Q&A with Ryan Frankel, Founder and CEO of This App Saves Lives

Ryan Frankel is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of This App Saves Lives (“TASL”), a mobile app-based solution that incentivizes safe driving practices by allowing users to earn and redeem rewards from local and national brands for driving undistracted. TASL also applies its unique technology to corporate fleets and insurance companies to reduce financial and reputational liability. Ryan started at Goldman Sachs as an intern in 2005, then joined full-time in the firm’s Special Situations Group where he worked in New York from 2006-2008, before working in Controllers from 2008-2010.

1. How did you start your career at Goldman Sachs, and what was your career path during your time here?
Ryan: After a summer internship before graduating from Haverford College, I returned to the Special Situations Group where I focused on Structured Investing. I worked for an amazing individual who showed me the ropes and gave me tremendous responsibility and exposure to senior leadership early in my career. I was then recruited to join a newly-launched SSG Portfolio Operations team where I was empowered to travel the country to meet with the leaders behind the businesses with whom we were invested and to identify value creation opportunities. I fell in love with this new role. In fact, I was so inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of these C-Suite executives that I ultimately left Goldman to enroll in Wharton’s MBA program with an eye for my own future entrepreneurial journey.

2. As an entrepreneur, you founded VerbalizeIt, a language translation technology company featured on ABC’s Shark Tank and which was acquired by Smartling in 2016. Not long after, you launched EduPlated, a nutrition coaching telehealth business. In 2020, This App Saves Lives came to life, rewarding safe drivers while bringing awareness to the dangers and consequences of distracted driving. What inspired you to create these companies, and what does the future of This App Saves Lives look like over the next five years?
Ryan: I’ve always been drawn to business opportunities where I can personally relate to the associated pain-points. VerbalizeIt was born out of my own unfortunate circumstances in which I fell ill in China while traveling and couldn’t communicate with a doctor due to the language barrier. And as an Ironman triathlete who recognized the role that nutrition plays in the pursuit of a healthy and active lifestyle, I launched EduPlated, a nutrition-focused telehealth platform that enabled anyone regardless of location to work with top-tier dietitians.

And speaking of triathlons, the idea for This App Saves Lives was spawned while recovering from a cycling accident in which a distracted driver ran a red light while texting. Distracted driving causes 2 million accidents in the U.S. each year and costs employers and insurance companies over $130 billion annually. We’ve built an exciting and impactful for-profit business that leverages powerful technology and a rewards-based approach to make the roads safer for us all. We launched a week before COVID (great timing for going to market with a driving-oriented business, right?!) and we’re already seeing our results in the form of reductions in accidents, injuries and deaths. And with businesses, insurance companies and consumers alike all resonating with our platform, I couldn’t be more excited about the future for our company.

3. In your book, The Making of an Entrepreneur: Lessons from a Winding Journey Towards Entrepreneurship, you talk about your journey as an entrepreneur. Can you elaborate on some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from them? What advice do you have for others who are looking to bring an idea to life like you have?
Ryan: Where do I begin?! There are always tremendous highs and lows along the ride that is building a business from the ground up. Be it achieving product-market fit, dealing with technology hurdles, hiring the right team members and creating the ideal culture, raising capital or achieving desired growth rates, there’s never a shortage of bumps in the road. I try to stay even-keeled, managing the highs with the lows to stay level during the journey.

My advice to other entrepreneurs is to surround yourself with individuals more experienced and intelligent than you are to elevate your own performance and insulate your company for the long run. And despite my own proclivities to be destination-focused, I try to remind others that the destination represents only 1% of the total time spent building a business. Enjoy the ride because before you know it, it’ll be over.

4. How did the firm prepare you for all of this?
Ryan: So much of the culture and approach that I employ in my businesses stem from experiences cultivated at Goldman. The firm has a longstanding reputation for welcoming the sharpest of individuals and the advice above stems from my own personal experiences being surrounding by so many individuals far smarter and experienced than I was.

5. How did you leverage your GS network after you left the firm?
Ryan: I’m lucky to have maintained close ties to former colleagues, many of whom have been mentors, sounding-boards and connectors for me.

6. What is one thing you learned at Goldman Sachs that has influenced your professional or personal experience the most?
Ryan: The value of time and the importance of filtering the signal from the noise to focus on the most powerful levers to drive change. It reminds me of a quote from Harvey Mackay who said that “time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.” In a world filled with no shortage of distractions or opportunities, I try to measure my efforts relative to the most precious of assets.