SALES TANK - EDITION 1

Welcome to the first edition of Sales Tank. Today's concept is pretty fun. We have 5 founders, actually we're 7 in total, and we're each gonna pitch our businesses one at a time. We're gonna get feedback from our fellow founders and CEOs here. The pitch is less than 3 minutes, so we're gonna be fast. We're gonna mention also who we target as a business, and yeah, this should be pretty fun. Maybe let's start with a round of intro. I'm Charles Cormier. I run GTM Ventures. We do lead gen podcasting, which is this method to have people on your podcast and then pitch them on whatever you're doing and then close them as clients. It's pretty fascinating model. Chris, tell us a bit more about yourself and what you do.

Yeah, so Chris McKenna, I was the founder of Tartarade Industries. I am a former law enforcement officer who was 24 years in and decided to put my hat into the entrepreneurial world.

Brian, uh, founder of Brick Consulting, a sales consultant consultancy agency. We focus mostly on sales prospecting, but we'll help our, our clients from A to B, and our clients are typically, uh, small businesses in the business services space.

Craig.

Hi, I'm Craig Klein, CEO of SalesNexus, and my background's in B2B selling. And, uh, today I'll be talking about SalesNexus, our automated B2B selling platform for CRM and marketing automation.

Braden, you just joined us. A quick intro about yourself.

Yeah, hi guys, I'm Braden. Sorry I'm late, one of those, one of those days. I'm Braden, I'm the CEO of SlashExperts. We help connect your customers and your prospects to close the deals faster. Third-time founder, for some reason love the pain.

Sunny. What's up, my name is Sunny. I'm the co-founder of RaiseNow. We essentially put your capital raise on Autopilot.

Dan?

My name is Dan Zakorski. My company, Black River Logistics, is an e-commerce and music shipping company that helps record labels, artists, management teams, and direct-to-consumer brands fulfill, pack, and ship their orders on their websites, and I incorporate people with disabilities as part of the packaging process.

Tino?

Hi, my name is Tino Goh. I'm the CEO and founder of Baroo. We've digitized the entire cabinetry industry vertical and to be able to leverage local production assets and eliminate 60% of the traditional cabinet industry's cost structure.

Thank you for the intro, everyone. So, Brian, the stage is yours. You want to start with your pitch?

Yeah, so my target audience is small and medium-sized businesses who are typically in the service sector servicing other B2B businesses. And we can talk about what business leaders keeps them awake at night, which is unpredictable cash flows. 87% battle with fatigue and burnout. The root cause is usually sales prospecting. And that's one of the things we help our clients solve using various techniques., but centered around LinkedIn. Where most prospecting is done like a mosquito, it's an annoying persistent thing and it gets quickly swatted away through messaging. Ours takes a mosquito approach, or sorry, a butterfly approach where we go in there and we attract the prospects to the client. Our branding on our sales prospecting model is called Sales2B. It's 100% North American owned. We don't offshore anything. We don't automate anything or use any bots or AI. So it is a very high-touch, personalized approach, which really falls around the whole piece of wanting to attract people to us. We use a butterfly philosophy, and that philosophy really is to attract people. We do kind of 3 things. One is building a relationship. Two is building the brand. And three is positioning the expertise of of our client, uh, and that brings in, um, our buyers to— attracts them to it. It's, it, it, um, you know, it's a long-term approach as well as, you know, we will, will gather short-term quick hits. People who are active buyers will, will get, will get caught in our, our piece as— but we're also really looking at going after 100% of that target audience who are fits, uh, and long-term building that relationship with them so that this works long term for our clients. Typically, we see over 17 times an ROI on what our clients pay us for what we return within a year. Um, and we usually are adding in about 1,500 people to their, uh, prospect pool, their, their community every year. Um, we do do kind of 3 approaches. One is our quick hit and run, which is kind of a short-term approach. We do have a longer-term approach which we use, which is our most popular model. We also do what I like to call subject matter expertise positioning, where we use live events and other things, other events like that to really position the person as an expert in their field in conjunction with using the other two methodologies. We also have a self-funding component to ours. So we have a partner who does assessments. And we can build in these assessments are really kind of, you know, a deep dive into capturing the needs assessment. We can build that into the sales process, have it kind of spit out near the end of the sales process a 90-day plan that you can then sell back to the client, which would completely cover the cost of all of your sales prospecting. So basically your entire sales prospecting becomes self-funding and costs you no time. Um, and that's, that's Brick Consulting and, uh, our sales-to-be prospecting in a, in, in 2 and a half minutes.

Thanks, Brian. A couple of things here. Uh, one, I'd like to hear about the pricing. I own the LinkedIn outreach agency, Ryan, and I shut it down for the lack of scalability vs. cold email, but I still highly believe in LinkedIn outreach. Matter of fact, I like the fact that you're doing stuff manually. As a guy that overdid AI on my side for what, 5 years, I still do LinkedIn outreach but manually nowadays, right? With using my brain to look at the prospect's profile helps me understand my ICP, and I still find value in that as a guy that's obsessed with automating everything and super energy efficient, right? So would love to hear about the pricing. I think you should start your presentation with, uh, your background because your background is huge, right? Like, uh, I think you should start with a bang. Maybe a screen share would be helpful and explain also how you're different from the competition, because I think that's the main stopper here. There's so many like LinkedIn outreach agencies out there. So if you can address like all these points.

Do you want me to do that now or just—

Yes, like in rapid fire, like 30 seconds. Sure.

So my background is, you know, I was an Ernst Young consultant for 10 years. I then did about 12 years doing turnaround work and scaling businesses. And then for the last 13 years, I've helped organizations through sales consulting. We're very different in the sense that it's very high personal touch. We don't use automation. We don't use AI. It's— it's— and we're 100% North American-based. So all that being in, it's very high touch, very expertise. We set up the relationships. With our prospects using their ID, using their LinkedIn account. So when we hand over the leads to our clients, it's— we're very, very careful to stay congruent so that all our messaging, everything is in our clients' buzzwords. It's all their speak. So when people take— when we hand them over, it's very congruent. There's no loss, there's no red flags raised by the person. Another approach is like most process, sales, prospecting, lead gen is done. They go after the 5% of active buyers that are out there in the market. We're going after the 100% of that target audience, building relationships, uh, and we, we're really highly into qualifying. So we pre-qualify and qualify at every stage through our process. Um, the other component is, um, you know, the long-term component of what we're doing. We're constantly building. So each month we work with a client we get better and better results.

All right, uh, Chris, any questions or comments about, uh, Brian's pitch?

No, you basically stole my thunder on everything you said about having just a deck and get to those details of what differentiates you from everything else.

Yeah, Craig, uh, the only point I have is, uh, you mentioned about you're not using AI, which I feel like in today's market most business owners are going to perceive that as, hmm, maybe that's not a good thing. Maybe you need to— I understand why it's a good thing, I think, but you may need to connect that dot a little more clearly.

Braden?

I think you double down on not using AI. I think that like in the AI world of like everyone saying the content's garbage, you could actually write better versions of it. So I think that's your pitch is like you're the anti-AI. And that's what I, that's what I dig.

I second that. Uh, Sonny, any questions, comments?

Yeah, I like what Brayden was saying as well. I mean, in a world where all I'm hearing about is AI, I like leaning into the, the other side of it as well.

Dan?

I would say drawing the connection between why you are going away from all the AI stuff, like, and explaining, like, cost benefits and stuff, or focusing individualized outreach or something.

Tino? Tino is muted. Muted.

I don't have anything more to say that hasn't already been said.

All right, let's go with our second contender, which is Craig. Craig, the stage is yours. You can pitch us.

Okay, well, quickly, our target market is B2B sales teams And, uh, you know, 5 to 50 or 100 salespeople, 5 to 10, 5 to $100 million in revenue, uh, mostly US and Canada, in, uh, manufacturers, distribution, wholesale, B2B, you know. Um, now let me launch into the real pitch here. Um, wait, you guys are not seeing my screen, are you?

Nope. Uh, let's see. Yeah, now yes.

Okay, all right, good. Thank you. Um, yeah, so we're the AI-driven B2B selling for humans, and, um, I'll explain what that means.

We're—

what we're trying to do is help salespeople build human relationships, not automate selling out of the B2B transaction. Um, the problem that has existed since I began selling over 30 years ago and still exists in the same way is that when you implement a sales automation system, a CRM, uh, users don't use it. They— or they don't use it the way management wants them to use it. And SalesNexus has always been great at doing that or fixing that problem. We do that by tailoring the system to every customer's workflow. It's not the same when you use it as when I use it. It's totally different. It fits your business. It connects to any tool so that our Nexi AI can use everything that you know in your business about your customers as the context for helping you be more successful. So here's just an example of what the screen looks like so that on one screen, as the caller, as the salesperson, I see everything I need to know and the AI's making suggestions to me. I'm not having to jump around through multiple windows to do things and disposition calls or go ask a chatbot things. But that's not really showing up very well on the screen. But the point here with the AI is that in the future of AI, what companies will find is that the difference between success and wasting a bunch of time with AI is the context that you let your AI look, look at. Our competitors force you to put everything you own into their cloud so that their AI can do its magic. What SalesNexus does is let you plug all of the data stores and apps that you use into our system, but keep using the things that work best in your business. And the AI can have all of that context. Our track record speaks for itself. We've been doing this for over 20 years. We've got tons of great reviews. And most importantly, our customers stay with us 4 times as long as they typically stay with our competitors. So our average customer lifetime is over 5 years now, and believe it or not, our big name competitors, it's, it's less than 2 years. Uh, and here's our pricing and positioning. Um, versus our big name competitors are much less expensive, about less than half the cost for the same features, versus some of our more B2B selling-focused competitors that are in the same price range. We have much stronger marketing automation capabilities and a lot easier onboarding system to help the customer fit it to their unique business. So that's SalesNexus.

Thank you. Um, okay, I think like, uh, sexiness, right? Like, um, because Adele, for example, which is what me and Sonny use, we use Pipedrive. Uh, I wish I have— I had never used HubSpot, but I did back then. I use all of these guys and, uh, they all seem to have some kind of, uh, graphic advantage, right? And I think in today's market, if you can just show like in a very sexy way and like as few words as possible, few graphics as possible, what makes you different in that space, I think it gets serotonin out of my brain, you know. When I look at your stuff else, it just looks like another AI sales thing. That's, that's what I think think. What do you think about that?

Yeah, that's good feedback. I agree, it's, it's hard to create a slide that connotes the action of using the tool, but you're right.

I think it's like focusing on one feature, right? Like one feature that's epic and that you are a cat— a definite category winner. Just odd to me when I seen a board that you're sitting next to Pipedrive and Adio. Adio is really fucking good, you know, like, uh, I use a bunch of CRM and what I like about AdYou is that they're agentic, right? So they— it does stuff for me. It's not just data. I don't care about data. I want to do stuff with my data, right? So that's what I think. Chris, any thoughts?

Well, you took that one right out of my note list there, was that one slide, which was the AI automated, was just too big. It was too complex to try to navigate for a 3-minute pitch, but I get it. That's a great slide to have. When you got somebody on the hook. So once you've reeled them in, that's something you splash at them. I don't know how you would condense that. I'd have to wrap my head around, you know, just how you take what you have for a flow and make it condensed so that you have just a bullet somebody is going to grab and then you can get the deeper dive.

Brian? Now, if this was your first contact with someone, I loved how you started with the fact that the biggest problem with CRMs is nobody uses them. Just stick with that point and solve that problem. Because that alone would— like, I've helped so many organizations put CRMs in, and they all have the same problem. At the end of the day.

Tino, did you sit on that one? Any feedback, questions?

No, it's— I've looked out. I'm having internet issues here.

Brayden, uh, questions?

You, uh, you drove home the idea of like how folks stick with you for 5 years versus everyone else for 2 years. I like that only because like I've implemented and switched CRMs, which is a pain in the ass. And so I, I wonder if that's what you drive home more, is not just sticking with you but implementation being easier. I mean, like with the world of headless and MCP and all that stuff, it's one of those things where The onboarding play might be something to throw in pretty aggressively, cuz I'm sure we've all done Salesforce. That's a shit show. I'm sure we've all done HubSpot. That's almost the same. And so, I don't know, I dug that and then the rest felt kind of fluffy to me, I guess, in order to get your feedback.

Sunny?

Yeah, just start with a couple of good things. So I like the AI-driven B2B selling for humans. I thought that was a memorable. Way to kick off. I think the CRM adoption problem, as others have mentioned, is real and it's relatable. I've also faced it, so I like that. The 5+ year customer lifetime I think is also super cool. But I think the areas where I would improve a little bit is obviously the screen share fumble, right? It's some time and all that, right? So the demo screen wasn't showing up super well. I think illustrating that a bit better. The target—

zoom out, by the way. Quick zoom out fix, just press the minus icon on gamma and you fix it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the target market intro felt rushed and a bit mumbled, right? So tighten it into like maybe one crisp sentence. Um, but yeah, but I, I think this is too many threads. I would pick maybe 2 and 3, or 2 or 3, and then go deep with those.

Then I would say that the transition into the more complex visuals once they give you some sort of informal, uh, express interest in wanting to learn more.

Let's go to our next pitch. Chris, uh, stage is yours. Love your business. Let's, uh, let's go.

It's a lot different than everything else. It's something you actually hold in your hand, I guess.

So something that protects your life.

Yes, absolutely. So you got that screen up?

Uh, let's see. Yes, let's go.

Okay, so what we're building is the next generation of ballistic eyewear, and I'll preface this by saying that eye protection hasn't changed since 1950. So there's our model on our soldier, and our vision is to protect yours. Here's the problem: there's a big protection gap that's been Hiding in plain sight. Your current eyewear spec is a 600 feet per second, basically a BB, um, towards a standard, uh, ballistic hit. Your combat helmets do 2,200 feet per second. Out of all injuries, 14% are ocular, but the eyes only represent 0.1% of the body surface. So we're not matching the spec to the head as of yet. Uh, 10-year study back Afghanistan, Iraq, they spent $25 billion on ocular injuries. Which was condensed to 43%, were directly related to improvised explosives and frag. This is getting worse. The Ukraine conflict data— 22% of head and neck casualties occurred despite wearing the helmets. FPV drones are outpacing injuries by far. We have models. So instead of one, we have a, a 3-lens stack. So what you see here is the LT. This is our entry market, which gets adoption on the style and how we build it, then we can introduce, or we'll introduce them all. But we have an MT, which is a mid-threat, and an HT, which is way more expensive but may work— robust version. So my thought was not to pigeonhole all this, but to put 3 units out where we can capture more markets with a tiered system. And as you can see, the price points reflect— obviously, if you buy a Ford Mustang, you can get it with a V8 or you can get it with a V6. It's just options are good. Our solution— so what you see up here is the current APAL, current standard is 660. Even our light model is 19% better in increased threat. Our heavy model is 3 times the standard, nearly meeting a combat helmet in its effectiveness to stop fragmentation. So I do have an active patent, it's granted. We're fully Berry compliant, made in the United States. Everything has tasked— I'm sorry, passed ANSI specs., this unit remains lightweight to the standard that there is. Everything is 100% made in the United States. And as I explained, that three-tier platform, traction and validation. We've already had the US government validate this and set it probably for a future requirement. We completed a contract with the Navy. It was called IWTSD, irregular warfare, where they fully vetted the process and asked me to build this, gave me some money to do it, and I did it. Which leads to DEVCOM Soldier Center, where we have a cooperative research and development agreement with them. And this is going to be in relation to visors and spectacles in lightweight applications. Uh, PEO Soldier, which is Program Executive Office— basically they buy the equipment. So they have identified this as the only current technology that is capable of the forthcoming standard for a field evaluation for 2027. And if you look at all the stuff coming out, you have Andro making these head-worn systems with IVAS and the integrated visions and the AR systems. And I've got the, this, the solution with the chassis to put that onto every warfighter's face. Uh, I've been moving congressional appropriations for fiscal year '27. Not only are they putting an appropriations bill forward, but they are reaching out saying, you know, give us more data. This is going to the top of the stack. We need to get this appropriated so DEVCOM can move on these plans. Uh, I do have international distribution in place. Through Israel, India, and is a company right here locally that does international sales. So everything's just waiting for a product to be made. This is a $4.2 billion market, no real competition. United States military is $840, foreign military is $1.96 billion. And we can also go into industrial applications. So your mining, your heavy construction, uh, energy production, any high-hazard manufacturing, arc flash, these type of things can be heavily leveraged with this equipment that we're building. So out of that market, if it's a $4.2 billion, if we could just capture 1%, we're a $42 million company on a technology that hasn't changed since the 1950s. Financial predictions, very conservative, super conservative, but basically at year 3, we're at $6 million, year 5, we could be at $12 million with an exit multiplier of 5 to 7 times. I look at a payback period of 3.5 years just to gain that market adoption, get things rolling, have people aware that this exists, and get them to commit to purchasing. Core team, you have right now, there's like 6 of us. These are the, the core people, but there's me, founded it, did the patent, have extensive research. Tim Cashel is my director of sales. He has extensive Department of Defense network. Josh Marcano is a former Green Beret. Extensive channels across seas. Ukraine— he's been actually Ukraine 3 times helping them build infrastructure with their, uh, with their systems. Brian Higginson, who's actually run labs for warfighter labs, has a PhD, 25 years in physiology, biomechanics, and soldier systems. So we have a good team, basically what I'm saying. We have a great team solid behind it. Investment opportunity— I'm looking for $250K for a 1% equity on a $25 million pre-evaluation. Here's what it goes to. Don't have to space it out, but it's all accounted for because the category doesn't exist yet. What we're building, the government is trying to help us do it. And thank you. My statement is, if you wear a combat helmet, wear Armored Eyewear, and I own the trademark, so we're good.

Thank you, Chris. Uh, first, I like the, um, the pitch, right? Our vision is to protect yours. I think you shared the pitch for Spark Tank, right? Like for the investment, because this one is Sales Tank. So one comment, I would have started with your experience. Hey, I'm Chris. I'm a law enforcement officer. And I saw, I saw shit firsthand, you know, like for 10 years.

So start with me, with my background and yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I like the pitch. I like the company. I'm going to try not to wear my investor hat here, but like, let me ask you this, like, who's your ICP? Right? Who are you going after and what moat do you have to sell to them? Is that your DOD guy that would, uh, have a, a very easy time to sell to the DOD?

Yeah, so he's integrated heavily in sales with the Department of Defense already, and it's, it's kind of a cart before the horse thing. So my main customer would be the Department of Defense. So that requires a spec change because this thing is so off the chart of protection that they have to write a standard. But that's where PEO comes into play because they're aware. They help fund, you know, the process to get to where we're at. And it just becomes them kicking up a standard or saying that we're going to put in a new level, a 4 standard that says a hybrid Class C that protects at X amount. And that's underway.

And are you sure it's overkill? Like the current solution, the eye protection is not sufficient enough from what I'm hearing from you.

Well, it's not, because if you have a system standard for your head and this is what it is, and you're not doing your face, and especially with drones, the drone warfare being what it is, head-level explosions instead of on the ground, uh, the eyewear isn't meant to be taking those type of hits. It's just not. And I can go into a deep dive and tell you why the MSEP program exists, and it was because of fashion and the military basically saying Yeah, we want our guys to wear eye protection. They won't wear them because they goop it up. So you can buy your own and you can wear them. You can wear your Oakleys and they wear them, but they're just not sufficient in protection. Yeah, now the ownership is being taken back and they're saying if we're providing you a standard for your head, we're going to provide as much as close of a standard for your eyes. And coming out will be mandible solutions as well.

Brian, any questions or comments?

I was very impressed and, and, you know, never even realized that. I mean, not my space, but I never realized what a huge gap that is. Right. One minor thing I noticed was just in your presentation, the picture, your product is very dark and the background was very dark. Okay. So it just made it really kind of hard to see the beautiful product that you have.

Lighten it up.

Craig? Yeah, no, I love it. I can't wait till I can go to the local gun store and get myself a pair.

Right.

I get that a lot.

Yeah.

Thank you.

You know, yeah, I thought the company name was awesome. Tardy Grade, like unkillable, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the slides were a little bit busy for verbal presentation. I understand why you need all the detail for a reading deck, right? You need to validate it, but at the same time, you kind of need to talk about the detail, and I don't know how to reconcile talking.

Maybe if I slow it down a little bit, hit, hit them a little bit more. I think I had a little, a lot more time than I, than I needed, or I wasted some time.

You're muted, Charles. Between, um, I sort of like it as well. Anyways, I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, it's fine.

Um, Braden, any comments, questions?

Yeah, not feedback, but an idea. I invested in SPV for Axon Body Armor. And like what they did that was really cool was they had a ton of advisors who were like in spots in governments and just like lobbyists and people who were just big heavy names in like government contracts. So maybe it's something you're already doing, but like that was one of those things where it helped a lot of us in Dosa too, where we would bring on CMOs of enterprise companies to be advisors for us and give them shares to basically give them some vested interest. And like to have a slide to be like, oh, these are the 35 people in the government that already love us, that have our advisors for us. I mean, that, that would be kick-ass for, uh, getting contracts done.

So if you would shoot me a note, um, if you— I don't know if you'd be willing to, but if you have contacts with those guys, then if you could— I, I've got equity available that I could get out to advisors. I just don't— I haven't really, you know, bridged or approached them. So that could be something I would be interested in.

Yes, it's one of those like—

we—

it doesn't really even— we just added a zero at Sendoso and like no one No one really was asking what the outstanding share amount was. It was like, oh, here's 1,000 shares. They'd be like, sick. Didn't really mean anything, but it was enough to make them feel like they had vested interest in it. So that might be something you— I mean, it gets probably weird in government, but I don't know, it's one of those where—

Yes and no, because you have these guys that they have connections, places you don't know. And you understand that from being on the Body Armor side.

I'm like, maybe Nancy Pelosi wants to get some advice.

We're not going to go there. We're not going to go there.

Oh, wait, we can't go political. Sorry.

Sorry, sorry guys.

Yeah, maybe on another show. I'm gonna keep you guys posted for that. Sunny, any questions or comments?

Yeah, uh, I love, uh, the 'our vision is to protect yours.' That's super cool. Uh, the protection gap framing I thought is, is powerful as well, right? And then obviously like the Navy contract and all your experiences I think is amazing as well. And so the areas where I was kind of thinking I would maybe brush up a little bit is, well, I think Charles already mentioned, right, that so it's like an investor pitch versus sales, which you're aware of. Um, too many stats packed in, right? Again, I think people can't read and listen at the same time, so I think the less you put on your deck, the better, so that they can actually pay attention to you. Um, I think Charles mentioned this as well, leading with your law enforcement background I think would be super powerful. And then the, uh, the ICP and the sales path were also a bit unclear to me, right? So, and I can recognize that because it was more like an investor deck. Just, you know, last thing is if you wear a combat helmet, wear armored eyewear is a killer closing line, right? Story sells itself.

Yeah, and I got the— I have the trademark. That's cool. So that does work. I like that.

Dan? I definitely like the closing comments. That's a cool tagline. I need to come up with one for my company at some point. A little jealous on that one. Yeah, I thought that the— like, maybe you can change the color tones. A lot of darkness and stuff. But I know you need the stats and the safety numbers and all that stuff for your pitch because you are appealing to a government that has a lot of like bureaucracy and stuff like that. I— one of my nonprofit partners, they do Navy hats for the— they sell all the Navy hats for the servicemen and women and stuff. So, um, I understand that there are specifics and stuff too, right?

But yeah, Tino, it's your turn.

Ready? Yeah, so I'm, uh, the past week I've been presenting to enterprise customers, uh, one for a very large general contractor and, uh, the second one to an architecture firm that they typically work with. And so what we've done is we've digitized the design-to-localized manufacturing process for cabinetry and casework. So interior remodels, it's, it's digital from the front end all the way to localized manufacturing. And so I didn't prepare a deck, but I'm going to show—

tell us about your ICP and how you would pitch them. Yeah, on a phone call.

Well, um, I'll just share 3 slides of a deck. And so, so the, the core problem is, uh, architects, they design in a vacuum, and they don't, you know, the design is not connected to constructability and certainly not connected to cost. And the reason why they can't get all that information early is because cabinet makers, they're overburdened, they have manual processes, and over the course of a design process all the way through construction, it's mistake-prone. And that's what causes that process to be super expensive, versus our process, we can be producing the same good for half price because of our, uh, digital efficiencies. And so what we've done is we've integrated that entire digital to localized manufacturing process into one data stream, if you will. And so what I'm proposing to the architects and the large general contractors is we provide them that digital continuity in their own workflow. And so if an architect is designing with 3D models that correlate with our library of products, and they are— as they design, we can dynamically create that instantly costed spec and, um, in an assurance of manufacturability even at the conceptual level. So that way they are earning the project from the property developer with more certainty and assurance, and the general contractor is receiving all of those drawings and all of those costs dynamically through the fact that we are linking to the design. And then it's— once it's ready to go, we are simply a bidder in the process Although our numbers are already in the— have been pre-populated, but our role transforms it from an information provider to a bidder in the process, and then for localized manufacturing and just-in-time delivery. So that's— yeah, so I'm in the process of thinking through the pitch and how to make that easier and clearer.

Let me ask you, Tino, do you get your ICP on the phone or is it an actual Zoom call?

They were in-person meetings.

In person, okay. So you show up with a laptop and you show them a presentation, a demo?

Uh, yes.

Okay, before opening that laptop, do you sit down with them and ask them questions to sense their pain points?

Yes, and I've already built it.

What top 5 questions you ask them?

Uh, top 5 questions, um, I asked them about their process. And, you know, at one, uh, uh, at the, at the GC meeting, I, I said, um, you know, I asked them what they— there were 10 people around the room. I asked them what they, what their roles were and what they you know, what their typical process is. And then I asked them, hey, if you could wave your magic wand and make one problem go away, what would that problem be?

And usually it's money, right? Can you quantify their pain, the cost of their inefficiency?

I can— I can't quantify the cost, but I can quantify— I can— I think I can, um, quantify the number of hours in repetitive work and, and generalized frustration. Um, but it's not necessarily a— it's not necessarily a—

what are these guys' margins, Tino? Like, what's the profit margins in the cabinetry industry?

Oh, it's, uh, 20-ish percent, uh, pre—

um, so it's definitely cost, uh, there's definitely a cost issue. Um, they, they struggle to make margins, or that's what I'm seeing at least. And if you can flash a number in their face at the end of this call, uh, or even before this call, through an ROI calculator, I think that, that would be a, a big value. Or at least that's my point. I don't want to take the stage too long. Chris, uh, any questions or Responses for Gino. I like your business, you know, by the way.

Yeah, I'm not pitching the cabinet makers, I'm pitching, uh, customers. The— how we integrate into general contract, into the design process to provide information during the design process, and then it automatically segues into the bidding process for general contractors.

Oh shit, so you're B2C?

No, it's B2B. This is— it's for large, large enterprise, like big buildings.

Okay, but when you say you sit down with these people, are you talking about this large, large enterprise?

Yeah, I met the EVP of Cahill Construction at a trade show, and I, I told them what we were doing in like 10 seconds, and he said, send me a— send me a one-pager. I sent them a one-pager and then 14 people were copied on the pre-con team and ended up meeting with a bunch of them.

So my comments still stand, right? Like flashing their, uh, their big red—

they don't care about their suppliers' profitability.

No, but their own profitability, like how much they lose with not using you.

Oh, gotcha. Um, no, they, they, uh No, because it goes through a bidding process, and so they get the best price they can get, even though we'll be automatically lower, because I've seen, I've seen it.

There you go. So you're, you're having them like getting better deals and contributing to their bottom lines, right? Yes. Uh, just trying to get clarity into it, you know. I feel like these questions, um, Chris, let's go to you. Any response, uh, any feedback or questions for Tino?

I think Tino found a niche. He's gonna ride that thing.

Yeah, yeah, same opinion. Uh, Brian, any questions, uh, feedback for Tino? You're muted, by the way, guys.

Uh, yeah, I really don't have anything for you. I think you've got a spot that just, you know, take the ball and run as fast as you can.

Damn.

Um, I think you should talk to a place called Viridian Homes out of Madison, Wisconsin. They do mostly um, spec home construction.

And yeah, right now I'm focused in— on scaling in the Bay Area. And then, um, we've already got 50 manufacturers around the country, including near Madison.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a cool tool for people that want to design and build their own home. Like, if you could incorporate your technology into people wanting to use like their own website And then you automatically just get—

I get a bid and a quote.

You automatically get bidding. People want to play around and design their own home. And all the software technologies are established in a way that people can— like the internet's going to put all of the building specs to the locality of it and tying your system into those types of technologies. It's a pseudo-passive income because it just routes all the orders to your cutters and everything.

Yep, that's exactly it.

Craig? No, I thought it was great. I had my— I lost internet and dropped out for a few minutes, so I missed the middle, but, uh, I love the concept.

Raiden?

Uh, I'm in the Bay Area also. I wish I would have known about you. I just did my kitchen remodel, which cabinets were a lot of fun. There's a ton of companies right now that are doing like this, like, pick which thing you want for like your bathroom or for like your kitchen, and like, I feel like those could all be like really good partners for you? Because I don't know how they do cabinets, but their volume seems high. Like, like the yardsends of like bathroom redos and bathroom— and I don't know, it just seems like a cool partnership, right?

Yeah, the big one that was VC-backed, uh, they, they flamed, uh, like they burned up $30 million in VC because they were undertaking—

we're good at that here—

don't scale.

Sunny, any questions?

Feedback?

No, I love the, the problem, the core problem. I thought it was really crisp, right? The architects design in a vacuum, it's disconnected from constructability and cost. I thought that was really nicely done. Uh, the digital continuity in the architect's own workflow is, I think, a strong value prop. Um, a couple of things, uh, I think the, you know, you couldn't quite quantify the cost of the pain, right, when Charles pushed. So And an ROI calculator I think would be really powerful, especially with, uh, cabinetry margins. I love what Dan said as well. I love the idea of just like slipping into that, that, uh, you know, where, where people are making homes. And yeah, we're, we're embarking on a similar journey, so I think this would be super cool to have. And then the, I guess, the role shift from information provider to bidder got a bit muddy for me, so I'd simplify that story.

Nice. Hey, one last one for you, Tino. Uh, goal is to add value here. You said big enterprises, right? Like, how can you target smaller-ish or mid-sized players to reduce your sales cycle? I'm just worried that you'll spend a full year, uh, closing an enterprise sale, and meanwhile that you'll run out of runway.

You're, you're completely right. Uh, the only reason I, I, I took this pitch is I met the VP at Cahill, and, and that led to the invitation. And so, okay, I'm gonna I'm going to follow this path. Because our, our tech applies to their 18-month process. And we get in at the earliest stage. So we're already embedded and pre-priced. And, and so the 18 months down the road, we get, you know, we're the lowest bidder by default, right? The— but we're, you know, our go-to-market is I need to finish the design tool, which integrates design to localized manufacturing, and I need either margin or a check for that. And then, and then the— our go-to-market is, so I'm— I asked the local ASI, Interior Design Society industry trade group, hey, can you— would you help me structure a $300,000 design contest? And what that is like give them 25% off on the winners of this contest. And, you know, $300,000, it still provides $200,000 in margin for us and a million plus in total top-line sales, right? So that kind of like gets— it's a big bang approach once the design tool is—

but again, it's too long. Um, again, that's my gut feeling. Take it or leave it, right? And we're all bullish about your business here. You— we all know that you're on to something. It's just why not launch a podcast and start talking to ICP and then eventually sell them? Like, that's today, right? Like, uh, that's probably the path that I would take. Um, thanks for pitching. Then you're next. Uh, tell us about what you have here, your ICP and your pitch.

Uh, my background is I used to sell on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, all those things for about 10 years. I did $26 million in sales on Amazon, primarily in the lawn and garden business. And on my last year of Amazon sales before I wound down my operation, I had set up like a— I basically ran the business as a solo operator by myself, and I did everything. And mostly buying through Lawn and Garden Distributors. I split off to a number of nonprofit warehouse organizations that people with— they're like nonprofit packaging companies. And I help people with disabilities get packaging jobs. And so when my Amazon business closed, I just took all those nonprofit packaging relationships and transitioned into doing e-commerce fulfillment, storage, packaging. And I focus on doing fulfillment for bands, record labels, artist management companies, and direct-to-consumer brands that need storage, packaging, and fulfillment and see value in helping invisible people get packaging work. And, uh, what's unique about my company is that it's a very elastic thing. Like, I don't have to have a very high cost to be just as profitable as established warehouse and fulfillment companies because all of my nonprofit partners have to maintain state and federal safety, security, check-in policies and procedures in warehousing and logistics for— to be able to have these people come in and they receive their state and federal funding to keep their operations going. So I bring packaging jobs to the nonprofits. I set up prep tables, packaging, shelving. I show them how to use the warehouse software, and then I provide the service to my ideal customer profile of the music business and direct-to-consumer brands. And, uh, what's unique about it— or I already said that, and that's essentially like the elevator explanation of what I do— because I work with these nonprofits, they already have the warehousing space, the pallets, the forklifts, and the people that want something to do. At the end of the day, e-commerce fulfillment— while Amazon wants to replace it with robots, I want to actually put human beings to work. That's all e-commerce fulfillment is, that people are paying a lot of like high pick and pack storage and fulfillment fees for, is putting something in a box, taping it closed, and putting a sticker on it. And that's essentially what people in my nonprofit partners do for me. And then I do the complex stuff and they do the simple stuff.

And you have background in the, in that industry as well, right? You pick music and nonprofits for a reason. Is it like a lifestyle business is my question for you? Like, do these guys have the money to pay you? Is the business growing?

Um, for the music business and the record labels, I'm focusing on timing out transitioning the brands and the bands to my facility, uh, during like to do the fulfillment of their like album releases. Because that's just an easy time to bring everything in. And I have a commissioned sales employee that's been in the music business doing my cold email outreach for me through my, like, Google. I'm not doing any automating on that stuff and just having very organic conversations. And I let them kind of come, they come in with questions and I let them start and kind of go from there. And I choose the music business because one of my current customers that I pay like $35 a lead for is a musician in Australia. I saw his pricing, I asked questions, I understand the contract structuring, and they're getting screwed left, right, and center. The music— small recording artists that are doing 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 album drops, they don't make that much money because the labels and other factors and the service providers in the music business overcharge and they subcontract too much. And I'm a direct provider that has direct, like, decorating relationships. And that's another thing that I want to do is, uh, music tour support. I manufacture, produce all the merch— hats, shirts— and then I coordinate and help produce and manage the process of getting vinyl records pressed and produced and delivered and packed and shipped out the door.

We need visuals for that, right? Like vinyl and all of that would nice to be, to see the merch that you shipped is one and lifestyle business or are you going for scale?

What do you mean by lifestyle business?

Just like okay growth and just self-financing or do you want to scale that?

My long-term play is to flip it into a nonprofit and become an industry utility in the music business. Why? I make my money first and then I drop the cost afterwards.

Interesting. And also you, you said you hired, uh, people with, uh, disabilities, right? Like, isn't that worth mentioning in the pitch?

Yeah, like I say, nonprofit packaging companies, from like a little bit of feedback I've gotten to talking to people, they get gun-shy because they don't want somebody with mental disabilities touching their stuff. They have this thing where they're gonna screw it up or something.

I have this guy I had on my pod that I'll refer you to. They run the business John's Crazy Socks. I'm not sure if you know them, but it's like a dad and son business.

Oh yeah.

The son has trisomy or however you call that. And they were very fun to have on my podcast. Maybe I can reconnect with them. I don't have much more comments. Chris, any feedback or questions?

Yeah, a couple questions. Do you just do packaging or do you do the duplication on the— like, do you do CDs?

Yeah, like, like, I basically just connect my artist and my bands to the duplicators, like, or Disc Makers. Or say that again, like Bison, Disc Makers, Copycat specifically. Copycat is in Minneapolis, it's closest to me. And most of the, like, vinyl pressers, like United Record Pressing and those guys that offer CDs, they're just subcontracting and marking it up. And I just directly connect my customers to those duplicators and the pressers, I guess.

So you don't handle contracts with the stores and stuff wholesale?

Like, I basically provide the shipping, and I could eventually— maybe I would just start scraping a list of all the independent record stores together, right?

But let's say somebody had an album that I wanted to— is that something you could help with? Like if I had a full track, a full album of something, is that something you could help get into a store?

I mean, like, I can figure out how to get into the distrib— like, if you're selling it on— if somebody has a record or a vinyl, yeah, I can get it. I— you just send me the Dropbox files and I help you get everything print produced and manufactured. You're going to cash flow everything through your pre-order. They're going to cash flow everything through their pre-orders. And I don't want to make money on something that I'm not doing.

Okay, conversation for afterwards. I'll get your email address or something.

So yeah, man, are your perfume business— Chris, you haven't told us about this one.

Going well, but, uh, music— I did some stuff with a couple bands and stuff. I got my hat in everything.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I, I saw your sniper compilation yesterday on the video games. That was pretty fun as well. Ryan, um, any questions or comments for Dan?

Yeah, I'm wondering whether you, you leverage the, the kind of the, uh, the not-for-profit or the, the social benefit component piece of what you're doing.

Do I, or how I do it?

I think you answered the question, and the answer is yes, right? You leverage it?

Yeah, yeah, it's like an added— it's a value-added thing because all of the like single line item, like the average order value for the music business is like 1.08 to 1.15 items per order, which means it's like one record, one CD, one vinyl album in a mailer. And people with disabilities, all you have to do is put one album in a box, tape it closed, put a sticker on it, and I'll pick it up. So it's, it's— I do the complex stuff, they do all the easy stuff. And I have multiple nonprofits in my area that I can tons and tons of volume with.

Are you gonna SaaSify or API the business? Uh, would that be in the portrait, or agentify it? Could that have— do you have that in mind?

No, because a, like, agentics and MCPs and all that stuff and AI technology is not needed for what I do, unless, like, they— like, and already the music business has a hard stance an aggressive stance against AI within the content creation process.

So they want real people. The Chainsmokers are quite bullish on it.

The Chainsmokers?

Yeah, they're VC guys now. Did you see that?

No, I don't know what you're talking about.

They've been reaching into VC guys. Yeah. And they're called the Chainsmokers. I'm pretty sure you know who they are. Craig, any questions? Comments for Dan?

No, I really like it. The only suggestion I have is, uh, maybe just frame the multiple problems that you're solving here a little more clearly at the beginning. So it's, uh, because you're doing more— you're solving more than one problem, and that only came clear sort of towards the end.

Okay, cool, man. Thank you very much.

Tino?

Yeah, I like Craig's suggestion. I mean, it's, um, you know, it would also, you know, if you, if you did it like a triangle, you know, like a problem 1, problem 2, problem 3, and we are combining those 3 problems with one solution. And, um, and that kind of like, uh, leverages the, the, the do-gooder aspect of your business.. And then, uh, and then that could be, that could be digitized as a, as a portable so that you don't actually— it can be self-service and becomes productized.

Braden, uh, talking my language. I started a company before this called Sendoso, which is a gifting company, and so we ran 5 warehouses. So I, I know about the pick and pack world really well. So there's— we should connect after because we did a ton of work with partners. It's not the music direction, but like we brought in nonprofit folks to help us with like handwritten notes, for example. It was like one of those things. Yeah, it was, uh, it was massive in terms of like the money. Like the pick and pack world is like one that it's fantastic if you do it right, which we got pretty good at. But yeah, I'll ping you after and I'll—

Yeah, man, cool. Thank you. That'd be great.

Sunny? Yeah, I was gonna say, I love the, the $26 million on Amazon. You know, as a solo operator is I think serious credibility. So I would definitely lead with that. I think the nonprofit angle is a real differentiator, right? Low fixed cost, social impact in kind of like one move. Amazon wants robots, I put humans to work is I thought very memorable, right? As well. But some areas where I would maybe double-click on is the elevator pitch felt a little bit rambled, right? So you said, or I already said that, or mid-pitch, or something like that. So I would just tighten that up a bit. And then the cost elasticity explanation got a bit tangled as well in the nonprofit funding mechanics, right? So I would simplify that. And I think my partners have already, they have like the where. I like the overall pitch, and yeah, those are kind of my main points I wanted to address.

Thank you. It's your turn.

Yeah, I know we're over time, so I'll keep this short and sweet and just share a couple things on my end. So I'm Braden, I'm a third-time co-founder. I built a company called Coffee Sender before, sold to Starbucks, and I built one called Sendoso, which was a gifting company. While I was at Sendoso, one of the big things that we saw was a lot of folks would come to our site, and we were a B2B-focused company, and as with any B2B site, it was take a demo. Or send us your information. Like, that's what we want your CTA to be. And a lot of folks wouldn't do it. Like they were looking for information. They were trying to figure out like if there's a case study. So they leave the site and they'd pop up again in a community, like a pavilion or a marketing group. And they'd be like, hey, does anyone actually like this company? Like, what is it? And so we found at Sendoso that a lot of folks were not ready for a demo yet. Like they wanted information. And what they really wanted was a back channel. So we built /experts to help solve that problem. And what it does is— I can actually show it to you because I'm super visual. So if you go to like this use case I was talking about with Sendoso, you're on here, take a demo, being your CTA. But if you come back to the site 3 or 4 times, what might pop up is connect to an expert. An expert is an existing customer somebody who uses this product, somebody who's willing to have a conversation with the prospect. So you can be like, sweet, like there's a lot of people here. I can filter it, I can find somebody like Alex, I can book a call. So my very first step from a prospect could be actually talking to a customer versus talking to sales. Now one of the big things here is I get asked like, are these folks gated?

Yes.

Are they pre-vetted? Absolutely. These are individuals that are expecting phone calls and they're actually getting paid to give their feedback to that prospect, which is pretty cool. Here's another use case. As we rolled it out from Zadoso, we started building the company. We're about a year in right now. This is another one, it's called the Warmly. Front and center, talk to a Warmly customer. So you press that, here's a bunch of customers here, Startech. So it's been kind of fun to build. What we noticed was a lot of folks top of funnel maybe weren't ready yet to have a conversation with a reference, even though like they, they knew they wanted it, but like they wanted a back channel. So we also built was this tool called Carly. Carly is an agent. She lives in the background of your sales deals after you've already had a touchpoint. Maybe it's a demo, maybe it's a conversation. So Carly will do is automatically look at those ops and try to get them to have that exact same conversation with an expert. This is an email she's sending. You can also use case studies or reviews. So she's sending social proof to really get these opportunities. Over the edge to actually close the deal, which has been kind of awesome to build. So that's, that's the whole tool. Uh, it's been, uh, it's been awesome to build. We're, we're, we, we plug directly into your CRM. We pull the information directly from there. So that's how we find who these experts should be. We also ask you for a list of like, hey, like, who do you think likes you enough to be an expert on your site? But, uh, a year in, about half a million in sales, about 60 customers, been learning a lot as to how to build it.. And I think the biggest thing we've learned is folks like to turn it on sales reps and just have it run as basically a copilot with them, basically moving deals along. So that's kind of been the biggest use case for us. But that's us.

I love it, dude. Yeah, I'm sold. Just like last time you presented on Spark Tank, I'm sold. Just instead of back channel, why not use simpler word like don't believe us, talk to your customers, right?

Yeah, trust.

Vocabulary is so, so important. And on telesales, it's just like, uh, instead, people don't want to speak to you, they want to speak to your customers, right? Like, boom, that's, that's what you do. So I get feedback, I fucking love it. Uh, Chris, any questions or feedback? No, it's great, excellent. Brian?

So one thing I would, I would need— my, my initial thoughts are, well, I already have referral people who do referrals for me, so why don't I just use them? Like, what's the difference. So yeah, I didn't get the lightning strike of why that's— how that's any different.

Cool. I have a counter for that. Like, I have them too, of course, but are, are they really into it, right? If I pay them something, I, I think they would give even better testimonials. That, that would be my counter to that. That— any—

I think that's like the build it or buy it mentality too, which is awesome. I think it's one of those where folks have references, it makes it easier for us to put them front and center and get them on more calls. And so, like, uh, which, like, you bring up a good point that I should have talked about pricing, because, like, we only charge, like, per call. So it's one of those where, like, that's one of those where it's— there's not a, like, a full software cost. But that's good feedback.

Thanks, Brian. Brian, what do you think about what I just said? I think you were about to say something.

Oh, um, yeah, I, I mean, I, I, like, because I, I incorporate my references into my sales process already.

So do you pay them? Because their time is valuable, and I don't want to spend time—

yeah, they get paid in different ways. So they, they get, they get paid either, uh, sales discounts. If I get, if I get, if I get closes and they're part of it, they get, they get, you know, a little credit on their bill. Oh God, they get, they get rewarded. Extra— usually they take it out in extra services.

Perfect.

Yeah. Which is good. Uh, Dan, any questions, comments?

I thought that the, uh, like you, I didn't quite get the connection between all those different, like you went to several different little sites and stuff and like the connection between the different, how those are all interconnected didn't quite, uh, resonate with me. Like you, you basically provide like on-demand expertise that people pay like on a per-call basis.

Correct.

Yeah. Well, the company's paying for it. So if you were looking at purchasing HubSpot, for example, You wouldn't talk to a sales rep, you would talk to somebody who's already using HubSpot.

Oh, I see.

Then your existing clients, right? Like your existing clients would get paid to talk some good stuff about you to your prospects.

Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. Like that was going to be my suggestion is like compensate all the people that are willing to take the calls that are active users of XYZ. And you're already doing that. So maybe give them more or something.

I don't know.

Good feedback. Craig, any questions or comments?

No, I love it. I mean, you hooked me. I want to learn more. Um, the only question I have is, um, you know, like, how much are these guys getting paid, right? Like, how— what's that model look like?

Yeah, it's up to you. Depends on the company. Sometimes it's, uh, our average is $200. It could be cash, could be an e-gift. If you're in an industry that's regulated, like folks will do charity cents too. So it's like you get $200 for the charity of your choice.

The finances, I like that.

Tino, uh, I love it. I'd like, I'd like to understand how to, how to deploy because my idea was, uh, uh, our customers are often architects and, and interior designers, so I could put them on, on the site and it would be lead gen for them.

Yeah.

Sunny? Yeah, I know, as I've said now, I'm like a broken record. I love, I love this idea. It's obviously, we see it work in the field, and so to systemize it and build a company around it, super smart. Um, just a couple of things. I think the traction came last and quietly, right? So, uh, 500K.

I was trying to keep it sales-focused. Yeah, I guess so, right? I pivoted halfway through there today. I wasn't sure if I was going CFO.

Uh, I think the Carli pivot mid-demo blurred the story a little bit, right? Is the pitch really the expert network, or is it this AI agent, right? So I would pick one as a lead. And then, uh, I think Tino mentioned that the, like, the pricing I don't think was mentioned as well, right? So it'd be nice to know that, that as well.

Awesome feedback. All right, Sunny, should I go next, or should you go next?

Uh, you can go. I'm ready though as well.

Yeah, yeah. I'll try to make it succinct and yeah, eager to hear you guys' feedback. So I run this company here called Podbuyer, right? So a lot of us, we struggle with lead gen and what if we could take the podcast idea, right? Which is to interview someone and spend some time with them and turn these calls into sales calls, right? So that's what I built with Podbuyer. What we do basically, we start with cold email as the beginning of the funnel. We start warming up mailboxes. We're experts at email deliverability and we launch campaigns that look like this. The campaigns are AI built and we add leads that are verified here. We invite them to podcasts. And the result of that is that we get a whole bunch of leads here, right? 'Yes, I want to be on your podcast.' Um, these guys get, uh, moved to your calendar, and then you just click an easy call here. You hop on a podcast with them, you ask them questions before they get on the podcast call. So on the Calendly link, you can pre-qualify them. So it's very time efficient, it's 15 minutes. And once you do the actual podcast with them, you can keep on asking questions that would one, uh, pick your curiosity, but also qualify them for your business, right? So I find that this model works pretty much for any B2B business in the market right now, and it scales infinitely, right? Because if you understand human psychology, people want value before they get an ask from your side, and hopping on a podcast call is the best way to do that because they do get value from your questions, someone spending time with them, asking them thoughtful questions about their business and actually creating content, right? Because we do publish these podcasts mostly on YouTube, on X, on LinkedIn right now. It's like the same system, right, that we would use with them. And for example, this is my YouTube channel and I find that this approach crags the wheel for various reasons., right? Because most people are like, why would I start a podcast? I don't want to be Joe Rogan, right? Like, or I don't have time for that. But truth be told, um, we're not aiming for views. We're aiming for human relationships, right? We're aiming to build relationships at scale. And imagine if you can, uh, increase the growth of your network while making sales. The close rate on these is 10% via the, the classic 30%., but the cost per lead is, uh, anywhere from 10 to 50x less than what you would pay for direct sales leads. Um, plus you're having fun, you're learning about your ICP. I find that most business owners' problem is learning about their customers, their ICP, and being obsessed about it. I speak with literally 5 to 10 of my ICPs nowadays as a guy that's already successful, that's extremely energy efficient. And I still find it exponential, right? So people hire us to do the full system for them, uh, build the full StreamYard stack. It's fully automatic. Instead of— other than you showing up on the call here, everything's automated, right? So everything is streamlined, everything's efficient, and even the YouTube Shorts are automated, right? So for example, this one here I published a couple days ago, already 685 views. All of that is automatic. So you're making sales, you're making content, you're growing your brain at the same time, you're having fun. Um, so yeah, people pay us a couple of grand to set up the cold email system and the, the publication system. It's all automated. So what do you guys think about that pitch? Chris, you can start.

I think it's a fresh perspective, honestly. I think you're using the tools all these, these amazing tools, but you're using it in a way that's humanizing to the entrepreneur and building kind of a bridge where you're leveraging these— the humanity part of it, but allowing these algorithms to post the stuff. But at the end of the day, it's not an AI thing, it's a for-real person. So I think it's pretty fascinating that you're able to, you know, wind all that together and stay focused as you are, because man, I saw that and was— it was like a clown blew up on your screen. How do you stay focused with that?

Yeah, well, that's my one thing, that my one thing is a podcast funnel, right? So I'm obsessed about it, and I'm building like an ecosystem of founders and VCs under me. And ultimately, I'm a broker, right? Like, I, I put people together, um, and that still is aligned with my vision. And by the way, guys, you can criticize me, uh, like, don't pull any punches on me right there. Any criticism on your end, Chris?

Uh, no, I mean, it's, it's— you explained it, I get it, I understand it. I just, I like the fact that of that bridge. I really like that. I think that's smart. I think it's, uh, you're, you're a needed commodity in this day and age.

Thanks, Brian. Don't pull, don't pull punches.

Oh, you know I won't pull punches. Um, one of, one of, uh So I've had similar experiences where I try to get people to do, you know, videos or webcasts and something, and usually the pushback I get from them is it just takes too much time. I think the reality is, is they don't like talking on things and seeing their face and hearing their voice. So how do you overcome, how do you overcome that component? Because I can see it's a super valuable, super valuable approach, especially for very key clients. If you want to really have a laser focus and attack some hard-to-get-at clients and, you know, you have your top 10 list of people you want to attack, this is a great way to go after them. But how do you get your clients to agree to invest all that time into doing videos?

Yeah, it's the only way, in my opinion, especially if you're in a hard field and your ICP is tough to reach and to convince to talk to you. Like you said, I feel that people have resistance from an ego perspective is like, oh, I'm not a podcaster, or I don't want the spotlight. And then the energy spend is, in my opinion, it's a silly argument because there's nothing better since sliced bread in sales, in my opinion. I've been doing sales for 10 to 15 years. Like I said, I've tried a bunch of methods, identified cold email as the best. And then it's the best way ever to Give someone an excuse to talk to you. I think it's so valuable. Yes, the close rate is not the 30% that you would expect on a direct sales call, but the cost per lead is 10 to 100x less. So, and that's usually the bottleneck in sales. People don't have, um, uh, 6-figure budgets to invest in GTM, right? So it's like, yes, go spend time with your ICP. Like, that's the best way to do it. Another thing I get a lot is like, oh, this is fake, right? This is not authentic. Well, no, I still love talking to people and getting data about them, and it's more authentic than sales calls, right? Uh, sales calls is like pretty salesy. So yeah, that's my two cents on it.

I, I like because I think it gives back to the prospect at the same time, right?

You—

they're doing a sales call, but they also get some marketing out of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then I think you kind of bumped around all the different pages and all that stuff very quickly. Um, I don't remember us in our previous conversation talking about the, the very first thing that you did, you mentioned. Well, I guess I mostly talked to Sonny and from his email or whatever to get connected to you. And then I talked to you very briefly. Um, so maybe I didn't quite like— you're basically saying podcasts are the way to win business and get conversations to sell your service or whatever.

Essentially, yeah, I run a couple of business, so that might be the confusion. I run fundraising as a service, but for go-to-market, the podcast, yes, is the best methodology ever.

Yeah, like it was just— you kind of bounced around a lot. So slower presenting, slower, or slow down the discussion and what you're saying and stuff like that?

Yeah, good one. Craig?

I really love it. It seems to me I can't quite articulate it right this minute, but somehow what you're doing and what Brayden's doing meet— there's a Venn diagram there where the, you know, something works there and, and you get two bang for the buck, you know. Um, but I really love it. The, the only thing I wonder about is, I mean, I get pitched with similar offers a lot, right? And I love what you're doing with the, the content creation part. That's, that's unique from what I've seen.

Um, but I want my strength though. But yeah, finish your question.

Well, I was just going to say that it seems like the, the downside that I've seen with other people who are, who are doing this as a lead gen kind of a technique, you know, having a podcast to invite customers on, what they do wrong that I think comes off really bad is they they, they make the pitch part of the podcast, right? And I feel like, oh yeah, a lot of people need a lot of training and help with getting that dance right, you know?

Yes. So I never pitch on the pod, and I never pitch period, right? Like, even on my sales call, I ask questions and I try to see if there's a need or a pain. If there's no pain, I just run, you know? It's like, okay. Talk to you later.

Um, I'm not— you guys offer training though to help the, the business owner, you know, kind of format how they're presenting things?

Yeah, consulting is part of everything that we offer. Content is not my strength. I hired a guy, a great guy, uh, that is a partner now with Sunny, uh, on the team to help us with that. My strength is building relationships at to scale. And even that is really, really hard, you know. So I'm constantly like focused on trying to improve the podcast funnel. That's my one thing. What I'm good at, I think what most of these podcast agencies are missing, one, they don't go much with the relationship angle. And as a matter of fact, today they're not super good at follow-ups. After the podcast, what happens? You know, like most of the time it's nothing. We developed a system to follow up with value. It's like, hey, do you want to book a clarity call with us to get clarity on your numbers or whatever? And a bunch of offers like that, like this show. Hey, do you want to be on Spark Tank, Sales Tank? I have like a whole bunch of offers. That's, that's my strength. Yeah.

Yeah. You know. Yeah, I mean, I've, I've heard a lot of— I mean, I've been pitched a lot of like DIY podcast services, and I haven't seen the— yeah, it's not obvious to me what the value is, you know, because it's kind of like it's attempting to be one-to-many, but in my industry, I think it's— I don't know how effective it would be, but for other industries, um, I think it's, it's a valid approach, um, and if you make it easy for those folks, then yeah, I mean, it's a— at least it's not a noisy channel.

You know, my number one challenge with Podbuyer is like having people understand, so it's, it's good feedback. I'm constantly like working to simplify because in the end there's like many moving parts, right? So I'm constantly trying to make it simpler for people to understand and see how it could impact their business. But yeah, thanks. Brayden, any feedback?

I think the only one I had was the start of it to drive home, like, comparing email response rates, website conversion rates, content. And like, I think that like that would kind of draw home like the problem of like, hey, this is is why pods are a way to go. I think that'd be awesome. And then I think on the backend too, like you can talk about content creation and syndication too. I mean, like, I'm horrible at that. Like you come up with a podcast and then like sharing it more than like once, like how that could be used for distribution for even more leads. So those are my two quick feedbacks.

But I mean— And the Shorts, the YouTube Shorts, they're part of the follow-up. Because when I do content for the prospect, I tag them on LinkedIn and I do that over like, uh, 2 months, right? So they are reminded of my existence like a couple of times. Anyways, uh, good feedback. Um, yeah, I should probably start with a comparison. I'll build it. I'll build an actual pitch with Sunny. Actually, Sunny, like, how good was my presentation or how bad was it?

Well, I mean, before I get to the presentation, I want to say that The method works and the system works. I'm living, you know, a testament of that. I do it every day in the field with Charles, and I've been doing sales for 20 years and this whole entrepreneurship game. And I— and maybe not for B2C, but for B2B, it works like a charm. And yet, you know, that pushback to say, you know, people in your industry do come on podcasts because you've come on ours, and so it's just more like an ego thing. I think most people are kind of quietly dying to tell their story, um, and the truth is, is that, you know, not even their wives probably care to hear it. And so I love being that, that guy that can, you know, just like, you should just shut up for 30 minutes and really just let people vent. Um, in terms of, you know, uh, feedback, you grilled everyone tonight on, you know, leading with their background and skipped yours. So, oh shit, and he'll die yourself. You told, or someone told Craig his deck wasn't sexy, and then you ended up showing us email campaign screenshots. You've asked literally every pitcher about pricing tonight and gave us a vague couple of thousand or a couple of grand. So those were kind of my big ones. But then, then you followed with you're not aiming for views and then showed us 685 views. That was a nice flex at the end.

Yeah.

You know, I think building relationships at scale while making content is essentially the headline, right? And nobody else here can say that their lead gen is also their marketing. So I think it's meta. I think it's genius. And Charles and I are closing a deal a day essentially now with this strategy. So I love it.

All right, now it's your turn. Let's go.

Oof, a little poop, not gonna lie. I'm gonna do it anyways. Let's see. Share screen, entire screen.

It's very good feedback, by the way, dude. I'm gonna implement all of that.

Okay, so I just put this deck together while we were all talking here real quickly. So, Raise Capital on Autopilot. So Charles's, uh, system that he's built over the last 10 years, uh, we actually applied this at something called Raz Rocket, Raising as a Service. And, uh, you know, like Charles said, we charge a few, couple grand for it. But one thing I noticed in working with Charles is that there's a, you know, 9 out of 10 customers can't afford our solution. And so essentially what I've done is I've taken those APIs, those 9 or 10 APIs that we use in a day-to-day, and I've built a product out of it. And yeah, so the whole tagline, you didn't start a company to live in your inbox, right? That's kind of the thing, you know, 50+ we think it takes of investor conversations conversations to close around. It can take, you know, 6 months at least, and less than 1% of, you know, pitch startups ever get funded. And the unfortunate thing is the investor only spends less than 3 minutes even looking at your deck, if that. Usually it's about 30 seconds. So meet Sage. It's one platform, you know, replaces your entire fundraising stack. Sage runs the raise, so you get, you know, back to building your company. It finds the right investors for you, it reaches out on your behalf, it watches your pipeline, and then it introduces you even through your warm paths as well, right? Super cool. You know, in terms of like what's happening out there today, we're obviously seeing a lot of people take it kind of the DIY, uh, you know, path. It's, it's very manual, very slow. A lot of people use consultants or brokers where they rely on their limited, uh, role Rolodex, and then you've got like CRM tools, don't— which don't have any of the juice that ours does. We've got 200,000 investors already mapped out in our, in our platform. We do personalized outreach where every email can essentially be custom generated as per the, the recipient or the investor's thesis and your company itself. We do, you know, warm intros in the system, and we have a low kind of monthly cost fee. So this is not just a funnel. It's, it's what we're, we've got. Oh, so this is all, we've already got at least, I don't know, 230 active deals in our, in our pipeline right now. We've got about 65, 66 customers, paying customers already, uh, that are working with us on RazRocket. And we're really just taking all of our experience. Uh, I've raised, you know, nearly $100 mil. Charles has scaled thousands of businesses, and we've kind of come together to, to build something that we think I think is, is going to be ginormous. And so if you're raising, you know, raise with Sage. I'll just do one more quick thing here as well. Actually, wait, did you guys, uh, you can see— you guys saw that, right? Okay, I want to just do one quick demo here. Um, log in. So there's a lot kind of under the hood here, so I won't take you through and bore you with all the details. I'll just take you to one place here. So this is again where I'll investors are. Like I said, 191,000. There's a lot of kind of depth here. There's obviously Sage, which is the AI that you can speak with, hey, who should leave my round, and she'll answer. But the part I'm most proud about is this like one thing kind of picture, or this view rather, this UI where we've, I, where we've obviously, we've taken everything, put it in the background, and we just surfaced the one thing you need to do to close your round. And the idea is to take a 40-hour-a-week chore and turn it into a 5-minute delightful thing that you do over coffee. I'm married for 15 years, so I'm kind of jealous of my single buddies. I designed it to be like Tinder a little bit. So I go, okay, follow up with Vivek Jadhav. That's the guy I should follow up with. We create an email that follows all of the rules, like no URLs, under 80 to 100 words, speak to their thesis, talk about our value proposition, call to action. If I like it, I just swipe right. And a draft got created in my Gmail. So if I go to Gmail, you'll see in my draft it's sitting there, and then all I need to do is just, uh, just hit send on it essentially. And, uh, and so, and the system right now is a bit, you know, manual where you kind of need to do it one by one, but then eventually the plan is, is what we're working on now is apply kind of using the entire machinery that Charles is uses over, you know, last 10 years instantly, all that, and make it so that you can crank out not just 5 or 10 emails a day, uh, with your own email, but you can do, you know, 1,000 if you need to fill up your calendar and close that round.

I think it was good, just, um, why a deck? You know, I think I would just go with like the demo itself because the decks look a bit empty here and there. Um, and yeah, like just like a walk around in the tool. I think like also the deck didn't make it obvious that it was, I don't know, fundraising. At first I felt that. Sage name, I think I would rename it Ray, right? I think I told you that, the AI itself, because there's a bunch of AIs that are named Sage. But yeah, other than that, good start. But I would go like with mostly share screen. What do you think?

Got it noted. Yeah, no, I created the sales deck, like I said, just for this call. So I normally just do a screen walkthrough.

That's kind of— yeah, because there was the time on top and then the next slide, you didn't really know where to look, just like a demo.

I think I actually— it's kind of hard to explain, but I did a keynote and I was sharing the screen that was supposed to be my note screen, and I was looking at— anyways, yeah, drop the ball there.

Chris, any questions, feedback?

Well, I think you should name his AI assistant Sunny. It's like the female you.

Yeah, or Ray.

Ray, like, uh, like Ray, Rayman, Star Wars, you know, kicking ass with a lightsaber. Um, my only thing is what the investor group you have within that portal, where they come from.

Apollo, Pitch Deck, uh, PitchBook, sorry, uh, Crunchbase. And also, you know, we have a team that we work with that's essentially doing what companies like Apollo do to kind of continually grow that list. We think we have 1 out of every 5 that we're targeting right now. A lot of them are obviously focused on AI, uh, you know, Bitcoin slash crypto because of my background in robotics. Those are kind of the 3 areas we're, we're kind of focused in on.

Gotcha. So if there is an investor that, let's say, I'm a millionaire and I just want to put— park my money somewhere and I want to help out. If I went to you, do I have an investor profile on your site?

If somebody that we profile— so, so I think what you're asking is if you're a guy and you want to come in here and get your name in the database. That's not currently how it works. It's more—

we're just asking if investors have profiles on the database. Yes, they do.

Yes, yes, they do, but they're not created by by the investor, if that makes sense.

Like, it's stuff that we pulled in from the internet, pulled in from their SEC filings or whatever.

And it's deeply enriched also. There's like deep researchers. I'm not sure if that's deployed, Sunny, but like there's deep research, which is way better than Apollo.

Well, I guess the other reason I ask is because it's like, is the site taking— it's generating that data and kind of cold calling them, or they're not aware?

It is a cold email platform. Form, but I've also built in some functionality where you can upload your LinkedIn CSV and we'll map you to your pipeline. So we'll say, hey, you don't know Tim Draper, but Sunny does, and you're connected with Sunny, so send Sunny this email. Click a button and we'll just send an email for you.

And Sunny— yeah, I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying, what's the— where's that— where does that tie into what you're saying? Yeah, it's like a LinkedIn with all the I do this, I do that.

Does it have LinkedIn outreach, Sonny?

It's also got— yeah, I've integrated with LinkedIn as well.

Yeah.

And so what Charles and I do as a business on the service side, we're trying to like bring as much of that value into this platform. It's not easy, not gonna lie. But, uh, yeah, but, but the profile question is like, again, they're, they're created by us. Like, we, we profile them off of all these websites. Yeah, but, but I've definitely thought about having investors come in and and submit their data and all that as well. And, and the long, long-term vision is to create like a Tinder for investors and founders where they can literally connect, not just an outbound for founders, but have them, you know, connect essentially where it's like, oh, this is the ideal VC for me, this is the ideal investor.

Is that not being done? That's really not being done, is where you're, you're taking people that want to invest money and people that want to raise money.

I'm not doing that Consciously, because we're not a broker. As soon as we start doing that, and, you know, we are toying with the idea of doing it and maybe not charging for it, but yeah, you know, it's a bit of a slippery slope where if we do that, we might get classified as a broker, and we're not that yet. So we take more of a tech play where it's like one-sided, but that is the vision, right? That's why we want to go.

I guess, can AI be a broker legally? Yes, can't be an artist, right, Dan? Can't sing a song, you might as well not be able to be a broker either.

Like, people and their art are two separate conversations. Artists and art are two separate things.

Yeah, questions, feedback for Sonny?

I thought that, uh, jumping into the demo, the slides got dull. Go like do 2 slides and then go into the demo and maybe ask the guy who wants to see how it works to do something that they already do that's a pain in the ass.

Got it. Uh, you know, any questions, comments?

No, I've seen that before and I, I think it's a good— it's, it's a good— it's good execution of a well-trodden path by a lot of folks.

All right, guys, let's, uh, pick our winner today just to close the show off. Um, me, Chris and Brayden were my favorite pitches. Uh, Chris, I guess for the novelty, it was well, uh, designed slides, I would say, and it seems like there's a market demand. I like the numbers. I just love the, the presentation, even if it wasn't made for sales, by the way, which is pretty funny. And Braden, because that I think has a huge product-market fit, good presentation, good salesperson. Tino, probably third, I would say. Yeah, Tino, on my— I love the business, I believe in the product-market fit. Chris, who were your top 3, or number 1 either?

I mean, as far as the business models, I'm giving it to probably Sunny and Tino. Tino, just because I like— I mean, Tino, you got it in the bag, man. I mean, you didn't have to be here. Go away. Sonny, it was just— it's interesting to me to see that you're trying to bridge like that gap with things. I think it's needed.

So, Dan, any favorites?

I liked Tino's— like, what you're doing I think is really cool. It's really unique, and you can actually like be like a manufacturer that just uses subcontracted services. And like focus— you make the cabinets that people just take pictures of their walls and do it way cheaper than— if you can do it cheaper than Menards, that's cool. And Menards is very aggressive in terms of the Midwest and stuff like that for their— what they do for building and building suppliers. Like, they could— you could white label your service with Menards, and then Menards makes money, and then you just mark up your service to them, then they sell cabinets for you and stuff.

Tino, any favorites today?

Yeah, I like Chris's slides. I like the aesthetic, and I think it was well done. Braden's tool I'm really interested in checking out and Sunny Rays Now is all— is good. I wonder how fresh— how do you refresh that data though?

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, we do it every month or so. We make sure that it's all clean. Yeah, I guess I'm up next. I'm going to pick Chris because I feel like he could beat me up. No, I'm kidding. I like Chris. I love the eyewear angle. I think a lot about that. You know, just maybe— Charles, you're really into the whole, uh, what's it called, Meta glasses and all that. And I just feel like this area is so valuable, right? You've got your ears, you've got your eyes. And so I also worked in robotics for almost 8 years, a lot of work with like, uh, you know, DOD and all that. And, and I've seen how a lot of the things from the battlefield eventually find their way to the masses. And so the fact that you're starting there, you've you got this wedge, if that thing blows up, you could potentially be on everybody's face, right? So yeah, I love that. And then Braydon always, I just love his ability to see these simple human behaviors and create ginormous businesses. I think that's very, very impressive.

Very cool.

All right, guys. Yeah, okay, I gotta hop to the next one.

Bring this to a close, guys. Thanks for being on today. That was the first edition of Sales Think and catch you guys on the next one.