Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
The co-founder of HabitAware, Aneela Idnani Kumar, was clearly emotional as she pitched her company’s concept to a panel of judges and audience members at MEDA’s $1 Million Challenge for Minority Entrepreneurs earlier this year.
And that was a big part of her power.
“At around age 12 I started pulling out my hair. Weird, right?” she told the audience, disclosing her condition, trichotillomania, that left her feeling ashamed.
“It’s that fear of judgment and shame that keeps you looking like this — no eyebrows or eyelashes,” she said. “Hair pulling is a lonely condition.”
When her husband and HabitAware co-founder, Sameer Kumar, finally asked her what was up, they ultimately created the Keen smart bracelet, which senses the behavior in question and sends a vibration. “Once aware, choose healthier activities and retrain your brain,” the St. Louis Park-based company’s website says.
The intriguing company sits squarely in the mental health tech space.
It also addresses skin picking, nail biting and thumb sucking disorders. And here’s where Aneela began choking up onstage. “For 20 years I thought I was alone, but 21 million Americans suffer from body-focused repetition behaviors,” she said. “We have shifted the conversation from shame and blame to love, compassion and healing.”
The company has $1.7 million gross sales to date, has achieved profitability and has secured $300,000 in federal funding through the National Institutes of Health. The funding will be used to improve the algorithm, develop SAAS or software as a service product, and gain clinical validation.
They’ve also done well on the business competition circuit, winning the $50,000 grand prize at the Minnesota Cup last year and $400,000 in the MEDA challenge in January.
In an interview after the pitch, Aneela acknowledged that entering contests is work. “It is time-consuming, but the right organizations and competitions are valuable,” she said. “Minnesota Cup forced us to put it on paper. MEDA put us in front of VCs and their connections.”
As newcomers to Minnesota from New York City a few years ago, the couple found contests a good way to crack the code. “We’ve been told there’s a secret society here. I’m like, where is it?” she said.
Onstage, Sameer could rattle off statistics and growth plans with ease, talking venture-speak fluidly. But in conversation he became thoughtful about the company’s roots. When he one day noticed that Aneela had no eyelashes or eyebrows, “It was the beginning of that journey. At the time I wish I could say I understood it. I didn’t understand why it was a big deal,” he says.
They are grateful for the move to Minnesota.
“I’d still be pulling out my hair in New York because it was work, work, work,” says Aneela, already an award-winning app developer before she co-developed Keen. “We would be on opposite schedules, which means he would not have caught me” pulling out her hair. In Minnesota, “we had the freedom of time to come up with the solution.”
I like the combination of business savvy and personal story that HabitAware’s founders display.
I salute their grit in pursuing the competition path for more than the prize itself, as they recognized the route would lead to new connections. I admire their listening and adapting skills, as they have obviously honed and tailored their pitch in response to judges’ and investors’ questions along the way.
These are two founders who serve as an example of a winning combo, head and heart.
