“I’ve always had the entrepreneurial spirit, and I’ve
learned how to make it on my own.”Langston
Whitlock, 17
Cofounder and CIO, SafeTripIT SOUNDS LIKE the windup to a punchline: a techy teen and an opera singer walk into a
community outreach event and...stumble upon a million-dollar app idea. But that’s what
happened when Langston Whitlock and Ja’Nese Jean—who met years prior working at
these kinds of local gatherings—learned of a problem facing their community.
“A homeless veteran told us that [people across Atlanta] don’t have transportation to
get to medical appointments,” says Whitlock, a longtime coder. “Ja’Nese turned to me
and said, ‘Can you make an app for that?’ ”
In 2018, they launched SafeTrip, a ride-sharing app geared to the homeless and
elderly that lets patients, caretakers, and healthcare providers book medical transporta-
tion; it accepts various forms of insurance. The company has raised $2 million, with
$3.4 million in revenue last year.
With Jean as CEO, Whitlock serves as CIO, overseeing a team of 10—all older than he
is, of course. “We have a great bond,” he says. “They love me cause I’m a kid, I guess.”
That youthful perspective has proven valuable, like when Whitlock told his team that
plenty of teens today learn defensive driving and CPR. The company created a feeder
program, in which high school seniors train to become SafeTrip drivers after graduation.
As for Whitlock, who works at SafeTrip full-time yet will still graduate in 2020, his
plans are singular for now. “My mom has worked since I was little, and my goal is for her
PH to have her ultimate happiness,” he says. “So whatever it takes, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
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PHOTOGRAPHCOURTESY^ OF^ FACEPRINT(SMITH)September 2019 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 35“I’ve been amazed by how
many people are willing to listen.”Erin Smith, 19
Founder, FacePrintTHREE YEARS AGO, Erin Smith was watch-
ing a video of Michael J. Fox and made
an observation that she couldn’t stop
thinking about. “Whenever a Parkinson’s
patient would laugh or smile, it came off
as really emotionally distant,” she says.
The Lenexa, Kansas, teen reached out to
clinicians and caregivers, and she learned
that they’d noticed similar facial expres-
sions in some of their patients—often
years before an official Parkinson’s diag-
nosis would eventually be made.
Smith—a longtime science enthusiast
who grew up conducting experiments in
her kitchen—got to work building a diag-
nostic system called FacePrint, a super-
smart selfie that captures changes in
facial expressions over time to detect dis-
orders like Parkinson’s. Until now, diag-
noses have been subjective; Smith hopes
FacePrint will become an objective tool to
diagnose and monitor the disease.
FacePrint’s algorithm has an 88 per-
cent accuracy rate (the standard is
81.6 percent), and she’s received sup-
port and funding from the Michael J.
Fox Foundation and pharmaceutical
companies. The technology is currently
undergoing a clinical trial at Stanford
University, where she is enrolled but on
leave while she completes her research,
funded by a Thiel Fellowship.
“I really want to optimize for my per-
sonal learning,” she says, “as well as for
the best way I can help shape and build
the future of neurological and mental
healthcare.”