Live from the Innovation Stage: Burbank Startup Pitch Fest 2025

Hello. Hello. Hey everyone. Hey. Good evening. My name is Neil Bloom with Ryzen Type partners and I am thrilled to welcome you all on behalf of the City of Burbank to Startup Pitch Fest. Burbank Startup Pitch Fest. Welcome everyone. Let's give a big round of applause. We are kind of coming up on about a year of programming that we've been doing over the last year, bringing together the the Burbank startup community here with a number of talks that started at LA Tech Week last year and kind of on the breadth of the startup community. Then we went deep into the future of healthcare, the future of media, and then we're wrapping it up on a bunch of pitches from local startups. So really thrilled to have you all here tonight and I'm thrilled for you all to meet Odette from the City of Burbank to tell you a bit about this program and series.

Hi everyone. I'm here on behalf of the City of Burbank's economic development team. Welcome to PitchFest 2025. Thank you. So I'm actually on my tippy toes. If you're looking for a place to launch or scale your business, Burbank should be on your radar. We're home to over a thousand media and production companies, a powerhouse workforce, and we're quickly becoming a serious player in tech and innovation. We've got high speed fiber infrastructure with one Burbank, no city income tax, no gross receipt tax, and flexible workspaces perfect for startups and growing teams. Plus we're building community through Burbank tech talks, business mentoring and hands on support to help founders succeed. It's an exciting time to join the Burbank ecosystem. To learn more, come talk to us or visit choose burbank.com thanks for being here. Let's build the future together.

Awesome. Well, we are about to hear about where the future of technology is headed, but tonight we are going to get to know some other local ecosystem players here in the space. Now, we all know starting a startup, it takes a village and part of that village is capital and connections. That's what a lot of us do in helping startups in a variety of ways, help the founder continue on their journey. And I'm very happy to have super early stage investors here in town to come up and share a little bit about what they're interested and excited in what they're investing in and what they're going to be kind of looking for in some of the pitches tonight too. So why don't we welcome up Amy and Ben onto the stage Here we'll do a little bit of a state of the venture capital ecosystem. So Amy Harmon from Innovent Capital Group, a local investment family office here and Ben Kahan from Pegasus Angel Accelerator. Why don't I just come sit next to you? So we don't feel that. I'll sit in between you so we don't have an empty chair there. There we go.

Everyone here.

Okay, great. Well, thank you guys both for being here. Thought it would be good for the audience to get to know you a little bit. But also really kind of the state of investment. Right? Everyone's everyone, all anyone is hearing these is AI, AI, AI. Right. So we know we're going to talk about that, but what's really interesting on the investment side. So why don't you first tell us a little about your background and we'll take it from there.

Thank you for having me. My name is Amy Harmon, I work for a single family office. So we are both founders and investors. So on the investor side we invest in early stage seed and pre seed deals and we write $100,000 checks across the board. Our team is really industry agnostic, but we are looking for serious problems being solved with technology. When it comes to the KPIs and metrics that we invest in, we really look at it from an industry specific approach where not all sectors are going to have the same kind of traction and same kind of momentum. So we try to be really specific about each individual company that we view. But yeah, that's about, that's what my firm and my.

Yeah, Ben.

Hi everyone. My name is Ben Cahan. Funny fact, I'm born and raised in Burbank, but I'm a senior associate at Pegasus Angel Accelerator and that's based in Santa Monica. So I'm used to going to events, always on the west side. So finding out that there was an event here is awesome. So thank you guys so much for having me out. It's good to see the ecosystem here. But yeah, we're an accelerator. We write $100,000 check. It's about a three month program with us. We help at the inflection point. So when you have a little bit of traction and then we take you to hopefully become a unicorn one day. But yeah, we're pretty much agnostic but pretty much just like SaaS and AI. We don't really touch anything consumer or med tech or anything like that. But I don't know right now I think it's like one of the most exciting times right now. The innovation is crazy and Especially with AI, it's like each week something new and new. So I think from being a founder or investor, this is like the best time to be in the space.

Why don't you explain a little bit what an accelerator is and related to that you obviously have an application process. Take us through a little bit about that and what are the kinds of applications you're getting lately?

Yeah, so we just had our first new cohort, we just launched it and we basically got 1,000 applications and brought that down to like five companies. So we're pretty busy. So yeah, with an accelerator it's, you know, we give you money but it's also very hands on. We become part of your team, an extension, it's a lot of mentorship and you know, introducing you to other pathways of, you know, getting investment. But yeah, we try to, we're pivoting a little bit. So our education part of the accelerator is very personalized. We, I don't know, we filmed like 300 videos with our GP Lucas Pols, just covering different topics. And so when we bring you in, we look at what you need help with and then we basically build a curriculum around that. So yeah, we've been really busy the last year and we launched like four different programs. Like it's been, we've been busy just.

From an accelerator standpoint, usually you're accelerating so you have kind of a starting point of where companies are and an end point. What are the metrics or milestones you're looking at from start to finish?

We say we'd like to see like a 2x in their valuation by the time they're done with us. And Some we've had one company do 5x but we don't promise that.

Okay, and on your end, where does deal Flow come from and what kinds of companies and technologies are you looking at?

Deal Flow comes from a multitude of sources. I'd say that these days it's really relationship based. You know, there's such an excellent community of people out here in California and so we have just our trusted group of people that we rely on to kind of share Deal Flow back and forth. We go to lots of pitch events, you know, we do the virtual ones to in person ones and then our team is also bicoastal. So there's three of us here in Southern California and then the other half of our team is in New York City. So we're kind of building up on both coasts as a family office too. We have a lot of connectivity in the family office space, especially on the Ground in New York City because one of our teammates is second gen. So. So we have just a lot of really strong relationships in that family office world. And I know a lot of, you know, but like there is a lot of differences and a lot of similarities depending on where your check comes from. And so we're really lucky to have a lot of relationships across from VC to angel to family office.

So a lot of entrepreneurs say they're ready for capital, they're raising capital, and then there's the difference of actually being investable. Could you guys give a little bit of just feedback to the entrepreneurs in the room or friends of entrepreneurs? How do you know when someone's really ready to raise? Because you guys are really like, first check the first kind of investor into some of these companies. Give us a little advice and feedback.

I mean, at our stage, like we look at like three things. It's the team traction and market size. And a lot like at this stage, like you, you might pivot, you might change. So it's like when I look at a company, it's always like the team, like, do they know the numbers when you talk to them, do you believe in them? Like, do you think this is the person to take this company further? So I think it comes down a lot at this stage to team.

Yeah, Team obviously is really number one. And I think the second thing is the clarity of the problem that you're solving. We know that as founders in addition to being investors, that you might pivot, you might think that you're solving that problem, you might think that you have the solution worked out and you might end up in a different place. But having like a really, really specific idea of what that problem is and who that customer is is really important. And with you might still be ideating ahead of that. And that to us is like, you're not quite ready for our investment. But when you've really pinpointed that down, then you might have something that is what we would all call VC backable.

Okay, well, we are about to see five companies, about to see the people, right, give the pitch, tell the story and show us the problem we're going to solve. So why don't you take your place in the judges booth right up front and let's give a hand to our judges here. Okay, so let's explain a bit about the night. So first of all, tonight is really about like, yes, there is going to be a winner. I'm going to tell you what they're going to win, but really we're here in Support of entrepreneurs. Okay? And they're getting up and doing something hard. They're telling a story that they've been working on and practicing, but in a time frame. Okay? Like think of all of you, if you've ever been told, stop talking within a certain amount of time, think it's really hard to do. Okay? So let's cut everyone some slack a little bit and we're here to actually celebrate all of them because really getting up and sharing your story is a big deal. Okay? Now at the end of the day though, this is a bit of a show, right? We want to hear the story and want to hear how you're changing the world. And so for that, we've put together a bit of a prize package that is a bit part cash. So we are giving out a cash prize to the winner as well as a package of support from attorneys, investors and finance experts to give a review of your deck, review of your documents. Do you have your documents all set up? Review of your IP and then IP guidance, a financial modeling, both a check, but then actually a free model from a contract cfo as well as time with our investors as well.

So.

So we hope that no matter what, everyone gets a bunch of resources out of this and the community gets to learn about another great startup that is gonna change the world. Okay, so here are the rules. Here's how we're gonna do it. Because we could easily be here all night being enthralled by great stories, but we gotta keep it to five minutes. So I will be the timekeeper. I'll be upfront. I will give a one minute to the founder that says you got one minute left. Okay, I'm going to be pretty hard. About five minutes. Done. If I can tell you're like on your last sentence, last slide, I'll let you go. But if you're mid deck still talking about your market, we're going to have to cut. And hopefully you can answer what you missed, what you didn't say answered in the follow up in the questions. Right? You're going to get a question that says, well, what about the team? Oh, I'd love. I'm really happy you asked about the team and the product, you know, so don't feel rushed. Just get everything out in five minutes and we're going to have a good time. Okay, everyone ready? Everyone excited? Okay, so up first and by the way, all the founders. I'll call you up. You will pitch from here. You can advance slides. It's all one giant deck. So just go to the Right. Will be your next slide. So up first is Catch id. Come on up, let's give him a hand.

Okay, I think we're going to play like a 20 second video to show you how we see the future of identity and payments.

It's good we're getting this out of the way. Right up front.

Play.

It.

All right, so can we move to the deck please? My name is Eli Farhard, I'm the founder of Catch Digital id and we're waiting for the deck. But basically we protect your business infrastructure from identity based cyber attacks. It is 100% biometric and 100% passwordless. Here's our team of veterans of FinTech, Cybersecurity and AI Machine Vision. We have more than 4 exits, 13 patents, multiple publications and we work at those renowned institutions like hsbc, IBM, Raytheon, Symantec and Erstin Young. After being defrauded twice, I started Catch. I was in financial services for the last 25 years in investment banking, managing portfolios. Here's the reality. Digital passwords were first used in 1961 by an MIT professor. This tells you that we're using a 60 year old technology to protect our identities in the age of AI, which is ridiculous. And that also explains why 80% of breaches are based on stolen credentials. And here's another problem for the enterprise and employees workforce. Identity theft is a real huge problem. It only takes one identity to be compromised, to have a breach. And once you have a breach, you're exposed to ransomware attacks. You got reputational and brand damage, you can get financial loss and regulatory scrutiny. The second problem is workforce identity friction. We've all dealt with login failures, expired passwords, multi factor authentication, which everyone hates and security questions. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Think about the hidden costs like credential management, lost revenue and conversions, security trade offs and employee stress and fatigue. Our solution is to eliminate credentials altogether using biometrics, strong biometric systems to prevent network breaches, to provide protection beyond devices. So your hand, your biological hand is your identity, not the device anymore. It's a device agnostic solution that has no friction, no wait times and no stress. Experience this new seamless identity security where you get quick business access across all smart devices anywhere. No credentials to manage, reset or worry about. And it boosts productivity for employees. It reduces your security costs by 50%.

Think about that.

And increases client conversions. Our business model is based on a $500 fixed annual tier, so success model for large enterprise. So we're focusing now on Identity for workforce. So what are clients saying? Catch removes friction hardware deployment. Catch minimizes check in lines at large events. And Angela C at Gold's gym. She said she loved the idea that she goes into the gym having nothing on her and her hand does the job. We also had 200 more investors on our funding portal. So they also align with the same idea of the value that our clients think. They think also we're projected to be in the future. But here's why we're very different from everyone else. Every strong biometric system today is device based and that means it's going to kill scalability. We are a software only solution. That means we are scalable for the mass adoption. And with that concept we can provide zero ID vulnerability, unlimited convenience and affordable adoption, which is really, really important. Think about Clear face id, Amazon one, they're all device based. All those devices require maintenance, install and teams of engineers that take care of them. Our go to market strategy is based on partnerships, social REITs and direct sales. The market stands at $35 billion IPA, which is privileged access at 15 billion. This market is growing at 17% annual compounded annual growth rate. That's something that most investors can capitalize on and this is the massive opportunity. We anticipate 1700x in revenue growth in the first five years when we service industries like finance, healthcare, government and beyond. We were recognized by the fdic, UC Riverside, Wise, Ratings, Visa, Google and Launch Fund. You watched this video, which is our vision. We invite you to join us to democratize access, which is very important. A lot of people don't have access today and they need to deal with the hassle and protect our identities in the age of AI from data breaches. Thank you very much. Please feel free to scan the code if you want to learn more.

Okay, questions from the judges.

Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for your pitch. I think I'd like to understand a little bit more around your technology. Can you explain to us why a handprint is safe and secure and perhaps maybe more secure than some of these other technologies that are in the market. I understand it being hardware agnostic, but if you could explain why it's safe and secure and how you're able to deliver that without having proprietary, proprietary hardware?

That's a great question. The hand itself is a dynamic biometric. It's very hard to replicate. It's not on your Facebook, not on your LinkedIn. So that's also another approach. It also has a lot of properties, so it is private, it is easy to use, it does not discriminate against people of color or races, which was a problem with facial recognition for the most part.

Hello. Hello.

I think you're fine.

Okay.

Thank you for pitching. Can you go more into your traction? How many customers you have?

Yeah, we signed our first customer. It's called Momentix. It's a digital ticketing agency based in la. They partner with Zamna, which is. Which organizes large events, 10,000 plus events in Mexico, Europe and the United States. So that's our real excitement. Moment where we signed our first customer. We planned deployment by December with a commercial version. Now we're testing with them. All the other clients I mentioned, it's ongoing conversations. We didn't sign anything yet with them.

How many people are in the pipeline?

About four. Two are payment processors. One in Boston, one in la.

Thank you.

What does the customer onboarding look like from the external? So you have your customers that are using it, but how do they onboard the individuals who are standing in line or paying at their service?

Can you rephrase your question?

Because I'm a customer, One of your customers. How are you ingesting the data of my hand? What's that? Onboarding for the end user.

Okay.

I mean the user experience. Yeah, yeah. Well, it just takes a minute or two to sign up your hand because we have to capture biological markers. So here's the thing. We want to make sure that your actual biological hand is being scanned. It's not a video of your hand, it's not a photo of your hand, it's not a generative AI biometric. So all these, we have 11 identifiers that can make sure that it's your actual biological hand. So you need to scan those things. It takes up to two minutes to onboard each client, but you do just a one time. And when you sign in, it's just two seconds.

And then your software would be holding onto that data so that it would always know that it was me every time I came back.

No, we actually tokenize and use homomorphic technologies. We don't hold any personal information on our end because it's a liability. We can get hacked like Microsoft. So no one is immune from hackers. And so we, we use technologies to tokenize it and we don't want to hold that liability. And if we started this conversation with a European, a client in Brussels who wants to use our technology and aggregate it among other solutions they offer to their clients, where, like with gdpr, third parties are not allowed to authenticate your clients. So we're going to provide them the technology and they do it on their own stack.

Okay, thank you, everyone. One last round of applause.

Thank you.

And next up, we have Gary Gadgets. Please come on up. All right, round of applause for our next presenter.

Hi, my name is Dan funk. I'm the CFO of Jerry Gadgets. And, well, what are jerrygadgets? Okay, spoiler alert. No AI0AI. They're safe, washable sensory tools that were designed to help enrich a care experience for. For aging adults with dementia. We also found that as an adjunct in the last six months, we discovered that the neurodivergent market shares a lot of similarities with the dementia market. So we're just now pivoting right into that market as well. The genesis of the product came from Angela Fairhurst, who's our CEO. Her mother had Lewy Body, which is a form of dementia. And Angela got very frustrated over time that when she went to visit her mother, she was unable to. To really kind of communicate with her. As the cognitive decline progressed, she couldn't talk anymore. It's like, what do we do? We see it. We watch tv. She noticed that her mom liked to texture. She responded very well to things that had glossy paper or things that were textured and somehow. So Angela discovered one night in the kitchen that she took a waffle pot holder and was holding it, went, oh. So she cut it out in a circle, took it in. Next time she visited, her mom gave it to her mom, went crazy. Loved the texture, loved to feel it, loved to listen to the sound it made. They eventually, it was like a little Frisbee. They threw it back and forth. And so it was a way to sort of foster engagement with someone who had dementia who otherwise would be just sitting. And that's what the idea was. That was the genesis of it. So Angela created a series of these, all patented, manufactured in China. They're made with medical grade silicone. Because one of the issues with dementia patients is they tend to put a lot of things in their mouth. They behave like kids to some degree. We wanted to create something that, number one, was safe. It's medical grade silicone. You can wash it in the dishwasher, you can put in your mouth and chew on it. Also, in care homes, sometimes there's shared elements and tools between different residents. This was a way to guarantee that it would be safe. That's sort of the genesis of what it was. We created several different ones. We'll show those as we go along. I hope I do this right.

Boom.

Obviously, we're all aware of what the aging Market and population is. Which is enormous. And that's where we said, okay, there is a need. Dementia is growing in the neurodivergent market. As more kind of discovery of what it is comes to the forefront, we're identifying more that way. She looked at what the various things were. There are other little gadgets and things that were available, but they were either too childish, too complicated or unsafe or there was a choking hazard. What could we do? The combined global market for this, we lumped together both dementia and neurodivergent. The Tam is of 44.8 billion, which if you look at the aging population and how that's expanding rapidly. I was talking to some of the gentlemen out front before this. We're all going to go through this. Either we're going to go through it with our parents or our kids are going to go through it with us. So there is a tremendous market available for that. These are the products themselves. We start out with three individual sets. We sell them as a group or individually. We just found that there was a tremendous response in the pilots that we did in care homes for these particular kinds of things. They like freeform shapes, they like the fidget gidgets and the flowers. And there's no right way to do it, which was also very, very important. You can give it to a patient and they do whatever they want. Sometimes they put the tulips in upside down. It doesn't matter. They're just engaged. And that was the thing. Bright colors, same thing adds to a level of engagement. As we grow older, our perception of color diminishes. Things become faded. So we wanted to go for very bright, bright colors. Durable dishwasher, Safe, non toxic, multi user, no AI. And this is the group. Angela founded it. It was her mom who started it off. Pam has worked with a bunch of companies in terms of marketing and communication. Apple, Nissan, Taco Bell. I actually don't come from this world. I come from television production. But I ran the unscripted division at Fremantle, a Burbank company. And we had about a $600 million operating budget per year. We do American Idol, America's Got Talent, the rest of the board, obviously, we have gerontologists, social workers, et cetera. We're working with a large group of people in the elder care market. You can see that I won't go through all the things because you can read faster than I could even say it. But there's milestones. So far we're very new. We just started a soft entry into the market last year. Again I'll send this to you. You can read all the fun quotes. Everybody loves it and it does very well. This is why we chose this sort of pathway. It had these advantages that others did not and we felt like there was a need in the market that was not being fulfilled. Profit margins are looking pretty good. We think growth potential is tremendous. Again, I can provide financials afterwards because I know the clock is ticking. Basically what we're looking for is initial. We don't think we're going to have to go to stage A. We think this is like angel investor. We're looking for a five year exit. It's just not going to require. The core of it is we need funding for marketing. You want to be heard, you want to be found. That's the nugget.

That's it.

Thank you so much.

What a wonderful problem to try to solve and I'm certain, certain a difficult one. You say that you're looking towards a five year exit. Can you describe to me a bit about who you think those potential acquirers would be?

I think that anybody like Procter and Gamble, anybody in the WHO has adjunct business in the home health care market, people on that scale, that's where we're looking. Those types of company at larger 500 companies that have home health care because that's a burgeoning area to us. That's we're going to see investment grow over time.

Have you had any conversations with anyone from that space?

Not yet. We've had conversations with investors we just came back from. There's a longevity summit that's held twice a year. Mary Furlong is very active in that area and all of the sort of buyers in that and investors in that area show up. So we've had numerous conversations just getting started. Cool.

I love what you're working on in this space. Talk to me about the competition. Like how many other companies are doing similar things?

There's probably only about a half dozen other companies and they manufacture things that they consider to be like little toys because the perception is that people with dementia and they do enter sort of a childlike state. But what we wanted to do was actually boost engagement as opposed to just kind of keep you busy. And we also found the quality of those products was very low. So we don't feel like there's a tremendous amount of competition, honestly, especially with the product that we offer. And it's one of the things we spend a lot of time on is it's medical grade silicone. They're outside. If you get a chance to Feel it. Medical grade silicone is the closest thing that we manufacture that's to the touch of human skin. So again, it's a real sensory boost for the elderly as they use them. And kids.

All right, round of applause. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And next up, we have Blip. Come on forward and round of applause for the third team pitching.

Hi, everyone, my name is Aria. I am the CMO of Blip Industries. I am currently filling in for our CEO who is stuck in Tel Aviv. He had investor meetings there and unfortunately that's when the war started. So he's not able to come back yet. But he will be soon. So I'm going to try my best to answer all the questions to the best of my ability. Yes. Oh, here's the clicker. Okay, so we are Blip Industries. This is Eli's story. So basically as a child he was very into aeronautics and drones. He did grow up in LA and he noticed that there is a really, really horrible traffic problem here. So he tried to create Blip Industries last year and we got a lot of traction and he's trying to solve a lot of problems. Here are the issues. Customer demand for speed, environmental impact, cars. There's a lot of emissions. Drones do not exhaust emissions. And there's also an American drone shortage. And there's just no on demand delivery. When you need something in five minutes, how can you, how can you do it? You can't, but now you can with Blip Delivery. So these are our verticals. Blip Industries is an umbrella and we have a B2C vertical, which is our aerial delivery service. We made a marketplace where a user can go online and they can put something in their basket and order it Falcon and it can get to them within five minutes, sometimes three minutes or less. It's absolutely wonderful. Blip Photos is our aerial data and 3D modeling B2B service where a lot of adjusters, construction companies, real estate developers love using us. And Blip Iron nautical is our B2G sector where we create autonomous drone systems and we create our own drones for the government. So it is very important for me to stress that we are software first, but we're hardware enabled, we're not a hardware company. A lot of our software is on a real time aerial data platform. We do have SAS verticals and our own proprietary AI ML powered insights. We do have proprietary drones as well. And yes, you can read all that, but I don't have a lot of time so I can't go through every single thing in detail. But we did receive a million dollars in funding for a pre seed round and this is what we accomplished in a year. We launched Blip Photos and we have been generating revenue from that. We built and scaled the drone delivery marketplace which is huge. We have over 5,000 products there and we did deploy operational drone docks all throughout Los Angeles. And yes, we're building our mqx. It's our next generation flagship. It is absolutely stunning and you will see that in a video that I will be showing at the end. Yes, this is our target market for blip delivery. We're currently targeting high net worth individuals in Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Brentwood. But we are definitely expanding at a very rapid rate. We also connected basically made a Blip Air railway. This is mostly used for blip photos where a drone can go from one place to another. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with drones, but there's a limited range in the battle does get depleted. But we created a lot of drone docks so when a drone is on a mission it can go there and then go there. You'll see it in the video. Yes, this is our competitive landscape. We do have a few competitors for blip delivery but we do stand out in many features for Blip Aeronautical. Andrew and Lockheed Martin is our current competitor. And then this is our business model. Delivery is free right now, but we do mark up our products. And then for Blip photos we have packages and we also, we mostly have been doing customized packages because we get very special requests such as 4,000 houses for 3D modeling and we just mostly work with businesses one on one. But we also do have a vertical where just a normal resident can get aerial photos taken for 25 bucks right now. Yes, this is Blip Aeronautical and this is our Future Business Model 2.0. We are trying to work with vendors in the near future and deliver safely deliver food from restaurants. And then Blip Recon X is our reconnaissance vertical where there's on demand surveillance and that's wonderful. We're actually pretty close to completing that, but we're still wanting to tweak it. This is our founding team. Yes. And then this is our roadmap. And so yes, we are looking for 7 million to complete our seed round. Drones are expensive. We do need quite a few bucks to expand our fleet and we are working on our own American drone FAFSA so we can manufacture our own hardware. As we said, there is a big shortage of American made drones. And yes, so we are of course looking to expand our marketplace and waivers are very Important for us. So we do need money for that as well. And then here is our KPI. And I know I don't have a lot of time, so I am going to jump to the video. Yes. If we could just click there. Thank you so much.

Welcome to the future.

BlueConnects, autonomous drones. Microverse and smart software. Power and delivery, Imaging, surveillance and events. That's our mqx. That's our fly cart. That's our marketplace. And then this is Blip Photos packages. And then this is Blip Recon. Instant deployment. The future in motion. Okay, that's it.

Thank you, guys.

I hope I did it justice.

Very cool.

Thank you.

My main question is around air traffic and especially in an area like Southern California with so many different airports and at scale, how can you go about that? Because, I mean, I have a. I have a hobbyist drone, but it won't allow me to fly at all. In Burbank. Yeah, the airport.

Exactly.

That's my question.

That's a very good question. And the truth is, we are constantly working around those airspaces. We do have some limitations, but we're actually in a very special situation. We are working on getting these certain waivers where we can fly in Santa Monica airspace. We. And it's one of a kind. No one has it yet, but we are very close to getting it. So we do have the special advantage. But you are right, there is. There are limitations. Fortunately, we do have another vertical that in case somebody cannot order drone services, like they're in an area that's too close to Beverly Hills Police Department or the airport. We can deliver via ground. It's kind of like our own driver's blip driver. So, you know. Yes. So that's. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you very much and great job for, you know, stepping in. I have so many questions, but I think you're touching so many different verticals. We are. Where do you feel that A, you're having the most traction, and where do you plan to really focus instead of maybe spreading things all around? What's your main area of focus as you go to market?

Yes. So for us, I think the biggest Moneymaker is definitely B2G, because the government really, really needs drones right now. And because of new executive orders, it just expedites the process so much faster, and there's just so much money in that. So I think our focus on building our own proprietary drones and expanding our fleet for that regard is our best bet. But other than that, Blip photos, also, the aerial deliver aerial data service is just. It's Just wonderful as well, because those packages, for example, we are creating a package for a developer who has 4,000 homes. She, she, it's. I forget what the company is called, but they have 4,000 homes where they need 3D modeling and we are getting $100 for each home. So that's almost like $400,000. So that's, it's just, it's wonderful for, for money, for revenue. Yeah. So blip delivery, I think is probably our least earning vertical because it's just e commerce at a smaller scale right now.

Okay, thank you very much and round of applause.

Thank you guys so much.

All right, up next, we have healthy habits. Come on down.

Applause.

I'm in. Great.

Okay. My name is Jim Fasante and I have an exciting startup to pitch you. It is the Burbank Casino for kids. Stay with me on this. This is not your granddad's casino. This is not your dad's casino. We don't check id. Your kids can tell us whatever age they want to say they are and we will let them in. It is free admission. They will have fun. Their dopamine receptors will go haywire. But as a for profit business, just know that my goal is to extract as much time, attention and data from your kids as I can. But they will be out of your hair for eight to 10 hours. So you're welcome. If we did this, this would be horrifying. So why are we okay putting the entire unfettered Internet into our kids pockets without any guidelines or guardrails? The digital world is obviously reshaping childhood and parents are struggling to keep up. Teens spend an average of over seven hours a day on screens and that's affecting their mental health, their attention spans and real world play. So yes, healthy habits. This is the real thing. It is a program designed for parents and guardians to help their kids form a balanced relationship with tech. And that includes video games, social media devices, AI. We want to empower families with clear strategies, expert backed guidance and community driven action. We do not ban tech. We're not tech abstinence. That's not what we do. We teach families how to use it mindfully because we do believe that balance is possible. We live in a technological society. There are uses. But let's find some balance for our kids. And the way that we do that is through workshops and talks. What we do is we bring research based strategies to schools, libraries and communities and then we help them form parent and guardian groups, essentially helping them build an aligned tech, build aligned tech expectations together. And basically it comes down to education and communication. This is not a silver bullet because there isn't a silver bullet. Everyone's family is different and change requires informed and collective action. Now I have a very unique perspective on this. I've spent about 20 years as a marketing executive in video games and technology and social media. So I know this stuff from the other end of it and it's gross and I hate it. Which is why I'm doing this. I have been in numerous meetings where they talk about our kids with dollar signs in their eyes. But it's not just me. I have also brought in specialists in education curriculum, mental health, gaming and social media. And I'm really excited because we recently partnered with a member of the Translations unit for LAUSD to reach Spanish speaking communities authentically through our partnership with Creative Visions. We are fiscally sponsored by their 501C3 status to operate as a nonprofit and this is kind of how I see it. Scaling up phase one is more like phase 1.5 to be honest, but expanding parent engagement across the US partnering with schools, libraries, PTAs, nonprofit networks to deliver community led workshops, developing toolkits for educators to host Healthy Habits sessions locally and prioritizing outreach to underserved and multilingual communities, ensuring access and equity. Phase two down the line is to launch Digital Literacy curriculum for schools. We want to create age appropriate classroom modules on media literacy and Internet safety. Quick Personal Story I work with Big Brothers, Big Sisters and my little when he was about 11 years old used to tell me the most outrageous things as if they were true. And anytime I asked him where he heard that, inevitably the answer was YouTube. YouTube is a wonderful resource, but it is also full of a lot of trash and lies. So we have to be able to tell our kids, figure out how to tell them what the difference is for them to figure out. If you've read Anxious Generation, if you've watched Adolescence on Netflix, if you've seen a kid scroll aimlessly on a phone or caught yourself doing the same thing, you know that there is a problem here. Before I said there isn't a silver bullet, but Healthy Habits is curated, actionable information and tools served up to parents and guardians on a silver platter. Together we can give our kids healthier habits online and happier minds in real life. Thank you.

Thank you for this. Sorry, take a second. Thank you for this. I am, you know, really interested in what it is that you're building here. I think that I have two questions. One, is this sort of a curriculum based thing that you're building that you're going to be selling into these systems and does that merit going to potentially school districts or governments for part of your sales cycle? And then two, what is your current pricing strategy? I don't think I heard that in your pitch.

Yeah. Yes. To your first question we that we're definitely targeting schools, PTAs, booster clubs to bring in to do a talk and then again spend half of that working with the parents to help them figure out how to form communities. So essentially, you know, even if they're able to talk to their kids, friends, parents and form a group that way, it's a way to all get on the same page. I mean a lot of parents here, like I didn't want to give my kid a phone as early as I did, but then they would be left out, which is a very real thing. The person that's helping me with the mental health aspect of it, she has a 14 year old daughter. She does not let her use Snapchat but she is being left out of things because that's how her classmates communicate. And actually there was a really interesting interview with the wife of the person that founded Snapchat and she was asked, you know, how her kids use the program and she said oh no, we don't allow screens in our house. So it's for us, not for them. Financially though that is something I'm still working on. I've spoken to different people that go into schools and do this kind of programming, whether it's like, you know, safety programming, stuff like that and trying to gauge, you know, what is that the kind of price point. So I'm still in the stage of figuring that out.

Cool.

There we go.

Yeah, thank you for this. It's a real problem for sure. My question's around what's your strategy through to get to partner with these schools?

It's from what I hear talk with.

Other founders, it's really hard to break into the educational system. So yeah, what's your strategy?

So I have been working with a friend of mine who over the past 20 years has done in school programs on coding. So he has been going to schools and you know he all over Burbank, he has like over 100 schools that he's worked with and so he and I have been talking about once, you know, I figure out what those price points are and get you know, all the curriculum set up and the principals are back in July reaching out, having his personal recommendation because once we're able to get into schools we can start filming some of these Things we can have, you know, feedback from parents. It just makes it easier to then branch out beyond Burbank and take it, you know, into California, into other states as well.

Ask one more quick. Have you done any like pilots or test groups to sort of test the efficacy of your program?

Yeah, I've done it at my child's school and it's been really effective. I mean, it is as basic as just starting conversations because people think that they're kind of on their own with this stuff. And when you think that you're on your own with this, you've already lost. So once they realize that there are so many more like minded parents and guardians in their group and they're able to kind of talk about these issues, it just changes everything. So I've absolutely noticed a difference. I started it last year with, while we were still in, in the school session. And it's just, it's been, it's made a huge difference for people.

All right, a round of applause. Thank you very.

Much.

And last up, our fifth pitch, sbivx. Please come on up and round of applause.

Good evening. Yeah, you can hear me. I'm Ikram Gerd and I work for Aspyvix. Did you know that we are still using antiquated traumatic instruments that was developed during the US Civil War to extract bullets from soldiers? And we use this instrument that hasn't changed in 100 years on women every year, every day at the Organicologist. So if anyone would like to use it and try it, please be my guest. And that's what we are tackling. Women deserve better. We are talking about 120 million women suffering every day, everywhere, everywhere in the world with this traumatic instrument called the tenaculum. When you see on social Media, go to TikTok, YouTube or any social media, you will see women recording themselves getting this procedure. And we are talking about IUD procedure. Sorry, we are talking about iud. So intrauterine device placement. This is the most common procedure in gynecology. This is the most effective contraceptive solution at 99%. But still 120 million women are suffering. 37% of them are just avoiding getting an IUD ever again because of fear of pain. And that can lead to unattended pregnancies and also to huge health care cost.21 billion per year in the US only we have a solution for that. And it's called the cervix. And it's called the cervix. Go ahead.

Patients are demanding better gynecologists need a modern painless Alternative meet the cerVix. It's a FDA cleared non traumatic cervical stabilizer designed to make gynecological care modern.

With less pain, no bleeding and higher clinician and patient satisfaction. This device replaced this traumatic instrument by suction. So you can see here just with the picture how it works. It's not pinching, it's not generating bleeding. And women deserve a better and safe experience at the gynecologist. When we talk about value proposition, there's a study that we have done that shows 73% of pain reduction, 88% of bleeding occurrence. For the physician, it's also win because their patients are more satisfied. And also on the IUD manufacturers they can win market share back. One thing that is also important to to show is just the market. It's a huge market. We are talking about iud, but it goes beyond iud. There's so many procedures in gynecology and the cervical biopsies, hysteroscopy, even in IVF treatment for embryo transfer. We are talking about total $4 billion for this market. And there's also a future with new procedures and new monitoring devices that will come that will add $1.5 billion. One thing that is also important to highlight is the fact that the device is very easy to use. It works in three steps so it doesn't disrupt the workflow for physician. And then you can see how it works. So the first step is you just pull the piston and then you will place it onto the tissue, onto the cervix and then you push the button to suck the tissue. Once it's done, the tissue is inside the suction cup and then you can start holding it and pulling it gently. No more piercing. So very easy to use and to adapt. And when we take a look at our early adopters, we get 1300 patients who have benefited from it worldwide over the last year. So in the US only we have Columbia University, IU Health and also all the women's health clinic centers who are currently using it. 25 reference sites, nine countries and 94% of patient satisfaction. But women have a voice they can also influence. And we had a video on TikTok that went viral with over 3 million views in only two days and 2000 women asking where do I find this device? So that also led us to have not only on the B2B model, but also a D2C model. We also get recognition from different media coverage, New York Times, Forbes and others. And we have been recognized by Time magazine as one of the best invention in 2024. We have a partnership with Bayer Healthcare in Switzerland that we are also expanding in other countries in Europe and very soon hopefully in the US we have been working very actively to push the guidelines. The last guidelines were from 2016 and as of May 2025. Finally, the scientific Society of Gynecologists now is recognizing the pain and now urging physician to do a better job of managing pain for women. We have, we are starting selling in the US, LA and New York first this summer and we own the full IP for the product and this is our team. So we have a very diverse and very experienced team coming both from the health care medical device world and also physician that both in Europe and in the US we have raised 16 billion so far. We have 9.5 D and we are raising for our B1 round 600K to be able to launch our products in Europe and in the US but also starting planning for the next generation of our product. With that being said, who still wants to be pinched with the tenaculum? Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm really curious, did you come up with the concept for this device and if not you, who were the designers behind the device?

Yes. So we have a very small team of seven. The inventor is an engineer who worked with his brother who is a gynecology. They are both based in Switzerland. That's where we have our headquarter and I'm part of the team, the leadership team.

Just a quick follow on. Is that a single use device or how many times can it be used?

This one is reusable, ours is single use as of right now. And we are working on the next generation with this portion reusable. This one and this one will be disposable.

Thank you.

Cool.

Yeah, amazing stuff what you're working on. My main question is is there any other medical related clearances that need to be done? I saw that you said it was FDA cleared, but it is a complicated space.

So it is.

So it's FDA cleared. We can already start launching the product. It's also C marked for Europe and we had the MHRA for the UK and N Visa for Brazil and we are working on other market authorization and we just submitted for the next generation our 510k as well. So that way when the product will be finalized, we can also launch it right away.

Can I just clarify one more time what this bridge round is for? What's the 600k going to be used for?

Yeah, yeah. So this one is like we had the B1. We have already raised $3 million through crowdfunding and VCs, and we are still missing 600k to be able to launch the commercialization, expand the team, and also finalize the second generation of our product.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, everyone. Another round of applause for all of our panelists. Okay, so the judges now, they're on the hot seat to deliberate, so I'm going to pull them off stage. We'll just kind of go back there for a second here, just share some notes. So give us two minutes or so. Chat amongst yourself here, and then we will come back and announce the winner. We're going to do a photo with the winner and with all of the finalists, and then we'll go back out and network. Okay. All right, give us one second here to deliberate here as well. Maybe we'll put on some Jeopardy Music for a second. All right. Wow. The judges, it was a hard deliberation back there, back in our. Our jury chambers. But why don't we call all five companies up on stage? Let's all come and do this together. Come on up. It takes a lot of guts to come up and do this. Tell your story, do it quickly, concisely, and take the questions right after as well, too. Amy, I'm giving you a microphone here. Perfect. All right, Amy is going to announce the winner.

Can you hear me now? Okay, well, first we wanted to say it was a hard decision because all of you are building something really excellent and really thoughtful. So thank you so much for your pitches and for your time and for everything that you've been doing in the spaces that you've been building. So we came up with a first and second place because we had a hard time choosing. So our second place is for Blip. I don't have anything to hand you. I just put my hand out. And our first place winner is. Aspevix. Congratulations.

Okay. Congratulations indeed. We're going to take a group photo and then we'll do a photo with the winner. So just give us one second, but thank you all. Audience, thank you so much for coming out. We still have networking and there still are startups at tables and look for our programming coming out for August and October events that you'll get emails following up soon. So thank you again for coming out to Burbank Startup Pitch Fest. Thanks, everyone.