Page 32 - Entrepreneur-November 2018

MOST DARING
ENTREPRENEURS

Daniela Perdomo
Cofounder and CEO/ goTenna
Bold move/ Taking on the telecom giants (when they’re at their least useful)
razilian-born Daniela Perdomo was living in Brooklyn in October 2012 when Hurricane Sandy struck,
leaving large swaths of New Yorkers without power and internet service. “Even in this hyperconnected Edward Stack
place, you couldn’t get through to anyone,” she says. “I remember thinking, Our smartphones are CEO/ Dick’s Sporting Goods
amazing, but without a signal they’re just really expensive calculators.” Bold move/ Sacrificing
Rather than gripe about the communication gap during times of crisis, Perdomo decided to do sales for safety
what telecom giants couldn’t: Close it. She cofounded goTenna with her brother, Jorge, and set out
n the wake of the Parkland, Fla.,
to create “the most scalable, completely mobile mesh architecture that’s ever existed.” The resulting
I shooting in February, activists
candy- bar-size piece of plastic, which pairs with a cellphone via Bluetooth, uses radio waves to send
and receive text messages and GPS locations up to four miles without the use of cell towers, wi-fi, pressured major retailers to stop selling
Bor satellites. The first iteration launched in 2015, and in 2017, goTenna introduced a game-chang- assault-style rifles and high-capacity
ing upgrade: goTenna Mesh, which adds on mesh-networking capability. Each goTenna acts as a node in a magazines. Such calls have come and
network. The more nodes in your vicinity, the more your range expands, and the stronger and more reliable gone before, but this time an unex-
your communications become. pected brand agreed. Dick’s Sporting
It’s tempting to liken the handheld device to a long-range walkie-talkie, but it’s decidedly more Goods said it would no longer sell the
sophisticated. With a walkie-talkie, messages are broadcast to the public and interfere with everyone’s items, and would no longer sell firearms
airwaves. But with goTenna, hundreds or thousands of people can send targeted, encrypted communi- to anyone under the age of 21. Hunting
cation at once—without straining the network. More than 100,000 have been sold, and the startup has products make up about 10 percent
raised $16 million–plus in funding to date. of the company’s sales, but CEO
Last September, when Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, volunteers set up public goTennas so res- Edward Stack was willing to take the
idents could call hospitals for medical help, coordinate supply deliveries, and reassure loved ones they hit. “Following all the rules and laws, we
were safe. “It was like I saw everything come full circle,” Perdomo says. “These events feel extraordinary, sold a shotgun to the Parkland shooter
but they’re not—they happen somewhere almost every day. And we should be asking more questions
in November 2017,” he wrote in a letter
about the resilience of our infrastructure.”
explaining the decision. “It was not the
gun, nor type of gun, he used in the
shooting. But it could have been.”

Russell Ladson
Cofounder and CEO/ Drop
Bold move/ Building virtual P H O T O G R A P H B Y G A R Y H E ( P E R D O M O ) ; P H O T O G R A P H B Y L E Y L A I S M E N ( L A D S O N ) ; P H O T O G R A P H B Y G E T T Y I M A G E S / M I K E C O P P O L A ( S TA C K )
reality’s infrastructure
he AR/VR marketplace has
T become crowded by startups
promising to transport users to far-off
experiences. But Russell Ladson is
thinking closer to home. “We asked
ourselves what a browser looks like
in a post-smartphone world, when
we all have augmented and virtual
reality headsets,” says Ladson. His
app, Drop, offers VR and AR users
an immersive way to explore the
internet. (Imagine your browser, but
as a 360-degree environment.) That’s
earned investment from HTC, which
will make Drop a launch partner in
HTC’s new Vive Focus headset.
But Ladson really sees Drop as a
core utility tool for developers. “This
enables an ecosystem for even more
AR and VR experiences,” he says.

58 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / November 2018