
During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Zain Jaffer, Partner at Blue Field Capital, discussing trends in PropTech.
Pathaway
As for entrepreneur pitch today, we had Crystal Williams from Cleveland, Ohio, pitch Pathaway. She has an interesting decision ahead: to build a business or do a non-profit with her concept.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
Sramana Mitra: Your Series A was mostly angels?
David Moss: There were some traditional VCs in Series A as well.
Sramana Mitra: What was the size of the Series A?
David Moss: I think it was around $4 million. With Series B, we filled it out with more corporate investors. They also turned into customers.
>>>David Moss: The third thing we do is we’re bringing people together. If we look at the history of computing, in every era, killer apps would emerge. These apps were killer because they’re viral. They’re viral because they’re social. What’s key is to take the newest technology of the day and find how we can intersect that with elements that are social.
There is nothing more social than taking care of somebody. We are bringing together family caregivers and we are bringing together professional caregivers to provide care. Usually, it’s a primary caregiver who steps up. This person has a lot of stress. What we need to do is distribute that stress to the rest of the family and provide them with a better lifestyle.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What about customers? Did you have customers?
Omri Dor: That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Roey and I did a couple of trips to London. We went there and were going door-to-door to residential brokers. We would walk in and show them the demo and a video. It was an explainer video. We would walk door-to-door getting them to sign letters of intent. I believe we got zero.
>>>Today’s 567th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, March 10, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!
Today’s 567th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, March 10, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!
Sramana Mitra: When did this insight on senior care come to focus?
David Moss: We knew we wanted to get into senior care around 2016. It takes time to orient that product in that direction. We had to keep the company alive. We wanted to position this technology more in this direction.
It was in 2018 that we received a $4.5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to create assistive solutions for people with Dementia and Alzheimer’s. That was key. That enabled us to focus on commercializing this infrastructure and go out there with something that is valuable for this population.
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If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
This is a textbook case study of founders with deep domain knowledge in starting with services and then productizing, eventually raising institutional capital. EZOPS Co-Founders Sarva Srinivasan and Dutt Chintalapati tell us all about their journey.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born? Where does your journey begin?
Sarva Srinivasan: I was born in India and grew up there. I did my Computer Science there, then majored in Finance. I then started working with Wipro.