This is a YouTube video titled "GoodDayLA - George Bandarian, Finding the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs" featuring a multi-speaker interview recorded in early 2022. The conversation includes George Bandarian, the founder of Untapped Ventures, along with hosts Tony and another speaker, discussing entrepreneurship, venture funding, and an upcoming virtual event hosted by Untapped Ventures aimed at supporting tech entrepreneurs and startups.
Welcome back at 623. For many people, the pandemic has prompted a rethinking of career choices. And for some, that means exploring, setting up even their own businesses.
So how do you do that? Untapped Ventures is a venture studio and fund that invests in finding the next generation of entrepreneurs. Joining us this morning is founder George Bendarian. George, good morning to you. Welcome.
Good morning. How are you guys?
We're doing well, thank you. Thanks for waking up early with us. Okay, so Untapped Ventures, what is this company? What does it do? I love the fact that it is all about local.
Yes, exactly. So we're a venture fund, a VC fund. We invest in companies. We're also what's known as a venture studio, where we also build startups as well. And we're kind of have an impact focus. So our goal is to help humanity achieve its untapped potential. So anything that we do that we invest in, we want to be able to move humanity forward and just help people be their best selves.
So now, George, is this. Is this a really good time? I mean, certainly, you know, in some ways I think it's a favorable environment for wanting to start your own business, but that's still not an easy thing to do.
You're right, Tony. And I think the great resignation has. Has led to probably the greatest era in entrepreneurship. People not just question where they work and how they work and who they work with, but really why they work and what they want to do for work. And that led a lot of people to realizing they maybe want to try their hand at entrepreneurship. And I think the important thing is finding a problem to solve and falling in love with the problem and the customer and going for it. And we help local founders and entrepreneurs do that.
Yeah. A lot of people questioning the meaning of everything, including life these days talk a little bit about what kinds of people or companies or ideas would be a good fit.
Great question. Or Axio. So as far as the ideas, we look for what's called venture scale. So we want it to be able to scale quickly, be able to get to a million to 10 million in revenue, to 100 million. And, you know, kind of like your classic tech unicorns that people might have heard of. So being able to reach a unicorn being $1 billion valuation company, the ones that we all kind of read and see about that eventually go public, that we use on our phones and such. So those are the kinds of companies, more those than, let's say, your local small business and the kinds of founders that we're looking for are just your, you know, smart, driven, resilient, savvy, gritty founders that they might be doing something already. They already have a startup and we're happy to fund that. Or maybe they're in the early stages and they're aspiring and they want some help to get started. And we have some playbooks, some world class playbooks and education and tools and programs that we can help them kind of take that first step and get started. Right?
Yeah. Because I'll tell you, if you're going to start your own business, you need all the help and support you can, you can get. And George, are there a lot of people out there looking to actually become tech entrepreneurs?
Yeah. So we just announced the launch of our venture fund and we decided to host the party in the Metaverse and we've been been astounded by the turnout. We have over 500 people attending. So that tells me that Barometer tells me that yes, there is a lot of interest. Certainly would love to have both of you there and invite your viewers as well. We could share the information. But yeah, I think there's a lot of people that want to be tech entrepreneurs. I think, you know, Elon Musk is probably doing that in multiple areas from Tesla and you know, what do you call it, Space X and many other companies. And so we have many good examples to look at that are solving important world problems. Right. You want to make $1 billion, solve a billion person problem. And I think that there's a lot of great examples of the innovation that's happening that's really just solving problems that are going to move us forward as a human species.
Yeah, there are a lot of opportunities out there in tech.
So your event is happening today at 2:22, which is very appropriate for the date. Just tell people real quick where they can go if they want to be a part of this.
Yes, yes, we got a little cute. It was 222022 at 2:22 Eastern. So it'll be 11:22 Pacific. For our time here in LA, the best place to go is just to our website. It's www.untapped.ventures. so basically our name WWE Untapped that Ventures. And over there we have a link to the event where people can sign up. We have a ton of resources and the good news is is there's no VR goggles required for this Metaverse party. So you can just join through your desktop browser. So we wanted to make it accessible to everybody and looking forward to partying at 1122 Pacific. All right.
Sounds great. And once again, that's www.untapped.ventures.
Thanks, Tony.
Thank you, George. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Best of luck to you.
