Sean Freitag has long believed in serving a higher purpose.
It’s why he enlisted in the U.S. Navy right out of high school in 2000.
It’s why he collaborated with other veteran entrepreneurs at an accelerator program in Washington D.C.
And now, it’s why he has brought his company, Signum Technologies, to an Orlando accelerator program that focuses on veteran-led businesses.
The SPEAR Accelerator, coordinated and run by the Veterans Entrepreneurship Initiative, starts this month.
“We are all coming into this together around the same experience level,” he said. “We all started at the same place and speak the same language.”
Signum Technologies focuses cutting-edge technologies on societal challenges faced by people across the U.S.
The company’s journey started with biosensor tech that addressed security and healthcare needs caused by the COVID pandemic.
“The pandemic provided a great opportunity and landscape to highlight some of the problems that we saw in healthcare,” Freitag said. “There is a reason high-risk candidates chose not to go to the doctor.”
Freitag enters the accelerator confident it will push Signum forward.
One reason is that shared experience, which means collaboration in the future could emerge from the program.
“I had experience in the military with working on something that serves not just a business goal but also a higher purpose and shared mission,” he said.
Signum provides actionable insights to nurses and technicians, placing both groups on the same page during treatment schedules.
The team, which has reached five with more hires likely on the way, was built after it was determined that there was a need in the marketplace.
“The problem found us,” he said. “We were handed this technology.”
The company’s technology automates several tasks within a doctor’s visit or checkup.
What that does is minimize the amount of time patients need to be either waiting or interacting with a physician.
In practice during the pandemic, it allowed front-line workers to avoid mundane screenings and increase efficiency while also improving the safety of our frontline workers.
“I was confident we could build a real business around this,” Freitag said about the Annapolis, Md., venture. “We have the competency and ability to go tackle this.”
As he prepares to jump into the accelerator in Orlando, Freitag said a key advantage of joining a program with other veterans is that each entrepreneur will understand immediately some commonly shared experiences.
In addition, there is an inherent level of support from those who have served.
“It’s a unique cohort,” he said. “We are there to grow our own companies but I think part of the camaraderie is that you want to see your fellow veterans succeed, too.”
