Good afternoon.
One of our two core pillars at PLAN was addressing the financial security of people with disabilities, but the other one was addressing the fundamental issue, which was their isolation. At PLAN we created a very strategic and focused process to develop personal networks. We determined that in order to spread this process to people with disabilities and their families and to many people beyond, we could better distribute our solution in the container of a social mission business, which we call Tyze Personal Networks. We took advantage, really, of a trend around technology, so this is all the social networking technologies that are out there, in creating Tyze. Tyze, if you want to think about it, is like a very personal, private Facebook for people to coordinate care around a person vulnerable to isolation. When we created Tyze, we realized that isolation is a 21st century challenge and that isolation is costly. There are many studies that talk about it as a determinant of health, including that its effects are more detrimental than that of smoking. So Tyze as a solution was created for people with disabilities, people who are aging, people who are experiencing challenging diseases and so on, anybody vulnerable to isolation.
Funding to create the business began within the charity. It came from a number of foundations in the United States and Canada. We created the business plan and the prototype, and then we launched the business as a private business, owned primarily by the charity, but also owned by private angel investors. We were actually able to blend funding to launch this business.
The business model was always designed around making the solution accessible in a way that was inclusive, accessible, and affordable. Our model was to sell Tyze to businesses or non-profits and charities that were serving people vulnerable to isolation. As we began to grow, we began to dance between the two worlds of business and charity, which led us to a few more private investors, but also to a number of foundations and so on that wanted to invest, but couldn't because of the nature of the container, the private business container.
In terms of a business model, again, with this inclusive, accessible, affordable design, we were didn't fit into the traditional business world for mezzanine funding. We weren't looking for a fast exit. We weren't looking to make the traditional rapid economic growth. Our distribution was our biggest motivation. Mezzanine funding, a traditional term in business, was really very limited for a business like ours. We grew to 20 employees. Actually, there was some discussion around some investment by government, but, again, being a business was a problem. Project funding in a charitable container was widely available, but investment into the business was not.
Tyze itself was acquired a year and a half ago by a Canadian charity, Saint Elizabeth Health Care, so in that way it's a very good story, and Saint Elizabeth continues to maintain Tyze. The big learning for us has been that the potential of social finance is so great and the potential for partnership with government for really wide-scale distribution is extraordinary. The challenge becomes in the ways and means of these various containers and structures to be able to work together. How does a social mission business work with government, work with private investors, work with foundations, in order to scale it to its largest extent? This is particularly important when we're talking about something like Tyze, which works upstream to effect cost savings into our systems of care.
Thank you.