The global assistance technology market was estimated at more than $ 22 billion in 2023 and is planned to grow considerably by 2030. Despite the potential market size, many founders create technology to help people with disabilities to fight to obtain the type of early financing necessary to take off their businesses in the first place.
Adaptation Ventures is a new Angel group hoping to fill this financing gap by providing capital to startups at the start of startups building accessibility tech. It will support startups that build technology specifically for disabled people as well as for companies with products designed for a wider market that also helps these populations.
The company was co-founded by the married couple Brittany Palmer and Rich Palmer (photo above), both former founders of startups, providential investors and disabled people.
Brittany told Techcrunch that she had experienced this problem with the first -hand financing gap when she tried to raise capital for her company Beeyonder, a startup that offered virtual travel experiences to people with disabilities.
“The venture capital companies really did not understand the community of disabled people, the size or the opportunities to sell them,” she said. “When I spoke with founders in the space of handicap technology, there was a similar type of consensus according to which many people in the world of startups and the company really did not understand space.”
Rich, the former co-founder of Saucefound the same feeling when he worked on the side of investments as managing director, then at Angel Investor, at the Launchpad Venture Group, an investment group at Providential focused on technological and scientific startups.
“We knew that this opportunity existed,” he said. “We met incredible founders and try to find the best way to bring them capital.”
Despite the couple’s providential investment experience, they initially decided to collect a traditional venture capital fund and presented many LPs, including impact investors and individuals. Although they saw a certain traction on their idea of funds of origin, part of this interest has dried alongside the changing accounts of the industry, and beyond, of diversity, equity and inclusion surrounding the new presidential administration.
They also noted that high sharpness individuals were no longer interested in getting involved directly in startups in this space, instead of serving LPS in a fund, and they started to think of building a group of angels instead.
“We both benefited from providential investors who have taken early bets on us,” said Rich. “We are both disabled people. We came out and we learn that, you know, there are no groups of angels in this space. There is no first money in companies that help companies at point A at point B and it’s crazy. ”
Adaptation Ventures plans to invest at least $ 250,000 in each company with the possibility of co-investment. The group will hold quarterly meetings which include a minimum of four throws and investors will vote on companies that should go to the reasonable diligence phase, said Brittany.
There are many potential companies that are the group’s investment strategy that Rich has described as, making big things smaller and expensive things cheaper.
Companies that correspond to the group thesis could include something like Rebokeh, a company that builds assistance technology for low vision. It also includes companies that do not focus on accessibility, but can also help those who have a handicap like Tonal, Rich mentioned as an example, which makes the exercise more accessible to disabled people who prevent them from having physical weights.
Rich joked by saying that with the collective decades of the experience in the world of startups and investments, they have been practicing for this new role for 10 years.
“I am a survivor of the brain aneurysm,” he said. “I had temporary and permanent handicaps as a result of this. [Brittany] is a bilateral amputee. It is difficult not to notice these things or to hear these things about us. We have therefore attracted founders to this space and invested as angels in recent years. The chances are in a way against you obtaining this funding, so we almost had to do so. »»
