I broke my ankle playing basketball. No, I didn’t get crossed over.
That was 2013. I was twenty, and I spent six weeks on crutches, a device nobody has meaningfully improved in about five thousand years. You put your entire body weight into your armpit. There are nerves in there.
Two classmates and I built a better one. We were biomedical engineering students at Georgia Tech, which meant we knew exactly enough to be dangerous and not nearly enough to know it was hard. We moved the load onto the forearm, patented it, and started a company.
Then things moved faster than they should have.
In June 2014 the White House held its first Maker Faire. Georgia Tech was one of three schools in the country, with Stanford and MIT, invited to send a student project. They sent ours. I showed the crutch to President Obama, and handed him a 3D-printed letter on behalf of a hundred and fifty universities committing to the Maker movement.
I was twenty-two. Nobody who made that decision knew me. They needed someone not to screw it up.
Seven months later Forbes put me on the 30 Under 30 list for manufacturing. I wrote at the time that it felt like how I imagine Dwyane Wade felt in 2006.
The part nobody tells you
The crutch was a hard business. The person on crutches isn’t the person buying them, and the people buying them are hospitals with procurement cycles measured in years.
Our manufacturing cost was now higher than our selling price. Two of my cofounders left. I don’t blame them.
In 2017 we took what we had learned about compression and load distribution and put it into a sock. Ankle taping hadn’t changed in a hundred years, it requires a trainer, and it takes ten minutes. Lasso did the same job in four seconds. In a rig we built ourselves it reduced ankle deflection by more than 75 percent against a standard athletic sock.
Hundreds of professional athletes across the NFL, NBA, MLS, and MLB wore it. An NFL Hall of Fame cornerback invested and joined the board. Men’s Health named it Best Compression Socks in 2021 and Greatist ranked it the number one running sock. A powerlifter bench pressed 1,129.8 pounds in them. A runner completed the New York City Marathon on our crutches in six hours and nineteen minutes, a week after tearing his ACL and MCL, and set the world record.
Neither of them worked for me. They used the thing and it held.
Where it went
I left Lasso. The company is gone. The socks are still sold, by a company called Move, in 340 Dick’s Sporting Goods locations, built on patents with my name on them.
Somewhere in the middle of all this I taught entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech, the school I dropped out of.
Now
I build software. I co-founded YG3, where I’m the COO. It’s a marketing platform for businesses too small to hire the people who would normally do this work.
The category looks like a hard turn from crutches and socks. It isn’t. I said in 2017 that I don’t really care about crutches, that I started the company to solve overlooked problems and the crutch was the first one I tripped over. That’s still the whole thing. Find what everyone has agreed to stop noticing. Fix it.
I was born into a Brahmin family. I’m a Christian now. I write about that, and about where the world’s religions actually came from, at The Secrets of History.
Questions people actually ask
How many patents does Partha Unnava hold?
Nineteen filings across five jurisdictions: the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Europe, and WIPO. They cover four product lines, the crutch, the compression sock, the knee sleeve, and the elbow sleeve, and were granted between 2014 and 2024. All are assigned to Better Walk, Inc. Two are filed under my full legal name, Partha Sarathy Unnava, which is why a search for the short form returns about a third of them. The full table is here, with every number linking to its filing.
Did Partha Unnava meet President Obama?
Yes. On 18 June 2014, at the first White House Maker Faire. Georgia Tech was one of three schools in the country, alongside Stanford and MIT, invited to send a student project, and mine was the one they sent. I presented the Better Walk crutch and handed the President a 3D-printed letter on behalf of a hundred and fifty universities committing to the Maker movement. Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering documented it, quoting the White House release.
What happened to Lasso Gear?
I left as CEO and the company wound down. The socks are sold today by Move, bundled with their insoles, in 340 Dick’s Sporting Goods locations, built on patents that carry my name. Lasso Gear is unrelated to the Nashville events platform of the same name or to Lasso Labs, though several databases conflate them.
What is Partha Unnava doing now?
I’m the co-founder and COO of YG3, an AI marketing platform for businesses too small to hire the people who would normally do this work. It’s sold direct and white-labeled through agency partners. I also write at The Secrets of History and published Earned Attention in 2025.
What is Born Again Brahmin?
My handle. I was born into a Brahmin family and I am a Christian now. I write about the conversion and about where the world’s religions actually came from. The testimony is here.
Where did Partha Unnava go to school?
Dublin Coffman High School in Ohio, then Georgia Tech for biomedical engineering. I left before finishing the degree. Georgia Tech later had me back to teach entrepreneurship in the Startup Semester program.
Some things that are true and sound made up
I hold patents in five countries on four different products, none of which I can wear to a wedding. I once bought a Herschel duffel bag specifically because it makes me look good in airports, and there’s a shoulder strap, but I look better carrying it by the handles.
Every claim on this site links to a patent office, a newsroom, a wire release, or an archive snapshot.
