Jorge Rios

Post-pitch story

Bridgefy came to The Pitch with a problem most of us never think about until it hits: what happens to your phone when the network disappears? Founder Jorge Rios has been working on the answer since 2014, building messaging that hops directly from phone to phone over Bluetooth, no cell tower or Wi-Fi required. The technology has shown up at crowded stadiums, during natural disasters and at protests, anywhere a network buckles or gets switched off. By the time Season 12, Episode 6 aired in September 2024, Bridgefy was already well past the idea stage. It had been through TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield, and funding databases put its total raised at roughly $4.2 million. That included a $2 million round in March 2023 and a $1.4 million round in October 2023 led by Avalancha Ventures, both before the episode came out. What happened after the episode is harder to pin down. In November 2024, an advisor posted on LinkedIn congratulating Rios and the team on joining the Embryo Ventures portfolio, but no amount or terms were made public. We also couldn't confirm whether any investor from the show actually put money in. The company is still running. Bridgefy keeps offering its app and its developer kit, which lets other apps add offline messaging. The pitch was simple: messages that keep working when everything else fails. For now, so is Bridgefy.