t need to be that way, she said.
“Just seeing the guys’ motivations of why they’re donating, it’s actually restored my faith and humanity in some significant ways,” she said. “There are so many of these guys [who say], ‘I’ve had a sister who was infertile, I really want to be able to give back’ or ‘I’ve got three kids already, and my kids are so great, I’d love to see more people like them in the world.’ There’s a whole tribe of people who are looking out for you, versus the narrative now, where every family has to try and figure it out individually.”
The launch of PreSeed comes as more attention is being paid to male fertility, rather than focusing solely on women. Other male fertility companies include Legacy and Posterity.
Photo: oatawa, Getty Images
