Why our founder, Saul Costa, believes this is the moment to build something different.
Vermont
Plain-text version
I founded Shock in 2023 because I’d noticed something unsettling, but addressable: Technology had never been applied to real-world community issues in meaningful ways. Not because it couldn't be. Because nobody had tried. There were microcosms of effort, but no serious, heavily-funded-startup-level push to revise the trajectory of technology in American communities. I decided to give that a go.
Startups are my life. I sold a tech company out West in my twenties for $40 million and then moved back to Vermont. Bought some land up north. Spent most of my time outside like when I was a kid here. And the more I paid attention to the communities around me, the clearer it became that the energy was there. People were ready to help each other. They wanted to volunteer, to organize, to show up. What they lacked was shared infrastructure for realizing that intent.
So I spent a year examining the problem. Talking to community members. Reading history. Studying economics. And then I started building.
Today, Shock is a team of twenty doers. We’ve released two products: Bee, an activity discovery app that encompasses Vermont’s entire community event ecosystem, and Meadow, a powerful coordination platform for volunteer management. We work with 50 local partners, operate on a $250K monthly budget, and every dollar goes into building, storytelling, and funding local projects. Plus loads of fun hats.
I've committed significant personal capital to Shock because I believe in what we're doing. The technology category we're focused on barely exists. There is no coordinated infrastructure for community participation at scale. Local activities hide on scattered platforms. Volunteer programs run out of spreadsheets. Nothing is integrated. The systems to help communities thrive haven't been prioritized.
Shock is building those systems for deployment across America. Vermont is the proof of concept, launched in 2025. In 2027, we’ll start operating throughout the Northeast. With the right partners, by 2030, our technology will be used nationally to address communities’ critical, often worsening challenges.
There's a version of technology we haven't tried yet. We need to, and now is the time. I’ve funded Shock exclusively so far, and now I'm raising a growth round from a handful of people who want to be a part of this next chapter. If that's you, let’s talk.
Saul Costa
Founder, Shock