(Podcast Intro with Music – 00:00) 

Kelvin Crosby (00:06)

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We are not waiting for change, we are investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world.

(Episode Begins)

Kelvin Crosby (00:25)

Hey, hey, hey, so good to see you. Even though I can't see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood And I'm so excited that you are here at Investing in Accessibility a Samaritan podcast. My name is Kelvin Crosby and this is my co-host.

Chris Maher (00:39)

Chris Maher.

Kelvin (00:41)

And today we're going to be going through Chris's story and why he really wanted to get involved with Samaritan Partners and really build this firm. And I tell you if you didn't listen to last week’s episode, you're missing out why I got involved into it. So go check that out, episode one, and then you got episode two here today, so go check that out. So, I'm gonna ask the first question here Chris. Chris, so what really got you into the disability world? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the disability word, but I think the challenges, wherein for some, they're superpowers, I feel like. And so, what got you into this field?

Chris Maher (01:26)

Sure, thanks, Calvin. It's good to see you, my friend. You know, the backdrop and impetus for starting Samaritan Partners has to do with a couple of different aspects of my background. So, the first is I spent the last 25 years as an operator and leader in a variety of small to mid-size VC-backed companies. I've always gravitated towards that early stage of entrepreneurship where you're building a team and building a business. A few times I worked for larger and sometimes public companies and I'm grateful for those experiences, but I've always gravitated to that early stage when you're building businesses. That's the last 25 years. 

A quick aside, prior to that, my first decade at a college, I actually was a college basketball coach. And I bring that up because that's really where I learned, as they say in the business world, the soft skills. I started to hone those soft skills of working with people, teamwork, collaboration, leadership, coaching, mentoring. And so, for the last 35 years, I've been leading and guiding and mentoring teams, and for 25 years building and scaling VC-backed businesses. 

And in parallel to that, for the last 20 years, my wife and I have raised two beautiful daughters both of whom live with disabilities. My youngest daughter who is now 18 years old, she was born with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My oldest daughter who is a senior in college. She's cognitively typical as they say, but she was born with physical disabilities. She has a weakness on her left side. It's a form of hemiplegia. And that's been our normal. My wife and I don't know any different. Our daughters are amazing. We wouldn't change a thing. But because of our journey, we've always probably been a little bit more aware and sensitive to other families on a similar journey. 

So, for me, Samaritan Partners, the genesis of it, was really about trying to bring together two things that I'm very passionate about, one of which is early-stage entrepreneurship and the other is helping people. And obviously on the helping people side, my close ties to the disability community with raising my daughters, it was pretty clear that's where the focus of the fund was going to be. So Samaritan Partners is a social impact venture fund that invests in early-stage for-profit companies that either provide products and services to the disability community and/or create employment opportunities.

Kelvin (03:36)

And as you find yourself going through this journey of raising two daughters, one with an intellectual disability and the other one with other challenges, and you find yourself being molded in a way, and I love the word molded because we all go through life having to mold through challenges. And you find yourself having to go through these stages and you're finding yourself having to interact with accessibility. And can you kind of tell us a story in your life where you realized if this product would develop correctly for somebody with a disability, then this would help my daughter.

Chris Maher (04:22)

Yeah. So, one memory from my oldest daughter's childhood comes to mind. With the weakness on her left side, her left arm and hand was, has always been significantly weaker than her right. And she doesn't have great dexterity with her left hand. So simple things like putting on her socks and shoes as a child was very, very challenging for her. she was very stubborn and rarely would take help from her dad or her mom. But the really hard part was tying her sneakers. And so, we looked for a lot of different solutions and something as simple as we came across these rubber laces that you would put into her shoes instead of having to tie them, it was easier for her to her shoe on. 

And so, something as simple as that in terms of accessibility or an accommodation and assistive technology, just little rubber shoelaces, where it was a massive impact for her in terms of being independent and autonomous. 

Fast forward to today, my youngest daughter who has intellectual and developmental disabilities, she'd have a hard time doing the multiplication tables for you, but she can get on an iPhone and text with people all day long because of speech to text. She couldn't type out those words very competently, but she can do speech to text and communicate with people just like anybody else would. And so kind of the full spectrum of little rubber shoelaces versus something like an iPhone, but they can both have a very profound impact on a person–in the life of a person with disabilities.

Kelvin (06:10)

And I think this is where if we look through this. Like for me, having access to accessible things, like a coffee maker, making a good cup of coffee is an important thing, right? Having that be accessible is extremely important. And this is where I love our statement. We're not waiting for change. We're investing in change. 

Because when we think in that mindset, we find ourselves really wondering how can we actually make this change happen? Accessibility is not necessarily just technology. Accessibility is giving access to everybody who's in this world and be able to give them that freedom and independence so that they can live their best life. And I think what's really cool is Samaritan Partners, you're involved in making the process of helping make hotels more accessible. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about what that looks like and how that kind of came together?

Chris Maher (07:24)

Sure. The focus for the fund, for Samaritan Partners, is broadly disability. So not focused on any one particular area, but in the specific area of travel and hospitality, accessibility is something that a lot of companies and corporations seem to be leaning into because they've realized that people with disabilities like to travel just as much as anybody.

And when they travel, they tend to travel with their friends and family. And if they can't accommodate the one person with a disability in their group, well then that whole group is likely going somewhere else where that member of their group can be accommodated. 

And so, we've invested in a company called Wheel the World, which is an accessible travel company. One of the founders had an accident when he was a teenager and he's paralyzed from the chest down and as a wheelchair user. And it really came out of his own lived experience of the challenges of specifically booking hotels that had full accessibility for him, from curb cuts to ramps to the width of doors, shower seats, the heights of beds. 

So, he and his co-founder started a business around that where people with disabilities can go to their site similar to Expedia, but all of the inventory on that site has been vetted and validated for accessibility. And when you book that room, it's guaranteed. And so that's just one example of an investment that we've made around accessible travel.

Kelvin (08:59)

So, this is where we're not just waiting for the change to happen. We're actually doing something about it. And I think this is where I think when we think about Samaritan Partners, we're looking at it from a way how can we give access to everybody? So Chris, when you started this firm, is that what they call it, a firm?

Chris Maher (09:27)

Yeah, a venture fund.

Kelvin (09:29)

So, when you started this fun, you went into this and you're like, I'm going to do this. And kind of tell us that journey and like where there's some struggles, some challenges and what are some things that when you started, you didn't know, but you started learning like, wow, this is such an important thing to be around.

Chris Maher (9:56)

Yeah, so I'm kind of like the entrepreneurs that I'm investing in. I'm a startup again. And it's a wonderful place to be, to be back at building a business literally from the ground up. And so there was a lot for me to learn coming from the operational side. I'm a first-time investor and fund manager, so learning a lot of the back office part of managing a fund was part of it.

But also, as I started to focus in on the disability sector as the area of investment, it was also learning a lot about the different nuances across disability. At a high level, I think most people don't understand, and we're going to do an episode on this, of just how large a market it is and just a few stats for people. The disability community is actually the largest minority population on the planet. It's in the neighborhood of 1.8 billion people or so. That's one in four adults in the United States and one in six people globally. 

Disability also has no prejudice or bias. It touches all of us. It cuts across age, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, ethnicity, geography. So, it really is a part of the human condition. And so, as I got into this more deeply, it really became evident that one, this is a very large market. And two, there's a significant amount of early-stage innovation going on. And three, and this is where Samaritan comes in, there is a lack of private capital investing in this space. Historically, it's a bit of a generalization, the disability community has been supported by nonprofits and local and federal government, which is wonderful, and they do amazing work for the community. But there are limitations to how much those groups can really elevate the community.

And so, there is a very unique opportunity for private capital to come into this sector to provide not only catalytic capital, that’s capital at the early stages of innovation to really help to evolve and progress those innovations and technologies, but also providing operational assistance and partnering with the nonprofits and the local and federal governments to really elevate the community to a place where we really need to get it. And so, it just became clearer and clearer for me as I got into this more and more, that there was a wonderful opportunity not only to drive significant social impact, meaning improving the lives of millions of people with disabilities, while also getting a fantastic financial return.

Kelvin (12:31)

And I think, let me tell you a story. Because I think where you can see why this is so important was, let's just look at my life. In 2017, I went to CES and I saw the autonomous vehicles. And I thought, that's pretty small stuff. Like, why couldn't I put that into a blind cane? So that way visually impaired people could travel more independently and safely. 

So I went home, innovated that idea, got a team of engineers, and started putting this all together. And in 40 days we created our first prototype. And then I'm realizing the next step is gonna cost a lot of money. So I dropped my own money into it, invested about $100,000 and I ran. Then we got to that, we ran out of that $100,000, so I started looking for investment. And nobody wanted to invest. No VC, nobody wanted to invest in a product that would help visually impaired people travel more independently and safely. Samaritan Partner’s wasn't here yet, but if I had that investment, this cane would be on the market today. 

I had to close down that part of my business and launch a new product. That was a lot easier for me to scale. Granted, there's a lot more work involved. But as you see me grow this business, I learned different ways to create funding, do different things. And granted, I funded all my business by selling pottery to be able to get it to where it needed to be. And it took me almost eight years to get to this point.

And the struggle is real. If you don't have the desire to move forward and you don't have the support around you to make it happen, the chances of these products that will help people with disabilities really making it forward, it's not realistic. And this is why Samaritan Partners is huge in saying, no, we're stepping up to the plate. We're going to do this and we're going to make this happen.

And that's why I'm here today and why I'm excited to be a part of this journey and say, I'm behind Samaritan Partners in saying, I want to see more products, more services, more businesses give access to all people with disabilities and give them that freedom that we all need to have in our lives and that independence. And this is why I want to encourage you to share this podcast with somebody. Because if you share it with somebody, you're just saying, yes, I want to be a part of this movement and giving access to all. So important. 

Chris, where are you seeing Samaritan Partners going in 2025. Where do you see Samaritan focusing over the next twelve months? 

Chris Maher (16:06)

So, I think over this next year, it'll be a combination of continuing to help the existing portfolio companies, which we'll talk to many of them over the course of this podcast and making sure that we're helping them operationally, but as well as they continue to grow and may need to raise more capital to be a part of that journey with them. But it's also, there's a wonderful pipeline of companies that we've been speaking to for quite some time. We've probably talked to over 200 companies in the last 12 months. And so we'll be continuing to identify those companies that we think cannot only drive significant social impact across different areas of disability, but that have a strong commercial model that can support that. And this is why you do what you do, Kelvin, and I'd say 100 % of the entrepreneurs that I've talked with over the last year, they're doing what they're doing for two reasons. One is they've got a very personal connection to the problem that they're solving, just like you, and they want to do it in a for-profit way because they realize that to really drive that impact, to create accessibility for more people, to live more independent and autonomous lives, they need to have a sustainable commercial model behind it. 

And so that's what we'll be doing over the next year is continuing to try to find great entrepreneurs that are solving really important problems, but have a commercial model behind it that can really help them achieve not only scale and sustainability with their impact, but do that in a commercially viable and sustainable way. So, it's a super exciting year ahead for us. And we're hopefully going to bring a lot of those entrepreneurs and other thought leaders.

in the world of disability to everyone on this podcast.

Kelvin (17:59)

So, as we wrap up, I want you all to think about this. If you currently don't have a disability or have a challenge, and you have a disability that comes around, would you want access to the things that you love? Because I have to say, I don't have access to a lot of things that I love. I love watching football. I can't see it anymore. But what if there was a way for me to watch football without being able to see? That's an interesting idea. This is why Samaritan Partners is here. And again, as I said earlier, share this podcast, spread it wide so that we can bring awareness to this need, as well as help each one of us live beyond our challenges. 

Thanks for listening to Investing in Accessibility a Samaritan Partners podcast. As we sign out, as I always say, go live beyond your challenges and we'll see you in two weeks. 

(Episode Closing with Music)

Kelvin Crosby (19:22)

Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast, where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow up, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn @SamaritanPartners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, you can email chris@samaritanpartners.com. If you would like to learn more about us, go to www.samaritanpartners.com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us 5 stars and sharing this podcast with everyone you know so we can spread the word so we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.