MyFoco Archive

When I present CloudContacts, I generally receive compliments on my presentation style. I begin with a very short story which discusses two things: first, why we spend time networking and second, why and how I came up with the idea for CloudContacts. I almost always find the product/service demos are stronger when they start with some background on the market and where the idea came from rather than jumping right into what the service does. I think the stories create a connection and interest between the audience and the presenter. It’s also important that the presenter’s passion for the idea come through in the presentation.

Last week at the Austin Co-Founders Wanted meetup, there was one startup presentation that stood out to me. This presentation began with background on the market (in this case foster children) and it was easy to see the presenter is very passionate about helping to create real change. Since the presenter’s at this meetup were specifically looking for potential partners in the audience, bringing the passion and getting the audience excited was critical.

The concept presentation was provided by Chadwick Sapenter and the concept is myfoco.org. You can watch Chadwick’s video below – it’s his five-minute pitch on why you should join his team at myfoco. It doesn’t look like the website is live yet (many of the demos at the meetup were in the initial concept stage). The basic idea of MyFoco is to create a social service to aggregate information and resources to help kids when they leave the foster care system.

Chadwick shared some stats about the foster care system:

• 70% of prisoners in the U.S. prison system were former foster kids
• less than 1% will graduate from college
• 80% of death row inmates were former foster youths

Chadwick notes in his demo that there are resources out there for things like housing, education, relationships, jobs but there’s a big divider for the kids to get to the information.

Chadwick is looking for a “group of superheroes” which includes engineers, developers and other talents on the backend. Chadwick says he has the social service groups around the country behind the MyFoco concept.

If you are interested, you can reach Chadwick on Twitter or at chadwick@myfoco.org.
Continue reading “Co-Founders Wanted: MyFoco Provides Portal For Foster Youths (video)” »