22 Aug DotCom Therapy gets shot at Silicon Valley VCs after pitch contest
By Jeff Buchanan, Xconomy
DotCom Therapy, a Madison, WI-based startup that has developed software allowing the dozens of therapists it employs to provide remote speech therapy services to schoolchildren, captured first place in one of Wisconsin’s more closely watched pitch competitions on Monday.
The contest DotCom Therapy won was the fourth annual “Pressure Chamber,” which is put on by the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce. The event is one of more than 40 being held as part of Forward Festival, a yearly entrepreneurship-focused conference in Wisconsin’s capital city.
By virtue of its win, DotCom Therapy gets a spot on an all-expenses paid trip to San Francisco in October to meet with Silicon Valley venture investment firms.
More than 8 percent of young children in the U.S. experience “speech sound” disorders, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
Currently, there are not enough speech language pathologists to meet the needs of the estimated 25 million kids who require speech therapy, says DotCom Therapy co-founder Emily Purdom. One way of addressing this shortage is by having more therapy sessions take place online, rather than in person, she says.
DotCom Therapy mainly licenses its software to local school districts in the U.S., which are required by federal law to provide speech therapy services to their students, Purdom says. Two years ago, she and Rachel Robinson co-founded DotCom Thearpy. The startup was initially based in Springfield, MO, but later moved to Wisconsin. Read more …