Lunch & Learn - Session 24

Hi, I'm Tom Powell, and you are here at the Lunch and Learn where we'll be talking about all things founders and capital. Joining me are Candice Powell from our office and Jackie Kuiper from not only our office but also the Founders Law Group. And Candice and Jackie and myself, before we introduce our guests, about how many degrees do we have from higher education between us? It's like, it's a gazillion letters at the end of names and in our organization in general. And it's so funny because we're a group that really believes in education, but not always specifically in formal education, that it's got to be brick and mortar, it's got to go this way, because we know so many people, especially in founders, that it's not about the specific you know, formal education specifically. So imagine what if the entire higher education system you trusted, the one that was supposed to create opportunity, signal credibility, and prepare people for the real world, was not just broken, but was misaligned at its very core? And what if the person sitting across from us today is not talking about the problem from theory, but from the inside, having led institutions at the highest level and then choosing to challenge the very system she helped run? That is my good friend Pardis. She's not here to tweak education. She's here to rebuild it. With a PhD from Columbia, former university president, provost, dean, she's basically done it all. She's firsthand seen where the model fails—cost, relevance, outcomes—and more importantly, why it fails. But what makes her different is not just that she challenges these assumptions, it's that she makes sense of the complexity and then brings clarity to what the future should look like. That's exactly what we're talking about today. Myuni, a model that strips away the inefficiencies, aligns learning with real-world demand, and creates a path that is accessible, adaptive, and actually works. So as you listen today, don't just hear this as conversation about education. Hear it as conversation about what happens when someone's willing to challenge the system, make sense of it, and then rebuild it in the way that actually serves people. Pardis, Welcome to Lunch and Learn. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. Thank you for that warm introduction. I'm such a huge fan of everyone in the Zoom room and such an honor to be here.

Oh, that's great. So where do you come from? Where are you coming to us today? I'm Zooming in from Scottsdale, Arizona.

And how warm is it there today? Oh, yesterday was 105. So today I think we're catching a break. It'll be 102.

So is it, is it May? Did you guys somehow hit May and missed March and April altogether?

Yeah, I think Arizona missed the the memo that we haven't even had the spring equinox yet, which is on Friday. It's technically still winter. It's crazy.

We had one of our ski resorts at Tahoe, which as you know we did, because you were, you were skiing with us on our Lift Pitch Tahoe and then almost got to ski with us on our Franz and Friends. So one of our mountains was Homewood. And this weekend they said, oh, we're going to close after next weekend. Yesterday at the end of the day, they put up a sign and said, we're closing today. That's how bad it is for us.

Rotten ski season for us out here. Yeah.

So, uh, Pardis, we've got a bunch of founders on here. We oftentimes are talking about how you create businesses, how, what businesses you're in. Today we're doing this mixed bag of you're in academia or we're in academia. Now you're taking it to the founder model and giving people this opportunity of how they can think differently about what has been traditionally a brick and mortar or even an online model. But just tell us about that. How did Myuni come about?

Yeah, so I describe myself as a recovering academic turned entrepreneur or founder. So, as you mentioned, Tom, I've held every role that you can have on the academic side of the house. So I was, you know, got my PhD at Columbia, several masters, became a professor at Pomona College, rose the ranks to being Dean of Women. Then I was a Dean at the University of Denver, Dean at Arizona State University. I was the Provost at the University of Montana and then the President at the University of La Verne. So in many ways, I've seen it all. I've been at— slacker, slacker— and wrote 10 books in the process. Yeah, I know. Yes, I know. The slacking was— yes, exactly. I'm Iranian. It's the overachieving. It's kind of in my DNA. But the higher up I went, the more acutely I felt the disconnect. And so it started out as feeling that disconnect that the students were students would talk about feeling like they weren't learning what they needed to get a job. They felt like they couldn't make, they couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. At the same time, they felt that it was becoming increasingly unaffordable, which it is, you know, many of these institutions, you know, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I had students whose parents were taking out second and third mortgages on their homes, students sleeping in their cars. Mental health crises going through the roof. So I started to feel those pain points early on when I was professor and department chair. And at one point, it was just as I was becoming from department chair to, to transitioning to Dean of Women. Within one year, we had 3 suicides. And that was when I first learned what a posthumous degree was. So what it was to award a degree to a student who had died by suicide. And throughout my career, I would award many, many more. And That was what helped to show me how acutely the pain points were being experienced by students who felt that the education was out of sync with what they were looking for, too expensive, inaccessible. I'll give you an example. When I was at the University of Montana, as you know, Montana is one of the largest states geographically, and I would have students, in fact, I had this one student who drove over from the reservation, which was on kind of the other side of the mountains, if you will. And once the snows come, the pass is closed. Well, it was fall. Winter was coming very early, as it does in Montana. And his mom got sick back home. And he had to make the difficult decision between going home to care for his mom and staying in university. And I thought, this is ridiculous. We have to have a hybrid model. We can't have this student have to make this difficult choice. So I became acutely aware of the pain points on that side. At the same time, I became involved in YPO. I'm in the Young Presidents Organization. I started getting much more involved with workforce. And I was hearing the pain points from the employers saying students are not prepared. The workforce is changing. We need people to be able to upskill and reskill. And I vividly remember an argument I got into when I was president out in Los Angeles. I had a YPO friend who was very high up at Bank of America, and they had come and they were recruiting our students to come and drop out after their second year of college and go work for the bank. And I'm like, you are doing them a disservice. When they drop out, they never return. As you know, as we said, We sit here today, 43 million Americans have started college but dropped out. So those are, I mean, that's, and then, you know, millions and millions more are, you know, being crippled by debt, but 43 million are in debt and can't pay it back because they never finished. So I said, if you do these to these students, they're not going to be able to finish their degree. And they said, Pardis, what's the point? If I left them there for another 2 years, they still wouldn't be ready. I'd still have to finish the job. I would still have to teach them everything that they need to know. And I thought, okay, you know, I can see his perspective. I also can see the danger for the student, because if they drop out, what are they going to do? And that was all happening at a time when students were becoming increasingly unhappy. And so finally, I was president. I thought, I've now seen it all. I've seen a lot of the different sides of this coin. I actually can see the solution. So shame on me if I sit here awarding degrees to caskets, knowing I'm not doing right by workforce, when I know the solution.

Marty, so you have this incredible problem solve statement, right? The problem that you solve, and that's one of the main reasons we even wanted you to come on the show is because that's part of our, that's the key piece to our capital readiness is you've done such a beautiful job of explaining to us and in a way that we all can relate at various levels of life to that problem. I think one of the things too that you weave in really well, and I want to like pin in on this a little bit more because I think a lot of the founders on this that watch this can relate to being at the highest level in their career potentially, right? They were maybe in a, in a corporation, or they achieved a high level. Solving a problem and building outside of that. I am guessing there's a huge chunk of the founders on here today who that is their story too, right? Whatever industry they're in. And so you, you really hone in on that problem statement and it's, it's wonderful. And I think that's the, the big takeaway for capital readiness that we want people to have. I, you honed in on the, the main piece. Was it the posthumous degrees that was like the main and, and and obviously the debt that convinced you that the model had to change. And now I want to hear a little bit more about the solution, I guess. So, like, diving into the next piece, how did you get to the place of actually doing different in an industry, by the way, education, higher education is very old. It's not had a lot of tweaks other than, no, getting a little bit more expensive.

Yeah, no, and it's, it's exactly what you said, Candace. It has not had tweaks, meaning it is out of date, and society has massively shifted. But this ecosystem, which is the foundation of social change and social transformation, and in many ways education is the foundation of a healthy democracy. So if our education system is at stake, that means our democracy is at stake. So the fact that the United States is falling in rankings when it comes to global education and the fact that our children's generation will be less educated than their parents is a national security crisis. And we need to think about it like that. I love the framing of that.

Yeah, thank you. National security.

Yeah, it is. It is a national security crisis. We have to do better. We have to educate the generations better. We've got to do better.

I don't want to gloss over something that you didn't say specifically, but it's really a theme. I think we are great as a society with data, right? We focus, we collect, we collect, we take surveys, we take it in. You sound like you have been listening and listening and listening and have been caring to listen throughout all of these different roles. And then you don't just listen to process, you listen to process and then solve and then act. I'm curious to know, is, yeah, I want to hear more from you on that. What would your, what was your method of like collecting data and giving students an opportunity so that you could listen? And then I'm also curious with our participants that are online, when you're running a business, the cliché is the customer's always right, right? What, what are we doing as founders and business owners to really listen to how we can better serve our clients?

I love that question, Jackie, because that listening capability is exactly what allows us to hone in on the solution. So to your question, my PhD is actually in anthropology. My PhD is in medical anthropology. So I'm a trained ethnographer. I'm a trained listener. And when I became a dean, I began actually turning my ethnographic training on the students and on higher education. And I wrote a book called Hyphen, which was about being a hyphenated American, like rural Americans and, you know, all kinds of hyphenated Americans. And I began that deep, deep listening to figure out what was going on, but not only from the student perspective, which gets back to your question, Candice. You're like, what was the it? For me, that it was in, in a 10-day span when I was president, having multiple students in crisis, like on, on holds. Like, you know, in California they're called 5150 holds. That's that 72-hour suicide watch that they put you on in California. How many? Yeah, they put you on a 72-hour hold. But how many people were on that? So I, at that point, I had about 12 students in that. Holy cow. Yeah, so it was literally like in this one-week period, I was balancing like, how am I going to call these parents? Because I thought I'm the president, it should be me. I should be the one calling the parents and saying this is happening while I was also in all these YPO conversations recognizing that the workforce was at stake. Here we are in the state of California, a state which needed massive numbers of workforce-ready folks. Upskilling, reskilling. You know, we had just created a College of Health and Wellbeing because being in the Inland Empire, we needed to train nurses, physician's assistants. My gosh, we, you know, the state needs workforce, right? That's what they need. And certainly my home state of Arizona and the state of Nevada is another really interesting one that is ripe for Workforce Pell. So in July of 2025, President Trump passed an act called Workforce Pell. which was the single biggest game changer in education since the GI Bill. And yet it's barely been talked about. So Workforce PAL entitles every American over the age of 18 to $7,583 towards any accredited credentialing program that gets you workforce ready. But here's the catch.

Even if you have a PhD, even if you—

so, Tom, do you want to come get it? I want to come take a class. I'm talking about this today.

Yeah, but part of it is pretty—

so hang on. I'm going to, I'm going to totally take this on the sideways. So I'm just going to, because I'm going to jump to it because we've got a bunch of entrepreneurs here. So meaning I could write a program, I could get it created if it creates workforce opportunities and I could sell it. And if it, I mean, we go through all this process, but my uni could actually help me get good content out there through you. And then we could get it and get access to these things that could help people get to work right away in whatever space. So, AI or whatever we want to do within that space, and then there's funding for this.

Exactly what you just said. Yeah. Yes. Thank you for honing in. The catch is it has to be accredited.

So, you know, I know, I know someone who does that.

Exactly. Um, and, and that's back to the, like, Pardis, why did you do this? Why did you leave the top and, and go and start this? Because I realized I could. I was one of the few people who had sat in every seat. Oh, I was an accreditor. Like, I did a lot of accreditation work. I knew exactly how to, um, as, you know, one of our friends, uh, Kevin, says, explain it. It's your domain expertise. Um, so I know exactly how to articulate my domain expertise. I knew how to get programs accredited. I knew how to create a curriculum that had what we would say horizontality and verticality. I know how people learn. I know how to credential people. I know what the problem is. I see the solution. Shame on me if I don't do it. Shame on me if I don't do it. And so to your point, Tom, yes, if you're an entrepreneur, you probably have a huge body of knowledge that's incredibly applicable not only to your own workforce. You probably have tons and tons of people working for you who you could be teaching and we could be upskilling. But think about all the other folks in the ecosystem that could benefit from your knowledge. So we would partner with you and we would create accredited credentialing, and we call them stackable credentials. So you would get a certificate, 3 certificates stacked towards a bachelor's, and then you have post-bachelor's, 2 certificates stacked towards a master's. So you could, you could even just get a certificate. If you're somebody, for instance, who's been in the military and you've just come back and you probably have a lot of knowledge and work experience, you probably don't need a whole degree. Candidly, there was even another article in the paper this morning about how the 4-year degree is going, but like, where did we get 4 years from? Like, time— like, that's such an arbitrary marker of like merit. Like, a 4-year degree— why? So there was an article like, okay, we're not going to talk about that anymore because that's not a thing really anymore.

No, I think, I think it was talked about about 55 years ago whenever the Wizard of Oz movie came out. Yeah. And these— and Scarecrow gets awarded because he needed a brain, and, and he gives him the piece of paper and says it's a bunch of people that stand around and say, hey, you've done what you needed to do, here's your piece of paper, right? Doctor. Yes.

Which, you know, I mean, we got those, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But like, now what? You know, it's like, to your point, it's 55 years later, workforce is changing rapidly. The— I always say like the word of the day is upskilling, upskilling and reskilling. And, you know, Jackie, to your point about data, the statistic that really, really sat with me, I couldn't get it out of my head, was that the students who were graduating in May of 2024 would have between 30 and 50 jobs in their lifetime, more than half of which hadn't been invented yet. And I'm like, okay, we have to rethink how we educate completely. Completely. So upskilling, credentialing. So to all of our entrepreneurs and founders out there, you have tremendous bodies of knowledge that we could use to upskill the workforce. And for those of us who live in states like Arizona and Nevada, these are states where we really, they're ripe for workforce development. They're ripe.

And we're a big state like Wyoming and Montana as well. Montana. So it's so hard for everybody to be able to reach there. But the other part of it is, especially in Southern Nevada where, you know, over two-thirds of our population is, so much of it's driven around hours that have nothing to do with real studying time, right? So this, you can, you could really be creative. Hey, Angela, let's pop up Pardis's contact information because I think somebody's going like, well, how do I get, where do I go? What do I, I've got some ideas, I want to be able to get that there. And Jackie and I were talking about the capital raise So tell us about that.

Yeah. So we're right now in this place where what's exciting about what we've done is we've, you know, gotten our accreditation framework. We've built a whole entire educational ecosystem. We've figured out how to leverage the funding, and we're actually building out the capability to be able to support pretty much anyone looking to build out a degree. So we are at the moment raising, we're in the middle of a raise. Uh, I see Tom like, say the problem that you're solving. So the problem that we're solving is education is unaffordable, inaccessible, and out of touch with workforce. We are creating accessible, workforce-aligned educational content that's stacked towards degrees that can be applicable for your workforce, your state, and also can get your message out there.

So we— so who should be contacting you? I mean, like, state government officials should be contacting you, people and founders that have ideas about that I would love to be able to have this accredited in CEUs. Jackie and I have to continually do CEUs and various things. Candice, you as well, right? And it's like, oh, wow, how could you tie this in? The ski industry. I mean, it's just like unlimited opportunities for workforce, right?

Absolutely. Yes.

So, classic educator that you are, I think you just gave a masterclass in how to deliver the problem that you solve, especially when it comes to a disruptive, which, let's be honest, most founders are doing something disruptive. And so I'm so grateful. And yes, I'm always dealing with this, uh, the sun coming. I like it, it's a halo. Um, so you're doing— this is new, the summertime, uh, or the, the new change that comes down here. Um, thank you for telling us about how you— I mean, you shared with, with everybody not only what you do, but a great example of, of what we look for And obviously you gave this to me on a chairlift. So with my, with my small child, it was great.

That was lift pitch Tahoe with my son, 2027.

And I so quickly was probably one of the quickest. I was like, yeah, I'm in, I'm into this. This is amazing. I want to like shift gears and I want to remind people, if you have questions, please feel free to put them in the chat. If you don't, great, because I have a gazillion questions to fill in the space. So I will take over the time. I sent Jackie something the other day, and I spoke to you a little bit about it, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull it up because I sent it to Jackie and I was like, oh my gosh, this is a topic that, you know, we care so much about women, women in business, women in finance, and The AI movement has so many pros and cons to it. And one of the things that really frightens people about AI is the threat to jobs. And there was a study done that said jobs mostly dominated by women may be the most vulnerable to being replaced by AI. They found that nearly women make up nearly 90% of those most vulnerable workers. And so I thought that was really interesting because it seems like almost in this natural way, by you taking this other position with AI, you're almost addressing that problem head-on, which is almost— I don't know if it's a problem you foresaw being, but boy, you're so ahead of the curve on this. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, first, thank you for that. I really appreciate it because I think one of the things, you know, we couldn't predict the exact moment, but what my team and I could see was that statistic I shared with you about having so many jobs in their lifetime, most of which haven't been invented yet. And so we realized we had to create a framework and an ecosystem where people could upskill. And especially when I think about like this question of access around being able to get your degree, I think a lot about women. I'm a single mom, I have 3 young kids, and I think about, you know, the fact that if, you know, if I wanted to upskill right now, I couldn't like move somewhere else, take my kids, and what am I supposed to do, sit in a classroom? You know, it's just not, it's just not feasible. So what, what I think is, you know, exciting about this moment is we, we started to see that problem and the solution right when AI was getting as robust as it was. And so we were able to actually lean into the capability that AI has to make learning more accessible. So we say we're human-powered, right? Human-centered, AI-powered. Excuse me, human-centered, AI-powered. And what we do is we take the vast expertise of the professors or of the entrepreneurs and the founders, and we are able to fill it, feed it into our technological approach and use the power of AI to make the learning more accessible, meaning the courses are asynchronous. So like, yeah, if you're a single mom like me, you can get on that at 10 PM after your kids have gone to bed. You can take as many courses as you want from 10 AM to, you know, midnight, if you will. And then we have these apprenticeships. So it is not fully online necessarily, but it is asset light in that we're not dependent on brick and mortar. What's great about this model is that people are getting to interact with AI while they're also learning their trade or their skill. So they're starting to get more comfortable just by function of our learning platform that has the added benefit of their learning AI while they're also upskilling into whatever it is that they want to do. So for instance, we're building out some continuing medical education and we're building out nursing programs as well. So now you have people who are going to be upskilling in the nursing area while also learning AI. And then we are creating the bodies of knowledge in real time. The courses are changing and getting better and better in real time, which is exactly what education has been missing. So we're solving multiple problems at once by also upskilling the entire workforce.

Not only missing, I feel like the things I see from education on like the broader scale is they are digging their heels in on kind of like anti-AI, the fear around AI, and spending so many more resources and like trying to prevent AI bleeding into the education instead of maybe recognizing opportunities to educate around it, embrace and build a whole workforce that is now stronger, better, faster, literate, fluent. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, again, in an already disruptive model, you're choosing a very disruptive, like, course, of course, as well, which is incredible. And there's a massive gap here. So you're like filling this huge gap. And I'm just wildly impressed. Have you trademarked that, parties?

Empowered AI? Yeah, that's what we need. That's— are you volunteering to help me with that, Jackie?

Absolutely. We'd love to help you. We have— Tom, you're on mute. Oh, he's on mute.

Dad, you're on mute. You were doing it right now with such enthusiasm.

He was so excited.

Try again. Great. Human-powered AI. What was the term? Yeah. Human-powered AI. Yeah. Centered. Centered. Okay. No, I'm serious. So for all of our people that are out there listening to this, so this is, this is not just my thought process on there, but, you know, the majority of companies, especially in the United States, the value of those companies is intangibles. And we value these companies and we help companies double and triple and quadruple the value of the companies. Much of that is through the intangibles, which is trademarks and intellectual properties and those pieces. And when you do it, You need to be able to get it patented, trademarked. And when you come up with a term like that and then you also have a process for what you mean, that is what we do at the Founders Law Group, right? So that is, yes, we need to get that going. We need to get that down there because— and you use it in a commercial platform. We need to get that going for, for right now, right? And any of you listening, if you're going to get that, then you know that, hey, don't— you don't have the process to be able to do it. You can't just have the name. You got to have the process, right? So Pardee's has got the process. Yes, we need to get jumping on that right away because that also adds value into what you're building. So just everyone in there, I want to say, so some— before we do the last question that was answered, I want to say you now have a new client from, uh, uh, Clyde Gill said they're on the cusp of launching an apprenticeship program and that could work as a certificate too, which is perfect, right? So you change— one of the great things about entrepreneurs is they change how people perceive a problem that's always stood there. Right. And you're bringing that solution and you articulate that problem. But next, you, as Candice said, what's the solution? How does it work and what does it mean when we get there? And you're starting to build a team and you've actually already had clients, right? You're already post-revenue. You've got real money coming in. I think you've got a nonprofit and a for-profit segment of this that is balancing both sides of those type of things. Yep. That's exactly right. So exciting. We've only got like 10 minutes left. Too many, too many questions. As Candice said, I still have a whole list.

She has a whole list.

She had like 92 before we even got in there. I'm like, that's too much content.

And I was like, I spent a lot of time about on this. Don't worry, I get time with you in Arizona this weekend because, which my husband is, is not thrilled about the weather, but, um, we'll try to cool it down before you get here. I don't want to listen to, to that.

It's not going to happen. We're going to be, you know, I'm going to be out there with one of the U.S. senators is also down in Arizona this, and it's like I'm like, what?

I'm supposed to be on a ski hill. I know, I know. I feel the same. I moved here and I'm like, but where are the ski mountains? And everyone's like, you could ski Snowbowl. And I'm like, I'm sorry, what?

No, no, it's not horrible. It's actually really kind of a cool, fun little mountain. You know that, right? So I'm not going to diss on Snowbowl, especially because compared to my mountain, it's way bigger than my mountain, right? So I love that scenario. Talk about the journey, if you don't mind, Candice. I'm going to jump in there for a second. Generally, we have found people from academia do not transition well to being entrepreneurs. And yet there's so many people that are in academia that actually are entrepreneurs disguised as academics, right? Or vice versa. So tell me about that transition of where you're going now, what is going through, and you're in the capital raise and you've had to execute on these, which execution has never been one of your problems. But it's like, how do I execute this in a business model now? Because you're used to the bureaucracy of even big, big schools. And now you're like, I can do this.

That's exactly going to be my— that was going to be my answer, Tom. I mean, my, my, my— what I had to get my head around was like, wait a minute, if we want to build it, we just can. And it was like, yeah. And I'm like, this is incredible. I mean, it's incredible because, you know, I think about when, when I was in Montana and, you know, We were trying to build more workforce-ready programs, things like sustainable ranching, trying to build programs in the things that the state needed, right? Shipping and logistics. But we were building a horsemanship program. It was like, okay, we're trying to build the things that are very much needed in this particular context. And yet, to your point, there was the bureaucracy. So that was a big like, whoa, we could just— and again, we still have to be obviously, we're very careful to move within an accredited framework because we respect the the legibility and the credibility of accreditation. And I think that's what also is a big differentiator for us. So we always say accreditation is not just a feature, it's the moat. This is what makes us different from MasterClass or Udemy or any of these other ones where, yeah, it's learning as a hobby and they don't retain. I mean, you know, many people might, you know, listening to this webinar today, like, it's like, how many of you have like signed up for MasterClass class and like maybe done like one.

Oh no, I do so many.

Well, yes, well, you're like me. I mean, we're like, you know, lifetime learners.

I went into the master class and took notes, right? Yeah, right. So we're like that.

But imagine you're doing all that and then you would actually—

I know, I joke I'm insane on a lot of things because I will find YouTube series on things and I'm like— I told you, right now I'm into gardening and hydroponic gardening, and I'm like, I have a binder of things right now. Yeah.

So that's a great example, actually, Candace, because what I always say is students don't need more content, they need context. And so what an accredited degree pathway provides is the context. So it's like, yeah, you're taking some gardening programs, you're maybe taking some sustainability, but you actually might be stacking towards like an ag degree that you don't even know that you're doing, you know. And so Pharm. San. Exactly. See, you're getting a whole degree and you didn't even know it.

Even know it. I know.

You know, I love, I love that because what, what in academia, what we have seen, and, you know, having taught, and I just see Tony's there. Congratulations on being a PhD candidate. I am married to a PhD candidate right now. So it's a, it's an incredible pathway. And I have 3 candidates that I'm the chair of their dissertation committee. So I tell you, that is a crazy scenario to be going through, right? But the universities, the big ones at least, and many of them figured out how to do this through their executive ed where they didn't have to go through the bureaucracy. Like, someone came up with an idea, but they weren't always accredited, and many of them aren't accredited, right? So it gets to use the name of Harvard or Stanford or whomever to be able to do that, and then you're going through it and it's like, nah, what you're bringing is that hybrid of it actually says not just a certificate from this place. It's like, no, it's building towards something something that some places may value. There's still jobs out there that say we require a doctorate, or we require an MBA, or PhD, or JD, or whatever. It can be going towards that stuff.

Yeah. And then there are entire areas of workforce where they— it's kind of become a bit of a wild west. And so employers will say we, we need there to be a degree in this, even though it doesn't exist quite yet, you know, because this is such a, you know, one area that's, you know, it has its controversies. You know, in the state of Arizona, you know, ketamine therapy is legal. However, like, there's not really a degree that— or a credential that says, hey, this person that's about to stick a highly psychedelic substance, like, in your body has some training. Has no training. What about cannabis?

Cannabis has got to be a huge market on that cannabis side, right?

Exactly. Exactly. So this is where, you know, and another area that we're really building in is food, you know, food, restaurateurship, chefs. They're saying, listen, this is a body of knowledge that we want to actually elevate that entire body of knowledge by putting degrees behind it as well.

We're starting to get a flow of questions and comments into the chat, which is awesome. It's telling me that this is like sparking thought and new ideas and fantastic conversation. I think, Tom, you already acknowledged Tony's comment. That is amazing. He's asking you a specific question, Patti. So maybe as we wrap up, Angela, if you can throw Patti's QR code back up again so people can get in touch with her, that would be great. And then reach out to you.

That's, that's the thing.

I want to reach out to you.

She is really cool. I got to tell you, having hiked mountains together, we've been able to ski together. I mean, we've been in a mineshaft together. All true.

All true. All true. No, and I— anytime Tom is like, hey, we're gonna go do this, I'm like, I'm in. I don't— like, I don't even wait for you to finish your sentence. Uh, he's like, hey, do you want to come? I'm like, yes. Like, what are we doing? Let's do it. Whatever we're doing. Anytime it's like this group of people, uh, that are involved, I'm like, these are just— I just— I would follow— I'd follow you into a mine or anywhere.

Yeah, well, I also took you to Tesla too, so that was kind of cool. That was pretty cool. Tesla and then a mine shaft and then the top of a mountain in the snow and then— and a haunted house and a haunted house and Haunted house, all these things.

I love a haunted house. There's another question, and I think this one may be great for Tom and Pardee to both take a crack at. Um, Paul says, I have a sports fan engagement concept, front end and back end coding on my own right now. Do I need to prove interest in my concept with my MVP first, or should I pitch my concept to get hopefully funding pre-MVP? Either way is painful, but this is my passion project, so I'm willing to endure the pain. Any tips for Paul?

So, from my standpoint, I have never been great at pre-revenue fundings, meaning we look at it and say, gosh, I wouldn't have been able to back this company or that company. Facebook is one of them type scenarios. I've got to understand what the financial model really is. And so, in my mind and many other funders' minds, it's we need to have proof that somebody's bought it. So, we hear so many great ideas until somebody is actually willing to pay and part cash with it. It could even be that they're willing to pay for it when something happens. So I have a friend that launched the first private satellite launch company ages ago, raised $1 billion while he was, you know, in a doctorate program scenario. His name's Rick DiRusso, so you can look him up and see it. So all these satellite companies now that you see happen, he didn't actually have the sale, but what he had was the contract that said, if you build it, we will buy it, from Lockheed Martin type scenario. That's a contract for a sale. So I'm always pro of saying, if you build this, would you be able to get it there. So may not be the right group for you, but the number one thing to be able to articulate is, as Pardis said at the very beginning, what problem do you solve? So if it's the fan scenario and it's like, isn't it a pain in the ass to be able to get tickets to concerts? Well, that's how a friend of mine created StubHub, right? So yes, it was a pain in the ass to be able to have tickets, need to sell them. I don't want to go stand out there. I want to be able to buy them, da da da da da type scenario. And then it all of a sudden creates, you know, that type scenario. So yeah, I don't know if that helps answer the question, but it's there. We got to wrap it up, guys.

We got to wrap it up.

This is so cool. Thank you, man.

Yeah, Pardis, thank you so much for joining us. Maybe we can do it again. I would love to.

This has been such an absolute honor and pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Yeah, no, it's awesome. And I'm going to pitch it out there. So the two brainiacs next to me on the way that I'm looking at the screens, I don't know how everybody else looks at it. They have another show that's part of our Founder's Office called WTF, Women Talk Finance. And I think that that would be another subsegment which would allow Candice to ask her 40 questions.

Oh yeah, no, I still have a whole bunch of questions. So, Hardice and I already discussed that. She got her problem across so quick to me on the chairlift that we had ample time to plan plenty of other things together. It's awesome.

And the last thing I saw up there is that sometimes you have to convince people that that the problem needs to be solved. And there's a great example of that. Nobody really thought garage door openers were important until you didn't have to get out of your car in the rain to open your garage door, or that you were a single female and pulling up and you were able to open the garage without having to get out. And, you know, all these different things. But it still was a convincing of what problem existed. It didn't mean that everybody else recognized that there is that problem. Problem, right? So putting a computer on everybody's desk that Bill Gates talked about, you know, that wasn't— nobody thought that they needed a computer on their desk, yet we have them everywhere. So yes, but I still, I still go back. It is our Betty Crocker way of doing this, and you can be a Julia Child too if you want to. It's great. But a Betty Crocker way is you start with that problem and articulate that really clearly, and then how it is that you solve it very briefly. So the problem you articulate clearly The solution you articulate clearly and briefly, and then what it means is what's really important. And build that into there. Thank you, Pardis, for joining us today. Jackie, Candice, as always, our engineer Angela, thanks for running all this backend stuff. And now this is actually how you get in touch with us, I guess. I don't know.

Hey, we're going to end it before we even got the last bit. That's us.

So you can find out more about us at the Founder's Office and reach out to our group. We're here on Wednesdays for Lunch and Learn. We appreciate everybody joining us. Pardis, I'll see you in a day and a half in Arizona, and then Candice will also see you. So thank you so much. Have a great, uh, have a great day.

Thanks so much. Thank you.