TheBlindGuide acquires UPenn startup ThirdEye, bringing computer vision
to the visually impaired
John Mannes
There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere of a college hackathon. Amidst
the free t-shirts and apps to help you find parties on campus always lie
a few hidden gems for those with the patience to hunt. ThirdEye, one of
those gems forged out of PennApps, UPenn’s hackathon, is being acquired
today by TheBlindGuide for an undisclosed sum. Started by three current
Penn students, ThirdEye brings object recognition to mobile to help the
visually impaired.
Originally created as an add-on for the now obsolete Google Glass,
the ThirdEye of today exists as a mobile app. It uses Google’s Cloud
Vision API to identify objects and read their descriptions aurally.
Users can also snap photos of text and have it converted to speech.
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Team members Rajat Bhageria, Ben Sandler, Daniel Hanover and Nandeet
Mehta, spent a lot of their time leveraging their student status to
build out relationships with organizations supporting the visually
impaired. A lot of these partners ended up becoming distribution
channels for getting their service to market.
They spent a lot of time hashing out a business plan, ultimately
settling on a fremium model in the U.S. of $8 per month after a period
and a free model internationally. At the time of the sale, ThirdEye only
had about 500 monthly active users. But Bhageria says that, though the
acquisition is small, he is proud that development will continue on the
project.
After the fall of glass, the group mulled over the idea of building
its own hardware. In contrast to the stereotypical hot-shot college
dropouts, everyone on the ThirdEye team wanted to graduate. This meant
that there was only so much time to go around when it came to learning
the medical device regulatory and insurance landscape.
TheBlindGuide is an e-commerce retailer serving the blind and visually
impaired communities. The ThirdEye team will not be joining the company.
Instead, TheBlindGuide will hire visually impaired and disabled
programmers — building tools for the impaired by the impaired.
Like any self-respecting founder fresh off an exit still contemplating
next steps, Bhageria is piecing together his own venture fund to keep
active. In the spirit of the decentralized Contrary Capital, his new
project, Prototype Capital, supported by high-net-worth individuals.
Bhageria wants to give mainstays like Dorm Room Fund and Rough Draft
Ventures a run for their money on the college startup seed-financing
circuit. The idea is that investors across a large number of campuses
would get access to more deal flow and be able to offer perks like legal
help and office space to entice entrepreneurs.
--
David Goldfield,
Assistive Technology Specialist
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