FI Waterloo Fall 2019 Demo Day Pitches

So as part of the rationale, a lot of people ask me, you know, what's in it for me, why do I do it? I think first of all, it's a great testament to watching these entrepreneurs create something magical in the course of just 13 weeks. It's also a great program for people who want to be entrepreneurs and do things such as participate in a startup weekend, which is like a hackathon. We have one at TechStars called Startup Weekend. There are many others. Usually at the end of those startup weekends or hackathons, people have a high level of energy, and then they have the realization that on Monday morning they have to go back to their jobs. Founder Institute is the next logical step for people who want to launch tech companies before perhaps they are fully aware of what company it is and how to do it, and perhaps before they have full teams. But we make them incorporate, we make them work hard.

For anyone who has ever tried to start a business, you know it's lonely. Having access to a network of new founders that are starting at the same time as you is invaluable. It gives you a chance to be able to talk, get excited, brainstorm, and really just make that momentum, make it happen, and make it a reality.

The Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. Over the past decade, we've helped over 4,000 startups raise close to $1 billion and build some of the world's fastest-growing tech companies. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with chapters across 65 countries, the Founder Institute's mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology companies worldwide.

It's been inspirational tonight. So many amazing ideas, concepts that have been brought to life. As you saw and heard, there's some serious skills, amazing education there. So we can, you know, go and get a job anywhere, but we've decided that we wanted to be entrepreneurs.

Hi, I am Andy. I have bachelor's in computer science, postgrad in enterprise software development. I have over a decade of experience of building and scaling apps for startups. I worked on some of the most high-traffic platforms in Canada, from Hockey Canada to Gulfstream Aerospace, you name it. I'm here today to present you my new company, Cleanbee, the better way to a cleaner home. Now, let me ask you guys, how many of you think hiring a private driver is a luxury? Or owning a smartphone is a luxury? How about getting a cleaner? 10 years ago, all of these would be luxury. 2020, not so much. With increasingly busier lifestyles, we have less and less time to maintain a tidy home. And a third of North Americans spend 4 hours cleaning per week. And if you look at the families more than 5 members, the numbers come to 15 hours. With this massive shift of culture towards experiences, now is the right time that we take on this chore that we love to hate: cleaning. To make money on Airbnb or Uber, you need a house or a car. And many people, like newcomers to Canada or students, they can't really make that kind of upfront investment. So what can they do? Also, cleaners working for established cleaning companies, if they want to pick up some extra work on the side, they don't really have any options. Me being an immigrant myself, before I started my career as a software engineer, I took a cleaning job, and it was the hardest, thing to do. There have been times when I didn't even get paid. So my background as an engineer and my experience with cleaning made me develop this app called Cleanbee. Cleanbee connects homeowners to vetted and insured cleaners on demand. For house owners, it's simple. They have a messy house and they want it to be cleaned. Once they sign up on the app, they just enter their accommodation details and they post a job, and then they can go around about their day doing what they're supposed to do. For cleaners, they show up at the arranged time, they tidy up your place, and they leave. No fuss, no contracts, no mandatory weekly fee, simple on-demand cleaning. All the payments and transactions are taken care by Cleanbee. To ensure the quality of service, we have a training program where amateur cleaners can sign up and learn tips and tricks for quality cleaning. Also, seasoned cleaners can sign up and learn the new trends in the cleaning industry. After we have built some partnerships, with cleaning product manufacturers, we'll be also able to give the cleaning products to our cleaners with discounted rates. Security is obviously a huge concern for anyone letting a stranger into their house. And for that reason, we put all our cleaners through rigorous background checks. We have also developed this feature for livestreams And we are getting these pouches that go across the cleaners, that go across the body, and cleaners can basically have their phones inside and a homeowner could monitor them live while they're working. Every cleaner is also equipped with a liability insurance. What that means is if there's a breakage or a theft, Cleanbee got you covered. The revenue. So the average price of cleaning on Cleanbee is $59, which is half the price of any of our competitors. We take 25% of transaction and we charge $79 for the training program. The purpose of training program is mostly to filter out cleaners who are not serious about the job. We only want serious cleaners to be onboarded on the app. And then profits from sale of supplies can come later. Market is huge. It's a $100 billion market worldwide. Half of that is in North America, and Canada accounts for $8 billion. The one point to note here is The fastest growing customer base in this market is young professionals who have figured out that time is so important, and they don't want to waste their time on day-to-day chores like cleaning, and they're willing to pay for it. We have a number of competitors, but there is no direct competitor to Cleanbee. All these companies are basically cleaning companies that have an app, or they're not focused on cleaning itself. So how are we different? We are on demand. So all our rivals, to order a cleaning from our rival, you have to schedule cleaning weeks in advance, while we do it whenever you want to. Also, our competitive prices, both with homeowners and with cleaners, gives us an edge. We charge you half of our cleaners and we pay twice to our cleaners. There are no mandatory commitments. You don't have to pay a mandatory weekly fee if you don't need the cleaning. So we have studied a couple of other businesses who have had the same timeline, for example, Ritual. So what we are planning to do is launch it in one building in downtown. How that helps us is it will help us to iron out all the quirks with the process, fix the bugs with the app, and then we want to grow organically from one building to another building, a block to a block, and take over the city. So applying the same process, we have, uh, we have made some projections, and we want to get to $660K MRR, monthly recurring revenue, by 2023. But this also means we can take the same process and we can apply it to any city in the world that has the same population per unit density as Toronto, which means you can replicate the same process in Vancouver, Chicago, New York, and so on. I have an amazing team of advisors. Emre Bishop, who is a well-known name in Toronto startup space, He has founded and co-founded multiple companies. I have Vapov, who's a senior manager at Salesforce, and Wally, who's Walter, who has created multiple Twitter and Insta accounts that has thousands of followers. We're looking for $300K. It's most— this will mostly go towards hiring standby cleaners, when we launch, and chunk of it will go towards marketing and advertising. We are Clean Bee. Thank you so much for your time. The better way to a cleaner home.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Olga, and I have both a PhD in and passion for innovative digital finance, which is why I created my company, Bounce. So whether we realize it or not, we are constantly mitigating risks in our day-to-day lives. It's the reason why some of you put on a seatbelt when you got into the car today, or put on a helmet when you get on a bike. Now, the reason we do this is be— because unchecked risk, when it's realized, has massive consequences. It could mean lost income for years or even months. It could also mean unexpected bills, and for many families, that could put them into financial devastation. There's currently a seismic shift going on, which some call the rise of the gig economy or the future of work. More and more people every day are moving from full-time employment to non-standard work, contract, gig, Now, the reason this is really relevant for risk is because a lot of these people are losing access to benefits. And usually, a part of your benefits package is access to the really critical financial products that you need to manage your own risk, such as insurance. I spent the last few months speaking to hundreds of these workers, asking them, "Why aren't you yourself going out and getting these financial products that you really need?" to manage your own risk. And a lot of people tell me the same thing: insurance is expensive, it's confusing, and it's really hard to find. If we don't address this problem, by 2030, more than 76 million individuals in North America will not have access to the financial tools they need to manage risk. 76 million. This is a crisis. But every crisis is equally an opportunity for innovation, which is why I created my company, Bounce. We are a risk mitigation platform for the future of work. How it works: our workers start off by choosing their profession, and based on their profession, they're able to browse the very specific risks that are associated with the type of job that they do. It's much easier for a person to connect to risk than it is for them to connect to really complicated financial products. The other thing that we do is we help to uper— understand the opportunity cost by costing out the risk. So if I'm a photographer and I lose my expensive equipment, I will know that it might cost me $57,000. It doesn't seem so serious then to pay $50 a month for insurance if you understand your opportunity cost. We also help our workers to manage their own risk. We provide some tangible suggestions on how they can do that better, but we also link them to the financial tools that are really help— that can really help them to swallow some of these bigger costs. And They can buy these products directly on our platform and also compare to make sure that they are getting the lowest cost. And we'll also be able to get our workers better costs because we're aggregating, and they'll get a much better rate than if they were to approach the insurance company as one worker. Now, in terms of our competitive advantage, the majority of the insurance industry goes after employees. It's much easier for a broker or insurance company to go to one company with hundreds of workers and basically capture these workers all at once. The customer acquisition cost is much lower. But also, more than anything, the insurance industry wants a really diversified risk pool, which they can get by going to these large companies. There's an emerging class of companies that is starting to go after these nonstandard workers, but usually within very silo product lines. So they might just sell property insurance, for example. What we do is based on the risk profiles of our workers aggregate all the products onto one platform, so our workers don't need to go anywhere else. In terms of our revenue model, we'll get commission on the products sold, and we also have a recurring revenue from the premiums. Our go-to-market. We have segmented out this whole gig economy, and there's two segments within there that we think are really ripe. Currently for, for attraction. And within these segments, we have picked out the workers that are earning more money because they can afford insurance. We're also going after workers such as photographers who just have a much more diversified risk profile. And to find these workers, we're going to go to any of the organizations that are aggregating them. This includes the digital platforms. It also includes some of the associations. We want to be able to give insurance companies that very diversified risk pool, and we want to give these organizations another stream of revenue, so we will be doing revenue shares with them. In terms of our timeline, we're currently building the initial version of our product. We plan to launch early next year. We want to expand into the US and Europe, maybe beyond, And the ultimate goal of Bounce is at some stage for us to introduce a better insurance product to these workers. In terms of our revenue, you'll see a jump around year 2, not only when we start to expand geographically, but start going more aggressively after these other worker segments.

Why me?

This is such a massive issue. I have been working in the breakthrough innovation space for more than a decade, and I've been focusing on the segments that no one else has wanted to touch. If I can launch microcredit to refugees in Uganda or microinsurance to poor farmers in Kenya, there is no reason why I can't do the same to non-standard workers in my own backyard. I am supported by an incredible team. People who not only have the contextual knowledge on insurance, but also have several successful technology exits. And I'm looking to grow that team, so if you know any innovative insurance people, people who can think outside of the box, or strong technical senior-level executives, please let me know. I really enjoyed my time with you tonight. Thank you so much, but I gotta bounce. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Kush. I am the founder and CEO of WellBe, elbow health and wellness. So does this look familiar to you guys? I'm sure. Whenever we have any free time, we're on our laptops or our cell phones texting, typing, clicking away. What we don't realize is that we're putting a lot of pressure on our hands, elbows, and wrists. So we're seeing an increased number of people with carpal tunnel and tennis elbow. You're wondering, "Tennis elbow?" Yes, now it's being called computer elbow, cell phone elbow, and mouse elbow because we're seeing it so much in that demographic and not really tennis players. The problem is millions of people are suffering from pain in their elbows, wrist and hands from carpal tunnel and computer elbow. Not only is this a physical pain, but there is a huge financial burden. It costs the US economy $2 billion per year for 500,000 surgeries in carpal tunnel. That's only 2% of the people that actually even have this condition. This is a huge problem. So why does this all matter to me? Well, growing up, I had a lot of pain in my hands, so naturally I became more inquisitive about anatomy and physiology. I got a degree in kinesiology, and I got my doctorate in chiropractic. In chiropractic school, we learned a lot of different therapeutic techniques. One of them was addressing extremities through massage. So after graduation, I practiced in San Francisco for about a year and a half. A large demographic of my patients were working in the tech industry, And they often came in for carpal tunnel and computer elbow. So I would do this massage technique on them, and they found a lot of relief. And it actually pushed me to create a device that they could use at home. Say hello to Wellbeau. Wellbeau is here to improve your elbow and hand health through an automated health device. We have an app component as well. We have a free app and a premium app with different features. Wellbeau is a simple device. It works by strapping onto your elbow, forearm muscles. And it produces a cross-friction massage by producing a linear motion that causes a compressive force for moments on your extensor and flexor muscles to give you relief so that you can go back to doing whatever it was, probably being on your phone or your laptop. Wobble is portable, effective, and inexpensive. Why now? Well, we know that we're already seeing a huge amount of people with carpal tunnel. Research shows that it's on the rise, and it's not stopping anytime soon. The marketplace that we are in is the workplace wellness, which is a $48 billion marketplace worldwide and $8 billion in the U.S. The part of the market that we are hoping to capture is a conservative number of the people that are going to see their therapist and the cost for those visits, because Wallable is providing an effective therapy at home. Our business model is simple. We're going B2C, B2B, and we will also be generating revenue through our premium mobile app. So how are we gonna do that? We're gonna go directly to our consumers, but we are going B2B in two different ways. Creating an affiliate partnership with other healthcare providers. Being a chiropractor, I have a huge network of therapists that I already have letter of intents with that want to sell this product in their clinics for their patients. And then we also want to go directly to companies that have a lot of workers that are facing these conditions so that they can give this out directly to their workers so they're saving cost. So when we think about these conditions, what do we usually think about? We think about surgery, and we think about healthcare providers and other braces. Yes, surgery and healthcare providers are effective, but they are expensive and they are very— they're not convenient to schedule. There are alternative braces on the market, but they don't have that mechanical component that will provide the therapeutic effect that Wobble will. Yes, we are hardware, and hardware is hard and it is long, but we're excited for that journey. So this year we're really focused on doing our research and creating the best prototype that we can. We will first go directly to our consumers, get enough data, then take that to clinical trials to then go B2B so that we are— so that we can show we are a therapeutic device. We have a great team. Everyone on our team is either from the healthcare, the business side, or the engineering side. We are still looking on— we are still looking to bring on a product developer, so if you'd like to talk, please come on over. Wellbone: portable, convenient, and cost-effective. Thank you.

¡Hola!

Good evening everyone and welcome to Post Avant. Last month, this real banana duct-taped to a wall at Art Basel Miami sold for $120,000. And a few hours later, someone ate it. With headlines like these, it's no wonder art seems confusing. Hi, I'm Lauren. I'm a PhD in art history, formerly from Sotheby's Institute in London, where I was an art professor and advisor to clients building art collections. I created Postavant to help bring clarity to art enthusiasts and collectors with a platform that makes it easy to learn, explore, and collect art. How big of a problem is this? Well, the art market is a $67.4 billion industry. On the high end, you have private dealers who closely handle sales with individual collectors. This market is sealed. On the low end, works sell on e-commerce platforms and directly from artists in your general home office decor market. What we're after is this huge middle sector that's underserved. For example, Banksy's famous Balloon Girl sold in 2006 for 5 figures, and by 2018, it fetched $1.4 million at auction. That's a return of 100x. Postdivon helps new and experienced collectors, many with financial, executive, and professional backgrounds, banks, and law firms looking to collect and invest in art. In fact, blue-chip art outperforms the S&P 500. Right now, there's a massive opportunity. Only 9% of the art market is online. New viewing technologies coupled with comfort purchasing higher-priced items are adding to this growth. Last year, 65% of collectors bought art online, and 52% had never seen the work in person. So why hasn't anyone solved this middle market? Well, simply put, art seems confusing. It's overwhelming trying to figure it out on your own, and traditional offline advisors can only help a handful of clients. At PosteVente, we focus on the customer journey and ease major pain points at every stage. Art enthusiasts and collectors can access training with online dynamic video classes on art history and the art markets led by industry experts. So perhaps you're wondering why this journal is the most important artwork of the 20th century. Courses allow people to learn from the comfort of their own homes or environment, so this is basically because new buyers don't wanna feel intimidated in the gallery or uninformed in the market. Users go on to create profiles and then receive curated art that's selected just for them. So unlike endlessly and aimlessly searching at numbers of galleries and auction houses and art fairs, PosteVente delivers personalized focus. For example, Max adores million-dollar Warhols, so we predict he'll like Banksy. We look at key data points such as medium, style, and price, and identify art that aligns with his interests. In this case, something with a return on investment. Max views his selection and can choose to buy, reserve, or comment. Our immediate feedback loop learns his preferences and helps us predict better matches facilitated by machine learning. On the buy side, we broker deals with galleries and gather information in real time. This means that collectors can finally access quality art online and track multiple artists who are exhibiting around the globe. Our business benefits from two revenue streams. Free content is a key go-to-market strategy that draws people into the platform. This then funnels people to subscribe for classes and matches on a tiered basis. Importantly, we take a transaction fee on the sale as we provide huge value for artists and galleries by showcasing their work to targeted buyers.

¿Qué es?

Okay, so right now we're in the process of acquiring 10 collectors and 10 galleries, and the number of collectors and galleries are our key metrics for traction. By Q4, we're anticipating 75 galleries and 450 collectors, which is actually a drop in the bucket considering there's over half a million galleries globally. Content creation is also underway. We're filming behind the scenes at galleries, artists' studios, with curators, critics, collectors, and advisors to generate content for classes and social media marketing. Our timeline assigns 2020 for creating the classes, acquiring users, gathering data, and building our beta platform. In 2021, we'll refine this for a big launch party at Art Basel Miami. You're all invited. By launch, our revenue projection is $27 million based on 15% month-over-month growth of new customers. My team includes highly experienced art market professionals, a genius coder in New York who's overseeing the tech, and my friend Mike, a successful serial entrepreneur who recently exited. We're looking for 2 strategic investors to help bring the platform to market, and if you're interested in PosteVente, I encourage you to come and speak with me after. And for everyone, I know the art world might seem strange and wonderful, but I encourage you to come and explore. Join PosteVente, sample some classes, and perhaps a few bananas along the way. Thank you.