Lassy Project Investment

My partner Steve recently made an investment into a company called Lassy Project which will be bridged into Pilot Mountain Ventures. Here’s the what and why of it.

Lassy Project helps find lost children. Faster.

It has three types of users. First, the village, comprised of friends, family, and trusted neighbors who volunteer to be alerted when a nearby child is reported missing. Next up, the parents. If your child goes missing, you can notify an entire local community with the push of a button. Lastly, children. Using location monitors like a phone or GPS device, Lassy Project alerts parents when your child isn’t where they’re supposed to be. It’s worth noting Lassy Project doesn’t require your children to have their own phone.

Here’s how it works in practice. Your child walks to soccer, school, or a friend’s house on a daily basis. You, as a parent, set up safe paths for them. If your child wanders off, you receive an alert. Most times, it’s because they detoured to McDonalds or something similarly harmless. You confirm they’re safe and go on with your life.

But what if that’s not the case? You can’t confirm where your child is or what’s happening. You then escalate to your village. Village members receive an alert with a picture of the child, description, and the last active GPS information available. If needed, Lassy Project will alert surrounding villages for additional coverage to create an instant search and rescue party who work together to find your child.

Why sign up? 

Parents sign up to get access to the most effective tool to find a missing child…people. For those of us who aren’t parents, join the village knowing you can safeguard your community’s children, and maybe even save a life.

Sign up here! Download the iOS or Android app or sign up directly on their website.

Why we made the investment?

This is a good example of how PMV expects to do business in the near future.

First, we believe in Lassy Project’s team. I roomed with CEO John Guydon in Downtown Las Vegas during the June Catalyst Week. We got along on a personal level and I knew I’d love to work with him some day. He’s a D-1 collegiate champion and excellent sales person. His co-founder and CTO Temitope Sonuyi holds multiple degrees from MIT. Plus, these two have worked together since 7th grade. This fits our team-first focus.

Also, Lassy Project replaces a government program that isn’t effective enough: Amber Alerts. It takes Amber Alert hours before information gets sent out. That information is bare bones and quickly out of date. By comparison, Lassy Project sends rich details to people within seconds, including up to date tracking information. Every second, let alone hour, counts. This is easily 10x’s better than the current solution.

In addition, from a hardware perspective, we like their location tracker solution. Instead of a phone+tracking app or building something in-house, Lassy Project is hardware agnostic. Any device with GPS capabilities can be plugged into their system via API. That means the would-be abductor doesn’t know if something in the child’s shoe laces, backpack, or phone could track him. This is a big preventative measure. You, as a parent, also don’t have to buck up for a new iPhone.

We don’t think lost children is a frivolous issue. According to the DOJ, nearly 800,000 children were reported missing in a one-year period. This problem deserves to be solved.

John and Temitope also have incredible business development partners signed and in the works that really excite us. We can’t talk about most of them, but here’s an endorsement from the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police. These partners are really exciting distribution channels.

Things have sped up lately

For starters, Lassy Project announced they were accepted into the most recent Techstars Boulder class. They’re a few weeks in and loving it. And on last Tuesday, they launched a new version of their site. It’s a massive improvement.

It’s worth noting that both John and Temitope are the first all-minority team that we’re aware of to be admitted to a major accelerator program. Congratulations to them, that’s no small deal.

We love the team, we love the business, and we’re excited to work with Lassy Project over the coming years.