Felicia Jackson, CEO of CPRWrap and a product of Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, is back from Austin, Texas, after participating in one of the most prestigious business accelerator programs in the country, and she is laying the groundwork for an international expansion of her lifesaving product.
Jackson and her employees traveled to Austin in January to take part in the Techstars Austin accelerator program for three months. Only 1% of the hundreds of people who apply are accepted, Jackson said, and three Chattanooga companies – CPRWrap, Woorly and Pass It Down – were picked along with other top startup firms from Los Angeles, Toronto, Houston, Austin and Fayetteville, Arkansas.
While Jackson doesn’t run a technology company, like Woorly or Pass It Down, the 47-year-old said she has several projects coming soon, with one being a tech-enabled component for CPRWrap.
Since her start three years ago, Jackson has raised $300,000, but she is currently trying to raise $750,000 more in a round of seed funding. Her most recent – and first investment to result from the Techstars program – was from RetailMeNot, but she declined to disclose the amount while the funding round is still open.
“I was introduced to CEOs whose companies had just been acquired for multi-million or billions of dollars, and they come in and tell you everything – not just the good, but the bad, too,” Jackson said. “With Techstars, they not only helped construct the company I had going in, but they helped the CEO, too.”