The View from the Office. 

I met up with Lauren Silva Laughlin, founder of men’s health startup Batch Global, in the restaurant of the Moxy Hotel in midtown. We each had coffee.

Lauren left a job as a columnist and editor at Reuters last year to become an entrepreneur. She’s launched Batch to educate men on reproductive health issues. 

She plans to start as a media company, with a newsletter, video, and podcast. She wants to use the visibility to build a business that matches would-be parents with sperm donors.

Her entrepreneurial journey started seven years ago when she discovered via a DNA test she was the product of a sperm donor. Her parents had not told her because of the stigma. 

That resonated with me as I’ve had several friends in the past few years discover from genetic testing that they had siblings they didn’t know or that they had been adopted. 

Researching the issue, Lauren realized there is a quiet fertility crisis unfolding in America and many other countries around the world. There are a wide array of causes, including the fact that people are waiting longer to have families and sperm counts have fallen. 

Many couples and single women are looking for sperm donors to conceive. But the process remains difficult, shrouded by shame and disinformation.

One challenge is the extreme shortage of facilities. For example, one of the country’s largest fertility clinics, California Cryo, was reported to have just 600 donors in 2018. Meanwhile, there are tens of thousands of people looking for help. 

The majority of people find donors from Facebook pages. Lauren said that the lack of oversight, consistency and regulation in that environment can lead to problematic situations and abuse. 

She showed me some of the Facebook pages where people are looking for donors. It was heartbreaking to think of the struggles some people go through to try and have a child. 

Our conversation was wide-ranging. We covered not just fertility and sperm counts, but so many other aspects of modern life like dating apps and the evolution of relationships and definition of masculinity. You realize that the topic of fertility literally encompasses all aspects of life. 

Lauren is well suited to tell the story. She started her career as a media investment banker at Deutsche Bank, before joining the financial commentary service Breakingviews as one of its first employees in New York. She later wrote for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. 

Lauren’s goal is to make the process for donating sperm easier and transparent. 

That way everyone involved knows what to expect when they are expecting. 

If you want to learn more you can connect with Lauren via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.