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Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

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Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#51

Post by caiobegotti »

khaledkteily wrote: post #41
Taek wrote: post #34

What happens to the sperm if the company goes out of business? What are the privacy protections around DNA and other personal information inherent to sperm collection and storage? Do you offer jurisdiction options?

A very common-sense question to ask. We have agreements with our cryostorage providers to automatically transfer ownership of the assets to them in case Legacy ever did not exist in the future. So you would work directly with them and have the choice of either keeping the sample frozen there, or transferring it to a facility of your choice. We would help facilitate this to the greatest extent possible. We do not yet…

> So you would work directly with them and have the choice of either keeping the sample frozen there, or transferring it to a facility of your choice

That reads pretty much as "good luck with that!" to me, I'm sorry. People would pay you exactly because they would never have a facility of their choice and in case it goes sour they would probably have to face a ridiculous price tag from some other new company not truly interested in keeping their sperm but that just happened to be part of your risk hedging or simply of a insurance deal.

Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#52

Post by throwaway72759 »

_5659 wrote: post #27

This might seem overtly politically correct and I'm actually a bit surprised in myself for saying this, but have you considered changing instances of male/men to just generic families? (e.g., We help families have children vs we help men become fathers). I will state up front, I'm not trying to police language, just pointing out that deciding specific keywords up front affects how people find your business online or…

Thank you for this response, it really echoes my feelings.

Before I started my transition, preserving my sperm was a top priority. At the time, my financial situation was dismal, and it took me almost a year to save up enough to afford it. That’s a whole year my transition was delayed.

When I finally went through with it, the whole experience was pretty awkward. The folks at the cryostorage place were nice, but I felt like I was not 100% welcome. The actual “sample collection” process was very awkward and uncomfortable.

If there had been a trustworthy service like Legacy back then, I definitely would have jumped on it.

As it stands, the site and branding definitely feels targeted totally to men, which isn’t super welcoming to people in my position. It’s a sad fact that I have to deal with feeling unwelcome a lot when it comes to healthcare related things, so if I have to go through that I’d at least like to be able to do it from the comfort of my own home, not needing to physically interact with someone.

If you did find a way to balance your branding to make trans people feel more comfortable, I think that would be a wonderful thing and I think there is a pretty large market there. As odomojuli said, I think using more “family-centric” language would be a great start. If you don’t feel comfortable explicitly catering to trans people, fine, but lowering the emphasis on “MAN” would go a long way.

Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#54

Post by anonymous11243 »

khaledkteily wrote: post #6
AnonHP wrote: post #5

Could you edit your post and list which countries (and states) you operate in and plan to expand to? I know HN is mainly US based and that many YC startups tend to be US based. But it would be useful for people to know about the geographical reach because unlike online SaaS launches that probably can work worldwide for many solutions, this one has many physical aspects to it.

Yes, of course! I'll edit it shortly. We're live across the United States, and actively working on international expansion to Canada, Europe (via Geneva & London), and the Middle East (via Dubai).

What's your timeline for the Canada expansion? Would like to become your customer.

Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#55

Post by khaledkteily »

neolog wrote: post #50
khaledkteily wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great question, and one where keeping everything cool is important in both cases. We get a lot of monitoring information, both on the way to the cryostorage facilities (everything from humidity to temperature variance to battery level of our trackers), and we similarly get daily or weekly checks of the frozen sperm (like manually checking on levels of liquid nitrogen). We hadn't considered making this inform…

- How long without cooling does it take for the samples to be destroyed? - When it does go down, how long does it take you to catch it? - Are you doing active "chaos monkey"-style testing such as intentionally turning off random systems and ensuring your backup procedures detect and solve the problem before the samples are destroyed? - Given the current deterioration rates in your industry and your facility under nor…

Facility backup generators activate within seconds of an outage, and are load-tested regularly for 30 minutes. In case of heat/smoke/motion detection, facilities managers are sent smartphone alerts. There are very clear SOPs for almost every possibility.

THAT SAID, you can plan for all kinds of issues - power outages, natural disasters, human error, technical error, etc. - but you will never be able to bring risk down to zero.

For this reason, we also offer multi-site storage, whereby we divide samples into multiple tanks across multiple locations. AFAIK, we are the only company in this space to do so.

Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#56

Post by khaledkteily »

anonymous11243 wrote: post #54
khaledkteily wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course! I'll edit it shortly. We're live across the United States, and actively working on international expansion to Canada, Europe (via Geneva & London), and the Middle East (via Dubai).

What's your timeline for the Canada expansion? Would like to become your customer.

As soon as COVID allows it... you can keep in touch with clientservices@givelegacy.com.

PS many of us are Canadian so we get this question from friends. A temporary measure, once the borders re-open, is to simply drive anywhere across the US border, have it picked up that day, and then return to Canada.

Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#58

Post by neolog »

khaledkteily wrote: post #55
neolog wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- How long without cooling does it take for the samples to be destroyed? - When it does go down, how long does it take you to catch it? - Are you doing active "chaos monkey"-style testing such as intentionally turning off random systems and ensuring your backup procedures detect and solve the problem before the samples are destroyed? - Given the current deterioration rates in your industry and your facility under nor…

Facility backup generators activate within seconds of an outage, and are load-tested regularly for 30 minutes. In case of heat/smoke/motion detection, facilities managers are sent smartphone alerts. There are very clear SOPs for almost every possibility. THAT SAID, you can plan for all kinds of issues - power outages, natural disasters, human error, technical error, etc. - but you will never be able to bring risk dow…

> you will never be able to bring risk down to zero.

I'd avoid these straw men, trust your customers to understand risk management.

> you can plan for all kinds of issues - power outages, natural disasters, human error, technical error, etc

Great, I'd love to see this risk modeling. Which sets of components would need to fail in order for a sample to be destroyed? Which components have failed? How often? Are the failures correlated?

What legal risks exist for the customer in your industry? When things go wrong in that way, how does it happen?

Do samples degrade over time? How fast? What is their viability rate?

Re: Launch HN: Legacy (YC S19) – we help men test and freeze their sperm

#60

Post by SuoDuanDao »

davelasto wrote: post #22
s17n wrote: post #19

To me the name "legacy" is a huge turnoff, big enough that I probably won't use your service. Maybe it's just me though!

I'd love to learn more! Is there something in particular you don't like? As a marketer (and the growth person on the Legacy team), I've learned you can't build a strategy or business that appeases everyone. Ultimately, a name is just a name. Ultimately, we are working to help hopeful fathers build families.

Personally I like the name. speaks to an idea of value.
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