A startup founder who served time in jail is seeking to courtroom an untapped market: ex-cons

Richard Bronson, an business owner who just lately launched a startup referred to as Commissary Club, has an uncommon background for a founder: in a earlier life, he frolicked in jail.

In the Eighties, Bronson labored for the infamous Stratton Oakmont — the corruption-riddled brokerage agency that was run by Jordan Belfort, the so-called “Wolf of Wall Street” whose story turned a 2013 movie. The agency collapsed within the mid-Nineties beneath the load of misconduct accusations.

Bronson was a associate at Stratton, however left after a 12 months to start out his personal agency in South Florida. He was fairly profitable in that enterprise, till he wasn’t.

“I constructed a $100 million enterprise taking these small cap firms public,” Bronson informed TechCrunch. “Some of the success, nonetheless, got here by way of breaking the regulation — securities legal guidelines — and in the end, as I knew inevitably would occur, I needed to pay the value. I misplaced the whole lot, and most importantly, my freedom. And I used to be despatched to federal jail for a few years.”

Bronson has been out of jail for a very long time now, however he has by no means forgotten the struggles he had when he initially emerged from jail.

“Nobody would rent me, regardless of all of my training and work expertise and the whole lot else. I used to be like utterly radioactive,” he mentioned.

Bronson’s expertise after jail helped inform his present startup, an employment-focused social media platform referred to as Commissary Club, which takes its identify from the shop inside a jail the place inmates purchase snacks and toiletries. The web site is particularly marketed to ex-cons, and makes use of AI to assist them navigate the usually complicated strategy of discovering employment and housing after they reenter the globe.

“I couldn’t assist however discover how little help was obtainable to folks popping out of jail,” mentioned Bronson. “If it was this dangerous for me, what concerning the guys I used to be in jail with who had little or no training and little or no job expertise? What had been their possibilities?”

Commissary Club additionally has a social part, which Bronson mentioned he added as a result of he is aware of how isolating the post-prison expertise could be. “It’s virtually like Facebook,” he mentioned, “the place folks cannot solely discover job, and get the assistance with the roles and the housing and entry to advantages, however they discover the opposite lacking ingredient that’s existentially necessary to them that isn’t glad elsewhere. They discover neighborhood.” Judging by the positioning, Commissary Club additionally seems primed to grow to be a referral community, and it gives a method for customers to search out dates.

For now, Bronson’s startup is a workforce of two — simply him and his co-founder, Roman Kissin, who Bronson referred to as the technical thoughts (or “the brains”) behind the undertaking. Kissin beforehand labored for eBay and IBM and, between 2022 and 2025, served because the CTO of LexisNexis, in accordance with his LinkedIn profile.

The web site is free at first, then switches to paid. Users get “the primary 10 purposes without cost, after which we bundle the subsequent at $149 for 10 purposes, or $14.99 every,” Bronson informed TechCrunch. Some could balk at that for-profit mannequin, and for folks simply out of jail, it could be a tricky promote.

Yet Bronson sees it as a win-win — a enterprise that may assist a neighborhood that few others try to assist.

“People instantly assume, ‘Oh, is that this a nonprofit?’ And the reply isn’t any,” mentioned Bronson. There’s a robust mission part, actually,” he continued,” and I’ve devoted my life, after I got here out of jail, to serving to my brothers and sisters with information. Part of it’s as a result of I simply felt so remorseful for the shit that I had executed. I nonetheless get up on daily basis regretting decisions I made.

“But we’re going after an enormous, large market that no person — I imply no person — does something about,” mentioned Bronson. “People discuss AI taking away employment and folks shedding jobs. I have a look at it in another way. We’re constructing AI that creates employment for those who society left behind.”

Bronson’s Commissary Club was chosen for this 12 months’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200, as a part of TechCrunch’s storied Battlefield Competition; come be part of us subsequent week in San Francisco to see the competition live.