This Week in Startups - Startup Pitch Competition: Three founders compete for $25K | E1999

Starting point is 00:00:00 You seem like a winner to me. Are you a winner or a loser? I'm a winner, Jason. Okay. Winners know their value. Say it. I know my value. Say it again.

Starting point is 00:00:11 I know my value. Right. If anybody wants it for free, what are you going to tell them? F*** off. Yeah. Tell them if... Try one more time. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:00:23 I know my value. I want it for free. I want it for free. I want it for free. I want it for free. Fick off, Jason. I know my value. You're going to pay.

Starting point is 00:00:29 I love you now. Now I'm in love with you. This week in startups is brought to you by Fidelity Private Shares. Fidelity Private Shares. Manage your cap table and data room. Get faster, more accurate 409A valuation and fully automate your next financing round.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Visit FidelityPrivate shares.com. Mention our podcast and receive 20% off your first year paid subscription. Google Cloud. Accelerate your startup journey with the Google for Startups Cloud program. Get up to 200k in Google Cloud credits or up to 350K for AI startups, plus training and guidance. Apply at startups.govs.gov.com slash twist. And Runway.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Looking to level up your financial planning? Runway is the modern and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. Sign up at runway.com slash twist to get your first two months free. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week and startups. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. With me is Kelly Shricker. She is a principal here at the launch fun. That's my venture fun.

Starting point is 00:01:38 We've got 20 people at the company. And one of our passions is helping founders figure out if they want to start a company and we meet them in year zero at a little format we call Founder University. You can visit Founder.University. And this 12-week program has a bunch of modules about how to start a company. We accept 250 startups to each cohort. And then every week they check in with us and Kelly and the team and just tell us how they're doing.

Starting point is 00:02:07 We wind up investing in about 5 to 10% of the graduates of the program. Sometimes we do it during the program. Sometimes we do it when people apply to the program. We get super impressed with the company. Sometimes we do it after they graduate. We give them two offers. Hey, do you want us to be your first check for but 25K so that you can incorporate?

Starting point is 00:02:24 And sometimes we'll give them the 125K check. that standard in Silicon Valley like TechStars, why Combinator and Accelerator do. And Kelly brings me the best companies. We feature them here on This Week in startup so you can see what companies we're investing in because the greatest proxy, Kelly, of where the technology industry is going and where entrepreneurs are going is where the capital allocators place their bets.

Starting point is 00:02:48 So what you'll see here today is three of the top companies that Kelly selected for me to meet and we'll find out if I want to invest in them. Kelly, did I miss anything with the program? Maybe you could tell us when the next one is. Absolutely. Our next cohort is going to be cohort nine, which kicks off on October 25th. So we've got plenty of time founders, but don't wait, go ahead and apply at founder. And hopefully you'll get to come and join us for 12 weeks. Okay, to have their best chance of getting accepted, what are the top two or three things you hear me say over and over again lead to success with a startup? What are the factors we look for in founder university companies?

Starting point is 00:03:25 Absolutely. A few of the things we look for are definitely builder founders. So developers, designer, UI, Ux folks, growth hackers, you know, really people that can bring the product to market and get it out there without having to spend a whole bunch of money. Outside of that, we really love product velocity, even if you're very early and you maybe don't even have those customers on the platform yet. Just seeing that you're out there getting the work done week over week moving forward, not just changing your logo every every week or so, which we do see from time to time. But we really want folks that are in it to win it and are willing to put in the work. And being a developer, designer, UI, growth hacker is a good start there and then just working really hard.

Starting point is 00:04:06 Okay. So we love product founder builders. We like multiple teams. If you're two with three developers, man, chances of us funding you are very high. If you're one developer, one designer, one growth hacker, it's pretty good. If you're three idea people, a salesperson, man, you can't build the product and you got to ship a bunch of money to some development agency. We're not going to fund you. So there you have, folks, or unlikely. So let's get to work. Who's our first company? We got two minutes on the clock for them to percent, yeah?

Starting point is 00:04:32 Yes, we do. All right. First up, we're going to have Eric at the public board. All right, Eric, welcome to the program. You have two minutes on the clock. And remember, most people are listening. So if you're listening right now and you want to see this deck and see the product, go to YouTube, do a search, or listen to us on Spotify, where we have video.

Starting point is 00:04:51 incorporated into this week in startups. Three, two, go. Thank you. Hi, I'm Eric, CEO and co-founder of the public board. We're decentralizing access to digital billboards everywhere. Our product aims to make it as easy as sending a tweet to every digital billboard in the country and beyond. This is the construction company I used to own. And when I had it, I wanted to display content on digital billboards, but I never did, because I found the process was just too slow and painful. So after I sold that company, I thought, hmm, what an interesting pain point I could resolve for other people. The easiest way to test assumptions and get feedback was to bring digital billboards to major events, and our model was to give one free display spot to everyone and then upsell from there.

Starting point is 00:05:30 We did that for six days. We had over 2,700 pieces of content uploaded by about 2,200 free account creations, about 250 of which paid for upgrades in our automated sales funnel, generating us about $31,000 in revenue, and our customers loved it. They loved the photos. They love sharing them all over social media, and that created an incoming supply of new leads for our sales funnel. And that's exactly what our competition doesn't do. They're living in the past. They're thinking too small. We're opening up a new market.

Starting point is 00:05:59 And when we're successful, people will no longer refer to Billboard advertising. They'll refer to public messaging. We're a marketplace for Billboard owners. Our Beachhead customer is the consumer market. It's the highest margin and the maximum virality. And it opens us up to move into SMBs and enterprise in the future. We have a variable take rate based on performance. The more revenue we generate for a board owner, the more take rate we end up getting.

Starting point is 00:06:20 In a summarized, simplistic sense, if we look at a sample city of about 2 million people, based on our take rate, we think we can generate about $5 million of revenue in that type of a city. Which means we need about 20 cities in order to hit our 100-mill ARR in the United States. And that's before we go international. My co-founder and I are repeat founders. We're a technical team. We're really grateful to be here on the Twist podcast. Thank you, Jason, for your time.

Starting point is 00:06:43 My name is Eric, CEO and co-founder of the public board. Okay, this is a great presentation. public board, they're bored, or it's a board for the public to use. I like your vibes and I like the energy. I like the making it really easy for people. It's a marketplace, it's software. You know, we like all those kind of things. How many co-founders are there in the company?

Starting point is 00:07:07 Myself and my co-founder, Bargaff, just two. Great. Where did you each work anywhere notable? Did you work somewhere notable before this each of you? Before this, we were founders. You know, we exited our past ventures. we met through LinkedIn and I was looking for a co-founder. We got along really well a few years ago.

Starting point is 00:07:23 So doing this together was a no-brainer. So your startup founders, you had a previous company each, different companies. Yeah. How did those companies do? Did you sell for a profit? Did you sell for break-even? Did you have an aquaard? Do you shut them down?

Starting point is 00:07:35 Tell me. Yeah, my last company, the one that I sold, I brought it to about 6-mill ARR. I built it from zero people up to 60, exited on a cash sale. It was in construction, a little lower margin, more like an EBITA calculation, not tech valuations. Yeah, I was. And my co-founder Bargab, same thing. Grews to 20 million users on the tech side in the fitness world and exited to battery ventures. So both of you are technical and you're writing the code?

Starting point is 00:08:00 What are the skills here? How do you break things up as co-founders? Bargav is definitely the co-founder that does all the code writing. I get really involved in the UI, the U.S., understanding the customer working directly with them. That's my passion and kind of my forte in the relationship. We're kind of like, you know, two peas in a pod here. Love it, love it. Now, you're not going to own the billboards.

Starting point is 00:08:21 You're going to find billboard owners and then convince them to give you some of their inventory, all of their inventory. How's that going to work, do you think? Yeah, we start with some, build that trust, grow it up. And when they can see that we generate more revenue for them than they would on their own, we end up with the whole thing. Okay, so this is a great idea. What about, you know, these digital signs I'll see, you know, when I'm at a urinal or something, or in a cafe. I noticed people are kind of putting up these things in alternative places. And I've been

Starting point is 00:08:54 pitched on dozens of startups over the last 15 years that do these kind of things. What do you think of those, I'll call them micro billboards. Yeah. To me, it's, you know, the way of the future is to have digital billboards kind of everywhere. So there's no stopping that evolution. It's definitely not our beachhead customer. However, I would imagine in the future, it's kind of inevitable that we would probably end up touching any digital billboard in an elevator or on an Uber car or wherever it happens to be. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your vision. It's very clever. And I think it could work really well for events, by the way. You know, you're a little pop up there. It got me excited. If I put one of these billboards up at the All In Summit, let's say, in the lobby,

Starting point is 00:09:32 or I put 10 of them up all around the event at the parties, et cetera. And then we told the sponsor, because we do this for our sponsors on our events, we'll have their logos in rotation. Now, if we had the logos in rotation and we told anybody at the event, you know, put something up on the board for, you know, 10 minutes for 100 bucks or whatever it is or 500 bucks, that could be kind of powerful. You know, I mean, I might not do it, but I could see Coachella doing it. I could see, you know, any number of events doing it a volleyball tournament at the beach putting up a couple of these or, you know, whatever it happens to be. So I find it kind of compelling to put these up in different places. I know there are mobile billboards that people are using a whole bunch, you know, like, that deliver like one case of Topa Chica, but, you know, while they're on the way to deliver them, they drive through really popular neighborhoods. So very cool vision. Thank you so much. Okay, founders, are you overwhelmed by cap table management? And are you up to your neck in all of this due diligence you have to do? Well, shouldn't managing your investors be easy? That's where Fidelity private shares can help. Because dealing with equity is confusing and

Starting point is 00:10:40 fundraising shouldn't have to be your full-time job. And you've got to have a solution provider that you trust. With fidelity private shares, you're going to easily be able to manage your cap table and your data room. You're going to get faster and more accurate 409A valuations. You're going to be able to do sophisticated scenario modeling, which I'm telling you, a lot of founders don't focus on and they should. You want to know what that pro forma cap table looks like and, you know, do some scenarios. Hey, if we get bought for $100 million, a billion, what happens? And you're going to want to automate your next funding round. You want it to go smoothly, and you want to come across as professional, all on one collaborative platform with awesome support.

Starting point is 00:11:19 Fidelity even has an amazing startup community for access to exclusive events for founders and VCs. So, experience the difference that Fidelity can make by visiting FidelityPrivatechairs.com. Mention our podcast, and you will receive 20% off your first year paid subscription. All right, wonderful. Next up we have Matt at Speed A.I. All right, Maddie Boy with an AI. Here we go. I wonder if you have SpeedAI.Tech.

Starting point is 00:11:46 Maybe get a dot tech domain. My favorite. All right, here we go. Three, two, go. Hi, my name is Matt, and we are Speed A.I, an app that creates adaptive training plans coaching for runners. From the day you decide to register for a marathon

Starting point is 00:11:58 to the moment you cross the finish line, we hold your hand every step of the way. Meet Tim. He's a new runner registered for the New York City Marathon, but doesn't know where to start training. Tim downloads the first. the app and answers this dynamic questionnaire about his fitness history. He connects his wearables like Apple Watch or Whoop, and Speed's algorithms incorporate all of this data to create a tailored

Starting point is 00:12:18 training plan for the New York City Marathon. As Tim trains, his whoop detects he didn't get much sleep. Speed's assistant AI detects and suggests an adjustment to the upcoming workout for the day. Soon after starting his plan, Tim then receives his monthly nutrition box, filled with energy gels and hydration products. Speed's unique nutrition training tells Tim exactly when to use the energy gels to maximize their effectiveness. Our closed beta users like Tim are telling us that our training approach incorporating nutrition is helping them set new personal records. With speed, we're offering three product tiers. At 1899 a month, a training plan for 2999 a month training and coaching and for 5999 a month, training,

Starting point is 00:13:00 a month, training, coaching, and a monthly subscription box. We have a closed beta with a small group of users. We're releasing our open beta in two weeks' time for September 1st. In the meantime, we've released the nutrition box to our waitlist and had a surprising amount of engagement from interested athletes, influencers, and even some brands asking if they can include products. At speed, we have a love of endurance sports, having competed at events like the Iron Man World Championships and numerous marathons.

Starting point is 00:13:26 My brother's sister and I, are a family team of software engineers, with experience working for startups, government, and large tech companies like Twitter and Data Dog. Thank you. Okay. We've done a lot of coaching apps. Most of them have not worked out so well, but I do think AI brings something new to it.

Starting point is 00:13:42 How do you make sure that the AI is actually giving good advice and not hallucinating? I was a marathon runner for many years for a decade, 11 New York City marathons. I would have loved to have a coach. I would have loved to have an app. I was writing everything down in a journal, basically to keep track of my training and then maybe a spreadsheet. So, you know, I do understand that marathon runners have a unique need. But isn't the AI, like, going to be bad?

Starting point is 00:14:05 And how do you make sure that it gives good advice? Yeah. So the biggest thing for us that we've seen in our testing is really making sure that the context that the AIA has is accurate and has a good background. One of the things that we've definitely seen is for the users who are using the app. The guardrails are definitely something that we're working on, for sure. Awesome. But it's something we need to improve.

Starting point is 00:14:31 And then with these bars, what's the point to get in the bars from you when I can buy them on Amazon? I'm curious if that's like a major part of the vision or it's a distraction. Tell me your thinking. Yeah. So one of the things that when we've been talking to users is the nutrition and how to actually take those energy bars and gels during training is one of the things that's left out of most training protocols. And so that's one of the things that's key to the training plans themselves. So if you're training for and you're going on your long run, doing a race simulation, we say, you know, 15 minutes in, you need to be taking the gel that we've supplied to you. And then 30 minutes.

Starting point is 00:15:11 And then you can, your body actually is able to acclimate to these gels. Okay. Tell me about the founding team. So we're a brother, sister team. Three of us. We're all siblings. Oh, three of three siblings. Okay. Yeah. And roll software engineers. So we're done. We're soft for engineers, siblings. Love it. You've worked together before on projects. I take it.

Starting point is 00:15:34 From building sandcastles to startups. Good enough for me. Okay, Kelly, let's keep the trains moving here. Give me my third company. I'm really excited. I want to invest in one of these. I'm feeling frisky. I want to make a bet. And I love the first two. The third one is good. I'm going to have a big problem here. Let's go. Next up is Joe at Pot Engine. Hello. All right, I love pods. Go. Perfect. I'm Joe. CEO co-founder at PodEngine, the podcast audio intelligence platform. Meet Sarah. Sarah's head of marketing at a growth stage fintech. She needs to grow revenue and knows that podcasting as a channel is a no-brainer to explore, but she doesn't know where to start.

Starting point is 00:16:10 She's found it impossible to do herself. Existing tools and agencies are time-consuming, manual, or really expensive. Then she found Pod Engine. She creates an account, and Pod Engine AI enriches her profile and creates a podcast strategy for her, just like, career agency. Because PodEngin transcribes and analyzes thousands of episodes every single day, she starts receiving opportunities immediately into her inbox, relevant podcasts are guests on or sponsor, and alerts for her brand and her competitors. After just two weeks, she's really impressed.

Starting point is 00:16:40 She's booked interviews of four industry-leading podcasts, as well as uncovered which competitors are sponsored podcasts, and she's received alerts when her brand has been compared to other competitors. This industry is really surprised us. It's built on manual and labour-intensive work, and it's perfect to streamline with AI. As well as our initial platform, we're now iterating super quickly. We've got a guest booking workflow, medium-margent solution, and we think the world's most powerful search engine for podcasts. Our roadmap is equally as exciting, bolstered by customer demand and inbound interest. It's a huge opportunity. It's over half a million active podcasts, a rapidly grown industry. Majority of podcasts take guests or seek sponsorships. However, podcast and as a

Starting point is 00:17:21 growth medium is yet untapped by most businesses. We're the team to do this. We're serial builder, founder, friend, entrepreneurs with multiple exits under our belts. And despite being so early, we have great traction. We've got five pay and media monitoring customers. We're working closely with 10 pilot agencies and API customers, and we have over 400 freemium users. I'm Joe Tanarella, see you at Podengine.a.ai. Okay, well done. You did a great job, Joe. I know this need. So, having two podcasts, one of them is like, really, really big. And the other ones, this podcast we're on right now is niche, but makes a lot of money has been sold out for, I don't know, 12 or 13 years since we've had advertising, the first year we weren't even trying. And so I did research manually. I think I had hired magic assistants, and then I was using Athenawow.com. assistance to go through the top business podcasts and add new sponsors to our Google sheet to give to the partnership team. And I just said, hey, go to the top 50 podcasts, look at the notes, show notes.

Starting point is 00:18:29 It was very manual. But, you know, if we put somebody on it manually who costs, you know, 10 bucks an hour, 20 bucks an hour, and they can find, I don't know, but five new sponsors a day an hour, and they do it for 10 hours and we have 50 new leads, oh my lord, you know, each of those leads is worth to me, 10 bucks. So, you know, it's easy, peasy lemon squeezy. But you have something else here, which is people want to be guests. I get bombarded. There's these podcast agencies now that literally all they do is book people on podcasts, authors,

Starting point is 00:19:00 business people, et cetera, influencers. And I hate these companies with all my heart. And I block their domains using superhuman. I hit the shift exclamation key. And I literally not only block that person, I block at pod. you know, bookers or something like, and then I have a little thing where if they try to get around me and hit me with the Gmail, I reply to them and say, we do not take guests suggestions. And they're like, okay, well, I just have these three suggestions. So how do I get them to you? And I'm like,

Starting point is 00:19:26 hey, dummy, we don't take suggestions. However, I do know that other podcasts do. The one concern I have is you're boiling the ocean 500,000 pockets, way too many. What you really want to do is tell this two constituents, these are the top podcasts, these are their advertisers, these are the new advertisers. So, hey, here's the This Week in Startups. We just started having Oracle as an example, which has a really great cloud offering, and they're on the pod. So my competitors would want to know, hey, Oracle started doing This Week in Startups. Are they doing any other podcasts, right? So there's like a very kind of interesting nuance here. The long tail, I don't think actually matters that much. So I'd rather see you focus not on the 500,000 podcasts. Do the 5,000 that are notable. Because 90% of the revenue

Starting point is 00:20:14 is in the top 500 podcast probably is my guess. And I saw some notes about that. So I love the idea. What does it cost? What are you charging right now? So at the moment, to be completely honest, we're still figuring out pricing, just like we're figuring out product market fit

Starting point is 00:20:29 and what that looks like a problem. So between $50 and $300 a month, depending on kind of size, we have a free new model right now. I'm going to give you a very important piece of advice right now. The cheapest price is $500 a month. Anybody who can't afford that is a mid-loser. You don't want to talk to them.

Starting point is 00:20:43 Yeah. You want to talk to the people who are serious. If you're hiring a PR firm, that's between $2,000 and $25,000 a month. If you're looking for advertisers, the typical ad buys probably between $10,000 and $100,000 on average for an average podcast. That means $500 a month, $6,000 a year. I would make people pay for the year up front. I would make them sign a two-year commitment maybe, and then you could fall back to a monthly if they want to try it. I would give no free, zero-free, in order to use it, you have to have a credit card. Please trust me on this. Do not be a loser.

Starting point is 00:21:17 Okay? Yeah. You seem like a winner to me. Are you a winner or a loser? I'm a winner, Jason. Okay. Winners know their value. Say it.

Starting point is 00:21:27 I know my value. Say it. Again, like you mean it. I know my value. Right. If anybody wants it for free, what are you going to tell them? I'm going to tell them they've got to pay. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:39 Tell them if, let's try one. more time. Yeah. I want it for free. I want it for free. I want it for free. Fuck off, Jason. I know my value.

Starting point is 00:21:47 You're going to pay. I love you now. Now I'm in love with you. Because I have so many founders who say they have the greatest product ever. But they don't want to charge. Are you a chicken? Not a chicken. Are you a man?

Starting point is 00:22:05 A man. You're a human. Okay? You're a man. Charge for the goddamn product. Okay? and charge a lot. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:13 Charge a lot. I would make it $1,000, actually. And then just have people beg you for a discount. I say, you know, there's no reason to discount that. If you're serious, you get one booking for your client. It's worth $10,000. So you need to get one a year to break even. Your second one, you're profitable.

Starting point is 00:22:29 You get one advertiser, J-Cal, you're profitable. If you tell me that, I'm all in. Great. So this is a great idea. You can crush it. Most people are not going to like this. idea most investors are not going to like it. Savvy ones know that data systems, data subscriptions are a great business. You can look at a lot of different databases that charge, whether it's

Starting point is 00:22:50 crunch base, or there's a bunch of advertising database. People love paying for the shit. But they will not respect you if it's less than $10,000 a year. So I would say it's $10,000 a year. If you don't want to pay $10,000 a year, it's $2,500 a month for one month. You can try it for $1,500 or you can pay $10,000 for the year. It's a yearly contract. You got to give a, you know, and that's it. But be hardcore, great idea. Got it. And tell me about your team.

Starting point is 00:23:16 How many co-founders? Two co-founders, both technical. You write code? I'm writing code. Luke, my co-founder, he's computer science. He's started and sold a consulting business in software. So he's the hardcore one. I'm ungrateful.

Starting point is 00:23:29 I'm contributed to the website. All right, well done. Well done. Okay. Thank you. Great job. All right, everybody. You know, being at a startup is a team sport. You're not going to get there alone, man.

Starting point is 00:23:39 You got your founders. You got the, you got the, early team members, of course, investors, most importantly, that first couple of customers, right? And you all work together to get your company off the ground. And I have great news for you and your team. Google for Startups Cloud Program is now a partner here at this week in startups. And listen, you all just want to know the number. Here's the number. 200,000, 350,000. These are the two numbers. What are these two numbers? You're going to get $200,000 in Google Cloud Credits. And if you're an AI startup, you can get up to $350,000.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Google is serious. Google for Startups Cloud program is here on this week in startups. Just letting you know, they are serious about helping your startup. The number is the number, okay? And there's two great numbers here. 90% of generative AI unicorns choose Google Cloud. We all know that. They do a great job.

Starting point is 00:24:34 So here's your call to action. You need to get these credits. You need to start building. You're going to find out everything about this amazing. program, Google Startup Cloud Program at Startups.gov.com slash twist. Okay, very simple. Hit the rewind key, bookmark this, write it down. I want you to sign up right now. Pause the podcast. Because these are big numbers, folks. They really want to support you. I don't know how long they're going to do this for. So startups.com slash twist. All right, let's get back to this amazing

Starting point is 00:25:02 program. Kelly, let's have a conversation. Give me your ranking of these three companies based on your, you've been how many years in working for me as a venture capitalist? Three years. Three years. Okay, based on your three years, rank one, two, and three in terms of if we all, if we invested in each of them at the same valuation, you know, and wound up owning a whatever small person in the company for supporting them and giving them cash, which one's going to give us the biggest return, second best return, third best return,

Starting point is 00:25:29 in your estimation, tell me what. Absolutely. So I'll start with who I think, we'll have the hardest time getting there, which is speed AI, you know, running is a really big, space, consumer can be a little bit hard. I think really talking to your customers is going to help you figure out exactly what is needed in a crowded market and then just go as hard as you can on that. With Pod Engine, love a SaaS business. Podcasting is huge. I think it will only get bigger. And so if they listen to that good advice about pricing, I think that they have a good chance of returning our fund and

Starting point is 00:26:00 then even more if we were to invest. Okay. And just to be clear, it's not SaaS because that software as a service, this is a data play, right? It's a data subscription. So it is a subscription, but let's just make sure we're clear. It's not SaaS. It's data. Keep going. And you're number one and you're number one. Cool. My number one is public board. You know, disrupting, frankly, a really boring business and removing a lot of friction just opens up a whole new world of customers, which is really interesting in the VC world. The other thing I think is really interesting is not just that it would be the, you know, out of home advertising. But as you said, there's event applications here, you know, on the B to C side, you can celebrate life milestones and graduations, right?

Starting point is 00:26:35 Oh, wow. People are willing to really do that thing for the wow moment and the experience. And so I can see how, you know, especially with the idea that you can test it for cheaper free and then you get really addicted to it, all of a sudden it's gamified. Your friends are pulling pranks on each other. Who knows what it looks like, right? Okay. Your order is almost perfect. The correct order is Pod Engine, then the billboards, then the marathon app. The reason is Pot Engine has the easiest chance of returning a large amount of money. Those data business get bought for a lot. The marketplace is going to be a little bit harder, but again, it could get very big. It's going to have less odds. And the third one, obviously, consumer, finicky, low odds.

Starting point is 00:27:13 If it does hit, it's a niche market. But not that small of a niche. But all three are great, and all three have great teams. I'm joking with you. Nobody knows. But we'll have this on record. And hopefully, you can pull this out in seven years when your order was right and mine was wrong or whatever. We'll see.

Starting point is 00:27:30 That's why in our company, I force everybody to make hard decisions. And this is an easy decision for me. I'd like you to invest in all three companies. Can you do that for? me, Kelly? Of course I can. All right. Listen, let's bring everybody on for a second here. It's not the Oscars. You don't have to give an acceptance speech, but would it be okay with you all if I just gave you some, a little bit of chatter to kind of get things moving here and invest in it and you're all going to work hard? Yeah? All in. You're all in. I like it. Okay. Great job, everybody. Everybody

Starting point is 00:27:58 splashy cashy gets a little bit of an investment. And, you know, let's work hard here. Startups aren't complicated, folks. You got to obsess about your customers, build a product or service they love with good product velocity. And the way you have good product velocity and you know what your customers have is by having a kick-ass aggressive team that comes to work every day and puts in the time. The way to win as a founder is effort and time and having that product velocity and obsessing about your customers. If you obsess about your customers and you, you know, really have good product velocity, you know, you're not afraid to charge a good enough price. Things can go well for you. Nothing's guaranteed. But you all have my respect.

Starting point is 00:28:38 these are great businesses and you all came to founding university and had a good time, yeah? Absolutely. It was great. Yeah. Okay. So I just want you each as we close here to tell me what was the most valuable part of founding university for you specifically? You personally, not your co-founder, not your team, just you personally, what would you say you got the most out of it? Just so Kelly and I can hear and the other people can hear because they might want to go after they see this to founder. dot university and apply with two or three of their friends to build a great, great startup that focuses on team, product, and customer.

Starting point is 00:29:13 Let's go. We'll start with you, Matt. Matt, what did you personally, Matt, get out of, from Speed AI? What did you get out of the program number one? For me, having an engineering background, learning all of the business side of the things. So related to the accounting, how to structure, how to set up a company, the setting up the cap table, all of that. That was extremely valuable.

Starting point is 00:29:34 So blocking and tackling a lot of the chores you have to do as a founder suck. And then having somebody who's invested in 400 companies has seen it all help you with little modules and some bullet points and some points you in the right direction. It's going to save you a lot of time. So that's great to hear that we did our job. Okay, Joe, from Pod Engine, you're up next. What did Joe from Pot Engine get out of the Found University? The thing I like most of at Founder University, I think was the community. It's just so helpful to be around like-minded founders.

Starting point is 00:30:02 I jump in to a discovery call with them and likewise with me. And some of them I think are going to become customers in the future as well. Great. Okay. And Eric, your turn. Eric, what did you get out of Founder University? The biggest value that I got out of Founder University was to really analyze and deep dive into my TAM, my total addressable market.

Starting point is 00:30:22 I remember before Founder University, I was looming random chat GPT searches on what is our market and coming up with a wild array of answers. But then when I was watching and listening to it. to Kelly do her, her bottom-up Tam approach, I really got to understand who is my beachhead customer, who's my ideal customer profile, how does that relate to our go-to-market strategy, and how does that relate into our long-term planning as well? And I'd never really dove that deep into it ever before or had anyone questioned me on it. No one questioned it. Kelly did, and I learned that from Founder University. I get to take that away forever, and that's a great value. Awesome. So Kelly did her

Starting point is 00:30:58 job. And Kelly, it's good to hear you did an adequate job. And, you know, for you too, Kelly, you can always work a little harder, but you're doing a great job. I mean, I'm starting to sound like Trump in my old years. Tremendous, Found University, great job. Founders love it. Okay. No, it's great to hear. And you know, what I love about these answers, Kelly, is that when we go around the horn like this, everybody gets something different out of it. You know, some people already understand market size, total addressable market. They were some Wonky McKenzie person. you know, and they just grind it out and they got it done. Other folks, you know, hey, they don't know the blocking and tackling and, you know, like Matt,

Starting point is 00:31:34 maybe, I don't, I've never set up a cap table. How do I do that? And you can make a lot of mistakes with your cap table. And if you avoid those mistakes, man, that could save a company and, you know, just great job everybody. Are you looking to level up your financial planning? Well, there's an amazing company called Runway, and they've completely changed the way businesses handle their finances. I recently did a tour of the product with one of our founders and with the company, and it is mind-blowing.

Starting point is 00:32:02 Finances are hard. We all know that, right? But Runway makes it simple and even fun. How do they do this? Well, they use plain English formulas that you can understand that integrate into more than 650 tools, pulling in all your accounting data, your HR data, even your CRM. And that gives you a complete picture of how everything in your business fits together. Runway also makes headcount planning and scenario analysis super easy.

Starting point is 00:32:29 You can just drag timelines to adjust your plans, and all of your metrics will automatically update. This is stuff that startups need to be doing. You really need to get finance dialed in in order to scale your company, and Runway is the way for you to do that. You can add real-time charts, text, even video to investor reports, and Runway will help you make better decisions by making the impact on your business crystal clear to everyone. you want a personalized demo, head over to runway.com slash twist and sign up to get your first two

Starting point is 00:33:00 months free. And there are a ton of companies using runway. A number of them are in my portfolio, like two of my favorite companies, super few ones that I use all day long, and eight sleep, which I use every night to get that sleep score up. So once again, go to runway.com slash twist. It's an amazing product. I got time for one question. Any question for Kelly or I? from the three of you, just now that you're funded and you're going forward. Any question that you might have?

Starting point is 00:33:26 Raise your hand and then go ahead and ask it. Sure, yeah. Okay, good. Thank you. Imagine six months from now, we're talking again. I'm really curious in your mind, what would be the number one thing

Starting point is 00:33:37 you would want to see? Like there's so many versions of traction, there's so many things to look at. What would be your number one? We get together, boom. Is that there or not? You know, if you understand your customers really well,

Starting point is 00:33:48 and those customers are over the moon, we don't need a lot of them. We just need to know that these five customers think that this is the greatest solution ever. And then when our team does due diligence, and they say, hey, if this product didn't exist, how would you solve the problem? And they panic?

Starting point is 00:34:08 What? It's going away? Are they going out of business? Because this is critical for my business. And, you know, Paul Graham refers to that as like hair on fire problem. Like, my hair is on fire. I need a bucket of water.

Starting point is 00:34:18 Um, so, you know, I think we would really, the nature of that relationship with your customers, I'd rather see five people who you are essential for than 50 people who are dabbling, right? Then I will also say that a lighthouse customer, somebody notable, uh, you know, so in your case, if, you know, I'm going to pick a brand that is, you know, there's like, somehow you got, you know, Starbucks, you know, to, to promote the app and their news. lemonade, summer beverages that my daughter's love on their things and they thought it was killer. You know, okay, wow, how did he get Starbucks? Like, whoa, you know, or for Pod Engine, you know, if you got, I don't know, Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss to pay you and you were like, hey, yeah, Joe Rogan's using it. Tim Ferriss is using it. Their ad teams are using it. Look, boom. So, yeah, we love that. Thank you. Thank you. That's a great answer. I appreciate it. No problem. I've got to take one more if you got one.

Starting point is 00:35:16 Matt, Joe, any questions from YouTube? Go ahead, Joe. Hey, thanks. So you mentioned data play. I love that idea. What do you think marketing and go-to-market strategy looks like for a data play? And how is it different to us as us? You know, what you're going to find is when you send a report and you send a couple

Starting point is 00:35:35 screenshots to the right person, they immediately respond. So you find my three account executives and you say, hey, I've got this new product pod engine. We've analyzed all the sponsors. We know this is a list of sponsors on this week and start. startups based on our data. Did we get it right? Because we also have it on these 25 other people and we can get you the 25 people that you don't and their advertisers and we can tell you who you have and who you don't have. So that list where you say to, you know, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:36:05 some New York Times technology podcast or, you know, Yahoo Finance has some tech podcast. And you tell them, this is J-Cal's advertisers. These are your advertisers. These are the ones J-Cal has that you don't have. Vice versa. That's super powerful. but you got to find the right person and you email them and then they lose their mind. It's really that simple, but it's your job to figure out

Starting point is 00:36:26 who's that title that you find on LinkedIn or using lead IQ or in crunch base or whatever it is. Maybe you just email the sales at, you know, This Weekend Startups or Partners at This Weekend Startups.com and you get it. And you'll figure that out over time.

Starting point is 00:36:41 And, you know, you're just solving a simple problem from them. Do you want more leads? do you know i noticed that you've appeared on these four podcasts we can tell you 40 other podcasts that would probably want you as a guest would you pay for that or not i'm just curious and how much would you pay because it seems like each of these podcast appearance must be worth 10 20 thousand dollars for you our service is only 12 000 a year i think you should buy our service and get on another five podcasts amazing i love it so i'm quantifying the value for people and i'm

Starting point is 00:37:10 putting it at what i think is realistic you know if you're a venture capital and you get on another podcast, you know, VC's probably think that's worth $5,000, $20,000. If you're a book author, maybe you think it's worth $1,000, $3,000. And that's what you have to learn is. What's the value they put on that? A PR firm, you know, might buy one account and they might be in an all day. And you see they're using six different IP addresses. You say, hey, listen, I know you're using six different people are using it. We see the searches. You really should be buying a five-pack. How do you feel about that, right? So the land and expanding. So you just watch the abuse and you want to see abuse. Abuse means consumption and engagement.

Starting point is 00:37:44 So, you know, you let them abuse it. Tell them in month six, you know, or month four. I noticed that like you got six different IP address using this all the time. It's obviously got multiple people using it. Can we talk about a multi-seat thing? Because I see you getting so much value. All right. As we wrap here, Matt, you have a question.

Starting point is 00:37:59 I was going to ask if you've seen any successful growth strategies for consumer apps. Sure. We have FitBod is one. We have Steezy. We have com.com. Making an app that is essential for people's lives that they get a lot of value from, and they tell their friends about, is the highest form of product market fit?

Starting point is 00:38:19 Because then that means you're not doing the marketing, other people are. And that's called net promoterscore. And so I think you hiring people for your company who have the skill set you need and are marathoners who love the product is critical. You know, Steezy, if they hire somebody who's into dance and they're good at marketing,

Starting point is 00:38:39 Fitbot only hires people who are into CrossFit and fitness. So when you look at their retreat, it's like, this looks like a rugby team. Like, they're all in great shape. And, you know, they do a retreat every year. And I think it's, you know, one of the lakes here in Austin. And they have a great time. And I see them all at their retreat.

Starting point is 00:38:56 I'm like, wow, these people are buff. They look great. And they told me, we only hire for those two types. So if you hire and you understand the marathon or mindset and the person of skill set, I really encourage you to do that. So you have two full-time people on this? I'm sorry, you said three? All three of us, yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:11 Yeah. And all three of you run or no? Yeah, we all run. Yeah. Perfect. So when you hire your four, hire a marathon runner with the skill. Hire a runner who understands a product and then your product market fits going to be tighter. I've hired people to work for me who aren't passionate about startups but are great at their job.

Starting point is 00:39:29 And they become good contributors. They can be an okay or solid contributor. They rarely become extraordinary contributors. But when I hire somebody like Kelly who's passionate about startups or Jackie who's passionate about technology startups and entrepreneurship, and they have the skills, boom, you know, you get that like really great. So if you make an X, Y, access, you don't want to hire people who don't have the skill.

Starting point is 00:39:51 So then it's a matter of you're only hiring with the skill and with the passion for the vertical. That's my best advice to you because they're going to help you get that product market fit better. They'll understand the customers. Also, virality in the product is another big unlock. So you have net promoters score,

Starting point is 00:40:06 which is they go off on their own and tell people about it when they're training for the marathon. The next piece is they add their friends, who they're running with to their account and they share their training with them and then they ask them. So do you have multiplayer mode and virality built in yet? That's what we're working on that.

Starting point is 00:40:24 Okay. Yeah. So I mean, listen, if I add five people, like when I order from Uber Eats, you know, or I'm at an offsite with our team and somebody DoorDash or something, they share the link and say,

Starting point is 00:40:36 here, order DoorDash, you know, put your order in yourself. Person's forced to go to the website, create an account, open an app, and then all of a sudden we're off to the races. So that's like one of the big hacks is if you can have multiplayer mode because then everybody who you pay to sign up,

Starting point is 00:40:51 like let's say you start paying people $100 to sign up and you lose $50 on them, well, if they invite two friends and one of them joins, now you made $50, right? I'm just saying like if it's $100 to acquire a customer and each customer is worth $150, you know, you hire, let's say it's $150 to get a customer

Starting point is 00:41:07 and you make $100 off a customer. Okay, you lost $50 getting them. They invite two, friends and one comes, you made another $100, now you're instead of net negative 50, you're plus 50. Right. But this is very simple. You don't need to overthink it. Two things.

Starting point is 00:41:22 One, people won't shut up about your product. Not saying nice things about it. They are in the 9, 10 category for net promoters score, which means they tell their friends. And then two, you have virality. Another amazing episode of this week and start, let's go to Founder. University. Come to founder Fridays. Tech and meet other founders.

Starting point is 00:41:38 And if you want to apply for funding from our firm and you're not quite in the founder, University Place, you go to launch.com slash apply. That's our common application for everything. And you will meet with one of our team members if you've got a halfway decent idea and a good team. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

This Week in Startups - Startup Pitch Competition: Three founders compete for $25K | E1999

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