Life Savers

Inventing An Altruistic Product Is One Thing, Taking It To Market Is An Altogether Different Challenge.

- Ian Lloyd Neubauer

We speak with three self-made CEOs who took big risks with unique products to make a difference to people’s lives. Here’s how they did it. 

AMANDA HART CEO, BE A LOOPER

Tasmania has the highest youth suicide rate in Australia: 45 victims for every 100,000 people. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and a statistic that doesn’t take into account the collateral psychological damage levelled upon family and friends who are left behind. “Growing up in Tasmania, I lost three close friends and nine people from my wider circle,” says Amanda Hart. “So when I was 18, I went to a suicide prevention retreat to learn how to help people at risk.”

It was there that Hart first learned about a mental health check-in tool where people rate their mood and text this information to a friend or counsellor every day. A low rating equates to an SOS and the receiver calls the sender. During the same period, Hart was forging a career rolling out technological transformations for companies. “That was the penny-drop moment,” she says. “I realised I could reach a lot more people with technology.” So she built an app that reminded users to rate their mood at a set time every day and send the score to five nominated friends. If a score of three or below was received, all five friends would get an SOS alarm on their phones. And the system would be reciprocal. So users would also get to see how their friends were tracking and offer them support too.

Two months after the app was launched in December 2017, more than 6,500 people from 55 countries had downloaded it. Between them, they had sent 1,700 SOS messages – which had potentially saved the same number of lives.

ZIAH LANE CEO, NO ISSUES