"Every second counts". Any educator in the US education system has heard this phrase during emergency preparedness training however, todays technology is significantly outdated to handle emergencies efficiently (think walkie talkies). Today's startup, Prepared, is preparing our education systems to take better care of their students — let's check them out!
⚾ The Elevator Pitch:
By the end of 2019, there were over 417 mass shootings in the United States. Michael Chime, one of the co-founders of Prepared, actually experienced first-hand the impact of a school shooting. After the traumatic incident, he noted the antiquated systems in place which were ultimately incapable of providing quick support during these dire times. He knew there had to be a better solution.
Michael teamed up with two of his peers, Dylan Gleicher and Neal Soni to found Prepared, a one-tap mobile alert system that admin and faculty can use to instantly alert the campus on emergencies as well as 911 dispatchers. This solution is faster and easier to use than the existing solution — panicked walkie talkies, loud speaker announcements, franctic phone 911 calls.
Since inception, the team is already working with 150 schools, raised $1.8 million seed round, and has a fleshed out product that it has deployed to various organizations.
👇 The Drop Down
Site:https://www.preparedapp.com/
School: Yale University
Founded: 2018
Stage: Seed
Tech trend: Edutech, School Safety
Traction: 150 schools using their application, raised $1.8 M seed round to build team
Team - Engineering and Product Team out of Yale University
Michael Chime - Co-Founder, CEO (Thiel Fellow)
Neal Soni - Co-Founder, CPO
Dylan Gleicher - Co-Founder, CTO
🔍 Our analysis
- 📈 Growing Customer Base Two years ago, Prepared beta tested their product with 22 schools. Right now, they have 150+ schools — if that doesn't yell "Growth!", we don't know what will (+680%)! The team has noted they were ambitious from the start but with their recent seed raise, they feel even more confident that they will be able to expand further, and faster, than ever before. Their big goal for this year to expand into five major metropolitan areas by EOY '21.
- 🎳 Ambitious & Specialized Team This team grinds hard. The three of them worked together to build out a team and product, join an accelerator program (Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking), expanded out to 150+ schools, and even raised a $1.8 million seed round. On top of that, they have complementary backgrounds in government/policy as well as computer science. We are confident that this team will be able to navigate the bureaucracy that clouds today's schooling system while being able to deliver a high caliber of product that folks would expect from a robust safety system.
- ⚡️ Remote Schooling - Existential Threat or Opportunity? In 2020, virtually all schools (university and K-12 alike) moved online. Many students and schools are now considering operating fully virtually, even going forward. With at-home-learning, tools once natural for school sites, like emergency preparedness, are defunct. The switch to virtual learning presents a unique challenge for the Prepared team. As a counterweight, schools are more comfortable using digital tools with COVID — that might be a bonus since it reduces the friction to adoption for a virtual system like Prepared's.
🔍 Get Involved with Prepared
