Rescripted_Future of Fertility_Khaled Ktelily: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Rescripted_Future of Fertility_Khaled Ktelily: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Abby Mercado:
Hi! I'm Abby Mercado, an IVF mom, former VC investor, and CEO of Rescripted. Welcome to The Future of Fertility, a podcast dedicated to shining a light on the entrepreneurs and innovators who are changing the face of family building. With billions in funding over the past few years, we'll introduce you to the people, the ideas, and the businesses that are changing the fertility industry and in turn, millions of people's lives. The future of fertility is bright. Now let's get into it!

Abby Mercado:
Today, I am here with Khaled Ktelily, the founder and CEO of Legacy. Founded by a team of healthcare and fertility experts, Legacy is changing the outdated view that fertility is a woman's issue and building a digital fertility clinic for men and people with sperm. Khaled and I met at ASM 2021, I was so impressed by Khaled's charisma, and as someone who did IVF because of male-factor infertility, his drive to put men and women on an even playing field when it comes to fertility and family building. Thank you so much for joining today, Khaled! I'm so excited to have you on the Future Fertility Podcast!

Khaled Ktelily:
Thank you for having me, Abby. It's a, it's a pleasure. And I remember us meeting very well and I was impressed by very much of the same and the work that you do.

Abby Mercado:
Thank you so much. Well, let's, let's get started. So straight up, tell me about yourself. Just start at the beginning, you know and I would also love to hear one fun fact about you that few people know.

Khaled Ktelily:
Ooh, okay, okay.

Abby Mercado:
So yeah, start at the beginning, and then let's get fun!

Khaled Ktelily:
Okay, let's do it. Well, believe it or not, I did not grow up thinking I would start a male fertility company, shocker for most people. So I am, I'm Lebanese-Canadian kind of grew up between both countries, I left Beirut during the war in 2006 to Montreal. So that was kind of my move to North America, which was about 15, 16 years ago by this point, started my, kind of, started my studies in business, I did finance, information systems, organizational behavior, thinking to myself that someday if I'm ever building a running a business, I mean, you need to understand, people need to understand tech, you need to understand the numbers, you know? And so I started my career in management consulting, I did Health and Life Sciences Consulting for a few years. So basically, sold my soul to the devil is really what I'm getting at for, for a few years time.

Abby Mercado:
I started in investment banking, so.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, I'm actually, I'm very grateful for the time I spent doing client services. And what's interesting about client services is you are just at the beck of call of another person all the time. I'm, I'm grateful for the experience, it wasn't what I wanted to do long-term. So I kind of had this existential crisis, I left my job, I went to work for UN women, thinking that spending some time with the United Nations would, would be formative. I thought that as a man working on women's issues would be particularly important. What I found, unfortunately, is the United Nations is like the most bureaucratic, painful, slow, inefficient organization of all time. I want to say no offense to anyone who's working at the UN, who's listening, but step it up, y'all. So I was a volunteer for about six months, I ended up applying to do a master's in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, so spent a lot of time focus on health policy. And it was around that time, actually, that I had the idea for Legacy, which I'll talk a little bit more about shortly, but after graduation, worked for the World Economic Forum in Geneva, I moved to Switzerland. But I was just so fixated on this idea of Legacy. May 2018 rolled around, I sat my boss down. I said, listen, you're going to think I'm nuts, I am moving back to Boston to start a sperm company, I'm quitting this cushy job, I'm leaving this wonderful city, and I'm moving back in with my mom for a few months to, to build the business. And actually, I'll make, I'll make the fun fact about my mom, not about me. So both my parents are entrepreneurs, father for about 25 years and my mother as of the past few years. So she actually followed in my footsteps, funnily enough. So she went to the Harvard Kennedy School a couple of years after I did, she did a mid-career program, and then she started a menopause startup. So we joke that my mom is working in female infertility, I'm working on male fertility. So we have some really weird conversations around the kitchen table.

Abby Mercado:
That's amazing. I actually think I saw your LinkedIn post about that and I definitely, I definitely gave the thumbs up.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah! They're interviewing with Y Combinator. I mean, they're serious, they're serious.

Abby Mercado:
That's awesome, that's awesome. Well, thank you for telling us about yourself. What an interesting path. And I think the one, what ring true from kind of your description of your past is the fact that it feels like your career has been mission-driven at least, at least more recently, and doing a lot of work in more of the public sector. So it doesn't surprise me that the company that you founded is also mission-driven. So, so tell us a little bit about that company. So you have this idea, you told your boss, I'm sure he was like a mind-blown emoji. Like what, Khaled? Like what? I don't understand. Tell us more.

Khaled Ktelily:
It was, it was a strange conversation, in part because in that conversation, he was offering me a promotion, and I was like, I'm actually not accepting that, and I'm actually quitting. So that was a mind-blown, and I think maybe kind of an awkward, awkward experience. So I had the idea for Legacy a couple of years before starting the company. It was, I was on a client project in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I'm going to preface this by saying this is like not one of the cooler founding stories, but I was on a client project in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we were stopping by a Starbucks before getting to our client site, it was like seven in the morning. I was the most junior person on the team, so I was sitting in the passenger seat, I jump out, I pick up some freshly brewed coffees and teas and, you know, those cardboard cup holders they give you when you've got more than one drink at Starbucks?

Abby Mercado:
Oh, yeah.

Khaled Ktelily:
So I put all the drinks in that. I get back in the passenger seat, I put those on my lap as we are driving down the highway, a car in front of us brakes very suddenly, meaning we brake very suddenly. And you can see where this is going.

Abby Mercado:
Yes.

Khaled Ktelily:
Because all four of those and like scalding hot coffee, scalding hot tea, freshly boiled water, spills all over my lap. So in retrospect, this was funny to everyone but me because there I was, full suit and tie. I jump out of the car and by the side of the highway, I rip my pants off because the fabric of my suit was absorbing the burning hot liquids it was burning even worse, I ripped my pants off. Thankfully, the presence of mind to keep my underwear on, there I was, otherwise in suit and tie, but like basically grabbing my crotch by the side of the highway. I later found out that, I don't know, like ten or so cars had stopped by to watch this crazed man half dressed. So I went to the ER, there wasn't any burn unit nearby. They didn't know how to, I'm like, my thighs were, like, literally rips, this rips the skin clean off, I got second-degree burns.

Abby Mercado:
Oh, my god!

Khaled Ktelily:
Yes.

Abby Mercado:
It's like we're sitting here laughing, but.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, no, it.

Abby Mercado:
Was I was like, I was like, I'm not a dude, but like, that seems like it's probably pretty painful. And also, it's like corporate America, like junior person. Like, hasn't that happened to every junior person in corporate America? So anyway, burns, holy moly.

Khaled Ktelily:
So I got burnt. They didn't know what to do with the burn. And so I just remember they basically wrapped me up with gauze, like Tarzan. I felt like I walked out with a loincloth. I had an experience, and then. So, you know, I had this fairly traumatic experience. So thankfully, second-degree burns do heal fully, but it took me a month and a half to fully recover. I couldn't wear pants for, for like a month because this was right before I started my masters. And so when I had started, it was like a month or two months later, one of my classmates shared a story about how he had dealt with cancer and how his doctors had advised him to freeze his sperm before starting chemo. So for those who don't know, in chemotherapy, is just it's radiation being pumped into your body, it's very harmful to you. A lot of folks end up infertile afterwards. So he's telling the story. I've just had this incident and I guess this is the closest thing I have to a light bulb moment where it hit me. I was like, well, I've never heard of this concept before, but maybe I should go freeze my sperm. And so I asked him, you know, how much does it cost to test or freeze your sperm? And he's like, it's about a thousand dollars. Like, okay, I mean, it's not cheap, but like it's within the realm of possibility. And I'm like, do I need permission from like, I don't know. Do I need a doctor? No, I don't know if you need it. We need a prescription to go and masturbate at a clinic? I don't know. Can you do it for free? I have no idea. And so I looked up the local sperm bank. I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the time. It was right next door to my favorite Chinese restaurant, The Dumpling House. So it was just like sensual vibes going in. I was ... as walking in on. My.

Abby Mercado:
Freeze your sperm, get favorite dumpling, so I love it.

Khaled Ktelily:
And so, you know, you walk in and, you know, it sounds like you've experienced some of this with you and your partner. Just like what the process. I mean, first of all, you walk into a fertility clinic, and everyone is kind of averting their gaze, right? Nobody wants, like you're hoping you don't run into someone you know, because it's stigmatized and it's uncomfortable and, you know, you don't want to go and tell people about this stuff. So you walk in, and I remember the receptionist asked me these like very invasive questions, you know? Have you ever had an STI? I'm like, I don't think so. It's like, when's the last time you had sex with the man? I'm like, I don't think recently, you know, like, you know, and then all these questions like, okay, well, why are you here to freeze your sperm? Are you getting a vasectomy? Do you have cancer, or are you transitioning to become a woman? I was like, again, I don't think any of the three. I'm just, I'm just here to do it proactively. And I remember she looked at me like I was the crazy one. She was like, okay, weirdo, hands you the specimen cup. They only, they don't, they don't say sperm, they say specimen. They take you to a small room, black leather couch, you know, you turn the lights off. You, of course, are imagining every bare ass that has been on and around that couch. There's like porn mags and they're sticky, you don't to touch anything. There's a remote again, you don't want to touch it. The door didn't make it all the way down. So there's a little sliver of light at the bottom. And so you could see the shadows of people walking by, they're laughing, they're joking. Meanwhile, you're in there. I had a ten-minute time limit because someone needed to use the room right after. So, you know, it was fine, plenty of time. You then hand your freshly produced sperm sample to a nurse, right? Super weird. You then wait a week to get your results. The results make no sense, it's just a bunch of data points. You then schedule a call, it takes another week to get an appointment and all the stuff. And so all in all, it took me three or four weeks to actually go through the process and I walked away from this thinking this should be a no-brainer for every man. And I became really fixated in this idea, like, if you could create something that was affordable, that was consumer-oriented, that was done from home, why would this not be a no-brainer for every man? And as I so I mean, I joined ASRM, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, I started taking courses on sperm. I became like my friends started calling me the sperm king because it is all I would talk about for a very.

Abby Mercado:
All the name ...

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, I know, yeah. Great for my personal life. And so I really started studying up a lot on sperm, and I did for a couple of years. But what became painfully clear is look, chemicals are making us infertile, sperm counts on the decline, infertility so much more common than we think about. We only ever talk about it as a women's issue. There's such a need for a product on the male side, and I just became convinced that I wanted to be the first person to do it. And I remember this huge study came out in 2017 showing that male fertility had declined by 50 to 60% over the last 40 years. This was Dr. Shanna Swan and her, and her colleagues, and that was the moment for me. So it actually was shortly thereafter that I sat down with my boss and quit because I figured I'm like, if I don't do this now, someone will beat me to it. And I have been talking about sperm for too long to not be the first person, the first to arrive in this industry.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. So want to go back to just understanding your experience at the fertility clinic. So did you, I mean, beyond asking, asking you the reasons as to why you were doing this, which should someone like .... No, no, it doesn't matter. Like where you told the benefits of potentially doing them and? No. Yeah.

Khaled Ktelily:
I mean, yes. I don't want to interrupt, but just I mean, nothing at all. It was just, like what I, what I really was struck by was that everything about it was so clinical. I felt like something was wrong with me for going there, right? And the problem is, when you have health care, like individuals in health care providing a health care service, the patient, the human, the human gets lost in all of this. And so you're treated as a patient and a number, not as an actual human being. It's like, all right, get in there, jerk it, come back out, you'll get your results in a week, whatever, right? Imagine this like a Bostonian accent too, just pack it in the closet, huh? Yeah, I can't do the accent but.

Abby Mercado:
Well, no, no, I liked it. Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, well, obviously in 2017, something needed to change. And so, you know, you kind of, you made that, you made that change. So tell us about actually starting legacy. Like what were the early days like? I think I read that you guys have raised $50 million dollars to date, so you're, by no means early anymore. But like shed some light on. What did those early days look like for you in a small team?

Khaled Ktelily:
I mean, so first of all, I had, I had really wanted a co-founder. I didn't want to start it by myself. But I found that the women in my networks were not particularly interested in starting a male-focused company. And the men in my networks were not particularly interested in working on sperm and being known as the sperm king, prince, whatever. And I didn't, I honestly didn't come from an entrepreneurial network. I basically had one friend who had gone through Y Combinator, and he's the one who kind of helped give me a lot of advice. So I didn't know, I didn't come from the networks, I didn't know the lingo, I didn't know the vocabulary. I had no, I mean, someone was like Andreessen Horowitz, I was like, who's that? Which, which today, I mean, it's laughable, right? If you're in the world of VC, of course you know Andreessen Horowitz, I had, I had no idea. And the early days were really just me. I actually have a very vivid memory. I was at a coffee shop in Cambridge wearing like Jim Schwartz and a t-shirt, I was going for a bike ride afterwards. And my laptop I had a privacy screen on because I was looking at sperm all day, right? And literally just sending emails, trying to get your first few partners, trying to get your first few customers, trying to get your first few contractors, the branding, right, I mean, you're literally just, you're doing everything, you know? And so I do wish I had a co-founder. It's just it's much more difficult to do it by yourself, there's just more you have to do. But I was so, what I think I was fortunate in was, I am so, I have always been so convinced that this is something the world needs. If you look at our pitch decks literally from like early 2018 till now, the core vision is still largely the same. It is you normalize, you educate, you raise awareness, you make male fertility something that is not. Fertility no longer just a women's issue. And so it really was just me in a coffee shop with a privacy screen for some time. My first person joined about six months in, like a full time person. And yeah, a third person joined, I want to say April 2019. So almost a full year later. And then we went through YC that summer.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. What, how did, was YC, kind of, and for those listening, Y Combinator is a very large accelerator of startups, very famous, very difficult to get in. So obviously, Khaled and team impressed them somehow but like was that kind of would you consider that like your jumping off point where you able to raise capital shortly thereafter? What does that look like for you in the team?

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, it's a great question. And actually we did things a little bit backwards when it came to YC because a lot of, a lot of startups will go in and then use that to raise money. We'd actually raise some money beforehand, and so I'll share something that I think will be valuable to anyone listening who's even thinking about starting their own company or even thinking about being in the fertility space, it became clear to me that when you are dealing with a stigmatized industry, which you need more than anything is awareness, you need media coverage, you need people talking about this. And I figured instead of being ashamed about sperm or fertility, let me lean into it, be like, yeah, I run a sperm company, how cool is that? And so I remember I nominated Legacy for every award, every competition, every everything. And so we applied to TechCrunch Disrupt. So TechCrunch Disrupt has competitions all around the world, they have North America, Middle East, Africa, Europe and so on. And so I applied to three of them. So I applied to TechCrunch Disrupt Europe because I was just living in Switzerland. I applied to TechCrunch Disrupt North America because I was living in Boston, and I applied to TechCrunch Disrupt Middle East and they just put our home address in Lebanon as our office. I figured whatever, YOLO, so applied to all three, got an email from TechCrunch Disrupt saying, hey, we'd like you to be one of our like nominees for cool, up and coming biotech startups. We're going to give you a couple of free passes to the conference, would you like to come? I said, you know what? Yeah, sure, it's a great opportunity. So I bought a ticket to Berlin, convinced my cousin who was living in London to come join. And as I was landing in Berlin at 8 p.m., I remember I got an email that said, congratulations, you have been selected as the wild card for the startup battlefield. Show up tomorrow at 8 a.m. with a full deck and a full pitch, 7 minutes ready to present in front of 1000 people.

Abby Mercado:
Oh, shit.

Khaled Ktelily:
And I remember, like, I was sick, I was jetlagged, I was exhausted, I had slept poorly, all this stuff, I message a friend of mine who's also an entrepreneur in Montreal, and I'm like, hey, dude, I need your help, please help me get a pitch deck together while I'm asleep in Berlin, right? Because of the timezone difference. And so I wake up at six, he's helped me put together a deck, I tweak it, I make up a script, we go, we pitch, we end up making it through the first round onto the final round, we end up pitching again and we win.

Abby Mercado:
Stop!

Khaled Ktelily:
We win. And there were 12 other startups that had been practicing for months, months! But, but again, it was, look, I am working on a topic that is interesting and fascinating. So let's lean into it, let's talk about sperm. And actually, in those days, I don't want to get too sidetracked from the fundraising story, but in those days, the early tagline for Legacy was, again, because I had I'd been living in Switzerland for a couple of years and, you know, the Swiss have a reputation for quality and discretion and privacy and Swiss watches, Swiss banking and all of this. So the original tagline was Legacy is the Swiss private bank for your most valuable assets. And so I went up on stage and I said, look, for the next 7 minutes, I'm going to talk about banking and deposits without ever referring to the financial industry. And that was how I gave the pitch. And there's an ongoing joke because at the time we had zero customers, we had literally zero customers. One of the judges, he asked me was like, how many customers do you have? And I said, listen, I don't want to talk about customers, I want to talk about conversations, we've had thousands of conversations with men about this product, and everyone dies laughing because we had zero customers, but we won, and we got this big oversized check. We got a ton of inbound interest from VCs. You know, I have like 50 meetings with VCs over the next few weeks. I managed to bomb basically all of them because I didn't know the vocabulary. I had no idea what I was doing. I remember I think it was like Kleiner Perkins reached out and I asked my friend, I'm like, who's Kleiner Perkins? Are they any good? What's wrong with you? Yes, they're good.

Abby Mercado:
Just Google it, Khaled!

Khaled Ktelily:
Exactly. And it was shortly thereafter, so Bain Capital Ventures reached out to us through an associate. I almost didn't take the call because people know associates are not the decision-makers. But I did. And he was like, uou got to get in here, pitch to our partners, so a few days later, we pitched, we walked out 4 hours later, we got a signed term sheet for our first million dollars.

Abby Mercado:
Wow. Wait, how long did that take you?

Khaled Ktelily:
I mean, from, from Bain meetings to term sheet was a week? Not even, I think, less than that.

Abby Mercado:
Nice work on that.

Khaled Ktelily:
Less than that, from first call to term sheet, 4, 4 hours. And actually, interestingly, for our series B fundraise, they came back 37 minutes after we pitched the partners.

Abby Mercado:
Love it. That's awesome.

Khaled Ktelily:
But that was our first million. We got accepted to Y Combinator a week later, and we ultimately still decided to go, and I'm glad we did.

Abby Mercado:
You know, this is so interesting just hearing, and as a startup founder myself, just hearing about the fact that your vision hasn't changed and it's so, like, Rescripted we went through Techstars and their criteria is like the product, the product actually doesn't matter. Like it really is, like the conversation, like what is your vision? Like, what are the, what are the conversations that you want to be having?

Khaled Ktelily:
Have you had thousands of conversations?

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, but like what, what is like the larger conversation that you're building this business on? And, you know, I guess kind of with that, I'm curious about pivots. Well, like, first of all, like, maybe just, let's, let's start by having you tell us about the product. What is the product today, what was it yesterday, etc.?

Khaled Ktelily:
Absolutely. Are we on video, by the way, or is this audio only?

Abby Mercado:
No, audio.

Khaled Ktelily:
Okay, great. Well, I would have shown folks so, so our, our product is a mail-in kit. So the idea is you go to the website, givelegacy.com, you purchase a kit, you input your insurance information, if you have insurance. Within one or two days, you will get a kit that arrives at your home. The kit is, is carefully designed but has two core components. So obviously the deposit cup which you ejaculate into and then a sperm preservative that keeps your sperm alive for several days. So you produce a sperm sample, you add the sperm preservative, you screw the lid back on, you put it back in the kit, you scan a QR code, we then come to pick it up from your home. We ship it overnight to our lab, yeah, you can either drop it off yourself in a drop box, but by default, we will actually have, have someone come to pick it up from your home.

Abby Mercado:
Very Swiss.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, right? Very, very elegant. And in fact, the box, the kit honestly kind of looks like a watch box. And so I think we're still kind of inspired by our Swiss roots.

Abby Mercado:
Love it.

Khaled Ktelily:
So we ship it overnight to our lab. We'll do a full clinical-grade semen analysis. We test for volume count, concentration, motility, morphology, we do DNA fragmentation testing as well, we have supplements and so on. So we'll do the analysis, then send it off to cryostorage. And what we do is we'll take your sperm, we'll, we'll freeze it, we will divide your sperm sample into four vials. We'll send those four vials to two different locations. So two vials on the East Coast, two vials on the West Coast to ensure redundancy. So that way for people who are freezing their sperm samples for ten plus years, you know, your sperm will be safe. But the idea is you don't have to talk to a doctor unless you want to. You don't have to talk to anyone unless you want to. It is you ordered it online, you get it at home, you masturbate at home, we take care of the rest.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. No, that's amazing.

Khaled Ktelily:
Is the most enjoyable consumer product that you will order online that is legal.

Abby Mercado:
So, so obviously you have a direct-to-consumer strategy, but I've also noticed that you have a B2B strategy. So walk us through how both of those strategies emerge and how those are both strong drivers of revenue for, for Legacy today.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, it's a, it's a great question because a lot of startups will just pick one or the other. In our case, we started off as a D2C brand, but I never saw our future as a D2C company. And it's interesting because this is a, this is in a world where Roman and HIMSS had taken off in a big way. They were pure D2C companies. But from my perspective, D2C is less defensible. You know, it's much easier for new entrants to come in. And we actually we had a competitor come in the early days with a snazzy branding, cool-looking kit, right? Like the core D2C components. But for me it was, look, if you want to build a company for the long term, you need to unlock a B2B and we will be a direct-to-consumer company until we can unlock those channels, and it's interesting. So Jay Rugani and Julie ... at Andreessen Horowitz wrote an article called B2C2B, right? So it's B2B or B2B2C, they're kind of flipping it and they're describing the phenomenon of companies like ours starting off direct to consumer, building up a large consumer base. We have, I think, 15,000 plus consumers at this point getting the evidence that you need, the efficacy building case studies, and then using that to unlock business-to-business partnerships. So we have three core types of partnerships insurance, employer, and military. So right now we cover, I believe it's about 12 million lives across New Jersey, New York, and California. So if you have insurance with insurers like United, Aetna, Cigna, if you have Tri-West, then you can come to us and you won't be paying out of, out of pocket for the product, right? So what that means is for the end user, the end price is 0 dollars. And the employer side, we've basically done a clean sweep of all the fertility benefits providers, right? So that's MAVEN, Care, ... Fertility, progeny, and so on. And we work with all of them and we are their preferred partner in part because we have just developed such a superior product over the last few years. So that's another, I think it's another eight or so plus or minus million folks who again, their employers are covering it. And then finally, it's one of those things that becomes very obvious when you think about it, but it wouldn't be immediately intuitive is the military. So, you know, men, we have about 1.1 million men who are active duty in the military, all of whom are at risk of being wounded or killed in action, all of whom are exposed to chemicals and burn pits, and so on. And so we now work with the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets and the VA. We just testified before Congress, that actually was earlier today, our head of military affairs testified in front of Congress about why semen cryopreservation matters to the military. And we're actually currently lobbying Congress in partnership with a lot of our great partners, like the Military Family Building Coalition and Resolve and so on, to help introduce laws that will actually encourage sperm cryopreservation for men in the military.

Abby Mercado:
Wow. That's very cool. That's awesome. And such an important conversation to be having. And it's, to say this is both a men's and a women's issue, fertility and family building. And then going to the very far end of the pool, you know, like what is a man's man, right? Like, ah, we're not even supposed to say that anymore. But if, if you were to, like, that's found in the military. So having this conversation be like so open from a military perspective is, is incredibly important.

Khaled Ktelily:
It was amazing. We actually mean my head of military affairs, Captain John Crowley, we flew to Coronado, California, to present to the Navy SEALs before their graduation and explain to them the benefits of sperm. And it's funny because they, I mean, first of all, it's terrifying to be in a room of several dozen men who could snap your neck at any way. You know.

Abby Mercado:
I used to work for a Navy SEAL, so, yeah.

Khaled Ktelily:
Got it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Abby Mercado:
Like, terrifying. Yeah, I understand.

Khaled Ktelily:
I'm like, damn, this presentation better be good, you know? And after, and they're like all men. It's like once you make, men just need to make the first joke. They need to get it out of their system, need to flush it out of their system. They make one penis joke, one sperm joke, one whatever, you know. But once they make that, what's interesting is men will match your tone. So as long as you are treating the topic seriously as a professional, they will do the same. They just need to get that first joke off their chest. Same is true, it's as true for the Navy SEALs as it is for, for any other men.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. Awesome. So tell us, I mean, obviously, Legacy has had an amazing run to date. Like, what can we expect to see from Legacy in the coming years? And how do you also look to your consumer to kind of, to kind of lead that charge and to tell you what they want?

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, that is, that is such a great question because everything we do is informed by the customer calls that we have. We call them clients, by the way, not customers, to try to elevate the experience a little bit. Everything we do is driven by what our customers are looking for. So we have three primary types of customers today. So the first is couples that are either trying to conceive or planning on trying to conceive and just want to get all the data that they have. You'll see a lot more couples nowadays who are just being thoughtful. They're like, okay, we're going to want to have kids, you know, the, assuming it's a heterosexual couple, the female partner will get her hormones tested or she might go to her OB-GYN for a checkup, the men will get a sperm test done and they basically just want to know that they're ready to go. And then you have couples that have been trying for some time and want to understand what's going on. That's kind of the first bucket. The second bucket is people facing major life changes or transitions. So you're starting chemotherapy, and you're worried about iatrogenic infertility, i.e. medically, not medically inflicted, but infertility that is, that is a result of a medical condition or medical treatment. You have folks who are beginning to transition, so we deal with a lot of transgender women who are born biologically male or producing sperm, but freeze our sperm before beginning gender-affirming surgery or the gender-affirming process. You know, we have men in high-risk jobs. You know, you work around radiation, for example. Pilots, for example, are exposed to tons of radiation as a result of being so much further, further from the earth, so frequently. So that's kind of the second bucket of men who just want to preserve their fertility, and that would include men in the military as well. And the third is single men who are just being proactive about this. And what we've seen is a huge increase in the conversation, especially around chemicals. So we've seen the stats around how much sperm counts are declining. We've seen the stats about this, you know, fertility rates and birth rates across the world are plummeting. We know that chemicals are making us all sick and giving us cancer, and probably making us infertile. And so more and more, we have young men who are in the 20 to 26 age range who are saying, hey, let me, let me be proactive about this. Let me freeze my sperm today knowing that I will use it at some undetermined point in the future.

Abby Mercado:
Wow. Awesome. Well, it sounds like you're, you're certainly serving a variety of folks. And you. You've kind of uncovered them and uncovered where the opportunity is not only for the business, but to help more people and to help as many people as you can. So, well, as, as we're closing up here, so at Rescripted, we are.

Khaled Ktelily:
I can't believe so much time has passed, I didn't feel them at all.

Abby Mercado:
30 minutes! So we, like, at Rescripted, our mission is to rescript the narrative around reproductive, hormonal, and sexual health. And so as such, we, we have on founders and CEOs in those and those industries. So if you are to rescript a narrative around fertility, what is it? What do you want to rescript here?

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, yeah. I love this question and I love that you're doing this podcast because again, I think a lot of this comes down to education and awareness and just talking openly about topics that are so often under the surface for me and frankly, for Legacy as a whole, we want to change the, this outdated view that fertility is a women's issue. We want to say, hey, we should be rebalancing the responsibilities around family planning, right? For, for heterosexual couples, for same-sex couples, we need to get out of this really outdated view, you know, and what is and I think we're moving very much in the right direction, not just on the male side, but on fertility in general. So as of June of this year, you have 20 states that have passed fertility insurance coverage laws that includes 14 covering IVF, that includes 12 states doing fertility preservation. You know, and even, even just anecdotally, I met a guy. So I, of course, ask everyone I meet, have you frozen your sperm? This is like a normal ice breaker, you know, it's like so great to meet you.

Abby Mercado:
I do the same thing about, I do the same thing with eggs, but I think I should start doing it with sperm too.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah, you should!

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, I will.

Khaled Ktelily:
Anything is. Freezing your sperm is so much easier, so much cheaper, so much less invasive, so much more enjoyable. So anyway, so, so I meet a guy at a party a month ago and I ask him, so have you frozen your sperm? And he says to me, this is the I've been waiting for this to happen because I've always said to the team, this will be the inflection point. And he says, no, but I really should. Everyone's talking about it. I was like, this is it. This is, this is the beginning. I met our first power user. This is like a week later I met our first power user. I didn't think we'd have power users and this guy, and he said it in very crude terms, I'm going to replicate it a bit more diplomatically, but he's just like, yeah, I've jerked off for you guys like seven times. Like, this is just such a genius fucking idea. Like, I talked to my parents about this at the dinner table. I'm like, okay, I didn't know. We have, we have a power user.

Abby Mercado:
You sound like him. Like I can actually.

Khaled Ktelily:
Yeah.

Abby Mercado:
You can picture ...

Khaled Ktelily:
So it's moving. It's moving in that direction. We're lucky to have some celebrity investors like Justin Bieber, Orlando Bloom, DJ Khaled and so on, and, you know, I think they're helping change the conversation as well. So there's a lot of work left to be done, but it feels it feels good, you know, and we say our, our vision is to unlock sperm as a biomarker of health, and our mission is to humanize the path to parenthood for all. And so it feels like we're, we're well on our way.

Abby Mercado:
Oh, mic drop, well, Khaled, thank you so much, CEO and founder of Legacy. Just thrilled to have you on today and I'm sure I'll see you soon.

Khaled Ktelily:
It's great. Great to be here. Thank you for having me, Abby.

Abby Mercado:
Thank you for tuning in to the Future Of Fertility. We hope you live here feeling empowered about all of the exciting innovations taking place in the fertility space. If you like today's episode and want to stay up to date on our podcast, don't forget to click Subscribe. To find this episode, show notes, resources, and more, head to Rescripted.com, and be sure to join our free fertility support community while you're there.

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