She Sold A Company For $250 Million And Is Now Building An AI-Powered Weapons Detection And Visitor Management System

Lisa Falzone’s journey from elite athlete to repeat tech founder reflects her discipline, adaptability, and resilience. She is the co-founder of Revel Systems and Athena Security Inc., and has built and scaled companies, weathering the emotional highs and lows that come with entrepreneurial life.

In this insightful interview, Lisa shared her experiences, including her early life in Santa Barbara, her time as a competitive swimmer at Stanford, her first major startup exit, and her renewed mission to combat real-world violence through technology.

Lisa also touches on rarely discussed topics, such as founder burnout, as well as what it meant to raise funding for her companies and navigate the different cycles of a business.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

The Athlete’s Edge in Entrepreneurship

Lisa grew up in sunny Santa Barbara, California, where the beach was her playground and swimming was a family legacy. Her father was a swimmer, and her mother was a synchronized swimmer. By high school, Lisa was training intensely, often for three to five hours a day.

This level of discipline shaped Lisa’s mindset. “You put in a season of hard work for a two-minute race,” she recalled. “You have to perform under pressure, and you have no idea what will happen. That pressure, that competitive drive, that adrenaline rush–it really translates into business.”

That drive earned her a spot on Stanford’s elite swim team, recruited by the legendary four-time Olympic coach Richard Quick. At the time, it was one of the best swim programs in the US, shaping her passion and competitive outlook.

Lisa recalls watching the discipline and commitment Michael Phelps displayed when training for the Olympics and being impressed by him. Swimming also taught Lisa to be ambitious and to endure pain to achieve her goals.

While swimming consumed much of her time at Stanford, Lisa majored in history. Ironically, she assumed at the time that entrepreneurship was only for computer scientists.

That myth quickly unraveled when Lisa moved to London post-graduation and encountered founders like Richard Branson, who didn’t fit the Silicon Valley mold. During her time in London, she worked in venture capital, insurance, PR, and marketing, doing several internships.

However, Lisa was keenly interested in starting her own business rather than working for others. Her varied experiences would come in handy when she started Revel and Athena.

From Blogging to Building Revel Systems

Lisa’s entry into entrepreneurship wasn’t a straight line. She experimented with several business ideas, from a swimwear distribution startup to a coffee shop and a toy company. Along the way, she started a modest blog filled with motivational quotes for entrepreneurs.

“It was mostly for myself,” Lisa says, but she eventually made the blog public. It provided her with a platform to meet, connect with, and interact with people who shared a similar mindset. One of her two early commenters would become her co-founder at Revel Systems–Christopher Ciabarra.

Christopher was a technical architect, and Lisa quickly realized that they had complementary skill sets that worked well together. The duo began developing an ordering app that integrated point-of-sale systems. They were speaking directly with restaurant owners to test the idea.

“The app wasn’t it,” Lisa said, “but talking to customers was key.” Many restaurateurs complained about their outdated point-of-sale systems. Around the same time, the iPad had just launched. Lisa and Christopher were already developing the software and analytics for iPads.

The two co-founders connected the dots and created Revel Systems, a cloud-based iPad point-of-sale system. Revel took off quickly. It was an enterprise point-of-sale system designed for chains and large volume businesses.

Revel’s hybrid business model combined upfront hardware sales with recurring SaaS fees. “We charged $3K upfront and $100/month per system,” Lisa noted. By 2014, they had raised over $100M in funding and scaled to a $500M valuation.

Retracing her steps, Lisa recalls how they started the company in 2010 when the economy was just beginning to recover from the OA crisis. She knew she had to create a product and sell it before the seed round. To make that happen, she invested around $30K of her personal funds.

Christopher, who was the CTO and chief architect, hired less expensive programmers and got the prototype ready. The duo tested it at a fish-and-chips shop in Sausalito, California. And, they never looked back.

Burnout at the Top and the Exit

The pace was grueling. “I wasn’t confident, so I just worked and worked,” Lisa shared. The pressure to compete with well-funded rivals who offered free software added to the mental toll.

After the company reached a level of stability and success, Lisa hit a wall. “I collapsed from exhaustion,” she admitted. Her team encouraged her to step back and take time off. For the first time, she focused on her mental health.

Therapy, self-care, and travel became part of Lisa’s recovery process. “It’s like driving a car over a bumpy road,” she said. “You can’t feel every bump; you need to let go of the little stuff.”

Revel eventually sold a majority stake to a private equity firm in 2017 and was later acquired by Shift4. Despite the financial win, the aftermath wasn’t the celebration many would imagine.

“After you’ve been on a mission for seven years, the silence that follows can feel depressing,” Lisa admits. But instead of fading away, Lisa chose to start again, with a renewed sense of purpose.

Athena Security: Tech with a Mission

Inspired by her growing family and the alarming rise in school shootings, Lisa co-founded Athena Security. Named after the goddess of wisdom and protection, Athena’s first product used CCTV cameras to detect visible weapons in real-time.

Yet as customers pointed out, detection alone didn’t prevent incidents. That feedback led to a major pivot in 2022: Athena began developing a next-generation concealed weapon detection system for entryways.

It was like a high-throughput alternative to traditional metal detectors, primarily used in hospitals and emergency rooms. Explaining in detail. Lisa reveals that at Athena, they do all the reporting analytics. It is a hardware and software solution, similar to Revel’s.

Athena’s business model involves charging $25K/year per entryway. “We catch thousands of weapons each month,” Lisa said. “And nurses are attacked more than police officers. That statistic blew me away.” Athena’s systems were long overdue and well-received when deployed.

As Lisa points out, school shootings get more publicized, but violence is happening daily in ER rooms. Nurses and doctors don’t feel safe being around angry patients who could be carrying a weapon.

Hard-Earned Lessons in Product-Market Fit

Lisa’s top advice? Don’t try to think your way into product-market fit. “You have to get out there and sell. Even if you don’t love the idea, just start talking to people. Let real conversations guide you.”

Lisa credits Stanford professor Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany as a foundational text. “Sell first, build later,” she emphasized. And be ready to pivot. “The entrepreneurs who fail are often the ones who are too in love with their first idea.”

Being humble and admitting when they need to switch courses is crucial for entrepreneurs. Lisa also reveals how they were four years into the product-market fit when COVID hit, and things got delayed. They couldn’t sell security during the pandemic, which was a huge challenge.

Lisa’s solution was to create another product during the interim period–a COVID solution, as she terms it. Although their product-market fit was delayed, she considers it an advantage since they were able to find the right fit that worked.

Funding Round Two—On Her Terms

Unlike Revel, where Lisa worked with VCs and private equity firms, Athena was initially self-funded. After their Revel exit, Lisa and Chris Ciabarra, her co-founder, reinvested some of their proceeds, aided by a strategic use of Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS).

Lisa explains that investors need to have a real estate transaction that exits within 60 days if they put the money to work. That’s how they can delay capital gains. This strategy enabled Lisa and Chris to divert cash into Athena Security.

So far, they’ve raised $16M, with a significant portion coming from the founders themselves. Lisa prefers individual investors over institutions. “Wealthy individuals don’t have LPs to report to. Their timeline is yours. That makes a huge difference.”

On the other hand, venture capital or private equity firms might not be in direct alignment with the company and its founders. As a founder, you might want to make your startup a legacy company and work on it for the next 20 to 30 years, Lisa explains. But investors want to exit in 5 to 10 years.

Storytelling is everything that Lisa Falzone was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (see it here), where the most critical slides are highlighted.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.

The Vision: A World Without Athena and Words to Her Younger Self

In an ideal future, Athena becomes obsolete. “If we’ve succeeded and if there’s no more violence in hospitals and schools, then we won’t need to exist,” Lisa said. “That would be the dream.”

Lisa’s final reflections reveal just how much she’s grown through her entrepreneurial journey. “I used to take every problem as an existential crisis. Now I know that this is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Lisa’s parting wisdom? Stop worrying so much about what others think. “At 25, I cared a lot about perception. Now at 40, I know who I am. I do what’s best for the company, even if it means making unpopular decisions.”

And perhaps that’s Lisa Falzone’s true legacy: a fearless operator, guided by mission and shaped by resilience, determined not just to build, but to build better. Being married and having a family outside of her company gave her an identity that wasn’t tied to her work, a crucial aspect.

Listen to the full podcast to know more, including:

• Lisa Falzone’s competitive swimming background instilled the discipline and pressure-handling skills that later fueled her entrepreneurial success.
• Her journey into entrepreneurship began with self-exploration, blogging, and experimenting with small business ideas, culminating in her co-founding of Revel Systems.
• Revel Systems found product-market fit by engaging directly with customers, ultimately creating a cloud-based iPad POS solution.
• Despite scaling Revel to a $500M valuation, Lisa experienced severe burnout, highlighting the emotional toll of first-time entrepreneurship.
• Athena Security was born from a mission to prevent gun violence, leveraging AI and hardware to detect concealed weapons in hospitals and schools.
• Lisa emphasizes selling before building and staying open to pivoting based on customer feedback as keys to achieving product-market fit.
• With her second venture, she opted for self-funding and individual investors to align mission and timelines, avoiding the misalignment common with institutional capital.

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Keep in mind that storytelling is everything in fundraising. In this regard, for a winning pitch deck to help you, take a look at the template created by Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley legend (see it here), which I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. 

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.

 

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