Episode 9
Maximizing Human Potential Through Disability Innovation
Brittany Palmer, co-founder and managing partner of Adaptation Ventures, discusses investing in early-stage companies developing disability, neurodivergent, caregiving, and diagnostic technologies. Born with a bilateral below-elbow limb difference, Brittany shares how her background in environmental law, her experience founding an accessible virtual travel company, and her caregiving journey with her husband Rich Palmer led her into venture capital. She closes by explaining why the disability market is far from niche and how the "curb cut effect" helps investors recognize that innovations designed for disability often benefit everyone.
Transcript
Well, hello. I'm Joe Walensky, and we're here for another episode of the Digital
Speaker:Accessibility Podcast, the people behind the progress, and
Speaker:today I am speaking with Brittany Palmer.
Speaker:Hello, Brittany. How are you doing today?
Speaker:Hi, Joe. I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Speaker:All right. It's another fairly warm day in the Bellingham
Speaker:area, north of Seattle. Where are you talking to me from?
Speaker:I am in Connecticut right now, so luckily we have some really great weather today.
Speaker:Well, it's good to have you as part of the program.
Speaker:And our usual best place to start is if you could tell us a little bit about
Speaker:the work that you're involved in now.
Speaker:Yeah, of course. And thank you for having me on here.
Speaker:I really appreciate it. Super excited to talk about what I'm currently involved in.
Speaker:So right now I am a managing partner and co-founder of
Speaker:Adaptation Ventures that I run with my life and work partner, Rich
Speaker:Palmer. And Adaptation Ventures is a pre-seed
Speaker:venture capital firm that focuses on maximizing
Speaker:human potential, human independence, and dignity through
Speaker:early-stage investments in disability, neurodivergent,
Speaker:caregiving, and diagnostic technology.
Speaker:So it's a little bit of a mouthful there, but we are sector and industry agnostic.
Speaker:So our goal is to look across the
Speaker:early-stage innovation ecosystem and find companies and invest in them
Speaker:that are serving any part of the disability market or working
Speaker:on disability prevention.
Speaker:Well, it sounds like you will run into a lot of
Speaker:different organizations across the spectrum.
Speaker:But are you able to just provide some examples of the types of
Speaker:things that the companies that you invest in will typically
Speaker:be involved in? Yeah. So we actually see a fair amount of both
Speaker:software and hardware companies and a lot of AI companies, which
Speaker:I think sometimes when people think about disability and neurodivergent technology
Speaker:and caregiving technology, they're not necessarily thinking about the latest
Speaker:technologies being used. But there's a lot of AI being used in this space,
Speaker:even in hardware too. And so we see everything from
Speaker:robotics that are helping people to stand up and be more
Speaker:independent in their home, to haptic technology that are helping
Speaker:people who are blind be able to interact
Speaker:better in social situations and view nonverbal cues,
Speaker:to technology that is helping
Speaker:kids who are neurodivergent learn better in schools.
Speaker:So prosthetics that are sort of
Speaker:like the top of the line, just incredible innovations and
Speaker:strides in this space, as well as financial technology.
Speaker:So again, broad spectrum of companies that we're seeing all at the early
Speaker:stages but doing really amazing things and ones that are scalable
Speaker:too. I think there's this notion in the venture capital world that
Speaker:the disability market is niche, that there is no money to be
Speaker:made, that they have no money to spend, and it couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker:So a lot of these companies are really taking advantage of massive
Speaker:opportunities in this space and at the same time providing
Speaker:incredible impact. And so how did you find your way
Speaker:into what you're involved with now?
Speaker:What's your background and what led you in this direction?
Speaker:Yeah. So my allergies are killing me today, so you'll have to excuse me, but
Speaker:I am. It's okay. Take a break whenever you need to.
Speaker:It's fine. Okay. So
Speaker:I was born with a disability,
Speaker:so I have a bilateral below-elbow limb difference.
Speaker:So I've been adapting to the world my entire life.
Speaker:But growing up, I just wanted to be viewed as someone that
Speaker:didn't have a disability and was totally normal, nothing different about me from
Speaker:any other kid out there.
Speaker:I played sports and did lots of things that kids normally do,
Speaker:just in a little bit of different ways.
Speaker:And I started my career actually doing environmental and health and safety
Speaker:law. So I went to Rensselaer Polytech for undergrad
Speaker:and then went to Pace Law for
Speaker:my law degree. And I just have such a passion for
Speaker:travel and the environment and
Speaker:health and safety, but more on a global scale.
Speaker:So that's how I started my career doing
Speaker:international environmental health and safety law.
Speaker:I was a partner at a consulting firm in Boston.
Speaker:And then after Rich started and sold his company, and I thought,
Speaker:"There's no way I'll ever do that,"I decided to start my own
Speaker:company. And this was really the first time that I
Speaker:took what my background was and my love for travel and
Speaker:my experience in disability, and I decided to start a company around that.
Speaker:So it was called Beyonder, doing live and interactive virtual tours
Speaker:for people with limited mobility and other conditions that prevented or inhibited
Speaker:travel. And we ended up serving not only people with disabilities, but
Speaker:also schools and corporate companies for their employees,
Speaker:lots of senior organizations, nonprofit organizations.
Speaker:I wanted people to be able to experience things that they might not be able to see
Speaker:in person. And that was a venture-backed company.
Speaker:But during that period, I heard a lot of
Speaker:investors say,"Disability is niche, and there's not a lot of money,"again.
Speaker:And Rich and I,
Speaker:we saw the gap in this space as we talked to more founders who were going through
Speaker:the same thing. They just needed that first capital in.
Speaker:They needed that high-conviction investor to help them.
Speaker:And so after doing our own investments for
Speaker:six, seven years, we decided to start Adaptation Ventures.
Speaker:And so that's how we got to this point.
Speaker:Rich also, he in his late 20s had a brain aneurysm rupture.
Speaker:And really,
Speaker:he learned how to read and write and walk and talk all over again.
Speaker:And I got a significant dose of understanding what
Speaker:the caregiving life was like in addition to also working a full-time job.
Speaker:And so we just really wanted to work together to bring this to
Speaker:more people and to support these entrepreneurs in ways that were sort of lacking in
Speaker:the early stages of my company.
Speaker:Oh, well, thanks for sharing your personal story of challenges with
Speaker:you and Rich. You mentioned at one point about
Speaker:limited mobility related to travel that you were interested in.
Speaker:Could you tell me just a little bit more about that?
Speaker:It's something I'd like to learn more about.
Speaker:Sure. So right now,
Speaker:well, I would say not necessarily right now, but there's still a lot of focus around
Speaker:wheelchair users as being the only ones that people think about when you think about
Speaker:accessible travel. And there are a lot of wheelchair users, and it's incredibly
Speaker:important for them to have accessibility when they travel,
Speaker:for sure, no doubt about that.
Speaker:But there are so many other people that may have
Speaker:sensory disorders or
Speaker:constraints where they can't be in places where there's a lot of noise or
Speaker:there's flashing lights. There are people who are not
Speaker:in wheelchairs but might not be able to walk as far
Speaker:and/or up a lot of steps to see places.
Speaker:And when you think about people with
Speaker:autoimmune diseases that might not be able to take
Speaker:the medications needed to keep them safe when they travel to certain places,
Speaker:people undergoing cancer treatments or
Speaker:needing dialysis and not being able to travel because they can't get that
Speaker:where they're going, there's all kinds of things that we consider
Speaker:limited mobility that when people think about that,
Speaker:that might not be the first thing that comes to mind.
Speaker:But when I was doing my research, I just came across all of these different
Speaker:groups of people. So not just on the physical sense, but people with
Speaker:agoraphobia, high anxiety, people who
Speaker:are on parole and can't leave the state.
Speaker:So there's so many different groups of people that when we say limited mobility,
Speaker:we're talking in big terms.
Speaker:And so from my experience doing the consulting and then from
Speaker:doing a lot of travel with Rich, I just thought a lot of times,
Speaker:I really want people to be able to experience this if they want to and bring that to
Speaker:people that might not be able to make it to these places.
Speaker:And so that's where I came up with the concept.
Speaker:So it was local guides that could kind of give you that
Speaker:rundown of in real-time tours of different places,
Speaker:getting to ask a local guide questions about things that you see.
Speaker:And some of it was through slides and storytelling and other things
Speaker:were actually walking down the streets of Venice or Lima.
Speaker:I think one of the tours,
Speaker:the attendees, the travelers, as we call them,
Speaker:they saw a car accident right in front of them.
Speaker:And so it was real life, and people really felt like they were
Speaker:getting a little bit of an immersive experience with
Speaker:the tours that they were able to do.
Speaker:Yeah. Well, thanks for giving me all those examples.
Speaker:That definitely helped me build a bigger picture of the challenge that
Speaker:you were confronting. And as we look forward, are there any
Speaker:new activities that you're particularly excited about or
Speaker:things that are coming in the short-term or farther term that you'd like to
Speaker:tell us about? So we're going to be looking at
Speaker:traveling in a couple of months.
Speaker:It's a little further out to CES where there's a lot of accessibility,
Speaker:a lot of accessibility work, and potentially the
Speaker:finance and investment conferences that are happening in the Middle East
Speaker:this fall. And the reason why we're particularly excited about
Speaker:those is because when we talk about
Speaker:disability tech and accessible tech,
Speaker:a lot of times we talk to the same people that are in
Speaker:our circles in the disability space. And what Rich and I are really trying to do
Speaker:is expand that message.
Speaker:So we want to be in rooms where people would not expect us to be in, where people
Speaker:wouldn't think that disability or accessible tech or neurodivergent tech
Speaker:has a place or applies to really expand people's understanding of this space.
Speaker:And one thing that we have found that really does that is talking about the
Speaker:curb cut effect. And most people have never heard of it.
Speaker:And so they typically have their mind blown when we ask them,
Speaker:"Have you used an electric toothbrush?
Speaker:Have you used speech-to-text?
Speaker:Have you listened to an audiobook recently?
Speaker:Have you rolled your suitcase up a curb cut on the sidewalk?"And
Speaker:the answer to those questions are almost inevitably yes for every single person
Speaker:we speak to. And when they find out that a lot of these things, all of those things,
Speaker:really, were created for people with disabilities first, but because they had
Speaker:the most difficult use case, they actually were expanded to being able
Speaker:to be beneficial to the wider public.
Speaker:And I think the more people realize that and understand that,
Speaker:the better they will understand this space and be open to its expansion and
Speaker:supporting it. And so we know that lots of people have gone and said,"Oh,
Speaker:I have to talk about this to the next person I see,"or family members
Speaker:and things like that. And so, yeah, we're really excited to be
Speaker:spreading that message in the next couple of months and seeing all the new
Speaker:technology and companies that are going to be at the CES conference in January.
Speaker:Well, thanks so much for sharing your story and talking about what your organization
Speaker:is looking to do in the future.
Speaker:I definitely learned some things from that.
Speaker:So best of luck with everything that you're doing.
Speaker:And thanks again for taking part in this.
Speaker:Thank you, Joe. I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker:All right. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.
Speaker:Bye.
