SXSW Startups: MySideKick
The Forrest Four-Cast: February 25, 2019
Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. Winners in 10 categories will be announced at the Pitch Award Ceremony at 6:30 pm Sunday, March 10, at the Hilton Austin.
A finalist in the Social and Culture category, which will pitch at 11 am Saturday, March 9, MySideKick is a complete web-based application that addresses all the issues of sexual violence, with a mobile interface to help better engage college students. They discovered four reasons why sexual violence is not properly being addressed on college campuses and created seven powerful components to address and remedy these issues.
Founder and CEO Erin Rose answered some questions about her company’s work.
The name of your company, Every Two Minutes, reflects that every two minutes in the United States, a person is sexually assaulted. Tell us more about what drove the inception of your company.
My father created a self-defense program for women in the early 1980’s, so I grew up very aware of violence against women and that the responsibility of staying out of harm’s way was completely put on women. Around 2012, I knew that sexual violence on college campuses was at public health epidemic levels. Also, far too many lives of my former classmates, friends, and family members have been disrupted, and their educations and careers interrupted, due to sexual violence. I wanted to do something about this. My focus has always been to get to the root of the problem, which is to change the culture that allows for and even encourages sexual violence, while in turn, silencing victims.
I started talking to people: key individuals at universities, leading trauma experts and researchers, law enforcement, students, Greek life, and sexual violence survivors. In 2016, I told my now husband that all I wanted as a wedding gift was to quit my job and work on Every Two Minutes. So, in October of 2016, I resigned from my job at an ad agency and have been working on Every Two Minutes full time ever since.
MySideKick is geared for universities — how does your program work?
Our goal when creating MySideKick was to account for every single kind of user in a campus community — from college students in and out of Greek life, from freshman to seniors to graduate students, to living in the dorm to living off campus, to campus police to faculty and staff. We tried to account for every single possible scenario and possibility you might have, so that the program is comprehensive and complete.
With the help of students at Duke University, we created an in-person, peer-led prevention training program that has been rolled out with students in Greek life at Duke over the past three years called Starting the Conversation. This is a 1.5-hour interactive and engaging conversation. We also developed a Sober Brothers Bystander Training. These programs have been tested with Greek life at Duke, but easily can be used by the general student population.
Can you explain more about what you’ve learned?
Based on our research, we discovered four reasons why sexual violence is not properly being addressed on college campuses: lack of student engagement and effective education; lack of tools to be effective and active bystanders; lack of behavior modification and under-reporting of assaults. Some 90 percent of assaults go unreported.
Our app has several components for users to address these issues. Users can create and save private friend groups, visually locating everyone on a map. They can find friends in a crowded space by turning their phone to the side and letting the Augmented Reality find friends. They can set up automatic notifications when friends arrive to their destinations at the end of the night. They can anonymously report and receive alerts on a map in real-time and receive peer-to-peer sexual assault prevention education and trauma-Informed crisis information.
Since the #MeToo movement, do you think the statistic of 90 percent of assaults going unreported will change in the generations to come?
Yes I do. What increased reporting really means is that survivors feel comfortable disclosing assaults. Research shows reporting and seeking help increases when a survivor has quick access to the right information and confidential resources for reporting and advocacy. I am already seeing those changes happening on college campus.
But even beyond the increased reporting, I see a future where sexual violence is not treated as something that “just happens” nor the inability to stop or control it. Sexual violence is completely preventable and I believe that together, someday, we can eradicate sexual violence from the college experience.
Last year, France was the first country to pass a law that imposes a fine for catcalling. What do you think about this?
Simply put: About damn time. Do I believe it would work in the U.S.? Absolutely, if enforced correctly. Street harassment is cut from the same cloth as sexual violence: to exert dominance and power over another individual. Street harassment has real, physical and psychological effects on people.
My own experience with street harassment is what inspired part of the mapping feature on MySideKick called Safety Pin. For about a year and a half, I worked in downtown Detroit and it was a 10-minute walk to and from my office. I was harassed daily, no matter what route I took. I used to think, “If only there was a social app that would warn me as I got close to these situations in real time so I could avoid them and also give me the ability to pin these incidents to warn others, so others could avoid this and not have to experience what I did.” And that is essentially what Safety Pin does.
Every Two Minutes is currently based in Ann Arbor, Mich. Tell us about the startup ecosystem there.
I am based in Ann Arbor because I am an Ann Arbor Spark business. My friend Christina York, who is the founder of the technology start up Spellbound, made the introduction and I am forever grateful. I would not be where I am today with my business if it wasn’t for their mentorship, classes, grants, introductions and opportunities they have provided to a woman founded technology start-up like mine. Ann Arbor as a whole is a very forward thinking, supportive, entrepreneur-friendly community for startups and tech companies.
I also received help from my alma mater Michigan State University through Spartan Innovations and participated in the Conqueror Accelerator.
What’s one piece of advice you wish you’d had that you’d give to others wanting to join the startup journey?
The startup journey is a lot like dating. Anyone you surround yourself with, whether advisors or mentors, biz partners, potential hires, programmers, business incubator, anyone you give equity to, etc. — treat it like the dating process. Don’t be in a rush. Get to know them and work with them over a period of time before fully committing. For example, I just brought on a CTO. I gave a structured time frame of six months to revisit the conversation to see if we still want to work together and our legal agreement is structured as such. Everything is very transparent and up front (like how dating SHOULD be).
Look for more interviews with other SXSW Pitch finalists in this space between now and March.
Click here to see all 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2019, along with the links to their interviews on Medium.
Also, if you are an entrepreneur, check out all the cool panels and presentations in the Entrepreneurship and Startups Track, which runs March 8–12 at SXSW.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
