6 College Students Pitch Us Their Startups | MFM Shark Tank
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Yeah um so just to process here, i'm Tommy Tommy potter. Do not you miss um really excited .

to be bringing startups today give to illustrate the community where power hour, which is the CIA for college trevor ship. And what I mean by that is you don't know like who we are. You don't know where we meet.

We are this underground society of hand picked killer founders. Ers, what if you're built in the impossible we have got tell me like, tell me potter, like Harry potter. And then there's no, there's no meeting place, there's no information, there's no way in and there's no way out of this club.

And it's a it's a tap on the shortage.

just like the C I. We let you be where we're going to be meeting and speaking your language already. This is some real skeleton bones shit, be what I want to.

I want to preface, this is live audience, if you don't know, can the room we got, like sixty five people here ready for your mess? the. Ecosystem is out here today. I know the same is going on down to U. U, C.

They got a massive room.

How many you got in that room? They're Austin. Pen the camera quick.

Yeah, so, but yeah, we've still on all points that time he said, I basically hope, get all the amazing founders as well as entrepreneurs, content creators, I would believe that to an awesome stuff in the same room down here. U, I, C, so where? Or super pump .

on both side? UIUC is oy carbon deal .

universe noy urban ish champagne e the big guy I so tell me we got Austin in the club is called happy our is that we said.

no, we're power hour of .

power hour, power hour for an hour full of power and it's all student run. There's no faculty. Nobody who's he's making this happen is this like is been around for ten years? Or did you just invent this on thursday?

What's going on? Do you? Member, bob, bobbi, fire housel, which was on this podcast about two years ago.

I may never forget Bobby.

So Bobby started all of this.

Bobbi started this. Bobbi started this. And it's kind of been planting around. And you I U C as their community. We're very like deep .

in our partnership there as well. This is so this is fantastic. So to give little listener background, two years ago we had this guy named on bb B, I think was in michigan.

Bb 啊， gathered like this, like group of maybe fifteen entrepreneurs, and like four of them pitches, and they were awesome. And apparently bobbi has five club this thing, and gone out from university, the university, to, like converse, you guys to join on. And this sounds awesome. And so today I think six of you of three each are gonna itch. Is that right?

totally. I correctly, there's a lot of school pride on the line in terms of which schools are going to come .

out on top in this competition. So where they ended on the line for we have tons of creators in the audience that was tough to get IT down to three three startups, but we're giving you our best. Um so can't wait.

We're ready to already all. So this is college shark tank style two schools pitching from both. We're going to have a winner.

We're going to maybe have A A few other awards that we come up with. I invested in one of these last time out of out of mission. So going company really felt.

So we're going to we're not going to hold that against you all. You win some, you lose some and we lost that one pretty hard, pretty quick. Um but that's alright.

All right. But let's see if you guys can be at michigan. So the first one that we're going to hear from is meet your class. And I think is you seen a michigan, are you guys doing three in a row? And then .

it's going to be de and this kid he's got so i'm using college words.

Is that let IT bake or a lot of cook? Which one is that?

Whatever that we're going to let him bake.

I the first one um is the folks at uh a michigan.

Okay, hello, my name is jona and i'm the COO of meko class. Two years ago, my cofounder ers and I created platform for perspective college students to meet each other before coming to campus. And medor class quickly grew in popularity, largely because the communities we built actually extended beyond our own platform and integrate with the social media apps that nearly every high school are uses on a daily basis.

Within two years, this system has scaled to over four hundred thousand the concretions, and even generate over six hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Three premium business model. Well, this was a great success.

And even larger opportunity emerged when we were approached by a university called the crest college, which was struggling with enroll vent. Basically, they are having issues building seats, and they were not alone. This is a really big issue. Recent polls have found that over two thirds of university cfs are deeply concerned about declining enrollment. A really big factor in this that the Chris college and really the majority of universities across the country struggle with is a phenomenon known as summer melt.

Summer melt refers to when e prospect gets all the way to the tail end of the enrollment function, just to, at the last second, renege on their deposit, renege on their commitment and decide they no longer want to go to college at the quotes college, believe you, you're not. This was happening with every one in three students, which eventually was leading to a thirty three percent vacancy rate at the school. The Chris college believe the weaker class could help decrease the summer melt because our platform had gained the irregular as being able to build up excitement for perspective students and also to give them a support network.

Furthermore, we also bound through discovery that meager class dinner was very valuable for universities in helping them to allocate their limited time and resources towards students who needed the extra attention and help. And we're very excited to say that this work at the Chris college students who used maker class last year experienced a sixty one percent reduction in summer melt, which is expected to add one point seven million dollars back to their top line. And we're so excited by these results because any minimum this summer melt issue is calculated to cost the higher education system over eleven billion dollars per year.

And it's a poor going to take more than one case study to really go out for this market. But luckily, we now have skilled to eight partners for the upcoming invision cycle. And amazingly, that same B2C bus iness tha t I d es cribed at the sta rt is hel ping us and emp owers us to cre ate a p ro duct tha t ind ustry lea ding, loved by students and administrators and also got us admitted to tech stars and has allowed us to boot strapper away into a much larger, much more qualified team ready to take the higher red market by storm.

Alright, that was great. We do. You have an ending for us. So sharks, who's ready to, you know, blab a blah. And are are you raising are you actually raising money or not? Not a raising money right now were planning.

but actually open a seat around when we graduate in the spring.

That is awesome. That is awesome. Uh, by the way, of the six hundred or thousand revenue, uh, uh, how many people are working in there? Which your profit do you have any profit on?

yes. So us, as initial co founders have not yourself a dime and we reinvest every single penny back into the team. Um so I don't know the exact profitable of the top my head here. We try to keep the bank account enough to stay alive, but we reinvest every penny back into grown the team and gain to more university partnerships. And we're trying to get fifty by the end of this kind emission of .

of the six hundred thousand. How much in your business account right now?

I think around three hundred thousand, we are one hundred and twenty thousand from text stars. And then i've also want some pitch competitions.

Okay, okay, cool. In black, you know, was black, right?

My name's jone. Up black is my amazing count thunder.

Okay, great. So jona great. First, great pitch. Really cool business. At first, when you were talking about IT, I thought, well, you know, you sort of created facebook twenty years too late. You're trying to help college kids connect.

But then what the story got really interesting when you started talking about how colleges are struggling to fill enrollment and they have vacancies, just like our hotel has vacancies, ecologist vacancies. And that maybe your tools actually could help them decrease that and then then they would be your customer, right? You'll be charging them.

Did you charge that first college? And what are you charging those other eight colleges? Who said our partners with you on this?

yes. So our initial partners are heavily discounted relative to like the market for a solution like this because we're trying to more logos, more case studies. Currently, those partners are at under ten thousand dollars, but there is a very clear path to scaling this once we have a bit more credibility under our name.

You said market rate, who else is doing something like the are they doing?

We do have a handful of competence. So this initial thing that we're describing is called like mid fund conversion. It's basically getting people who are later on in the end, roman final and then trying to convert them.

There's a few competence listed in the second column. Where we've really spent out from them is our integrations with social media because we're able to get a large organic user base at the earliest and latest stages of the enrollment final. So I love our competence are like third party apps where the university basically emails all their students says, hey download this and kind of forces them to use IT.

And the reason they do that is because these communities generate so much valuable data, they have a lot more control over IT. Um and social media standalone really doesn't do this for them because it's not a Taylor made higher ool higher right tool. So we're basically retrofit these social media platforms and bring all the data that they pay .

for the so jona if you were charging them, what you think you can charge them, have you added the conversations about how much they would be willing to pay either as a percentage of sort of save students or as a flat fee? What's your sense of how much each college can to pay?

So initially, just for this mid final conversion tool, we believe that IT should be pretty reasonable, of course, I college's variant size. But we've seen these at the lowest for the smallest schools around twenty thousand dollars and then they've seen them scale past two hundred thousand. Um this is of course just like one small part of the enrollment function. There is many more issues that we believe are trying to solve. That's just a generally like I only I was like saying a commodified rate that in your sees I can't paying with for this.

Is this the biggest problem or is there a bigger problem?

This is one of the biggest problems. Um as I mentioned for the Chris college, one in three students were melting. So when we so it's just the kind of the lowest hanging fruit initially go after because VISA kids who artigue should be going to college, they got buried, they got weight to the tail end of the end roman fund. And then we then converted more of them on, but they obviously wanted just get more boxing, sea drought, the entire .

process johna has, uh, you know, I always asked how the story ends. Uh, is there a vision for where you where are you are going to be ten years for this?

Um we're still trying to figure that out. We are very motivated by genuinely improving the student experience and making IT. So college is worthwhile. So in the long run, we want to put power back in the students hands. A lot of students don't know that they have negotiation power in the tuition Price and allowed them also end up at places that are sub optimal. So we kind of want to, in the one room, become the go to place that students come to and they figure out where they're going to be the most successful to for ten years down the line.

Did you just say that you can negotiate to a sum Price?

Because I had no idea that possible IT is possible. I personally then do IT um some members of my team could speak to a lot more, but student have a lot more power than they realize. Universities needs students in order to stay in business.

The majority of schools um not the university mission bit, the majority of schools are tuition ing dependent for revenue. Tuition and missions is like a very small percentage of revenue. So if U S. For decrease tuition here, that likely would not pan out because they're not really struck with any financial situations. But event of the day, colleges need to act like a business otherwise they're onna go lunder.

I wish this google to google those community apps. I had no idea that stuff existence.

some of large, how big uh unibody I .

think raised thirty million dollars. They raised IT during cov. Its so there's you know T B D if it's legit, but uh IT seems like it's a business that many tens of million in revenue.

Yeah join my quick take on this. I think you actually have a real business here. One of the biggest investments I missed on was the very first guy who ever pitched me as an Angel investor.

He had a idea for a something called apply board. And what he was doing was helping international students get into. He was helping, like kind of small colleagues get more international students because international students to didn't know their name. And I never heard of Christ college.

So you just said IT and he was charging about two to three he was charging the university two to three thousand dollars per student that actually got admitted um in a rolled there and so he was making tones on monday said that company really took you off. So I think you even a real business here. The only thing I would say, I guess, to rap up is I don't think you should ever raise money for this.

I think you should be strapped this thing. And if you actually just stuck with this idea and you boot strapped IT, you know in four, five years, you would be sitting on probable twenty million dollars, which would be a phenomenal place for you to be exciting this business. And um I think the biggest risk for you is not a business risk.

It's a we raise money because we pitch investors that this could take over the world because we thought that's what we're supposed to do. We thought you have an idea. You pitch investors, you raise round one, round two, round three.

And suddenly we're looking at you're saying, how are you going to be a billion dollar company? And the reality is this might be a phenomenal fifty doll, fifty million dollar, but no chance at a billion dollar. So my my vice you would be, don't raise, but great pitch overall. The last thoughts.

completely agree, completely agree. Well.

thank you. Big round of reply.

right. So where are we going now?

L annoy, yeah, we've got a arga in a sentence. Ces co car going .

guys that meet you.

All right, I know IT you drop out. Well, you you're .

not even in college. What's gone on now? Images on a get semester, a sham founder sink just met him yesterday.

Couple me, me. My couple of my bodies are art. I'm just basing in differences going here, seeing if this is the right place for us.

But right. Well, gap year, I like, I like the sound of that already about year ago.

Mean, my co founder, washington, the spanish TV show money high on networks. unfortunate. Neither us know spanish very well. So we had to watch the english dub. Anyone has ever watch a dob movie knows that there's a bunch of issues, the lips, not in chronic zed, the audio, the voice actors on, nothing like the actual actors. There's one scene or two voice actors had the same actor, making everything extremely confusing.

We look at this issue .

a bit further and found that this is extremely technically complex, expensive, one hundred and fifty hundred dollars minute time consuming and low quality to double a video notice with all of this dumping is a sixty billion dollars in twenty twenty two. And there's been no clear solution for this. We started by transacting consent for creators of mr.

Recent mister nym are and found that the essential use cases within education, imagine the millions uh, people trying to get an education. And the second language where the concept is, am meant for them. So we created metaphors, a and automated authentic c and affordable translation solution for educators. All the user has to do is input a video into our solution, press the input and output language, press submit, and within minutes, get a lip sink voice clone in text, on screen, translated video, just like this one that we translated for our client. UIUC N G S and course .

zero utility anim suggest that an ethical choice will lead to the greatest .

good for the greatest number of people, but is pretty good. A program or proof, Normal and process. Voice is perfectly clown.

from english to spanish to french. His lips are synchro zed and our key differentiators any text on screen translated with the same font, text and color as well. For an enterprise clients, we have a human loop process.

We transact videos with industry specific terminology, keywords, idiom, know that google transact issues. We also have the most languages and cheapest product on the market right now. We're six thousand dollars and monthly return revenue training videos for university illinois and corporations like vocal corporation.

We actually are in talks with coursera for a potential integration in quarter one, twenty and twenty five as well. Just to look at one of our potential deals after a paid pilot, wood keys, just one degree, looks like thirty thousand minutes in five languages, generating one point three five million dollars revenue for our company. This actually saves the university ninety one percent and actual cost, ensuring the course as well.

Our team combines business and technology with myself, taking a gap year to focus on this, and our machine learning team of five machine learning engineers having thirty seven years of experience and computer vision. Hi, my inter cola cola. And my purpose is a great language very much. Thank you guys very much.

Alright.

that's awesome. Great pit. Great pit. And leaves some of the slides absolutely might need to go back to him. So first of all, the demo was great. Can you just tell us a little bit about that, the magic there? So you said, uh, translates the voice, makes the lips match, which i've never seen anyone do that.

Did you see? You didn't see that. Why to do that for the independent? great.

No, I didn't see that. So what are you doing to make the lips? Is is a superimposed on top of their lips?

yeah. So essentially we take a one of my bodies H Y C model. We take any original video and original audio, and we got are allowed to synching ize the lipid based on the input of video and audio in our back in system. We then sure that you're going .

to say you took on your bodies, lips and he he's a model. See, you're saying there's an off the shelf library based a lot off the shelf model that does this already. You guys just .

integrating? Yes, I think .

and another question, you said something like if they did this just one course for one university that's like a million in revenue for you, are they currently are you convincing them hey, you should dumb this or they're already dubbing IT at just at ten times the cost?

yeah. So right now there are training videos automatic and they're transition courses like imagine cuisses tests and just like reading papers, but they're not transient in the videos. So a spanish user has to go on course sera and you know take the course in spanish but have to read the subtitles on an english video ah for these videos are these courses that they're creating right now. Um we are basically providing the solution that standardized the actual viewing experience for the end users.

So they are doing this right now without that think three or something like that, that dubbing was a seventy or sixty billion dollar. What what does that number tell me about that number? This is um just .

looking at traditional dubbing. This means in film, education, marketing, just transition in general, huge market bunch of different oppositions that we could put ourself in. Was trying to tell um you guys that we also translated for content creators like mr.

B spin nightmare found that the niche was in education for us to pick of the central need. Think about the evocation of translation for people that have life changing opportunity. Strip for them because they can't take a course and they are they preferred language or they're not able to understand the professor in a classroom. So that's we've .

got to know the key, key distinction. You said they're already doing this, but actually the way you said that was they're translating the test and the quiz. They're just not they're not do the videos today. And so for them to agree to do this, this would be a new cost of of a million dollars to them that are not currently spending.

So in terms of translate a video, in general, they're trying to transact these videos. But for for a look, a person to translate video, just for video, takes four hours. They have accurate new slides.

Have a new professor go in, you know, speak in a new language of the contract. These people, this would cost some three million dollars to edit these videos. You know, gover added the screen text.

a big distinction. Let's say i'm sitting at the university and I look like I am with this best on right now. I am.

So i've got my budget. But what I asked you is today, they don't already spend in this. You're not saving the money from something they're already spending. They're currently not spending because they would be too expensive to do IT, too slow, too expensive.

And so you're gonna a new cost to them, right? So that's going to be a big point of friction because they're not going to make more money necessarily off this. You might be able to convince them that if you do this, you might be able to get more customers, but they won. It's going to be just extra cost with no extra revenue.

Is that correct? Uh, that is true. However, they are going the direction of putting these courses online. Digital um translation is the thing that they are already doing. This would just be an added cost for them another day. But he would provide a Better solution, essentially being a marketing place for international students to come with the universe. But to answer tion.

what do you do if her vulcar first? While I did, I didn't know vulcar o was a brain. I thought vulcar was like, clean.

Next tissue, you know, I thought was a thing that's pretty wild. But what are you doing for them? And how did you close those guys? Because they look like a big flutist company.

Yeah we had a personal connection to one of the higher ups of the company. We do internal communications for them. So um every month there is a ninety minute internal town hall where the CEO basically speaks in the english.

She's italian woman. He had a bunch of issues with when she's speaking english, he likes emotion SHE kind of um doesn't feel like herself. And we were able to provide them a solution where he was able to provide the company with updates in her true persona in the new language by speaking in italian for ninety minutes into our camera.

We put that into our solution. Within three hours, we will secure, I translate a video that she's able to send all the plants and vocal CoOperation in ten different languages. And we provide the solution to empty IT.

But IT sounds like you you're not doubling down as much on enterprise. You want to go for this university education nature that right .

so we want to go into um the education niche. This is universities. This can mean educational content creation. This can mean um corporate income as well.

We are understand that these educational sale cycles are extremely long, which is why going to the transition agent agency's educational content as well can help us kind of uh, apply like a geometric approach to our sales cycle le as well just a swe everything up faster, having having us get more tracking the and then the university brain itself creates a stance where people say, hey, university or or use this, i'm an educational content creator. I trust them. I'm onna trust this company as well, right?

Well, I think you have a solid pitch and I think you have a really great product, but I think this is a product in search of a market. Um I think you're going to run into a lot of trouble because you're going to go to these universities and you're going to say, hey, work great and I can say, yeah, that's awesome. But they have no budget.

They won't have the budget for IT or it's just going to be seen as an extra cost without a clear extra payoff uh or sort R Y attached to IT. Um and so I think that's gona hurt the sales cycle. H what's already a slow sales cycle is university sales, I think, is going to get harder because you're costing the money rather than saving the money.

Um but one thing to consider is if if there's already a big market for dubbing out there and they're doing IT man leave, this is actually could look like a private equity play where you go buy existing dubbing services that have existing books of business and then you just fire all the people to replace IT with the AI that's going to do IT Better and faster and cheaper than they're currently do. You said IT cost like one hundred dollars a minute itor whatever, to to dub with humans doing IT. And so what you could do is you could go buy companies and then rip out the cost structure by replacing IT with A I.

And that might be actually be a Better way to go to go to this market. And again, this something that you don't really hear a lot, your instance just go now lot of people don't talk about this, but there is a whole other AI of business roll ups and private equity where um they're not looking for this. They buy something at a fair Price and then they slash the cost and half by using technology to make things more efficient.

You could do that here said, and we actually are trying to do that right now. Partner with the translation agency to understand exactly um how they derive their clients um how they are going to these sales cycles with um like refugees, people that are going to different educational content. Um the one thing about universities is that I do seeing this being globalize and um systems and in learning management systems like core sera.

So we just had a meeting yesterday with coursera as actually say that the universe save all I pilot goes well they willing to give us a shot integration for a translation for a couple of courses there um that would you know allow us to b from going to a thousand minutes for every two week to maybe a thousand hours for every two weeks. Um just the just to show you the fun things they were taking. Um in terms of universities, we want for the learning management systems, not the individual university.

Hey shan, I don't pay attention to this too much. But um how that video that we saw, how impressed was that?

I mean, it's finally impressive. And I think they're doing a couple of other things that are specific, like changing the text on the screen. So I think you know that, that makes the whole solution work because then the actual course works.

So it's it's something impressive, but I know there's GTA be ten other companies that could do this today or there's nothing like scientific breakthrough with what they're doing. So this is really good to be a question of who built to the best business around this new technology. The technology exists and anyone's going to be able to build a business around this. So it's really good to be about who figures out the right market, the right go to market strategy, the right pricing model to actually build a business out of this.

What do your parents think that you .

take in the gap here? We got into we got into tech stars in june and IT up declining that our parents are south indian. Um they kind of driven by you know percentages like prestige was able to show them that maybe i'm like top one percent precise companies by getting the accelerator and show them that they let me take this cap semester and then um can have to show them some K P. I like keep take taking time off to school， but I love in you right now.

Are you up to this? Hey, kids. Are parents your kids? amazing. This is he's it's it's going to turn out alright. It's going to turn out more than alright.

And think where you're at right now, that office right right now, there's a kid. There is not a kid anymore. And Johnson dallas um and he was in eighth grade when he started working with us and he started in the summer and then he started working every day after school.

And then I think in eleven grade or so is pretty clear, this guy is awesome and he should just work your full time. And we made up an offered, and his mom was freaking out. Couldn't I can't.

My son is going to be a high school drop out. This is crazy. No, he's gonna test out.

He's going to graduate, is going to get a gd. And what I convinced her of was he's not dropped out. He's going pro the same way lebron James went pro because he had incredible skills. And that reframe, I got to tell you, I was some of my best work with that mom on a bench in a park convincing that he's going pro, he's not dropping out. And then we got to got to go full time with us.

Do congratulations on your success. Good job, and thank you for letting a Susan and the a you, the man. What do we have next? I'm making shots.

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Go pretty cool. When I thought micro bian shown, what did you immediately think? I thought, yeah, I thought was gotten pop. I was like, I got to put the thing and you're going to give me a thing to help my skin. But I didn't know that skin microbes, an was a thing .

that's pretty caller hows. Your king .

care routine, you know, body watch that goes on my arpi t also goes on my face. good. But I bought in to the idea that IT is important, and I, I, I do want to get Better. So this is interesting to me. Do you have any revenue at all?

No revenue were currently in development. We're doing beta testing.

Okay, got IT in really smooth pitch. By the way, you are a talker that was really well done. Um okay. So let's give some thoughts on this.

So anyway, his deck, Shawn, was great. Those cartoons, they told the story.

Yeah, who made? Who made all that?

You made that the the deck in the story. Yeah, no one made IT. That's just my story.

No, maybe think the graphics are cool. The that year my my .

coffee on and I worked on IT and then we also work shopped IT with like a bunch of other students in .

the community so guta okay. Um you know one thing I think that would help you is um this type of story I think would go viral on tiktok like basic what you told us if you were like um I used to think skin care routine well, I used to think of what if I didn't care about my skin and then I got a flushing bacteria this is me after my trip to go stra and you show a picture you like so here's what I did to get rid of this and while never look at any of these skin care products, the same again knocked over bunch of bottles on the table, right?

You do something like that. You're going to be like two million views on a tiktok. You can actually include that in this, which is going to be like we know how to tell our story and get out there and that that story resonates with people, that people are looking for something that's more personalized, that's actually science based and not just, you know a fancy brand um and we're going to use content to our advantage and that's how we're going to have much cheaper customer acquisition, right?

The smart brands in the d dc space are basically content first right now. They know how to tell their story on tiktok and instagram and youtube. And that's where they are getting to like A A sort of run away growth compared to everybody else who just doing very basic static ads on facebook to the thing.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we observe that many our competitors, sn, got ton of their initial revenue into advertising. And so we're looking at sort of a different go to market strategy. We want to please fifty people in our beta testing. We want to work like very closely with a smaller group of people to make sure in our product algorithm is really working the way that it's supposed to before we go like mass market. Um but I like the idea of doing short foreign content because I know that definitely hits with with the Younger audience.

Target market whose your competitors? So are there other people doing this?

Well, there's no one that's doing exactly what we're doing. There are skin care companies that do microbiome testing, and there are also personalized skin care companies. Um the biggest skin microbial company currently is parallel health and they offer a two hundred a month protocol where they do sequences on your skin meta by super high market high and product.

Um there's a company that successful. They're been a business or seven years now called proving health. They were after starting parallel.

It's proven skin care. They are on their own shark tank um and they do personalize skin care that's based off of a quiz only. So we we have a quiz and we have microbes on testing. So are sword of the baby between those two ideas.

A lot of times with health stuff, uh, heal health stuff or anything involving your body, that's very it's very controversial because always there is a much people who love something typically and then there's uh an equal or more amount of haters, which is not to really mean it's wrong IT. Just health is very controversial. Um what would the haters say about this? Like what they say, like do microban b stuff.

It's not actually important. If you just use these three things, it's going to do most of the job. You don't need to worry about the other stuff. Like what are the haters to say about you?

I'd say the biggest like viability there is that the the skin micro bion field is actually very nicer. So though basically we're testing a hypothesis, we believe that skin care that's precisely tailor to your microphone on is Better than the traditional methods out there.

I think people would likely continue to hold to the societal idea that all bacteria is bad, like we need to stand the sort of sanoh zed mindset, like people really like to feel clean. And so I think that that's the biggest objection to this is like we love germs. You want to harness the power of the germs that are on your face and we believe they have a lot of potential. So people won't be like, oh, it's gross but know just science .

scientist growth why I I like I think the criticism and a but I pays the health stuff. I think the criticism is like a you know that's like, uh h that that thing we will just move the needle by one percent where as if we do these other things, it's mostly going to get you there and be perfect do you know saying, chon.

yeah how to put this second health stuff you can listen to human man for ninety two hours and suddenly your our brian Johnson and whatever you're trying to take forty two supplements a day, but eighty and ninety percent of the gains are going to come from like good sleep, drink water, eat clean whole foods. And if you just do those things and you're not pretty probably not already to doing these things, that will get you the bulk of IT.

The rest is really like, you know on the edge optimizations. And I think you're right and that uh sort of a smart skeptic would probably um have that thought, but I don't think that's what's gonna drive successor failure in this case. So I think I actually one thing you are missing from your pitch is to convince me that people care about hyper personalization.

And if that's where the puck is going and really what you want in a pitch, it's for this to feel like an inevitable outcome of what's go, what's happening here, of what's happening in this space, whether it's you or somebody else, that sort of secondary. But you really want to convincing story of two things. One, inevitably, this is where the pocket is going.

And that innovation ably, we are gonna be the ones who take a vantage score when that puck gets that right. So you kind of need to make two cases when you make a pitch. And so for example, I know that in hair care and kind of beauty products, make up products, there's a lot of this already.

The trend has gone in this direction. Where isn't IT like they you do quiz and you figure out all I have curly hair and my problem is that it's, uh, dry. And then for that, you're going to a go a certain product.

And I think what you would want to show is that the companies that came out in the last wave for beauty products that went the personalization route have our perform have had all these really great exit. But nobody y's done IT for skin care yet, but they will. And here's what, here's what's gonna en in skin care.

The same thing that just happened in makeup, and here is gonna en for skin, right? The same thing that just happen in item is gonna sin. And that makes IT sort of feel inevitable.

Oh my god, he's right. The next wave of successful skin care companies are going to use this kind of science based, hyper personalized um think that I think was missing from your pitch. That's kind of my feedback for you.

Thank you. That's good. That's very good feedback.

I thought you did a great job on the story. I am still trying to understand what I already asked that question but like the other answers could have been like, uh, everyone agrees that this is right, but the the question I was trying to figure, can we or anyone even figure this out? Like I wanted to figure out like what's going to what is this all hint, john, because you've talking like on a beta like this. What is this? What are you having to convince the world that that that needs to happen for this to be a massive breakthrough?

Let let me ask you a very simple question. Do you believe IT less assume IT works? Do you believe that it's going to be a visually different result? Meaning if I just show you two pictures, one person who's using your thing in one person who's just using off the shelf stuff.

Onest question, do you think it's gonna where I could this point? So yeah, that's clearly Better because if IT is, then all your marketing is gna work that way. And if it's not, then the the science kind of actually in the world of supplements and and vitamins and and creams, let's be honest, nobody is a clue if any other ship actually works. And so this is all just a branding game. It's all the marketing game.

It's all whose can convince the consumer that what that if you buy this product, you be more beautiful and everyone will love you and things, you know things will go well for you in life, right? And so I think we're kind of unless it's literally visual where you can see the difference and it's going to be inarguable, then it's just a question of are you going to be a great marketer? Low real I is low real successful. It's not because we know that their their product scientifically is Better than anybody else's products because they're Better marketers. That's the reality of the situation.

Yeah we we certainly recognize that um we definitely want to sort of watching to the the trend towards clean and sustainable beauty, which is why we made a box that you can plant in the ground and IT grows flowers. We think it's really like the beauties in the details here. So I am so agree with you before and after. Pictures are like one of the best things that we can get, and the results of a beta testing are currently looking very promising. But a before I start to make claims and put those pictures on the website, I want to do like really throw analysis of how the products are working, how the alarm, ms, working to make sure that we have something that is it's really solid.

Our brother, we appreciate you. Congratulations on this. And and and see a pitch. We got to go the next one job.

Thank you.

He will take a put great talk about another podcast that you should check out. IT is called the next wave IT tossed by that wolf. And the land is part of the hub spot podcast network, which, of course, is your audio destination for business professionals like you.

You can catch the next wave with that wolf. And he's talking about where the plug is going with AI creators, AI technology, how you can apply IT to your growing business. So check in out, listen to the next wave wherever you get the pocket.

Is the brother brother nuts? Is that is that who's up?

Max IT is, yeah hey guys, my is Austin majors and the kellton on their brother's nuts here, brothers nuts. Our mission took the fake food to the curb and revolutionized healthy stacking with organic sprouted nun seat stacks. So first off, my family found that half of the stacks out there were not actually healthy, and the other half tasted like garbage.

A first of, why do we create this business? Well, our business started back in twenty ten, actually, when my father is dying, those with stage four brain cancer, IT was given seven weeks to live into the changes, and diet and lifestyle turned up seven weeks into seven years. But one of the biggest issues him in my family had was finding a stack that was as helping as I was tasty.

And so are currently C F O A K, G flavor officer, A K. Mom being the amazing mom that he is, want to work and create what is now known as the crackled G Z. omens.

Now, my family and my friends were astonia to see that these were as healthy as they were later for, but also very crunchy. And that's what makes us very different. All over another seat are surrounded, but howa gone over the last seven years.

So I started coming with teen years old. My father passed away with my older brother, who was, and over the last seven years, we ve done over million dollars in sales. We sold over million dollars or nuts were incurred ly available in two hundred retail locations in the future is very promising.

We have a clear path forward over the next four years to take this business to ten million dollars and sales in the a national brand. How are we going to do that? Really do that and doing the hard work that no one else wants to do, and I know no one else wants to do because I speak to these stores and no one else is doing IT.

So what is that? First of all, it's expanding and making more money from our current clients, client like fresh time, mom s market, fresh market. But it's also expanding distribution in getting new grocery stores like cold foods, spout A G B key accounts, how we how we we are going to grow within those stores where we are to shaking hands, doing what I just stood for you guys telling my story, having people try the product in letting people know that there's something out there like this.

And last, we're to continue innovating through our product. Right now. We developed a clean chocolate omen, and we also will developing a high protein variants, our most popular flavors, something that's never been done in this space now kind of more grand scale.

I mean, there's sixty two thousand grocery stores at the nutt markets selling ten million dollars this year are looking the bigger companies out there, and we can absolutely get there. But what's really calm as we are on the open up c to free, where that sped, good and free, god friendly. We check all the boxes.

Finally, something that my dad did in twenty ten is now main street, and we are on the cutting edge of IT in the last period. Over period, products labeled sprouted grew thirty four percent in their velocity and sales. We are on the up and up, but let's remember why we're dealing this.

Look, the reason why we able to have the success, why able to land these retailers get through these to these gatekeepers is because we're doing this in every sale that we're making. A milestone is contributing to continuing my father's legacy. Everything we're doing is to grow his legacy, treat my own along with my brothers, because we know that by changing what people snack on every single day, leave them to live longer, Better, healthier lives with their families. And so if you're ready to join us, they kick the fake through to the curb evolved way you stack. I love .

IT that you. That that was great. And I got goose bombs. What amazing story good for you do. I'm really happy to hear about this.

this. And I just placed a fifty two dollar order. I'm going to try the chay ones, the garlic ones in the .

spicy base py.

This is great. So you um you're in some stores today, you just give us the basic run down. So how many stores you're currently chain or multiple .

multiple change? Very first shot fresh. There are about seven stores across the midwest. I mean, the story with that is my brother called called the CEO got A A call back in the lunch room of the senior of high school SAT out the team got three stores prove ourselves and three stores that gave us third selves again.

They give a seventy stories, only give you those that that many allow you to expand if you're selling well. So after we had that success story, we went out and we targetted smaller chains like mm zog's market on the the east coast, the fresh market, we were starting off small list. And with that data, we've were now going to news stores like we met with whole foods weve got a yes from them. We got push back or fighting in a bigger and Better yes. And we have a huge me, what spouts tomorrow .

actually wow uh and so and move is what's the revenuer?

yes. So conception of the last seven years, we sold over million dollars worth of nuts. This year alone will do four hundred thousand last year, two hundred thousand in next year with some launches that we're planning will do partly closer to two million.

And what are the retailers tell you so that, that fresh time that you're you're sorry, you're in seventy stores with them or they have seventy seven.

Now we're in all of stores. We're in total of two hundred retail stores across the country from some of those bigger players and some just smaller one off stores, health food stores to of courses.

And like you know the way that retail works as they need to see the velocity of you, how how much you're selling on the shelf a at their stores, free to get in the more stores. And so what data do you have? And is that currently a strength visit, a weakness what what's going on with the current a cycle, cycle rador, whatever they call IT for retail consumption?

yeah. So the velocity in the data is the biggest thing. So our product is incredibly unique in that we are only the only ones you offer a pride like ours have very few completed, I can name them.

And so what we have to do with, of course, first demonstrate a gap on the shelf. Hey, you not, you will have any flavor, not options. Our organic sprouted IT and then contain no seo.

So first way to do that and then we just show share the data. I mean our vases, if they were bad and thousand issue, we fresh time we not to let us go from three to thirty to seventy stores. They came to us. We didn't have to approach them on that. We were just killing IT so much.

Okay, okay. And fair enough. Um I feel like you answer the question that should be answered numbers with letters.

That's okay. All right. So here's the problem that I have with this business. I like I like your name. I like your story.

I really want to try your nuts, right? But here's the problem um when I go to your tiktok, I see fifty followers. And when you're Young, you have a lot of disadvantages.

You're not going to have the same level of experience. You're not going to have the same amount of funding and resources. You're not going to the supply chain experience that you're that your competitors all have. Um but you do have a story and what you should be is amazing at social media. Um there you should be telling your story on social.

You should be getting people excited about this and taking that to the retailers and saying, look where this Young, exciting brand that consumers really care about and consumers are excited about and you don't have an option like that. You're the nut shell for you guys is stale. It's just blue diamond and it's the same old brands that do the same old thing.

They're not they're not on on trend. They are not see to all free there, not whatever, right? You have that story, but you need the social side to be kick out because social just takes creativity.

IT doesn't take money. And you're part of the generation that should be Better at this than whoever the CEO a blue diamond is. Their social state going to be pretty boring.

And so I think that's where you're drop in the ball and that's what you're gna need to get into retail because i've talked to retailers and what they care about is they need they need to believe, uh, that you are going to help drive traffic to the store or that customers care about your brand and that there they're adding Young hot brands to the shelf. That's that's what you need. There's your stories.

So I think that's what's missing for me right now. absolutely. yeah.

Who what what the family business like this? Do you and your brother? Are you the two owners or is your mother involved? Who who owns the company?

yes. So my brother and fifty owners, we do have my mom, who is our chief flavor officer, she's in charge of making sure the nuts taste as good as they do. I mean, she's the original person who traded these recipes, and we just talk me, start selling.

This is awesome. congratulations. I am. I bought in, which shown as well on the story.

The story was very good. I saw you about page. I saw the personality.

I was like, this is definitely be something interesting. I'm now a customer. I'm very eager to try, but this is pretty bad as .

do you remember the name of that that's brand that is kind of like on twitter he might be energy is that IT?

It's like a pin and right? Yeah, they do a many eight figures at a year revenue.

many eight figures of tens of millions of dollars in revenue yeah um have you have you looked at these guys uh all some and for the year with them .

and I think they just got popular on social media um and their stick is different than yours. There's is like the of like indulge versus what you're trying to do. But you do have like i've invested in this like uh c oil or uh uh seed oil free companies.

Um I think T B D if it's going to be mainstream, but IT definitely seems like you might be. Uh but this is like super fashion. You have a lot of the tail ones.

Uh tell you out here, I think you want to include that in your pitch, by the way. So um you an investor doesn't really know how big a nuts brand can be in your numbers while you know that are bad, they are on the small side for like an e commerce company, right? So if you you know we've done a million dollars across seven years OK, that's that's not a huge I think got a paint a picture that this can actually be really big.

I looked up blue diamonds, by the way, blue diamond d says about one point eight billion year.

and right? So I would show the nut category is huge. And you you have blue diamond does one point eight billion in sales a year. The next one does this.

Next one does this and we would use this phrase on m FM that there's a sea of same's you walk down that I O and it's all old brands is not one chAllenge of brand and all of them have the same problem that they they're lacking. Xyz um we have fresh packaging where a chAllenger brand we we have a Better story. We're hot on social media.

So I think you need that part of the story. And I would include others like nerdy nui would show examples of others who have come in to this category and are doing very well and how you're the next online again, it's that sort of air of an inevitability that you want to paint. And so when you don't have the traction that shows that your own trajectory is inevitable, you want to show the inevitability of a categories of change.

Um some of the things you talked about about you know a spouter products to grow thirty four percent year over a year in these stores. You know that's kind of like he wants slides there because he feels like every category now has a sprout ded product and the sprouted products are over performing. Guess what? Nuts doesn't have a sprouted product.

We are that that's proud that, right? So you want to paint that picture for for the investor, but really good overall. And honestly, I actually think of all the business we heard today, I think this is probably the one that could be the biggest yeah, but I don't think you're using your strengths. And I think if you keep going on the same path, you're going IT won, be huge, but you're still Young and you have time to change if you actually like takes up of the feedback to do IT, I think this could actually be a lot bigger.

Thank you so much. Uh thank you. mad. You're the best. Um awesome major. Thank you very much. right? We have the last one from university mhic an right?

All right. Hi sam shan, M F, M, M. We are tour the A A part sales person for property managers today.

only four percent of a carbon prospects that ever land on an apartment on website actually end up taking the in person to our. And it's no surprise that the in person tour is the highest converting part of the apartment sales process. I mean, there's nothing like someone giving you a guided experience of something you're about to buy.

But when ninety six percent of the potential prospects that hate your digital store fund never get the chance to experience your tour, that a highest converting sales ed moment in the apartment process, well, please get missed. Yeah, these lead gets missed.

In these apartments are lot of hundreds of thousands of dollars of myst opportunities and only vacancies that could have been filled if these prospects took a tour.

that is, until the apartment installs tour, tour helps apartments like arber apartments scale mariana, their digital sales person maria doesn't have enough time to tour every single prospect that visits the property person, much less all all the prospects that visit the property online.

But what if we could recreate marion is best in person tour and replicate up that on the website so that marion is on the website for all prospects? Twenty four, seven?

Our public manage just pays a link to an apartment website. We escaped the website and generate video scripts that help marano with the infrastructure to record the tour and scrape combined altogether with the the knowledge base into a smart virtual leasing agent.

Once that who is ready, all the company has to do is pace a little piece of code on the website in naomi's a is on the website, twenty four seven. And when when the prospect goes on the website and starts to browse, we're actually learning about that prospect through the small digital ico interactions in mariana can pop out of the right hand corner of the website at the perfect time and asked them they'd like to take a tour once in the tour.

Morgana can teeth them about the apartment and even offers to give them a tour of like a specific or plan or specific community that we do appropriate for them. Mariana can also ask tract qualifying questions for that prospect, such as, would you like to take in person tour, or would you like a schedule call back? All while driving engagement.

increasing climate booked. Now replicating that imprisons tour for these apartments can drive me three x engagement and create more qualified leads for the apartment. We know this because we are working with in the largest property matters in the nation. In the spirit of the podcast, we delivered our first million tours and help drive over thirty million dollars of worth of leases for the apartment. Additionally, this has helps us get to reach over million doors and remedy.

and that's not all guys do those videos that we recorded of mariana earlier. Well, now those are one of the biggest assets of the apartments that tour automatically restart poses those videos to follow up with leads and automatically run tiktok, meta and google ad campaigns.

Look, shop ify as that the experience and with the advent of shop fy online shopping for everyday commodities, compelling visual video first, but larger purchases like shopping foreign apartment online, otherwise known as leasing, still remains stuck with static photos, manu scheduling and folds. But that ends today with tour that's sorry. This shopping online for apartment is nearly too excited than all show, all other forms of e commerce combined. That's right.

guys.

This is the two point five trillion dollar industry in which property managers rely on their tour to close over eighty percent of their sales. Where passionate driven team who has designed delivered some of the best experience is the best companies in the world, including growth that rap in google shopping.

we start on campus to solve our own problems. In our own shopping journey. We got IT to Y, C, and are just going to started with solving IT for millions of more with tour the s person for public man.

All right.

all right, all right, all right.

That's pretty great. Do you raise money already or what?

Yeah, we've we've raised about two hundred fifty to four O K. So far. But the large you been, boost stopped. We've had many interesting moments throughout the journey, but we've been really focused on getting the product is as good for our customers as possible.

Can I tell you, I used to work in this industry a long time ago. Can I tell you like the three reasons why I think this could fail? And you could, you could tell me how i'm wrong. Uh, the first, I think that there is a thing called matter port that existed for a long time.

I know airbnb tested on their website, and I used to be an airbnb owner and when they had these are medical made these like realistic models of what your apartment looked like, basically virtue similar the and they found that a decreased uh, conversion and the main thing being is that a lot of apartments for rent our shit and like is like do just like I just need to get someone in the door and once in the door I can like, like do themselves and ship to sell them. But like online IT looks pretty shitty in the three way. The the other one being that, uh, there's like right now, I don't know, do apartments need to be filled at the moment like IT seems like uh a lot of these folks like do on killing er right now my vacancies is quite low.

Why should I spend money on to do this um when the last one being is a lot apartments that you need, I would imagine, to do sales on the apartments are kind of shady and I don't want someone to see them online. I need them to see them in real life so I can sell you on IT and you know you you know I mean, it's like I don't want like a user video of like a one thousand nine hundred ninety four hundred civic but if I get you here, you're like you I got a thousand dollars like this ship out is for you and I don't need a video for that. You only mean so can you like refuse some of those points?

Yeah I mean, I think you're absolutely right. Matter port and use one of our comes you know they're doing five, they're doing five hundred forty million dollars per year. They are a public com. But the big thing that they do that's different um or that we do that different is where .

you're telling me that matter. Port is five hundred million in revenue.

Yes yes. Um now with the big thing that is different perspective, the big thing that we do that's different is two things. The first thing is we are in fundamental active experience that's partners with the apartment to final someone down the whole cells funder from the first moment they meet them to following up on email, following up targeting.

And that allows us to hit a large, much larger market than matter port even does today. And then the other thing that I think you talked about, which is like the nature of most of these apartments, fundamental being not necessary, maybe all draw experiences. I think the first thing is looked things change.

Apartments ments are becoming one of the largest purchases we make. IT is one large version, and make, make and like these are becoming more commodified and becoming more amenities. Zed, I think all future is going into the experience economy.

I think the experience isn't be a very important part of R, G or even lennie shop. So I think that experience is a very important part. We see that because a lot of our tools, we delivered over many tours.

Many of them are international, out of state. And these are important decisions that people are on the edge on which different shops, you know, different shops that or different apartments they might want to work with. Now, for example, one apartment might want to have a virtual acing advances compared to others.

And that's why we hope fundament become for the version. In the last element, I know just you one might say something is just that we are also augmenting the sales force, right? So IT is a front line.

Sales in most of these businesses are fundamental high turn. There's people leaving the building all the time. If we can help augment their sales team, we have a much larger staying power with the actual property, not just a one of virtual tour.

And what they'd like to add is that matter, porter, they're like essential goal is to communicate the like YSL establishment to the customer. And obviously, we do that. But what we're trying to do is to augment the website to Better communicate that as well as segment leads so that they know how to allow cate the resources best to the highest intent leads. So that's another area where they save money .

by Better allocating resources and the tour, the tour that you give. So I want to miss this doing the thing like, I don't know, maybe have a demo. Is IT just a girl talking and photos? Or is IT like a walking tour that you generate? Or do you go filming first? what? What is the actual thing? Okay, here's the video.

Yeah, we go in film.

So we have two elements. We either have a video pro network that can huffle MIT or building more and more scripts that you can easily and started building from your phone. I found sixteen as like rivals like SONY cameras and what.

So this is not A I generated, this is like a video you guys make.

Yes, yes. And then we take the knowledge base as well as the media supply that throughout the whole .

sales process got IT. Okay, cool. So you guys go film a video, went an apartment, so work with you and then you have the AI wrapper around IT where it's chat, it's Q N A, it's scheduling appointment. It's following up with a targeted like that. That's what you guys do after yes okay, cool and the four hundred and fifty uh k of A R R that you have right now, that's from how many of customers that's .

from one hundred thirty popular ters, usually around the Price point of two hundred dollars, some are to fifty, some are paying more.

And how do you get one hundred of whatever property managers?

So the cool thing is we have a land expand motion. So once we're inside, our property manager used to image many properties, large apartment buildings. What we do is we demonstrate our results and most of our other property manage costs start expanding within the property manager's. So the one property manage and can set the company fers us to some of her additional parties in our portfolio or some of the other regional property matters.

So how will you go from one hundred something properties today to you a thousand or ten thousand in the next year? What are you going to do?

So one of the big things we ve been trying recently is automatically generating tour so that we can demonstrate value to apartments before we even have to like go in person because always see that a large cost of like video taping the actual apartment so we can immediately describe the website, pulls on images, use flocks to kind of turn the images into somewhat of a mark video, pulse some information from their website and generate a tour that can act to segment leads on the website.

And then they can get to see the value of IT. A tori came in. This is a high intently. Let's follow up on IT. And then from there, if they are pleased by the value, then we can actually go out and record that video on making the tory even Better.

okay. So you're gonna. You're going to auto generate these videos as a prototype, as a sample and then you're gona call, email them and say, hey, we could do this for you guys.

Call email were for yp.

okay. And then what do you guys want A B test to do you on any of your your apartment websites? Do you show if you have us installed version if you don't have us installed, what's the difference in revenue?

Yeah, absolutely. So where we notice is when he comes to the actual properties like the one of value generation for the parties using me in additional hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars, uh, in these is now specifically, we do three things, really importantly, at least read leads to like these undamned items. The first thing is we deliver four times number of tours.

Prospects who are on the website get three times engagement. And also the leads that we end up capturing, just obviously, we going to be more qualified, right? And so those leases convert .

at a higher rate, okay, watch. Pretty convincing if you told me, hey um how for many tours are giving per week right now. I could forex that if you add this thing to your website, that's a pretty compelling, uh, proposition.

do you think so? Yes, I still think that there's a bunch of the I think there's a bunch of all the questions related to the things that I said, but that is compelling. I think that I just I think i'm scarred from the industry of like selling to these companies and how hard that is, how old schools some of these I can be got to say about how old school your customers are.

And it's like the two customers that we've had in this presentation and this uh section have been um campuses or colleges and apartment buildings. And i'm like, oh my god, those are like both really, really, really hard. Um have you guys to notice that when you're signed to these apartment uh companies that they are pain in the ass to work with?

IT definitely is an old guard and and you know things change you know ever so often, but I think they're realizing how important is like particularly when they're looking up like e commerce, how things are evolving that's important for them to be extremely petite vange. And so just the nature of competition has really have been trying .

to somewhat wish the they're just slow.

They're really slow. Yeah, yeah. I do think though getting back to that idea of like you want to make us feel inevitable, I think IT, there's a clear red line you could draw where you say, look, if you were apartment building and back, you know, fifteen years ago, you might have been able to get away without having a website.

But about fifty years ago, you now had to have a website. Okay, you had a website, you had to be final on google that became Mandatory table stakes. So didn't.

After that, you had to have photos. If you don't have photos, you were not even competitive, right? You are not viable. And then you had to have videos and you had to have videos.

And then after that, you had to have a booking thing where somebody could schedule tour, where I have to call you. That became tablettes. For now, ninety eight percent of apartment sites all have a IT a way to book a tour. All mine.

Well, guess what the next one is? The next one is in A I agent that's helping you book those appointments by either answering questions up, selling you or you know putting putting together a higher quality in a pitch to in front of you and that's the next wave of this. Like all website had go through this.

And when the tech made IT where IT was possible, IT just became um too competitive. If you didn't have IT, you were left in the dust. And that's what's going to happen in this space. All websites are now going to have N A, I agent that helps themselves.

agree. Yes, I love that show.

And you guys have done great with your matching zip ups that are a nicely merchandizes. congratulations. That's that's step one to being a startup.

So you've nail that one. Uh, you've also nail the revenue thing too. So congratulate million .

tours is also pretty good and thirty million dollars of leases that came to your appointment that also .

that's okay as well.

But really the jacket are fantastic, right? Thank you guys.

Guys that do.

Yes, we kind of grade them on a curve. It's like if you're already in yc and you already have like now a million tours done.

then yeah, I kind of a feel like these are unfair, to be honest. I feel like if you are A Y, C, or taking a gap and separations go well.

I don't know. They get here this fine.

That's like you do need to go to college if you're at Y, C.

these guys put up a team slide and I was like, i've experienced at google at ill, but like all these counties, like just be like twenty years old, what's go at these even college kids and what what's happening? I think we have one more left the final pitch, come in in formula, annoy, who do we get?

Hello, my name is od vico pta. The C O N founder of patch t is really nice to .

meet you guys today. meet.

All right. Until a month ago, we were working on a no code engine that helped businesses automate their daily tasks with the eye. And IT was going really well.

We were working with extremely large enterprises like the big four and had more than a million dollars in bc money to accelerate our growth. But the more we work with enterprises, the more we realized that are most valuable, automation for them ended up being detail related. They wanted help managing their cluttered in boxes.

That looked something like this, a fun story. Our lead investor once told us that he went for a week long break and had eight thousand unready emails. And a business owner that we were working with told us his employees were spending more time on emails alone than the job they were actually higher to do.

And these stories are not one off. According to mckinsey, the average employee processes more than six hundred emails per week, wasting thirty hours and thousands of business dollars, despite IT being an essential part of our lives, email has become a burden, and we find IT hard to keep track of even the most important emails in our inbox, often losing them. But according to industries select, eighty six percent of business professionals still prefer using emails for some reason.

So clearly, we can't get rid of emails. So what can we do well, to solve this exact problem? We are currently building a virtual executive assistant or secretary that handles your emails for you.

What if, just like a real secretary, IT could learn from you and respond to emails on your behalf? What if, just like a real secretary, IT tells you what the most important emails in your inbox are every single morning? And what if, just like a real IT could automatically respond to emails that you don't care about?

Well, you can have that secretary because our mobile APP does all of that. And we are launching on the APP store next week. And no, we're not joking.

We have been actively working with a big four customer, letting up six figures in annual revenue and are starting a pilot with the largest children and rico d franchises in the world next week. Not only that, but we have also been working with five global financial institutions and completed and oversubscribed seven figure rates. We were also fortunate enough to win first place in one of midwest largest start of pitch competitions.

My name is advice, and together with my co founder, mark, we collectively bring more than a decade of experience in A I and building companies. My entire teenagers have been spent building and scaling numerous online security businesses to millions of users, and market has tons of A I research and start of experience under his belt. We're now working together to change the way you interact the email today. So join us in helping you recall laim, the biggest part of your daily workday. Thank you.

So here's the deal. I made most of my money from a newsletter business. He was called the hostel, and there was a daily news letter at scale to millions of describers.

And IT was the greatest business on earth. The problem with IT was that I had cost of forty employees, and only three of them were actually doing any writing. The other employees were growing the news letter, building up the tech for the platform and selling ads.

And honestly, IT was a huge pain in the by. Today's episode is brought to you by beehive. They are a platform that is built exactly for this.

If you want to grow your news letter, if you want to ze a newsletter, they do all of the stuff that I had to hire dozens of employees to do. So check out out behaved that com, that's B E E H I I I V 点 com。 So that you, the first five set words of your pictures, pretty funny.

You said until last month, we were doing this thing. So let me answer some questions. And then but then you have A A, A six figure enterprise contract and you've raised a million dollars. I don't understand. Can you like briefly tell me they had .

a product pivoted, they raise money, they had customer, but IT wasn't the thing.

So are pivoting.

Is that right? Is that yes, for sure? So I can answer that. So essentially, we is the same business. So we have a we worked on the generate engine, generate the engine that we started just this february. So all the contracts that we have are not converting to the email plant. Essentially, we were using our technology to develop email automation for all these businesses, and we had raised money on that. But now we simply change the user interface from a work love da that looked kind of lake that year at sector who Moore off an assistant email client interface that we found that IT works Better with enterprise um customers.

Got IT alright because your website doesn't tell that story. But um then if you click uh you have this a father up top as says new x commotion point our email client, which is pretty cool uh that tells that sorry, a little a Better .

can I give PSA about the r team has decades of experience?

Oh, G I I guess because a couple .

of a couple of the pictures have had that. Um I don't think you should do that. I IT seems you know, what you really want in a pitch is to give the vibe to the investor that wait a minute, I think this is even bigger then what they're saying.

So this is a subber are where you you're desperately trying to convince them that this is gna be big and awesome. It's going to work but you cannot appear to be um overselling IT. You have to feel like you're underselling IT and then they feel like they're finding some diamond in the rough. And so you know how old do you?

I'm twenty.

You're twenty, right? So to be like we have you know a combined twelve years of experience, I think that's a bit of a tel. You would be Better off saying is I started coding when I was eight. About the time I was twelve, I had already built blood blog. And when I was fourteen, I hacked into my schooling and change my grades.

And now I figured out you the the last few years i've really been obsessing focus the AI and like that's a more believable and exciting story for me is like, oh, this is one of those boy genius, right? Like, oh, you're one of those like hacker types to started early. I can patch, match and say, yeah, a lot of the best performing founders I know have that same story and that story works Better verses, when you tell me, you mean my cofounder who are, you know, eighteen years old? We've got decades of experience like, no, you don't right.

okay. Now what else can I believe out of this? Even if it's technically true, the whole accumulative years of experience of your team is not a real metric that most people put in their pitch deck.

So I I give with that, yes, you're right. That's public service announcement. I do have a question IT. Seems like you've got a great job of selling into people that are really hard to sell into.

So how did you go get uh, enterprise contract from a big four consulting company worth, you know, over hundred thousand dollars? I am curious to hear what you did there. What's the short story?

Yeah very good question. So um short story was that I was working as a consulting um on campus as part of the university organization and thanks to my opportunity there, I was able to connect to a very high level business executive within a big forest um through my mentor who happened to also be the director of the consulting garg. So long story short, IT was very network driven um they were looking for a solution to fit certain problems that they had within an enterprise and what I was building as a personal project happened to solve this exact problems. So once I had that, we essentially made IT a company.

And what do they say when you're pivoting? I mean, did you pay IT because of them?

They are partly the reason be pivoted. But IT was also when they started engaging with more, more prospects. So our initial generate vi or engine was essentially you could take A, I and plug IT into any legacy systems to automate any complex data date task.

For example, if you're A, B, C and you see a lot of pitch decks every day via email, we could create an automation for you where you would automatically process those pitch CS, analyze them against your investment. This is portfolio companies at seta. And then also send out replies saying, hey, we love this. We would love to have a meeting or no for the following reasons.

And what you're describing is that, sorry, I want you to finish IT is what you're describing similar .

to Linda dot A I? yes. So Linda dot A I was definitely a competitor of ours in that space. Um but then as I was saying earlier, the more we engaged with customers and prospects, we found that our product was explicit being used for email automation. And a big problem with products like our previous one.

And Linda AI is that the barrier to entry for a lot of non technical users is quite high. You have to almost be a developer to actually use even these no code tools. And that is why we decided to change the interface into a much easier to understand virtual assistance.

Undersecretary dota, I think the chAllenge with this business because you seem really smart and you know, I think whatever you work on will be interesting, think the chAllenge here is are going into the most competitive space. So I do feel undoubtedly that email e in boxes are going to start to have A I in them and the AI is going to help you process, categorize, um summarized your emails in in a way and respond you with the responses.

The problem is, do I really believe that you are gonna able to get people off of outlook, off of gmail and onto your service? Or in addition, you know they're also going to be doing that right? Google, google is definitely be adding a to this, and so is superhuman.

And so microsoft, right their own open eye, basically. And so I do think that this is gonna just an absolute bloodbath category. And so I think from an investment, one of you that would be my problem with this, which is even if I like you and even if I agree with the idea, it's kind of that second inevitability I talked about.

One is, whether is the puck going this way? This, yes, of course, going this way. The second is, are you gonna the team who captures that opportunity? And IT just seems highly unlikely that you would be the team that captures that opportunity given people don't want to switch email clients and that all of the email clients are already aware of this uh, you know capability and our you know highly incentivised to add A I to IT.

How do you say how much you really so far he said a million.

Yes, whoever is a little more than a million.

Are you still in school? Are you in living in emphasis?

Um currently we're on the gaps semester, like i'm on the gap semester, everyone else on mark also on the gap mystery as one class left, but everyone else is full time before .

people do I think like the first company meet your class. Uh, is that middle of all things? That is the issue. All these kids, all these smart kids are bAiling on university. That's amazing that you is like picking gaps.

是我 i just told you that， uh, you're probably gna fail. Tell me why i'm wrong and I should kick up yeah for sure.

Um so businesses switching to our clients is definitely a very big handle that we were also trying to navigate. But what we found is um by vertical zing in a lot of businesses with our own kind of information management secretary, um a lot of businesses prefer us over their standard molines like G M and out milk for example. Um currently, as I said, we're starting a pilot with the largest children's and risk in franchise. They entirely run over gmail, but they're still willing to switch to us simply because some of the features that we provide is something gmail and outlook just can never do because they have to cater to large groups of audience and they cannot fit specific initiation of uh, certain requirements that a .

lot of customers have. okay. Are all right, ough. And what does you got before we wrap up? I don't .

think I have much. I I think that um I think that is so early, it's hard to ask questions because i'm on your website and IT looks like it's very much beta. It's hard for me to fully understand.

I think shan, you're are asking about replacing gmail according to the website is an integration. It's not replacing gmail. It's hard to its fully understand because you're so new.

Do you just keep using gmail and this is overlaid? Or is this a new client you download and you're ve posed to go here instead of gmail 点 com？

yes. So essentially you just log in with your gmail. So when we were beating that value to adobe is by not saying that you need a new T O, D and a new domain ID. You simply log in with your gmail. We get all your emails and then you start using our interface rather than emails.

Yeah, it's like superhuman, right? So you keep your email address, but fundamentally you're not supposed to to go to gmail every day, you just to go to supermarket and open up your email. Use that for a good pitch.

Thank you. good. Best to luck you. Uh, I think I think this is a huge idea. I think this could be super competitive. And if you did IT, that would be amazing. This is a, this is a multi billion dollar when if you can actually do IT, that's the good news.

yeah. Thank you.

right? Thanks.

brother.

Right to rapid. Can we just name, I think you guys wanted do the winning school that we thought brought brought the heat. Um secondly, our favorite pitch, the best pitch, meaning the one we would be most likely to put our money into and then the um I think we should maybe do a audience choice as well, which is uh you know let the crowd react and see which one they they think is best only thinks .

right so let's start what's school? I have a winner the last week.

P A quick michigan meter class um which was helping university of the summer .

melt the middle menu which is the .

personalize skin care microbial stuff and tour which is the AI apartment tours and then UIUC was basically meet metaphors o which is the dumping company brother's nuts, which is the sprawled nuts company, and pathology, that one we just heard about email, uh, the AI email client. So those are the school. Sam, what's your back?

L annoy way. I think that michigan incredibly impressive. So but I think that. I thought that uh I thought that I thought I was incredibly impressive that the metaphor oo guy was at um uh was that founders what's called the um the way this Young guy who just went the way that he had already result of IT the money um and was taking a gap year and then brother's not already has a business that has is doing like forever a year in revenue. I just thought I was more impressive than a midwestern in school there. People are like going to the coast and I think that's a really good thing. You agree or .

know I would disagree. I would have gone, Michael. I think that traction wise, I mean poor, it's break the case here.

Tour had the most traction, right? Half a million dollars in air or a million tour served. I think tour and they're in Y C, I think tours do in the best.

Um I think meet your class has a real business. He stumbled into actually like a cool business where half a million people have used this thing. And now we found a business model that might actually work. So I thought that um michigan had had the Better businesses overall .

are right good that we disagree that good of vote, but we disagree .

and it's a tight all right. So let's do our favorite business out of these. If you were going to invest your money into one of these, sam, which one would you have invested money?

The business that I don't want to invest in, but I wish I owned, and I think the people should, uh, the people who owe this one might get the richest. Uh, the fastest of all these businesses is brother nuts. I think Austin major, brother nuts.

I don't think they should raise money. I don't want to invest in them, but I would love to own that company. I think this could be a family business that makes hundreds or h hundreds, millions or even more the next handful .

of decades OK. I would say that business, my head tells me it's either meta class or tour, but my heart is with brother's and i'm going to go to others that as well. I think that they are one one step away from actually making this like a rule of a legit business that you're going to see on the shelves in every grocery store.

I think they're not far away from doing that. And I actually think it's I would actually I would actually invest in this business because I think you could actually make IT happen. It's not a it's it's .

not theoretical here. I think that all the most of the companies had an A I element, and I applaud that. I think that's where that's where the puck going. But it's hard to stick out, man, like we get I there's just so much .

going to one with an .

old element. I, an omen element? A, I don't know. Man, right? IT doesn't IT seem kind of seems like it's T V D as so like who's going to be the winners? IT seems really hard to to pick a winner at the moment.

Yeah, sort of A A trade off of like more competition.

but maybe more upset. You set that well, you set up. You set up. This is definitely what's going to happen. This can be a bloodbath.

yeah. Ah I how I .

feel to know the crowd's choice.

So can you guys on you, i'm going to say the name of the of the business crowd reaction is going to dictate who wins the audience choice to see if this works. And this might be crazy with the audio situation here. Our producers freak out, turn, turn the laptops.

So I want to see the crowd actually, okay, so we ve got the crowd. Yeah, right. We're going to start off from michigan meter class.

Okay, from from you are using meter, father. There might be pressure like this will give predicted that from michigan, we have the skin microban company. Mill yg, exactly .

putting his mouth next .

of my all right. We're going to go from UIUC. We have.

Look one, look one, i'm going to tell you what I was from michigan. We have tour. So promising and that looks like mill you was the loudest. And now from UIUC last one, we have brothers not.

So, shan, I I think I know who won that one. I think that was .

a metaphor. O I think .

I think .

they had IT how you go.

Yeah.

we miss you, but we miss you. All right, right? Okay, wonderful guys. Great job. Uh, everybody, this is really impressive.

You guys are way ahead where I was in college at thinks am probably the same for you. You guys are ahead of the curve. I hope our feedback is helpful.

Even the people we shot on, like if we ask hard questions or or give you a hard time. H every all of all the six people who presented the six companies, you're going to be in the one percent of the one percent. You are, you are the one percent of the one percent.

And what are doing is, and it's a sign of respect if we are willing to keep IT real with you, that's because we actually think that you can win if we just wanted to be nice participation. So you know so happy for you. Um you know that wouldn't been helpful to you, but I also would be actually, you know not a sign of respect we respect all of you for doing this and I just want to say like I would not have become an entrepreneur.

I not had a class like this uh where a speaker came in and just got me hype about the idea of doing a started. I did not know what to do. My first idea was terrible.

My execution was absolutely horrendous. But IT got me on that path. IT just seems like more fun. And so if you're listening to this or you're at one of these schools right now, um if IT seems like something that you would want to do and IT seems like the lifestyle like go for the you know don't let that hold you back. This could be a tipping point moment for you just .

like I was for me and it's the you are currently in the face of life where you will never get easier to do these things then where you are right now, uh, for the next like have a four year window where it's like you have nothing really big to worry about except for this. And also I think it's Austin and Tommy. Give these guys a shout. Um you guys are a man. Um it's really hard to organize this type of stuff and I think that um getting getting this type of energy in one room like you guys have done, it's contagious.

And you think what i'm thinking, I get two words for you. I get two words for you, nationwide. We're taking the power, our nationwide and and the second, the second towards for you pizer party sponsored by M.

F, M. I think we should give these guys some money, let them hold some events and have some fun. So I could tell me after this, give you guys some cash that we can encourage you to throw more events and get more people excited about this.

And I like that it's underground. I like that it's off the books. I like that this is not the entrepreneurship club of the school.

This is um you know just the people who actually you know care about building stuff. I want to do cool things and want to get off the conventional career track. Um I I am for that.

Thank you for doing this. We appreciate you have a wonderful wednesday. And uh if you're listening m FM, you gotto go and give all these guys a little bit of love on on their websites and check out the products .

I guys that's IT. That's a part. Travel, never looking back.