TIES, a men’s fertility and performance supplement brand, has launched alongside a $1.5 million seed round led by HumanCo, the mission-driven health and wellness holding company founded by Jason H. Karp, who joins the TIES board.
The brand launches with Foundations, a doctor-formulated preconception supplement developed with five physicians and specialists in reproductive medicine, integrative health, and preconception nutrition. The formula targets antioxidant defense, sperm and reproductive health, and hormone function through ingredients including CoQ10, L-Carnitine, zinc, selenium, vitamin C, vitamin B12, and methylated folate.
TIES was co-founded by Luke and Camryn Novak, both former Division I athletes, who started the company after realizing during their own family planning that while women have a well-established preconception ecosystem – baseline testing, prenatal vitamins, clinical guidance – the male equivalent barely exists.
“When Camryn and I started talking about having a family, she began doing some baseline tests, checking in with her doctor, taking prenatals, and reading everything she could to best prepare,” said Luke Novak. “I watched all of that and just asked a simple question: is there anything I should be doing? When we started researching, we couldn’t find anything that actually spoke to men in an approachable way, with ingredients and dosing built for how men’s bodies actually work.”
The context: global sperm concentration has declined approximately 50% from 1973 to 2018, with total sperm count declining over 60% over the same period, according to research published in Human Reproduction Update. The rate of decline has accelerated, more than doubling post-2000. Men contribute to 50% of all infertility cases.
“There hasn’t really been a gold standard approach to proactively supporting men’s fertility,” said Karp. “Sperm health is a key biomarker, and men’s fertility is a benchmark of overall health. Men’s fertility is an area that has long been ignored, and TIES brings a sense of care and fanaticism that is in a class of its own.”
