Today Product Trust Investments contributing up to $1,000 to match donations as part of Solace’s 100 Days of Funding campaign. Solace is a free first-of-its-kind mobile app for the transgender community. It allows users to create a custom roadmap and timeline for their transition, providing verified and credible resources to inform their decisions, and tracking progress towards user’s goals.
Solace was conceived and pitched at HackOut the world’s only LGBTQIA-themed startup weekend, an event created by nonprofit StartOut’s Austin team in its 4th year. In a 5-minute pitch, ending with tears and standing ovation from the crowd, Solace won 1st place.
Since winning HackOut, the small team of five consisting of Robbi Katherine Anthony, Patrick McHugh, Juan Pablo Delgado, Ari Martinez, & Diego Hernandez have secured a fiscal nonprofit sponsor. This means all donations will be tax-deductible while Solace works to establish its own nonprofit 501(c)3 status. Their fiscal nonprofit sponsor, QWELL Community Foundation, a fund of Austin Community Foundation, a 501(c)3 public charity, was also present at HackOut where the two organizations first met.
Taylor McCaslin–founder of Product Trust Investments–volunteers on the programming board of StartOut Austin and was an organizer of the HackOut’s event where he met the founding team and fell in love with their passion and drive. “Our goal is to use technology to augment that phase ‘it gets better’ into ‘how it gets better,’” says Robbi Katherine Anthony, Solace’s Executive Director, herself a transgender woman. “For anyone going through transition, this application will hopefully make the process significantly easier since all of the necessary, accurate information will be centralized in one place. Right now people are resorting to forums full of anecdotal experiences regarding transition, which can contain a lot of inaccurate and inconsistent information,”
Taylor, himself identifying as queer, hopes that this matching donation will help Solace accelerate its funding goal and ensure that Solace makes it onto the App Store and Google Play Store. “We need more technical leaders like Robbi and team who don’t just seek to build profitable companies, but who want to inspire meaningful and impactful change in their communities,” Mr. McCaslin explained. “Product Trust Investments invests angel seed funding in small diverse startup teams building inclusive and responsible technologies to help them get off the ground. Returns from investments will drive donations in the arts and nonprofits for social good.”
You can learn more about Solace and make a tax-deductible donation by visiting http://solace.lgbt