Jack Fertility, an Oxford-based men's healthtech startup, has raised more than £500,000 in pre-seed funding to launch Snip Check, the UK's first home-to-lab postal vasectomy test kit, and accelerate development of its broader range of male reproductive health solutions. The round was led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from Microsoft angels, Alma Angels, The Beam Network, Moonstone Venture Capital, FemTech Lab, Founders Factory's Reckitt Benkiser Accelerator, and the Oxford Seed Fund.
Yet perhaps it's time we ask not only why aren't women having babies?, but also why aren't men? Men are largely invisible in the birthrate debate. It's ironic that amid all the pontificating and the policy ideas for encouraging more women to have babies a conversation often being had by men the other half of humanity is strikingly underexamined. Part of the problem is an absence of data: like many European countries, we don't really have any on male fertility.