About Us
Our Story
It all began with a Swiss Army knife.
Alexander, a Scout, went on a trip and forgot to take his Swiss Army knife out of his backpack. A TSA officer at Dulles Airport found it, and he had to give it up. It wasn’t expensive but he’d been given it when he was 7, and ever since he had taken it with him everywhere. And then it was gone. There had to be a better way!
Alexander’s frustrating experience inspired his parents, Natalie and Richard, to help him develop a solution, and soon they were building prototypes and applying for a patent. Natalie and Richard combined their 30 years of demonstrated success — taking concepts to market, managing operations, and building organizations — with Alexander’s leadership skill and fresh, young perspective to the team. Together they have built a company that helps travelers save their stuff!
Our Team
Now as co-founders of Flippit, Natalie, Richard and Alexander have assembled a seasoned team of experts in logistics, digital, startups and retail, with pedigrees from P&G, Bristol-Myers, Kraft, FCB, and the NYPD.
Natalie Yates
Co-Founder and CEO
Natalie likes to add clicks to the bricks. Thrust into general management at age 24 on the premature death of her father, Natalie has run manufacturing companies and a digital consultancy, advising both private and public sector clients on how to leverage digital to improve operations. She is applying her knowledge of logistics and procurement, user-testing and general management directly to building Flippit.
Richard Cacciato
Co-Founder
Safety, air travel and innovation are in Richard’s DNA: An Eagle Scout and son of an airline security director, Richard finds better ways to do things and creates agile teams to build them. At P&G and Bristol-Myers he learned Fortune 50 strategy, finance and marketing. At Blue Iceberg, his digital agency, he worked with commercial, non-profit and government clients to embrace digital and mobile tech — experience he’s applying to Flippit.
Alexander Cacciato
Co-Founder and Director of Strategy
After losing his Swiss Army knife at airport security, Alexander co-founded Flippit and now leads the company’s strategy. Originally from New York City, he graduated from Trinity College in 2025 and has helped shape Flippit’s technologies and its go-to-market systems as it builds relationships with airports across the country. He has also led the investor outreach behind its national expansion. An Eagle Scout fluent in several languages, he brings the same resourcefulness that built Flippit's first prototypes to scaling it nationwide and beyond.
Sean Phillips
Technology
Elizabeth L. Fort
Marketing & Communications
Felina Rakowski
Airport Launch Team, Recruiting & Training
Flippit Field Reps and Airport Reps
Our dedicated Flippit Reps operate onsite to manage each Flippit station: they process orders, respond to needs in the field, identify new opportunities and help spread the word about Flippit.
The Flippit Solution
The Challenge
Every day at airport security checkpoints, travelers discover tons of items they forgot were in their carry-ons or didn’t know were prohibited on-board, forcing them to choose between 2 major pain points:
Abandoning valuable or sentimental items or
Risking missing their flight while figuring out what to do
In addition to lost items, frustration, anger, or sadness for travelers, this can also mean escalation and resentment towards TSA agents, and delays for all at the start of a trip. How can air travelers comply with security rules without losing their stuff?
Flippit allows travelers to save their belongings by sending their prohibited items to themselves. Our patented “quick-drop” system uses smartphone technology to make the process fast and easy: travelers complete the transaction at any time after security: no paper forms, no app, to download, no account, username or password. We charge a flat fee anywhere in the U.S. , packed, insured and tracked.