Meet Three Startups Thriving with Help from Newark Venture Partners

Newark Venture Partners (NVP) is a leading seed-stage venture firm founded by Don Katz, Audible’s founder, in order to catalyze the innovation economy in Newark. To date, NVP has invested more than $55 million in over 100 companies, nearly 60% of which have female founders or founders of color.

NVP’s support is also unique in that it goes beyond the financial, leveraging Audible’s knowledge base and the skillset of its employees, as well as other limited partners, to provide mentorship and other assistance. Said Vaughn Crowe, Managing Partner of NVP, "One of the reasons we've been successful is that we have incredible partners like Audible, who has been extremely helpful in providing technical and strategic expertise to our portfolio companies. That type of relationship is invaluable to us as a fund, and it has helped us put Newark on the map as a place founders want to be part of."

We caught up with three founders whose companies received support from NVP, to learn more about what they do and how NVP’s support was vital in helping them get off the ground. They represent a wide range of industries—robotics, mental health, and media—that reflect the variety of companies in NVP’s portfolio.

Mobot

Eden Full Goh was first struck with the idea for Mobot while working in product and engineering for a medical device startup, where she spent long hours performing software and firmware tests and updates, over and over, in order to ensure the device would perform perfectly when presented to hospitals. Late one night, thinking about how much testing she still needed to get done, Full Goh had an epiphany: “I could program a robot to do this!”

Full Goh’s wife gave her six months to execute a plan in order to make Mobot a reality. In that time, she taught herself how to code in order to build and program a prototype robot, which she carried back and forth on the train from Newark to Manhattan, demonstrating to potential customers its power to automate rigorous software testing.

After securing a few early customers, she started working with NVP, which became Mobot’s first investor. “The NVP team was critical in the early days of building Mobot, as I learned about all aspects of business, including how to run sales, how to pitch IT departments at large enterprises, and what to include or avoid when creating legal contracts,” says Full Goh. “I also worked with NVP’s industry partners to get crucial market feedback and pitch potential customers early on, which helped hone Mobot’s go-to-market engine.”

Today, Mobot serves more than 60 customers, conducting quality assurance tests on popular apps for mobile and wearable devices that serve hundreds of millions of users. As Mobot grows, “the NVP team has continued to provide incredibly valuable ongoing support and guidance, which we’re very grateful for.”

Handspring Health

Handspring is an affordable mental health provider for young adults and children, co-founded by Sahil Choudhry and Kwasi Kyei. A graduate of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, Choudhry was working for an insurer, investing in startups and doing deep dives on industry problems and solutions, when he noticed that a significant number of mental health claims were coming from people under the age of 26.

Recognizing a pressing need for more mental health providers focused on children and young adults, Choudhry spoke with clinicians, pediatricians, and parents to better understand the problems a business would need to solve in that space. The answers came down to access, affordability, and quality of care. “We are trying to attack all three,” he explains. Handspring offers their services for much less than the going rate, and aims to work with insurers to make this even more affordable for families (they’re currently in-network with United Healthcare in New Jersey, with more to come). The company also invests heavily in the growth and development of its therapists, with in-house training programs that use evidence-backed practices in treating children.

When Choudhry approached NVP, he says they had also identified the need to bring quality mental health care to families who haven’t traditionally had access, and were enthusiastic about helping to bring Handspring to life. In addition to providing funding for Handspring, NVP was able to connect Choudhry to important New Jersey stakeholders like charter schools, universities, hospitals, insurers and real estate brokers, allowing the company to get a real foothold in the industry.

Currently, Handspring offers its virtual sessions in five states, and plans to open physical clinics in 2023. One of the first places they’d build clinics is in Newark, to serve kids and college students. Plus, it’s where Handspring is headquartered. “I’ve seen Newark grow and change, and it’s exciting to see so many businesses moving in,” says Choudhry, of his college stomping grounds. “It’s getting easier to attract talent here.”

Meet Cute

Founder Naomi Shah describes Meet Cute as “a modern entertainment brand with a focus on original, cinematic audio shows, especially for Gen Z and millennial audiences.” Working with thousands of creators, Meet Cute develops, produces, and distributes audio stories that are “rooted in optimism and perspective.” Each month, a new series is released in 15-minute episodes that drop on Tuesdays and Fridays, on every podcast platform. Meet Cute also produces a slew of rom-com-obsessed original content on social media.

Shah hadn’t planned on getting into media and entertainment. She started her career on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs, but “soon craved something more entrepreneurial and creative.” Shah researched and analyzed companies focused on broadening access well-being, “particularly areas of well-being that are traditionally overlooked in venture capital, including movies, podcasts, and concerts.” Shah created Meet Cute to serve those areas and give creators a space to create feel-good, short-form audio content at a rapid pace.

Meet Cute started working with NVP in 2020. In addition to funding, “The NVP team has been abundantly helpful to us in making introductions to notable people in media,” she says. Shah was introduced to various teams at Audible, who lent their expertise in producing and distributing some of the world’s leading audio entertainment. “Their continued support and birds-eye view of the audio storytelling market has helped us at each stage of growth,” says Shah. That’s one of the biggest boons of NVP’s support, the founders all report—that it goes beyond funding and offers connections, mentoring, and advice. “I’ve learned that good investors aren’t just financial investors,” Shah says, “but mentors and champions for the company and founder.”