What were you doing previously, and what inspired you to launch your company?

I started working as a physical therapist in home health in 2016. After securing my first few contracts, I started Kinesio Rehab, a staffing agency that supplied field clinicians who would treat home health patients. It became apparent that this model was inefficient, with too much waste in the form of time and administrative costs. I was inspired to launch Visitry as a digital solution to the problem we were already solving manually.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Our company is solving the problem of supply and demand in the home health world. I’m excited to work on a tool that will make lives easier and leave no patient without the home care that they need.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge might have been trying to build software with zero technical experience. The way we overcame this was to learn the fundamentals as quickly as possible and to find partners we could trust who had the skillsets that we were missing.

Where do you see your company headed next?

We see our company continuing to add clinicians and agencies until it becomes the number one choice for home health staffing. We are also adding more features and functionality so that we can provide a true home health multi-tool.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

I’m going to borrow from an Embarc Collective regular, Justin Davis, and advise that you don’t fall in love with your product and that you fall in love with the market instead. This will allow you to make the necessary adjustments required to find product-market fit.

Why Tampa Bay?

Tampa has become my new home since relocating from Buffalo, NY. I see so much potential in this city, and I love that direction that it’s heading!

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What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

Over the years I've started several companies in the IoT and Smart Home spaces. In my last venture, we launched the world's first smart lock and were a large player in the smart home ecosystem, with some incredible partnerships with Apple, Nest, and Ring and notable customers like Kwikset and Honeywell. Most recently I was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Tampa Bay Wave, working with several exciting local startups.

Smart home for apartments has started to become more of a norm in recent years, but the players in the space have really missed the mark when it comes to meeting the needs of the market, leading to extremely low adoption. My co-founder Dave Magrisso, a veteran multifamily entrepreneur, started hearing more and more from the market about the growing demand for a better solution, so he set about solving that problem. When I met Dave, it was a natural fit to bring this smart apartment vision to life.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Our smart apartment platform allows multifamily properties to operate more safely and efficiently all while simplifying their resident's lives. I love to build products that solve a real need, with iApartments it's a fun challenge to build products that bring value across the board to the residents, onsite staff, and owners of each community.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

In our previous ventures, my co-founders and I were the first movers, in this latest venture we find ourselves up against some large incumbents with heavy financial backing and a head start in the market. Thankfully being veterans in our respective areas of expertise, we've been able to drastically cut down that head start, and by having our customers' needs be our north star we're able to continually gain ground.

Where do you see your company headed next?

We've recently launched our first add-on offering and are rolling out nationwide. Right now we're hyper-focused on growing the company and our suite of products and services. Our goal is to have iApartments be synonymous in the industry with smart apartment technology.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

Learn when to listen to the advice of those close to you (coaches, mentors, partners, family) and when to listen to your gut. If you're surrounding yourself with quality people, in many situations, they'll be correct. But sometimes when everyone is telling you to go left, you need to go right. Oftentimes those decision points come at a pivotal point for a company, it can make all the difference.

Why Tampa Bay?

Honestly, I moved to Tampa Bay on a whim never expecting to stay more than a year. Having grown up in Florida I had some preconceived notions as to what the bay area had to offer, and now going on 5 years in the area I'm pleased to say I could not have been more wrong. The tech and startup ecosystem has exploded over recent years providing a phenomenal area to nurture and grow companies, and when you pair that with our beautiful bay and beaches, it's hard to pass up.

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What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

This is my 4th startup - I've been in startups my whole adult life. Previously I worked with my co-founders in a previous startup that failed, due to how we managed our time. It's when we were trying to figure out what to do next, where the inspiration of Maya was born. We never wanted another founder to go through the same experiences as we did when developing a business.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

Founders are the busiest people on the globe, the average founder can spend up to 70% of their being drowned in administrative work. Maya is a productivity assistant for founders. She helps to facilitate up to 50% of administrative work for founders, giving them the necessary time it takes to run a company.

It literally keeps us up at night at how many founders are out there with no help, alone and in need of acceleration of their business. we are incredibly passionate about reducing the number of business failures by 3%

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

One of the biggest problems we faced was a lack of network and users trusting Maya. We overcame our networking issue by putting ourselves out there for the world. Hours upon hours a day is spent on talking to founders, talking to partners, and at events promoting Maya with founders (doing things that don't scale as some would say). We overcome our trust issues by using our Partners' credibility (large trusted partners) at the forefront and working individually with each founder as we build Maya intelligence throughout our journey.

Where do you see your company headed next?

We have a mission and have laid out certain milestones to hit in order to get there. We are in our private invitation-only beta, so next will be releasing Maya to the public with universities, ESOs, and accelerators/incubators. We are currently raising our pre-seed round to fund the next 12 months of revenue growth.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

You need to really put yourself out there as the founder. You are the seller of your idea, and networking and validating your idea is crucial to its success and growth. I no longer believe in building in stealth.

Why Tampa Bay?

Two of the founders are Tampa-born natives, which means this is home. By the nature of our product, Maya creates and inspires founders to build great things. So why not bring our Tampa Bay community up with us in the rising of Maya?

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What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?

Through most of my 20’s, I have been fortunate enough to be a freelance video producer. I noticed every opportunity I was landing came from making personal connections. I had a very good process for networking.

From making the first connection memorable, efficiently managing that information, to following up and closing the deal. A classic sales process right? But there wasn’t a user-friendly platform enabling me to do this. It was done the archaic way. So I created my own process. After traveling across the world, meeting people on the go, and building up my network, I knew there had to be a better way for our culture to share their information and manage the connections they made along the way.

Thus birthed Pulse. An easier way to connect, share, create, and follow up with like-minded people for productive relationships.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

We are helping people capitalize on their connections. Giving them useful tools to help them best connect, create and maximize opportunities.

I get excited about work every day knowing I get to help solve one of the most archaic issues of the modern era.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge for me has been being a "non-technical founder.”

I’m actively looking for a technical co-founder but I’d say I’m still overcoming this challenge. It’s incredibly hard to pitch investors as a tech company and convince them I’m the guy for the job - without having a technical co-founder. But I have been able to surround myself with tech advisors and consultants who have been able to guide me the last two years as much as they could. I also partnered with a development company that has been able to serve as our CTO arm until we fill that role.

Where do you see your company headed next?

Our company is headed towards its official product launch by the end of summer.

We’re excited to see any bit of results at this point, as covid delayed our plans to launch in 2020, the time is almost here.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you'd share with another founder just starting out.

When you're raising money, know exactly how much you need for the next stage. You can close the smaller checks much quicker as angels will see a more manageable journey.

Why Tampa Bay?

Market Size + The People.

I moved away from Tampa when I was 18, but came back over 10 years later from LA because I saw my brother growing his business here and I wanted to be a part of a city with MAJOR upside. He built relationships here quickly and now has a very successful business. Cities like Los Angeles, SF, Miami, NYC, Chicago have already been established. Relationships run deep in those cities. They take years to nurture and there are A LOT of people to compete with. Although I did see success, I saw an opportunity to bring my unique experiences from a city like LA to a newer, younger, city. I was able to make a name for myself and do it at an accelerated pace. In LA, it took me 5 years to get properly started as a video producer. In Tampa, It took me 6 months. Tampa is the perfect size for anyone looking to bring their expertise from a big city to grow their own business and help share their knowledge with others. People in Tampa are open to advise and quick in wanting to collaborate with you.

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