Blake Richardson grew up with an entrepreneurial mindset. He was in middle school when he began dyeing and selling his own socks, then moved on to launch a T-shirt company in high school. So when Richardson was in high school and visited the firehouse where his dad worked, his mind again began to turn.
“You would hear the dispatcher voice over the alarm system with the flashing red lights, and I remember being at the fire station and thinking, ‘How can I help?’” Richardson said. “How to make it less stressful? There has to be a better way.”
That idea sat in Richardson’s mind for roughly five years until he took an entrepreneur class at St. Augustine-based Flagler College, where students were tasked with pitching ideas. He pitched a wearable device that would replace the adrenaline-inducing alert firefighters receive when needed on a call. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, firefighters are 14 times more likely to have a heart attack during an alarm response.
“They’re more likely to die during alerts versus on the job,” Richardson said. “A lot of that is due to the adrenaline rush, and it’s unhealthy in the moment or over the course of your career.”
As part of Richardson’s class, he spoke with the local St. Augustine Fire Department about the idea — which quickly saw its value.
“One of the firefighters had just gotten back from a health and safety committee, and it resonated with him immediately,” Richardson said. “He said, ‘You need to do this.’”
He began attending pitch competitions to pitch EaseAlert, where he eventually met his co-founder, Elezar Tonev, in April 2019.
The company’s product launched in February 2021; it’s a patented wearable technology that vibrates to alert the wearer. It also comes with a bunk alert, which flashes red to further alert the firefighters of the call. The department’s municipality purchases a contract with EaseAlert to deploy the devices. EaseAlert is working with 12 fire departments with 90 firefighters and has deployed more than 38,000 alerts.
Richardson has also gotten into the defense space, with MacDill Air Force Base purchasing the system in August 2022. There are opportunities for expansion in the medical space with nurses and the school system with teachers, but Richardson stated he is currently focused on the first responder space.
The company has raised roughly $500,000 and received grant funding. It has three full-time employees and is a member of Embarc Collective. His goal for the next year isn’t focused on revenue or growing the team — it’s the impact he wants to make on first responders. He hopes to quintuple EaseAlert's impact.
“For me, it’s a passion project; I want to do this for a long time,” he said, adding he hopes to fund centers to help firefighters with behavioral health issues. “I want to help them not just in the moment but with their overall mental health and well-being.”
