MySideKick

Women, LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable populations are unsafe. 1.4 billion women and girls globally experience physical and sexual violence in their lifetime. 8 is the average age a girl first experiences street harassment. 94% of Millennial and Gen Z women and 85% of men rely on their devices for personal safety. 3 million US students alone are sexually assaulted annually. Across the globe women, girls and LGBTQ+ persons leave academic programs at alarming rates due to violence and harassment, leading to long-term inequalities.  In STEM fields in particular, 45% of women are more likely to leave than men due to gender-based violence, and the number goes up to 62% for black women in engineering. MySideKick provides a suite of safety tools to make people safer with collaboration and AI features that help users detect and respond to unsafe situations.

MySideKick is a mobile app that provides a unique, comprehensive suite of collaborative safety tools — including fully automated detection of dangerous situations and hands-off alerting, and forensics — specifically designed to address the safety concerns of women and vulnerable persons on both college campuses and in urban areas. Specific features include:

• Safety Pin: A collaborative mapping application — think "Waze for Safety" — that addresses the problem of safe routing (do you want the "shortest" route of the "safest route"!?)
  

• Roll Call: Cross-platform group management and alerting to make sure you and your friends get home safely.

• SafeStrut: Safe routing when it’s dark out.

• S.O.S. 2.0: Automated detection of unsafe situations and medical emergencies related to violence

• SoberSentry: A tool that addresses dangers associated with date rape drugs and being drunk.

• VenueVibes: Features that address safety at venues.

• PartyGuard: Campus-specific features that address problem of safety at Greek Life events

• Spiked: Tools to provide emergency information specific to campus life and related safety issues and problems.

Initially our target populations are women, LGBTQ+ and vulnerable persons on college campuses, groups that experience dramatic levels of violence and concerns about their safety. These groups feel unsafe ALL THE TIME and it affects every aspect of their lives. One simple example: 92% of women runners report feeling concerned about their safety. Similar statics exist for going to the gym, walking home at night, etc., and not just for women, but for LGBTQ+ and other. 14 women report ride-share sexual assaults in the US daily. Eliminating harassment and violent incidents has been proven to reduce the likelihood that someone will develop a substance abuse problem or die by suicide. 40% of STEM women quit within 5 to 7 years after launching their careers, compared to a 23% attrition rate of men, a difference attributed to harassment and sexual violence. We will expand to urban environments and other youth verticals (e.g. our App is going to be the Safety APp used by the US athletes "Team USA" in the Olympics this summer in Paris, France.)

Peter Dolch has decades of experience successfully developing and deplying B2C and B2B applications at scale and cares passionately about this mission. He has had too many numerous friends, colleagues, girlfriends and family — women, LGBTQ+, and others — that have experienced serious harassment and sexual violence. He has ridden in police cars to help find perpetrators, talked to emergency room doctors, helped teach women's self-defense classes, and hopes to make the world safer for his children.

Erin Rose's passion for combating violence motivated by bias runs in the family. Her father has a black belt in jiu-jitsu and created a self-defense program for women based on the martial arts. His instructional videos were nationally distributed and thousands of women attended his seminars. She is acutely aware that the overwhelming responsibility to stay safe falls upon the shoulders of potential victims, that no one is tackling cultural change or getting to the real root of the problem, and that self-defense is not the way to stop gender-based violence. Erin founded Every Two Minutes because she knows we can leverage next-generation technology to tackle the rise in violence. 

Every single person on the team knows someone who has felt unsafe on campus, knows someone who has been assaulted on campus, have themselves felt unsafe or been assaulted on campus, has been afraid to walk home alone, and every one of us has numerous friends and family who have had bad outcomes that could have been avoided with the technology we are building. We have children who will soon be going to college, we have friends with children going to college, and our investors and advisors have children who will be going to college, and we all want this for them, and we are all passionate about this solution.

Our app has been tested by hundreds of women across over 100 universities in our target community, and we have detailed feedback and input from those (and other) users. Not only did their feedback help shape our existing product, they are an integral partner in designing the future features we will release. In addition we’ve talked with numerous organizations and student groups that are aligned with our mission (sororities, diversity clubs, campus safety organizations, etc.) and their input and agendas help drive our product roadmap and market rollout.

For our B2C product, we have done a brief test-launch on the University of Michigan Campus in preparation for a multi-campus launch this fall. For our B2B product, we have signed a contract with the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee to be the safety app for Team USA at the summer Olympics in Paris. We are in discussions with the International Olympic Committee, SafeSport (international umbrella organization for safe sporting) and numerous US sporting organizations (e.g. US Lacrosse, US Swimming, etc.)

Peter is very familiar with the MIT Solve program as he’s an MIT alumni and Chair of the MIT Sloan Club NYC. Our knowledge of the value of the program – focus, network, thesis – makes us big believers in its value to us. We believe that Solve's imprimatur and connection to partners, advisors and investors will help us grow faster and better address our mission.

MySideKick provides a comprehensive suite of safety tools that are specifically designed to address the safety concerns of women and vulnerable persons on college campuses and urban areas: at parties, bars, music festivals, on dates, out walking, exercising, and traveling in rideshare/public transit. We enhance safety via prediction, automation, notification, collaboration, information and forensics.

Because the app's features are designed to automatically detect and respond to unsafe situations, this gives users a sense of protection and security. Since it uses AI/ML learning algorithms to identify dangerous situations, users can feel reassured that it's always improving and getting smarter to keep them even safer.

The form factor is a mobile phone, with advanced features if paired with a smartwatch or other wearable device. The automated nature of some of our safety features provides additional security not available in an actively managed environment, and network effects drive massive value  as we scale.

Completeness of product offering is a major differentiator. As a University of Texas Austin student told us: 

“I’m going to pick this over other apps because MySideKick is like 8 apps in 1.”

We are quite different from our competition because of our ability to automatically collect, correlate and analyze data. All of the existing personal safety products primarily focus on users to actively seek help.

Our goal is to increase safety and reduce violence for vulnerable populations everywhere. Real change in outcomes and behaviors can be expected when women and vulnerable persons are safer, from the completion of academic programs, to better academic performance to better jobs and financial security. We also expect better health outcomes (physical and mental) from improved safety and reduced violence, especially sexual violence.

Our impact goals are to create a world where violence and hate no longer steal dreams, futures, fun and freedoms by building connected communities. We align with four UN Sustainable Development goals: Good Health and Well Being, Sustainable Cites, Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities.

Our core technology is a location-aware mobile application with AI.