Announcing Prepared’s $1.8M Seed Raise
By: Michael Chime
Tags: Public Safety, Schools, Hiring, Seed Investment, Startup

The Prepared Team is extremely excited to announce today that we have closed $1.8M in seed funding from M13 Ventures and industry angels.

This is a big milestone for Prepared and will enable us to accelerate our mission — creating a safer and more transparent world.

Dylan, Neal, and I launched Prepared as Yale undergraduates in 2019. At the beginning, we had one goal in mind: to make learning environments safer. Over the next few months, we watched as dozens of schools began signing up to use our platform. This was incredibly exciting, validating the potential in our idea as an incredibly impactful venture.

Our team found that emergency communication is often implemented in very inefficient ways because of dated technology. Schools and other large campuses rely on walkie talkies, PA systems, and other obsolete tools that have been the standard for decades. Our founding team has spent the last 15+ years of our lives in formal education settings. In our experience, there are amazing people in schools working extraordinarily hard to make environments for students as safe as possible. The problem wasn’t a lack of effort, it was a lack of effective technology and tools.

Prepared was formed around one key insight — that our smartphones, laptops, and desktops are the most powerful and adaptable modes of communication ever built. Our vision was to harness their power to keep communities safe. As we see it, the tools that schools need to make significant improvements in safety are already in everyone’s hands — they just need to be activated and used in the right way. So we set out on a mission to make emergency communication faster, more accessible, and more powerful in schools by unlocking the full potential of everyday technology.

Now, almost two years later, we’ve created the infrastructure to take that insight to nearly 150 schools across the USA.

And we don’t plan to stop there. In the future, we hope to further unlock the capabilities of everyday technology and empower everyone during any emergency — large or small. In addition to helping us partner with more schools, our $1.8 million raise will allow us to build a world-class team and expand our core product offering.

We are grateful for and humbled by the support and partnership from all of the incredible people who we consider a part of our community.

From the schools and districts who have believed in us and worked with us from our earliest days to our amazing investors: we couldn’t have done it without you. People like Steve Belli, Naseem Malik, William Dorn, Joe Payne, Lesley Herald, James Murphy, Mark Rosenblatt, Manoj Pankaj, Karl Alomar + the great people at M13 and Dorm Room Fund. We are grateful for all of you and we are proud of what you had to say about us:

Karl Alomar (Former COO of Digital Ocean & Managing Partner at M13) — “It is not often that we get the opportunity to be involved with a business that is truly destined to impact society as we know it so positively! Great founders with great intentions build great companies!”

— “It is not often that we get the opportunity to be involved with a business that is truly destined to impact society as we know it so positively! Great founders with great intentions build great companies!” Sam Hendel (Co-founder of Dataminr) — “I was first introduced to Prepared through the Tsai City mentorship program at Yale. They started with a great idea to address the critical need for better communication around school safety. Most impressively, they have executed their strategy with determination, creativity, and skill at a level far beyond their years. I’m proud of the Prepared team for achieving this important milestone and I look forward to watching this great Yale company continue to thrive.”

— “I was first introduced to Prepared through the Tsai City mentorship program at Yale. They started with a great idea to address the critical need for better communication around school safety. Most impressively, they have executed their strategy with determination, creativity, and skill at a level far beyond their years. I’m proud of the Prepared team for achieving this important milestone and I look forward to watching this great Yale company continue to thrive.” Steve Belli — “Prepared is leading the charge in a safety revolution that is long overdue. It is rare to be a part of something that sits at the intersection of high growth potential and impact. Prepared is that rarity. We are excited to be a part of this journey with them!”

We also want to recognize some of the people who believed in us from the get-go. Sven Riethmuller’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Clinic at the Yale Law School has been an invaluable resource from Prepared’s inception. Their support was critical in helping us close this financing. Kassie Tucker and the amazing folks at Tsai CITY were key in helping us get to this point. Sam Hendel has been incredibly valuable as an advisor to us, especially as young, first-time founders. Finally, we greatly appreciate every school that has believed in us. We hope that we have exceeded your expectations and are excited to continue working with you to make learning environments safer.

To every single person who has helped us get to this point, your support means so much to us. We are so grateful to have all of you on our team and will work hard every day to make the world a safer, more transparent place for everyone

For Media or Press Inquiries please reach out to contact@preparedapp.com.

Since its founding in 2019, Prepared by Invictus Apps, Inc. has been on a mission to create a safer, more transparent world. Founders Dylan Gleicher, Neal Soni, and Michael Chime bring relevant experience from companies like Apple and Intel and met while studying as undergrads at Yale University. For more info on our mission, company, or team check out www.preparedapp.com.