HapWare: A Wearable to Help the Blind "See"

Josh Muccio (0:00)

Welcome to The Pitch where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I'm Josh Muccio.

Lisa Muccio (0:06)

And I'm Lisa Muccio. And on the show today, we have Jack with HapWare. He's raising $1.5 million.

Josh Muccio (0:12)

This company is super cool. It's a wearable and it communicates non-verbal signals to you using vibrations on your wrist.

Lisa Muccio (0:22)

What?

Josh Muccio (0:23)

Like if someone's waving or smiling or reaching out to shake your hand.

Lisa Muccio (0:27)

Okay, but why would I need that?

Josh Muccio (0:29)

Let's say you were blind or low vision or anyone in general who has trouble reading non-verbal cues. Non-verbal communication is pretty important, wouldn't you say?

Lisa Muccio (0:42)

Yes, I strongly believe in non-verbal communication. In fact, I like to emote a lot.

Josh Muccio (0:47)

You sure do.

SPEAKER_3 (0:50)

Maybe a little less non-verbal from you would be nice.

Josh Muccio (0:56)

One of the main reasons that I wanted to bring this company on the show is I liked that when evaluating HapWare, it forced me to think about what it would be like to live a day and not be able to see the world around me. I don't know, I've just never actually sat with what's it like to not be able to see.

Lisa Muccio (1:15)

I totally understand that, but just because something is cool, doesn't mean that it can scale to a venture size business. I think the real question is, will enough people use it and what other use cases will come out of it to make it a mainstream product?

Josh Muccio (1:34)

The Pitch for HapWare is coming up after this.

Lisa Muccio (1:37)

But first, we're hosting two events this November, a live show in New York and also our Season 17 taping in San Francisco. To join us at either of those, go to Pitch.Show slash events.

Josh Muccio (1:50)

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Welcome back to The Pitch for HapWare. Let's meet the investors.

Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures.

Charles Hudson (2:38)

We have 500 companies, so you pick it, we have it.

Josh Muccio (2:41)

Ellie Bahrmasel with Paranaut.

Ellie Bahrmasel (2:43)

Entrepreneurship is the dance between hubris and humility.

Josh Muccio (2:46)

Elizabeth Galbut with SoGal Ventures.

Elizabeth Galbut (2:48)

Not all exits are created the same.

Josh Muccio (2:50)

And Jeff Cantalupo with Listen Ventures.

Jeff Cantalupo (2:53)

Do you want this to be a premium brand? HapWare.

Ellie Bahrmasel (3:05)

That was a good snap.

Jeff Cantalupo (3:06)

Thank you.

Jack Walters (3:07)

How's it going?

Lisa Muccio (3:08)

Hey, I'm Jack.

Ellie Bahrmasel (3:09)

Ellie, nice to meet you.

Lisa Muccio (3:10)

Jack.

Elizabeth Galbut (3:11)

Hi, Elizabeth.

Jack Walters (3:12)

Jack.

Charles Hudson (3:12)

Hey, Charles, nice to meet you.

Jeff Cantalupo (3:14)

Jeff.

Jack Walters (3:14)

Jack.

Jeff Cantalupo (3:15)

Good to meet you, Jack.

Jack Walters (3:15)

Nice to meet you guys. Hello, everybody. My name is Jack Walters and I'm the CEO and co-founder at HapWare. I want you guys to close your eyes. How would you describe what I'm doing right now?

Am I smiling? Do I seem bored?

Jeff Cantalupo (3:30)

You're using your hands.

Elizabeth Galbut (3:32)

Yeah, I thought you're waving your hands around.

Jack Walters (3:34)

Am I checking my notes maybe because I forgot what I'm supposed to say?

You can open your eyes. The questions I just asked you describe nonverbal communication.

Things like gestures, body language and facial expressions. The fact of the matter is over 90% of all communication is nonverbal. But for people who are blind or low vision, these cues are largely inaccessible because they are visual. And for people that are neurodiverse or on the autism spectrum, these cues can be extremely hard to read.

At HapWare, we are building Ally, which is a wristband that can communicate all those different nonverbal and social cues through the sense of touch or haptics in real time. We integrate and pair with any camera to pick up the visual scene and then we communicate it through the sense of touch of less than a quarter of a second. So tens of millions of other people can get access to know when their kids are rolling their eyes, when someone's walking away from them, or when they're reaching out to shake hands. And this problem is personal to us. My co-founder, Brian, is one of 20 people in the world who are blind with a PhD in computer science. One of the few people that has the technical know-how and the lived experience of how to execute. I have a haptic demonstration here, so you can kind of get a little idea of what haptics feel like. So if one of you would like to experience just a quick little demo of a volunteer on the end.