Kelvin Crosby: 0:06

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

Kelvin Crosby: 0:30

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're here at Investing in Accessibility. I'm your host, Kelvin Crosby, and we're going to drop into Chris Maher's session that he had at Waw ability 2025 and it's a celebration of the ADA of 35 years. And I'm excited to drop into this and how you got to hear how awesome this panel that Chris was interviewing and getting their input. I tell you you guys are in for a treat. You guys ready to go on a journey? Let's do this.

Chris Maher: 1:06

Hello, welcome to our next session, our panel here -- Design Capital and Impact: The Future of Disability Startups. My name is Chris Maher, I'm the founder and general partner at Samaritan Partners and let me introduce my fellow panelists today. Going down the line from my left on your right, right next to me is Tomer Aharoni, the co-founder and CEO of Nagish. Next to him is Michael Bervell, who is the co-founder and CEO of Test Party, and down at the end is Diego Mariscal, who is the founder and CEO of 2Gether- International. Welcome, gentlemen. Before we get into our discussion, we're all going to provide a little bit deeper background and description of ourselves, so I will kick that off.

Chris Maher: 1:55

As I said, my name is Chris Maher, founder and general partner of Samaritan Partners. I am a middle-aged white male. I'm about 6'2", with blonde hair that is quickly turning gray, and today I'm wearing a blue blazer and a white collar shirt with a little blue windowpane pattern on it, dark jeans and loafers. Samaritan Partners is a public benefit venture capital fund and we invest in the disability sector, so we invest in companies that are either providing products and services to the community and or creating employment opportunities. And my connection to disability is that my wife and I have raised two beautiful daughters, both of whom live with disabilities. My oldest daughter has a physical disability and my youngest daughter has intellectual and developmental disabilities, and let me pass it off to Tomer.

Tomer Aharoni: 2:40

Thank you, Chris. Hi everyone, I'm Tomer. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Nagish, which means accessible in Hebrew. What we do is we make communication more accessible for people with hearing loss, people who are deaf and people with speech disabilities. Nagish received two FCC certifications in the last two years and has raised more than $60 million to date, and I'm happy to be here today.

Chris Maher: 3:01

Thank you, Tomer. Michael.

Michael Bervell: 3:03

Awesome. Hey, I'm Michael Bervell. I'm the co-founder and CEO of TestParty. TestParty is an automated digital accessibility platform, so we scan the source code of websites and we use AI to rewrite the source code to be accessible as by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. I'm a black male in my 20s, super handsome, really funny, extremely smart, yeah, all the descriptions. I'm wearing a white button-up with a navy blue jacket and I'm excited to be here, excited to talk about capital and impact.

Chris Maher: 3:36

Terrific. Thank you. Diego.

Diego Mariscal: 3:38

I will start by saying that was probably my favorite description. I'm going to steal that. My name is Diego, Diego Mariscal. I'm the founder and CEO of 2Gether- International, which is the largest accelerator for founders with disabilities. We've supported over 700 founders all across the world and helped them raise more than $84 million in various forms of capital. Excited to be here. I think this is a very important conversation and, as for my visual description, I'm not sure if it's going to be as great as yours, but I am a 30-something-year-old male Latin wearing my signature red shoes and normally I'm wearing a blue blue shirt, but I decided to dress up for the occasion and so I'm wearing a white button-down shirt. So excited to be here and my relationship with disability is I have cerebral palsy and excited to talk about how that has turned into a competitive advantage in my life, but also for others as well.

Chris Maher: 4:45

Great, terrific, well, thank you, gentlemen, and that's where we're going to kick off. We're going to jump right into the deep end right off the bat here. And Diego, this first question is for you, because I've seen you speak several times where you talk about disability as a competitive differentiator. Can you kick us off and elaborate on that?

Diego Mariscal: 5:01

Absolutely yes, and it's been kind of the cornerstone of our work, right.

Diego Mariscal: 5:06

So when you think about it, as disabled people, we have to figure out how do we dress, how we drive, how we communicate, and that is inherently entrepreneurial skills at play, right, it requires resiliency, it requires creativity.

Diego Mariscal: 5:23

Just figuring out how I was going to get to the venue required a certain amount of additional thinking. As I mentioned, I have CP and that means for me I've literally fallen thousands of times in my life and thousands of times I've had to get back up, and that has a ripple effect also in business, right. I don't know if a thousand, but a hundred times I've made mistakes and, you know, had roadblocks, and I've also had to get back up from a business perspective. And so a lot of our work really looks at how can we translate the disability experience and the lessons that disability inherently teaches to you and translate them into a business context, whether that is navigating benefits right and the complexity of what that means, from navigating regulatory environments as a startup, navigating a care team and communicating effectively and translating those skills into communicating effectively to your stakeholders and team members. So really, the parallel experiences are very similar and so a lot of our work has centered around how do we capitalize on that, and so far, so good.

Chris Maher: 6:41

Yeah, no, your organization, which we'll get into more later, does an amazing job of that. With my two daughters, went through the same thing. My oldest daughter, who has a physical disability, was constantly falling as a child, and so things that I don't think people think about is people with disabilities are inherently really good problem solvers, because you have to do that from day one and you're resilient and you're adaptable. And so, Tomer, let's go to you anything you'd like to kind of dovetail on about that.

Tomer Aharoni: 7:07

Yeah, I think it's true from the other side as well that solutions for people with disabilities are actually, in many cases, great tools and better tools for people without disabilities, and we've seen this ripple effect so much in the past, where people with disabilities invent something for their needs, or people that are close to people with disabilities invent something for disability needs, and that something becomes widely used anywhere by anyone, because what benefits people with disabilities will eventually benefit the greater good. Um, and I think that that ripple effect is so important and should not be underestimated.

Chris Maher: 7:38

Yeah, and so that kind of takes us down a path that, um, Michael, this question is going to be directed to you to start, is where you start to get into the concepts of universal design and product market fit, and so can you speak to that as it relates to the founding and the growing of TestParty.

Michael Bervell: 7:59

Yeah, I mean, I often say that innovation happens at the edges of the bell curves, right, that where there's the extremes is where you find the coolest, most innovative solutions. And when we think of what a business is like, fundamentally, it's you're solving a problem with a solution and the pain of that gap, the gap between problem and solution, is what you charge Like, that's your revenue, that's your price, right, and so the bigger the problem, the bigger the solution. The more sought after that problem is, the more sought after a solution might be. And so I think to your point, Diego, like to have a problem first mindset for your whole life is what creates like this area where you can make the best solutions right, because everything you look around, you're like well, I've made this solution, that solution, that solution, and I did it for free. And now how do I monetize that? And so it's like almost I think it's totally as a superpower, at least in how Test Party was being created.

Michael Bervell: 8:51

The problem that we found actually came through my co-founder and he was working at Amazon for Twitch, which is the live streaming platform, when Twitch got sued for not being accessible. And at that point the common solution was hey, if your company gets sued, go hire a consultant and they'll manually audit and give you a PDF. Then you look at the PDF and you solve it. And us, being 20-something-year-old guys, who really were TikTok natives, were like zillennials. All the buzzwords.

Michael Bervell: 9:20

We were like why are we looking at a PDF to go somehow solve accessibility issues, right, in a code base? And so that's where we thought, like you know, there's all these security startups like SNIC and Cernar Cube and Acunetix that are doing this through automation, where you can look at a code base and automatically find security problems and fix security problems, and that's what we started to do. So when I think about product market fit like the founding story of TestParty was really around what I would call adjacencies. We looked at security as a space and we said what is the adjacency of a solution in another market like accessibility? And I was lucky that I had a background at Google and the UN in accessibility so it was easy for me to see that. But that's where I think true product market fit and growth comes from, when you're trying to find a problem and find a solution to bridge that gap.

Chris Maher: 10:05

Yeah, those are great points, Diego. I'm going to let you kind of wrap up this topic, but like, can you speak to universal design and product market fit as it relates to lived experience?

Diego Mariscal: 10:15

Yeah, and I don't know if we've ever gotten into this, uh, Chris, but you know, when we started 2Gether, it wasn't about supporting founders, it was about changing the way people thought about disability, and we did workshops in schools. And that didn't work for a variety of reasons that I'm not gonna get into, and then we focused on doing advocacy campaigns and that also didn't work and finally landed, after many, many years of trial and error, on supporting entrepreneurs with disabilities.

Diego Mariscal: 10:52

And so when we talk about product market fit, I often use our own story as an example of hey, it took several iterations and really several versions of what we wanted to see to become successful, but what was really interesting is that the problem never, never wavered, right, we started together or I started together with this idea of how do we redefine the way people thought about disability.

Diego Mariscal: 11:19

Right, I had the opportunity when I was a freshman in college not too long ago, to go to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and that was the first time ever I saw a group of leaders, disabled leaders, unapologetically proud of their disability. I grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, and I had never encountered people that were proud and loud about their disability. And so, walking out of that conference, I thought, well, how do we create that experience for the masses, so that not only the elite that get to go to the UN have the opportunity to have that transformative experience? And so that was the impetus for 2Gether, and it just so happened that we do it through supporting entrepreneurs. So I share this, because our story is one of hey, the problem was very clearly defined, the way in which we solve that problem, we've had to pivot and learn and shift, but the fact that the mission has never wavered, I think, is also indicative of our success.

Chris Maher: 12:30

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. You haven't told me that, so thank you.

Chris Maher: 12:34

So for many companies and for many startups, sometimes you have to navigate the policy and regulatory landscape, and Tomer, Nagish has been very good at that and very successful at that. Can you share some of the insights around that experience?

Tomer Aharoni: 12:51

Of course. So I think that, by design, regulation moves slower than innovation. There's really no way for regulation to keep up with innovation, because innovation happens in closed rooms. You cannot know when a designer or an engineer or an entrepreneur builds something or thinks about something until it's out there and until it's actually being used, and it really doesn't matter so much until it's being widely adopted. The way we navigated this at Nagish is, we said okay, we want to create a better solution, a private phone call solution for people with hearing loss.

Tomer Aharoni: 13:27

And today, if you look at regulation, regulation doesn't regulate AI-powered services for communication. They only regulate human-powered services for regulation. So we have two options. One was starting to push, as back then we were just two students at Columbia University. We can be two students pushing for regulation. I don't think it will happen and it will probably be very expensive. Or we can go the startup way. Raise money, don't think about regulation. Put a product out there, build it with the community, get as many people as possible to use it and then use the power of the community. Show that there is a real need, show that people are actually going to benefit from using these products and go to the regulators and tell them listen, you're behind, let us help you, help us, help the community, and it worked pretty well for us?

Chris Maher: 14:14

Yeah, it certainly has. That's a really interesting approach. Michael, your experience, especially around the EU and Europe, is different because some new regulations have just rolled out and so can you speak to how Test Party is navigating that?

Michael Bervell: 14:29

Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, when we were fundraising, the number one reason that people passed was because they thought the market was too small.

Michael Bervell: 14:36

Right, and if I had a list of like 200 people that we pitched and I would write every time someone said no, what was the reason?

Michael Bervell: 14:43

And that was the reason about 70% of the time.

Michael Bervell: 14:45

And so our story that we started to tell was, hey, there's this huge regulation coming out in Europe. it just came out on June 25th of this year and it's the European Accessibility Act, with the argument that once it's required in Europe that websites are compliant and accessible, that'll have a bleed-over effect around the rest of the world, in the same way that GDPR, the Global Data Privacy Regulation, had a bleed-over effect where now we all see except cookies on our websites, even if we're not doing business in Europe. So I think what's interesting about Tomer versus my story is you were kind of pushing regulation to happen, whereas we're kind of benefiting from regulation overall, and I think it is a scenario where a rising tide lifts all boats, because today only 5% of websites are accessible if you look at their homepages, and so there's a 95% market and right now all of the players are trying to push to get that 95% market activated. So regulation is one great way to do that, and I think also there's other innovations that I can talk about later.

Chris Maher: 15:45

It's both really powerful insights, but from a very different approach, which is great. Before we go on to the next topic, Diego, do you have anything else you would say around policy and regulation?

Diego Mariscal: 15:55

Yeah, so you know we're based in DC.

Diego Mariscal: 15:58

So policy and regulation is a big topic for us.

Diego Mariscal: 16:13

And I often go back to this idea of navigating a disability and the parallels between a business, right. So I have been a recipient of Medicaid services and Social Security and vocational rehabilitation services, all of which are government-funded programs, at least for now, for folks with disabilities, right. Figuring out how to access those programs and how to use them to your advantage, I mean, you require almost the equivalent of a PhD education. It's so complex and difficult. And so when it came time to, okay, set up a business, you know, set up an EIN number that was easy compared to the nightmare that it is navigating all of those government programs and regulations. And so it goes back to the point earlier if we are able to navigate the complexity that is disability advocacy, we are certainly able to navigate the complexity that is business.

Diego Mariscal: 17:22

So that's one area. And then the other piece that I'll mention and one of my favorite books is called Regulatory Hacking, and it talks about this concept that you can actually find ways to hack regulations and to figure out the kind of chain of command and who you need to talk to to pull regulations in a certain way. So there is a concept in which you can use startup knowledge and experience to hack regulation. So, thinking about that as a founder, and how do you use the challenge that can be regulation to your advantage to make your processes, your products, more innovative is an opportunity that's often overlooked.

Chris Maher: 18:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My youngest daughter turned 18 a little while ago and we're navigating her now being an adult and there is no playbook, and you're right, you need a PhD to navigate everything in SSI and SSDI and bank account limits, and that's like a whole other panel. So let's shift gears a little bit. All of you have been very successful in not only starting your companies and organizations but also scaling them and growing them, and part of that has been that you've all been very successful raising capital. And so I'd like each of you to take a minute or two to share about that experience and let's start with Tomer and then we'll work our way down but just talk about that process, that experience and any insights that you have, and you in particular have been incredibly successful raising capital for your business.

Tomer Aharoni: 19:12

Yeah, so I think for us, similar to Michael, we had the same issue when we started meeting with investors. We had no choice. As I mentioned, our options were trying to figure out regulations to students or raising money and putting the product out there to get a community to use it. So we had really no choice but to raise money. And once we decided to raise money, again we had options. We could have tapped into Grants, which you need probably four PhDs to figure out, or we could have went the classic VC way, which we decided to do.

Tomer Aharoni: 19:39

And one of the struggles we had when we started is that when you go to hearing VCs or non-disabled VCs and you try to pitch them a solution for deaf individuals, they immediately think I don't know any deaf person. It's probably a small market. So the first thing we needed to figure out is how to really make a case for it. How do we explain to someone who's a complete ignorant in everything to do with accessibility that this is a massive market and this market is going to benefit everyone? There are 40 million Americans with hearing loss. To some extent, it doesn't have to be a binary condition. It's a really wide range of needs. So that was the first challenge that we needed to navigate. Once we navigated this, it became slightly easier, because now you have a market, you can actually make a case for the market. And then we had to show that there is also a business model here.

Tomer Aharoni: 20:33

I do believe in capitalism when it comes to making a real change. So if you want to actually impact people's lives, yes, you can do it in non-profit, where you can do it with grants, but if you really want to build something sustainable and make a long-term impact, you need a business model. You need to make revenue, you need to grow. It's not a bad thing. Having a startup raising money, being profitable, these are not bad as long as you're actually progressing change. And I think, once we got into agreement with people, with investors, that this is what we're doing, that we're building a very sustainable business on one end, but on the other hand, we're actually doing well in the world. So I love saying, doing good by doing well or doing well by doing good, things clicked and we were able to raise the money.

Chris Maher: 21:13

I think it's a great point and you guys are a great example. I love being in this space from an investor standpoint because all the entrepreneurs I meet, like all of you folks, probably had a lot of people telling you early on when you first found your company oh it's disability, why isn't it a nonprofit? And I love the fact that you all are adamant about no, no, no, we're going to build this in a for-profit way because we're going to create a self-sustaining financial model to support the social impact that we are going to scale and have a positive impact on millions of lives. So thank you for that, Tomer, Michael, give us your experience, because you guys were also very successful in that first big round you raised.

Michael Bervell: 21:49

Yeah, and we raised our round at a time when it was very difficult to fundraise. People were not really investing in anything, let alone in our industry. And so I guess the biggest, there's two big takeaways. I think one is that fundraising starts before you, in theory, have a company, right. And so my first job out of college is working at Microsoft, where I then became an investor on behalf of Microsoft into companies like OpenAI, into companies like Kahoot, and so that was a really interesting experience to see the other side of the table. And there's a lot of inside baseball that I learned just by being quote unquote in the game, right. Now, I guess the way that you would access that is things like podcasts.

Michael Bervell: 22:31

Right, there's so many podcasts I watch with, like Bill Gurley or, you know, Paul Graham or any of the Y Combinator team that has like all of the quote unquote secrets that used to only be understood if you had worked in the industry. And understanding that is really valuable, because when you go to pitch an investor and they say a comment like yeah, I think the traction is not there, there's a hundred things that that could mean. And understanding what is in my data room, what is in that document I'm sending to them and what are they seeing and not seeing is super valuable. So that's the first tip. There's all these resources online to learn about how investors think, and before you start pitching, you should definitely know how they think and what they're thinking about.

Michael Bervell: 23:10

I think the second thing that we did differently that actually really benefited us is we leaned on every angle that we could that we had as unique to us, and so at the time, I was in business school, and so I leaned on that business school network really hard to the point where one of our lead investors came from a referral from a woman who I did three coffee chats with because she was a mentor at the Innovation Lab, right. And so who knew that three coffee chats over the spring and the summer and the fall will lead to an intro that led to almost a $2 million check by the winter? And that wasn't intentional. It was just me trying to get to know people and understand people, and I leaned heavily on that network for sure.

Michael Bervell: 23:48

We also were super intentional on fundraise, about raising from VCs who invest in disability-focused startups, that invest in black and Latinx-founded startups and just invest in social impact generally. And so when we built our cap table, that was part of the calculus and I don't think that's a negative. I think it's actually a pretty big positive. So those are the two things Get inside the investor's head before you pitch them, especially if it's a specific investor, and lean on all of your strengths. Don't feel bad about trying to lean on what you need to do. It's what adds to the business and makes it more likely to succeed.

Chris Maher: 24:22

It's really interesting that you lean on that, and I know that and, Tomer, we're not going to get into too much, but I know that you actually went in the opposite direction. You went away from social impact and disability VCs and went to traditional folks. Because if you can prove it to them, you can prove it to anybody.

Tomer Aharoni: 24:36

Pretty much. Yeah, we really wanted to avoid painting ourselves as a disability company, even though that's what we are. We knew that we're going to need a lot of money to make this a reality, to actually build something unbelievable, and that we have to tap beyond just the disability network, and I think it was also a bit of a personal challenge. Eventually, we leave this world. I know everyone in our industry. I spend so much time with everyone in the industry it's preaching to the choir and I wanted to make sure that we get real people that invest in real startups, that we compete in the real world startups, in tech startups, the biggest companies out there, and not just in this close community.

Chris Maher: 25:17

And, truth be told, there's not enough private capital in the VC space specifically for disability. There's a handful of us, we all know each other, you guys all know us which we're trying to change. Exactly. So, Diego, your organization is technically a nonprofit, but I know you run it like a for-profit. But you've also raised a significant amount of capital over the years to support your mission and your business, and it's been through different channels, and so can you speak to that.

Diego Mariscal: 25:45

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's been a road for sure. I think people see us now and I think they see a lot of success and, yes, we are very successful. It's been a 10-year journey, right, 10-year overnight success. I think it's still up. You can find it, I think, on Facebook. But when we first closed our first round, it was a crowdfunding campaign and what I did was I would use Uber Pools and I would go to nowhere. I would just pick random places in the city and because Uber Pool, you used to pick up people along the way, so I would pick up strangers and pitch them while we were driving.

Diego Mariscal: 26:37

And so, uh, that's how we raised our first seven thousand dollars, and you can see my face on that video like crying because I was so excited.

Tomer Aharoni: 26:52

You were probably the first Uber pool rider to actually want more people to come ride with them.

Diego Mariscal: 26:56

And I also used a lot of SSI, SSD to supplement, so finding creative ways to fundraise.

Diego Mariscal: 27:06

But I think what's unique about our story, and I encourage all the founders that we work with to do this, is people think it's a chicken and the egg. You either need to have a product to raise money or a service, or you need the money to develop whatever you're doing. I actually think it's in parallel, right. One of the things that we have been very successful at, and, in fact, we're right now raising about a $40 million round and we have 20 of that already committed, which is so exciting. But our success has come from always doing both. So we've always run programs, even tough that $7,000 was to support, like five entrepreneurs who were also doing crowdfunding campaigns right, and so being able to show to those people hey, this is what we did with the funding, right, and that led to Meetup, and then that led to Google seeing our work and led to more funding, and that has A lot of which is coming from corporates and large financial institutions.

Chris Maher: 28:14

Exactly, they want to support the mission. Exactly.

Diego Mariscal: 28:17

But the secret to our success has always been it's never been oh, we need money to do this program. It's we're doing this program, it's having impact, continue to fund it and continue to scale it. And I think that's, frankly the reason why we've been so successful because we have results, constant results, to show for. So that's what I would encourage people to think about.

Michael Bervell: 28:42

And I'll just add to that too. I often hear too much capital chasing, not enough good ideas, and once you have the results, the capital comes.

Chris Maher: 28:50

So we're getting close to our time. So before we wrap up with some final thoughts, there's one last question that came up when we were prepping, and you're each going to get like maybe 60 to 90 seconds, so you've got to keep it super concise. While we were prepping, all of you talked about how important in the early stages of your business and even today, as you're starting now to scale and grow more rapidly, how important finding mentors and advisors were, and also how valuable it was to participate in accelerator programs in those early stages as you were building your business. And so, Diego, let's start with you and we'll come this way. You run an accelerator, and so talk a little bit about that in terms of what you're doing with those companies, and then we'll kind of come down the line here.

Diego Mariscal: 29:36

Yeah, so I mean part of the reason why 2Gether I think is is is so successful is because there wasn't an accelerator for founders with disabilities, right, and so I I'm creating something I wish I had when I was, when I was starting. So that's on the accelerator part. And then on the mentoring side, I actually have kind of an unconventional thought on this. Which is one of my biggest mentors early on was Judith Heumann, who I think about every day. But we had a really interesting relationship in that she saw me as a mentor as much as I saw her. Meaning that she would learn from me about technology and like how to use your phone, how to use FaceTime. And I would learn obviously about all her knowledge, so approaching relationships from a symbiotic standpoint you as a young person, as an entrepreneur, have as much to offer this mentor as they have to you, and thinking about it that way, I think, allows you to build more genuine connections.

Chris Maher: 30:47

That's a great point, and I'm going to actually jump over Michael and come to Tomer, because you actually talked about your experience with people mentoring and advising you has now turned you into giving back as a mentor and advisor, so can you speak to that?

Tomer Aharoni: 30:56

100%. Yeah. So when we started the company, well, we didn't start it as a company. We had no intention to start a company. One of the things that happened relatively quickly is that Comcast reached out and they said they wanted to invest and invite us to work as part of their accelerator in combination with Techstars.

Tomer Aharoni: 31:12

Now, those who are not familiar with Techstars, I think it's the second largest accelerator in the US by market cap, after Y Combinator, and their saying is constantly give first. It's highly based on mentors. They have this two-week period when you just start, they call it mentor madness, where you have 80 meetings in two weeks and they basically suit you up with the best mentors that can help you. And through those two weeks we unlocked so much, we learned so much. We really accelerated the business in two weeks like we could have done in two years without those people which made us do exactly the same thing. The first thing I did after leaving Techstars is coming back to Techstars as a mentor. So I came back, the next cohort and the next one, and I've been working with founders since then to help them with my learnings, because the pains that we're feeling now, someone felt them a year ago and the pains that someone is feeling now. We felt them a year ago, so definitely make a difference.

Chris Maher: 32:04

It's a difficult journey. It is. That's great, that's awesome, Michael, tell us about your story. You've got 70 seconds.

Michael Bervell: 32:14

I have a fun story and it involves you, Chris.

Chris Maher: 32:14

Then

Michael Bervell: 32:21

started fundraising, I didn't know really much about the disability space and you were someone who was willing to open up your network, to even describe and be on the call with us for like an hour and introduce us to other investors.

Michael Bervell: 32:32

And it starts small. And I think what we do with mentorship and I still do this all the time, even today, is I oftentimes will look where do I want to be in three months, six months, 12 months, two years, three years, and I have mentors who are in that position today, who are where I want to be eventually. Like I know, we're going to raise an A in 12 to 18 months. So now I'm currently and constantly talking to founders who have raised their A within the last month or two months. Right, just understanding what the process is and what I can learn. So there is a sense of immediacy to mentorship and a sense of strategy to it, but that's one of the biggest things and so you know I'm trying to be like you at some point in my life. So thank you for being a mentor.

Chris Maher: 33:09

Thank you. I'll give you that 20 bucks later. Thank you. No, it's a great example. All right. So, as we wrap up here, and thank you again for the discussion today, we could go on for a very long time, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're all very bullish on the future of disability inclusion and accessibility and the direction that it is headed and is going. And so, as we leave our audience, can each of you share one final thought on why you're feeling so optimistic about the future? And we'll start all the way down at the end with you, Diego.

Diego Mariscal: 33:47

Why am I feeling so optimistic about the future? I mean, because we have to be, right. Like is there another, is there another? People say that I'm an eternal optimist, but I'm like well, is there another way to be? I mean, I think everything that's happening right now with the world is an opportunity to innovate. It's an opportunity to reframe disability as a competitive advantage. Right, we've long talked about disability from the civil rights perspective, from this equal access, and that obviously has a time and a place and it's critical information. But often the conversation around innovation is missing, and I think this moment in time is particularly important and there is an opportunity to highlight the innovation and the opportunity that comes with the disability market.

Chris Maher: 34:46

Agreed, well said. Michael.

Michael Bervell: 34:48

I mean, Diego said it all. I think the one thing that I'm really excited about is just technology. Like the fact that artificial intelligence allows you to do more with less data sets. I think is going to be a massive unlock for people who are typically not seen in those data sets. So I'll leave it there. I guess ping me on LinkedIn if you want to hear more.

Chris Maher: 35:08

Thank you.

Tomer Aharoni: 35:09

Yeah, I'm doubling down on that. The tech is out there. Today you can literally describe what you want and AI will build it for you, and it's just the best time ever to build and to build for more people and represent more people, and I'm really excited.

Chris Maher: 35:26

Yeah, agreed, and they way that I would sum it up, and all of you touched on it. I don't think there's ever been a moment in history where we have an opportunity, if we work together, to create a world for all of us instead of some of us, and so that's super exciting. Gentlemen, thank you for your time today. Everybody, thank you for watching. We hope you enjoy the rest of the summit and we'll see you soon.

Kelvin Crosby: 35:52

That wraps up Investing in Accessibility. As I always say, go live beyond your challenges and we'll see you in two weeks.

Kelvin Crosby: 36:05

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 us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email chris at chris@samaritanpartners. com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www. samaritanpartners. com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know, so we can spread the word, so that we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.