College students leaving campus for the summer also leave behind plenty of possessions — and a group of Gallaudet University alums wants to take them off their hands.
Myles Goldberg, Ethan Kramer and Sean Maiwald started reFort, a D.C.-based, deaf-led company that refurbishes departing students’ unwanted appliances and electronics over the summer and sells them to returning students by the fall.
The partners came up with the idea in October 2016 so they could enter a George Washington University pitch competition. But then funding this year from Communication Service for the Deaf’s new venture fund put it on a new track, Goldberg said through an interpreter via videoconference.
“Today, there are a lot of customers who really don’t understand that these goods are turning into things in a landfill, and that they can actually be used again,” he said.
The CSD Social Venture Fund offered selected reFort as its early-stage startup to back with a undisclosed cash investment,…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
