Egg Freezing for Founders

Founders aren't like normal people

Unlike most people, we have one priority: making our company work. For most of our 20s/30s almost nothing else matters. Many will protest this being unhealthy - and it probably is - but ultimately it often ends up being true.

For me & many of my founder friends, this has had us put off major life changes, like having kids. For women, the exact years our bodies are most fertile — our 20s and early 30s — are often the years we need to devote to our companies. This is exacerbated if we don't have a partner who's ready to be super dad/coparent.

Egg freezing (or egg securing, as I call it) gives founders optionality. It gives us the time we need to work on our companies and have kids later, and to decide if we even want kids at all.
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Freezing younger is always better

The data are unequivocal about this. The younger you are when you freeze your eggs, the more healthy eggs you have, the more you can retrieve in one cycle, and so the highest your odds are. Plus, it'll cost less!

What are my chances of a live birth?

Based on retrieving

eggs

In plain English please

If you're gonna do egg or embryo freezing, better to do it early. Earlier than you think. 35 is not too late, but it's getting close.

Egg freezing comes down to regret minimization. I don't want to wish I'd done something when I was younger.

I froze my eggs at 29 and wish I'd done it even sooner. If I'm going to spend the money to do it eventually anyway, there's no reason to wait.
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The TL;DR on Egg Freezing

How it works
We're born with all eggs we'll ever have, and they decrease in quality & quantity over time. Every month a crew of eggs shows up, one is popped into the fallopian tube to meet a sperm, and the rest die off.
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Egg freezing saves the eggs that would've died in our bodies anyway. For two weeks you'll give yourself hormones that say to this crew of eggs "hold up, don't die, we're gonna come get you."
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Preparing your body
‍Tactically, this looks like giving yourself these hormones (a poke in the tummy fat) and visits to the clinic every other day for 10-12 days. Here they'll do bloodwork & vaginal ultrasounds to see how your eggs are growing.

Expect PMS-like side effects. Also, no travelling during this two weeks.
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This is where art meets science — you want enough hormones to get as many eggs to 'maturity' as possible, but don't want to overdo it such that it puts your ovaries at risk forOvarian HyperStimulation Syndrome.
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Egg retrieval
When the eggs are ready to be retrieved (around day 10-12), you'll go to clinic for ~20 min procedure. They'll put you under light anesthetic so you shouldn't feel anything.

Fun story: I was apparently singing happy birthday to my eggs as they were being retrieved.

The doctor will go through your vagina with a probe and essentially vacuum out the eggs. You'll go home, sleep the day off, and your eggs will be stored in liquid nitrogen until you need them.

This is the only day you'll need off of work. If you can, try to hold the following day as well, just in case you need extra down time.
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Using your eggs later
When you're ready to use them, you'll call up the clinic, they'll thaw the eggs, fertilize them with sperm to become embryos, genetically test them, and then prep your uterus for the genetically-tested embryo to be implanted.
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All of the studies show us that frozen eggs are as good as fresh (never-been-frozen).There also seems to be no limit to the time you can freeze your eggs for (but we know for sure they're good for at least ten years).

Egg vs Embryo (egg + sperm) freezing

Both processes start the same: with the egg retrieval I just described.

Here's the difference

Egg freezing: ‍you retrieve the eggs, and freeze them unfertilized
Embryo freezing: you retrieve the eggs, fertilize them with sperm, genetically test them, and then freeze them

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The benefit of securing eggs is they're free to match with any sperm later, but because we can't test egg quality you don't know how many of those eggs will make it to a genetically tested embryo.

The benefit of securing embryos is you know upon freezing how many genetically viable embryos you'll have, but your egg is tied to that sperm! One way decision.
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Get Started with Lilia

Some uses cases we see for each

Embryo freezing

You've got your parent-partner, and are just not ready for kids yet. You might want more time to enjoy your partnership or just know your startup will consume life for the next few years.
You've got your partner, plan to have your first kid via sex, and want embryos for babies # 2 or 3. If you want your first kid soon-ish, having securing embryos gives you more time for more babies later.
Don't yet have a partner, and want to be a mom one day even if it means going solo; you can freeze your eggs using donor sperm to create embryos.

Egg freezing

Don't have partner, want kids later (although not solo), and know your startup will consume your most reproductive years.
Have a partner, and they aren't ready for kids. You want biological kids later and don't leave things to chance
You know you want to use a surrogate some day. This is a secret many founders whisper to me. No wrong or weird way to become a mother, we say!
You're not sure if you want kids but want to keep your options open; you don't want to regret not doing something earlier.
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Reasons not to freeze your eggs

You only want one kid and you want it now
You definitely 1000% don't ever want biological kids for sure for sure no matter what
It's not risk free. There is the risk of OHSS, that the eggs don't work and you banked on them, that you lose an ovary (from extreme OHSS), or get a blood clot (if you have Factor 5 Liden - a blood clotting condition - like I do)

Securing eggs had a positive impact on "present" me

After securing my eggs I felt this immediate relief. I thought to myself, is this how men feel walking around the world? Like they can just do whatever the hell they want?
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Turns out ya, mostly. So, now I have the freedom of a man. And it feels good as hell.
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Consider making it a company benefit

Most startup founders aren't drowning in cash (in the early days anyway). Consider making it a company benefit — trust me that lots of folks do this. It'll benefit you and your female employees.

Plus, there's no equality without reproductive equity. Egg securing gives your employees with ovaries the same reproductive optionality as your male employees.
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Lilia's pitch

Lilia is an exchange of money for time. You pay us $485 once, and we are your admin/expert assistant, getting you express access to top-quality providers in SF, NYC, and Toronto.

Founders don't have time. When I do have half a sec to step away from the company, the last thing I want to do is research things that feel hard or emotionally heavy.

This founder-endemic dilemma (business vs time) makes it easy to procrastinate researching egg freezing, let alone actually getting started.

That's why I started Lilia — to solve my own problem of outsourcing the heavy lifting required to secure my reproductive freedom and optionality through egg freezing.

One Y Combinator founder and Lilia customer explained it well‍

"Lilia felt very Wirecutter-y :p I just needed to trust that you understood my criteria (close to work, available soon, etc) and offered some criteria I didn't consider (safety of egg storage, etc), and it quickly became a relief to outsource the research. Simplifying my decision made it more straightforward to initiate the process.