SPARK TANK - EDITION 16

Welcome to the 13th edition of Spark Tank. Today we have 4 founders with us, about the same amount of investors with us. So we're gonna hear their pitches, gonna be 3 minutes per pitch per founder, and then the investors are gonna jump in with questions or feedback, decide a winner at the end of the show. I'm Charles Cormier, founder of EdgeTM Ventures. We do go-to-market a very uncommon way for B2B AI SaaS founders. I also founded RAS Rocket, which is raising as a service, and I own a VC fund called the MAC10 Fund. We invest in YC founders, $10 million per batches. So round of intros on the investor side. Robert, quick intro about yourself.

Great, make me go first. Rob Stevens, Somerset Capital here in sunny Denver, Colorado. I was formerly with Technology Partners, and we've done a variety of different turnarounds and cleanups, as well as direct investment in technology and that sort of thing. And I've had some fun ones, a few of them that have made NASDAQ billion-dollar market caps and unicorns here and there. So I'm excited to be here today and hear about some opportunities.

Sunny, you're next.

Yeah, I'm also co-founder of GTM Ventures and RazRocket with Charles. I also founded India's first Bitcoin exchange 14 years ago.

It's called called UnoCoin.

I'm also the CEO of a company called Humanoid Global. It's a public company. It's an investment issuer here in Canada that invests in humanoid companies. Happy to be here.

Michael, quick intro about yourself.

Yeah, hello everybody, Mike Fineman, and I own Texas Business Brokers. I have a, a lot of experience in different industries, made a lot of mistakes, and so I love to be able to share that with founders and help them sharpen their knives to be able to be prepared for the future.

There you go. Brian, uh, can you start the round of intros for founders?

Of course.

I'm Brian Wally, CEO and co-founder of Forward Inheritance, and it's lovely to meet you all. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Joe?

Hi, Joe McCann, founder of ai.fo.

And, uh, Benton, finally.

Benton Calder, founder of Mondro Systems.

There you go. We're gonna start, uh, the pitches, guys. So Benton and Joe, talk to you later. Gonna share the screen. Brian, uh, you're good to present.

Lovely.

There are roughly 5 events where families care about the state of their estate, and that is the marriage, the birth, the divorce, the medical problem, and the death. No one can really help you with the last one. You're going to go to probate. But with the marriage, the birth, and the divorce, we tend to get Everybody knows they need to go get new paperwork, but there tends to be a mañana problem. We'll do that mañana, and we'll do that mañana, and we'll do that mañana, and they never do. It's the medical problem when mañana becomes today, right now, for every single family in America. The problem is what happens is that we are not planning for the great wealth transfer. We're planning for the great probate. But what if we ran the business of the family like a business? What if we organized it and optimized it relentlessly for decades and generations to ensure that American families are well positioned for the future and helping themselves thrive? In today's current macroeconomic environment, we're seeing 2 kinds of families. First are families that I'm going to say are accidentally wealthy or do not believe they are wealthy. They might have estates of $1 to $2 million, And in fact, there are 12 million families with estates of $1 to $5 million across this country. Our thesis is that they might need some liquidity help because mom and dad are living longer. How are they going to pay for that? Because college is expensive. How are we going to pay for that? Because life is hard. How are we going to pay for that? We offer a few new fintech products and lending solutions to families to help them, and they first must onboard to our SaaS product in order to see if they qualify. And that leads us to a second set of American families. Think of folks that know they're wealthy or already have an estate attorney and already have a wealth manager. What we can do for both sets of families here is we can organize and optimize their estate with the— what we call the FAM, or the Forward Asset Management System, which is secure, stable, and shareable. And we can take all of the operating agreements of a family— think the will, the trust, but power of attorney for medical decisions, power of attorney for financial decisions, your homeowner's policy, your life insurance policies, your tax returns. We can not only organize those operating agreements of the families, we then account for the assets and the liabilities of the families. And it's not just the financial account. I do not wanna be your wealth manager. You already have one. Like, what we do is we can— let's document the art and the cars the jewelry and the small business and the home and maybe the second home and the Airbnb property and the intra-family loans and the intra-family wealth so that we can not only organize but we can optimize this. What do I mean by that? When you have a trust, right, in your name and yet your home is still papered and owned by you personally, you have not funded your trust. We can systematically scan all the families on our platform and steward them through the process to teach them how to fund their trust. We can ensure that the named beneficiaries in the will and trust are actually part of the estate plan. We can ensure that there are no conflicts. We can have better family communications and better outcomes. Further to that, we offer an internal marketplace lovingly called the Neighborhood, where you can find an estate manager, a wealth manager, or an estate attorney, or a 529 plan, or a lending solution. Or if someone has passed, you can come to our partner Autumn. We can do better for America, and in fact, I think we must do better for America, or we're not going to have the great wealth transfer. We're going to have the great probate, and it's going to happen in a hospital room or in a, or in a courtroom. And I think we have the opportunity and obligation to do better for ourselves and for our families and for America. Thank you very much.

Great, great pitch, Brian. I love it. Uh, what's the economics of that? How much are you raising? How much you're asking?

Yep. We are seeking to raise $2 million on $10, uh, pre-money valuation. I have a term sheet, a verbal on a term sheet from an existing investor on those terms.

Interesting. Okay, the economics, what are the plans? Is it the monthly cost, right? And what makes you sticky?

Yep. So we are selling this for $20 a month or $200 for the year for the family, but when the family has moved in, their fundamentals, we actually decrease that to $10 a month $100 for the family for the year, and then of course the affiliate revenue, uh, through the neighborhood.

And how you get your clients?

Sure, we are currently— we can find clients for less than $100, uh, right now, A, in a D2C motion. We are also partnering with B2B2C, so wealth managers, estate attorneys, uh, employee benefit programs and health benefit programs. And we— so distribution is going to be key, and we have access to Over a million families, uh, right now in the partnership cycle right now, and each family is representative of $2 million of ARR annually.

And you're about to implement Podpire's legendary go-to-market system.

We are about to.

I mean, uh, for the record, Podpire is my company. I'm just joking. Uh, but yeah, uh, Brian's about to become a client of ours, so I'm very bullish on this. The B2B2C channel is Very promising. Uh, Robert, any questions for—

I've got a couple.

I got a couple for you. Um, how do you differentiate yourself from somebody like Archway who kind of looks like they're in your space?

Ah, so Archway, is that built for the family or is that built for the wealth manager?

That is, uh, it's a kind of a combination, uh, situation as far as I know. I think that, that they kind of check both boxes.

Um, fair. I have not heard that Archway is tying together the operating agreements and the assets and optimizing that for the family. that as a financial mechanism to help family make and save money, improve value every single day, every single month, every single year, that is unique in the market.

Interesting. So, so comparing yourself to them, they're— you're saying they're more of like a record-keeping company?

That's right.

Okay.

And typically not for the family.

Sure. Um, anyway, the second question is, are you, um, are you a broker-dealer? Are you a registered investment advisor? How did Do you split fees with those folks? How is that a revenue source for you?

And talk about— Yeah, we, we try to give them affiliate sales, right? So like that go-to-market motion, we can hand them new families. Uh, and not only that, we have some liquidity solutions that can help them with AUM and things of that nature. We never want to run afoul of any of those laws, right? I mean, you can imagine.

Okay, so you don't take trailers on those? Is there a reason why you don't? Seems like that would be a kind of a laydown.

Because now I'm competing with my partners.

Okay.

Right. I want the family to invite their existing wealth manager and bring them into the fold and have them grow. Okay. I don't want to compete with them. I want to support them and partner with them.

Okay.

Brian, just one quick comment. Why didn't you start with your background? That would have helped a lot, right? You're an ex-banker yourself. Uh, that should be included in this slide. Can you tell us your background?

Sure. I'm formerly the CEO of a payments company called Xactuals. We sold that to City National Bank, Royal Bank of Canada. It moves billions of dollars annually. My team and I have built secure system and payment systems and fintech systems for our whole careers.

That's powerful. Sonny, any questions, feedback?

I'm a big fan of Brian as well. I think it's a really important topic. I was going to say, what's— I guess there's always 2 questions on my mind. First one is the wedge, right? Is it families seeking liquidity or is it families needing estate organization? And like, I guess what like evidence shows like that they convert into each other type of thing?

Yeah, sure. So I think the families, if you think of that one, the 12 million families of $1 to $5 million of inheritance, the folks that have a million-dollar estate, they probably need liquidity. That's what the data is showing. So we can offer them liquidity solutions to help them today. The family with a $5 million estate, they probably don't need that liquidity. So we will bring them in on the SaaS side, right? Organize it for them. And then if they need it down the future, where that could be year 2, year 3, right? We could offer them liquidity. So we're using that liquidity as a go-to-market motion for the families that probably don't even know that they're wealthy, right? Or don't consider themselves wealthy.

Good. And then what's the other one is in terms of like, how do you make this hard to replicate beyond just the interface? Is it like the data, the workflow, partnerships?

That's exactly right. So once, you know, we just, we have a wealth manager who is white labeling our software right now, right? They're never going to leave. All the families come to us, and that is a very sticky solution, especially as we steward families through all of these journeys and help them make and save money every year. Why would you ever leave? We have all your documentation. We have an accounting of your assets. You've invited your beneficiaries. That is a very sticky application, which is why we wanted to build it for the family, because that is the family's data. That is not the wealth manager's data. That's not the estate attorney's data. That is not— right? That is the family's data. So let's build a solution for the family so that they can control their own fate. Let's run the business of the family like a business.

Got it. Hey, just some, just some constructive criticism, right? So the problem I think is very compelling, obviously, but the pitch kind of blends SaaS lending and a marketplace, right? So I think it'd be better to clarify the primary business model and the economics first, because it gets a little bit, at least in my mind, a bit muddy.

Okay. Duly noted. Thank you.

Hey, just to follow up on that, I'd like to see the statistics of like how many Americans die without like a will and without like a strategy. in place. I'd like to see that.

50% of homeowners— that's on slide 2— 50% of homeowners do not have a will currently.

Okay, sorry, I missed that. It seems, um, and then yeah, the moat of like not locking them in, but like the pain is huge if they, they, uh, they decide to go, right? Maybe give them like their documentation, a CSV, right? But there's— they would still be missing a lot of value. I think that's the, the master plan right there. And also, do you have a slide saying That most people are wealthy, but they don't even know about it. I love that one-liner.

Yeah, that was on slide 2 as well. But yes, and I have it in the appendix.

Very crazy, man. Yeah, I'm not sure why my brain didn't pick up on it, like if it's the, the matter, the how it's presented or anything. But yeah, anyway, that's good, man. Good job. Mike, any questions or feedback for Brian?

Um, no, no questions. And it's, uh, never good going third because they all stole the kind of the questions and comments that I had. I think it's great. As a 65-year-old young guy, it's definitely— I see the value in it. And I just think in terms of presentation, the focus of the presentation is probably not to get us to enroll in Forward Inheritance, but probably to get us to invest in it. And so I would just think about— I think your conversations would go deeper if you provided some of that easy stuff. Like, you know, the first thing that I thought was, hey, what are your qualifications? Because I can— you're very— you definitely seem very qualified, and, um, and there's a lot of confidence that I have in the way you were presenting your audit. Um, but I— but, you know, it's kind of like, hey, this is serious stuff, and you got a serious organization that's putting this together to protect you because we're not messing around. This is multi-generational. And I think also the business model, if we're looking to invest in it, you know, the $20 and how does that, how does that, you know, kind of, kind of waterfall down? And then also the monetization of it and how, what a big idea, you know, kind of that is, um, you know, just that kind of stuff. I think, you know, a lot of the questions that are being asked, you could have— I would have suggested maybe getting that more kind of in front.

Okay.

And that way you can have deeper conversations on the backside that I think will be more lucrative Copy.

Thank you very much for that.

There you go. That was good, Brian. Thank you. We're gonna go to our next contender. We have Joe here. Joe, the stage is yours.

Hi, I'm Joe McCann. I'm the founder of ai.fo, a CFO reasoning layer for small and founder-led businesses. I've spent the last 20 years of my career working in finance and operations, everything from controller, all the way up to most recently as CFO and COO for a Bay Area healthcare nonprofit. And throughout that time, I've learned one thing, and that is most companies under $50 million a year don't necessarily need a CFO, but they need the judgment of a CFO. So I built ai.fo around that. Founders at every point during their career have to make a number of decisions quickly, and so they need to be able to have all of the analysis that they need, At each point to be able to make those decisions. Why is our revenue tightening? What's going on with this customer? Are they driving profit or are they costing us?

Sorry.

And so from that, we are able to hook up directly to QuickBooks or take CSV or Xero. From there, we run up to 48 different financial signals on a deterministic layer. From there, we are then able to run scenario planning, modeling, and decision-making matrix and a decision ledger for down the line when you need to remember why you made these decisions along the way. And then from there is at that point we bring in an LLM, which is the translator from the numbers to the words of— so a founder who's a non-finance leader can understand exactly what they're doing. Right now there are 1.8 million businesses in the US that are under $50 million a year that would benefit from CFO Judgment. And right now we are live for a free healthcare assessment, a health check assessment. We are launching subscriptions next week, and as we continue to build on with each business that comes on board, we are able to compound that interest and build our network intelligence, which becomes a valuable moat. around what we're doing. Right now we're raising a $1 million pre-seed on an $8 million cap.

That's it, Joe, right?

Yep.

Thanks. Thanks for the presentation. I'd love to see like more images of the platform. Do you even have like a demo of like how it works or?

Yeah, we have the full demo available on our site and the free health assessment is actually available right now.

Got it. Because I told you about the client I'm about to onboard, right? Like me and Sunny have been talking with them and again, it's sort of like Brian's business, right? It's like you're sitting on gold, but you don't know it. Isn't that like the main offer to business owners? Or is it something like you're about to get hit by the IRA or whatever they're called? Like the Internal Revenue Agency in the US. What's the—

That's the IRS.

The IRS is the IRS. Something completely different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what we do is actually we're running the analysis. So we're looking at all the compounding factors of what's happening within the business and the numbers. Why is— are we looking profitable on paper, but we don't have cash in the bank? What's happening there? It shows that if there's customer concentration, if you're having a delay in revenue collections, what's— whatever's happening within your business and the in-depth analysis that's happening, not necessarily look out for the IRS.

But it's sort of like, I'd like to see like green lights and red lights, right? Like that's how human brains works. Like, oh, we prevent like these red lights from happening and here's some green revenue that you forgot about, right? Like early in the deck, I'd like to see that. And it's like in a couple of words, like an AI agent you can stack on top of Stripe. If Stripe doesn't tell me what's wrong about my business, like your software would.

Yeah.

Yeah, actually, I can just change that right now. And all right, so this is the— this is your first board when you log in. It's showing you everything that's happening within your business on your deterministic layer. So these are all the base signals that we're able to run based off of that. From there, we go into the decision-making matrix, so you can understand what's actually happening within there and start to make plans and decisions around what you're doing. And then you can see what's actually going on, where your collections are, all of the issues that you might see, and then it's actually showing you where your red lights are, what your capacity ceiling is, where you're having issues, and what you're running into from there.

Got it.

Yeah.

And then we were able to run the different signals on where your leakage in money is, what's happening, so you can actually really get a more in-depth understanding of what's happening there.

Yeah, I like that. Um, Robert, any questions?

I was gonna, uh, I didn't want to interrupt you there. So do you have any case studies? Like, we have Company A and we've done this for them?

Uh, we're actually in the process of, uh, doing that. We've just finished up running with, uh, a handful of design partners. And we are— we just launched our, uh, the free healthcare assessment, so we're running Signals only for customers right now.

Yeah, um, so when you're pitching this to somebody, you know, you start with a problem. You've done a good job of explaining that there's a need there, but start with a problem and then show how you fixed it. That's it. That's a, that's a one thing. The other thing I would just say, um, is just if you're talking about people throwing money in this thing, is to give an idea on what the exit looks like on the other side of it too, and pitch Not just your business, but your investment, 'cause you're kind of selling 2 things.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying? You've got a really interesting product, but if you're trying to get money outta somebody, you gotta be able to say, okay, Michael, this is how you're gonna get your money back, and this is what our big plan is. So, but other than that, I think that's about all I got to chime in on at this point.

Sunny?

Yeah, I was gonna say great job on the product, by the way. I mean, I think the demo is clearly the strongest asset. I would lead with it. Don't save it. Yeah, I guess one question I had for you was, like, if I ask, for example, can I afford this hire, does it show the exact runway impact before I decide?

Yes, it does. So we actually built that all in on a deterministic layer. So when you're in there, if you're looking at, can I afford this, and you need to make a hire on somebody, what we do is from there we are then able to have— we've taken all your payroll information, we know what your average cost is per that. We also have the option for you to fill in what your anticipated sales salary is for that person, plus the fully loaded costs based on your averages. From there, you then see the downstream effect on the next 3, 6, and 12 months of that hire. And we also then take it a step further and say, maybe hold off 6 months, maybe hold off 3 months, or you're good to go with this.

How does it handle messier, like, I don't know, miscoded QuickBooks data?

So messier QuickBooks data, we're working only off of closed data at this point. So once you have your month closed within QuickBooks is when our system is able to take over for the full analysis on everything. We're able to give you live running on burn, run, and continuous things on that. But right now it's based on your closed data.

Can it push alerts or do I have to log in every time?

No, it pushes alerts via email to the founder.

Amazing. Cool. Well, great job, man. I'm impressed. Yeah, Mike, I guess I'll hand it over to you.

Yeah, where did the name come from? I noticed that ai.fo is a domain that's available out there, so I guess maybe you don't own that, but where did the name come from?

I don't own it quite yet. It's, uh, they want a lot of money for it, and the .fo is actually a Faroe Islands domain extension.

Oh, okay, I should have known that. But why AI.fo?

Like, AFO, is it meant to be like separate? Like Can't we do better?

Always open to figuring out a better name. Um, but ai.fo, it's a play on an AI CFO.

AI CFO sounds way better. So if you can—

Yeah, way better.

In my vernacular, FO means something else. So I don't know. Um, maybe, maybe I'm just exposing my 60s age bracket here, but FO means something different to a lot of us.

Uh, no, you're not, you're not wrong.

AI.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, this is not AI.FU. That's the—

I, I, yeah, I think the name's important. I think, um, I think especially as something before— I mean, it's probably good timing, uh, but I think the name's important. I think it needs to be kind of, kind of cool, kind of, you know, I mean, it's really going to provide capability, you know, you're giving them a portable CFO. Kind of a thought process, and I think the name's kind of got to be memorable. It's got to speak for itself, and it's got to be just you know be real descriptive.

So how about how about I think about that? How about F A F O fuck around and find out?

I think I think you I think you need to give it a name of some really some old man that would wear a bow tie. So it should be called like Edgar or Ed.

I like that.

Yeah, like Claude and all these names. That's very trendy.

Yeah, yeah, call it Mike. I think Mike.

Mike, that's a good one.

Hey, quick question for you before you go. Um, are you looking at all this JEV stuff?

Uh, I have looked at all of that. I think JEV is a really great product.

That moves the needle for you?

Like, given— Actually, it moves the needle in a more— actually, yeah. So actually, we, we are working— I've already been working with that, uh, on seeing where that can actually slot into provide further probability and helping in that decision matrix actually right there.

That seems like a big leap forward.

Yeah, it really is.

Cool. All right, thank you.

Uh, I have one last thing. I'm— Mike, I'm not sure if you had some stuff, but you know, like quick suggestions a CFO would make, like try Ramp or go on Mercury, right, to reduce your payout time, to reduce the fees that these guys take. Say you're losing on currency exchanges, right? Is that the kind of suggestion your tool can make?

Yeah, to a degree right now. That's not fully built out quite yet, but what we are doing is we're looking for where you have— we are able— we're looking where you have double subscriptions, where you might have cash leak. If you know, just for example, I always use Netflix as an example because how many times have you had 2 or 3 accidental subscriptions to Netflix going. But think of that now on an enterprise level where you have a Monday and a Lattice and however many other subscriptions where they're doing double duty. So we were able to see where there might be double work happening there.

I just think that that's almost like your one-two punch. I mean, you kind of are on 2 different levels here, right? You're trying to get folks to understand that they can't afford a CFO, but they can afford this, and this is what a CFO should be doing. So it's all the reasons why people are afraid of AI. Good.

Yeah.

I mean, it is what it is. But then secondarily, sorry, but secondarily, I think then you're also trying to say, and so what you're trying to say to them is that here are real-life examples of stuff where you're screwing up and you don't even know it. You're blind, you're blind, and this is like glasses. It gives you visibility that you just don't have the time to have. So get it in a snapshot on your display and then on your dashboard. And then secondarily, your push is, and here's why I believe This is going to be a no-brainer and it's going to scale like crazy. You should invest in this. And I think that's kind of your, your 2 parts of your presentation.

Yeah, I'd actually add a 3rd level on that, and that's— this is where I think that our biggest area for growth is, and that's partnering directly with VC firms and investors so that we actually can develop a portfolio view for them so they can see all of their portcos in one place, understand exactly what's happening across the board without having to follow up with each of their founders individually. And then be able to build the network intelligence off of that. So it becomes a real in-depth working piece right there.

Well, when you have that, I have someone for you to talk to that I think would— someone that has, I think they have 22 different brands and I'm not even sure how many entities they have. I think that's really powerful stuff because, you know, the power of 10 also comes in where you find out that you got the same problem across, You know, 60% of your entities, and it's not a concept-specific problem, it's an industry-general problem. And so now—

100%.

You know, one of our biggest— one of the biggest places I've been looking at within that specifically is how many common vendors do you have and how often are they increasing prices from one to another? How often do you have a common customer within that who's getting slow to pay? Those are signals that we can then share out at an anonymized level so that a founder can chase up on this receivable, on that receivable. Oh, I need to make sure my contract is locked in with AWS because they just jacked prices on 3 other people in this network.

Yeah. Well, and also tariffs. Tariffs as an example across— sorry, my dogs are going crazy. Tariffs across the industry, across your brands with the same vendor, but you don't have visibility to it because it's in separate classes. Powerful stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Or employee salaries and their output, right, compared to, uh, global stats in the market, right? Like what you should expect from that role in average, what they should be yielding, right? Making tough decisions with numbers. Uh, Joe, thanks for coming on. Let's go to Benton, our last, uh, pitch here. Benton, the stage is yours.

Thank you. Just quick shout out to the other 2 presenters. Great job. Those are both products that I will probably be purchasing in in the near future. So great job, Brian and Joe. Hey everyone, my name is Benton. I am the founder of Mondro Systems. I'm building a privacy-focused AI product for the home that works on-prem, on-device. And I spent nearly a decade at Shopify building really cool stuff, physical products, helping brands grow, as well as building billion-dollar businesses from scratch with the OCS and other projects like that. And so I'm here today to raise money for my company. I'm building Mondro Systems, which is a software company that's looking to add a hardware peripheral to that mix. And the problem that we're trying to solve is that right now the smart home bills you, it listens, and it leaks. And the average US household pays nearly $300 per month per subscription or for subscriptions. And AI is just the next one that's getting added on top of that. And right now, with the advent of these really capable open-source models, as well as the silicon that's getting created by companies like Apple or NVIDIA, you can actually host these models locally on device and never have to pay a subscription. And so we're looking to service those customers. And what we're looking— trying to build is one box that you own outright. It's a Wi-Fi 7 mesh network, it's local network storage, and it's a private AI that runs on device. So out of the box, it's a very capable intelligent machine that can generate information and store it for you on device and on your local network, and you don't have to pay a subscription. Now, just because it says no subscription does not mean I do not have recurring revenue streams. I do have plans for those as well, which we can talk about. But what I'm trying to do is disrupt the router market because I just got back actually from Denver. I think, Robert, you said you're in Denver. I was there for CEDIA, which is Um, the smart home installers custom AV installation trade show, and only 3 out of the 300 vendors there are offering an AI product. All 3 of them are cloud-based and subscription models. So that's Josh AI, that's Sonos, and that's Savant. And what happens with those is not only are they not private because they're up in the cloud and not secure, but they're also subscription models, which means if you stop subscribing to it your house becomes less intelligent. And so you're essentially just renting that intelligence. And when I talked to every single one of the installers that was at this trade show, every single one of them told me that their customers, their end customers, hated that not only are they paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for custom installations, that they're also adding on top of that a monthly subscription on average about $60. And so another interesting thing that came into the mix was back in March of 2026, The FCC put a foreign-made routers ban, so companies like Netgear, ASUS, and other companies like that can no longer bring new products onto the US market. And so not only are they scrambling for exemptions, but they're also having to produce plans and move manufacturing to the US. My plan is to start with manufacturing in the US, small production run first, a pilot run of 500 units, scaling to 5,000 units, and then going from there. And so the plan for go-to-market is a mix of direct-to-consumer but also selling through these channel installers. So these custom installers, there's about 20,000 unique custom integrators in the US alone. It's a $29 billion channel that's growing almost double digits year to year, and they already sell products like mine but with far less features for a price point right around mine as well. Um, and so where we are right now, I do have a prototype. It's actually on my engineer's bench in Colorado. So Robert, let me know, I can get you to go check it out if you'd like. It's running the NVIDIA Jetson chip. We're able to run the full loop of voice in, inference, and voice out. We've got over 100 people on an organic waitlist. That's just a couple months of just me doing organic social posts. We have our first custom integrator signed with half a dozen in the pipe as well. And we have a private beta launching at the end of this month for the software, which I'd love to give you a quick demo of. But really what I'd like to hammer home is I'd really love to build this product and disrupt the custom integrator AV integration market. And so here's a quick demo. What my software is, is essentially what Hermes is, if you've used the Hermes agent. So this allows you to utilize the unified memory stack of your local devices. At first, it's going to be macOS. Soon to be Linux and Windows. And it's not adding any new features that's not already on market, but it's allowing you to have a custom household management agent, agent, uh, wrapper around your harness for your open source models. So you can upload scans or images of your house to create a vector, a 3D model of your house, place your Internet of Things devices in that vector space as well as any agents that you create, and have a really capable household management tool. that you can share with your whole household. And if you're someone like— I used to work at Shopify, so I'm building this for a Toby Lutke type user. If you have a crazy Dell computer that can run a local source model at the Opus level, you can download any model from Hugging Face that fits your device. And again, we have plans for a marketplace that's part of our recurring revenue model. We have plans for inference grid technology to resell inference back to the grid for recurring revenue as well, and other patentable technologies with the software and hardware. So that's it.

I love it. Yeah, maybe you should have started with the Shopify background. Why did you leave that job to go and build this?

Yeah, so I was at Shopify for nearly 10 years, got to build some amazing stuff. In January, unfortunately, there was reorgs happening and I was part of some layoffs that they did in the partnership org, but it was really a great moment for me to graduate from Shopify. And I spent some time canoodling on this idea for a few years. But only recently in the last couple of years was this able to be possible, meaning that the open-source models were getting small enough and capable enough. And the silicon was getting powerful enough and relatively affordable enough. And so those 2 forces converged. And that's what led me to this today.

And how can you compete with Google Nest? Is it the privacy aspect first?

It's definitely privacy and the subscription aspect as well. So whenever you're going to be using the new Google Home, you know, $99 speaker, it's $20 a month on top of that. If you stop paying that, then you lose some of the really great generative features that Gemini offers. But it's in the terms of service. They're going to be training on all of your information. And if you use Google Photos as well, say goodbye to your name, image, and likeness in the future.

So yeah. Do you have a subscription? Because as an investor, I'm sort of worried like about the one-time cost. I want I want monthly recurring, you know?

Yes, for sure. So not only do I have the plans that I described earlier about the marketplace and the reselling inference back to the grid, I do have subscription plans for technologies that are patentable, so I can't discuss them here today.

Okay. And it's $2,000 that the consumer needs to pay in one go. Is that the, the floor price?

That'll be the price for the hub. And then to have a mesh network, you need the nodes. And so for the hub, we're planning to sell for $2,000 with nodes as add-ons or bundles. So a home starter bundle being a hub with 2 nodes, etc., etc.

Lagging. Robert, you can go next if you'd like.

Yeah, you know, one of the things I think you're really hitting on all cylinders on is there's a group, a group of us that don't want all of our devices and camera things constantly accessible to some unknown entity, be it Google or otherwise. In my home, we have cameras, a full setup, but it's not through Google. It's through a device. It's a product that I own myself. And there's just a huge market for that. Anybody that thinks that your pricing is off, I don't agree. I think in terms of that, you're gonna spend a couple of grand, that's kind of in a sweet spot for the right kind of customer, the right kind of acquisition for your— and also that same person would spend $49.95 a month for an add-on piece of software through your app store too. So I think that that's a— I think you're kind of hitting the best of all worlds there with the opportunity to get some recurring revenue off of a your own platform for the distribution, just as long as you own it. Don't, don't leave it open. And, um, but, uh, yeah, this is kind of an exciting thing. My, my only question for you, and maybe, um, is what about, um, like hardware obsolescence?

When—

how does that come into play, and what's, what's the move forward from there?

Yeah, so I do have written commitments, uh, for support on the NVIDIA chip, which is the most important piece of this. Um, the other components I'm not worried about, that's the storage component and the Thread antenna component. And, and then, you know, speakers and microphones, they, you know, they don't really go obsolete in the same way. So 8 years of, of support on that chip, so I'm pretty confident in that. I do have also other product plans to go upmarket, um, in future years that would allow to be additional pieces to the already existing hardware. So let's say you buy the hub and the nodes, and then I come out with my more amazing product It's not that you have to get rid of your hub, it's that it can also then be an 8 GB unified memory that the other device can tap into. And so you're just adding to the pie that is your unified memory stack of your household.

That's great. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, dude, I love this idea too. It's so smart. I guess it kind of was touched on, but like when the box gets smarter from local data, does that intelligence die with the hardware? Or can I move my home's brain like to a new one without, you know, like a lobotomy?

Yes, yes, you can. So my plan is to have the hub that I'm selling to have expandable storage, which allows you to take that storage in and out. And so, um, coming with probably a 500 or so gigabyte base storage up to 4 terabytes, which allows you to add additional storage to it. But then that also allows you to take it and take it wherever you need to go. And the way that I'm building the software is to allow it to not have any of that memory stored in the chip, but rather in the storage in files like long-term, short-term memory or anything like that. That's how I run my business right now. And that's again to future-proof so that people feel confident that they still own all of their information.

Got it. Got it. So you're fighting Apple, Nvidia, silicon cycles, and like the FCC calendar, right? All at kind of once. So hardware is essentially where most startups go to die. What's your plan for not, you know, becoming like a paperweight?

Sure. I wouldn't say I'm fighting Nvidia or Apple. The cool part about my product, the hardware specifically, is that it can orchestrate to whatever devices are on your network. So if you've got a Mac Mini or Mac Studio that's running my app, the hub would orchestrate larger jobs to those devices. So you can actually replace your laptop or whatever, and you'll never feel a road bump at all. Now, for the— for my device, again, that 8-year support is super important and getting it written From, from NVIDIA was a very important step. So those 8 years allows us to do a lot. And then after those 8 years, it's not that it goes and turns into a paperweight. It's just that obviously there's going to be a little bit of extra need to have some care and support for my customers at that 8-year mark. But the typical user for Orbeez or ASUS or things like that, they upgrade within a 5-year cycle. So I feel like this is a good, good sweet spot to be.

Cool. Great, great presentation.

Thank you.

Mike?

Yeah, I think it's great. I, you know, one question that I have is kind of what's the from-to, right? So I'm getting ready, get— getting— I can get rid of this, and it's typically, you know, this much for the subscription, gone, I don't need it, right? So for laypeople, And then second is, and if you can answer these, that'd be great. Second would be, what is kind of like the war story of, and if you don't do this, here's what could happen, you know, kind of the, let me scare the hell out of you for a second. Can you help me with those 2 things?

Sure.

Yeah, so I'll start with the first one first. So in terms of your subscription, the typical user, and this is backed by data right now, 80 to 90% of your ChatGPT usage you can be doing with these open source models. And so if you eliminate that $20 a month right there, you can have these running locally. And then because of my local storage up to 4 terabytes, that's another few dollars on top. So I'm estimating, and then also there's also some other smart home stuff that gets disrupted by the Thread antenna that I'll have on device and things like that. So I'm estimating about $50 a month is what I'll be able to cut down your usage, or sorry, your subscription by. Just for the product. And then to your, to your second question, the horror story. Okay, so here's what I think is actually going to happen if you keep your photos and videos on even iCloud, but let's say Dropbox or Google, Google Photos or whatever. There's going to be a future where you're watching television and you see an ad with someone that kind of looks like you or really looks like you and is selling a product that you would not want your face next to. And so that's kind of the horror story that's probably going to happen. And you won't be able to sue them, not only because that person technically isn't you, but also you gave up your name, image, and likeness when you signed the terms of service, uh, and didn't read the whole thing. Um, and then also these speakers and microphones that are in our house with Google Home and Alexa and stuff like that, not only have they been caught listening and they have had to pay payouts, like I think Amazon Alexa had to do that last year most recently, um, they're listening to your children, they're listening to your most intimate moments. Um, and so For peace of mind, you know, and Robert, you kind of touched on it too, video as well. Having a camera in your house for your security should not also be you being surveilled. So, yeah.

Right. Yeah. So I think that some of that at the beginning would be important, and I try to make it even more compelling than that, you know, and also help people understand that if I'm on the road, you know, I'm constantly on the road, you know, talking to ChatGPT. That this will work, right? And here's how, here's how it works. And, you know, I think that's going to be really important because really what you're trying to do, it's kind of a change agent type thing, a bit of a disruptor, right? And, um, and you may have a target on your back, so you better be careful because it's a little bit dangerous in our country right now. But, um—

I'm in Canada, so yeah.

Oh, much, much better. I wish I was sometimes. Uh, but, but I think You know, I think really helping people understand, especially if you're talking to investors. And then what are you looking for? What are you trying to raise?

Yeah, so right now I'm raising $5 million on a $20 million valuation, and that's to get me from past the pilot run and into the production run. So that's past the 500 units into the 5,000-unit run. And that's so when I move to the Series A, I'm raising that on actual revenue. And that gets me through not only the first builds, but the FCC certification path, because again, it's a router, it needs to go through the cert path, and then, uh, purchasing the tooling and the early materials needed for those, uh, production runs.

And they'll be built in Canada, right?

No, sir. So, and, and I did say I'm in Canada, so I'm not doing the hardware design or build-out because that again would be against the FCC ruling that just came by. My hardware engineer who's in Colorado is handling that stuff, and it will be manufactured in the United States because as per the FCC new rule Um, without an exemption, you need to be building in the United States. So I've already got a couple targets of, uh, you know, certified manufacturers that would do products like this. Um, and right now we're just in the process of locking the bill of materials. We just got a couple last components, um, to move forward with.

I love that. Did you mention that early in the presentation by any chance, the US-built and technical co-founder?

Uh, I think I did the US-built. I don't know if I did the technical co-founder. I might have skipped through that, so maybe I'll add that next time. Okay.

Yeah, that seems like a very strong added value point. Well, thanks, Benton. I thought that was— let's bring everyone on stage. Just decide our favorites today. So I would say software I would use personally, AI.FO. I would say that's the winner. A person I'd invest to and a company, I'd say Brian. But best presentation, I'd say Benton. So that's on my end. Robert, Who were your favorites today?

So first of all, I think they were all great, great presentations, and each of these businesses has potential and has great legs. And I have a tough time drawing them, but I think in terms of credibility, I think Brian really brought it home with his background and really hitting a market that I understand. That was another thing that really chimed in with me. Also, Joe, you know, you came in very well with a Another thing that I understand as well, which is you have a lot of these— a lot of businesses that are in this zone that are still running cash accounting. They don't even— and if you're running QuickBooks, you do not have accrual-based accounting. You're going to have to bring somebody in to do that. And if you don't have accrual-based accounting, you don't know what in the hell is going on in your business. You have no clue. Everybody on this thing knows that. So I had a real tough, tough time, but I have a a very personal hatred of being in the cloud and having the thought of images of me coming and going from my own home. So I, I don't know, I haven't had a chance to look at the, any of the metrics of any of these businesses, but I think I'm gonna have to give Benton the thumbs up.

Tony, any feedback or winner announcement?

Yeah, again, I was impressed with all 3, but I felt like God, today, yeah, Benton crushed it for me in terms of best presentation. I loved it. I thought he answered the FCC questions really well. Strong, I think, founder market fit as well. For Brian, like I was saying, compelling problem. I think the pitch kind of blends some of the economics. I think if we cleared that up, it would definitely go up a couple notches. And then, yeah, Joe, I mean, phenomenal demo. I mean, I think the problem you're solving is super on point. I want to double-click on that one as well. But yeah, I think, but overall, Benton today crushed it for me.

Michael?

I think, can you hear me? Yeah, I think, Brian, I think the broadest kind of, I think, opportunity. I think it's the biggest market, the largest market, and it'll get larger as the population ages. So I think that's good too. I think in terms of Joe, I think yours has the biggest targeted value add. And I don't— and I think it's less about those VCs and, you know, private equity groups that have multiple brands as it is about the smaller business that can't afford enough CFO. Because a lot of the VCs would say, why would I need this? You know, tells me my CFO is not doing her job, you know. And then, Benton, I think you— what a great presentation. I think you were on fire, and I really enjoyed it. I would just keep getting clearer and clearer on what you're solving for because there, you know, I use Claude, I use, you know, ChatGPT, I use, you know, a lot of different AI and I still don't completely understand it all. You know, I'm still a neophyte and I use it a lot. So I think, you know, I use Gamma. I mean, I could go on and on and on. I just found out from Sunny I've got to use Granola, so I'm going to be looking at that next. But, you know, so that also opens me up. And so I think getting clearer on what you're solving for, and I think you might have a home run.

There you go. Well, thanks to all. That was the