Aidan McCarty

Co-Founder, Co-CEO: Unum ID and Be Heard

September 2018 - present
Part-time: July 2016 - August 2018

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Unum ID started out as the identity engine behind Be Heard. We pivoted and spun out Unum ID as its own product in 2018 to focus on identity across financial services and other industries.

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Founded 2016. Crowdfunded 2017. Funded by angels and Stanford professors 2018. Funded by Samsung 2019. Funded by Draper and Franklin Templeton 2020.

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Be Heard (formerly ePluribus)

OZY Genius Award 2017. Grand Prize Stanford Idea Competition 2017. Cardinal Ventures Alum. BASES Challenge Finalist 2018.

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Fraudulent actors outnumber real Americans 19:1 online. Be Heard is the first and only platform that empowers Americans to contact their representatives as verified constituents, cutting through the noise of fake actors. Be Heard provides a suite of tools that make it insanely easy for users to send official messages to elected officials at all levels of government (federal, state, and local). This includes a mobile app (iOS/Android), an embeddable contact form, and even a Chrome extension. Be Heard has been featured in a number of major outlets including the Skimm, Fast Company, and Lifehacker. For even more about Be Heard, see https://weshouldbeheard.org/

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Unum ID

#Outliers Batch 1. TechCrunch Top Pick 2019. BlockTank LA Finalist 2019. Samsung NEXT 2019. EvoNexus, Plug and Play, and Draper Associates portfolio 2020.
 

Data breaches impacted 1 billion people in 2018, costing businesses as much as $3 trillion. Unum ID is a mobile SDK and SaaS that leverages blockchain technology to put users in complete control of their personal information. This drops verification costs by 10x while vastly increasing privacy and security. There is literally no database to hack, as all information is stored on the user's phone. No more data breaches. No more mass identity theft.

 

The first application of Unum ID is in Be Heard products to secure our democracy against bots and meddling. In the long term, Unum ID will be a single identity for everything. Whether you are signing in at the doctor's office, setting up a bank account, or messaging your mayor, you should be using Unum ID. For more, see www.UnumID.org.

 

 

Teaching Assistant: Stanford Hacking4Defense

October 2018 - May 2019

 

Hacking4Defense is highly selective program at Stanford bringing rapid innovation to US warfighters. It is facilitated by all-star cast of Steve Blank, Steve Weinstein, Pete Newell, and Tom Bedecarre. The program connects teams of students with a DoD sponsor and pushes them to leverage the Lean Startup methodology to solve some of the toughest AI, energy, and cybersecurity problems, culminating in a final presentation in front of defense, academia, and the private sector leaders.. I worked directly with the teaching team to guide the students throughout the program.

 

Through the program, I occasionally help advise lawmakers on policy around national security and defense innovation.

 

 

Director: SENSA Labs

September 2016 - June 2018

SENSA Labs is Stanford’s premier social entrepreneurship incubator.  It is an intensive 10-week program that connects early-stage social ventures with mentorship from top entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley. and investors to drive rapid growth. I ran the incubator program for two years, helping companies such as DoNotPay and ArtsUp to scale quickly while producing social benefit.

 

Research Assistant: Tessier-Lavigne Lab 

Winter 2017 - Spring 2018

I worked under Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the President of Stanford. I work closely with Jianjin Shi, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab, studying mechanisms underlying Wallerian degeneration, the canonical form of axon degeneration.

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Research Assistant: Zarelab (Stanford University)

Spring 2016 - Summer 2016

I worked under Dr. Richard N. Zare, Chair of the Chemistry Department at Stanford University, sponsored by a Stanford Bio-X summer research grant. I worked with Devleena Samanta, a PhD Candidate in the Zarelab, to develop electroresponsive polypyrrole nanoparticles for controlled drug delivery. See my poster here. See the paper here.

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Gordon Lab (Stanford University)

Fall 2015 - Summer 2016

I worked under Dr. Deborah Gordon, investigating ant locomotion. I worked on a variety of projects for the lab, including assisting with a KQED Deep Look segment and a paper on foraging behavior of the invasive Argentine ant. See the paper here.

 

Advanced Teaching Platform

Summer 2015

I co-founded and worked full-time on a company called ATP (Advanced Teaching Platform). Our mission was to completely reimagine basic education and using a novel software platform to provide a comprehensive program that is fully compatible in the existing school system. The project is currently on hold.