HERMITAGE, Pa. – A family medical emergency led Kara Wasser to found the company that today is known as Looped Solutions, but the market now served by the company is a far different one from its start.
A native of Erie, Pa., Wasser and her husband moved to Hermitage after the birth of her daughter and after she earned her master’s degree from Duquesne University. Her husband worked at Wheatland Tube and they decided to move so he would have an easier commute to work.
Before launching the company that was originally known as OhanaLink in 2020 until it rebranded as Looped Solutions in July 2024, Wasser worked in the banking industry. Several difficult experiences involving having to communicate with family members during medical situations inspired her about four years earlier to develop a mobile app to help people in similar circumstances.
“I didn’t have a background in tech but I was a tech consumer,” she remarks. “I knew from the consumer side how I needed to solve those problems.”
With her husband’s encouragement, she left banking in January 2019 to work on the startup. Early days were spent learning business models and how to take an idea and turn it into a business, she recalls. She worked with mentors through the eCentre@Lindenpointe and Ben Franklin Technology Partners, which in early 2019 provided her first round of funding.
Wasser and her company went through Ben Franklin’s TechCelerator program and ultimately received about $300,000 from BFTP over several funding rounds, Brian Slawin, Northwest director and portfolio manager, recalls.
“Kara is a dynamic leader. She’s a very effective communicator and you could really see the passion that she had for the problem she was trying to solve,” he says. “This wasn’t a solution looking for a problem. This was a real problem and she had a great solution for it.”
Maggie Horne, director of the Center for Advanced Engineering at the Gannon University Small Business Development Center, also recalls being impressed with Wasser when she worked with the entrepreneur early on. She had “a unique way of looking at the problem she was looking to solve at that time,” she says.
“I don’t think I’ve ever known an entrepreneur like Kara who wouldn’t give up,” Slawin says. “She just has grit and determination, and people are just super-attracted to Kara and her mission, and the way she talks about it and is so passionate about it.”
The initial funding from Ben Franklin allowed Wasser to hire a development team. The OhanaLink Baby app launched in June 2020, but before long the company started to get pulled in the direction of domestic violence victim services, driven by the need for technological innovation in that space. Service providers “needed a safe platform to interact and engage with the survivors that they were working with,” Wasser recalls.
“Once we started to peel back layers of what was going on in victim services and how technology was evolving for abusers, but not for survivors, it was almost something you couldn’t look away from,” she continues. “That was really what ultimately made us dedicate ourselves to this mission.”
In 2022, the company launched its first product aimed at the domestic violence victim services market, Purple. Wasser acknowledges the space is “a huge challenge.” While there were women’s safety apps available, there wasn’t anything to connect victims to the help that they needed safely and clandestinely.
“It was really an opportunity for us to come in, innovate a space, create a market, which is very different than just coming into health care and releasing an app and selling it and going viral,” she says. “It was really coming in and having an impact on a space and changing the world. So it really just became a mission for us. The need was so great. It is so great, and we’re still working on it.”
Wasser points out that the numbers are getting worse for women. Six women per day are dying as a result of domestic violence, while 40% of calls for help are going unanswered.
“This is an absolute failure of the industry, and so we had to take a step back and really evaluate what has changed in domestic violence and victim services over the last couple of decades that has caused numbers to continue to climb, and technology is that answer,” she says. “Victims are being weaponized by technology, yet nobody’s coming into this space to save them with technology.”
That failure led to the formation of the Committee for Victim Technology Reform, of which she is a founding member. The committee, which is part of the Gabby Petito Foundation, is working on creating opportunities for other technology companies to work with victims, she says.
“We’re not talking about prevention. Prevention is great, awareness is great, those things are covered, but when it comes to actively helping women and men who are in situations that are dangerous, we need to make change,” she says.
Horne points to Wasser’s shift in her company’s focus as an example of how she practices leadership. She listened to the market, recognized other opportunities for the technology and followed it “to where it would be most impactful and relevant to the market that she was willing to serve,” she reflects.
Wasser also was good at identifying the right people to work with and approaching the people in the field where her product was taking her. “I’ve seen her develop her team in a very strategic way,” she says.
Wasser says the leaders that had the most impact on her were her early bosses when she was in banking. From them, she learned “what a good leader was and what a good leader wasn’t.” She singled out Lew Voise, who was her boss when she was a young mother.
“He treated me like a human being and not an employee. That really shaped who I wanted to be as a leader later on in my life,” she recalls. “I tell him that he had a profound impact on the type of leader that I would become just because of how he treated me.”
Wasser identifies two important qualities in her leadership style: maintaining “an equal playing ground” and trust.
“Everyone that works on this team is a professional and is an expert in their area, so it would be irresponsible of me to think that I’m a step ahead of anybody on this team, just because of my title,” she says. “Just treating your team as equals, treating them with respect and treating them as the humans that they are, with the lives that they have, is really important to the success of your organization and the success of your employees individually. That’s just the angle that we’ve always taken, that I’ve always taken.”
In accordance with that, Looped maintains an open paid-time-off – or PTO – policy, with the emphasis on getting the required work done rather than logging set hours, she says. She sees it as “a new way of leading and a way to really create employees that are loyal and dedicated not only to your organization but to your mission.”
So far, meeting goals hasn’t been an issue.
“If you’re time tracking and wanting someone to sit in front of a computer from 9 to 5, they’re going to be miserable, they’re going to be less productive, and they’re missing out on things that truly matter,” she says. “I’m not sure, to be honest, how many other organizations are hopping on this trend. I don’t really pay attention – I just know what works for us, and maybe others will follow suit.”
Horne sees Wasser as a “servant leader.” She brings things to the table that serve the community, but also treats her team as vital and leads that way. “She definitely is there to support her team and provide the resources that are needed to bring about success for everyone on the team, and of course the business along the way,” she says.
Wasser also isn’t the kind of leader who simply directs others to handle tasks, Slawin points out. “Kara is going to be there in the trenches all the time with you, side by side, so you’re never going to be alone,” he remarks.
“She’s also a very clear communicator,” he continues. “One of the hardest things in entrepreneurism, especially tech entrepreneurism, is to clearly communicate what I’m trying to solve for the market. She’s very good at that.”
As an entrepreneur-in-residence at the eCentre, Wasser shares her experiences with cohorts of entrepreneurs going through its programs. She has stayed in touch with many of these startups.
“I think the value that I bring to them is that you don’t have to have it all figured out,” she says.
“You know, there’s no magic formula that’s going to help you get from A to Z faster. There’s no fast track when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re building a business,” she says. “It’s about the journey there and helping them understand that it is a journey of wins and losses – we call it the roller coaster – and getting them comfortable with that is my goal.”
Among the lessons Horne sees entrepreneurs taking from Wasser is allowing the environment to lead them so that they don’t lose opportunities by being focused only on their original idea.
“They need to listen to where the market is taking their idea,” she says.
Looped Solutions now operates in 19 states and 90 agencies across the county utilize its technology. While acknowledging the growth, Wasser points out that the access point for her company’s technology is domestic violence victims who are actively seeking help from a shelter, which represents just 19% of victims. At the same time, 71% of abusers are monitoring their victims’ personal technology.
One of the Committee for Victim Technology Reform’s goals is developing additional technology that will target victims who have access to a first responder or a health-care professional to get access to this clandestine technology. “There’s a little bit of expansion with the products going on as well, and we’re excited to see where that takes things next, and where it creates opportunity for us to get more victims the help that they need sooner,” she says.
Pictured at top: Kara Wasser, CEO of Looped Solutions, at the eCentre@Lindenpointe.
