To James Arthur Dolce, the possibility of crossing paths with Ashley Lee Tyrner was, as he put it, a “one in a million situation.” After all, they lived 3,000 miles apart.
In reality, however, the two were orbiting the same circles before they even met. They discovered that they had each been dining at the Mandarin Oriental, the luxury hotel in Manhattan, during a neighborhood-wide blackout on July 13, 2019.
It was three months later, in October, at an event hosted by angel investors at the rooftop restaurant of RH New York, a large building owned by Restoration Hardware, that they met for the first time.
Ms. Tyrner is the founder and chief executive of FarmboxRx, which works to eradicate America’s food deserts by shipping produce directly to members’ doors. At the time, she was in the process of developing her go-to-market strategy for the health care division of her company by partnering with private insurance companies and Medicaid and Medicare programs.
Its mission is personal to Ms. Tyrner: When she moved to New York from Arizona in 2011, she initially relied on food stamps to support herself and her then-infant daughter. Her previous marriage ended in divorce.
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Once she began talking to Mr. Dolce, a philanthropist and founder of multiple tech companies who was then living in San Francisco, they clicked. Ms. Tyrner had a date scheduled for later that night, but she canceled it to join Mr. Dolce, who goes by Jim, for tacos after the event. Over dinner, she shared the idea for the health care division, something she had been keeping quiet for fear that others might copy her idea.
