Chicago Founder Hotseat Webinar (7/5/16)

Hi everyone, welcome. Let some people stream in for a moment. Great to have everyone join us today. Let me get a little better viewage here. My name is Adeo, I'm CEO of the Founder Institute. Welcome to our hot seat pitches today. This is going to be really exciting. We're focused on the Chicago chapter of the Founder Institute, and let me just quickly introduce myself, introduce introduce the Founder Institute, talk a little bit about what we're going to do today. So my name is Adeo Ressi, I'm the CEO of the Founder Institute. We operate chapters in 135 cities around the world where we help aspiring entrepreneurs take their idea into a meaningful and enduring technology company. So we essentially manage the very first steps of building your dream company. If you're looking to launch a company, we're currently enrolling in Chicago. One of our seasoned and best directors runs the chapter, Jason Jacobson. We're gonna call him on screen in a moment. Let me tell you a little bit about the Chicago chapter in particular. So we have some amazing grads from the Chicago area. We're fortunate to have one grad, Better Weekdays, It's a mobile career management platform that helps universities improve job placement. They've raised $1.35 million in funding and growing really nicely. Another of our favorite grads from Chicago, Digital GroundUp, an interactive technology platform that teaches users digital marketing techniques through innovative interactive online tools. And so if you want to join the Founder Institute in Chicago, the deadline is coming up this Sunday. You can apply at the link that's going to be put into the chat, and if you're not in Chicago and you want to apply, it's just fi.co/join. Or if you want to get a firsthand experience of the program, we have a amazing session tomorrow night about the Founder Institute and what it's like to be in the program, which Jason will be hosting. It's going to be at Venture Shot, and you can sign up for the event with the link that will also be pasted into the chat. So without further ado, let me call our director on screen from Chicago. Jason, are you there? Hopefully he'll pop on in a second. I see he's muted. And then I'll let him talk about his background when he comes on. We have over 50 submissions today to pitch. You'll be pitching— there he is, Jason. Hello. And we'll get to as many as we can. And by the way, we have a few queued up already, but if you want to pitch, you can do so by type going to the bit.ly link, bit.ly/chicago_hotseat, all lowercase, bit.ly/chicago_hotseat. Jason, why don't you give a couple minutes or a brief introduction of yourself, and then we'll give some pitching advice and jump right into pitches from people in the Chicago area and beyond. Great.

Well, I've been working with entrepreneurs the past 15 years in a number of capacities. Been an advocate, a resource, and a community builder. Worked with a lot of tech startups and had the opportunity to bring the Founder Institute to Chicago. We've now had 6 semesters, 60 graduates have gone through the program. As Addeo already mentioned, a couple of our graduates, it's been a really exciting chapter in Chicago. We have a lot of activity happening here in Chicago, so it was really a great time to launch the semester in Chicago. There's a ton of startup activity and excitement here in Chicago, so I'm excited.

How many—

you have a lot of mentors, right? Like 50, something like that?

So we have 30 to 35 every semester, but we have more than 50 total that we've worked with over the last 5 years.

Right, in the pool, and then you— yes, what ends up happening is you'll— if you have a class and let's say there's some biotech people in it, you might get one of the mentors that has a little more biotech background, or if it's more B2B, you might bring in one of the mentors that's more B2B. So your pool is great. I mean, some of the mentors from Chicago I consider great friends and supporters, and they're just lovely, lovely people.

Excellent.

Yeah, alright, well, let's give some pitching advice. I can kick off with some small things and then we'll get some feedback as well from Jason and just dive right in. So if you want to pitch, we'll talk about how to do so in a moment, but again, it's bit.ly/chicago_hotseat. My team will review it next door and queue them up for us to see. So my first thing on pitching that I say to everybody, and this is useful, and we'll sort of talk through this too as we get some specific examples, is If you can't explain your business in a sentence, you're very unlikely to be able to explain it in a minute. And if you can't explain your business in a minute, you can't explain it in 5 minutes. And to some people that's counterintuitive, but if you've been working with startups for as long as Jason and I have, this is a truism. Because your business is not that complicated, candidly, right? And so a lot of people are like, but no, no, no, I need more time to go into this and to go into that. At the end of the day, you're helping a customer solve a problem. So we've created a Mad Libs. You can go to fi.co/madlibs. Essentially, it's a fill-in-the-blank for you to craft that one sentence pitch. And essentially goes, you know, my company, insert the name of your company, is developing, and then you insert what you're developing, a website, a mobile app, a web and mobile app, hardware, software, something of that nature, to help, and then you're helping an audience. This is your customer. Now your customer is easy to determine, it's the person that pays you. So if you're like, who is my customer? I can help you. If they give you money, they are your customer. So a lot of people are like, well, I have users, but if the users don't pay you, but let's say advertisers do, then the advertisers are your customers. So you're helping your customer solve a problem with secret sauce. The problem needs to be something that's easily understood and identifiable and believable that that, that customer has, and the secret sauce is your deep level of knowledge or thinking around the problem that says, you know, I'm helping them with this problem and I'm solving it in this unique way, and it's unique because I put a lot of thought into it and this is how I'm solving it. So your secret sauce demonstrates mastery of the domain that you're solving the customer problems in. I can go on a little bit, but Jason, do you have anything you want to add on pitching?

Sure, just keep it simple. You don't have to tell us more than we need to know. Make it easily understandable. So I wouldn't use, you know, buzzwords or hyperbole language. Just keep it very simple so we understand exactly what you're doing. You don't have to Give us 2 minutes, just give us a minute or less, ideally less than a minute.

And one sentence is even good.

Exactly. We just did an ideation boot camp last week, same type of thing. Some people went way over and you lose people very quickly. The idea is to get someone to understand what you're doing, to have a further conversation. You don't have to tell us everything in the first sentence.

Yeah, so that's a great point. Let me, let me just eschew that or echo it or reinforce it. So if you say 5 words and I want to meet with you, you have succeeded, right? So really, you know, your job as an entrepreneur is to present the least amount of information and the least amount of substance to get someone engaged to meet with you or learn more. So again, if you're like, yeah, I'm building the Snapchat for adults, and people are like, oh, I'd love to learn more, done, right? The Snapchat for adults, 4 words. If the 4 words works and gets you that next meeting or gets you someone asking, well, tell me more, You've succeeded. Now, I don't actually think Snapchat for adults is a particularly good idea. I don't think it's a bad idea, but the point isn't the what, it's the how you present it. And if you can say less and get that engagement, then say less and get the engagement. Agree about using adjectives and buzzwords, try and avoid them. You're not the best Snapchat for the— your first Snapchat for adults, you're just Snapchat for adults, right? So keep it simple, I agree 100%. Now what we'll be doing now is we're going to give people about 30 seconds to pitch, you know, we can get my little timer going here, and you know, you'll have a chance to speak, we're going to do an audience poll as well, we're going to rate the pitches 1 to 5, No 3s are allowed, so you can rate anything 1 to 5 but not a 3, and then we'll start giving you some feedback on how to improve. So do you have anything you want to add, Jason, or we'll start?

Well, just 1 and 2 are— 1 is low and 5 is high.

That's good.

Just to make sure people know.

Very good, very good. And I would add, let's— fair enough, let's be even more specific. 1 means like you got a lot of work to do. 2 means it's okay, but you need to improve maybe the pitch or the business. 4, because there's no 3s, means it's good and I'm interested in learning more. And 5 is I would definitely take the meeting, even consider investing. So again, My team is reminding me to explain why no 3s. So we found out that if you do 1 to 5 and you leave in the 3, a lot of people migrate to voting for 3 when the business is really a 2 or a 4, because 3 is a safe number, right? Ah, it's in the middle, I could say 2, I could say 4, so I'll just say 3, I don't know. Right? But if you force people to polarize their view, good and bad, you actually get a much more honest assessment of the pitch. And the numbers bear that out in that we've studied analysis before when we had 3s, and then we took the 3s out and we studied analysis afterwards. When we removed the 3s, the rating of mentors and peers was much more predictive on the success of that company going forward. Okay, so 1 to 5, no 3s, we're going to get going here. We're going to call someone on screen, Lavanya, and I don't want to ruin your last name by mispronouncing it. Can you come on screen? Lavanya, are you there?

Yeah, I'm here. Great.

Welcome. How do you say your last name?

Saripalli.

Saripalli, okay. Well, I would have done a terrible job, so I got it now that you've said it. Are you ready to pitch? Because I'm ready to hear. 30 seconds. Okay, you ready?

Yes.

Okay, I'm seeing some technical problems, but it seems to be coming through. All right, start pitching, and you got 30 seconds.

Okay, our solution is a precision medicine solution to reduce overall cost by early detection of cancer using predictive analytics.

Okay, that's it.

Yes.

Alright, so that was about 15 seconds, so that was very short. So let's do the rating. Jason, are you there? So I'm going to hold my hands up. So another tradition of the Founder Institute is rather than me saying, "It's like a number," and then Jason saying it's a number. What we like to do is hold our hands up so that Jason's score doesn't influence mine, and then maybe Jason, in this case, you can go first and I'll go second. Okay, on 3, and this goes for you in the audience too, you can vote as well. 1, 2, 3. Okay, see, Jason's nicer than I am. Jason, do you want to go first?

Sure, I heard— I had a hard time hearing a little about it, but you did explain what you were doing. You explained some of the secret sauce with predictive analytics, but I didn't hear who your target audience was, so I wasn't sure who you were trying to sell this to. That was one of the biggest missing pieces that I wasn't quite sure who you're focused on.

Yeah, so I would— so look, I would recommend— so follow the format as it's like— so I think it's an interesting idea. Some feedback is it's a cool idea, but you know, to be safe, follow the format. The format is, is You'll never get it wrong with the format, you may mess the format up, which you did. So you said our solution, okay, so, and then predictive analytics and cancer. The first question, I didn't really understand either what it was and that's why I gave it a 1. So what are you taking, let's start with some basics. Who are you selling this to?

We are selling— there are two stakeholders. One would be the actual patient and the other would be the physician.

Alright, well that's already a problem. I would just pick one because there's very different regulatory and other challenges. I would just pick one. We're selling it to patients or we're selling it to doctors. That's like night and day. When you're selling it to doctors— in fact, I was just talking with someone in this field, I think yesterday. Was it yesterday? Yeah, Fourth of July, I had him at my house and his wife, and he's doing something different but somewhat similar space, health, and when you sell to doctors you have a collections issue because you're usually based on insurance and so that can be very, very different than selling to patients directly. Do you have any questions about the target or anything you want to add, Jason, about the target market because then I have some other things.

Not— I agree with that. Pick one. Pick the one that is most likely to start paying you first.

Well, and the easiest to get money from.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay. Regardless if it's— just to give you a background— this— regardless if it's a patient or a physician, ultimately patient is paying for it because as of now when we speak insurance doesn't cover any gene analytics, gene testing.

Well, okay, so let's go into— that was my next set of questions. So first of all, then your customer is the patient, by the way, just to be absolutely clear. If the only person who can pay for it is the patient, then the patient is your customer. Now, my second question, and I don't know, do you have— maybe you just brought this up. It's gene analytics. You said— I didn't gather that. Do you have to do a— how do you get the thing to do the predictive analytics off of? Do you do the gene testing? Do you rely on a third party? How does that happen?

For now, we're relying on third parties.

Like 27andMe, or is that right? Is it—

23andMe.

23andMe, thank you.

Yeah, that is 23andMe. There's a good start, and there's another one coming out of Duke University, so there are 3 of them. So we are using there as a third party, and they send us a file, so, and then that's where our process starts. We gather all the information from the file that they send us.

So the patient has to go and get an independent third-party diagnostic done. So, you know, that wasn't clear at all either, and, you know, that makes it really hard. The audience looks like they're giving you a 2, by the way. We're collecting in the ratings. These would have been really— so taking a step back, so I'm developing a website, right, because I'm— is it a website or is it a mobile— what is it? Like how does a patient get the data? Do they go to the web or do they go to the doctor? How do they receive the information?

Okay, they go to the website and—

All right, so you're developing a website. So they go to a website and so you're developing a website to help— now you're helping patients, but you're helping patients that have a risk of cancer? Like who— I don't go around being like, damn, I need to get my Cancer test done, so what is the cue that a patient might have to want to take the test?

So we—

You're cutting out there. All right, well, rather than let you answer because—

not a patient, my mom, her family.

You're cutting out, so I'm just gonna— we're gonna mute you and I'll just take some educated guesses in order just to give you some feedback. So, you know, let's say that you're a patient, right, so you're developing a website to have patients that are have been warned that they are at risk of cancer, of certain types of cancer, and you list them in your written pitch— breast, lung, colon, or prostate cancer, right?— to have early detection of a potential tumor by taking a third-party test data and providing a rich set of data analytics for a reasonable cost, right. Now, you know, that's a better pitch, right, but it still brings up a lot of questions, and I might, you know, one of the big questions in this particular business is your go-to-market strategy. So how do you bring this to market? So I might say, you know, your secret sauce here could be one of two things. It could either be explaining a little bit more about your methodology, or it could be your go-to-market strategy. Right now, considering that, you know, I would say go-to-market strategy in health is really, really challenging. Bringing medical diagnostic tools to market is challenging. So my guess is your go-to-market strategy is going to be through the doctor practitioner. So unlocking or unpacking that a little bit, you know, by providing doctors with free tests or, you know, some sort of way to engage doctors in recommending your product to their patients. Jason, do you want to add anything? Lavanya?

Yeah, no, I agree with what your, your information or your guidance. I wouldn't use any words that are really difficult to understand. You know, some people may not know what predictive analytics are. So just keep it simple and talk more about the business model and how you plan on delivering your solution. But I thought, Dale, your comments were good. So I think you hit hit it all, or most of it.

Great. Well, alright, let's go on. Well done. You know, 1 plus 2 plus 2 from the audience, you have a total score, we added up, to 5. Abdul is next. Abdul, are you there? Yeah. Hello, sir. Welcome. So we're excited to hear your pitch. I'm putting you on my main screen. I'm going to reset the timer, so you got 30 seconds. Just tell it like it is. We'd love to hear what you're up to. Thank you. My company, enian technology corporation, is developing a digital wallet in a fob form factor instead of carrying bulky wallets, targeted at consumers aged 18 to 55 and secured by a built-in fingerprint reader or a PIN and chip built-in P90X. Okay, Abdul, excellent. Jason, let's do the scoring again. Audience, remember 1 to 5, 5 is good. You cannot vote a 3. If you vote a 3, that means you're not listening. So I'm going to count to 3, but you can't vote a 3. Okay, 1, 2, 3. You looked at mine first, man.

No, I did— no, I didn't. You just didn't see my fingers.

All right. So 2-4, Jason, do you want to go first?

Sure. I thought you did a really good job following the format. You told us what you're doing. You told us who your target audience was. And you told us some of your secret sauce and how your solution is can actually work. I mean, there's— I think you can refine it some more, but you did a good job with the first pass at this.

Thank you. Yeah, I would agree with that. You know, here's— first off, the name is terrible. Eoinian Technology Corporation. You're building a— so I bought a product called Coin. Okay, let me— Coin. Coin isn't a great name either because search coin in Google, which I'm going to do right now just out of curiosity, and I'm willing to bet that the— yeah, no, actually, oh my God, it was the first. Well, so there's a ton of like coin resellers But actually, the coin technology was the first link. That's pretty crazy. So they totally SEO'd it. But generally speaking, a generic name like coin or butter is not good. But a hard name to remember and pronounce, Aoinian, is not the name for a consumer product. So I agree with Jason, you followed the format very well, but your first problem is you're building a consumer product with a non-consumer product name. Now, because I bought and own a coin, so I'm going to show you my wallet and hopefully I— and there's something that's in here. Called credit cards. What's not in here?

Coin.

Why is the coin card not in there? Because it sucked. It literally didn't work anywhere. Now most credit cards have the chip, right? The chip right there. I don't know if you guys can see it. What that presents, most of the digital readers enforce you to insert the chip The coin doesn't have the chip simulation, so you can't use it in half the places I pay for stuff. So at first I used it, I used it, I used it, and then it got to the point where it worked in 1 in 5 places. And so what I worry about is, I love the idea, which is why I bought the coin, but What you're seeing is the credit cards are just building in greater security to the cards themselves, which would make a fob-based thing less likely to work in lots of places. Then as a result, even though I bought the coin, I set it up, and my goal was to try and use it, I don't even carry it with me anymore. I don't know, and I made that decision like last weekend. You want to add?

That's good to know, because I was going to buy one of those, so now I know not to buy it.

Yeah, okay, good.

Yeah, I agree with your— the competitive differentiation is probably not— it's not here yet. So I agree with Dale's comments. And the name, of course, is something that, you know, if you have— you could have a DBA, something that is consumer-focused, but I don't think there's enough differentiation in in your pitch or your hot seat to really get someone super interested, because there's a ton of digital currency or fintech out there that, you know, would surpass this. So, right, and there's—

and also, yeah, sorry, Jason.

Yeah, the other thing I'll mention is the 18 to 55, that's such a wide range. I would— that's too large of a target market. At least you want to start with a much smaller subset so you're very focused and figure out who is your customer, what, who is, who has a need for this, you know, what demographic. But go ahead, David.

Yeah, I could see. So back to that point, Jason, and I agree with you a lot on that. So here's, let me give you some thoughts. So I think I kicked the chair a little bit there. Hey everyone, so the fob is an interesting form factor, the thumb or fingerprint to unlock is interesting. By the way, Coin has a little thing and you press a code, so in order to unlock the Coin it either needs to be near your smartphone with Bluetooth or you can click on it, a code, and unlock it. So that technology is out there today. There was another company that is even more advanced than that in a card form factor that's coming out. What I was going to say, I wanted to just— the fob, I like the fob, I like the fingerprint reader, but maybe there's like a market of like kids, and when I say kids, that's like 18 to— I would even say maybe it's young working professionals. and this could be something they use to pay at the bar, right? Because if it's fingerprint, you don't lose it. So you really target like the bar market with it or something like that and make it a cool thing for younger working professionals to use when going out at night. They can tap it, they lose it, it doesn't matter because, you know, especially in cities, you know, people get a little toasty, they can forget their credit card at a bar. This way, you know, they just tap it and remember it. So the other way to look at this is that maybe there's a certain market, because you have what's called a hammer and nail problem. I know we got to speed it up here, the audience gave you a 2 by the way. You have a hammer which is the fob payment tech, the nail is the audience or the problem that you're trying to solve. So if you were to say, hey, I'm building a really cool payment fob used to pay bar bills by young working professionals. And it comes in all different colors with blinky lights and this and that, so you can be the cool guy paying at the bar, I'd be like, okay, maybe that's a viable thing, and then you can expand from there. Okay, let's move on though. My team's asking me to speed it up. Good job, Abdul, the best one so far. Boede, I think, Boede? Boede. Boede, hey there, welcome, how are you? Doing well, how are you? I am very good. Go, you got 30 seconds.

Great, thank you. My name is Buedi Sobaton, I'm the co-founder of Ajay Express, and Ajay Express is an ethnic grocery delivery app seeking to address the problem of accessibility for millennials and first, second generation immigrants in acquiring their cultural groceries.

Okay, how do you pronounce that? Oya Express? Oja, Oja Express. Okay, Jason, I'm pulling you on, so we're going to count to 3. 1, 2, 3. All right, cheers. Do you want me to go first?

Sure.

Okay. Very— so I think the name isn't that bad. It's short and sweet, so that was good. I think the target market was good too, ethnic grocery deliveries. The problem with the on-demand— so here's where you didn't— so The on-demand economy really hasn't worked that great. There's some exceptions like I think there's a big one in New York whose name I'm escaping right now that's doing pretty good on the grocery delivery front.

FreshDirect.

FreshDirect, yeah, thank you. They're doing pretty good, so this is a smart niche, but the question is like Are you going to need to use FreshDirect and this, or are you going to just use this? I felt like there's definitely a need, right, and there's definitely an opportunity because you can't walk into most grocery stores and get a lot of the ethnic products you need to make Indian dishes, African dishes, European dishes. So if you have all that stuff, that's awesome. You also, sourcing it, would they need to buy it? For me, there were just too many unanswered questions, and this is a unit economics business where your cost of acquiring the customer has got to be really low. You've got to have a big lifetime value, and I didn't— if I were doing your pitch, I would be like, and you know, there would be some sort of way that you would weave in that people need this so badly they'd be willing to pay a premium, which then means that you could have a higher cost of customer acquisition. So for example, if you said something like, we're doing ethnic grocery delivery for products that often take let a family, you know, hours to find, with one click they'll be delivered to their door, allowing us to charge a 20% premium. That drives right into your unit economics and suddenly that makes the business more attractive to me. Jason, your feedback?

Yeah, and I may miss this, but I would really focus on what ethnic markets are you going to start with. Even narrow your focus even more. And I wasn't quite sure also enough of the differentiation because some of these other delivery companies could go into the ethnic markets. I wasn't quite sure what the secret sauce or the uniqueness of what you're trying to do is. And some other people— why aren't other people doing this now? So I just wasn't sure the connection between what you're going to be doing with the customer focus on what someone else could do with the customer. So I didn't know if it, if it's the delivery, you know, connection in the community that you have possibly that sets you apart from some of the other delivery services where they're not going to work with those companies. I just wasn't sure the really that, that what ties you in with the community.

And if you can get such rare products that you can charge a premium, right? And it's not likely that FreshDirect or another grocery service will have it, you're differentiated in a better place. All right, awesome. Well done, Boyede. You know, not as well as Abdul, but ahead of our first, uh, Lavanya. All right, let's go on to our next one. Douglas. Douglas Miller. Mr. Miller, are you there? I'm looking for you. Yes, there you are, sir. Hi.

Yes, hi, how you doing?

Handsome young man, are you ready to go? Yes. Go!

Oh, okay. Hi, my name is Douglas Miller and I am the founder of ASCEND, the Insider Social Network. My company, Weblink Technologies, has developed a new job board software which helps job seekers access the 80% of hidden jobs in the job market. We have developed an automated piece of software which combines social data and job data together in real time and creates a network of recruiters and HR professionals which we call Insiders. And we give job seekers access to this network via a digital push-to-call feature which allows them to make connections on the inside of any company that has been reviewed by our network.

Okay, you went over, that was like 49 seconds, but we won't penalize you. Señor Jason, are you ready?

I'm ready.

Uno, dos, tres. I'm like, ah, I crushed my hand. So it's 1.5, like 2. You gave it a 4? Yeah, I was— it wasn't— okay, I'll let you go first since you were more positive. I mean, I like your spirit, but Jason?

Yeah, I mean, I was generous. I do think you said too much, but it did help. It did help with explaining what you're doing. I mean, I know companies or entrepreneurs building products like this, so I I understand what you're trying to do, and you did provide some good detail on how you're going to do it. I would refine the target market some more. I mean, the 80% hidden job market is, you know, could be a big market, you know, but I don't know how large of a market that is and really who you're focused on. Not quite sure what the differentiation is as well, but you did do a good job following the format. You just went, you just gave too much information. For this first pitch, but I was generous because I liked what you said.

Okay, I was leaning towards generosity because you had a good vibe, and a lot of pitching is like your vibe, right? Like, what are you— you went long, so that's bad, but I was— here's the thing. First, you have Weblink Technologies and Ascend. I have no idea what's going on there. Is it Weblink Technologies or is it Ascend? I don't know. I don't think you know. A new type of job board. There's no such thing as new. I guarantee you nothing anyone on this call is doing is new. Now some of it may be a new application of X, Y, and Z, but I would just stay away from using the word new because if there's someone else who's doing it already, then it's definitely not new, and my guess is in the recruiting and HR space someone doing everything. So name the thing one thing, get rid of new. Now everything Jason said I 100% agree with. Here's, it just was all over the map. So you had a, so generally you had this push to call for recruiter and HR features, which you're monetizing vis-à-vis the job seeker, right? But in the employment world, generally the job poster pays, right? So what you're essentially saying is like, I'm going to help the job seeker, and that would lead you to believe that the job seeker is going to pay. But generally speaking, you don't pay as a job seeker to get a job. Right, so that part of it was confusing, right? So you're building a tool for the side of the market that traditionally doesn't pay. So really, there's where I couldn't get beyond a 2, and that's why it was a 1.5, because you're basically saying I'm going to help someone who doesn't pay for stuff to get jobs, but they don't pay for the things, and that's why I was like, then how the hell do you monetize it, right? and I'm sure you have some ideas there. And then, you know, this push to call, I don't know if I would want, like, so if the people who normally pay for it are the recruiters and HR people, I don't want a bunch of people on the internet, like, pushing to call me, right? Hey, I'm looking for a job. I'm like, uh, I don't know, man, like, I'll call you if I think you're good. Don't call me, I'll call you. So there was another disconnect. Now I think the idea of surfacing the hidden jobs, as Jason said, is a great idea, but then how do you monetize that? Who's your target audience, and how do you make that a win-win experience for the person recruiting and the person seeking a job? It all fell down for me there. That's why I couldn't get past really a 2, and barely a 2 at that. You got a 4 from the audience, you're the highest so far. Karen Moon, let's go on. Mr. or Mrs. Moon, are you there? Karen? Karen? Get through as much of these as we can. I see a Karen Lee, there you go. But we can't hear you. There we go. Hi there, Karen, how are you? Maybe? Going once. Karen, I can see your mouth moving. Can anyone— Jason, can you hear her?

No, I can't.

Okay, we'll try and come back to Karen. Brad, Brad Arlan. Brad, are you there, sir?

I'm here.

Okay, we're going to come back to you. Brad, let's see if we can pull you on. There you are, we can hear you too. Another handsome gentleman, welcome. Thank you, thank you.

All right, thanks Adeo, thanks Jason, thanks to the whole Founder Institute crowd for listening. My name is Bradley Arlen and my company is OneMe and we're developing a data usage-based cloud platform that helps startups and Fortune 1000 software developers simplify the creation of personalized and intelligent features for apps, websites, bots, and connected devices by providing access to an aggregated view of a customer's self-managed and authorized personal data. So this would be his financial, health, career, family data. So the customer logs in using any authentication account like Google or Facebook or LinkedIn, and that data is provided to the business.

Your time is up.

Alright, I struggle with this thing so much.

Alright, give me feedback. On 3, uno, dos, tres. Man, Jason, you're in nice mode today. I'll go first on this one. Okay, this one was literally all over the map. You're helping, I mean, I know what you're trying to do, but your pitch was literally all over the map. You're helping small companies and big companies customize with all this data and de de de, it's just like all over the map. Right, so it's basically when you say something, you can't be everything to everyone, right? You have to be one thing to one person, right? So what you're trying to do is get basically semi-private user data available to companies so they can customize the user experience. Through privacy and authentication, you know, or with privacy and authentication.

Data that's solely managed by the user.

Yeah, so the problem with that right now is, okay, this is a truism for everyone here. There's something called marginal utility. Today, There's something called retargeting, and with retargeting, I get tons of data, and I don't have to do anything. It's the retargeting advertising platforms know that I search for a sponge on Amazon, and then everywhere I go, it's like, sponge, sponge, sponge. It's like, whoa, that's kind of weird. So back to the point. You want to have something that provides real value, right, so, and to a specific person. So today it can be done with retargeting, so your marginal utility, the ability to be better than what I can get on the market, has to be way, way better. So let me quickly re-pitch it, and Jason, maybe Don't give feedback on his pitch, give feedback on my pitch. My company, OneMe, is developing a customization software that allows large marketers at large companies to tailor their consumer-facing messaging around items that users care about because the users set their preferences explicitly in a private and secure way. Again, that's not perfect, but what would you 1 to 5 that?

Maybe a 4. Yeah, I'm between a 2 and a 4, but I'll do a 2 because I think it's better, but it's still a little hard to understand what your business model is around that. It's definitely clearer than what you did, Brad, and I'm not sure if it's as targeted. I don't think it goes deep enough with the target customer. I think it needs to be more refined.

Right, so if you were to say, let me give you, let's be more specific about that. So maybe we say like, you're helping marketers at Fortune 1000 consumer product companies. So now you're already narrowing the field, or Fortune 500 consumer product companies. Tailor their, you know, and again, I would be very specific about what you want there out, because you're helping them solve a problem. So what's the problem that they're having? They're having problems customizing their stuff. I don't think that's a problem. They're like, damn, how do we customize our stuff more? Really, their problem is selling more, right? So customize their messages to increase sales. that's a better problem, essentially increasing sales. And then if you can be more specific, maybe it's offering the right blend of products to increase the final sale to consumers, something like that. So it's got to be— here, please stop— a really believable problem to your audience, otherwise it won't work. There needs to be some work done there, but it's getting there. Anything you want to add, Jason? I hogged that one.

And then Karen, we're going to try you again. Yeah, go ahead, Brad.

So the problem I have is I feel as I have two sides to this business. I've got one side where I want the individual, instead of having all their personal data loaded into Google and Facebook and LinkedIn, to have one central view of their data and that they have one login.

Forget that, forget that. No one, like, are they going to pay you? No, they don't pay you, if they don't pay you, you can't care about them, right?

Which is why I've been focusing on the company side who uses the platform to access this data.

Right, all you care about when you're running a company is Who pays me and are they happy? Right? So if they're not paying you, then, you know, don't worry about them.

Okay.

But I do agree that— so Jason, I'm sorry, what were you going to say?

No, I just— I don't think I have much more to add. Just be very simple and, excuse me, focus, as Adèle said, on who's paying you and Don't use too much extra, too many extra words in there to explain what you're doing. Should be very simple. And so you have some technology language in there, not bad, but you have a little bit too much in there. So just keep it very, very simple.

All right, audience gave you a 2. So, so far the winner is Douglas, but we got possibly, let's see, Karen's coming up, which she heard Douglas is in the lead. Karen, can you talk? Karen, I see you. I see your mouth moving. All right, Karen is unfortunately suffering from a common phenomenon when pitching, which is technical difficulties. When you go into a VC or an angel, I assure you your pitch will be thwarted many times over. Sorry, Karen, we're going to have to take you offline. What I'll do though is I'm going to read your pitch, which I know is a big faux pas because it's super boring to hear me read, but Karen's pitch is the Divine Feminine app is a computer app to help women find, start, share, and promote women's circles and other events both in their local area And online, filling a very strong niche that has slowly been building the past 35 years. Okay, so there we go. So we can vote on Karen's thing without her present. I know I'm not a woman, so that was a little weird, but on 3, 1, 2, 3. Okay. Jason, you go first because that's your first one. I feel like you've— the virgin one, if you will.

Well, I'm not quite sure what this business is doing. Also, the word app is used twice. I don't think app needs to be in the name of the business because that's the product that you're— or that's a delivery mechanism. Wasn't sure what the niche is that you're focusing on. It wasn't quite clear, and I'm not sure even what your business model is. You're promoting events, but I'm not quite sure how you're making money off of this. So I don't know if there's an online and offline portion that you're bringing together, but it just wasn't clear what you're doing. And I think also you can be very— you want to be more focused on your target audience. You just mentioned women, but it doesn't give me any details and who you're focusing on and what the problem is that you're really addressing.

Right. So like women as a market is way too broad. It's literally half the population. So is it older women, younger women, working professional women, new mother women? You know, like you got to narrow it down and you got to narrow down a lot. Like, so I'll give you an example. There's Girls in Tech and Women 2.0. 2.0, those are two female-driven organizations. Girls in Tech tends to be more women employees in technology businesses. Women 2.0 tends to be more female entrepreneurs, right, less employees. And even there, so that's a pretty defined niche audience, and then what they do is it's also an app, if you will, but it's more like they create, they run events or meetups and they run them all around the world. So, you know, are you, because you find, start, share, promote women's circles, again, like, so are you going to, so let me give you the big, it seems like you have a bunch of big decisions. What type of women are you helping? Right, by demographic segment, by job, etc. Number 2, maybe it's new mothers or whatever, number 2, are you going to be the platform where you are the— where the events are with you, or are they like, I have a woman's circle for moms in Palo Alto, so I'm going to go on to this app and it's going to help me organize what I already have. Or are you saying, hey, I'm working with working mothers and I'm going to make a working mother circle here, a working mother circle there, some will be virtual, some will be in person. So are you sort of pushing your events out or are you just helping them run their own events? And then if you're helping them run their own events, versus running your— doing your desired type of event, then you're running into some big problems because there are huge platforms, Eventbrite, Meetup, Facebook, that are out there that do a really good job. So then what Jason was saying is like, how do you differentiate against the thousands of platforms out there to do this today? There are blogs and then there are the really big ones that like Meetup and Facebook, as I mentioned, and Eventbrite. So how do you differentiate? Is it because you're focused on a demographic? So more questions than answers, which is why it got a little low scoring. So we're going to announce the winners and then maybe give some final feedback. So it looks like I'm reading here, first place goes to Douglas Miller with Ascend. He has some work to do, but it was the best one of the day between Jason, myself, and the audience. In second place with Abdul, again between Jason, myself, and the audience, and I both think they're interesting businesses with some works to tweak. Any final remarks, Jason, before we go?

I would just You know, study the startup Mad Lib. Anytime you want to talk to someone about your idea, use this as the format. You don't want to tell them too much, just get them interested for the next meeting. So it's thousands of people have used this Mad Lib and it works very well. So I would encourage you to study that and really focus your pitch around that one sentence.

It's really an amazing tool. And yeah, and don't be discouraged. It's super hard. I mean, you know, I was doing a presentation for the— I'm like one of the best people at pitching assistants in the world, and when I have to pitch the Founder Institute, I feel a lot of times I'm like, crap, I'm making mistakes I know I tell other people not to do. So I literally have to go through my own work on my own company and like Fix it because we all get excited, we all are overzealous, we all want to say we're the best, the first, but you have to overcome that natural tendency and try to do the best that you can to narrow it down. Remember, applications are due in Chicago this Sunday, and tomorrow night Jason's hosting an event. You can have more time practicing there and discuss your ideas at that time. Thanks everyone for coming in. We had a great crowd of about 50-ish people. Have a lovely evening, and I hope you come out tomorrow and learn more about FI. Thanks everyone.

Bye, thank you.