Sperm Freezing Is a New Hot Market for Startups

Last summer, Alexander McKinnon was always feeling tired. “I would lie on the couch at 2 in the afternoon and fall asleep,” he says. The founder of a biotech startup in Boston, he initially thought it was the byproduct of a demanding job, but as time passed, his exhaustion didn’t subside. By September his doctor had run a blood test and found his “super fatigue” was tied to low levels of testosterone. McKinnon was prescribed steroids to boost his energy. The trade-off was that the injections would severely reduce his sperm count.

McKinnon, 32, and his wife weren’t ready to start a family, but they didn’t want to risk their ability to do so in the future. “That’s when I froze my sperm,” he says.