May 8, 2023

Jamel Toppin for Forbes S trongArm Technologies, a workplace injury prevention firm started by Under 30 alum Sean Petterson, is being acquired by a private equity firm as the industrial-wearables market shakes out. “We’re going to merge with another company as part of a rollup to make something a little more meaningful in our industry,” Petterson told Forbes. He declined to name the firm making the acquisition or disclose the purchase price. Petterson, 32, was featured on the 2017 Under 30 list in Manufacturing & Industry for his company’s efforts to make wearable protective technology that helps industrial workers avoid injury. When we last caught up with him, in January 2022, he’d raised $50 million at a $200 million valuation, led by Drive Capital, to crank up production and sales of the startup’s wearable devices. But the past year has been tough for StrongArm, as it has been for many venture-backed companies, as financing dried up. “We were getting ready to get through a tough economy, and we were burning [cash] fast,” Petterson said. “We were basically optimizing for profitability and struggling to, frankly, find new capital.” When the firm tried to raise new venture funding in a rough market over the winter, the private-equity offer came up and the firm grabbed it. With the relocation of StrongArm’s Brooklyn office (already listed “as permanently closed” on Google) and plans for a largely remote operation, Petterson, who will stay with the firm as CEO, is moving to Denver. The StrongArm name and products will remain. StrongArm, which had revenue of $10 million in 2021 and had hoped to reach $25 million in 2022, was always personal for Petterson. His father, a construction worker, had a fatal heart attack in his early 50s on the roof of a job site. The younger Petterson came up with the idea for StrongArm while studying product design at the Rochester Institute of Technology and founded the company in 2011. “The main thing was to make something with an impact in memory of my dad and it’s working out so I’m feeling good about it,” Petterson said. Workplace injuries are a major problem for blue-collar workers, whom StrongArm calls “industrial athletes,” but wearables have been tough to design and slow to live up to their promise. StrongArm’s first exoskeletons, built to reduce arm fatigue, avoid muscle strains and prevent back injuries, went through multiple iterations. Then, as artificial intelligence infiltrated numerous industries, customers began asking for more data from smaller devices. StrongArm shrank its wearables down to attach to a worker’s hip or place between the shoulder blades with an X-pack harness. The startup also cranked up the data collected with sensors and set up an AI dashboard to analyze it with promises of both injury reduction and a healthier bottom line. By January 2022, the company had deployed more than 30,000 devices for use by workers of customers that included Walmart and Toyota. Walmart said in May 2021 that it had rolled out StrongArm’s technology across 6,000 workers in 18 buildings, and was seeing results as ergonomic-related injuries for workers who used the devices fell nearly 65% in the first year and dropped an additional 27% in year two and 16% in year three. StrongArm faces competition in the market from startups that include Modjoul and Voxel. Modjoul, founded by AIG’s former head of claims Eric Martinez, received investment from Amazon’s $1 billion industrial innovation fund in April 2022. Venture-backed Voxel, meanwhile, counts Office Depot, Michaels and Dollar Tree