(uplifting music)
- Everyone thinks of Flint, Michigan
when they think about water problems in the United States,
but an estimated 100 million Americans
are drinking water with lead in it,
so it's a problem that is massive
and scales far beyond Flint.
- You drink water every day.
It's a very important part of life.
And making sure that that water is actually clean
and that people are drinking safe water is very important.
(uplifting music)
- I am Shannon Evanchec, co-founder of TruePani.
TruePani started in the summer of 2015 when Sam
my co-founder and I were on a research trip in India.
And we observed this problem between the quality
of water that people were accessing,
and the quality of water that they were drinking.
- I'm Samantha Becker and I'm co-founder of TruePani.
You have water coming from a treatment plant
that's very clean, and then it's becoming contaminated
on its journey from the treatment plant to the home.
- Water changes from the source
and from when people drink it.
And that problem happens in India,
and that problem happens here in the United States.
When people adopt a new technology,
that requires a behavior change.
And although we had designed this
to minimize the behavior change,
we realized that a consistent presence
is really necessary to have people
adopt a new technology.
- When an entrepreneur comes up with an idea,
it's usually through personal experience
or first-hand experience.
And so we actually instill this mindset in them
that they have to engage with customers,
really try to understand the problem
from the customers' standpoint,
and that almost always is gonna require
some change in their business idea.
- I would say that our core mission
has still stayed the same.
We're still trying to keep safe water safe,
it's just a matter of how we're going about doing that.
It's a do-it-yourself at-home testing kit.
So you would receive it in the mail,
it would come, and there would be, they're test strips,
so you're getting immediate results.
You dip it into a sample of water,
and it will tell you whether the contaminant
that you're testing for is safe or not.
Then you can go and plug in your results online
and we will track everything for you and tell you
if there's a problem, what you can do about it.
- So we really want to simplify it
and do all of the hard work for people,
so all they have to do is dip a strip in their water.
We want to monitor that data for them
and provide metrics over time.
As we continue this, Georgia Tech has played a role
in every single phase and aspect of the company.
We had the privilege to participate in the Create-X program
through Georgia Tech, which is a three month program
that equips startup co-founders with their first round
of capital and a little bit of a crash course
in what it takes to run a startup.
- [Samantha] Georgia Tech has such an awesome
entrepreneurial community, where you're meeting so many
people that are working in Tech Square,
and all these different incubators and accelerators.
You really get a good idea for the depth
of how Georgia Tech is invested in that community.
- And since then, we've been connected with
a Georgia Tech alum, Jeff Lane, who has mentored us
as well as invested in the company.
- When you graduate from Georgia Tech, you have resilience.
And combine that with the entrepreneurial community
at Georgia Tech, I think it really meshes well together.
- Long-term, I would like to see us being the company
that monitors water quality for large corporations.
- [Samantha] When we were deciding
to change focus or to just quit,
we realized that we have such a good understanding
of what it takes to start a company.
We felt like we could really make a difference
and we could really do it.
(uplifting music)