Jessica Kim is a Praxis Venture Partner and Fellow who participated in the 2014 Business Accelerator with her second venture, BabbaCo. Jessica sold BabbaCo in 2014 during a season of life as the primary caregiver for her mother, who was battling cancer. During this difficult time, Jessica found it extremely difficult to handle all the caregiving responsibilities, despite having engaged siblings to share the load and a husband who is a doctor.
While navigating the caregiving process, Jessica was also discerning what her next venture would be. Her own experience compelled her to think about tech-driven caregiving platforms for families caring for ill loved ones. She joined the Praxis Venture Studio as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence, spending time with Venture Partner Philip Lorish and Praxis Co-Founder & CEO Dave Blanchard, to cast vision for a caregiving venture. Jessica came up with the name (the “iana” in ianacare stands for "I Am Not Alone”) and worked with Praxis and digital agency Whiteboard (Business 2020) to develop ianacare’s brand.
Through the venture design process, Jessica was actively discerning if this was the venture she wanted to build, and emerged from conversations with Philip and Dave with the conviction that it was. She recruited a Co-Founder to join her in the work, and officially launched ianacare at the 2018 Summit. Her first round of investors included funders from the Praxis community, and she more recently closed a $12M Series A to take ianacare to scale. Praxis journeyed alongside Jessica from her earliest hunch to connecting with values-aligned funders for her Series A, providing leadership and support in building the venture.