This Week in Startups - E1025: #StartupTuneup @ Founder.University Part 2!: 6 founders pitch to Jason & Dave Samuel of Freestyle Capital on AI driving assistance, sleep-aid wearables, marijuana, B2B food analytics & more!

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

1:07 Megan pitches Moment AI (facial recognition software that helps drivers) 3:19 Juan pitches DreamOn (wearable and app that help you fall asleep and sleep better) 5:38 Elissa pitches Fumé (marijuana products) 7:46 Feedback & questions for Cohort 3 19:54 Rankings for Cohort 3 23:38 Stewart pitches EVOLUTIONS (marketplace for financial fitness) 25:34 Nadia pitches Keybee (marketplace for short-term rental support services) 29:21 Riana pitches Journey Foods (service that brings metrics and nutrition tools to improve product development) 31:45 Feedback & questions for Cohort 4 42:49 Rankings for Cohort 4 47:43 Jason & Dave rank the best companies from cohorts 1-4

This Week in Startups is brought to you by Masterworks, the first company allowing investors exposure into the blue chip artwork asset class. This Weekend Startups listeners can skip the 5,000 person waitlist by going to I.masterworks.com slash twist, Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to Squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Twist to save 10% off your first. purchase of a website or domain, and BetterHelp, providing access to easy, affordable, and private professional counseling anytime, anywhere. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com slash twist. That's BetterHELP.com slash twist. Next up is Megan from Moment AI, facial recognition software. That helps drivers.

All right. I'm excited for this one. I love a little. AI. She's taking the microphone. This is a legit founder who's serious about capturing your attention. That's a power move. Three, two, go. Yeah, so my name's Megan and CEO Mama AI. As you know, there's tons

of sensors and vehicles right now, but since 2016 is still increased in accidents, mainly due to human error. And then you also have 7 million drivers that drive for disability. I have one of those drivers. I was

told by doctors that I couldn't drive because I'm epileptic, so I decided to build technology so that I could. So this, you see, is monitoring distraction in the vehicle. And we use machine learning and deep learning, so our technology gets smarter with each and every driver. And we also drowsy detection, and we also do irregular events. We could tell if somebody intoxicated when they have a seizure, stroke, study cardiac arrest, which is also an increase right now. And after each or every ride that you do, you can see how your driving went and you were getting drowsy

during a certain amount of day. If they're improving and you need medical help, we also take actionable approaches. So with our partners, we also could take control or your vehicle, acceleration, lane control. And we also, so we also are currently in public transportation and our partners with Edivia and Samsung and Harmon put us in the pastoral vehicles but with government regulations we had to create a dashboard to build it out due to

government regulations for our with our public transportation so currently the main two revenue strategies that we have going on we have a pallet right now is a paid palette so we do have revenue coming in which have up to 15 vehicles that include the buses the trolley so we also on the trains with luminal 80% of North America then we also have Indivia and Samsung for our pastoral with B2BC. Okay let's hear for a moment AI well done next up is Juan from Dreamon Juan from Dreamon great I'm Juan from Dreamon we make a wearable and an app that help you fall asleep here's a bit about our attraction we raised over 375

on Indigo, we've shipped over 5,000 devices, and we were recently featured on a show on CBS called Innovation Nation. What would that mean? We sold out of our inventory over the weekend, and in the past six days, we've taken about 25,000 in pre-orders with a 12-week shipping time. We have patents in the U.S. and Canada. A bit about our team, myself, day-to-day founder, in operations, and we have a great team professionals, including Dr. Jerry Sonnen, who is a psychiatrist and helped invent the device. About the sleepbed market, it is enormous. In 2023, it's expected to hit almost 102 billion. Out of that, the sleep device category is the fastest growing category grew by over 50 in 2018. Let that sink in. It's a 102 billion estimated market by 2023. About the device,

it creates a very gentle pulse that helps you fall asleep. It's extremely simple. You put it on when you're going to sleep and you focus on that pulse. It's a form of mindfulness. Works via a scientific process called entrainment, where your brain was actually synchronized with the frequency of the pulse. Why can't you do this on the eye watch, Apple Watch, anything else? For various reasons, libraries are closed. Also, haptics tend to use battery life.

So it's a very specialized and simple device. Our app supports it, and we're going into more of an app play for our version two, which we're working on. The apps are out now, native apps for iOS and Android, and a 30-day sleep program, which we're working on. And this is a bit about how, works. DreamOn could be one solution for people wanting to fall asleep without taking pharmaceuticals. I thought I'd give it a try. You can just put it on the palm of your hand is good.

Ready to go to sleep. Yeah. When you're ready, you press the start button and focus on the gentle pulse and close your eyes and just relax. It didn't take long for me to give into the pulsations I felt in my hand and I actually really fell asleep. Okay, well done. Big round of applause for Dream on. And next up is Alyssa from Fume. Three, two, go. Hello, my name is Alyssa Hambrecht, and I'm the partner and C-O-O-O of Fume. Not Fume. Fume.

Our products are branded, consumer goods and experiences, and we are selling weed. Real weed here. This is a look at our three brands with trademarks. I'll explain what those are at a second. these are the three brands we have trademarks on. Fume, starting with that one. It's our Penn Ultimate Super Luxury brand. It will feature Napa Cannabis once we can cultivate there.

We'll also have a groundbreaking edible program completely differentiated from what's out there. Grade is our premium negotiant brand. We really are building a platform here to tell the stories of the master cultivators across all geographies. And Symphony will match music genres with experiences. So thank Lullaby for Night Night Pot. rock and roll for go dancing, clean your house.

This is a fun brand all about music partnerships and built for scale. We launched the first product last year, grade, specifically Lake Grade, because this is our proprietary cannabis grown in Lake County. What you're having there in your hand is the first product extension, pre-rolls in the cigarette format. All six skews will be statewide by next month. We have the brands, the IP, the access to channel, as well as DTC sales. the licenses and the vertical integration to really build an exciting group of cannabis brands and later retail experiences. This is a look at our performance.

We'll do $17 to $20 million in revenue this year. We have three sources of revenue, and as you can see, the scale comes from selling our own brands. This is how we're going to get to $100 million in short order. We are currently raising our Series A, $10 million raise at a $50 million valuation, which, as of Q4, seemed a bit aspirational in the cannabis space. The use of our proceeds is all about continued capture of market share expansion into brick and mortar retail.

Thank you very much. All right. Well done. Apologies to the next cohort. Because I'm not going to remember any of your companies. Beautiful packaging. Yeah. Okay.

So we saw three great companies. Moment AI. Dream on. and fumet with the accent a grave, I believe it's called. Am I right? Is it accent aggras? No any part. A good?

Thank you. All right. Who do you have questions for, Dave? Megan, congratulations with building this technology, especially to benefit you initially. If you can talk just a little bit about how long until you get this product in market, You have the demo that you were looking, the demos that I was seeing was great. When do you hope to be able to have a product that you can sell?

Maybe you do now. Yes. So we are currently in public transportation. We have 50, where we have up to 50 vehicles. So that's our paid palette with Luminator. Luminator is the number one, North America, camel for the buses, try all these things of that nature. And they control 80%.

So we currently have that going on. right now. And then with Edia and Harmon, we will be just selling our software and then they put it into their vehicles with like Volkswagen, who's their partner and things, their partners on their end. Does it exist in order to, after a hard day's work as a bus driver, to then analyze the bus driver, or is it to in real time inform the dispatcher or the driver of their real-time performance. And if so, how does that manifest itself in a product? Is it an app and you just put a smartphone facing you and it uses the camera or does it

have to have a Wi-Fi connection? Yes. So all this is real-time from the public transportation and the passenger vehicles and the way that it was. So Luminator, they provide the cameras on all the buses and trolleys and trains in United States and Canada. We just then put our software on it to monitor. and by law it required the camera faces the bus driver.

So that's how we are capturing everything. So it will time if a driver having something, the dispatch stops the bus. Where in our passenger vehicles, we just connect to the sensors and integrate our technology with Volvo Volkswagen and those people we actually already met with and then their technology actually control the lane. Do consumer cars have a camera in them facing the cabin? I know the Model 3 does. that was a little controversial because they were using it for Century, but you have the ability to turn off the dashboard.

Are there any other cars that have a camera facing the driver? Yeah, so that's where, how we work with Homa and Devia. We actually, they would be doing Rearview Meros, and then we're also looking to create a dual dash cam. But again, that's on their hardware port. So we not come out of pocket, we'll come to hardware. And then they provide it. So then there's one camera facing the road and then one camera facing the driver.

Fantastic. done. Thank you. And what is the value of the pilot in terms of dollars? So, if $40,000 for this current pilot, they're going out for the vehicles. Great. Well done. Thank you.

How many full-time employees? Oh, so there's two four times of police, me and my co-founder Jacob. And then we also have a dedicated team, which we literally dedicated to this project. So they get paid for us, and they do both projects full-time, the public and the pastoral. Amazing. Thank you. Okay. Dream on.

How many of these watches are in market right now? What do they cost? $5,000 and they retail for $149. Got it. And is there a subscription involved with it as well or is it just you make the money off the hardware? Well, the business model slide, which I didn't get to, is hardware is $149 and then the app. We're launching a sleep program and that'll be a subscription model. Got it.

Can you use the watch without the subscription? Yeah, originally we launch it so that you could buy it for a loved one. And we had a lot of people, you know, I just want to give it to my 80-year-old, you know, grandfather's that. Now, I think moving forward, we'll probably have it require the subscription. Great. Or at least the app. I'm a big believer in the sleep market. And so I think it's a great market to go after.

There's lots, there's also, you know, a lot of people targeting this market because it's a big one. And I guess this is the V1 of your product. Do you have additional plans to maybe enhance this product with V2 or V3? Or the main thing is the, you know, the pulsing. Yeah. So we were going to go right to a V2, improve the aesthetics and also add additional sensors. We're trying to keep the cost low, hardware costs, because we don't want to get caught up in that. But demand has been so high with pre-orders.

We're actually going to do another V1 run. while we're designing the V2, hardware design cycle is a little bit longer than it takes. You have people that just want to get it now. So we'll improve aesthetics. There's various sensor options that are fairly low cost, which will really bump up some of the tracking. Even though it's really designed to help you fall asleep,

the sleep tracking is something that people want, and they just want that to be as accurate as possible. How much money have you raised to date? How many full-time employees? Crowdfunding has gotten up to about 375, plus we've had about 200K of profit on top of, that and then employees I'm full-time we are a bootstrapped groups we have a number of kind of part-time helpers have you consider probably know I'm an investor in calm or one of the first early

investors have you consider and we also are investors in eight sleep which now have like a five percent overlap because eight sleep were launched like three or four nighttime meditation nothing compared to what uh com has obviously and it's three thousand dollars I think or two thousand dollars for the for the eight sleep bed which is well worth it by the way It's amazing. How do you look at competition in this space or partnerships with the headspaces and comms of the world? We actually, Alex, too, actually ordered some devices from the crowdfunding operation, but it went to corporate office. We never, you know, tried to follow up and say, how's it going.

Yeah. You know, we envision a lot of our opportunities for partnerships, really by making those connections if you, you know, wanted to. Also, for mattress tech, mattresses are very crowded right now. Eight Sleep has got to really, you know, I listened to the story that founder Mateo spoke on your podcast. And part of it is that people don't know it exists. They didn't know that Eight Sleep existed, so they went into matches. But there are still a lot of matches companies looking for tech to kind of augment. And there's other form factors that can go into.

Yeah. So you could actually go to Casper and say, hey, would you like to include this technology and make it Casper branded or one of the other bad brands? You could white label it for them potentially or something. Okay, well done. I met an amazing company. I had coffee with the founder and I was totally inspired. It's called Masterworks. And in 2018, you know VCs invested over $100 billion in startups.

But did you know there is a $1.7 trillion dollar asset class that is uncorrelated to public equities and has outperformed the S&P and has no institutional investors allocating to it? That company and that category is art. The company is masterworks.io, and it's the first company to allow any type of investor, whether retail or accredited. Any of you can then go gain exposure to blue chip artwork. This year, roughly $68 billion in art will trade hands between collectors all around the globe. Deloitte estimates the size of the blue chip artwork asset class to be $1.7 trillion. And all of these transactions are between individuals. There is no way to invest in this asset class unless you purchase a painting. And masterworks.io is trying to change all this by being the first platform to file paintings with the SEC.

In the same process that a company goes public, they'll take an artwork, public, and allow you to buy shares in it. Today, Masterworks has over 30,000 investors signed up and using their platform. So I want you to go to I, the letter I, dot masterworks. Dot. I. Dot Masterworks. I. To skip the 5,000 person waiting list.

They've got so many people interested in this that they created a special way for our listeners to jump the line because we don't want to wait in line. It's a brilliant idea. The founder's brilliant. I had a great coffee with him when I was in New York. And I'm really intrigued by this business. And yeah, stay tuned. Okay. Let's get back to this amazing episode.

All right. Fume. I never take free samples of anything. But for this, I'm making an exception. Excellent. Search all, you're in. Okay. Sungrown, outdoor.

So you're selling $17 to $20 million. You did that last year? No, that's the projections for this year. For this year, great. And we have three revenue streams. Got it. Hold on. How much has this problem?

hit the market yet? Yes, the grade 8th, late grade 8th, launched in July last year. We sell them on Ease.com. Got it. What was the first run of sales or the first six months of sales then? About $85,000. Got it. Okay. So you are expecting explosive growth when the whole line comes out. Yes, 90% of our revenue to date is because we do fulfillment for Ease.com. So when you are in Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Yolo, or Solano counties, and you, order something on Ease.com. Are you familiar with Ease? I have a friend who uses it.

It's the world's largest legal retail channel in the world. And if any of you right now opened up the Ease.com app and you ordered, it would be brought to you here within 20 minutes. So it's like Amazon for weed meets Lyft. And so most of our revenue right now

is, is a low margin, but it comes from delivering for Ease. You got to let me ask the questions. Answer my questions because we have limited time. You're running. you're running EAS delivery. Depos. Got it. But you're also making product.

Got it. So the company's business is being EAS's local delivery or making the products for all platforms. It's all about the brands. The only reason why we did the Ease complication is for access to channel. Got it. I got it.

Okay. So how does it explode up to $20 million in revenue from last year, the first product line being $180,000 if we doubled it? We did $8 million in 2019. Oh, okay. but not based on this. That was the value of the delivery of the weed.

Of which you got paid. How does ease work with partners? They pay a percentage or they pay per delivery? Not legal. Not legal. They pay per delivery 20 bucks or something. We pay them. The revenue comes to us.

It's a complicated model. Okay. We'll have to dig deeper into it. You have questions? Dave. I would just, I don't know this market very well, but I believe that I like how you were talking about building a brand in the market. And I think that there are opportunities to build a strong brand.

So DOSIST has, I think, done a pretty good job, at least within California. I don't know what you think of that product. Yep. We sell a lot of it. And so I think, you know, building a brand could be a valuable investment. All right. Well done. Let's give a big round of applause to our three.

judges. Who's your, oh, you're ready to go yet? You have your number one, two, and three here? So some of this is, many VCs make personal decisions, and my reason for giving number three is Fume is, I'm just

personally not a fan of pot than will believe we're in the business, but I'm going with number three for me. I went with three. I'm a little confused by it. We actually don't do, until there's a like a national federal referendum, we've decided not to touch the product, although we do have one investment

Cush.com, which is a marketplace for growers, sellers, processors, and packages. So it's sort of more like an industry kind of platform. So we kind of felt more comfortable with that approach. Who is your number two? Number two, Megan. I see, you know, the benefit of technology like this. It seems like insurance companies might like that. I, you know, don't know much about having the government as a customer, but they have,

understandably, lots of drivers out there that they need to kind of monitor what and how they're doing. And so not really knowing the competitive landscape, but it definitely seems like, you know, there's an opportunity. So I'm going with that for number two. And I had the same number two. I think it's early days. I'm interested to see, you know, the third and fourth and fifth test.

And if they move from pilots to sustainable revenue. which means we both pick DreamOn. What was your theory there on DreamOn? I think we will just continue to see innovation around sleep. I'm wearing the ORA ring here, the $200 device, and the main reason for me wearing that is to actually understand just high level how much sleep I got in the night prior. But I've been experimenting with calm and other meditation apps,

and I think that consumers and even my kids, they're always on. And so the ability to kind of stop and slow down is becoming more challenging. And so I'm a believer that more solutions need to exist in this area. Yeah, and obviously I'm a huge fan, having invested in two companies already in the space. And it felt like the timing for this product is just really great, both in terms of the market that was built out by Com and Headspace. and ate sleep. And also, you're past the Kickstarter. You got some folks, so it feels like this is the time to invest in this business,

which I felt similar about, you know, my other number one pick, Move 38. People who can get through that Kickstarter to me show a certain resilience, a certain fortitude, a certain desire to see the product exists in the world because their products are, There's so much pull for their products from passionate customers that they don't need to go the venture out or the angel route to see them exist in the world. And they're willing to just fight doggedly to get them out there doing this crazy, you know, Kickstarter, Indie Gogo approach, which is a lot of work. You have to really want it. So it shows to me a level of fortitude and resilience that I like to see in founders. So a big round of applause for those three.

Uh, oh, next up, I dropped my weed. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, my cannabis. Sorry about that, yeah. So, uh, next up is Stuart from Evolutions. We will put three, two minutes on the clock and speak right into that microphone so everybody can hear you. Three, two, go.

Hello, my name is Stuart Gill. I'm a co-founder of Evolution's app, a mobile marketplace for financial fitness. 75% of Americans report not having a financial plan. In fact, 27% when faced with an unexpected expense of $400 or more, we need to sell or borrow something. And how we're solving this is speaking directly the way our community likes to speak through gamification. We're targeting millennials.

So on our mobile app, you'll be able to monitor your financials. You'll be able to receive financial education, overall improving your financial fitness score, as well as having an organized document center, and finally connecting your team of financial advisors. So our business model is pretty simple. For users, it's either premium or premium of $499 monthly subscription, and our financial advisors pay $69 a month to have access to our marketplace.

We're targeting $284,000 in growth this year, our first year on the market, and targeting also $23 million in total by year four. With that being said, our persona group is the 85 million nationwide millennials, but with that being said, there's 200, 2 million users in Los Angeles and Orange County who within the next 10 years will turn in the age of 33, which is the median age for people, first-time home buyers are also getting married. And then with that being said, there's also two million financial advisors in the areas of taxation, real estate, lending, and so on and so forth. But we've also targeted another six different verticals of financial wellness.

Our MVP launched yesterday morning at 9 a.m., so super excited about that. We're doing five test cases. Each cohort has 20 users on it and four paid advisors. This past year, we not only developed MVP but also did over 100 user surveys and we now have 28,707 worth of revenue based off of that. Okay, well done. Big round of applause. Next up is Nadia from Keebee. Nadia, you have two minutes on the clock.

Three, two, go. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nadia. I'm the founder and CEO at Kibi. My partner and I envisioned a work. world where people can work, travel and live freely. An important part of this mobile lifestyle is flexible housing, but traditional housing markets are not flexible. Imagine a traveling nurse coming from Texas to San Francisco. They wouldn't be able to sign a long-term lease. Companies like Airbnb

have taken a big leap towards fixing that. However, as an Airbnb host, I very quickly realize that I need extra tools and hands. At Kibi, we will be a big leap towards fixing that. At Kibbi, we will be a big leap towards fixing that. We offer the extra tools and hands. We built a platform that allows everyone to share us the space, with services ranging from guest communication to seamless turnovers. We employ the marketplace model that allows for the scalability we were looking for. Today, Kibi operates nationwide, with strong presence in metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, New York and Miami.

In 2019, we more than double, reaching approximately 800,000 in revenue. this year with a strong team and a great product in place we will focus on spreading the word through two channels, two main channels, Google AdWords that has worked very well for us in the past and through a very generous referral program. Actually we give any of you 100 for each client you refer to us for unlimited referrals. Please see a performance. presentation of our product. When you link your Airbnb account, you activate Kibi services,

which happens with one click. After that, all the hard work, such as automated guest screening and cleaning scheduling, happen similarly on our backend. You can also monitor the quality of service provision, for example, see photos after the cleaning is completed. The app also contains a provider module where you onboard and get verified,

you accept and reject service requests, and finally, you complete services, for example, submit photos after you clean the place. KB App is available on Google Play and Apple App Store. Okay, well done. Big round of applause. Do you want to turn your idea into a website? Do you want to blog and publish content, maybe sell products or your service,

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using Squarespace's templates to build a beautiful photography template for his passion project, superhuman wallpaper.com, which showcases all of the inbox zero images that he gets at the end of the day. So go to Squarespace.com right now for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer, go twist, and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Go to Squarespace.com, get that free trial. The website, it will look beautiful. Your website's going to look gorgeous. They have so many beautiful templates. And the best part is everybody on your team is going to know how to edit and clean and crisp up that website with new content whenever you need it. They just keep making the product better and better over the years.

They are the goal standard for building beautiful websites. Go ahead and go to Squarespace.com and get that free trial. Use the promo code. Twist to save 10% left. Next up is Rihanna from Journey Foods. Three, two, go. All right. Hi, everyone.

My name is Rihanna Lynn. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Journey Foods, where we bring intelligent software to the food that we eat to the makers of the food that we eat every single day. Consumers spend three trillion dollars on food, packaged foods across the globe, and the makers of this food are trying to figure out how to feed 8 billion people. These are, when I talk about this food, these packaged foods, these are Doritos, plant-based burgers, CBD cookies. And at Journey Foods, we built software to help the makers manage the process of the manufacturing and intelligent software behind our ingredient portfolio, the products that they need to understand in terms of nutrition,

pricing, and the sustainability of their products. Our intelligence helps them optimize the supply chain also helps them manage any alerts around changes in regulatory environment as well. We currently, in the industry that I know really well, I've been in about 10 years, I'm a biologist, I've worked at Google. There's $288 billion a year spent on R&D and IT for the foods that we eat. And we started charging customers about $199 to $1,099 per month to manage their products with great success. Oh, sorry. Currently we have users spending about $600 a month on average since July.

We're pushing for $12,000, and we achieved over $600,000 in revenue this year, or in 2019, we're pushing for 3X that in 2020. 83B customers, some of the most recognized brands across the world, and over 1.2 billion units manufactured. We're adding on integrations to Google, SAP, and Alyssa is going to be our future customer because you don't want your products managed in Google. Google Sheets. Thank you. Okay, well done. Big round of applause. Let's bring up the other two founders and since you have the microphone, I just want to ask you a question, which is, okay, towards the end I got an idea of who the customers were.

I got an idea of the revenue. I don't actually understand what the product does. Sure. So can you just tell me our customer, blank, has a product called Blank and we provide the following for $12,000 a year? Sure. So a customer, a real customer. Give me a real one. Soilent has beverages that replace meals. We provide software that helps them understand the nutrition, everything about their product and their ingredients in the cloud. Many of these customers were managing their product portfolios in Google Sheets without dynamic cloud-based insights and updates for the-

So why do they, why does Soilent need to know? know their ingredients. Don't they have like a packaging partner who does this for them and they know their ingredients because they came up with the formula? Like what are you telling them that they don't already know, I guess is my point? Sure. So we use machine learning to help them optimize the price, the nutrition and the sustainability of their products. If you go out and you want to launch a new product or you need to optimize that product, we're able to give you those insights on demand if a regulatory environment changes. So you said the Soilant, they came out with a new drink. They would send you the new drink. You send it to a lab. The lab analyzes it and then

you do analysis on that? No, we analyze that in the cloud, so we actually save them time and money through the data. So they just give you the ingredients and then you analyze the ingredients and tell them something about it? Yes, and if they want to create a new product, we can create that for them with one, two iterations without them going to a lab and using humans for that. So one more time then. If you, what's an example of somebody who used your software? offering created a better product because of it. Do you have a... What's the best example of that?

We actually make $15,000 a month with our own products, which was the first product that we launched. And those are Journey Bytes that we sell all over the country and on Amazon. We were able to lower our price by 30% and lower our sugar with data. What specifically? Like, you replaced a certain type of sugar with another one that didn't affect the taste or something? We replaced the type of sugar.

We replaced the type of sugar. and we also replace some of the ingredients in the stack that helped us lower the cost. Amazing. Okay, do you have any questions here? I think I might have clarified a little bit what they're doing. Good questions. I think from a focus perspective, I think it would be beneficial that I appreciate the worldwide of $8 billion and some of the big numbers that you had. But it seems like it would be beneficial to focus it a little bit more.

And then I'm agreeing with some of the questions that Jason's asked. I think thematically, this market is a big one, and there's a lot of opakness to the area. So I think it seems like it's a good target to go after, and it's just me understanding a little bit more about kind of the competitive landscape and how the companies are doing today. I don't have a specific question. Yeah, and I think this is important because when you have something that's groundbreaking, which yours seems to be, it falls into something we haven't heard before. How many people have heard about a product like this before? raise your hand and I might ask you the name of the product. Okay, no, one person.

What's the name of the product you heard about? Do you remember the name? No, okay. So only one person here has even heard about it. They don't even remember the name of the company. So be self-aware that we've never heard about something like this. And this is one of those instances where you've got to like kind of walk us through it with examples. So we always say in the accelerator examples matter and really give us the most illustrative

example that is not just the lighthouse customer, the biggest name we know, but the outcome. That's why I sort of tried to get you to the outcome. What was the outcome of your software the biggest impact it had in the world, right? So just a little presentation tip for when you have something groundbreaking and new. And Keebee, this is another example where we were trying to figure out what the product actually does. And we sort of got it a little bit from the demo. But give us an example of your product in the world. Who is your customer?

Why do they buy your product? And what's the outcome they're looking for? Okay, so the client, the target client is someone who has a short-term rental property or someone who wants to have a short-term rental property but doesn't have the time to do everything it takes. So when you have a short-term rental unit, there is a lot of things that the host need to do from guest communication 24-7 to cleaning, checking, pricing, all sort of things. So this is a big friction that makes it impossible for. for most of the people to share their place.

And this is where we come in. We remove that friction. So you make a management tool for the features that VRBO and Airbnb don't include with their tools. Is that right? Because they do provide some tools. Yes. Yes. Like they provide communication tools on both of those platforms with the person.

But you build a piece of software that helps me manage that communication better in some way or across both platforms? Actually, it's not only tool. we do the actual work too. So there is a marketplace that it's going to connect you with a housekeeper that is going to go to your place and clean it.

So it's more like a marketplace. Yeah, so it's a marketplace. And what do you charge for the software? Or you charge for a percentage of the marketplace? So it's a percentage. So the margin in the like hand zone services like checking and cleaning is 23%.

Got it. And then the communication and pricing I think it's 9%. Got it. Okay, well done. Any questions, Dave? No, okay. And then working backwards, Evolutions, Stuart,

congrats on the launch. I was very impressed. You know, it's early days, and you're a little too early for us, but we like to meet folks who are doing what you're doing early on because we like to understand how you're thinking about it.

And the fact that you have a trial and you had cohorts and you had goals for the launch was impressive to me. and then this quick revenue, I wanted to understand. You're a day old and you have 25K in revenue. Does that make you make 25K a day?

What's that about? I wish. It's 27 to date starting, so we incorporated in 2019 of last year. Our original business model was transactional. So when a real estate agent, we got points on the real estate transaction. Okay, so that's legacy revenue

that may not have to do with this new one. So this new revenue is we have 3,300 per cohort. So it's free for the users, and then the four advisors per year. each 20 are paying us 828. Got it. Okay. So $15,000 with the first 100 being tested.

Yeah. So important to make sure the revenue model is clear. Okay. And here you had multiple revenue models. You're charging the customer $10 a month if they want the pro version. Is that right? It's $4.99 for the customer and then $69 for the advisor. For a customer to manage their stuff?

No, it's just a subscription. So basically at the end of the day, we're a lead generation company. Yeah, that's what we go. the financial advisors leads. Got it. And they're paying $60 per lead or to just be part of the system? Monthly to be part of the system. And then with the new Privacy Act,

it's if the customer, the user requests the services, and then we send them leads. Got it. So people come for the education and then they can click to meet a financial advisor who then pays you if they become a customer. So part of our system is once you log in, Jason, you'll receive you do a little self-assessment, you get a financial fitness score,

and you'll be like, man, I'm only ranked 30. And why is that? Because you don't own any real estate, you haven't filed your taxes and who knows how long, that kind of thing. And you go through our locks up education. Each point of that you get more stars and goals and set up. And part of that is like, oh, you want to buy real estate? You need to take five means with realtors, that kind of thing. Got it.

Can you refer me to a realtor? It's a natural training position. Dave, questions? FinTech is big. And I think that, I guess just so I understand the target customer today, you were talking about millennials and Gen X, but I didn't actually understand the dollar amount for the typical consumer that's signing up within your app. How much money do you expect them to have today that an advisor would be interested in managing or helping? So with that being said, our average median

is probably about $55,000 income. But we're doing reverse engineering with most financial advisors focus on retirement and baby boomers. We're trying to get the guys in early. And our marketing campaign to the millennials of saying, hey, you want to do experiences this year, here's how you save your plan. Here's where taxation will help with that process. Let's get in real estate early. I may not understand why your life goal is to have your 30-side die and live in your mother's basement.

But with our education, let's make sure you're on the deed of that household. And we're trying really target financial advisors who are thinking long game versus short game. All right. Well done. Let's give me a big round of applause. Would you hesitate to go to the doctor if you had a broken arm? Of course not.

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So think it through. You start to do it with Evolutions, a marketplace for financial fitness, a lead gen business model. Nadia at KeyB, a marketplace for short-term rental support services, i.e., pricing and cleaning. And then Rihanna from Journey Foods,

using metrics and nutrition tools to improve product development, make better products, make better product decisions, and lower the cost of making those products through some type of enterprise software and or analysis of your products and advice. I believe it's software product model.

Who's your number three? Number three, I'm doing Keebee. Same for me. I do think that the pitch needs to be tighter to understand a little bit more about what you're doing and the differentiation from the existing, you know, big players, Airbnb being the biggest one. Yeah, and clarity is super important in a business. When an investor hears, there's like two or three or four different products, two, three, four different ways to make money,

it's concerning because it means you're kind of still triangulating and it maybe isn't ready to scale up. And so here, you know, there was a tool which complements the marketplace. And it was just a little bit confusing in this format. So it could be tighter. That's something we work on really diligently in the early days of the accelerator. And you've been to almost every one, I think, or if not everyone. and maybe you could comment on, you know, the Christmas of those presentations compared to, say, here, they haven't gone through the program. Well, I've always appreciated the education that you guys give at launch.

And actually, a lot of these have been really good. This one has just been a little bit confusing. And so it just, it needs to be, yeah, crisper on what Keebee was doing. Yeah. And so your number two? Number two, I'm doing Stuart with Evolutions. Okay. I believe in the fintech space.

We led the seed and believe in digit.co, which is kind of a digital butler that's doing very well. And, you know, it's a massive market. And I think my feedback is on the pitch, I would have a little bit more clarity on what you're doing within the seed realm. You had like four-year projections and you had large future forecast, but for the most part, many of us seed investors are like, okay, if money comes in now, what's going to happen over the next year, year and a half life cycle? And so I would adjust the pitch accordingly and just say this is what we're going to do over the next year, year and a half. All right. Fantastic. And that means journey foods. Oh, and mine was

evolutions as well. Same reasons for you. I think it's early days, but promising. And fintech's obviously big, and there's huge commissions and a lot of money at stake quite literally. We both pick Journey Foods. I just love enterprise software, and when it starts to get to this 50K a month range, that's when we find investors start to pay attention, maybe not Series A investors, but seed ones and we've had great success with people and call it $10,000 to $100,000 in enterprise revenue going through the program, being able to close big rounds. And so it's, it's, you're right in our sweet spot. And, you know, 83 customers can't be wrong. We talked about that earlier, like five, 10 customers, you can kind of fake it. You can convince people if you're super charismatic, delude them into thinking

that they need the product and they don't actually use it. 83 people are not paying for this product if they're not getting value. That would be an extraordinarily difficult. thing to do to get 83 paying customers and 600,000. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to get to 60 million in revenue a year. It could be a TAM problem here. There could be people roll their own and competitive issues, but that's what we'd roll up our sleeves and try to figure out. Why did you pick Journey Foods as your number one as well? You mentioned that you worked at Google. I'm not sure what you did there, but many ex-Google employees bring other team members. You mentioned it's a data play. Here you've got an old school industry.

feeding us all. And so I just high level, understandably, it's a massive market. I like the data play. I did have additional questions about, you know, what your product is doing today. But just mixing those two, it's a massive market

and coming at it from a technology perspective I think, you know, is a positive thing. All right. Now comes the hard part. I'll ask our number one vote getters. That's Aaron from nude bar. Jonathan from Move 38 and Stella from Stella Karakasi. Juan from Dreamon and Rihanna from Journey Foods.

Come on up. These are our top five and we'll do our three, two, and one for this co-order as well. This really is meaningless because all five of these are just so good, just really great stuff. that, yeah. All right. I think I've done it. Yeah, I did it. Yeah, I'm done, I did it.

I did it, I'm done, yeah, okay. I feel good about it. However, I'm just going to, again, caveat that this ranking means nothing. All four of these, or five of these presentations, all five of these companies, very real. And then some of them that were on the bubble who took second place is probably no difference between the second and first place here. who's your number three

first I'll say congrats to all I was really impressed with the quality of all the pitches and it takes guts to get up here and do this in two minutes especially with Jason saying go go go go so yeah it's a little bit of a test everything's a test for me

and so as I said I appreciate what Jason and Jackie and team do here okay so I'm going with number three yeah okay a little bit make it a little exciting number three I would probably not need to see Jason wearing this in the future. But not necessarily, not seeing me wear it to Burning Man this year.

Oh, and we've talked about Burning Man. Yeah, I'm going this year. I'm coming back for my fourth swing at the bat. Nude Bar. That's what I'm wearing to, Burning Man. Maybe we could do this together. We could coordinate outfits. Maybe.

When they burn the temple, let's do that. Do you have... There are men that wear the product. I appreciate that. I am certain there are men that wear the product. Yes. Yes. I think these men are going to wear the product to Burning Man.

Yes. If I invest in this company and you hit $10 million in revenue, I will wear them to Burning Man. Another celebrity. You can bank it. There you go. I'll put it out there. Okay. And amazing.

I had number three. I also had Aaron from nude. Oh, really? I did. And the reason is it's early days, obviously. And I think the direct-to-consumer stuff is very powerful. I think the world is going to find that although Amazon's running away with a lot of categories, they are building like the average generic product in a world in which people, a certain group of people,

it may not be all people, want excellence. And they want to have somebody who created something that really thought about it. And the example, I'm just pulling up here as Contigo, like, how many of these have you been through? And I found this company specifically has the most care and detail. meet somebody with a contigo. Anybody have a contigo? Raise your hand. Raise your hand.

Like, how many do you own? And how many people have you told about it? Seven. Five. How many you own? You said you had the contiga? Three. Twelve.

And I have like 16. Because I bought them for the office. I bought them for the house. And I'm trying to get rid of my big hope for 2020 is Trump is removed from office. Everybody uses a contigo and stops using plastic. And three people stop shaking hands and spreading virus. doesn't go to fist bumps. But that's me.

But I'm obsessed with this, just like you are, because of the clickable lock. And it's like, once you get that sip out, you're like, you know, is anything going to come out here? I can put this in my bag upside down with no fear with my laptop. It means a lot to me that these people actually did this. And then when you clean it, like, I mean, I can't shut up about it. I think that people like you who focus on a product like that and have that level of detail win versus the generic. and equality will win and people will pay a premium for it because it doesn't matter if you pay $5, $10 or $15 for this.

It matters how much joy comes out of it. And for your product, it doesn't matter if people pay $20, $30, $40 or $50. If they've been marginalized and haven't had any available, they're going to be delighted to pay you $10 more to have something for them, right? It really actually matters in the world that people are this focus. I just love the D to C category. Who's your number two? Sorry, I went on a tie red.

Harris Smith. Okay Dream on That's all I got Dream on So dream on The You know

This simple product As I said I think it's a massive market We're going to We continue to see Interesting Go to Market strategies In this area

And Consumers Athletes Businesses Are going to be Wanting to even offer this to their employees, to their athletes, because their employees and athletes will perform better when they sleep.

Yeah, I think it's still the first ending for sleep technology, and I think it's all going to come together. Yeah, and I had, for my number two, I had Rihanna from Journey Foods. The enterprise numbers, just like I said earlier, can't be lied. and it can't be fabricated. People are getting value from this. And there's a lot of people building a lot of interesting food products in the market, and people are obsessed with it.

And like collective consciousness of what we're putting our body is, you know, really becoming just really people are sophisticated, right? And I think the people making these products are in like some arms race to be increasingly more sophisticated about what they're building. and how they communicated to users. So I really like that. And my number one was then Dream on to your number two. I think having some great success in this space,

I could see this one being a no-brainer for people to try for $150. And if, you know, like Contigo, the second, third version becomes so good, people won't shut up about it. People will be giving it as Christmas presents. Or they'll meet somebody in their life who says, I'm having a hard time sleeping and they'll just gift it to them. So it just feels like one of those incredible products. Who's your number one?

I'm going with Journey Foods. I think that there's going to be a lot of innovation. We're seeing innovation, but there's going to be more innovation within the food vertical and having, if I understand the product, just more intelligence about the ingredients. And being able to look at the numbers, as I said, have it be a data play, but also you're going after such a large market. It just seems like there's something there. So that was my number one.

Amazing. And so we were largely in sync just had a different order. And then I want to just let Jonathan from Move 38 and Stella from Stella Karakasi. You're just a little bit earlier, candidly, when you compare your products and where you're at to the three that we picked. It really is just at this moment in time, right? And same with your AI product for moderating people. investors are looking to when they pick who they want to work with they're looking at a system of hundreds of companies that come in every month and they want to get to know the founder and the

company over time so don't give up keep making progress and keep sharing that progress another important message hey Dave you gave me great feedback on my company Project Al wanted to let you know that you talked about app stores and the developers. We have three developers. Here's what they said about the product. Here's how much money they made last month. We'd love to get a cup of coffee with you anytime, anywhere, Marin or the city and just get 20 minutes of your time for some of our amazing advice because you gave me some of the best advice in my life. That's the kind of shit that flies with investors. That kind of considered nature. If you're a founder who wrote down, you know, I got to get back to Dave and put it in your calendar for six months from now and

what Dave would want to hear and what would maybe unlock an investment for Dave, or he picked you you as number one, two, or three, or he gave you some great feedback. That's the way to curate investors. People don't put any work into investors. They just, you know, send a thousand generic emails and, you know, it's like somebody applying for a job on Craigslist by just sending to whom it may concern. I'm interested in your job listing, and you're like, no, you're not. If you are, you would have read it and, you know, said cover letter is important, and you didn't even read that, right? So really keep up with the investors and in a considered way. When people want an introduction for me, I tell them, hey, make sure you've watched the episode with Dave on the podcast, read his blog, followed him on social media.

And then when you send the email, say, hey, you said this on social media about this company. We're similar to them and we're similar to your investment in this company from your first fund. And I really love this moment where you said product is about X, Y, and Z on Jason's podcast. that's the kind of thing that would make you be more likely to hit the reply key, correct? Yes, yeah. It needs to be personalized. I mean, I will say, and there are so many people raising capital today, that, as I said, I feel bad because I'm not able to understandably say yes to everybody,

and I'm not able to even get back to everybody. But definitely the personalized email is noted, and I try to get back to all of those. And then just back to what you were saying, like, this is just a moment in time. I've got to make a gut decision really quickly. And sometimes it's hard to necessarily even, for me to even understand why I've made a decision a certain way. But it's just like I've got to make that quick decision because there's the next entrepreneur who's going to walk in the door. And the one thing, me being an entrepreneur previously, that I try to do is I try to make a, quick decision versus necessarily

dragging that entrepreneur on because as an entrepreneur previously I might go in and pitch and they're like you know I pitch but then I never didn't get like a specific feedback of yes and no and so for me for the

most part I just try to get to a quick answer and so that's why so the founder can move on and so the founder can move on. Yes. It might be a yes and it might be a better moment moment in time for them. Correct. Compare this moment in time, 2020 investing environment your life to the moment in time when you had your first and second fund and what time period was that. How

is your job different? Well, I think the main thing we're seeing today is just a lot more sophistication with the entrepreneurs and the teams and, you know, having revenue in place. And so when we started freestyle 10 years ago, it was typically, you know, pre-product, the companies were raising a million dollars, and it was pre-revenue. And now you'll hear the terminology. There's like this pre-seed. And for the most part, when freestyle comes in, there is, we're the first institutional round to come in.

But in many instances, the product is early in market. There's some revenue that's flown in, you know, that's come in the door. And so we're investing a little bit later in the cycle. that gives us just a little bit more clarity on how we envision things going. But the main thing with the pitch that I've said is it's really important, especially when you're raising from a seed fund,

that if you go and raise $2 million, what can you do with that $2 million? And so it's like specific, there's the use of funds, which is kind of like a basic thing, but it's really like, what are your goals with that $2 million? I think that's one of the most important.

important things to convey when you pitch a seed investor. Awesome. Let's give a big round of applause for our founders and to Dave. And specifically, we want to thank our partners for this event. Thanks to Republic, if you're looking to raise money. Great platform. We've had a number of people use it. And Ashore, who's just one of our partners who allows us to do syndicates.

And Fathom Law, I had dinner with the founder last night. and they're in it for the right reasons, 11 partners who have great experience, who don't want to be part of a big firm because they want to specialize in startups, which big firms have a harder time doing. They usually put younger, less experienced attorneys on your project. So thanks to Fathom, Ashore, and Republic for making this event happen. Let's give them a big round of applause. And well done, everybody.