Startup Fundraising Office Hours Replay!

Our free Startup Fundraising Video Office Hours help early stage company founders raise money for their startups. 

The fun, friendly live video Q&A sessions answer financing and strategy questions from entrepreneurs from all over the world with FREE expert startup advice. 

The latest free lunchtime session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was July 23. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

Watch the free replay for startup founder pitches, and the expert investor feedback they got, including:

• Ashwin from Mumbai asked about how to pitch a preseed company and demonstrate traction to investors before they have revenues.
• Wendell practiced his investor pitch for a NYC-based delivery company.
• Chelsea from Orange County, California pitched her startup that is raising money from angel investors for a service that repairs luxury handbags.
• Carrie told us about her elementary school in Cleveland that she is raising money for.
• Khurram pitched his AI-enabled home security detection system for feedback from Scott and the audience.
• Jia checked in from London with a business development question about partnering with another edtech company looking to enter the US market.
• Kat practiced her investor pitch for her startup's sales training and AI optimization tools.
• John from Huntington Beach, CA shared his vision for a integrated online retail platform for second hand goods.

To watch this month’s Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for July 23, 2024:

0:00
welcome to Startup office hours I'm Scott Fox today we're going to talk about next steps next steps for you and
0:06
your business and your business in this case I mean a startup if you're a startup founder entrepreneur maybe an
0:12
angel investor or someone who works with startups you're in the right place it's time for startup office hours I'm Scott
0:18
Fox I'm the CEO of the startup Council we're a worldwide community service organization that I started to help
0:24
early stage Founders and investors and all the folks that fill the startup ecosystem worldwide trying to bring more
0:30
opportunities to everyone I'm a firm believer that a rising tide lifts all the boats and we're here today to help
0:36
answer your questions about startup fundraising I've got a couple decades now of early stage startup building
0:43
founding fundraising writing books like these books behind me I wrote these three books and I'm working on more
0:48
specifically to help you figure out how to bring your vision out into the world and help other people solving problems
0:55
hopefully making some money at the same time so today we're going to be taking your questions and practicing invest
1:00
pitches from all over the world from all the entrepreneurs whove rsvped with us today and if you're joining us here live
1:05
happy to see you uh we're live on LinkedIn and YouTube and Facebook and Blog Talk Radio and of course if you're
1:11
watching this later in the replays there's lots of recordings of previous editions I do this once a month it's lunchtime here in Southern California I
1:18
turn on my camera and try to help you out with the benefits of my expertise it's free and we're happy to have you so
1:23
welcome so we're going to get started with a bunch of folks are backstage already who have rsvpd and we're going
1:29
to be talking about their questions and practicing their investor pitches as well it's a great opportunity for you if
1:34
you're new to this sort of thing to watch and learn or of course we welcome your posts in the chat room your
1:39
questions your participation your uh suggestions for people that are pitching please go ahead chat is live on LinkedIn
1:47
and uh YouTube in particular and Facebook too I think and you can put in your questions there and they'll start
1:52
popping up right here right there in a minute so go ahead and let us know where
1:58
you calling in from love to know where we're reaching around the world we've got a lot of people RSVP today a lot of
2:03
questions and pitches we won't be able to get to them all I'm sorry but I'll try to pick the ones that are most interesting and most helpful to the
2:08
broadest group of people and hopefully everyone involved who's watching can uh benefit from the discussions and again
2:14
like I said post your welcomes and comments and we'll be happy to have you participate and um give your feedback as
2:20
well because you know I don't have all the answers I've spent a lot of time on this and and I know a few things but the
2:26
world is a big place and the whole point of us doing this is to find new ideas that we can bring out to the light and
2:32
help share with other people so I'm sure that you have expertise that are going to be available uh through this medium
2:38
to help others so please go ahead use the chat room you're welcome to talk to each other link to each other uh share
2:43
your LinkedIn or your email address and particularly if you want to pitch today please tell the rest of the group who
2:48
you are where you're from and they can check out your website that's a good idea for everybody now the backstage
2:54
room is full already we've got 10 only room for 10 people at a time back there so we're going to cycle through those folks I'm going to bring everybody on
2:59
camera here in just a second and they're all going to uh quickly introduce themselves and tell us what they want to
3:05
talk about and we'll work out who gets to go first and uh so that we have some coherent show order so that you can
3:11
follow along at home okay or at work so um that's going to be our first step and
3:16
those of you in backstage um the room is full but we do have people pounding Dr cany knocking on the door nice to see
3:23
you all from all over the world showing up and you can join us um for while you're on camera but then I'd like you
3:28
to turn off your camera and go watch on YouTube or LinkedIn so that other people can come in as well so a couple quick
3:34
housekeeping notes before we go oh there's a couple people that looks like the chat's working we've got Gard from Cape Town that's all the way from South
3:40
Africa welcome gard and Crestwood montesorri from New Jersey so that sounds like an early stage school here
3:46
for the early stage startup discussions nice to see you and everybody else go ahead and say hi I know there's lots and
3:51
lots of you watching from all over the world there's Andre hey Andre how are you he's a regular attendee and a friend
3:57
and I can see also backstage we've got Chelsea and Gia and Eric and uh kuram
4:04
and Dante Mula and the UK and Anaheim and sanon castr that's near me and New
4:11
York City and another Irvine good to see you guys so the backstage folks that I just mentioned you can see your comments
4:17
are not appearing publicly because you're backstage so backstage is like a separate little private area so we're
4:22
going to come and put you guys on camera in a minute we'll talk through how we're getting started and then the public stuff that if you want to share publicly
4:28
is over here sorry over here in the chat room that's coming as you can see from LinkedIn and YouTube and so forth so
4:36
thanks for checking in yaser from the Netherlands and uh Mitch from Toronto and Martin from Las Vegas and hazy
4:42
dreams nephy from losos excellent and Nathan from Vancouver great glad to see you guys I'm glad we're reaching people
4:48
so please while we're still getting started here um please tell your friends invite your friends this is free I'm doing this to try to help honestly
4:55
that's the only agenda here just trying to help you so let's do this quick housekeeping and then we'll get on with the show so I just need to tell you a
5:01
couple things and one is uh well obviously you can invite your friends I just told you that and you can um sorry
5:09
there we go and you can invite your friends over uh this is our YouTube channel is under my name Scott Fox I've
5:14
been doing this a long time so there's a lot of you tuning in and appreciate that you can join us at startup council.org
5:20
that's the organization that I started we've got seven different free newsletters all full of content designed
5:25
to help you guys meaning you early stage Founders find more investors find more
5:31
customers find more team members find all the things you need to accelerate yourself so if you're not uh enrolled at
5:36
startup.org it's free just go check it out you don't have to sign up for anything but I suggest you do because we
5:42
designed it all to help you this session is being recorded and it is being displayed online obviously because
5:48
you're all watching online but it will be archived as well so when you're chatting or appearing oncamera don't say anything stupid or too confidential
5:54
because it will be archived and displayed worldwide uh we want to share as much as you should and not much more
6:01
and then of course this is not qualified legal tax professional accounting or any other medical or any other kind of
6:07
advice I'm just a guy you met on the internet trying to help you out so if this is interesting to you and useful
6:13
and I hope it is please tell your friends and the only way we get paid here is if you like and comment and share so please do visit our YouTube
6:19
channel and like and comment and share and of course the same thing on LinkedIn Facebook everywhere else the more you
6:24
like and comment and share the more um people we can reach with these hopefully helpful messages so let's get on with
6:32
the show so I'm going to bring on folks uh from backstage and we've got like I said a dozen of them yes Seth the room
6:38
is full we've got about 10 people backstage and that's all it can handle at once it's about all my my little
6:44
brain can handle too so we're going to walk through those folks in a minute and see who has what to say and what they
6:49
want to talk about and I'll try to put I'll take some notes and we'll try to put those in order and then we're going to hear some pitches investor pitches
6:56
and you and the audience are totally invited to share your commentary and feedback so how the pitches can be
7:01
better and there'll also be some questions people have strategy questions about fundraising and and what to do in
7:06
this crazy startup world and I'll be happy to give my opinion but we'd also love your opinions via the chat room as
7:12
well so this is a community focused event go ahead and put in your uh LinkedIn for example if you guys want to
7:18
meet up with each other in fact I should do that maybe somebody else can find it I I should should not distract myself
7:23
but I'm on LinkedIn and you can search I'm Scott Fox author is the uh the handle and of course I'm Scott Fox you
7:29
can search for me there pretty easily and like I said I'm a Serial internet entrepreneur these days I'm mostly an
7:36
angel investor so I've done worked on both sides of the table both the raising money and then I've advised a lot of
7:41
companies who are trying to raise money as well and my real occupation most of the time is actually as an investor I'm
7:47
an investor and I've lost track 30 40 different startup companies all over the world different kinds of things so I've
7:53
seen lots and lots of pitch decks and lots and lots of pitches and so that's part of what we're going to be practicing today so I want to thank
7:59
thank you for being here and let's get on with inviting some folks from backstage and see who's here and what
8:05
they want to talk about and I will try to uh coordinate this into a reasonable
8:10
uh fact simile of uh a table of contents essentially and I should mention by the
8:15
way the folks we're going to give preference to folks who are uh participants and who are registered at
8:22
National startups directory.com National startups directory.com is our sponsor
8:27
and this is a uh service that I built and you can participate free just like
8:33
they have uh you can see there's a coupon code there on the screen the national startups directory is simply
8:38
what it says it's me trying to help you guys by creating a directory so that everybody can list their startups in one
8:44
place why is that a good idea so that we investors can find you so the idea is to
8:49
create a sort of a Marketplace I guess and um you list your startup and you can say a little about your startup or a lot
8:56
and that way we can build up a library so that investors have a centralized place to find early stage investment
9:03
opportunities so it's a win-win for both sides the more you guys post your startups we send out News letters worldwide we have a worldwide reach of
9:09
course and you know we have uh 75,000 or so members in startup cities uh 45 48
9:17
cities around the world now thanks to all of you for participating but if you list in National startups directory we'll start pumping your uh startup news
9:25
out to all of them so it's a virtuous cycle creating more opportunities for you by introducing you to more investors
9:31
so to drive attendance and uh use of that service that we built which took a lot of time and money of course we're um
9:37
inviting you to pitch uh no sorry if you want to pitch we're giving priority to the folks who are listed there okay so
9:43
that's who gets priority and if you want to check it out there's a code on the screen there and you can go list
9:48
yourself there as well all right so let's go and bring on our friends
9:55
and who we got backstage there's a bunch of folks back there let's see here
10:00
here how do I do this okay they keep changing the interface okay so Wendell and kuram and Jess Dante carry Gia
10:08
Chelsea Eric and Jos please turn on your cameras I'm not going to bring you on unless your camera's on so Wendell is
10:14
here hi everybody how are you good nice to see you and Carrie back again hey
10:20
Carrie and J as well good to see you and Chelsea Here Comes Chelsea and Eric and
10:27
another one excellent okay I'm getting lots of messages the room is full like I said so if you're trying to get in and
10:32
you can't you just got to wait your turn these folks are going to talk first and then we're going to they'll cycle out
10:38
and we'll bring in some other folks and okay Dante turned on his camera good
10:44
Dante there's Jos and Jess Jos and Jess and kuram you need to turn on your
10:50
cameras if you want to join us okay so this is our opening lineup okay so nice
10:56
to meet all of you um welcome to the show uh if you can give me a smile are you all paying attention you got your
11:01
cameras on hello yeah there we go okay cool all right guys nice to meet you all right so I'm just going to go around the room and we'll see who's who and we'll
11:07
see who wants to go first and what they want to talk about so Gia nice to see you again what uh what's on your mind today just give me the super quick
11:13
version so I can order things okay thank you so much this is question from our co-founder recently she was approached
11:22
by investor and that company the the company is education technology company
11:27
asking for like the International Globe growth so my question is about is that
11:33
possible you share us a bit about your views how could you how you analyze this
11:40
situation is that possible for a company based in the UK gos Global for for
11:46
example to the United States and with our technology okay interesting all right
11:52
that's a complex one so we can get to that thank you for being here nice to see you again all right um looks like
11:57
Wendell how about what would would you like to do today wend hi everybody so my name is Wendell I currently run a
12:04
delivery company uh in New York City and we're creating a new startup for the
12:09
underserved Market of bodegas in New York bodegas a small family home uh
12:14
stores they sell food and groceries and they're very under represented and we have a product to get them online cool
12:21
so do you want a pitch or do you have a question about that absolutely so no I do want a pitch practice my pitch I'm doing uh my first big pitch event
12:30
tomorrow kind of warm up okay that's that's pretty much my goal now okay that
12:36
sounds good nice to see you and Carrie's back hey Carrie nice to see you hi are you um so all I am from St Bonaventure
12:45
Academy um it's a school startup and I am just here to practice my pitch okay
12:52
good to see you again all right just putting these in order and then this is Dante hello Dante
12:59
hey everyone um I'm Daniel uh well that's my real name but the way Dante is my you can say my
13:05
nickname I'm here just mostly to know more about marketing uh but for example yeah we have a startup and just I would
13:12
like to know ways how we can involve that and the ways how we can get
13:18
audience perhaps and yeah mostly here well to increase my knowledge and perhaps on on marketing okay do you have
13:25
a specific question or pitch or just kind of in general well I'll just here I'll adapt
13:31
and if I'm G to come up with something I I will ask thank you okay fair enough nice to see you okay and next to you is
13:38
let's see who's that Chelsea hello Chelsea hi I'm in saman capistrana just down the
13:45
road from you yeah and I'm hoping to practice my pitch for my startup launder today okay
13:51
perfect great thank you for that and then next to you is Eric hello Eric hey
13:58
Scott hey everybody um my name's Eric um working with a a partner on developing a
14:06
Marketplace in the Bitcoin Noster space um definitely wasn't expecting to be uh
14:11
backstage I'm just curious to to watch everyone else's pitch and and learn uh
14:16
about how to approach a very early stage startup and get seed funding but okay
14:22
perfect definitely relinquish this spot if someone else wants to be up here sure well that actually I was gonna you read
14:28
my mind uh you and Dante both if you guys don't have specific questions or a pitch can you I sorry to do this we only
14:34
have so much capacity can you leave here and go over on YouTube or LinkedIn happy to have you here you can participate in
14:39
the chat but I'm trying to put people on camera who want to talk so nice to meet you guys hope to see you again let's do
14:46
that okay um all right so then uh who we got last here thank you Eric there goes
14:53
Eric and J and kuram hey kuram nice to see you hi my name Isam I and founder for we
15:00
me and Scott are from the about the same city we meet quite a bit of different events uh we are create we have created
15:08
a startup uh and start in pre-order for AI for Consumer which is a smart home
15:14
and security space so you don't have to live with the emotion alerts and personal alert but we exactly tell you
15:21
what's going on in your life and when it happens and when is important important for you to know excellent so did you
15:28
want to pitch today or you have a question I want a question okay good to see you again and it's a two minute
15:33
spech right SC yeah up to two minutes is the idea right okay we've got a couple more here so let's see um gii did
15:42
Chelsea Jos who's Jo hey Jos nice to meet you hi nice to meet you too hi
15:47
everyone my name is Jos and I'm the CEO of a company called einon Innovations I'm from Australia but I'm currently in
15:53
France not to watch the Olympics but to work and um we've developed a machine
15:59
that can automatically IR close so we're a startup company with about three years in um but preferably I don't want to
16:06
pitch today I just want to observe observe so happy to relish my position too okay fair enough well nice to meet
16:12
you good day and thanks for being up early and uh we'll see you yes if you can tune out for a second and move over
16:18
to uh the public channels that would be awesome great to meet you all right I hope to be back in Australia again real
16:24
soon one of my favorite places for sure okay Sankar hello SAR how are
16:30
you hello sir hello hello what would you like to
16:36
talk about today I want to start a luxury watch brand
16:43
okay so how to get large amount of
16:49
investment okay so that's your question okay we can come back to that that's
16:54
cool nice to meet you all right so that's oh we got a couple more let's just check here add Ashwin and Cat wow
17:02
Full House this great looking group can everybody give me a quick smile hi everybody I gotta post these on social
17:08
media right it doesn't happen until we all look happy and you know post it on Instagram right so great to see you come
17:14
on cat you're gon not smiling you just arrived there we go thank you okay all right nice to meet you okay so cat
17:20
what's on your mind today uh I want to do my pitch for sparked innovations. a
17:26
okay perfect thank you that was very concise and ashin how about you so I would also like to our early early stage
17:34
startup and specifically sort of like ask a question asked the question that you know how do you raise sort of like a
17:41
preciate round without customers okay where and sort of like a landscape where like having customers and showing that's
17:49
enough we we'll do that we can definitely do that question but I got the idea but you want to pitch and ask a question yeah okay cool okay so I'm
17:56
going to turn everybody's cameras off again and let me digest sorry uh let me just give me a second and I will figure
18:02
out what order we can put these in so that we keep everybody uh entertained so thank you all for being here in the
18:07
meantime the chat room is active obviously want to welcome everybody for um for joining us uh let me put up let's
18:15
see there's a question there about the directory let's put that up again this
18:21
is there so that's the startups directory that we have built and it is open for you and I think we're going to
18:27
give uh priority to our friend Wendell because he is has a listing there as
18:32
well as wanting to pitch but Wendell if you got a minute I think before we do that let's just do some baseline
18:38
question and Karam also he's a member uh and Carrie as well okay um and then okay
18:46
so cool all right but let's start with a basic question I think um Ashwin had the most um uh broadly appicable question so
18:54
let's start there and this might help Sankar as well in terms of how to raise money let me just's see Pitch okay so a
19:03
lot of pitches today okay so let's just lay the groundwork a little ashn I'm going to invite you back up and let's talk about what you were saying there I
19:09
told you you'd get a chance right so um as soon as you said what you were interested in I had an idea that that
19:14
might be useful okay so there's ashin hey ashin nice to meet you where are you calling from nice to meet you as well
19:19
I'm I'm calling from India right now but my co-founder and the startup is in the bay oh nice all right okay so let's
19:27
start we can get to your pitch later but let's uh talk about your the background you were giving for a minute in terms of
19:33
what your company's doing and then what you're trying to achieve in terms of fundraising yeah so we are a uh we are
19:41
basically an AI startup that uh aims to streamline Supply procurement for
19:46
medical and dental clinics so this is going to be uh sort of like one tours of
19:52
knowledge for Supply inventory uh for both clinics and vendors as well as
19:58
direct line from vendors to clinic so just removing middlemen and related inventory and
20:04
financial tools that are going to be supported by AI okay excellent exciting so what you
20:11
what are you looking at funding wise then that's what's your question so currently we are at zero funding we're
20:17
very early stage we just finished an mvpn deployed it yesterday oh congrats
20:22
so yeah we have some meetings set up with uh some angels that uh we were able
20:27
to sort of connect through Linkedin and through uh sort of like mutual friends okay so we're going to sort of like do
20:34
that over this week refine our pitch decks or data rooms or one pagers all of
20:39
the investment materials and basically that's where we are the I guess the sort of like the
20:46
chicken and neeg problem here would be that we need investment to get to a point where we can reliably have paying
20:52
customers yeah but we also need customers to show uh you know that we
20:58
are a valid idea and we do deserve funding yeah so that is something that I
21:04
was wondering we do have you know we do have our champion customers that are helping us through beta testing you know
21:11
people that we've been able to talk to and collect data clinics uh mostly clinics and uh so you actually have
21:18
customers already uh I wouldn't call them customers because they're not paying they're more like sort of helping us in
21:24
development of the product so we get some level of access to like you know
21:29
their experience uh you know their data that type of stuff yes okay so they're
21:35
more like helping us out but we don't have I don't think we're at a point where we can actually ask them to pay us
21:40
money uh for the MVP as it is now fair enough okay so let me I'll I'll start
21:47
talking and you can wave your hands when I go off the rails okay so um so I
21:52
totally can relate to what you're saying and I that's why I pict your is as a first question because I think probably most people listening are face ing this
21:58
similar chicken and egg problem when we're Founders we're focused on the product and how we can make something
22:04
better in the world and pretty soon we realize we need money to make that happen right and how do you do both at
22:10
the same time it's a Time issue as much as a as a money issue really right because you're trying to build an airplane that already is leaving the
22:17
ground and you don't have the wings on yet right so it's a challenge so I I'm validating you and sympathizing I've been there um and this applies like I
22:24
said I think also Sankar was your name I think who wanted to start a luxury watch brand now luxury watches and AI assisted
22:30
Dental procurement are two totally different things but you're both in the similar situation it sounds like because
22:36
you've got something but not enough to demonstrate the cash flows that traditional investors want banks are
22:42
what most of the world runs on they take loans from Banks or you could even take uh credit card money right and run on
22:48
that but that presumes you have money to pay it back and you don't as a startup that's the definition of a startup in some ways right you don't have the money
22:54
that's the point so what do you do so you're on a great uh path already and
23:00
Sankar for your watch brand maybe not so much but I don't know so much about that but um for a software company well any
23:07
company really investors don't invest in ID as much anymore and I think Ashwin knows this right that's why he's already
23:14
he had some great things about um they have MVP in in process they have
23:19
customers demonstrating interest um all these kind of things are what you need to demonstrate what's called traction
23:26
and investors these days are convinced that well I don't they're convinced I think they're right and I'm one of these
23:31
investors I'm putting my investor hat on now we see so many deals we don't have to take the kind of risks we used to 25
23:39
years ago when I started my first company and raised my first Venture round you could kind of have an idea and
23:44
the internet was growing so fast and it was so new you could just kind of say we're gonna go this way and customers
23:49
will show up and people would be like okay I've never heard of that before that sounds like a good idea we're gonna give you some money these days those
23:56
paths are well worn right everybody
24:26
guess I'm back all right so what I was saying is traction is what investors are looking for these days in other words
24:33
our job is to make the most amount of money with the least risk possible the least risk possible means well you
24:38
already have a million dollars of profit profits every month well if you get to that stage you don't need the money
24:44
right so the tension is between what can you show that makes it here's what
24:50
here's my point what can you show in terms of traction that makes it look like your profits are going to be
24:56
inevitable what can you show show like a series of dots that form into a line
25:02
that form a pattern that takes off and you can say well we have this happened and then this happened and this happened
25:09
and we're pretty sure this is going to happen and this might happen too and if that happens then this is going to happen and you need to present that as
25:15
like look this is this is a foregone conclusion we're the people we're going to do this because we know these folks
25:20
and it's about and you already have a bunch of the pieces Ash I'm going to stop talking in a minute let you respond but you have some uh you have uh minimum
25:28
able product in the market you have people who have voted already by engaging with you maybe they haven't put
25:33
in money maybe they're not buying the product yet but they seem like they're going to anything that you can show like
25:40
that is what we call traction which is demonstration here's my definition of traction roughly I'm working on my next
25:47
book so you're helping me think this out traction is anything that shows somebody else gives a that's that's the
25:54
bottom line right because when you're a founding team you guys all convince each other that this is amazing but investors
26:00
we just we literally can't afford to believe you because everybody's a good talker that's not enough who else cares
26:07
and that's why for example you don't find solo teams much anymore like a solo preneur isn't enough we need to know
26:13
that you've convinced some other people this is a good idea and those are your co-founders or your teammates and then we want to see that you've convinced
26:18
some customers and they may not have paid yet because the product may not be finished but maybe you have you know a
26:23
relationship or they've let you put their logo on your website or you've signed a letter of intent or a memorandum of understanding or or
26:30
there's some you know promise ideally a purchase order that says when this is available we've got $100,000waiting for
26:37
you you know that kind of stuff um that is what traction looks like before you have revenues is that helpful am I on
26:43
the right yeah it is so for example let's say another so we did apply to YC
26:50
okay and hold on YC is y combinator y combinator yeah best known
26:57
startup accelerator based out of silicon value yeah so we did apply and we ended up finishing like the top 10% we didn't
27:04
quite get you know through uh but is is
27:09
that throw is throwing that out also fraction like is every piece every piece that sort of validates our idea yes that
27:17
you know beyond let's say like the paying customer you know so the point is I guess to like sort of like sort of
27:25
like let's say put that together and you know throw that in as our pitch before
27:32
you know I guess pre-revenue yeah that's right because think about it from our point of view for a second you
27:38
come in you're a brilliant handsome guy with all the answers like that's
27:43
awesome but if you don't no one else has agreed with you then you're an actor I
27:49
don't invest in actors right I invest in businesses so what can you show me and it it's better if it isn't like a
27:55
thousand tiny things right it's some significant on right so use your best judgment but yeah you know like you said
28:01
so yeah YC and you got down you got accepted at all as a thing right I mean that's very competitive right so you
28:07
know in the University World okay you didn't go to Harvard but you went to the University of Michigan well that's man
28:13
that's totally good you know right so maybe you're still a real real guy right and you are proving that it's something
28:19
bigger than what's between your ears and your dreams that there are other people that care and so yes would I would you
28:25
know again not a thousand little things like your mom you gave you a round of applause and your uncle bought you a new
28:31
toothbrush because he was so excited you know but like real stuff and it you know six or 10 bullet points of those trying
28:37
again to make an equation because we're as investors we're we're we're running numbers all the time so the more that
28:43
these can be Quantified is another Point like growth percentages or the number of this the number of that and we're
28:48
looking at those points and you give me six or eight points I'm putting them in an equation this plus this plus this
28:55
discounted by that multiplied by that I'm trying to believe you but you got to
29:01
give me some numbers to do something with so anything you can say is better than nothing and the better you know
29:07
more impressive things obviously are better so how's that understood okay yeah that that pretty much clears it up
29:13
for me excellent all right well I hope that was helpful so nice to meet you and I think you said you wanted to be back later to pitch too so I'm going to turn
29:19
you off but nice to meet you and we're going to move uh on to some uh pitches here so that was yeah sounds good thank
29:27
you you're welcome nice to meet you so that was Ashan checking in from India and I didn't go what city was maybe
29:33
he'll tell us later India's a big place right all right and then I think we were gonna bring on Wendell so Wendell wanted
29:40
to practice his pitch there he is hi Wendell Scott thank you for having me on
29:46
yeah you're welcome let me give everybody the quick version of the pitch so what we do for pitches here is take a
29:53
minute or two so not you know not a 10-minute pitch and there's no slides it's just a verbal thing just kind of
29:58
like you're having a conversation but I guess a structured conversation you might call it uh so 60 90 seconds 120
30:06
seconds and give us the what why where for and how much and uh then I'll try to
30:12
give you some supportive feedback and of course everybody that's listening please listen carefully and give Wendell suggestions to how he can approve
30:18
because even if he's a total rock star which I'm sure he is there's always room for improvement right even Olympic
30:23
athletes have coaches right so everybody's going to contribute here and hopefully help wend to the next level because he's on stage tomorrow he said
30:30
right your first pitch tomorrow so okay so here we go so give us a minute or two and tell us about Synchro Foods sure uh
30:36
we are secr foods my name is Wendell Ares I bootstrapped an online Management
30:41
Services for restaurants where I manage order online orders we have uh um a
30:48
tablet that we also consolidate all the orders for them to make it easier uh so I've been doing this for about four
30:54
years already I've been very successful with it and right now we have an opportunity to go after a big sector of
31:01
of uh in New York City that's been untapped uh the reason being because most of the owners are Hispanic or
31:08
they're foreigners they don't speak the language and they're not TCH and that's uh the grocery stores or AKA bodegas in
31:15
New York a lot of these bodegas they sell uh groceries uh well they do or
31:20
they all sell groceries but a lot of them sell hot food as well sandwiches street food burgers and we've uh had we
31:28
already signed about 20 of them uh in my current uh company and we're doing really well with them we do about $8,000
31:35
a month in online sales now so they went from zero to 8,000 and we decided to do
31:41
something strictly for them so we it's three services that we're going to provide one is a bodega app where people
31:47
could order they could order from their favorite Bodega whatever it is whether it's a chop cheese sandwich a Philly
31:52
cheese steak or a gallon of milk uh we also manage everything for them meaning
31:58
that it doesn't matter they don't speak their language or they're not TCH savy we are now become the managers we open
32:03
up their Uber accounts we manage all the menus we do everything for them so that's been very successful so far with
32:09
restaurants for me and we're going to put that with that niche market that's untapped besides that we're also going
32:15
to offer an app that the same tablet and the same Hardware thatas could order uh from the provision provider so they meat
32:22
providers we're going to have deals in place to get uh because of the buying power so the more the bigger our Network
32:29
the more buying power we have to go to a meat provider and say hey how much can you give us a box of chicken for and
32:35
then we could have make make it really easy for them to order right under the hardware that they're already using uh
32:40
and you know take some commission from there and I will say the third uh phase of the project is to build the network
32:48
of bodegas and build a virtual brand with the food that bodegas sell so basically all these bodas is pretty much
32:54
sell the same thing and just like uh Mr B had Mr Beast Burgers we're going to
32:59
have our virtual brand called fritura King fritura is uh the fried food the
33:05
street food that everybody loves the $8,000 we sell a month from these bodegas is mostly that fried food and uh
33:12
we're gonna make a virtual brand where anybody in could City in the city uh could look up a commercial order online
33:19
and the closest Bodega will deliver the food for them nice um so we already like I said we're already working with about
33:25
20 bodegas on the first phase which is management and the online sales now
33:30
we're ramping up to do the second phase which is the the provision ordering uh
33:35
my co-founder is the president of uh we're running I think we're running out of time here wrap it up I guess one last
33:43
thing is that my co-founder which I forgot to say uh he's the president of of the biggest Bodega Coalition in the
33:50
city and he'll bring all his Resources with getting clients and dealing with the provision providers excellent okay
33:57
well good job so I think thought was very good I I'll have some suggestions of course but I want to invite everybody
34:02
in the chat room out there YouTube LinkedIn uh Facebook wherever you're watching if you have suggestions I'm
34:08
sure that Wendell would appreciate it and just to point this out if we do this uh I do this every month and there's a bunch of these episodes online already
34:14
so if you're working on your own pitch you can go back and watch other pitches and see the feedback that I and other people have given them it's kind of a
34:20
free uh master class in pitching if you want and it's all there on YouTube for you if that's helpful okay so
34:26
congratulations W that was nice uh nice job um so I'm gonna I'm going to focus
34:31
on the negatives not the positives because you well let me do the positives just to be nice you're well spoken you're personable you speak clearly
34:38
which helps um you know the business which is very good sometimes people are a little shaky right um so I can tell
34:43
you've done this and you know the thing you you have a nice way like you your confidence inspiring like if if this was
34:51
a business in to me I like this is a guy I trust this guy so that's and that's hard to teach right so luckily you're
34:57
you're with a nice personality so um okay so what could you do better um
35:04
several things most of that was about the business sorry it was about the product I didn't hear very much about
35:10
the business I'm an investor I don't want to know so much what you're doing as how you make money so the only
35:17
numbers I heard in the whole thing were 20 20 Bodega signed up and 8,000 a month
35:23
in revenues so that's good but I need like five times of numbers like how many
35:28
bodegas like how many you going to have in a year like how many did you have last year like give me some sense of growth and then the number the 8,000 a
35:36
month in revenue is great but that's obviously I'm thinking gross revenue what's the net revenue like how much do
35:42
you guys make what's your cut of this right because you could have a billion dollars in Revenue but if you only make a dollar a year you're gonna go out of
35:49
business right so you don't need to answer me now but these are things that investors are gonna ask you right so 8,000 a month sounds good because it's
35:55
way more than zero which is good but I'd like to know what was it last month what's it going to be in six month and
36:01
especially what's your cut because that's the business and that's the piece your whole talk was missing and I call
36:06
it a talk it wasn't really a pitch you kind of were just talking about the business if you're G to sell the business it's got to be a Pitch you have
36:12
to have a little more of an agenda and you need to give us what they call the unit economics if we sign up one Bodega
36:20
we expect this much per month from them a gross order volume of this and our cut
36:25
is this which is a margin of this percentage over time we expect that margin to grow because of this like give
36:32
us the you know when you're in there getting your hands dirty how are you g to make more money you know how do you
36:38
make the money in the first place and then how are you going to grow that you hid one of your best features which is your co-founders ahead of this big
36:44
Association because one of the hardest things is to get distribution especially with something Mom and Pop stores right
36:50
but this guy I guess has already got relationships I would put that way earlier in your pitch right because or
36:56
your own background because you didn't say about who you were either other than that you've been doing something similar I guess but that's important especially
37:03
in this Mom and Pop shop because those relationships are critical right um it sounded like you have a pretty good
37:09
accent I'm guessing you might be bilingual in Spanish that might be worth pointing out so that's a fure like I
37:14
can't do that right so that's an advantage right um You you know think about what makes you different and
37:19
better not just what is the business but why I should care essentially right um
37:26
and then two there were two conf few things things you talked about I guess there were there were three something
37:31
and it wasn't clear to me again you don't need to answer me but just try to be clear there three different companies
37:37
or they're three different phases of the same company so just be careful with your lingo because if you're doing three
37:43
companies and it's three phases that's three times three is nine that scares investors because you're doing too many
37:48
things at once like don't don't like be careful about how you talk about your plans because we want to invest in one
37:55
thing and that we want that to be all you're doing right we don't want you doing anything else do this and make a
38:01
zillion dollars for both of us so just try to make it sound focused I know as an entrepreneur you want to you want to
38:07
cover all the bases and be sure that we understand how clever you are and that you're going to do all these cool things and all these opportunities you've
38:13
spotted but that has to be balanced with Focus because distraction is the death of more entrepreneurs than uh than lack
38:19
of funds right they get too scattered so okay well that's what I thought no
38:25
absolutely great feedback see let's see what people said in the chat room um let's see how do we what did any anybody
38:32
have any um suggestions in the chat room guys let's see I'm trying to get over there this interface is a little
38:39
challenging there we go okay um so a bunch of advice questions but who's got
38:45
uh suggestions for wend come on you guys don't be
38:51
stingy okay good questions from Lou and Delta and encyclopedia and Crestwood mon
38:57
sorry um all right well they're still warming up I guess I um I thought it was
39:04
good with those caveat I think you're going to be in good shape uh the hardest part to teach is knowing the business
39:10
and being friendly and articulate and you've got that so if you polish a little and focus more on the business
39:16
drivers rather than the product that's that would help and and don't feel bad that's what that's what we all do like
39:22
you start the business because you love the product and the process and the people right but investors especially um
39:29
VCS when you get to that r that level they have a mandate to invest in specific types of businesses and you
39:34
need to fit into that box so the sooner you give them the numbers the sooner they can decide whether they can help you or not corre all right thank you
39:41
very much cool all right nice to meet you hope to hear more about uh uh Synchro Foods in the near term and we're
39:49
gonna let our friend Wendel go from New York City and um when I lived in New York I loved eating at Bodega so ID
39:55
definitely be a a customer but I live in California now um okay
40:01
there we go so crestwood's got your feedback was dead on was waiting for the pitch yeah what did he oh what did he
40:07
need excellent point you didn't ask for anything that's a really good point thank you uh what are the numbers I kind
40:12
of said that but what did you need uh was a was a great uh point there so whenever you have a chance to pitch and
40:18
this is for everybody you want to ask for something right and even if it's not money of course you can say you know
40:23
we're looking for $2 million or whatever but you can also say we'd like introduction ctions to people like this
40:28
or we're hiring for this kind of person or you know whatever it is that would be
40:34
helpful when you get an audience people that take their time to listen to these kind of pitches we generally want to
40:39
help and we can't invest in everything so if you give us some ways to help you um you know I need an introduction to an
40:44
attorney you know something it can be pretty low bar or do you know an accelerator that helps people like us
40:50
those kind of questions um people we have wide networks and we do this because we want to help so be sure to
40:55
ask that's a great point all right so that was our friend Wendell let's move on here um okay so
41:04
Chelsea wanted to pitch K wanted to pitch um cat wanted to pitch as wanted
41:09
to pitch okay so let's do another question real quick Gia was here last time I'm gonna bring G are you
41:15
still here Gia G yeah okay let's talk about this crossborder thing for a second um
41:21
because I know we had a good conversation last time I just want to help you out uh and then we'll get back to more pitches so people the just a
41:28
quick version of the question and we'll see if we can help yeah thank you last time you helped us to understand how
41:34
could we approach to International Market and international investors and we did move quite well we received a few
41:42
like investors interest and among them one of them uh proposed to our
41:48
co-founders saying is that possible we with three three three founders together
41:54
join that company and that company is uh mainly for the Chinese and UK market
41:59
British market and they are they try they are currently considering like
42:05
increase their increase their capabilities in technology so we could
42:10
help them to do that and they are hoping to uh increase their International
42:15
markets for example in the United States and I'm not sure whether this could be a
42:20
good opportunity for us the company is uh in the education industry and uh
42:26
technology company looking helping the international students um increasing their studies
42:33
yeah that's the case I hope you could if possible could you give us your thoughts
42:39
if this is a good good good uh business and good opportunity for us I don't so what's the question uh the question is
42:46
if the education technology company um grow the company would be a good
42:52
opportunity for us to join and to help the company to grow in international market like
42:58
us okay so they're a us-based company and they're inviting to partner with you to enter the US market is that kind of
43:04
the idea U they are an a British company based in the UK but they have markets in
43:09
in China and in in the UK and they are looking for opportunity to grow in us oh
43:15
so you would partner together to enter the yeah they they were they were talking about the possibilities we are
43:22
joining their technology department to helping them to increase their uh
43:27
capabilities in software right okay so um if I'm understanding it correctly
43:33
then um yes it sounds like a good idea um it comes down to the details though
43:39
because you'd really need to know who owns what and who owes what and if things go well how does it work out and
43:46
if things don't go well how does it work out or if debts are incurred who pays them or if you raise money who get you
43:52
know who's gets the equity from that that how you split it I mean that's very
43:58
I'm happy to help but it's specific enough I don't I'm not sure I can the Ed edtech Market in the United States is
44:04
certainly huge uh I guess I would add that um it kind of goes up and down and
44:09
a lot of investors have been kind of burned with it because it seems so easy and it's a lot harder than you think but
44:15
you probably know that um but um so I think partnering could be a a great idea
44:20
um it's just it's just hard to tell without knowing more specifics the a lot of it would come down to it sounds like
44:26
if you're both to the US markets who has the best networks into those uh Target
44:31
customers already and that's really hard to quantify because uh even if somebody
44:38
has a fantastic contact just the introduction enough isn't alone right so they shouldn't get all the credit for
44:44
that then you have to set up Milestones about who's going to follow up and who's going to deliver and and tracking hours
44:51
and it can get very complicated very quickly so I don't think I can help you more than that if you know I can put um
44:57
This is complicated enough I I do do some private Consulting if if if you wanted to talk through it more um I have
45:04
to charge for that just because it takes my time hold on I'll put up the URL if I can find it um for you and your team if
45:11
you'd like to speak there we go um so I do video I'll do review people's decks
45:16
or do private calls um but you know it costs I charge like $500 an hour just because I have to
45:24
otherwise I don't have any time um and that's still half of what lawyers in this space charge so if that would be helpful you or anybody else happy to do
45:30
that um but I don't have a I don't have an easy answer for you but you know that that's why you're here right it's a complicated question so is that helpful
45:38
at all yeah okay great well nice to see you J hope to see you guys I hope it keeps
45:43
going well for you it sounds like you're you're making progress and that's the hard part to do is um like we were talking about um with Ashwin a few
45:49
minutes ago was making sure anybody else cares and the fact that some other company wants to partner with you is
45:56
really good sign because presumably if it's a company these are adults who have some expertise and assets and they see
46:02
value in what you're doing that's a perfect example actually Ashwin or other folks if you're looking for traction and
46:08
people want to partner with you it's maybe not quite as good as customers but it's pretty good right to have somebody
46:14
again validating the ideas that you have and showing that the market is interested in your Solutions that's the
46:19
key okay so let's get on with some more pitchesso let's go on um okay let's go
46:26
to to Chelsea is the next one on my list here is Chelsea hiel hi nice to see you
46:34
so um you heard the pitch ideas uh structure does that sound good yes yes
46:40
and I'm ready to give it a go all right let's do that then so why don't you take a minute or two and tell us about your
46:46
company and what you're looking for and everybody else please uh chime in with suggestions of how she could be I'm sure
46:51
it's going to be great but how she could be even better so go ahead Chelsea whenever you're ready awesome okay well
46:56
my name is Chelsea and I am the founder of launder and launder is an online
47:02
fashion repair service specifically catering to the luxury consumer and we
47:07
offer the trust transparency and experience that we know this consumer craves and I built launder based on my
47:14
own personal experience buying my first luxury handbag I wanted to wear this thing day in and day out but soon
47:21
realized that with that kind of wear comes wear and tear and I only had the
47:27
other option of putting it in the back of my closet waiting for a special occasion which as a mom of two does not
47:33
exist and so I realized the only place I could turn to for help was my local mom
47:39
and pop cobbler who didn't really elicit the level of trust or expertise that I felt comfortable with and so that's why
47:46
I built launder uh we start with a simple platform online that gives you access to high quality repair for luxury
47:53
goods and I crafted the consumer experience based B on what I know about this consumer giving them that trust
48:00
transparency and coner service that I know that they crave and I know we've nailed it because all of our reviews so
48:07
far have been five stars and after launching our MVP about six months ago
48:13
we're already seeing incredible traction we've already serviced over $200,000
48:18
worth of luxury items and 20% of our customer base have already come back for more and so today is the day we need to
48:26
start to scale uh so I'm seeking $770,000 worth of investment so I can
48:32
perfect our MVP platform and put marketing dollars behind an impactful
48:37
launch and we have other Tailwinds at our advantage showing the true potential
48:42
of launder fashion sustainability is a huge topic right now with circularity at
48:47
the Forefront of that and luxury resale is is growing exponentially so more than
48:55
ever before everyone has access to luxury and the biggest reason to believe is me I am a Kiwi from New Zealand I am
49:04
a brand Builder since ages ago with a resume that shows that I have grown Brands like ug Australia Compass real
49:11
estate and chipotle uh so I know how to make uh Brands resonate and I plan to do
49:17
the same for launder okay very nice uh just writing
49:23
notes okay very good nice nicely done have you done this before no this is my first time I don't know why I could kind
49:30
of tell but it wasn't because it wasn't great I just I guess I it was very well done very yeah seriously nicely done um
49:37
sorry I dropped my notes um so great um I have some feedback of course but everybody in the chat room please let
49:43
Chelsea know what you thought and help her out I think that was really good for her first time my goodness um you're
49:49
gonna you're going to nail this very quickly I think I can tell you you have professional experience in your background um okay so let's uh again
49:56
everybody uh excellent job says Crestwood okay that's a good start um so what would I do differently is the
50:02
question right because you you're well spoken uh and you know personable and so forth so what could you do better or
50:09
differently um I guess the main thing is that I don't know anything about fashion
50:15
handbags so I think you need to back up on that and you know you have to Justice with your audience right if you meet
50:22
someone who's a fellow like a customer who already uses the service you can skip this but most Angel Investors they
50:28
look like me right they're 50 plus white guys who do not are not your target market right so you've got to back up
50:36
and say something I don't know what it is but fashion hags are a thing they're
50:41
a really big thing and get with numbers I mean like this kind of Market the typical price point is this people own
50:48
them like this like you got to tell me like if you talked about like golf clubs you'd have no problem right but you're
50:54
talking about handbags So and I've I've lived this with some startups that I'm involved with like that do cosmetics and
50:59
stuff like that and the men in the room their eyes just glaze over immediately right so you've got to relate this to
51:04
your audience and if you're pitching if you can find an angel uh Investment Group that is women this will be easier
51:10
right like golden seeds or OCA um actually there's a couple in Orange County I should introduce you to um but
51:17
um start with some context and this is true for everybody the number one problem I see with pitches and unfortunately this is a little bit for
51:23
you but for everybody else as well is you're so close for the product you presume we know what you're talking about we have no idea what
51:30
you're talking about I never thought about a $2,000 handbag before right well if I did my wife or daughters wanted it
51:35
I said no you I try to stay away from it right so you got to bring this down so I can digest it right why is this
51:41
interesting all right you got the point on I I can make jokes about that all day but it's a mismatch right so you gotta
51:47
you got to bring it into terms that I can understand okay second um you have some great corporate experience it
51:52
sounds like um and you should probably bring that up sooner so because you you look professional but tell us you know
52:00
those are big Brands you're talking about right um you answered my question I could hear your accent I was guessing Aussie or kiwi and it was kiwi so yeah
52:07
sometimes it's South African so you don't want to be you know I know it's a hybrid at this point right fair enough
52:12
um you had good in terms of sharing some numbers so uh six months you had the MVP
52:18
out there the fact you're already in market and um generating Revenue you
52:23
should make a bigger deal of that right because you can hear a lot of other is are people earlier stage you actually
52:28
are in a you have a business this isn't an idea that's a big distinction like the it's zero to one right you're not
52:35
zero you're one it's binary it's one or the other you have a business so act like it right like we're selling this
52:41
kind of this much we did $200,000 serviced I had a qu I don't know what service means so you need to unpack that
52:47
this is similar what I said to Wendell he he did 8,000 a month but that's growth like what do you net right so
52:53
break down the pieces for it because again investors we want to do we're doing the math in our heads and if you
52:58
give us fuzzy numbers we can't do real math so 200,000 service that meant that we kept 20,000 of it our average take
53:05
rate is 10% margin we expect that to grow over time like this that that's what I need to hear so that I know it's
53:10
a business not a hobby um 20% recurring that sounded good you see I wrote those
53:16
numbers down right I like that's what I need is the numbers I don't know is 20% a lot or a little in this context
53:23
honestly it doesn't sound that high but maybe that's because these are you know
53:28
I don't own 50 Handbags and need one repaired every week right but Netflix recurring has got to be like 80 or 90
53:35
right so if you're going to say that 20% you need to qualify it because it sounds low compared to most S software
53:41
subscription businesses sure um maybe there's a different way to frame it like you know customers who own six handbags
53:49
bring at least four of them every year or something you know what I mean like some other way to because 20% just
53:54
sounds low it's not maybe in this context but again I need more context um
53:59
the trends at the end were interesting you might want to do that up front Okay it's well I I don't know because it
54:05
Paints the picture that might be more of the context right but honestly those are also nice to have not you know the fact
54:12
that it's eco-friendly and so forth it's super cool but it's not going to change my investment decision right so you
54:17
might just drop it it's kind of up to you right it's just taking time when I'd rather hear about the numbers but up to
54:24
you kind of my biggest point is if you're only is the 70k you did a good job of asking for money that's great
54:30
everybody needs to do that $70,000 is not enough to be raising $70,000 is like
54:37
and I this may not be you and certainly wasn't me when I was raising money for my companies but a lot of people just put that on their credit cards so you if
54:44
you're gonna go to all the trouble of raising money I would try to raise half a million you know or some real money
54:51
because $70,000 at least to rich people they're like what you know like yeah you
54:56
know I'll just you know that's less than my private jet fly and Tak to fly across country you know kind of thing so so or
55:02
or like 25 Grand because it's one person right 70 is this weird kind of like you
55:08
need a chunk but not a real chunk so we're it makes it sound like you don't know the market got it and I don't know
55:16
you know this is no no shame at all like if you if you don't have that money or your friends don't have that money
55:21
that's fine but investors think that everybody once you're rich everybody's Rich you people right so it's it's it's
55:28
a real hole in our system and I spend a lot of time in this in my books and I it offends me frankly that people presume
55:33
everybody has money oh $300,000 just get that from your friends and family like I grew up poor like I don't have any you
55:39
know so no shame in that at all but the fact is 70 is too much for a person yeah
55:45
and too little for a group so yeah so anyway that's probably enough on that so
55:51
hopefully that's helpful anybody in the uh chat room let's see what else uh let's see well done very concise and
55:58
clear that's nice U mention your customer reach and profit that's those are good thoughts um why isn't this this
56:05
is supposed to show up on the oh I see hold on I'm in the wrong window give me a second here I'm gonna share that was a
56:12
nice
56:17
comment come on okay zakona says very well done very
56:23
mention your customer reach and profit so I kind of said that actually customer reach is good accredited by the luxury
56:30
Brands that's interesting if there's some sort of accreditation or something profit I talked about but
56:36
customer reach is interesting how are you going to reach these people that's a really good point that is the number one problem these days the internet is so
56:42
big how are you gonna find these people word of mouth is nice but that's not going to build a global brand right
56:48
you're going to need some kind of customer acquisition strategy and maybe you don't know yet and that's okay but
56:53
you should at least say something about it so that we know that you thought about it otherwise it sounds like you're you're building a a small lifestyle
57:00
business um and you want to look bigger um Tam Sams would be useful yep uh that
57:07
means total adjustable Market serviceable adjustable Market serviceable obtainable market and that that's part of the context question that
57:13
I had so I agree with that that was from our good friend LinkedIn user and then uh this one how much Equity so this is a
57:21
debatable point uh it's not wrong you can say 70k for what percentage that's
57:26
totally reasonable but a lot of times people don't do that because you're not sure yet or you want to save that for a
57:32
subsequent conversation um you might a good way to get in between that is to
57:37
say something about flexibility like we want we're looking for 70 grand at a
57:42
valuation of one million to five million or you know some gives some sense that you're flexible and an even better way
57:50
is to be more specific about the format we're thinking about a post money Safe Note a convertible note an equity round
57:56
you know some if you can just sound like you've thought about it that the whole point here is just to get to the next meeting so that would probably be
58:03
helpful as well all right so uh Delta Rising loves the sustainability angle so
58:09
yes a lot of people do right um but and I don't disagree I just don't know that that's GNA change the Investor's opinion
58:15
about the business sure you'd have to debate that yourself so okay how's that was helpful that was great I just have
58:21
one question um how do I know what uh data point to include in like a one
58:27
minute or two minute pitch and what to save for subsequent conversations yeah
58:33
that's a good question um how do you know what to say in the initial pitch I think in terms of an equation
58:41
okay some kind of numbers that tell me you're for real so um depends on how
58:48
long the initial pitch is but something I mean you come across pretty professional anyway normally I would say
58:53
lead with your brand marketing expertise or something like that but you you come across pretty professional anyway so
58:58
depending how much time you have may or may not include some of your corporate resume um just so that they know you're an adult but you seem like an adult so
59:05
maybe you can skip that thanks but then the rest is is numbers so the quickest
59:10
way to get my attention is to say we're and you I let me just do it without explaining we're attacking a target
59:17
market of $30 billion we have 300 customers paying an average of $100,000
59:23
a month with a 20% gross margin a 5% % profit margin we're growing at 15% a month
59:28
compounded I want to hear about it now I don't care what industry it is right
59:34
numbers are what speak to investors and what we really want to hear is it's a big enough market that there can be
59:40
money made without you like controlling the market if you say it's a billion dollar market and we're going to take a 95% market share right I mean
59:48
it's not right it's got to be a big Market you have a reasonable way a path to get there quickly and that that is
59:54
going to be um um that it's profitable and the number one thing as I said earlier in the broadcast was growth if
1:00:01
you can talk about how fast you're growing once you talk about growth it validates everything you have a product
1:00:07
yeah customers are interested and more customers are becoming interested that answers so many questions immediately
1:00:13
that I'm interested again I don't really even care what the market is if it's growing like crazy you know if there's a
1:00:18
rocket ship I want to see right so sure that's how it works so hopefully that's helpful no that's super helpful thank
1:00:25
you so much yeah nice to see you hope to see you in person one of these days we if you're local here and we have a lot
1:00:30
of events and hope you're on our calendar for the Orange County startup Council that's probably how you heard about this I guess yes absolutely and
1:00:37
thank you I'll take all the help I can get fair enough nice to see you okay so that was Chelsea and she's from uh
1:00:44
Southern California here like me and we're g to move on to um next is Carrie Carrie Carrie Carri
1:00:53
Carrie Grace So Carrie is gonna talk about her Academy I think but she can
1:00:59
tell us hi Carrie Hi how are you good how you doing
1:01:05
I'm doing well all right well let's hear you want to do your pitch yes I'm
1:01:12
ready hi I'm Carrie Grace CEO and founder of St bonov
1:01:18
Cleveland rocks as a Cleveland native who lives and breathes all things Cleveland yes I am a Browns fan it
1:01:26
breaks my heart to say that when it comes to education Cleveland ranks third lowest among the 100 largest cities in
1:01:33
the United States in addition almost one in four children live in a family with
1:01:38
no working parents and the percentage of Cleveland adults holding a bachelor's degree is the fifth lowest among the
1:01:45
nation's 100 largest cities St Bonaventure Academy believes education
1:01:50
is the solution we are looking for people who want to support our mission to break this socioeconomic strain that
1:01:57
often plagues marginalized communities we aim to do this by implementing our Innovative educational model in the
1:02:05
Northeast Cleveland area that will not only serve our students but the surrounding Community as well as we
1:02:11
think outside of the box St Bonaventure Academy will not only be Cleveland's
1:02:18
first International diversity and cult respect but it will also create a sustainable change to empower
1:02:25
Cleveland's most economically challenged area to break the cycle of poverty and
1:02:31
in turn the challenges that are created by poverty while I personally have invested thousands in this Venture 100%
1:02:38
of St Bonaventure Academy's board gives because we are committed and truly believe in our mission we are starting
1:02:45
to gain interest and supporters by using every opportunity we have to talk about the issue and use the data that we've
1:02:52
collected for over 10 years to Pro prove that Bonaventure is the solution unlike
1:02:58
any nonprofit schools currently operating in Cleveland we have developed a funding model that will ensure we are
1:03:05
completely self- sustainable by year seven of operations we are seeking
1:03:10
$400,000 for our preed efforts to secure a prime position for us to hit our
1:03:15
financial goals moving forward a building is just a building and idea just an idea and a plan just a plan
1:03:23
until you find the people who can Inspire others to make it come to life we are not only committed to this
1:03:29
Mission but its sustainability by applying clear expectations high standards we will not fail the world
1:03:36
deserves better Cleveland deserves better and our community deserves better join us in this amazing opportunity to
1:03:43
make a difference all right lovely so everybody
1:03:48
in the chat room help her out with any suggestions you might have I've got comments of course that's my role here
1:03:54
but um you'd like to hear more and especially if you'd like to support what she's building it sounds like she could
1:03:59
use the help and deserves the help um okay so very impressive actually
1:04:05
depressing right the statistics about Cleveland I don't know if you know this but I'm from Detroit so I I've very much
1:04:11
SYM with this um and I spent a lot of time actually the money the profits from my books here I'll go back to college
1:04:17
scholarships in Interstate Detroit where I grew up in Interstate Detroit so I can definitely relate um that being said um
1:04:25
couple things uh your reading which is not ideal right um we want people to
1:04:30
sound like you really know this stuff and I know you do so I would suggest a strategy that it was a little more
1:04:35
bullet pointy and just kind of Riff a little so it feels more authentic you know not that it was it was it was good
1:04:42
it was very clear but you're spending time word smithing instead of connecting you know what I mean okay y so I think
1:04:49
it would be more effective if you engage you know from live essentially um
1:04:56
the real problem is that this is not a business right and we're here to talk about businesses so I I'm happy to give
1:05:01
you the airtime because I believe in what you're doing um I don't have any real advice for you because investors
1:05:07
are looking for a financial return and that's 100% valuable thing to do but you're in the wrong room right there's
1:05:14
not anything I can do to help you nobody's G nobody in this audience is gonna have 400 Grand to do this because
1:05:21
if they give you 400 they want 40 million back right and that's not what you're doing and that doesn't mean what
1:05:26
you're doing isn't amazing and cool it's just it's a it's a different room right so I'm happy to to help and give
1:05:32
feedback but this this isn't the right venue for you right um this is more about grants and Foundation nonprofit
1:05:39
raising and stuff like that which is super important and I'm sorry to put you off but that's kind of it's a different
1:05:44
thing um so if you want to do this uh I'm trying to put on my nonprofit hat
1:05:50
because I do a lot of nonprofit work as well um the fact that you mentioned your all your advisers are investors or
1:05:57
contributors I think that's very powerful um if you're I think you're most likely to get
1:06:03
um support from the local community so I would lean on those folks like crazy you know who do they know who do they know
1:06:10
um because the story of Cleveland is a dramatic one but it's not going to get much attention necessarily in Los
1:06:16
Angeles or Atlanta or Mumbai right because they've got their own problems right so it's probably a Northeast Ohio
1:06:23
pitch rather than this which is global um and um you know there's a lot of
1:06:29
foundation you know this stuff I'm just trying to be helpful but you know at least in Detroit there's the kesy foundation the skilman foundation the
1:06:35
Davidson Foundation the Ford Foundation you know all that came out of the money that Detroit had when it was the Silicon
1:06:41
Valley of America I would presume there's similar stuff in Cleveland because there's plenty of money in Cleveland at least historically right um
1:06:48
and I would just be banging on those doors um to see who who you could get to pay attention um yeah that's about all I
1:06:56
got it's not my expertise is this a long way of saying this is not my expertise but I'm trying to help oh it's helpful
1:07:02
it's very helpful thank you let's see let's look at these other comments in the in the chat room it sounds like
1:07:07
you're an NPO is there a way you can make it into a company is this possible yes so zakona is hitting on kind of what I'm saying um yeah I don't could you I
1:07:16
mean legally zakona yes you could convert into a for propit you know type Corporation but is anybody gonna you
1:07:22
don't want to be trying to make a profit off of students right so it's it's kind of cross purposes that's why we have
1:07:28
nonprofits the in between is there's something called a public benefit Corporation I don't know if that would apply here or or care if you've heard
1:07:34
about those but those are companies that um it's a legal Corporation as opposed to a nonprofit corporation but it's
1:07:41
allowed to not just focus on shareholder returns but to have a social impact sort
1:07:46
of focus as well and so it's a different legal vehicle um I don't know that that
1:07:52
would help but since Theona brought it up um that I just that out there in case that would be helpful um let's see and
1:07:59
the Crestwood montor right Crestwood montor agrees um since they're in education as well no surprise um yeah a
1:08:06
little more about what makes it different uh and you need impact investors that thank you Crestwood that's the idea impact investors the
1:08:12
phrase there are investors that do this where they invest for what they call
1:08:18
impact so I would go on um like on Startup investors directory is the the
1:08:23
service that we have uh you search for imp investors or just Google impact investors Ohio and see what funds
1:08:30
foundations and Grant programs there are that uh can help you because it certainly sounds like a valid Mission um
1:08:37
but it's not something that like you know software and biotech investors are gonna they might do it in their private
1:08:43
time but it's not the business that we're talking about here today so no I I appreciate it the pitch
1:08:50
practice was what I needed because okay that's where I get nervous sure sure
1:08:56
well you did a fine job yeah so just yeah if you can practice a few more times and a little less reading a little
1:09:01
more from the heart I think you can have a really nice impact and then you just got to find the right rooms like a
1:09:07
hundred of them right yes thank you okay well great well nice to see you again I'm glad you've
1:09:13
glad you came back anyway even if we're not super helpful happy to support so hope to see Carrie again and certainly
1:09:19
sounds like she's got um got her work cut out for her and Cleveland deserves the help as many of our cities do
1:09:26
okay so we got a couple left here I got uh Karam and Cat uh if you guys are
1:09:31
still here let's see who's still in the chat room hanging out uh oh let's see cat is still here and um
1:09:42
who's that sorry some of you guys wrote in right okay John so John looks like he
1:09:51
came in and he's one of our um I'm just going to bring him on a second here John
1:09:56
I just want to see who you are there is hey John so are you with
1:10:02
the uh Qui quball quibble yep you got it I got shut my door hang on sorry one
1:10:08
second no that's okay I'll bring you back I just wanted to make sure it was the right guy because I don't know you we we'll have you pitch in a minute we
1:10:14
got three p three pitches before we wrap up um and I didn't know you so and you weren't here earlier so Okay so we've
1:10:20
got three pitches and let me just check the chat room folks I've been negligent I've been too too busy talking let's just and then
1:10:26
we're going to bring on um our our uh pictures so uh the comments here
1:10:33
um crowdfunding okay we could talk about crowdfunding for a minute um let me give
1:10:38
you the quick let's just put this up here for a second crowdfunding um I want to showcase this
1:10:46
one because uh it's a good question but also because Crestwood Monas stor has been helpful in giving feedback to other
1:10:51
people so want to thank him or her for their time so crowdfunding uh funding for production of a board game we create
1:10:58
to create struggling dyslexic readers how to read okay so crowdfunding is awesome uh and it's for exactly the kind
1:11:04
of thing you're talking about because you can Target a specific community of people who care a general marketing
1:11:10
campaign you know like TV commercials or something if you had that kind of money won't work necessarily because the number of people interested in
1:11:17
supporting a board game for dyslexics is going to be very small in a broadcast but a targeted crowdfunding campaign
1:11:23
could be great the problem is that that presumes you have a community it's a mistake to think that crowdfunding
1:11:29
platforms are available to help you Market your investment what they really are is an administrative platform that
1:11:35
can help you collect the money and do it legally and allocate the issuing of shares to the people that send in the
1:11:44
Investments so I'm a fan of crowdfunding but you really need to have
1:11:49
an audience of your own first if you have spent some time and money and effort developing say an email email
1:11:55
list or a Facebook Community or a a Discord Channel whatever your medium is
1:12:00
and you have hopefully thousands of people who are already interested in this kind of thing then that gives you a
1:12:07
place to Market your crowdfunding offer if you go and set up a crowdfunding offer and you don't have that audience
1:12:13
already it's not going to do you much good and in fact the crowdfunding platforms probably won't even accept
1:12:18
your offer because you're going to put something up and nobody you're going to throw a party and nobody's going to attend right so if you're ready to go to
1:12:26
market with an audience of your own to raise money then I think crowdfunding is amazing so happy to um
1:12:33
talk about that more in future episodes if you'd like um but that is my initial take and once you have that audience and
1:12:39
you do the crowdfunding you got to be ready to Market it like crazy so that's why you need your own audience um uh
1:12:46
Sankar Sankar keeps texting um yes the luxury watch brand yeah sard this show
1:12:51
is is mostly about software and biotech and life sciences Venture Capital back things um I tried to help you out with
1:12:58
the conversation with Ashwin you could rewind and watch that uh a luxury watch brand is not something you can really
1:13:03
start from scratch unless you have a bunch of money already it's very much a chicken and egg thing so you need to
1:13:09
develop some kind of traction maybe you have customers or design expertise or some competitive advantage and then you
1:13:16
just got to hustle um I would go work for Rolex for a while and see what you can learn um you
1:13:22
mentioned you're 15 years old and that's not NE necessarily A disqualifier but it suggests that you don't have industry
1:13:29
expertise so I would go get some industry expertise and figure out how the game really works um because you're
1:13:34
shooting High which I admire but you got to be realistic about it as well and I don't know that um a luxury watch brand
1:13:41
is something you can start from scratch very easily frankly I would see if you can reach out on LinkedIn or other places and find some mentors who know
1:13:48
that industry or maybe in your town there's some Jewelers or high-end Watch dealers and um see where you can start
1:13:55
and um you're going to have to take some baby steps and then walk before you can
1:14:01
run all right let's see uh is there a checklist an investor a Founder can use
1:14:07
to evaluate Investor's background ah this will help the founder prepare appropriate content to bring the
1:14:12
investor up to speed faster that's a great question actually I don't know of such a checklist but my next book that
1:14:18
I'm working on we talk a lot about how you need to do a lot more research on your investors when you're a new founder
1:14:25
you kind of see every person as a checkbook and you just hope that one of them sticks you know but that's not the
1:14:30
way to do it you end up in the wrong room you want to be in the right room and that requires investment beforehand
1:14:36
I would look at the short answer is I would do as much research as you can online uh we have a service actually let
1:14:42
me put this up actually I built this kind of for this question startup investors directory.com is just what it
1:14:49
sounds like it's a directory of startup investors and we've got 3,000 different early stage startup investors and the
1:14:55
reason I bring it up is because you can see other businesses that they have invested in and that's the best way to
1:15:01
qualify an investor is to figure out where have they had success and where do they spend their time already because
1:15:09
they've obviously that's their job essentially right so you don't want to pitch a biotech startup to an aerospace
1:15:15
investor and you don't want to pitch a luxury watch investment to someone who does restaurants right it's different
1:15:21
things all money is not the same so this is a place you could go and there's a a coupon code there and you can sign up
1:15:28
there and search there's H 48 different categories of investors I think and you there's keyword search and location
1:15:34
search and really drilling it down so that's something I would recommend to you if you're looking for um for chat
1:15:41
sorry for for investors and uh similar question here yeah your second question
1:15:47
is what's a polite way to get a background info on the investors that is what I would do I would I would not go
1:15:52
into a meeting where you don't already know as much about them as they do you that that's kind of a a starting place
1:15:59
um and that's kind of your job um you know before you go into a meeting you've
1:16:05
got to do your research otherwise you don't know who you're talking to you might be giving away your secrets
1:16:11
um as possible okay all right and then uh what
1:16:17
else here want to see if there are any other questions I missed
1:16:28
okay okay good all right so let's go back to our pitches and we have our friends in the back room I think we had
1:16:34
kurum and then cat and then um this new gentleman whose name was John right okay
1:16:41
so is Kum still here yes he is okay hold on a second guys let me get
1:16:47
my captions in order here so we can do this right all right let's
1:16:56
right lot of uh juggling here kerm and Cat and then John there we go okay right
1:17:03
okay does that sound good you guys all good for that Kum cat and John yeah okay
1:17:09
cool all right we'll be back in a minute then and we'll bring you all on and we're going to start with Kum couple minutes and kerum you've been you've
1:17:15
done this before so let's hear a couple couple minutes about Irvine
1:17:21
AI yeah so I my name is k I'm the CEO
1:17:27
and founder of r r is a startup developing smart revolutionizing a smart
1:17:33
home in security using AI uh for both homes and businesses we
1:17:39
have a smart integration for to bring convert AI uh like motion alerts which
1:17:47
you receive on smart home and security system then the personal alert are not enough for you to understand what's
1:17:53
going on in your life home more business we bring it to the level of exactly what
1:18:00
happens for example somebody trying to intrude your home or your child is running out of your home or your dog is
1:18:06
messing uh with your couch uh or your grandparent just fell down in your home
1:18:12
I came up with this idea when my kid ran out of the home and we found it after a
1:18:18
while and my ring camera just didn't tell us anything except somebody moved and that made me idea why this is not
1:18:25
tell me exactly what happened and that's how we embedded on this journey we have developed a very beautiful Edge
1:18:32
Computing device as a hardware uh there's a technological Gap big technological gap of edge Computing
1:18:39
which is not available in any inside any home that's why we named our brand home home brain we our technology brings out
1:18:46
the cost uh it makes more efficient and is highly customizable by customizing problems of
1:18:54
of for example baby monitoring or if you have somebody with a seizure in your home or in a business retail setting
1:19:01
somebody wants to reduce the retail theft uh our technology and model can be
1:19:06
used on the top of that we are building a AI marketplace where other developers
1:19:12
who can find other problems in homes and businesses can come and develop the AI model and run on our
1:19:18
platform uh and share it or sell it to other people like just like mobile app
1:19:25
so far we have sold 200 units as a pre pre-order we have filed 24 patents uh
1:19:31
which are pending right now uh and uh our sales has crossed about $50,000 in
1:19:38
our 40 days of marketing campaign so far uh we are looking to ship to our
1:19:46
customer uh very soon we have a contract manufacturing contract ongoing in
1:19:51
China uh we have a team of 25 develop ERS marketers CTO and Business
1:19:57
Development uh working on this from like three and a half years we are raising uh
1:20:02
2 million or a market cap of 10 million with uh 20% discount as a safe
1:20:08
note uh right now uh we most of this money uh will go to inventory and
1:20:15
marketing uh it's 150 billion Doll Market in US Europe and China alone uh
1:20:22
growing at a growth rate of 2 5% uh just 2% of this market share can
1:20:30
worth up to cross quarter million dollars in five years uh there's a big gap in Market uh
1:20:38
yeah think that's probably it okay all right great um lots of good information
1:20:44
in there you would be five times better if you just turned it around I want you
1:20:51
when we're done to go back and watch what you just said and start at the end and say all those things in reverse
1:20:56
order because it took you a minute and a half to even tell me that you had a product in Market I didn't even know
1:21:02
that you had a business I mean I know because I met you but like you didn't actually say till like a minute and a
1:21:08
half in that you have $50,000 of sales that's totally different than being a seed startup you actually have a product
1:21:14
and you're selling it and I think you said in 40 days of marketing you had some results whatever that was like
1:21:20
that's what we need you're oh you're a real company that's a totally different thing than an idea right so it took a
1:21:27
minute and a half and before you even said that you'd had 200 units sold and you had 24 patents why did you take two
1:21:33
minutes to tell me that that's impressive man you got to think about what's going to get my attention so I
1:21:38
would turn the whole thing around and start with there's a$ 150 billion Market
1:21:44
um I'm just looking at my notes uh 25% of something you said um you can maybe
1:21:49
save the ask till the end but you had a nice specific ask 2 million on a 10 million safe 20% disc that's good that
1:21:55
can still stay at the end right but the other stuff you have 25 developers you've been working on this for three and a half years um you have contract
1:22:01
manufacturers in place this is the business you spent almost all your airtime talking about the product and
1:22:06
the product is important but you need to like squish the product down to like 10 seconds you know we built the Next
1:22:13
Generation ring camera that provides AI assisted detection of unfortunate events
1:22:19
in your home done I did it because my son ran away one day done then talk
1:22:24
about the business right I got 25 people working for me we sold this much with this growth rate that's what it was 25%
1:22:31
growth rate $150 billion you know at a 25% growth rate the growth ratees what get our attention so all the content was
1:22:37
good just go you've got it man just like go listen and rearrange it and start
1:22:42
with what's of most interest to me I mean me the investor right give me the numbers so I can do the math big Market
1:22:49
growing fast selling well good conversions what's the margin interesting okay 2 people 24 patents
1:22:56
like like all of those are factors in an equation right that I'm doing in my head as you talk but I fell asleep because
1:23:02
you talked about the whole history before you told me any of that and that's my other Point Energy you're
1:23:09
talking like you just woke up like come on like dude have a coffee have a beer I
1:23:14
don't care you know like like go right we want to invest in the best guy in the world not some guy who's hanging out
1:23:21
with his 24 developers falling asleep right you're got to bring it so and I know you can I met you in person right
1:23:28
you have plenty of energy right you got to bring it when it's when show It's Showtime right you got three minutes or
1:23:33
two minutes or 10 minutes whatever it is be ready and knock us out because otherwise we're just you just run into
1:23:39
the you know mess with the the 50 other people were going to meet that day and I know you've got the personality for it
1:23:44
um and the other thing that was missing you didn't say anything about your personal background so that's probably worth saying why are you the guy you
1:23:51
know and I don't remember we've met but I don't remember your specific background and you don't need to tell me now now but you know whatever I have you
1:23:56
know the the piece about your son you said but you know are you an expert in AI or you're an engineer or you have
1:24:02
connections in the industry why are you the guy and these other 24 people that you're recruited why is this the team to
1:24:08
do it that's something that's missing so anyway I hope that's helpful I know you can do this so turn it around spice it
1:24:16
up and I think you you're gonna you're gonna nail it how's that thank you yeah you're welcome anybody else in the chat
1:24:22
rooms uh let's see uh okay okay SAR SAR I'm gonna have to ask
1:24:30
you to leave my friend but this is not you're right this is not the show for this I I don't know I'm not a luxury
1:24:35
brand luxury watch guy okay um this is your I admire your energy uh yeah
1:24:41
Charles says walk before you run yeah that's right um yes and I believe you should start it but you have to walk
1:24:47
before you run figure out what the steps are to get there okay let's move on to cat was next let's see here cat and then
1:24:57
uh okay here's cat there we go hello Cat there Scott how are you good give me one
1:25:04
second here this one there we
1:25:11
go so nice to meet you nice toet you you want to talk about I think is that right
1:25:18
yeah spark innovations. a cool inovation all right so you got
1:25:23
the uh the drill for the format you start whenever you'd like all right sounds great thanks again uh I'm Kat win
1:25:29
I'm the CEO and founder of spark innovations. a about a decade ago I started out as a Pharma sales rep but my
1:25:36
training back then was poor and it took me about a year to really find my
1:25:42
footing and I feel like people can get there faster right now the Pharma industry spends $2.2 billion on training
1:25:49
that's uh unscalable inefficient and it just costs a lot of money and people are
1:25:55
just throwing things left and right so I'm creating an AI platform that helps sales reps uh communicate effectively
1:26:02
and build better customer relationships through conversational um patterns that they
1:26:08
have with AI generated prospects so they get a baseline assessment they'll Converse they'll learn tactics and
1:26:14
techniques of a soft skill um and then they'll receive feedback on how to improve so in this manner we hope to
1:26:20
increase quota achievement accelerate Revenue generation as well as decrease costly um uh rep turnover rate because
1:26:28
that can cost upwards of like $250,000 per rep right now the traction we have is about 80% of people are ready
1:26:35
to adopt a platform like this in Pharma and we've got one letter of intent from hero um a small pharmaceutical company
1:26:43
uh we intend to focus on the pharmaceutical uh sector first but we
1:26:48
know that this has broad range in many different sales Industries and other vertical as well um it is a $ 1.3
1:26:55
billion do market in terms of sales but in the Pharma it's about 363 and over the next 5 years we aim to um gain about
1:27:02
36 million uh of that market go to market strategy plan to use my network
1:27:08
of over 100 people across 40 different Pharma companies as well as Pharma vendors uh to tap into their network uh
1:27:15
we do have competition in the market already which validates our idea um and so we plan to move forward I myself am
1:27:22
an award-winning National director of high impact Pharma teams uh and my CTO brings over 30 years of software
1:27:29
engineering experience even for uh Fortune 500 companies I'm looking for
1:27:35
$750,000 in pred funding we've raised 165,000 so far 50,000 of outside and 115
1:27:43
of my own and we plan to complete the MVP by the end of this year and on board the first 200000 users in
1:27:49
2025 so would love to have you join us excellent was very good can anybody tell
1:27:56
that cat has a sales background nicely done no well this is
1:28:01
she's a great example Kat I'm Gonna Make You the poster child today that's what you want to do you want to not read it
1:28:07
you want to be Smiley energetic and specific and bring a lot of numbers that's how it's done so the style is
1:28:13
great cat so nicely done um so in terms of feedback so everybody in the chat room please let her know what you think
1:28:19
she could do better or differently for next time happy to have uh the feedback that's why she's here um so let's talk
1:28:26
about what you can do better or different uh so I did think it was very good I'm not not kidding you're obviously very personable and you're
1:28:31
polished at this kind of thing that certainly helps um anybody who starts a startup and thinks they're not in sales
1:28:38
is wrong right every founder is in sales so it helps to actually be from sales when you're GNA do this kind of thing
1:28:43
right so um so what would I say so I liked your uh the your resume was good
1:28:52
the uh the target market I understand the scalability is very attractive
1:28:57
because that's what we're looking for in software investing right uh you see how I can see how this would scale um what I
1:29:04
think would be helpful as an investor is to hear a little sooner where you are because I wasn't sure well let me back
1:29:09
up more I would like to hear of two things what it is and where you are so
1:29:14
what it is you talked about it but I still I guess it's software like is it
1:29:19
in where is it installed does the client do it how is it paid for like you know just like what is it because you know
1:29:26
and I don't so I get the sense that it's a package of um Consulting coaching
1:29:32
active feedback metrics reinforcement very cool stuff I just I'm curious like how does it actually work you know and
1:29:38
this is a great example if you have something built you can show a demo or even screenshots would help a lot we couldn't do that here obviously right
1:29:44
but like is this something you know the rep is it you know is it on the screen when they're on a call or is it on their
1:29:50
phone or you like just like the mechanics of it just because it would bring it to life for me especially since you've built it right and that brings my
1:29:57
second point I wasn't sure what stage you were at till the end you started talking about the MVP and how much you'd
1:30:02
raise and stuff but it wasn't clear to me whether this was built or not um or this was an idea ore you were at so up
1:30:10
front a little quick more quickly establish um this is how this is how the
1:30:15
thing actually looks and works and then that will immediately inform the fact oh it's built right but a little more about
1:30:21
like we're at the seed stage we're looking to go from this kind of stuff to this kind of stuff and that would just
1:30:27
help investors understand you know okay it's early it's mid it's late you know just give us some context because again
1:30:32
we don't know unless you tell us and I and I don't know right um so I think that would help a lot because everything you said was good I was just left kind
1:30:39
of wondering exactly what is it and what is she G to want from me when she gets to the end of the two minutes because I
1:30:45
didn't know if you were this was just an idea or you had a huge team and you were raising a billion dollars I don't know
1:30:51
right until you tell me so that context would be a lot you know just managing customer expectations
1:30:58
um for you who's um somebody mute that's you guys hearing that let's see who can
1:31:06
I mute here uh yeah if you're not muted please do okay that helped thank you whoever
1:31:12
that was um the other piece that would be really helpful and you may not know yet but the piece I immediately want to hear like I got if I'm on the right
1:31:19
track like the sales coaching and so forth sounds totally makes sense and any software investor will will agree with
1:31:25
that idea that this could be done better so I can see the lane you're aiming for and I like it um but I would love to
1:31:31
know some Roi like not just for me as an investor of course but I mean for clients like if anybody has adopted this
1:31:38
what do they get out of it like numbers is what I'm looking for like you know we had three pilot programs and you know
1:31:44
increased effic increased close rates by 12% or you know just something like that would really bring it to life and it
1:31:51
would also again reinforce that you are in Market you're is not an idea this is happening so anything you could do about
1:31:56
Roi and the more the better like if you could say our average engagement is $50,000 a year and that leads to a sales
1:32:03
lift of six and a half percent on a recurring basis and our turn rate you know the more you got the better of course but you didn't do any of that and
1:32:09
maybe it's too early and that's fine but that's what invest that's going to be the next question right like who's done this and is it paying back the
1:32:15
investment because that's what they're GNA want to know and that's you're going to want to know that too right so you can say it to other clients so for fair
1:32:22
I just have one follow-up question in terms of you know you're talking about like Roi because we're not quite there
1:32:27
yet we have beta testing opening up in a few months um but I think the closest
1:32:33
traction I could show beyond that is like signups of the platform would that be okay yeah well anything's better than
1:32:40
nothing right so if you say if you have nothing then it's just an idea and I and I don't believe you because I hear a lot
1:32:46
of other people with ideas that have traction right so anything you can do you might uh rewind this I don't know
1:32:53
how late you when you joined us but earlier in the show today I talked about traction and how to demonstrate what you have but the short answer is anything is
1:32:59
better than nothing and the better stuff is better of course but yeah if you have signups that's evidence of customer
1:33:05
intent and the main point of traction is showing that somebody other than you gives a that's what you need to be
1:33:10
demonstrating right who else cares um and if you can do that signups are a great way to do that and it will
1:33:16
hopefully lead to more things right so yes that's a long way to say yes yeah I'm just trying to look at my
1:33:23
notes Here I think covered it all um yeah and then oh I you said it but I
1:33:29
want to reinforce I wouldn't make it the point of the presentation and you didn't but we're going to start with Pharma and then there's these other things right so
1:33:35
it makes a lot of sense about your Beach Head Market is Pharma because that's where you are right and then I was just
1:33:41
writing myself a note to ask her about go to market and you started talking about go to market so that was good and your personal network of Representatives
1:33:47
you know at 40 different companies or something like that's important that's differentiating right so I would make a
1:33:53
point and you did I'm just reinforcing that's what we want to hear like own this Market which is great and then
1:34:00
hopefully how can this expand both vertically and horizontally to other marketsand make this a monster company
1:34:06
that's what here so hope that's helpful super thank you
1:34:12
so much yeah you're welcome anybody in the chat room there um let's see
1:34:20
um yeah I think that's probably good for now all right yeah it's 1:30 I got to get going here my next call so we got
1:34:27
another pitcher too but thank you Cat for joining us hope to see you again and uh see you I think did you say you were local maybe I'll maybe I'll see I am yes
1:34:34
I'm in Orange so yeah hopefully I'll get to see you live okay that'd be great all right so that was cat and we're gonna
1:34:41
bring up our next uh and I think our last pitch for today which is John and apologies to the rest of you uh ashin I
1:34:48
know you had another question I think we're going to run out of time and um anybody else who's here um we had a lot
1:34:54
of people today so that's good and uh we're going to wrap up here with our pitch here and then I'll go back to the chat room real quick and see if there's
1:35:00
any questions so if you have any last last hits you would like me to address you can put them in the CH I'll try to
1:35:05
cover those before we sign off for the day so um okay John nice to meet you and
1:35:11
why don't you tell us about is it quibble how do you say it quibble yeah you got it you got it first time all
1:35:17
right there we go hear about quibble from our friend John go ahead John cool well first want to say I'm here to talk
1:35:24
about luxury watches okay that's what quibble actually I'm just
1:35:30
kidding um no really I am happy to be here it's uh I'm grateful there's a
1:35:35
platform like this I think for supporting Founders um thank you particularly first-time Founders I wish
1:35:42
it was around a decade ago when I had my first startup me too that's why I built it yeah yeah know it's super useful um
1:35:50
so hey everybody I'm John nice to meet you um I'm a two-time successful founder
1:35:56
um with a eight fig exit for my last startup in 2022 um I started quibble uh to solve
1:36:04
the problem consumers faced when trying to shop for products at the best prices online uh the best prices are not uh on
1:36:13
Amazon and not on Walmart they're they're actually on secondhand marketplaces such as Facebook
1:36:18
Marketplace offra next door Poshmark Etc uh
1:36:24
and so quibble is the first consumer shopping app that Aggregates all these
1:36:29
products from the various marketplaces and gives consumers a centralized app
1:36:34
that feels more like Amazon but for shopping used stuff and secondhand
1:36:40
marketplaces most people probably don't think about them very often everybody uses them to some degree but they
1:36:46
represent about 200 billion market share worldwide they're very very big um
1:36:52
heavily used in other countries probably more so than the US uh they're undergoing a huge growth period
1:36:58
currently outpacing retail by 5% uh they're also the key to long-term sustainability for consumerism and uh
1:37:05
they're used uh by the majority of gen Z and Millennials uh as a first place to
1:37:11
go shopping before buying things new um but they don't feel at all like retail
1:37:18
which fundamentally blocks many consumers from wholesale adoption and they require people people
1:37:24
uh to search over many disparate apps haggle over subjective prices meet up
1:37:29
with strangers in parking lots literally to exchange uh goods for cash and risk
1:37:34
their lives um and so our Consolidated or aggregated exper uh experience
1:37:40
leverages powerful AI tools to do a lot of that including assisting users and
1:37:45
determining item values and it even handles uh negotiating prices uh as well
1:37:51
as providing uh financing and integrated electronic payment options uh it even
1:37:56
integrates pickup and delivery direct to your front door uh for locally purchased
1:38:02
items uh all all with the goal of making resale feel more like retail uh we have
1:38:08
a super talented first class team consisting of EX Google employees um
1:38:14
we've got uh the former CTO at easy post so we got some big Tech in there too uh
1:38:20
we've already established a partnership with nexd door that's the the third largest Marketplace in the US we're
1:38:26
raising a $1 million seed round at a $6 million valuation uh we're current
1:38:31
projecting about 20% market share within the next three years and we're currently building out the MVP with a scheduled
1:38:38
launch of around Q4 this year okay are we is that it that's it
1:38:46
okay excellent well nice job lots of uh lots of information there and um helpful
1:38:52
it sounds like a great product I I have some teenagers in the house who would probably be happy to learn about that um
1:38:59
is it live I I kind of missed that no okay so okay so that is one of my
1:39:07
first well literally was my first question right so kind of like I talked about with cat I'd like to hear more about where are you right so um is it
1:39:15
built when's it going to be built that kind of thing just some specifics um but that that's a small point but let me
1:39:22
back up so first thing is you need a different microphone because it's echoing in there you need to wear a headset or buy a real microphone Just
1:39:28
for future um if you're if you want to spend a hundred bucks I'd get one of these because presumably you can hear
1:39:35
can you hear me okay yeah yeah pretty good right um it's worth it's worth the money um and in this virtual world it's
1:39:42
definitely worth the money um I liked how you're a two-time exited founder but you didn't give us much more than that
1:39:48
about your background like why are you the guy like it's I I agree with the market opportunity and you don't need to
1:39:54
answer me now but like I'm left wondering maybe you you you've done this before I guess so maybe you're deliberately cloaking some of it so that
1:40:00
I want the next meeting that's right that is a legit strategy but but I'm I'm just left wondering like is this guy
1:40:06
from you know is he from Amazon you know or is he a retail store owner or like why and why him you know so that that's
1:40:13
interesting um most importantly you can watch the replay on YouTube you spent a lot of time talking about the product
1:40:19
and the T kind of setting the table and kind of convincing me and yourself that this was an opportunity and I think it
1:40:26
is um but I didn't hear anything about the business hardly like what's your typical sale size who's the customer
1:40:33
what's the margin like I need unit economics to have any idea um what I got mostly was an idea and you're at that
1:40:39
stage so that's fair but investors you at least need to give us some numbers to
1:40:45
uh so we have something to eat basically right um this isn't nearly in the category of uh who was it Chelsea was
1:40:50
doing uh hand luxury handbag stuff like I know nothing about luxur handbags I at least have opinions about you know used
1:40:57
you know depop and those sort of marketplaces um but you got to give us some numbers just to tell us you've done
1:41:03
the research if nothing else so it was very kind of 30,000 foot and that's a legit thing if you're at you know having
1:41:10
lunch and you want to then you're going to do a presentation next time but in a pitch I would get some numbers in there
1:41:15
faster um the only numbers I heard were at the end the 1 million seed at the Six Million uh valuation um what that led to
1:41:24
also was you said that leads us to a certain amount of market share it wasn't clear to me what how you define the
1:41:29
market also right so you've got a lot of competitors here so I'd like to hear more about competition uh how again why
1:41:36
you why now and how are you going to do this better I got the idea that there was a user interface and the
1:41:42
consolidation alone is going to be a big deal I get it but the go to market and like why is that sustainable um and then
1:41:49
more I guess now that I say it more on the tech if you're going to integrate all that somebody really got to know the
1:41:55
tech right and you had some good team members it sounds like but that's significant like all the apis there that are going to have to be integrated in
1:42:01
real time uh with real-time pricing right that and the shipping I mean you know better than I do but that's a lot
1:42:07
of stuff I've done a fair amount of e-commerce stuff there's a lot there so um I guess just a little less table
1:42:12
setting and a little more on the nuts and bolts that's kind of what I'm saying um okay yeah so is that helpful um hope
1:42:19
hope it is um and anybody else who's got uh suggestions for John please uh toss
1:42:25
those in there and uh John if you're in Huntington Beach hopefully we can uh see you sometime at local events um the
1:42:31
Orange County startup Council has a big mailing list and maybe that's how you heard about us but um happy to meet you
1:42:36
in person and there's a bunch of pitch events coming up soon I don't know what your other exits were involved what kind
1:42:42
of companies they were but um although that was the idea right get you
1:42:47
interested figure exits always sound good so um yeah but if um you want to
1:42:53
participate in in the scene around here the ecosystem is quite active I'd be happy to see you in person at one of
1:42:58
these events great you too cool all right well thanks for joining us that was our new friend John from Huntington
1:43:04
Beach and um hopefully we'll see him again and learn more about quibble as that grows that's sounds like a real
1:43:10
opportunity there for sure okay so we're about out of time here um and let's just
1:43:16
run through the chat real quick and see if I missed any uh anything that was on fire uh that we needed to ask
1:43:23
uh there's my friend Athena hi Athena the name of the company again now this is a great question I'm going to put
1:43:29
this one up for all of you this is really funny actually because it's amazing the number of times that
1:43:34
Founders say their name in their company and never repeat it so this is a very
1:43:40
Insight it doesn't look complicated but this is a very insightful question say your company name over and over why
1:43:47
because we hear lots of pitches and we're going to forget and your name too right and this is why if you have slides
1:43:52
it should say it on every slide you have your logo and your the URL of your website or whatever your preferred
1:43:58
contact point is say it over and over and over again okay
1:44:04
um let's see okay I think we're in pretty good shape here so I think we're going to
1:44:09
wrap up for today and I want to encourage all of you to head over to Startup council.org this is the organization here that I started it's
1:44:16
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1:45:14
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1:45:20
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