StrongArm Technologies pivoted from exoskeletons to small wearables that generate lots of data in its mission to keep blue-collar workers safe. The result: Big-name customers that include Walmart and Toyota.
for his company’s efforts to make wearable protective technology that helps industrial workers avoid injury. Today, Petterson, now 31, tells that the company has raised $50 million led by Drive Capital—its second financing in 12 months—to crank up production and sales of its wearable devices. With the new funding, StrongArm is valued at $200 million.
The Brooklyn-based company is something of a personal mission for Petterson. His father, a construction worker, had a fatal heart attack in his early-50s on the roof of a job site. An inventor as a kid, he studied product design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He came up with the idea for StrongArm during college and founded the company in 2011.
Soon after, StrongArm began rethinking its focus on exoskeletons. Companies were asking for data, and Petterson realized that the answer to workplace injuries would be found in smaller devices—and lots of data. Its current wearables are small enough to attach to a hip or to place between the shoulder blades with an X-pack harness. Yet they show significant details about how a worker’s body moves through space, as well as information about the environment, thanks to 25 different sensing inputs.
Drive Capital partner Nick Solaro says that pivot was crucial to his decision to invest. When he first met Petterson four or five years ago, he passed on investing because of the company’s focus on exoskeletons. But when Petterson and chief operating officer Matt Norcia circled back last fall to show off their new data-centric approach, he was interested. “When we started calling customers and speaking with people on the front lines, they were saying, ‘You don’t understand how effective this is.