18 months ago we started TrayVerify with $700k of founder capital. Now live nati
By Robertdwray · September 16, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
18 months ago we started TrayVerify with $700k of founder capital. Now live nationwide, with deals in flight that get us to 30% of our US market. A few years ago this would have cost 10–20x.
On March 31, 2022 I walked out of my third company and into my home lab with one question: was AI in healthcare real yet? It wasn't. In 2022 the best models couldn't even do basic math.
Today our device intercepts the mistakes that hurt people. Yogurt headed to a patient with a dairy allergy. Whole chicken headed to a patient who can't safely swallow.
Medical institutions serve 30 billion patient meals a year. At our first site, 21.7% of 16,244 trays were flagged with a critical error before they left the kitchen. Not annoyances. Safety threats.
If you live deep in a problem nobody outside your industry understands, this is your window. The capital and headcount that used to be prerequisites aren't anymore.
If I was starting again today I'd go even faster. More mistakes. More focus. Fewer distractions. Celebrate the failures — that's how we learn.
A new tool used to carry you for ten years. Now a tool or a skill lasts ten months. We can build 10x faster, but only if we learn, fail and re-learn at 10x the speed.
This Thursday at Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures, with the University of Maryland, I'm sharing the stage with Kat Erickson, Greg Cangelosi and Chris White. We'll get into failures, speed, financing, and the strangest part of all of this: the psychology of running a team of agents that never sleeps. Thursday, Sept 17 · 4pm · 1812 Ashland Ave, Baltimore
I saw this coming early because friends saw it earlier. Thank you Myke N., Ryan McClelland, Kyle Fritz John Werner and Ramy Nassar.
One question: Where should we go deepest on Thursday — failures, speed, financing, or the psychology of managing agents that never sleep? Wherever the conversation goes, I'll write it up here for everyone who can't make it.