4 New Business Ideas My Students Are Launching

Welcome back everybody to capitalism dot com this is a really fun episode i have hand selected four people from one of our mentoring groups it's called the capitalism incubator it's where we help people cast the vision and build the foundation and launch the business that they can build scale and sell and i've hand selected four people from that who have gone through one of our exercises to put together a pitch deck and i've asked them to come on and pitch you so they're going to be walking through their vision and their pitch where they have evaluation where they have a certain amount of money that they are looking to raise or apply into their business and you get to judge them and rate them on how well they have put together their pitch deck so they all give their contact information if you want to reach out to them and bring an offer to them or if you have resources that will help them or or if you just want to send a note of encouragement i'm sure that they would appreciate that as well they're all nervous but they're all excited because we're going to be launching these businesses inside of the capitalism incubator if you want to be on the notification list for when we've got spots that's at capitalism dot com inc i hope you enjoy.

Damian christy keith kirthan yasmin welcome to capitalism dot com this is a first having four people on at the same time thank you for doing this with me thanks ryan thanks ryan.

So i hand selected the four of you as being people who i really thought knocked it out of the park in this first sprint that we're doing inside of the incubator which is casting the vision of of your businesses and now damian kieran am i i think the two of you are competing for youngest members am i right on.

This i'm younger yeah kirsten takes that.

Kieran is younger kirsten how old are you i'm eighteen you're eighteen damien how.

Old are you i just turned twenty.

Okay all right so this is the first these are the first vision decks that you've put together right.

You guys are here because you knocked it out of the park great work and christy you're on the kind of the opposite spectrum not age wise but you've sold a business in the past correct correct okay would you talk us through just briefly about that business whatever you can share in terms of what your role was if you were the founder of what your background is and actually starting and growing and selling businesses sure yeah.

So i started that business about three years ago and bootstrapped it it was in the pet supplement space doing all natural supplements specifically for dogs and grew that by adding products we ended up with five products to the product listing it got to a place that i knew to take it to the next level i would have to bring on a team and bring investment funds in so decided it was a good time.

To sell it so kristi i'd like to know from your background somebody who has done the whole process of building and selling a business what has been different about our approach that we've been guiding the class through inside of the incubator than what you did in your.

First business that you sold yes so.

I'M very good at market research so market research is always the same no matter or what your strategy is but before i did market research and liked a product and decided hey i want to come out with this product so it was very product based and i sort of grew a brand around that kept it within the same space but what's completely different about cap inc it's all about a brand so it's a completely different strategy of speaking to a customer not creating a product and then.

Finding customers yeah chrissy i'm so excited about how deep you've gone into targeting a very specific person in your space but we'll talk about that when we go through your pitch now yasmeen you're coming into this with an existing business and you're coming into this with an audience so what has the experience been like for you casting a vision for what is kind of a complimentary business to the machine you've already got going.

On yeah absolutely it has been so interesting to kind of connect the dots and i think that's one of the things that you have been so helpful with is helping me understand how to serve my audience and how to structure my business in a way that really is just about the customer and i thought that was so brilliant it's not about the product it's about how do you serve this customer because i'm not just creating a supplement company i'm creating a business that serves my person and so having that audience and having spent the last four and some change years writing articles blogging and running a facebook group interacting with my customers on a daily basis has just been the groundwork that has really positioned me to launch this company and and you know like i said just just create products for my person it's been so eye opening to to connect the dots well i'm.

I'M really excited we talk informally about we kind of specifically sam prentice my partner and i in the fund are kind of looking for businesses that are gonna pop that we wanna hopefully invest in and your name comes up a lot because of that exact reason so we are rooting for you very hard now kirthan you're the youngest in the group and so you have not built a business before what has it been like casting a vision in the way that we've had you do it to the point where.

You make an ask we force you to make an ask at the end of this experience you come in at eighteen starting your first business what kind of mental hurdles have you had to overcome what has this experience been like for you so far.

In all honesty uncomfortable yeah.

I i feel like i've been okay.

Giving presentations because of school and all that sort but the way i had to approach this one it was there were so many knots in my brain i had to unwind and then i had to take a step back and understand that the way i'm gonna present this vision is not the same that i presented a presentation before in my past eighteen years of life so then it was just trying to experiment and test which way is the best way to put something together and and a lot of conversations with customers.

And the temptation especially when you're starting something at your age is to not think about the long term vision of the business it's to just jump in and do stuff which is what most people who are eighteen are starting businesses and there's some benefit to that but our approach is to cast a vision and to build a business that you can scale and sell so there was a moment for you where you were kind of you were facing what it would look like to talk about that publicly and you started to get feedback from your peers tell me about that moment.

So it started when i asked max in the when one of the incubator calls i don't really know many fiction lovers how can i reach out to them he just said post on your socials spread the word out and then from there other incubator members actually started to connect with me saying hey i'm i'm here you can talk to me and then from there ideas that i would have never really expected such as the old book scented candle came to mind and it's funny when i was talking to monica who's a heavy fiction lover she's the one who said kirtan i want an old book scented candle and i was like wait what and then she's like yes and then i started asking others about it too and then they're like oh my god yes this is so cool i would want that and then i realized there weren't many old book scented candles in the market but they want these candles so then i knew it had to be the gateway product.

From there.

Your vision really started as this loose idea when you came in it was this very like i'm thinking about going in this direction and then you and i on one of our live calls i kind of ranted at you for a bit for how i thought you could expand it and a lot of the pieces have just seemingly fallen into place as you've been crafting your pitch deck as you've been putting these pieces together so where have your biggest aha's come from so far definitely.

That live call with us.

Where we talked about how we can engage more people through a subscription model in the future.

Another aha was when you sent me that voice message of just pitching it in a different way that i would have imagined it and.

Tell me about tell that story about pitching it in a different way than you inspected.

So what i meant is i was just thinking of using.

Just the best sales of my customers and to bring them into the subscription model of a break even model where we buy books bulk buy books from authors and then bring them into a zoom call and then ever since you sent that voice message i realized that i don't really need to do any of that i can just make it a straight profit center and just engage with people and socialize with people and have a great time there without really needing to actually go out and buy different things for my members and it would still be.

A great time regardless yeah and we'll go into the nitty gritty details of this vision when we get to you i want to put damian on the spot because damian you were at least our interactions were fairly minimal until you dropped this beautiful pitch deck that was very well thought out and you and i didn't have a whole lot of one on one interactions and then the whole group was like damian knocked it out of the park so i don't know a whole lot of what was happening behind the scenes for you as you were working up to putting this together so did you come into this experience with an idea for the brand or did it hit you somewhere along.

The experience yeah so i actually came into the experience with starting like a skincare line for men but then going through the process of cap inc i realized that i wasn't really passionate of serving that customer and i wasn't really excited about it so one day i was just sitting in my house and it was late at night and i was about to pull up how i met yout mother from netflix and then just hit me all of a sudden why is no one talking about late night snacking and why is no one talking about like better for you options and so that's when i decided to.

Pursue this opportunity and i mean you never told me about it i don't think you ever made like a big announcement about it in the group so what happened in between oh there's an idea and oh damian has this very well thought out direction for this business what happened in the in between there.

I think it was really after we had the call with trevor blake it was when he was talking more about trusting your intuition and i kind of knew that was just like the moment something just felt right and yeah that's.

Great well i'm glad you did because it's led you to this point so i actually want to start with you before you kind of go into the presentation that you put together i just want to give a little bit of background for people who are listening so a few months into the capitalism incubator experience every member has to present the vision of their company so it's kind of the approach of you measure twice and you cut once so you are putting together the pieces of your business and your vision so that we can line up all assets and go because if you do that in the first forty five to sixty days and you've got a laser clear vision for where you're going to take this thing then the rest of the year is going to be us just laying the brickwork laying the foundation for building this business and one of the ways that you can accelerate that is by putting a few pieces together like if you decide to raise money we can move a lot faster or if you decide to bring in a few key relationships like partnerships with influencers we can launch this thing faster and more profitably so one of the things that is required in laying this vision is what your ask is what are you asking of other people who are going through this whether it is money or it is introductions or what do you need to be able to execute on this plan to be able to get on the path to a multimillion dollar business or a a business that you can have an eight figure exit so damian i'd like to start with you and i'm just going to give you the mic for a few minutes and i might interrupt you as we kind of unpack a few things but i just want you to talk through the pitch deck that you presented to the group inside of.

The incubator awesome.

So go ahead you're.

Live my friend okay so hey everyone listening my name's damian and my company is effing good snacks we exist to make it easy to switch from your typical unhealthy late night snacks to a better for you option people eat unhealthy at night because they're craving for junk food is the strongest yet the only solution is all this healthy stuff and who wants that right so that's where we come in our snacks are both satisfying and loaded with nutrients that promote better sleep so everyone's talking about eating better and healthier and trying the latest diets but no one's really talking about how what you eat before bed matters yet americans spend a billion dollars a week on snacks consumed between dinner and bedtime and you can bet it's not celery sticks or kale so a little background about myself my name's damian i started i actually started my entrepreneur journey about a year ago the first business i started was a yoga brand and i was able to grow that brand from zero to six figures in twelve months so during that time i oversaw sales product development and marketing my expertise is actually product focused so down the line i actually outsourced to other parts of the business so that i could focus on what i'm really good at i'm actually also a full time night snacker myself and so i know the frustration of not being able to find better for you versions of my favorite snacks like cookies chips and ice cream i also talked to like a lot of my friends about it and they also agree that nothing on the market really satisfies that desire so right now.

Damian i'm going to interrupt you and just compliment how you smashed it out of the park with the setting up credibility for this business where you know we spend a lot of time when we're training people to put together these decks of how to position yourself as the expert for your business and sometimes borrowing proof from places that aren't that you've built multimillion dollar businesses before and you did such a great job of doing two things one saying i've built businesses in the past i understand the operations of this and second i'm the market and you saying i'm a full time late night snacker is just such an unbelievably well done line of saying i'm the ideal person for this and that stood out to me and to everybody else who saw you present this.

Please keep going okay so right now as for our network we're working with ubars they're a contract manufacturer and co packer based in los angeles california they're helping us they're helping us currently with formulating product as well as packaging design and print and shipping the product if we need to so once we get the funding we need we'll able to start our first production run and secondly we're part of cap inc which is a community that provides mentoring for startups it's created by ryan moran and he and his team have the known expertise to help us grow and scale our business business to eight figures and beyond.

So what is the problem that effing good snacks is solving well actually we have to date this back to many many many years ago humans have actually been biologically wired to consume as many calories before bed so are actually our appetite peaks a night our cravings for sweets fats and salty foods are at their highest and that's actually when our willpower is the lowest so we can't change that and that's why we're giving people kind of a middle ground to enjoy their favorite late night snacks but without the subsequent guilt afterwards.

So how many of you actually caught yourself grabbing a snack at night most of you right so we found a lot of social proof on facebook groups and reddit groups of people talking about how they're on this journey of diet and keeping up their weight but the one thing that they can't solve is their late night snacking and that's due to the willpower the decreased willpower at night.

Anybody who saw that slide damien this is so well done you've got everybody who saw that slide to relate to it which means that any investor who is seeing your deck is like oh i'm the target market for this because you painted such a clear problem that is literally universal i thought you did that.

Extremely well yeah awesome.

So we know that nighttime snackers such as myself and everyone listening we crave the chips the cookies and the pizzas at night but we aren't necessarily willing to switch from our typical unhealthy snack to a nutritional bar so we make snacks so that people don't have to constantly battle between eating healthy but not satisfying their cravings or eating junk and feeling guilty afterwards so nighttime snacking is going to be a billion dollar category in the coming years and we have the chance to be first to market and establish the number one position we allow people to indulge in their favorite snack at night but won't beat themselves up after it or keep them up at night.

Now let me pause here and just ask christy for a second.

When damian is presenting on his business when you're sitting on the sidelines as a fellow member of the capitalism incubator how do you receive his pitch deck at this point.

I'M like woo damian i want to invest in your company but i don't have the money.

So so that's like one of the beautiful things of this process is like when you're when you're crafting this deck in isolation you're talking to the wall but damon you got so much feedback from the rest of the group and everybody who's seen this at this point that it's like how could you not pursue this business after seeing how everybody else responded to it.

So please keep going yeah so so just to show you how big of an opportunity this is i found some stats online fifty billion dollars is spent annually on snacks consumed between dinner and bedtime eighty eight percent of consumers between eighteen and thirty four snack regularly at night and of those consumers fifty eight percent of them feel guilty and out of control with their late night snacking.

So there is no better time for this business to exist with COVID nineteen more and more people are are actually staying at home and this means that consumers are increasingly watching more netflix or tv with their friends and family rather than going out and what do you do when you watch tv you grab a snack and the second reason this is the best time is because online grocery sales have taken off since the pandemic as well people are becoming more and more comfortable with buying food online and realizing how much more time saving and convenient it is so this is a golden opportunity for effing good snacks to release products that complement what people are already doing in their day to day lives.

As for our first product we plan on releasing many almond butter chocolate chip cookies we picked this product because cookies is actually one of my indulging foods and cookies is also one of the most popular late night snacks in america they have a total market size of four billion dollars and amazon sales alone is fifty two million dollars per year so right now as i've said before you bars and i are working on a formulation for the cookies and the first prototype is actually going to be ready in about two weeks.

Time.

Yeah and the coming products that we plan on releasing include cereal bread chips popcorn and frozen pizza all of these products that we've picked our consumers love and they want it and they know that they can feel good about.

It and damian how do you know that how did you come to that product line and how did you verify.

That people wanted it yeah so the first thing i did was i went on like keto groups diet groups on facebook and reddit and i kind of searched up what do you crave the most when you're on this diet or what do you crave the most when you're trying to lose weight so then that gave me a list of ideas and then one of the exercises from cap inc was to talk to people talk to your ideal customers so that's what i did i had friends come over and i called them up and i asked them hey what do you crave like what do you snack at night and then that gave me a bunch of ideas and then i just picked the ones that excited me the most and kind of make sense as they go along their journey yeah so.

That'S how i picked them good excellent.

Work my friend keep going yeah.

So the plan the strategy that we plan on taking to launch this thing to market is so as you might as you all might know quest is a billion dollar company that started out with an amazing product line partnering up with fitness influencers so we'll be following a similar strategy in creating an amazing product line and then partnering up with fitness and health and wellness influencers that our target demographic gen zers and millennials follow we'll also be sending out free product samples to multiple influencers in space as well as reaching out to blogs and podcasts for guest posts and sponsorships that will give us some good pr so we'll be using this audience that we've secured from the partnerships to launch and scale our products on amazon dot com and our own website as well and starting with the cookies we plan on releasing one product per quarter so we plan on releasing very aggressively so that we can actually dominate the category itself and each product that's going to be launched it's going to be launched with the audience we've secured as well as running facebook podcast and youtube advertising and some similar companies in our space that have done the same thing are quest nutrition they were acquired for a billion dollars magic spoon they raised a five point five million dollars seed round and they're a keto friendly cereal company skinny pop as you might all know was acquired for one point four billion dollars in in just five years alone and the common thread between all these companies are that they are capitalizing on the growing trend of better for you food products that the world is saying they need and want right now.

So right now we are seeking a strategic investor for two hundred fifty thousand dollars in working capital at a three million dollars valuation we project to hit a million dollars in revenue by the first twelve months this value i picked this valuation because i think it's justified by the fact magic spoon first raised four million dollars just based on a prototype and what they do is they reinvent favorite cereals into better for you versions just like how we're doing with late night snacking and what we'll be using this investment to do is we'll fund our first production run as well as creating the next few products and releasing them as well and acquiring new customers to get them on subscribe and save to give us that recurring revenue this investment will also allow me to hire outside vendors to fill in role that is not within my expertise just like how i did in my last business where i can just solely focus on what i'm really good at which is the product side of things we have set a target valuation of fifty million dollars in four years and this two hundred fifty thousand dollars will give us the firepower to get there and based on our strategy implementation and the huge market potential an investment of just two hundred fifty thousand dollars will twenty x in four year period so nighttime nutrition is coming and effing good snacks is here to lead the way thank you for.

Listening great work my friend amazing work fantastic work damian so how many people have you run your pitch by now that you've completed it and gotten the feedback that you got inside of the.

Group do you mean like present it one on one or yeah i mean.

Have you met with potential investors i know that you recorded a video of yourself and and going through this and put it out publicly so what kind of feedback have you gotten yeah so.

Once i posted to my facebook page i got messages from family that i haven't talked to in a while saying good job good job i didn't know you were doing this and friends reaching out saying this is amazing this is so cool so it kind of gave me that confidence boost i needed cause a lot of the times i'm sure most of us have experienced before like the doubt like can you really do this or like overcomplicating things and i guess putting this on my facebook page kind of gave me that extra boost i needed to say that i really can do this but i haven't in terms of meeting with investors i haven't done that yet now i know you.

Plan to so what's that next step.

For you next step i know you talked about posting your pitch deck on linkedin so that's what i'm planning on doing.

As well as yes i know trevor blake offers like investing so maybe i'll look at that you could just.

Go right to the source on that one damian if somebody wanted to pony up the starting capital to partner with you how might they get in touch.

With you yeah so my phone number is seven seven eight seven one zero five five zero one and they could also reach me at damian law eighty eight mail dot com damien damien d.

A m i e n yeah l.

A w eighty eight yeah at gmail.

Dot com all right cool you might regret putting your phone number on that one.

Great work great work my friend i mean really great and and what i think you did so well in this was you took the directions to heart of positioning yourself well amongst a busy marketplace and not showing why it's a competitive space but why it's a growing space and why it makes total logical and emotional sense for somebody to give you two hundred fifty thousand dollars i thought you just smashed it great.

Work thank you so much now let's.

Go over to christy now christy you and i kind of went back and forth via a little bit of facebook messenger where i asked you for some clarification about your deck and told you i think you're just inches away from having a home run here and the thing that was so impressed me about your approach was it was very specific to one person which is something we beat to death inside of the incubator and i'm curious what led you to.

Targeting that person yes so one i am that person and as i was saying earlier i was doing market research i'm an idea person so i had a list of like ten different ideas and i was approaching it more from the product idea because that was before coming into cap inc and as we started to talk about you really need to target a person not a product i started to narrow it down and i had with my ideas i was like well there's probably three people i could really target different demographics and as we started to have our breakout sessions in our cause we shared who our target person was and what we learned well i didn't have a target person so i was like well i don't have a target person but here's my ideas and everybody in the group's like you need to target this group because when you talk about it it's what you're most excited about and i knew in my gut before i even came that's who i should target but i just needed that person to say yes that's who you should go after yeah.

Well it's so easy when you're working on your own to look outside yourself for all those answers but the best businesses and the best companies companies are the ones that you know the ones that you're excited about because they're the ones that are going to propel you forward so with that christy tell us a little bit about your business and walk us through the direction that you're taking your vision okay well i'm christy.

Houck and i'm excited to present to you meraki hunt so when you hear about hunting most people right away think about men well there's us female hunters as well and that's what meraki hunt is all about it's about completely focusing on women hunters and meeting the demands and needs of their lifestyle so from the woods to the table meraki hunt has you covered so one of the main things is that women hunters is very underserved and they also face problems directly due to their gender the main problem is hunting clothes as most of the people i've talked to suck they are designed for men they are big they're bulky they don't fit right and there are a few companies that have clothes out for women but they don't have the functionality they don't have the performance and they just don't have the.

Everything that the men's systems have so a lot of times women hunters will actually buy men's clothes even though they aren't the best option so part of our solution is to create performance tech apparel the other problem is scent so when you're out in the woods if a big game comes in like a deer or something like that and they smell you.

You might not even see them or they might be walking in but they'll be out of range and as soon as they get your scent they just turn and are gone so our second idea is to come up with a scent free personal care line which would be the shampoos conditioners body wash deodorants that are all scent free specifically for women and that's a problem because there are products out for men but they do not work on women's hair so i have many people that say it makes their hair feel like straw and just doesn't work in addition to that we want a lifestyle product line because hunting is more than a season it's a way of life for women hunters so our products will help women experience hunting and being in nature even when they can't be.

So the overall us hunting market is valued at eighty six point nine billion dollars with one of the key drivers being the rise in popularity of outdoor recreational activities competitive landscape includes cabela's which has three point six billion dollars annual sales and they were acquired by bass pro shops for five point five billion in twenty seventeen there's also the sportsman's warehouse which had one hundred eighty six million dollars of sales last year and they acquired eight field and stream stores for twenty eight point eight million dollars last year.

If you look at the hunting apparel market alone it is worth one point two three billion dollars and growing at six point six percent and some of the companies in that space include sika gear which had two hundred fifty million dollars of sales last year qu which had fifty million and criptech which had four point eight million but all of these companies target men first and as i said they might have one or two things out for women but they really target the men's space however women are the fastest growing segment of hunters last year alone there was thirty five point nine million hunting licenses tags and permits sold in the us and twenty percent of all hunters are women which leaves seven point two million hunting licenses were sold just to women so there is a significant market opportunity.

Christie i'm.

Going to interrupt you here because that was the line that sold me so when i saw you go through that that was the line where a couple things happened in my brain first i was like christie really knows her stuff and knows this market and number two when you showed that women are the fastest growing segment of the market that's when my logical part of my brain went okay this is an early trend there is a big market here and that means that the product line that christy outlined isn't just an idea it is totally backed up by the growth of the marketplace so i just wanted you to know that that line was where it was like that was the mic drop for me great work thank.

You.

All right so that brings you to the leadership of the company which is myself and as ryan already said i was able to launch and scale a pet supplement business with a sizable exit in less than three years i also had a profitable e commerce retail store in the performance pet clothing market.

And i am very well known for market analysis and looking at opportunities for new tech and product assessments actually do some consulting work with universities in that area and i'm also an avid hunter so i know.

Everything about women hunting i'm very well connected with the space i belong to a lot of groups that are all about just for women hunters.

So i am currently seeking two hundred fifty thousand dollars of working capital at a two point four six million valuation and i came with that by looking at just the clothing space alone and targeting women hunters in the us which is twenty percent of all hunters and and capturing only one percent of the market leaves a two point five million valuation and i'm having a target revenue of ten million dollars in three years and the working capital will be used to aggressively release new products it will help to expedite the design and production of the performance techware and allows for the implementation of key marketing strategies.

So at that point i guess if there's any questions or.

My main question christy is how do you feel after walking through that.

Feel pretty confident and yeah i think the vision really just came together and like i said i'm really involved in the women hunting group so i know what their problems are i know that they exist all the products out there suck to use that word if that's okay.

So i know what they're looking for and it's so easy to connect and talk with this group and find product testers that are going to come and say hey yeah we like this product this is what we think you should add and just to have that group there to walk through the product development is really key.

And christy if somebody wanted to pony up the capital.

Or offer something else to you how might they get in.

Touch with you yes so my email address is khalk which is k h o u c k one thousand eight hundred twenty seven mail comc great work.

I'M really proud of how far you've come on this because i know it well actually my assumption is based on the way you've communicated you can tell me if i'm right you came into this kind of unsure that this is the direction that you wanted to go and it just feels super clear and rock solid about where you're going is my assumption about you correct totally would.

You comment further yeah i just as i said coming in the cap inc was more of to come with a clear vision and i had no clue at the beginning where i was headed i was all over the place.

New home ownership to skincare to you name it i was all over well i'm.

Really glad you went in this direction great work thanks good job kristi yeah really good really good work so i want to flip things over to the young one in the group we're basically watching him grow up kirthan.

You'Re growing up before our very eyes you're being baptized in the fire my friend so you know you've shared the story about a little bit about you coming up with the idea and us war gaming it together on a live call and i'm curious for you now that you've got the complete vision that you're going to share in a second how do you feel about your confidence becoming an entrepreneur now that the vision is set.

My confidence is for you.

Good good good and what was it what was it before.

Questionable very questionable especially with the social circle i have most of them not really into entrepreneurship and stuff now they're all like oh look at kirtan dude he's gonna go big just.

Wait that's good and a lot of them were convinced based on you put putting together this deck so why don't you kick us off and tell us a little about your business so my.

Brand is named sense fiction sense fiction is a brand that is served and is based around fiction book lovers and our brand essentially has three core focused goals one is to.

Contribute and amplify joyous reading experiences two is to unite a strong and social community of fiction lovers and three is to empower authors to have stronger and more social connections with their fans and we are going to do this through a physical product line and a book club membership great.

Well walk us through the strategy the product line and your ask all right.

So.

Here'S the gist since the pandemic the fiction industry is booming multi multi multi million dollar authors are being created romance novel consumption's up fantasy consumption's up sci fi thriller crime well the conception of basically any fiction genre you can think of is up and the problem is well no one is talking to those people libraries have been discontinuing book clubs since the pandemic goodreads discontinued their socializing service pen pals and big book retailers such as barnes and noble and book of the month have just completely lost the socializing aspect of book clubs this has led to a scattered community of fiction readers as they don't know anyone other than themselves and and they feel more lonely than ever without brands or clubs that support them well and i know you guys can't see my deck but in my deck i have a slide of customer proof of few of the several posts of readers feeling alone on a subreddit named books and they are complaining about reading great books and hardly having anyone to share them with not being able to socialize about them and not having anyone any other contacts who understand their quest to lose themselves in a great book and that's where we come in so we will offer products that are of badges of honor as identifiers of our customers being fiction readers as they will let them have pride in reading fiction they will also contribute to reading sessions by heightening and amplifying experience and allowing readers to immerse in a book even further essentially in a similar way to how gfuel supports esport gamers and contributes to gaming sessions since fiction supports fiction lovers and contributes to reading sessions and after consistent sales with our initial product line we will build a virtual book club starting with our best customers and it would have tons of socializing and our members would build great relationships with each other and we will have live calls with author features and q and a's essentially what oprah does for nonfiction since fiction will do for fiction and this is also such a great timing to build a brand representing fiction because ever since COVID nineteen hit paperback fiction sales and fiction in general sales rose thirty five percent making fiction genres the best selling of them all currently and on top of that recent brands that some of you may know such as bookbo they recently hit seven figures and are still scaling further and our strategy consists of two parts we will start by launching our products on amazon dot com and we chose amazon because it is the largest marketplace of book buyers around the world which would help contribute to our traction and and once we build greater momentum down the road we would move our traffic onto our own marketplace making it easier to sustain our brand identity i want to stop here because i've been struggling between choosing amazon and kickstarter because amazon as i said such a large marketplace of book buyers but kickstarter so many book accessory brands like bookbo page anchor and others they get funded very very well so it is just that one little thing we're deciding between but regardless which way we take i believe we will still prosper yeah and.

The important thing that i think you've done really well in your deck so far is identifying who the audience is and that audience is the growing market of fiction readers and when you've really nailed that it doesn't matter so much if you're optimizing for amazon or for kickstarter or for shopify or for retail or for wherever you're going it matters that you're absolutely clear on how you're gonna get in front of these readers the other thing that you know that made me so sold on your vision was that you're creating the platform that other authors would want to contribute to because they'll sell more books and as you do that then you get the readers who are the customers of those books to join the platform and buy more books and buy more physical products which end up being the cash flow that really builds the engine of this which is i think where you're going.

Next yeah and i know that it would work out very well because it is such a passionate market compared to so many others we look at so that's why i'm super super optimistic about how it will turn out in the.

Future so kirtan why don't you walk us through the comparable businesses that you've got in your deck and then take.

Us to the ask mm so the comparable businesses i have in my deck include.

Bookish which is a.

Subscription book service valued at about eight million dollars right now and they raised about one hundred sixty thousand in seed funding another is tiesta teas because they have similar products that we're about to launch in the future they are valued at about eight million dollars and raised almost one million dollars in series a funding.

Another that we have is bookbo they just hit a million dollars in revenue per year and another one we have in our.

Business is chesapeake bay candle which was acquired for seventy five million dollars recently and they are having similar products that we will launch in the future and our ask is seeking two hundred thousand dollars in working capital at a one point five million dollars valuation with a target revenue of one million in the first twelve months so i chose this valuation especially because of the growing market that is about to re that is happening right now and of the other book brands that are funded in this market and also because of the assets and direction we are headed and it's cool because any investors that will have early participation will have the first crack at a brand at a persistent and hungry audience with substantial traction as publishers and authors have expressed their interest and the team's network has responded favorably and.

Kirk one thing one thing that you didn't go into a whole lot like you put a lot of attention into the platform that gets in front of this hungry audience but one of the things that really excites me is that because you're in front of this audience you've got a really clear path to victory with your physical products like the candles that you're going to launch you can do the.

Beanbag chairs that's the word i'm looking for like hammocks and all kinds of stuff that basically people use being a fiction lover and i think you had that and i might have made you skip that so would you walk through that product line.

A little bit yeah absolutely absolutely so.

We are starting with our science fiction old book scented candle the most requested by far which is why we're doing that as our gateway product and then we will move into science fiction reading pillows which would help you prop your book up then we will have herbal teas fruit flavored herbal teas and then we are going to have coffee and low sugar cookies and on top of that we're going to have a little page we're designing currently a little page folder that will help you keep your book open much easier and we will later on develop our candle and tea line in order to suit different genres of fiction too.

For example our romance candle is planned to have i think it's including scents of peach orange and vetiver and we saw another candle with champagne bubbles which we could think of include for a fantasy candle.

I love that my friend and what has been so telling in your approach was when you really nail that target audience the whole world opens up because now you're more than just a candle company you're a platform and now you're more than a platform you're a community and now you're more than a community you're a raving fan base and the more you focus on that the more valuable the company so if somebody wanted to pony up the two hundred grand of seed capital or reach out to you how might they get in touch with you.

You can get in touch with me at diddigi kirtanmail dot com that is spelled d i d d i g e dot k e e r t h a nmail dot com and.

Heck my phone number is fifteen ten thousand four hundred eighty five.

And all the young ladies start to text kirtan would you spell your email address one more.

Time d i d d i g e dot k e e r t h a nmail dot com it's been.

A pleasure being a part of your growth my friend and you're just getting started great work thank you yasmeen i'm going to come over to you and what's been different about your experience is you're coming in with an audience so you know this market really well you know your person really well and so this has been a bit of a different experience for you what's it been.

Like getting to this point it has been so much of an exercise in thinking bigger.

And really really understanding as i said before it's not just about making a product and all this stuff it's really about serving a person and knowing that i know my person.

I think the past few months in the capitalism incubator have just been incredible and i am so glad you asked this question because i just wanted to say i think it's one of the best investments i've made and it has just been such a valuable experience i am so glad to be part of it i'm so so glad i took a chance because it was a it was risky it felt risky at the time i didn't know what i was really getting into and i didn't really know that it would just be one of the greatest experiences i've ever had so it's been a wonderful journey and so valuable and i can't believe there's still so much time left because we've covered so much stuff already.

Yeah yeah it is kind of interesting to realize that we really just started i mean we've all been working together for a few months now but you've come so far in those three to four months and the biggest jump i think you nailed was and this is so edifying to my ego when you say that expanded your mindset because my goal in that first week was how do i get these people to to think way bigger than they're thinking right now because they're coming in with the dream of hitting a million dollars how do we make that vision way way bigger and i gave you some assignments that forced you to do that and that really shifted the conversation of where the group went so thank you and it has been a privilege to be a part of.

Your growth as well thanks ryan well i think mission accomplished it's been really it's like the energy in there is so incredible and i feel like every week the things that we're doing sometimes i you know i want to plot my hair i'm like what is this exercise this is difficult this is a lot to do in one week but i just can't believe where we all are and i'm so proud of everyone too like these pitches are amazing and it has just been so great it is the best decision i made this year was signing up for the capitalism incubator it's just like i'm really grateful for it and think about that a lot because my journey this year has just been i don't even have words for it it's just been incredible it has given me so much confidence working with you and having these conversations it's so valuable like i said the greatest decision i made this year so i'm.

Really happy we're happy too yasmeen so why don't you walk us through the.

Vision of your business okay here we go.

Before i get started i just wanted to say i'm not giving out my phone number okay.

Me either okay.

Cool.

All right here we go so a little pink line changes everything the very moment that i first saw a little pink line on a pregnancy test took my breath away and and i knew in that very moment that i had become a mother and from that point forward nothing was more important to me than the health and wellbeing of my baby that's exactly in that very moment when my pregnancy journey began was nine months of planning and researching and preparing for birth and preparing for a new baby and planning out the nursery and then learning how to care for a baby and navigating how to breastfeed and figuring all that stuff out on little sleep but what wasn't part of the plan was reflux baby eczema food sensitivities and postpartum anxiety hi everyone i'm yasmine moussa and my company is biomology i am a mom of two boys and i spent nearly a decade at a fortune one hundred company where i manage sales and product development for an online marketplace now i am a mommy blogger over at the gentle nursery like you said ryan where i write about the best products for moms and babies i've turned a casual idea to start a blog into a six figure business by writing detailed research heavy articles by connecting with my audience and leveraging the power of search engine optimization to make my blog an organic success i am now a functional nutrition coach in training and a label reading ingredient obsessed mom and my audience will vouch for that my team at biomology includes an integrative ob gyn and this business has been hatched inside the capitalism dot com business incubator through my own experience as a mom and my work as a mom blogger i've identified three key problems that are affecting moms and babies today number one toxic chemicals are in our products and in our environment and they're passing through the placenta and affecting babies in the womb this is dangerous because babies their organs are developing and they're more susceptible to damage from chemical exposure because of this a mom nowadays practically needs a degree in chemistry to decode which ingredients and products are safe for her and her baby number two our modern unhealthy lifestyles are catching up to us and babies are the ones that pay the price so that's antibiotic usage chronic stress over sanitizing over medicating unhealthy diets and chemical overload as well as pollution in the environment they affect mom's health and by extension they affect her babies baby eczema reflux colics and other health issues are being diagnosed now more than ever problem number three is that despite what we see on social media so many moms are running on fumes and struggling physically emotionally and mentally by starting out pregnancy in less than optimal shape because of problems number one and number two moms are passing on a compromised health to their baby and and then in turn they get depleted by pregnancy then there's postpartum depression and anxiety and then you just add to that the routine struggles you face when you're breastfeeding and adjusting to mom life on little sleep and it's very taxing so at biomology we believe that good health begins in the womb and we want to fuel motherhood by restoring nutrients and order in the body so we make organic non toxic functional supplements products for moms and babies there's no label reading required because i have obsessively fed it every ingredient our driving mission is to end postpartum depression and reduce childhood disorders and we do that by making products with the highest ingredient standards so we are starting with a line of key supplements that support mom and baby's health during preconception pregnancy postpartum and well into toddlerhood our prenatal probiotics launched in april of this year and our infant and toddler probiotics are launching this month and i'm so excited for that because i've been working on this for so long they're the best probiotics for babies i'm so so excited okay i digress we launched our products straight to our audience so because i've been blogging for over four years now i have built up an audience i have a facebook group with over thirteen thousand members my blog gets over one hundred thousand unique visitors per month and we use the blog and the facebook group to recommend our products and launch to a warm audience we have over thirty eight thousand on social media combined two hundred thousand monthly page views and this has been a key part of our launch process so when we look at the market.

There'S definitely a demand for prenatal supplements mom and baby supplements and there are a few key players in the supplement space such as premama a prenatal supplement company that received three point seven million in funding and several other companies also in the space a few that are selling an estimated two to eight million per year the difference is that biomology we're approaching it from a functional perspective all our products and ingredients are made with the highest quality ingredient and manufacturing standards and i can vouch for that myself because i personally oversee product development and i vet each and every one of our ingredients and as we've covered i'm an obsessive ingredient researcher and label reader moms like myself and my readers we want clean functional products and that's what biomology delivers we make these products to address the three problems i've identified to nourish mom and baby so that they can thrive together more snuggle less struggle so to achieve our goal we're looking for a three hundred thousand dollars investment for twenty percent equity in the company this will go toward new product development toward listing management branding and customer acquisition including building up our social media and some investment in ppc advertising so the easiest way to reach me for anyone who is interested is by email and unfortunately like kirtan i don't have an email that's very easy to spell so the easiest one will be biomologymail dot com and that's b i o m e o l o g y mail dot.

Com thanks darren iamologymail dot com.

You know what i love about the way you set this up yasmeen is you made the path to victory so obvious because you stack the deck with a thirty eight thousand person audience one hundred thousand unique visitors per month and all we're doing is throw in really great products into where there is already an audience i heard you say once i am my own influencer you've already got the audience i mean one of our case studies was wellness mama who followed.

A very similar path to success they came on and shared with the group about how they were in a similar space built up the blog and now they have an eight figure company that they've launched in the back of that audience and you're following along a similar journey so i really admire how you stacked the deck to show just an obvious path to success you know one thing yasmeen that i think you miss is how obvious your success is like i don't know if i don't know if you see it as clearly as i do okay and i tell you that as a compliment because your audience loves you your product line is already the best in the industry and it's just like a matter of time for you so i'm very excited for you.

Thank you and that means a lot to me to be coming from you and it's just so great to be in this stage because i remember just kind of being scared to get started and it was you and the team that really motivated and supported me and you know to even be in the same sentence as wellness mama is just like an honor and she is definitely someone that has motivated and inspired me so i really look to her success as like as motivation for what i'm doing and i love that you know i get to serve my audience and hopefully you know make the world better and do great things just like she.

Does so i want to ask this question to any of the four of you i forced you all to come up with a valuation and an ask at the end of your presentation.

How many of you hated that part of.

The process.

That was hard that was.

Hard for you yasmeen yeah what what what did you say kieran definitely me at first you hated that part of.

It at the beginning but then later later on after i let it marinate it just it boosted my clarity even more just with two numbers right and.

My guess is and one of the reasons i made you do this is it forced you to start thinking as a seven figure business owner all none of you valued your company at three hundred thousand dollars damian you came out of the gate with a three million dollar valuation right your prototype still two weeks away but the minute you've got that prototype you've already got the clear direction the clear path to having a seven figure business so what was it like for you to put on the outfit of the owner of a three.

Million dollars business yeah so going to this when you asked us to put an ask i thought do i put zero because i don't have any sales and i watch a lot of shark tank and you know mister wonderful like screams at people who have high valuations so yeah so once i started thinking at like a million dollar business plus valuation i kind of gave me like a lot more ideas on how i can spend advertising how i can leverage that to reach out to influencers how i can just kind of think bigger in terms of just everything overall with the business so that was awesome beautiful.

Now christy you come at this from a product background where you don't think about valuations until you go to sell and so you may not have even ever had that conversation or that thought until you went to market with your your last business what was it like for you to set evaluation from the beginning of a journey yeah it was.

Really helped with clarity i think having that set and really understanding the potential of your market it makes you dive into numbers a little more like okay what can i achieve and makes you have a much larger picture and vision than starting from the opposite where you don't even think of valuation and it's definitely eye opening because i think as entrepreneurs we're so excited to dive into things and get started and oftentimes we don't think of the large vision and we actually are our own hindrance so we have all these mental blockages that say oh well i can't be that other company or we start looking at competitors instead of saying yes i can do this and this is why because the valuation is real it's based on.

True numbers of the market.

Yasmeen you made a face at me when i gave the assignment of recording your pitch deck and putting it out publicly you made a face that was basically like i.

Was your least favorite person that day so what happened once you actually.

Did that assignment.

Well i'm impressed that you remember my reaction.

Left a mark you know it was a little outside the comfort zone i've always operated very like privately and at first even with my blog i didn't even want people that i knew in real life to know what i did so that was definitely outside my comfort zone but going through that process and even just making this deck and doing all the research on valuations it really just it opened doors i would say it opened doors because once you put yourself out there and you put yourself out there to your community and the people that love and care about you people want to support you and so it was very it was very humbling in a sense because it really showed me how much the people in my circle want to support me and want me to succeed and it actually turned out to be.

A pretty cool experience good well damian kirthan yasmeen christy i am betting on every single one of you and i'm really proud of the progress you've made and as yasmin said we're just getting started.

You'Ve got a clear vision a clear evaluation a path to success and now we get to dive in and launch this thing and and build million dollar businesses together so i'm so excited so proud of you guys and thank you for hanging out with me today guys i'm rooting for you and so is the rest of the community at.

Capitalism dot com thank you ryan thanks.

For having me thanks guys we'll talk to you soon one of the things that came up over and over again in this episode besides the fact that this was just freaking fun was that their mindsets had expanded so much through this experience it's so common for one of our students to come in with the goal of having one day a million dollar business my job is to shatter that from day one and get them to think way bigger than that not because a million dollars isn't a great business are you kidding of course it is but because we run through a couple exercises that gets them to think about a really long term vision and also see what the marketplace values these types of businesses at and as soon as they see that they relax they don't feel stressed they don't feel like they have to work harder they feel like they can actually relax because there is validation for their idea in the marketplace and that gives us the COVID to cast a really clear vision to be able to line up the right partnerships and build this the right way so i'm confident in all four of these entrepreneurs i'm excited to support all of these entrepreneurs and all of the other students inside of the incubator if you want to add your name to that group you can apply over at capitalism dot com inc and we're our next round officially starts on february first so we'll have all of the new students enrolled and underway before then so if you're listening to this after you know end of january or so go ahead and you can just go over there and put your name on the notification list for the next time we've got spots so if you want to go through the process that these entrepreneurs went through of casting a vision and building the foundation to a business that you can scale and sell we would love to help you with that and you can join us inside the capitalism incubator please feel free to reach out to these entrepreneurs and offer help or offer money because that's the game that they're playing they're going to build really great companies okay thanks for listening and i'll see you guys in the next episode.