Founders and Investors: Tales and Tips from the Start-up World

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VOICEOVER: Founders and Investors: Tales and Tips from the Start-up World. Speakers: Brandon Biggs, CEO of XR Navigation. Regina Klein, founder and managing partner, Enable Ventures. Chris Maher, founder and general partner, Samaritan Partners. Mariella Satow, founder of SignUp Media. Moderator: Larry Goldberg, accessibility sensei and technology consultant.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Thank you, Karae and Ross. It’s great to be back at SightTech Global. It’s been an amazing conference for the past few years. I’m happy to have been here since the beginning. So I’m Larry Goldberg. I am about to celebrate my 40th year in the field of accessible media and technology. And today I’m really happy to moderate a panel on one of the hottest topics in accessibility today, and no, that’s not AI, but it includes AI. And that’s really about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and startups. And we have four people here who have some pretty interesting stories to tell us about their own journeys in the field of starting up a new business in the area and investing in it as well. So we’re going to get right into it and hear the stories of these founders and investors. And we’ll start right out by each of you just saying your name, introducing yourselves, and then I’m going to come back to you and ask for you to begin your story. So let’s start with Mariella.

MARIELLA SATOW: Hi, my name is Mariella Satow, and I’m the founder of SignUp Media.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Brandon.

BRANDON BIGGS: My name is Brandon Biggs, and I am the CEO of XR Navigation.

CHRIS MAHER: Hi, I’m Chris Marr, founder and general partner at Samaritan Partners.

REGINA KLEIN: Hi, I’m Regina Klein. I’m founder and managing partner at Enable Ventures.

LARRY GOLDBERG: What a collection! I’m really sorry we can’t all be in the same room anyway. But virtually now, we’re going to hear some of the stories of both the startups and the investors. And we’re going to start with Mariella. Take a few minutes. Tell us your founder story, your origin story, and where you’re at today.

MARIELLA SATOW: Yeah, thanks, Larry. So I started learning American Sign Language about four years ago. My mom is hard of hearing and my grandmother’s deaf, but neither of them ever learned how to sign. So with COVID, my high school shut down and I enrolled in ASL classes. I immediately fell in love with the language, started learning about deaf culture and just speaking to members of the deaf community. And it really surprised me to find that closed captions kind of weren’t one size fits all and weren’t the gold standard of accessibility that people thought they were. So I realized the need for sign language access, whether that’s for deaf kids who can’t read yet or can’t read fast enough to keep up. Or just deaf adults who want to watch something in their native language. So the solution was SignUp, and we’re a Google Chrome extension that overlays a sign language interpreter on streaming platforms. So with our launch, we interpreted three movies on Disney+ in American Sign Language. And overnight, we had 20,000 downloads and an article in Variety, which really shocked me because it was truly just kind of a high school passion project. Yeah. And from there, I decided to kind of grow it into a viable business. And I took a gap year to raise a pre-seed of a million and find a management team to help me run it while I started college. And I’m in my second year at Stanford right now. And kind of since then, we focused on scaling. We’ve launched a lot more content. We have over 300 hours. We launched in the UK with British Sign Language. And most recently, India. And we’re kind of in the pilot stages with the streamers trying to integrate, as well as looking at kind of a broader AI and tech strategy, too.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Thanks, Mariella. And for transparency purposes, I should say I am one of Mariella’s advisors. Not that I’m giving anyone any benefit of the doubt here today. So it’s a small field. And we do all know each other pretty well. But Brandon, you and I have just meeting for the first time recently. So why don’t you tell us where you are? Where are you coming from?

BRANDON BIGGS: Yeah, 100 percent. So I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you’re walking to class on the first day and you get an email that says the building your classes in has changed. If you’re sighted, it takes you about two minutes to pull up the campus map and navigate to the new location. But if you’re blind, that campus map is blank. If this was an emergency and you were looking at an evacuation map, you would be dead. None of the Google Maps, Apple Maps, Esri Maps or any of the other geographic maps are accessible to blind, keyboard only or low vision users, which is against the law. To kind of put this into perspective, able-bodied people view around 300 maps a year. Contrast that with blind people who view less than one. This map is a map of the city. The passive Gap is personal for us. Both my co-founder Chris and I are blind. And I started researching around how to make maps accessible to blind users around 2017 as part of my Inclusive Design Master’s program. In 2019, I joined the Smith Catterwell Eye Research Institute where we received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. research and other funding agencies to continue researching how to make maps accessible to blind users. And we’re talking about digital maps, not tactile maps. In 2021, I began my PhD researching non-visual digital maps at Georgia Tech. And in 2020, so going back just a little bit, we started XR Navigation. And the reason why we started it is because people were asking for inclusive maps that they could put on their websites or in their spaces. And so we needed a way to sell the maps. Once we started XR Navigation, we participated in a few incubators. So one was from the Impact Center. We also received a small business research grant from the National Institutes of Health. And we participated in a few accelerators. Such as the Remarkable Accelerator and CreateX from Georgia Tech. We also raised a pre-seed round from both Gina and the Remarkable Accelerator team. We won some pitch competitions. And that also gave us some funding. And we personally put some funds into the business. And then also now we’re raising a seed round. So. Early on, we decided that grants would be our primary funding mechanism, although they’re extremely hard to get. They’re non-dilutive, which makes them kind of the primary reason why we would want to get them. So, to kind of give a little bit of reality check here, we applied six times and received one grant. So, we keep applying and keep getting rejected. So, one of these days, the statistics should be in our favor to get another grant. So, that’s kind of been our preferable way of getting funding for the company. To give kind of an idea of what our product is, we build Audium, which is the world’s first inclusive digital map viewer and editor. The visual experience is what you would expect from a map, except it allows low vision users to zoom in up to 200% without squashing interface elements; make the border width of features thicker so they can see them. Switch between using patterns and colors if you’re colorblind, and use the interface completely with a keyboard. Our patented non-visual experience is very similar to a video game where users hear the name and sound of objects as they move a character over them. For example, Fillmore Street in a concrete footstep. Audium can either supplement or completely replace existing digital map tools. Our clients include the National Federation of the Blind, CSUN, and NASA JPL. Our vision is that every map is accessible to anyone, and we’re building the platform to make that happen. If you’re blind and you want to view a map, or if you own a map, please contact us to make that map accessible. So that’s been kind of our story. Thank you.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Thanks, Brandon. And you’ve touched on a number of areas we’re going to get into deeper in a little while. And of course, one of them is funding resources. I really appreciate you spelled out NIDILRR. Thank you so much for that federal agency. And to help spell it out, Audium is A-U-D-I-O-M. And we’ll be posting all of these resources on the SciTech Global website so people can follow along. Really appreciate that. Also, we’re gearing this presentation for people of all different experiences. So I’ll come back to you in a little bit. Or probably Regina or Chris can talk about that. We’ll talk about what non-dilutive funding is, because you did bring that up. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Now, Chris and Gina, you just heard a couple of pitches. You’ve probably heard them before. You’ll hear a lot of pitches. So why don’t you tell us how you’ve gotten, and we’ll start with Chris, how you’ve gotten into this field. And then we’ll get into what you thought about these particular.

CHRIS MAHER: Sure. Hi, everybody. Chris Mars, Brandon Partners, again. I launched a few years ago. Samaritan Partners in the summer of 2023. It’s a public benefit venture capital fund. The genesis for starting the fund has to do with a couple aspects of my background. So I spent the last 25 years as an operator and leader across a variety of DC-backed small to mid-sized companies. And in parallel to that, for the last 20 years, my wife and I have raised two beautiful daughters, both of whom live with disabilities. My youngest daughter, who’s 18, was born with developmental and intellectual disabilities. And my oldest daughter, who’s a senior in college, was born with a physical disability. And so for me, it was the kind of impetus for starting Samaritan Partners was really about bringing two things together that I’m very passionate about, one of which is early stage entrepreneurship, and the other is helping people. And so the focus of the fund is intentional. I’ve set it up as a public benefit venture fund, which means it has a stated purpose. It has a public good, which really means it has a stated public good or socially good investment focus or thesis. And the definition of that is early stage for private companies that are providing products and services to and/ or creating employment opportunities for people in the disability community. Part of the reason of setting it up that way is it just creates what we believe is really nice alignment across all the key stakeholders. Our fund, our investors. And so that’s what we do. And the communities are the companies we invest in and ultimately the communities that we aim to serve. And so we’re investing in pre-seed through Series A so far. We’ll reserve capital for follow-on investment as portfolio companies grow. And it’s broadly across disability, not focused on any one area. To give you an example of that, a few of the investments so far, Be My Eyes, which is serving the blind, low vision community. SignSpeak, which is serving. The deaf and hard of hearing community. Wheel of the World is an accessible travel company. And then on the employment side, Making Space, which is an inclusive employment platform, connecting enterprise and corporates to disabled talent. And I’m very happy to say that we are co-investors alongside Gina and Able Ventures on several of those. So why don’t I leave it at that, Larry, for now.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Thank you, Chris. As I said, it is a tight community and so mutually supportive. It’s incredible. Gina and I have been talking for a few years now and I’m constantly sending her some interesting leads and contacts, and vice versa. So it’s really mutually supportive. So Gina, tell us where you’re coming from and what you’re up to.

REGINA KLEIN: Yeah. And I love, love, love being on a panel with such bright stars. And so I’m really happy to be in good company here. But like Chris, I’m really focused. I’m in leading an effort, and I think Chris is part of this, we’re all part of this, which is to move more capital into tools that are designed from the beginning to be more inclusive, accessible, and that will be designed with purpose to drive equity in closing disability wealth gaps. I am the founder of Enable Ventures. The story started for me. Many, many years before bringing a venture capital firm to the market, I was a disability rights attorney for, I was an attorney for about 15 years. And I enforced the ADA with my bright colleagues, both at the Justice Department and later as a partner at Brown Goldstein Levy with really bright civil rights lawyer colleagues. But that was a learning journey for me. Because I was able to understand. Yeah. The technology had equal propensity to drive a wedge, to drive discrimination, to enhance and advance discrimination, as it did to liberate people from barriers, to cut through barriers, to optimize experiences. And I understood that there was capitalization and capital alignment with tools that were driving discrimination, that needed realignment. And that there was an equally or mutual opportunity set on the other side to back the best ideas in the world that are driving equity in the capital markets but putting tools in people’s hands to access skills training, higher education, closing wealth gaps at work, talent acquisition, retention, upward mobility and employment in new and emerging industries, this is all tech. That is making real changes in the market. Markets. There’s a revolution happening right now in the next generation of assistive technology, particularly with the tailwinds that we’re seeing around new applications of artificial intelligence. There’s optimization of technology that are unlocking new kinds of speech, new forms of communication, brilliant ways to unlock cognition, to improve learning, to better the experience of acquiring new knowledge, that there needed to be a source of capital that drove those changes in the markets. And I have a great friend and advisor who always says to me, ‘The answer to what is who.’ Who will build those tools is inevitably probably the most important question that we ask. I know Chris asks it, I ask it too, which is how do we align capital with people who are closest to the problems that they’re seeking to solve? And who will build the best solution, taking care to recognize people’s rights, to align technology with remedies rather than creating new problems, and who will safeguard the way that they build technology to not create new discriminations, but to try to drive tangible and material impact in ways that can be measured. So that’s what we are doing at Enable Ventures, and we are investing. Like Chris, in the earliest stage of the marketplace, so we are investing in, our firm invests in post-revenue companies at mature seed stage in Series A capital. But we’re also really present across the category, working to scout new companies, support them in the ecosystem, support the ecosystem, frankly, writ large. I continue to have a scout company called SmartJob that is working with, you know, the disability technology accelerators, I think Brandon mentioned that the National Federation of the Blind backed him through in partnership with SmartJob early on. So finding early ideas and helping cultivate them, cultivate the relationship capital of founders to support their go-to-market strategies and their success. So I am more than thrilled to be here with Chris and such great entrepreneurs and then with you, Larry, but I think this is a really special time. To be an entrepreneur who’s building in this space.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Well, that leads to my really first question, which is, and I mentioned, I’ve been in this field a while, and I started out in the nonprofit side, in public broadcasting, closed captioning, audio description. Never considered commercial investment opportunities, really until I joined the private sector myself. Why do you think that over the past few years, all of a sudden, this looks like an interesting investment? Is this an opportunity for people who have money? Now, we know it’s not easy and we know it’s not like money is falling from the sky, but why all of a sudden, at least in my perspective, are we seeing investors jumping into this field? And start with anyone who wants to jump in. Go ahead, Gina. I know you have something to say. Gina, you want to go first?

REGINA KLEIN: Well, Chris, this will be a challenge to see what you’re going to say. I have a defined view about this, but you go ahead.

CHRIS MAHER: You jumped in on the on the venture capital side. Yeah. Before I did, but I can tell you why I jumped in over the last 18 months. First, through lived experience of raising my two daughters and being an entrepreneur and a capitalist, building, you know, venture-backed startups and mid-sized companies over the last 25 years. And I think, as Gina said before, that lived experience, I think, is critically important from an entrepreneurship standpoint, right? Because you are closest. I mean, I’d say 99% of the entrepreneurs I’ve met in the last 18 months all have a very personal connection to the problems that they’re trying to solve. And I think that’s critically important for driving innovation, especially in this sector. And then also through my lived experience, I’ve seen how assistive technology and services can improve the lives of people with disabilities. And so through looking at the market, and you guys all know the numbers, it’s, you know, the disability community globally is a neighborhood of 1. 8 billion people. It’s one in six adults. You know, the assistive technology market is going to be what, $32 billion approximately in 2030. There’s a real, there’s a large market and economic opportunity there. And I think, largely my perspective is, is that the disability community has been supported historically by nonprofits and local and federal government who have done wonderful things, but there are, as we all know, limitations to those groups and organizations in terms of how they can really elevate the community. So, as Gina just said, there is, as Gina just said, there is, there is a, it’s early in the curve, but there is an amazing opportunity for private capital to come in to this market at the early stages and really provide that catalytic capital and the operational support for some wonderful innovation that is going on. And it, and I would say that probably both of our entrepreneurs on the call today, you know, Brethren and Mariella probably had people say, well, why don’t you just set up your company as a nonprofit? Like you’re supporting disability. I love the fact that there are so many entrepreneurs like, no, no, no, no, we need to do this in a for-profit way, because if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it in a for-profit way. If we’re going to create products and services and solutions that can scale in a sustainable way, we need a sustainable commercial model to support them. And so I think we’re early in the curve. I think it’s a massive opportunity and there’s so much exciting innovation happening at the early stages here across disability. And so those, those are the reasons that I jumped in and, and, and you know, I’ve had the good fortune of, of meeting people like Gina on the investment side. And it is, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve come to realize that, that venture capital, even though I was on the other side of the table for many years, raising money, it’s much more of a team sport than I realized, which is actually a good thing, where we’re talking all the time and introducing each other to companies and sharing deal flow and, and information. So I think it’s, it’s, it is a wonderful time. And I’m, I’m hoping that, that, you know, funds like Samaritan and Naval Ventures, and Gina alluded to this before, we’re going to catalyze bringing more private capital to this market because we need it. And there’s not only an opportunity, to drive scalable and sustainable social good and improve the lives of millions of people, but I think there’s a fantastic financial return to go along with that.

REGINA KLEIN: And I would just say, Larry, you know, I; let me ratify all the proposals that Chris just made to, to the answer, but then adding on to it, you know, there’s some; I; there’s a phrase, demography is destiny. And there’s something that is happening now that has everything to do with the ADA. The AIDS with Disabilities Act, which was enacted in 1990. And that ADA generation is now 34 years old and knocking on the front door of their prime working age years. And that the demand cycle from the consumer demand from worker demand for inclusive, radical, inclusive, accessible tech, from institutions of higher ed that are saying; we’re not; we need to get it right. We need to get it right. Because folks are not, um, standing by the by and waiting, waiting for us to get it right. They’re getting, they’re paying, uh, with their time and attention and financing, uh, to access institutions of higher education. They deserve as a matter of legal right. But the integrity of our institutions of higher ed acts full access to equitable tools. I mean, when Brandon’s talking about maps, you think about what have we not taught in institutions of higher education, because we didn’t provide it graphically in an accessible form. Um, so, that tide has swept in that ADA tide has swept to shore hundreds of companies that are led by the ADA generation who have decided, who have decidedly different ideas about how they want to consume technology, what its design discipline should be, and how they want to use it in higher ed skills training, access to work, upward mobility at work, and in accessing assistive technology all day long. And it has this really special component to what folks are building. And that is that the product itself has the ability to allow disability to lead, not just as point solutions in a disability lane, but to optimize a work tech lane or an ed tech lane or a health tech lane. So our founders with disabilities. In this marketplace are generating value to consumers without disabilities. They are solving the hard use case in front of them, mapping in an accessible way or Mariela better captioning and better access to ASL and interpretation. But they are also conveying value to the individuals who might not be deaf Mariela, but who, who, who like captioning nevertheless, uh, or a branded, uh, uh, individuals who, uh, have people in their families who are optimized by accessible mapping. So improving the whole experience of the group. And so I think what is really a factor at play as to why venture capital sees value in that is that there’s ability to remove what were seemingly insurmountable barriers before with, uh, tech-enabled solutions driven by the, uh, ethics and the values of people who hold these issues in a personal light, um, uh, lived experience being, uh, baked right into the product design. Um, but with an interest and an interest towards an all of community, uh, reach and, and all of society value creation that’s being delivered. And so I think those ideas that are inherently scalable require a kind of capital that’s aligned with scale. And so, um, the other thing is that the tail often wags the dog, that there is capital now at the table. There are more founders aspiring to the marketplace, uh, because it is now, uh, deemed investable. So both things can be true. Uh, but it’s a very, very exciting time.

LARRY GOLDBERG: For sure. For sure. So the, uh, the energy kind of creates more energy money makes money. Um, I want to go to Mariela. For a second. Uh, and I know you’ve pitched many, many investors and got plenty of nose, but for those who said yes, what was it? Do you think those investors, why did they jump in and to sign up? What was it that convinced them?

MARIELLA SATOW: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. Um, I would say for our, our main investor who kind of contributed around half of our $1 million preceded, it was the personal connection. Um, he grew up with a deaf brother. So he just kind of completely understood sign-up from the very beginning. Um, an issue I often have when pitching is people don’t see the point in sign-up, you know, closed captions are everywhere and you know, why do you need sign language? But for, you know, our main investor, he, he just understood it straight away, which was, uh, you know, amazing. And we kind of signed the deal straight away. Um, I think a big learning curve for me at the beginning with fundraising was, um, kind of learning that sometimes you do have to turn down funding if it’s not the right fit, which seems kind of counterintuitive, especially for an early-stage startup who is kind of really desperate for money sometimes. Um, I think just finding people who had a personal connection or who had kind of an empathy and willingness to learn about why an accessibility solution kind of is necessary is kind of the experience we’ve had with Sign Up, um, something all of our investors have in common, a kind of an understanding of sign language access, despite closed captioning existing.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Yeah. So you’re talking about some really, uh, high empathy, higher-level thinking, um, not just the money, but also the money, uh, Brandon, you have some private investment, right? Not just federal grants. Uh, so what, what got you to yes on those?

BRANDON BIGGS: Well, a lot of trial and error, um, but basically it’s, it’s trying to tell a story that is short enough and understandable enough. And, you know, even you might, you might be dramatizing it just a little bit. Um, but you know, it, it’s, it’s really important to communicate what the value is that you’re bringing to people. And it’s super hard to tell that story, especially if you’re complicated, your, your technology is super complicated and really hard to describe. So one thing that we’ve done for, uh, people, you know, like trying to raise seed rounds with investors and communicating with potential customers is do videos that are really communicative in a very short amount of time. And we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to optimize both our descriptions of our technology and the videos that demonstrate it in our, our interactive demo. That’s on our website. Yeah. We have a couple of videos that you can go in and try out our product. Uh, and, and that’s how we really communicate our value proposition to people. Um, which is why we exist, and the value we bring to people. Mmm-hmm, but unfortunately, on grants, you can’t do the, the, the videos very well. So some of them you can; you can submit videos, which we do. Uh, and so, but it’s, it’s really just trying to craft that narrative.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Well, let’s hear a little bit about grants. Um, it is tough. It is a hard road. I don’t know. It’s, it’s a hard road. But, you say harder than getting private money, but at least once you win it, you own it for some period of years. So if you could give us an example of one of the grants that you have received and what it took to win it.

BRANDON BIGGS: Grants are extremely frustrating. I would say they’re harder to raise than capital because there’s this really long period between when you submit that grant and when you actually get any feedback on that grant. So, to give an example, we submitted a grant on September 5th, 2024. We’re not going to hear about that, like, any of the possible feedback on that grant until December 15. And then we won’t actually get funded until April. So if you’re desperate for cash, grants are not the way to go because they take a really long time. On top of that, the grant period for like the National Institutes of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, which is what we work on, there’s three times throughout the year that you have to apply for that grant. And so it’s September, January 5th, and April 5th. And if you miss that window, then you have to wait till the next window. And it’s just, it’s a really long, long, long process. So basically, our strategy has been we apply every single period. And we will probably win it. And then we’ll probably not get it, which is, you know, the statistics. But if we do get it, then it’s an extremely huge positive benefit for our company. And we did get one grant, we got a small business research grant. It was after, like I mentioned, I think our, I think we got on our fifth or fourth or fifth time of submitting six times, we’ve submitted, again, after that, to try and get another small business research grant. And we didn’t get it. And so now, you know, we’re continuing that process. But that’s kind of been our experience, similar experiences with other types of grant mechanisms. We, I joined the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, which is a research institute. And for some technologies like ours, where there is a lot of research that needs to be done before it’s actually commercializable. I was very lucky to join that type of environment where research is being, is being done. Universities also have similar labs, where their whole entire funding mechanism are grants. And if you partner with a university, and a lab, then they will know how to apply for, you know, National Science Foundation grants, or National Institutes of Health grants, or NIDILRR grants to try and continue doing research. And so that’s where I would recommend if you’re not getting your PhD, you’re not part of that academic community to partner with.

LARRY GOLDBERG: Right. Right. Well, like in everything else in this field, persistence and resilience is key. And people like you and Mariella demonstrate that all the time. Now, Chris and Gina, I’m going to come to you now for some real solid basic advice for people who are just starting out in terms of getting going. I think our audience is going to consist of a lot of folks who want to launch something. You’ve got a great idea. So what’s your advice? What are you going to tell them when they’re just getting started? We’ll start with Chris.

CHRIS MAHER: Thanks, Larry. I think you’ve got to be ready for a roller coaster of a ride and to manage your emotions and not get too high when it’s going well and not get too low. And when you have those tough days, you have to try to keep that even keel. And the more you can do that, the better. The better you’ll handle that journey, I think you also have to be ready, willing, and able to get more done with less. And I think most entrepreneurs that have done startups come to realize that very quickly. And I think the successful ones figure out how to get a lot done with very little capital and or people resources. And I think that’s a good thing because if you can do it at that earlier stage, then when it comes time to scale, you can move quickly and do it in a very efficient way. I don’t say I worry, but I think a lot of times when those startups that are super sexy and get a lot of money quickly before they’ve actually really started building, then go and just spend, spend, spend, and don’t really get into the good habits of how to build in an operationally efficient and cost-effective way. And then you have to scrape together. I think the market, at least what I’m seeing and be interested to see or hear if Gina is feeling the same way. I think things have shifted. I think a lot of more traditional VCs who typically have come in pre-revenue or maybe even pre-product, just a great idea. And you’ve got wireframes and you’re raising money to build that MVP, the minimal viable product, or you’ve got a product and you need to raise the money to go to market and get your first paying customer. So I think that’s a great advice. I think it’s shifted where many traditional VCs now want to see a demonstration of product-market fit, where you’re in market, you’ve got some paying customers, maybe low six figures before they’re ready to jump in and make an investment. And so I think that’s where you’ve got to go to self-funding, family, and friends, professional angels, high net worth people. I mean, Mariella, you’re a perfect example of, I think, boy, a lot of companies, startups in the disability space should really look to go where you got half of your first million dollars from one investor who has a very personal connection to the problems that you’re solving. And I think that’s a great way to go early on. I’d also say, I sometimes talk to early stage companies and they’re like, oh, we’re going to go with their first raise is going to be a million or a million and a half. I would say go raise as little as you can to get your product to market and do that through a means that is as easy as possible, meaning kind of like timeframe wise, which may be friends, family, angels, high net worth people who have a real connection to what you’re doing. And then go build that versus trying to raise a big number. Because I think you’re going to spend a lot of time talking to professional investors who may waste your time and you’re going to spin your wheels and they’re going to say, well, we want to see you progress a little bit. So try to go build it and get to market with as little money as possible through those other channels. And then you’ve just got a much, and when you’re successful doing that, you’ve got a real, a much stronger story to tell more traditional investors, institutional investors, and VCs. And that will be an easier and quicker process. So let me, let me stop there and let, let Gina chime in.

REGINA KLEIN: Yeah, I, I tend to want to build off of the good foundation. You, you laid there, Chris, because basically my, my belief is the same as Chris’ is on capital efficiency and making sure that you also don’t dilute your position as a founder that you, before you have an actual product built. I know that’s easier said than done. And as Brandon had pointed out, it’s pretty hard to access grant funding. There has become a movement towards very fine, Entrepreneurial support organizations in this country and throughout the world, led by the experience of leaders with disabilities, who are creating disability tech accelerators. And that is a really interesting way to access, in many cases, grant capital associated with the program to founders to help build, iterate product, with the community, get user feedback, mentorship, mentorship, business development skills approach to changing and turning an idea into a business plan into a go-to-market strategy. So, if you are if you are looking to go from zero to one, and you are listening to this, and you’re saying, ‘But I don’t know the first thing about raising capital.’ What are you saying? There are programs in the United States like remarkable, like the multiple accelerator, like Together International, like the CSD which is a deaf-led accelerator. Um, these programs uh, like Synergies work um, that are building off of the idea that we need to support our entrepreneurs at the earliest stages, whether it be in a starter program to help ideas turn into business plans I’m calling it a starter program which could be called a launcher program sometimes um or a scaling program to help business plan to market execution and to help business development. And to help business development, uh, and growth, these are very very dynamic programs that are looking for entrepreneurs to support and often have grant capital that runs alongside the program that invests in entrepreneurs that are coming through the program at those earliest stages, so I would say consider that as an asset to the community and as part of an experience that will afford some business development skills. The other thing to take into consideration is how investors think, and investors really dislike meeting you only when you need money; investors love and relish the opportunity to see how businesses Grow during off-cycles when they’re not raising capital, when they don’t need the money. But how do you think as a founder? What is your team like? What is the product like? How much iteration is happening on the product before you’re raising capital? Um, and how comfortable are we by the way you think about your business strategy, uh, and your partnerships in the community, and the way that you are building product design around the problem that you’re trying to solve? So I would really encourage those that are listening to be um unafraid of opening dialogues even if you’re if you’re too early, even if you are not raising capital. And you’re not raising financing around to allow the investors in this network and in this ecosystem to know what you’re building, uh, and be able to follow along your journey, uh, which is really exciting because every entrepreneur has a um a veritable movie that they’re in, that they’re the protagonist of, and that we all would like, um, to take a glimpse into, uh, from time to time to see what’s happening with businesses. So I really encourage people to be in touch uh through LinkedIn, uh, through any way, and, uh, and let us know what’s happening, but, uh, all the things that Chris said too, lots of plus ones there, um, in a minute.

LARRY GOLDBERG: We’re going to give our founders the closing words, but that was tremendous advice. There, there’s a few million dollars right there in advice. We will be posting all of these links to both the contact information for all the folks here today as well as accelerators and government grant opportunities, so that will all be part of what Psych Tech Global will provide. I’m looking for just one final good news story from Mariela and Brandon, uh we know how hard things can be so give us a closing good news story because it’s all about these stories that work so well.

MARIELLA SATOW: Mariela let’s start with you, yeah, I love that question um a moment that Sticks out to me was my mom coming to wake me up at 4 a.m.

BRANDON BIGGS: m one morning telling me that i had gone to school and that i had gone to school and that i had gone to school and that i had gone to school and that i had gotten on the forbes 30 under 30 list um i think i’ll remember that forever um and yeah being a founder is really hard but moments like that where you get kind of a bit of recognition is makes it all worth it yeah i believe you were under 20 when you got that actually you need a new list really yeah yeah i’m looking for uh 65 over 65 but brandy you got a good uh way to close us out yeah um so we’re gonna go ahead and go with the golden thus and lastly a similar uh good news story is uh in april early april we received our accessibility conformance report from a third-party company showing that we are the first and only map viewer on the market that meets web accessibility guidelines and this is a huge deal for our particular company because that’s kind of our our main value proposition is that we’re very inclusive to everyone and the fact that we have this means that we can now sell to government agencies and federal agencies and different places who actually want a quantitative metric to evaluate your digital accessibility. So we not only met the web accessibility guidelines basic level, which is Level A, we got it to AAA, and the people who did our evaluation were like, ‘We’ve never seen somebody meet AAA before.’ So this is incredible.

LARRY GOLDBERG: That is great. I haven’t seen AAA either. So congratulations on that. Good story. You’ve got both the data and the anecdotes to tell us. So all of us, thank you PsychTech Global for giving us this opportunity to talk about this. As you can tell, we could talk about this all day and all night, but right now we’ll give it back to Karray and Ross. Thank you all.

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