Friday, May 25, 2018
Founder of RYSE UP, NearWoo Jason Crilly Passes Away
One of Southern California's promising startup entrepreneurs, Jason G. Crilly--the co-founder of RYSE UP and co-founder of NearWoo--has passed away, according to friends and families. Crilly passed away last weekend. According to posts on his now-memorialized Facebook page, Crilly took his own life, which some attributed to the stress of startup life, along with other factors. Crilly had most recently been the CTO of RYSE UP, a startup in Los Angeles which calls itself the "American Idol for Mobile", which e co-founded with Nathan Chandra. He previously was the co-founder of NearWoo (previously known as PageWoo), a Santa Monica startup developer of mobile advertising software for local businesses. NearWoo was backed by StartEngine, and had been one of the most successful startups to emerge out of StartEngine's initial attempts at mass startup acceleration. Mental health of startup founders--once a taboo subject--has been boosted by efforts by such startup community mentors as Brad Feld of Techstars. Techstars is one of the groups which has been helping to address the often overwhelming pressures of the startup life.