Canada Demo Day 2018 Full Video

Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you're coming in from. We have a Canadian Demo Day that I'm really excited to be hosting today with a number of great companies from around Canada. My name is Adeo Ressi. I'm CEO of the Founder Institute. The Founder Institute is an incubator and startup launch program that operates chapters in about 200 cities around the world. Canada as a country provides some of our best graduates around the world, and you'll have an opportunity to meet some of those graduates today, hopefully even invest in some of them or help them in their journey to build amazing companies. So you can see a number of our Canadian founders here looking so sharp. Apologies for the slight delay. We had a little bit of a technical snafu. The computer restarted here, but we're ready to go. Since launching in Canada, our first city was Montreal in 2014, we've created over 100 companies that have raised in excess of $10 million. Our grads include trailblazers like Hiccso, Finebob, and Unido. As well as many other great companies coming out of Canada. You know, a lot of people ask me, why do we have such great companies in Canada? And my answer is, I don't know. No, I'm kidding. You know, they have an amazing talent pool up in the northern parts of North America, and they have access to the North American market with a great rule of law as well as a lower cost of living. That combination is lethal for creating great startups. And again, you're gonna see some of them today. So we have 3 of these promising startups that are going to be pitching, uh, for you, and, um, they're coming mainly from Montreal and Toronto. So, uh, without further ado, uh, uh, I, I think the first thing I'd like to do is introduce Marc, uh, who's going to be one of our special guests investors helping me ask questions, and then we'll jump right into the companies. Mark, do you want to just say a couple words about yourself before we start the pitches?

Yeah, for sure. Thanks. So, Mark Goede, I'm on the investment team here at Omers Ventures in Toronto. We're an $800 million assets under management fund in Canada. We invest across North America, and really excited to be joining and hearing these pitches here today.

Great, excited to have you. This is going to be awesome. And what's your average ticket size that you might put into an early-stage company?

Yeah, yeah, so we're multi-stage truly, so we've done a few seed deals, but mostly with transformational technologies. Our target check size is between 2 to call it 10 million, We're investing out of a $300 million fund, so we need to move that capital. So we typically skew a bit higher than that.

Awesome. Excited to have you. Well, hopefully maybe one of these companies excite you to the point where you're gonna be able to follow up with them afterwards. And for everyone watching, the same to you. So each company, let me just cover the format for a moment and then we'll just get started. So each company will present for about 3 minutes. It's a webinar, so I'm not going to be too strict on time. For those presenting, I'm just going to give you a tip here. I know you've been prepped, but speak somewhat slowly because sometimes someone's internet on the other side might be choppy. I see you just froze. So if you speak slowly and you freeze, it's all cool. The heat, you know, We'll have the ability for the audience listeners to pop questions into the chat. I recommend that you do that. The chat is located on the right-hand side of the screen. If we can't get your questions from the chat into the Q&A session, that will be about 5 minutes, a lot of times the founders will answer your questions afterwards in the chat. Please do that. You can also highlight it as a question in the chat area. And again, if you have any connection problems for whatever reason during the pitches, there's a button at the top that says reconnect. Use it. It actually works. And hopefully I won't have to use it, but you can definitely use it. It makes everything run a little bit more smoothly. Okay, well, look, housekeeping is done and we are ready to go. So first up, what I'm going to do is we'll put them full screen. And for everyone else who's listening in here, you can always turn your video off and mute. We're going to go to Vacation Fund. It's a Toronto graduate presented by Erica Pearson, who's the founder and CEO. Erica, the floor is yours.

Awesome. Thank you so much. All right. So my name is Erica Pearson, and I am the co-founder and CEO of Vacation Fund. Vacation fund. Now, out of school, I had the privilege of getting hired into capital markets. I was earning great money. I could see a very clear path for career growth. And I was working in a city that I loved. But not too long into one of my earliest roles, I knew I couldn't stay. I was working 12 to 14 hour days. I was working on weekends. I was working on evenings. I was on call at all times. I missed dinners and celebrations with loved ones. I did not have time to work out or get a good night's sleep. And I was expected to bring my phone on the one vacation that I managed to take during a very slow time of the year. And the day that I quit, I remember wondering how many ambitious people my company lost every year due to burnout. And I knew that I wanted to help people like me be ambitious in their careers and make time for their priorities outside of work. Because especially when there is a war on talent and your employees could be poached at any given time, burnout culture is just not sustainable. So, on December 1st, our team launched a website for Vacation Fund, an employer-matched travel savings program that incentivizes employees to put money aside and take meaningful vacations every year. It allows employees to direct a portion of their paycheck into a separate vacation fund account and allows employers to match anywhere between 25% and 100% of the contribution, capped at a certain dollar amount annually. Now, for companies, this is an easy way to invest in employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention. Not only does it make employees' DreamTrips more financially attainable, but that it encourages employees to use their days off to travel, which has a positive impact on both their satisfaction with their company and their role within the company. So we've onboarded 5 pilot companies since February 2018. We are in discussion with another 13 companies, and we have an additional 46 companies on our growing waitlist, all equating to over $430,000 of annual recurring revenue. Now, we make our money off a subscription fee of $2 per employee per month, but we also have a vast amount of interest from travel companies that would like to send targeted unpublished offers to employees through our platform. And as a company, our big target, following an expansion to the US market later this year, is to help make 1 million travel dreams happen by 2021, with the help of benefits brokers and HR consultants as our distribution partners. Now our growing full-time team is stacked with the business mind, the technical mind, and the creative mind. All of our technology has been designed and built internally from scratch, and both our team and our advisors believe in our vision for the future in which people live happier, more balanced lives. Thank you.

Wow, I was taking notes and avidly listening. That's great. Okay, so I want to remind everyone that if you have questions, there's a chat thing on the right. If you can do your best to answer them, my team will pull out some of the more interesting ones and try and get them on screen. Well done, well done. Let's do a big round of applause. So I have a question, but Mark, do I want to cede the floor to you first if you have a question? And we'll start getting questions from the chat as well.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, I just want to say a great pitch, like right to the point, answered all the questions I wrote beforehand. Great customer development. My real question for you is, as someone who's worked with HRIS systems in the past, you know, employee benefits, RRSP contributions, all these are managed within HR systems today. How do you maintain— and I think I know the answer, but I want to hear from you— how do you keep yourself as an individual product and not become a feature of a large Workday, SuccessFactors, SAP, etc.?

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And obviously, and we've, we've been very sort of after our pivot, been very focused on, okay, what else is out there? What do people use for HR? What do people use for payroll? And how does this fit into the whole ecosystem? And And what's worked nicely for us is that with this being a very niche and a very specific offering, we hear over and over again from very forward tech companies that have a million other platforms on the go that vacations are near and dear enough to people's hearts that they're eager to start putting money towards this specifically. And then to know that this is a thing where your money is being put aside so that you can take a vacation every year. So most companies, for additional context, are doing a 50% match on people's vacation saving. Capped at anywhere between $500 and $1,000 annually. So it's significant enough that it encourages the employee themselves to put the money aside, and we essentially act as a fund administrator, making sure, okay, look, this is a separate thing encouraging you to take advantage of your vacation days. We're helping clarify company messaging and expectations around taking time off. And then obviously there's a massive opportunity in the travel space to provide value-add, including helping people estimate trip costs and actually put the money towards a very specific trip. But for right now, we're just helping sort of administer the program, and we're learning from our clients right now what do they need to see out of this. And people have been very forward about like, oh, this is like addressing a very specific pain point, and if we were to sort of close the loop around where this money actually gets spent, this is what we would want to do. Because we have some other scenarios where people have said, look, this can only go towards these packages with this travel partner, and we've But had other people say, well, some people actually have newborn kids at home and need a staycation. In that case, what does the money go towards? So, there's enough monitoring of the program that needs to take place that most people have said, I think people are eager to log into this. And obviously, longer term, being able to put a map in front of a company saying, these are all the places your employees have traveled to. And you could walk across the room and ask the person, oh, your trip to Peru, like, I see that you did this trip last year. I'm planning one. Let's— so turning it into an engagement and a value-add platform longer term is obviously the main idea.

There are questions coming in. I don't mean to cut you off, you're over-answering a little. So Edward was— and we got a lot of questions— so Edward was asking, what are the tax implications to the employer for matching funds?

Right, yeah, absolutely. So we're treating this— and we've talked to, I guess, sort of the Achievers in the league about this being a taxable benefit and how that's taxed and how some people have ended up being taxed after the fact with certain programs— this is treated as just a separate vacation cash bonus that people are earning every year. So it is treated as as a cash bonus. And that's just been the easiest way for people to wrap their heads around it.

And then Rika, I guess is how you pronounce the name, is, what's your timeline to reach breakeven? Obviously, that might be— it's hard to say, but if you can give an estimate for Rika, that would be great.

Yeah, no, absolutely. In a perfect world, we are cash flow positive 24 months from today. We are working through where it's not publicly announced yet, but we will be in Chicago for another accelerator this summer. And so working through Okay, this is offered in the US market and the Canadian market. We've worked through what deposit taking looks like in both countries. And then obviously just getting to a point where, okay, we're a 4-person team right now. This needs to be an 8 to 12 person team this time next year to hit all our metrics. So that's the best estimate at this point.

Sari is asking, I hope I pronounced your name right, how do you get the money out? I presume as an employee. So I want to take it on vacation. And if I have the savings fund, what's the process?

So in Canada, we're actually working through a strategic partnership with one of our clients. Interac wants to offer this to their employees. And for in Canada, it's an Interac e-request. So you can just literally pull it back using Interac into your account. And in the US, we're talking to a few sort of B2C and B2B fintech players about like our deposit-taking institution. Right now, it's looking like it's Silicon Valley Bank will be the best option for us longer term. We've talked to a few others, but that we're working through in terms of the ACH processes and maybe we end up using Dwolla for the time being. We've listened to other people's experiences and just heard, okay, how do we get this up and running as quickly as possible to authorize people's bank accounts?

So, okay.

And then there are a lot of questions here. So if we can't get to all your questions, we're— because I want to get through a few more. Try and answer them very quickly. You can maybe write answers to them offline when, when we're done. Yeah, sequentially, and then hit some big ones. But how are you attracting your first customers? Adam is asking.

Yeah, no, it's actually— so the— as of yesterday, it's been 66 companies that have been all inbound inquiries since December 1st. So whether it's— we've done some posts on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn has been a great one. I really enjoy pitching. I'll give Founder Institute some credit for that. So whether it's like HR tech, fintech, and travel tech events, I have been pitching everywhere just to sort of build awareness and tell our story. So that's been very powerful. And then honestly, just referrals, people that are currently building their benefits packages and wanting to incorporate something new and millennial and combating burnout.

So Nathan's asking about percentage versus just the $2 subscription fee. Do you take any percentages?

Uh, not as of right now. We've— it's just been like the best situation for us is to get this in front of as many people as possible and learning what our clients need to understand. And so we considered it being a total amount of the amount that's put aside, but right now that's just more difficult. It creates more headaches than it solves problems.

Ken wants to know, can, uh— well, there's a couple questions. Jerry wants to know, does the fund cover the family? And Ken wanted to know, can you buy a car with the money? So family, car, maybe some, you know. Yeah, yeah.

No, it's interesting because we, I literally was just on the phone with a client talking about, well, if you're not forced to spend this money with one of your specific travel partners, then how do you authorize that this money is going towards a vacation? So the idea is just that when people take time off, it's in their best interest to actually travel with it. But if they were using it for something that just helped them rejuvenate or relax a little bit, like ordering catered meals for their family, that's fine as well. So for right now, it's literally just a few questions when they request to withdraw, saying, one, have you asked for some time off? So ideally the money is being spent on something, on some kind of experience while they're not at work, while they're taking at least 3 consecutive days away from the office. And then answering sort of the next question of, so one, have you asked your boss for the time off? And two, what is this money actually going towards? We have people setting travel goals within the platform and setting goals for the actual experiences themselves. But again, this is something We've gone to our clients and said, how, how difficult do you want this to be for them to pull the funds back? And do you need them to upload a receipt, for example, for the time being? So it's something we're working through with our clients now.

Okay, we've got so many questions in here. This is amazing. So you're really gonna have to go into the, the chat and answer some of them. So stay, stay patient, everyone. Hopefully you'll get your questions answered in the chat. I want to get to the next presenter. Maybe I'll leave you with a last question about competitors. I forget who asked that, but there was one last— quick answer on any competitors in the market before we move on to our next pitch.

Yeah, we've had two direct competitors pop up in the last few months. Obviously we know that we're doing something worthwhile that can be very value-add. One out of Toronto actually, and one out of Orlando. But if anything, like, I'm just happy that it's changing the conversation for what employees today need. So, and again, any— happy to answer any further questions in more depth. My email address is erica@vacationfund.io. And if I can't get to all of the questions in the chat, please feel free to email me after.

I know, let's do a big round of applause. Well done, well done. I mean, and there's so many questions. I've done a lot of these webinars, I haven't seen this many questions. So audience, high five! Erica, go in the chat, you start answering as best you can. But I also ask you to pay attention to our next presenter. Xavier, can you come on screen here? We're going to move into AllSet, which is out of Montreal. AllSet is an AI-powered web platform to help the 25 to 44-year-olds manage their insurance policies effortlessly in one place. Welcome to the screen, and let's see if everything runs smoothly with your pitch getting up and going. Thank you.

Awesome. Thanks, Adel. And good job, Erica. So if we can just have the slides too.

I'll drop off when everything's ready. Yeah, very well done, Erica. So your slides are still not up. There we go. All right. I'm going to drop off.

Cool, perfect. So, um, hi everyone, uh, super excited to be presenting today. So my name is Xavier Freeman and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Allstate, the easiest way ever to get insurance. Um, 77% of millennials use digital banking, yet when it comes to insurance, only 17% shop and buy insurance online. This is a huge gap, yet a huge opportunity. Why is that? Well, shopping for insurance online is frustrating. Most of the comparison tools that are available are actually lead generators that will send you off to an offline agent or broker, creating friction. Products are compared based on their prices, which makes it really hard for you to know if you're getting the right product for yourself. Offering no personalization. This overall leads to a bad customer experience and therefore low conversion rates. Well, things are about to change. Introducing Allset, your digital insurance broker. Our smart technology allows us to offer users personalized advice as well as a seamless online shopping experience. How it works is pretty simple. You go to our website, allset.ca, and fill out a user-friendly application. And that's really where the magic happens. We apply algorithms to analyze data points such as your profile, location, property, and we then scan the market to find the 3 best products that are available for your unique situation. We display the 3 products we have found and make a recommendation as the one that has the best fit for you. It's up to you to select the one you prefer, and we help you get set up all in one place within the Allset platform. Our business model is pretty simple. For every insurance policy sold through the platform, we get a commission paid by the insurance company, on average 16%. This represents $196 in average revenue per customer per year, so recurring revenue. We are starting with auto and home insurance in Canada and then want to scale to other markets and offer additional products to our users. What really makes us stand out from our competitors relies on two things: First, we are not a lead generator. We are a fully digital brokerage firm, which allows us to control the customer experience from A to Z. Second thing, our computer-generated recommendations makes it easier for us to offer personalized advice to our users, as well as scaling at a lower cost of service. The opportunity for Allset is here and now. In Canada alone, we have an 18 $1.7 billion market ripe for disruption, and that market is about 10 times larger in the United States. Premiums for insurance in property and casualty have been growing at 6% for the last 20 years, and that's not going anywhere. Our progress to date on the regulatory standpoint: we're now compliant with the AMF, which is Quebec's regulatory authority for financial markets, and we're discussing with regulators in other jurisdictions as well where we plan to enter. And we're also part of the Next AI accelerator in Toronto that's helping us with initial funding as well as key AI talent and resources. We are building something people want. We already have over 4,000 people on our waitlist and we're also really happy to announce that we have distribution agreements with 4 insurance companies, including 2 of the largest companies in, in Canada and 1 global leader. The team behind AllSet is Philippe and myself. We have a complementary skill set. Philippe holds a master's in computer engineering and software development experience. On my side, I bring in the relevant industry knowledge leadership, and network. We also surrounded ourselves with a strong advisory board, including François Pochet, who was previously the Chief Operating Officer at TD Insurance, and Natasha Mayville, who was previously VP of Software Engineering at Intact Insurance. Our ask today is for partnership opportunities for distribution. So if you want to get involved with, with Alset, we'd be really happy to take the conversation offline. I'll put in my information in the question sections. And also, we are planning to raise some funding early next fall, so if you're interested in starting a conversation on this, please feel free to reach out. And on a final note, the easiest way ever to get insurance, AllSet is your digital insurance broker. Thanks everyone.

Okay, well done, well done. That went relatively smoothly. Sometimes we have hiccups and things that come through. Okay everybody, now there's a question from Cliff Lee in the chat.

Are you using Sorry, the line just cut.

Can anybody else hear anything? Xavier, can you turn your camera on?

Yeah, I'm back.

Hey everybody, sorry about that. I don't know what happened. Cliff has a question.

Can anybody see anything? No.

Hello?

Hey, Dale, I can hear you.

Good. Well, I don't see anyone, but I can hear you.

Yeah, I can hear but not see.

Okay. It might come back. It seems like a little bit of a technical glitch. Can you hear me, Xavier, okay?

Yeah, I can hear you at the moment.

So, okay, Cliff was asking, are you using predictive or prescriptive analytics? What makes the algorithm special? And what is your IP strategy? So a lot of stuff in there from Cliff. If the video flakes out again, we'll just keep running with audio. So let's do our best here. And then if you have questions, Mark, we'll get some of those in. So let's take Cliff's question first.

Yeah, so basically, if we go more on the IP, so the algorithms that we're using now, it's predictive algorithms, and it's really in order to recommend the best product based on the user needs. And how we define the best product for them is separating 3 different things: information about the person itself, so their profile. The second thing is the property that they want to insure, and the third one is how are they using that property. So how are they using that car, for example? And then based on that, we're able to recommend the best coverage and find the best price for that person.

Mark, are you there? I didn't see you. Do you have any questions, or I can keep going from the chat?

Yeah, I guess like I've seen— you see a lot of aggregators in the space doing maybe less on the predictive side, but like, you know, finding holistic insurance using different rate boards. And I see commoditization of rates because it's just an acquisition game, right? So you get into paid marketing channels, you're going to be spending a lot of money on SEM.

How do you think about it from a channel differentiation perspective?

I'm less concerned about the product. I believe that you could tell me as a 26-year-old male that I need this level of insurance. How do you think about unique channels for distribution and customer acquisition so you're not playing the same game everyone else is and seeing these acquisition costs rise?

Yeah, and that's a really excellent question, Mark, and that's a— we can definitely tell that you know about the space because that's a big challenge within this space. Basically, a way for us to differentiate ourselves and build some defensibility on our distribution model is to go through a B2B2C model. So partnering up with companies to offer AllSet to, on one side, their clients, and on the other side, their employees. So that's really through those strategic partnerships that we're going to be able to build defensibility and create a product offering that is harder to compete with.

Aleem was asking, how can we become partners with your company? Which, you know, that's good. You maybe get some clients out of this. Now, I don't know if he's in insurance or one of these companies that you were referring to, but maybe you could explain the sort of partnership ecosystem that you have and how one can work with you.

Yeah, so I just put basically the link to my LinkedIn as well as my email address. So anyone interested to partner up, please reach out to me. Basically, as I was answering Mark, if you have a, if you run a company yourself and feel like Alset could be an added value to your customers or your employees, we're definitely looking at partnership from a B2B to C standpoint. So that's one way. And outside of that, really, over the next few months, we're working on raising some funding. So if you're interested to have that conversation and see what are our plans for growth, please reach out to me and be a pleasure to take this offline.

So, um, I have a question, and everyone please don't be shy in the chat. So my question for you is, if you differentiate because of the AI from the insurance aggregators that Mark Mark was referring to. How do you, um, you know, I, I, maybe you could take us through the user experience to— because, you know, right now I go to one of these insurance aggregators, it's like, I need home insurance, uh, I'm, I'm, you know, my house is this old. Like, how do you differ from the user experience of those other products today?

Yeah, um, awesome question. So basically Really, customer experience for us is the key, the number one thing that we're focusing on. So the way we really differentiate from most of the aggregators that are there, and we don't want to become one of the many aggregators available in the market in North America, the way we differentiate is that a customer that comes to our platform, we automate the shopping for them and we're able to bind the policy straight from the platform because we're licensed insurance, financial services firm as Allstate. So that really creates a more streamlined customer experience as we don't— we're not sending our customers to other brokers or agents or insurance companies. We are really the intermediate in between the customer and the insurance company.

Hmm, so you bind the policy there. Again, if you have other questions, please ask them in the chat. Does that mean, just again to clarify, so in many ways it would look somewhat similar to how the other things do, except at the end, rather than having a broker call, they can sign it right there.

And maybe I can add on to it. Actually, what really sucks right now with all these aggregators is that the customers are led into thinking that they'll be able to purchase the insurance policy from the website, which is usually not the case. And we're offering that differentiator. So at the end, of the customer journey, they are safely insured and they have access to their policy documents and they're binded right on the spot instead of having to go through a third party and start over that process, which is most of the time painful.

Marc, I'm looking for questions in the chat. Do you have questions for Xavier about the process or offering? You're muted, but you look great.

It looked like it was a smart question, right?

Right. I mean, super great. Yeah, I got one more too, Xavier. Okay, Mark, okay.

So mine was, we see a lot of synergies across insurance products, like how do you think about the portfolio of offering developing? Like, is that a place you see differentiation, or is it no, we want to do home, auto, personal. So how do you think about the offering?

That's a really good point. So there's— we're really just starting with car and home insurance because it's a great way to get a first point of contact and point of touch with our customers. Because when you get a car, you need that insurance right there, and you're trying to find the less painful way to get it. And that's what AllSet will become once we have that first relationship with customer through a car or home insurance policy, because we have already, we get to know that person better, we're able to recommend other products that they will need in the future and be there really so that they don't have to do the shopping and restart every year. We're there really in the long run for them and being able to offer a suite of insurance products.

Jens is asking a question somewhat related to that, which is, after selecting a proposed insurance online, And does the process differ? Because right now all the paperwork traditionally sucks. So do you simplify the process?

Yeah, yeah, really. And one thing that we're really trying to do right now is become a fully green company where the customer gets a confirmation that they're insured and we send them via email a PDF copy of their policy right after, instead of them having to wait to get the policy through the mail. So that's a quick thing that we found that was a big customer pain point. Because people, when they're waiting for their policy in the mail, sometimes they're not sure if they're insured or they're not sure if the coverage is real. So we're making sure to ensure that everyone is comfortable and get the proper documents through email instead of mail.

Which leads me to one of my last questions here, and you can go into the chat if other people have questions and please answer them. So, you know, it seems like becoming this licensed licensed insurance broker online is a potential moat for the business, protecting the business from competitors, but it also seems like it can be quite a bit of hassle to do. So maybe if you could provide a little bit of commentary on the hassle factor versus the defensive positioning of becoming this licensed broker, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, well, I'll be pretty honest on that one. Yes, it is a hassle in many different reasons, but the number one thing for us is that hassle is our problem, it's our business. When it comes to the customer, they don't see any of the hassle because we take care of it for them. And that's really the number one thing for us. And we are able to automate much of the processes and being much more of a lean insurance broker than the traditional brokers who are mainly relying on personal contacts and phone to deal with their customers, which really will help us to scale while delivering great customer service online.

And then, um, you can ask a question about, you know, insurance for sort of immigrants and non-standard needs. Are you going after niche markets? Are you focusing on the mass market?

Yeah, so concerning insurance for immigrants, we'll definitely be talking with Destin AI, which is the next startup coming up. They have They have a big solution.

Good segue, nailed it.

And, but in terms of our initial target market, we're really targeting 25 to 35-year-old young professionals living in metropolitan areas, which we feel like are the most, the biggest market that are underserved. But regarding immigrants, we'll definitely talk with Destin after. Right.

Speaking of which, well done, well done, Xavier. Let's move over to Destin AI. Nargis, are you there? I see your face but not video. So, oh, there you go.

Hello, everybody.

So we're moving from the world of insurance to the world of immigration and law, which is a very hot topic, especially with our president in the United United States, making Canada all that more amazing a place to go. And by the way, for those of you who have not spent time in Canada, I've been twice this year. It is amazing. I love it. Every time I go, I'm like, whoa, it's less crowded, more civilized. Ah, and your business is helping people get to Canada much more easily. So why don't we turn it over to you Destin AI, bringing AI to legal and immigration issues. I will mute and go offline.

Hello, everybody. My name is Nargis. I'm the founder and CEO of Destin AI. Together with our diverse team, we are creating AI-powered platform for immigration. So you're probably thinking that in an ideal world, you would like to move from one country to another without any hassle, thinking about about visa issues, but in reality it is not like that. So we have a client from US. He's actually from Iran. He wants to come to Canada and he's a young professional. He reached out to us and mentioning that he searched about immigration system in Canada. He doesn't know what's going on. He's simply confused, overwhelmed, and he doesn't know where to start. And guess what? Ahmad is not alone. There are actually 45 million people in the world who wish to come to Canada for various reasons. And according to the Minister of Immigration of Canada, he mentioned that in the next 3 years, Canada will admit 1 million immigrants, and immigrants will make population growth of 65,000 by the year. We created a simple platform for people to find the right information: how to come to Canada, how to check their eligibility, is simply, um, how to find a lawyer, because in a realistic world it's too much hassle. So our platform, what it does is through our natural language processing, we answer the people's question and we connect them with the right lawyer, and without no hassle they can check their status and get their visa very smoothly. So the benefit we have is we save time for people that they can save their nerves to themselves themselves, and we provide them transparent choice. And simply, we are making this process smooth for both lawyers and the applicants. Since we launched, it's a very speedy growth. We doubled our team members. And since we started from Founders Institute, later we joined Legal Innovation Zone in Canada, and later NEXT AI program admitted us as well. And grows— growing in 25%, and we are currently helping our people manually and with the support of 20 subscribed lawyers. And our business model is very simple. We simply do not charge the applicants. We charge the lawyers for the transaction fees, fixed fees depending on the visa program. And our platform is so smooth that now the lawyers want this platform to manage their own clients. Clients. That's why we will subscribe them monthly for using our platform as well. And we are also working on the solution where people can prepare their own application with the fraction of the cost. This market is huge. In only in Canada, if you calculate, in last year Canada admitted 320,000 immigrants and average spent $10,000. Just in Canada, this market is $3.2 billion. And our plan is after successfully implemented this in Canada. We want to move to different markets, which the global potential is $141 billion. And our go-to-market strategy is designed in a way that we know where the immigrants are searching for, for information about how to, uh, come to Canada. We will utilize content marketing, digital media, and we are already started doing, or, uh, events in different parts of the We are a diverse team of immigrants. We want to create a solution first for ourselves and the people like us. And in our team, we do have the people who have legal background, operations, technology, media, and especially artificial intelligence. And in terms of the funding, we are looking for our 18-month runway, $500,000 seed round, and we want to aim to support 300,000 immigrants with the support of 300 immigration lawyers. That's it about us, and we are Destin AI. We are innovating the immigration field through artificial intelligence. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to your questions.

Boom! Well done, well done. All right. I gotta ask the first question. Sorry about that. So, you know, has immigration spiked in your opinion to Canada, given all the stuff that's happening in the US? And do you have any empirical evidence to back that statement up?

Obviously, you know what's happening in the US. For me to start this business happened for my my own immigration journey when I moved to Canada, I faced difficulties to find the right information. Even I had the good experience, good English, still I suffered. Then I figured out that it's not only me, people just have hard time to understand this immigration system. But obviously, yeah, the external environment in US is working for our benefits. So—

Right. You may eventually do it in the US as well. Quickly, Mark, a question. We got lots of questions coming in the chat as well. Mark, do you want to—

Yeah, I guess. Okay, well, you're going to force me to one. I want to know, like, how do you acquire these users? I'm assuming, like, when Canada immigrates from, you know, hundreds of countries globally, what's the plan there? Is it just through web portals? And then my second question, which I'm going to sneak on, is, like, what's the plan for global expansion? Because this is something that could be scalable across different countries. So I'd be interested to hear both.

Yeah, that's an excellent question. So because we have in our team the people from diverse countries, we know exactly where those immigrants are searching for information, and we are utilizing these channels. Regarding the global expansion, the technology we're using is exactly the same. Doesn't matter where you are, as soon as you figure out the legal system. We have a target Australia, United Kingdom, Schengen European zone, and obviously US and Dubai and Singapore. So as soon as we figure out the legal system in those specific areas, we can actually help people to move from one A destination to B.

Wow, I'm just gonna give you an A+ on brief and informative question answering. Well done. Everyone take note, that might have been the best answer to a kind of complex question I've heard in a long time. Let's turn it over to some of the people who are in the chat. So Niaz is writing— hopefully I pronounced your name right— I'm collecting and needing documents, but I do not know exactly how much I should pay for a lawyer. So I'm— that's a question, so I'm presuming do you help with that, figuring out the amount collecting, etc.?

Basically, in our platform, everything is very transparent. By selecting the lawyer before booking the lawyer, they know the consultation fee and the service fee, so they can compare the prices themselves.

Okay. How will people know about the service and offering? You already answered that. Are you going to work with immigration certified professionals too? Now, I don't know what that is, but I presume you do. So that's from Roger.

Basically, in Canada, there are 3 layers: immigration lawyers, paralegals, and immigration consultants. We are starting from immigration lawyers, keep the quality high. Later, we will also open it for immigration consultants and paralegals as well.

Eventually, eventually, right? Will— so this— Rich is asking, will the applicant incur the lawyer fees? I'm presuming they will, but then, you know, I want to sort of just understand— you talked about this a little bit, you know— do they pay through you, or do they pay the lawyer directly? Is there the ability to circumvent? So I'm taking Risha's question, uh, will the applicant incur the lawyer fees, and add that payment process question on top of it.

And there are two streams. First stream is if the person does their own application, connection, then there's no lawyer involved. They directly pay us. And in the case of the lawyer connection, we still get the payment from the people and pay the lawyer later on. The reason behind is it takes 10 to 15 days for the lawyer to receive the money from the applicant. But in our case, it just happens in a second, and we transfer the money to the lawyer, um, speedy too. So it's an additional service for lawyers to fasten the payment process. That's why we take the fund and we transfer it.

Right. So you're saying your payment system is much faster. Is that where you get your commission from then? By taking—

I wouldn't call it a commission because referral fee is illegal in Canada. It's a fixed technology fee where we actually provide the support to lawyers.

Good point. Wow. You got a lot of questions here. Holy crow. My eyes are going to get tired. All right. So there's a lot of people wanting to immigrate to Canada. Not shocking. Maybe that's the answer I asked earlier. How's your system will show real-time visa status to clients? Has CIS exposed visa application statuses to public or other applications?

That's a million-dollar question. We are already started working with— like, we are in negotiations with Government of Canada. If we reach to an agreement that they can give access to the system, we can make it happen. But for now, we want to make sure that we do what we can, and until the door of government. Later on, if we reach to an agreement, we can make it happen. Just watch what we are doing.

Jeremias is asking, you know, obviously you support probably French and English. What about the languages of the people that are coming in from Iran or wherever else?

Farsi, right?

And Iranian?

Yes, exactly. So basically we are operating in English now. It's a matter of funding. If we get seed funding, we will translate whatever we have into the most spoken languages where the immigrants are coming from.

Is that— and now, sorry, Mark?

Sorry, I just wanted to ask, and how's the traction to date? I didn't see any user stats.

We did zero marketing and We get— Oh, wait, hold on.

Oh, you cut out, you cut out. Whoa, freeze.

Right at the important part.

Yeah, like, we got— All right, try again. We didn't hear anything about any connection.

Basically, we are currently matching lawyers with applicants manually. We do have paying clients. I'm happy to share the exact details offline.

Okay, that— well, that was politically correct. Okay, what— let's keep going with the questions. What percentage of immigrants who need an immigration— what, what is a percentage of immigrants that need an immigration lawyer? You know, not all 300,000 need a lawyer. There's self-service solutions et cetera. So, and how do you deal with the scammer immigration lawyers? So those are two questions.

Basically, I will answer the question regarding scammers. So people will be able to report to us who are the scammers. We will have a blacklist. They can check and see who's a scammer so that they don't need to deal with them and to be able to get people to our platform. Before we onboard them, we check they are real lawyers. We don't admit people instantly. We check if they're good with Canadian Law Society and they don't have any trouble. And I forgot the first question.

Oh, the first question is that, you know, not all 300,000 people here—

Yeah, I got it. So basically, we do have two streams. The people can prepare their own application, they don't need a lawyer, and some people need a lawyer. The reason they need a lawyer because sometimes they got rejected once. If they apply again, they are screwed. So, or they write a mistake, something. So obviously not everybody needs a lawyer. I cannot tell the percentage. For example, the younger generation wants to do it themselves. A little bit senior, they have more resources, they want to give it to the lawyer. And another reason why people use lawyers, because they need confidence. Because imagine You want to move to a new country with your family members. You want to make sure that you are in good hands, even you are kind of not sure if you did everything properly or not. But eventually, yes, that's true. Not everybody needs a lawyer.

But I mean, in theory, you can help them do a lot of the work and reduce the legal costs with the AI. Yes, right.

That's what we are already doing.

Right.

So Edward was asking a somewhat similar question to the last one, which is How do you sort of, do you provide rating systems and reviews of lawyers? Are you, you know, that can be risky because you're like, this lawyer sucks, but use them. So, you know, how do you ensure the quality and rating and transparency of the work product of these different legal firms?

The beauty of the technology we have, you can see everything in an evidence, what's going on, what's the lawyer's response how to rate, what happened between each other, you can track the entire process, so everything is transparent and there will be rating system obviously and we will see who's performing well and the ones who don't perform, they will be out of the system.

Awesome, wow, there's so many questions. What other markets like students are you considering expanding into in the future besides, so So, you know, you could look at geographic expansion, but you could also look at market expansion. This question's coming from Jerry.

So basically, as I mentioned earlier, depending on what makes sense from the financial point of view, at the same time, what are the most need, we will put the targets for few countries and we will expand with the specific products. And obviously, the International students is a big chunk in Canada. Like, so many people come to Canada to just study. So that exact market can be also implemented to different countries where the people mostly go to study as well.

One thing, interesting question from Roger. We try and get a couple more in, so answer quickly. You operate like an unofficial escrow service by holding the money and the lawyer knows knows before the work will be paid, will be done and paid. It's more like, so, comma, you operate like an unofficial escrow service, question mark. I guess commentary on that.

People use Google, people use Gmail, people use PayPal, and if the lawyer accepts the money through PayPal, does that mean PayPal is unauthorized? It's just another technology company that we trying to support both lawyers and applicants, and everything that we do is in compliance with the rules in Canada.

So no, you're not an escrow service?

No, we are not.

Okay, just to make sure Roger gets his answer there. Wow, there's a lot of questions here. We got a few more minutes. Would you foresee partnerships with agents from different countries? Nayelo is asking. Asking. Hopefully I pronounced your name right.

We are considering these options. The issue with that is they are not regulated by Canadian legal organizations. It's hard to manage them. That's why we are considering it. I do not know, basically.

Okay, so you know, you're going to focus on the legal, well-known channels first. Michael's asking, as a company desiring to hire immigrants, uh, what advice would be useful, uh, and is this a market you would pursue later on?

So the beauty is our platform is because we help people to come to Canada after, because they trust us, we can help. Like currently we are having, um, partnership with different organizations like real estate, insurance, uh, let's say somebody wants to study English, doesn't matter. After coming to Canada, we will have different channels for and purposes so that we can provide further guidance, and that will be also part of the plan.

Yeah, okay, so we've been peppering you, but Mark, do you have any questions that you have to get over? Thanks for coming. Do you have questions quickly that you want to ask? You know what, no, I think you've been—

I think you've done a great job of warding us off. I think it's an amazing opportunity to acquire customers, to sell them future services, financial products. Right? Like if you, when you land in Toronto, you see all these ads for, hey, new to Canada, sign up for an RBC bank account. And if you could think about building out that affiliate network, you own the customer, right? You have their trust, you engage with them on a digital platform. I think it's an incredible opportunity to set up some sort of marketplace of services, particularly focused on people who are new to Canada. And they have assets right there. They need to set up their lives here. And I think also it's somewhat of a great Canadian story of helping people move here and start their lives. So that's amazing. I'd love to connect afterwards. I don't know if you're in Toronto or Montreal, but that'd be great.

Yeah, no problem at all. I'm in Toronto. Happy to chat.

Fantastic.

Well, listen, this was really lovely, guys. We started a little late, so we'll end probably a little bit late. If we can everyone come on camera camera for a minute. I just want to say, you did an excellent job, each one of you. Uh, very confident, very calm, well presented. Honestly, I think this is one of the smoothest webinars that we've ever run. And the video went out for like 30 seconds in the middle there, and everyone's like, are you alive? I'm like, I think I'm alive. Uh, you know, when your digital self dies, what happens? Who knows. But I want to thank all the presenters. Now, there are a number of investors who are watching live and will be watching offline. If you're interested in any of these companies, we will provide you with information to follow up with them on email, and you should definitely be in touch. I recommend that you keep answering questions in the chat while I do this conclusion possibly posting your email. I want to thank you, Negrees, Erica, and Xavier. I want to thank you, Mark, for being an amazing contributor and helping with questions. This was a beautiful display of Canadian companies where we're running right now. Two semesters are taking applications, by the way, for the Founder Institute. Both— go to fi.co. Okay, um, I'm talking. Hopefully you can go to fi.co/join, uh, to roll into the, uh, semester. Thanks everybody, have a lovely day, and we hope to do another Canadian Demo Day, uh, soon and see some amazing companies. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks, everyone.