We recently sat down with Lily Elsner, co-founder of Jack Fertility, an early-stage science and tech company based at our Wood Centre for Innovation. Their mission is to change the conversation about fertility and address a gender imbalance by tackling the lack of fertility testing and support available to men.
Jack Fertility has created the UK’s most convenient sperm test – one that fits straight through your letterbox. By making tests discreet and accessible, they are helping men take control of their fertility health and giving couples a more balanced approach to their fertility journeys.
Taking away taboos
Lily has been actively speaking about male infertility to challenge the stigma that surrounds it. She has appeared on many podcasts, spoken at events and even hosted a stage at the South by Southwest Festival in London..
She shared that setting the scene around trends in male reproductive health is important. Sperm counts are down 60% over the last 50 years (Levine et al, 2023), with the decline increasing quite rapidly.
Lily said that their research shows that by 2045, most couples will need some form of assistive reproductive technology to conceive (Swan, 2020). This is a serious trend that many people are not aware of, but she said that crucially, it is reversible.
From MBA students to tech-health founders
Lily and co-founder Nick Shipley met in 2019, during their MBA at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. When planning his own family, Nick shared with Lily the lack of support he had encountered concerning male fertility.
With a science background, Lily is passionate about changing and improving the healthcare industry. Lily knew that male and female factors were just as likely to be responsible for a couple’s challenge to conceive. So, she dug deeper and found that research into male fertility, outside of erectile dysfunction, was surprisingly limited and underfunded. Various fertility tests are available for women, but very few testing options and little support are available for men.
Jack Fertility was formed in 2022, having spent about 9 months mapping the ecosystem and understanding the market, greatly benefiting from Nick’s background in consumer insights. The company closed a pre-seed funding round in 2025 and is planning a consumer launch at the end of tthis year.
Jack Fertility’s ground-breaking business has been attracting significant accolades, recently winning the judge’s choice award at the 2025 South East UK start-up awards. Co-founder Nick Shipley was awarded the Kindness and Leadership award this year, and Lily was a finalist for the Women of the Future awards in 2023.
Removing barriers to male fertility testing
Their research showed that few men talk about fertility. Men avoid fertility testing because they find visits to the clinic inconvenient; they find the experience awkward and emasculating; and they often avoid testing because they fear the results. She explains being taken aback by how little the average person, as well as many medical professionals, know about male reproductive and sperm health.
Lily and Nick noticed how people had become more familiar with the idea of mail-in medical testing through the Covid pandemic. This gave them the idea of offering a mail-in option for laboratory-conducted sperm health tests and so remove one of the key obstacles – the awkward and inconvenient experience of a clinic visit to collect sperm samples.
Even the choice of the company name, Jack Fertility, aims to break down a barrier and engage men about their fertility. ‘Jack’ is masculine, approachable, and ‘one-of-the-guys’, and with its familiar use in crude phrasing, brings a smile to a conversation that men often find awkward.
Rebalancing gender roles in fertility
Lily explained that the business is very conscious of the imbalance that exists in fertility and how much of the burden women experience. Part of what drives her is a goal to rebalance that by giving men a service, and product designed for them so that they can be empowered to take a role.
She said typically services that exist to improve fertility exclusively talk to and are designed for women. She wants to open the issue for both the male and female partners.
Sperm health testing
None of the home sperm test kits currently on the market offer the full range of parameters measured in a laboratory that are needed to assess overall sperm health and male fertility. Jack Fertility’s laboratory tests of preserved sperm samples received by mail will look at five parameters to give a holistic picture of sperm health, including how much and what concentration of sperm there is, what it looks like, and how it moves. They will be one of the first companies in the UK to offer the mail-in service, allowing the samples to be put discreetly into a priority mailbox.
The team also hopes to connect men with the correct levels and points of support. If anything outside normal parameters is detected through the lab tests, customers will be directed to the appropriate professionals to talk to and receive advice on solutions. Alongside testing, they hope to educate people about how to improve sperm health.
Lily cites an example of the power of their holistic approach to analysing results. “Through our early testing, we were able to help a couple conceive and overcome recurrent miscarriage. One of the major factors for people with recurrent miscarriage is infections, not sperm health. We were able to identify this, and following a simple course of antibiotics, this couple could carry their pregnancy to term.”
Rooted in Oxford’s innovation ecosystem
At a ‘Started in Oxford’ event in 2020, Lily met The Oxford Trust’s CEO Steve Burgess, who, she says, has been a great mentor and support to her and the company. Because of this relationship, when it came to choosing a lab space, their first choice was the Wood Centre for Innovation, where they were accepted into The Oxford Trust’s Escalator Support Programme.
“Jack’s fertility is proudly a part of the escalator Support Program at the Woods Centre for Innovation, supported by The Oxford Trust, and it has been an invaluable part of our company’s journey. Having access to this incredible lab facility, as well as the amazing community, has really been a step change for our company and has the best of what Oxford has to offer”.
Lily also appreciates the strategic location of the innovation centre, with its proximity to TheHill, where they are part of their pre-seed accelerator programme, Oxford Brookes Enterprise Centre, and Headington’s network of health tech companies. The Wood Centre for Innovation is also home to Barclays Eagle Labs, which has been a great support to the business in the early stages.
To find out more about Jack Fertility visit their website.
