Founder Showcase: Diversity in VC, Community Building, Why Invest in Startups, and 5 Amazing Pitches

How we doing, everybody? Welcome, welcome, welcome to another resounding and amazing series of the Founders Showcase. It's our very first one of 2023, so welcome everybody into the new year. We've got 4 of these going on throughout the rest of 2023, and, and certainly, uh, this is going to set the tone for everything moving forward But as always, if this is the first time you've been to a Founder Institute event, first time you've been to a Showcase, let us know in the chat. If you are also, if it's been one of the many events that you've attended with Founder Institute, let us know as well. Y'all are always really good at telling us where you're from. But one thing I want to do this year, my name is Martin, if I'm being remiss, Entrepreneur in Residence for Founder Institute. I also serve as our executive director for our Texas chapters. We just kicked off our Austin program yesterday and we're going to be in person again starting tonight downtown. Looking forward to that. And you'll probably see some of our Enrolled Founders in the audience. Feel free to say hi to them and y'all better say hi as well. I'll see you in session tonight. But as I mentioned, you know, we're doing 4 of these a year and the next one's going to be in May. Application's already open to pitch for that. We'll share some links later on in the show. For that as well. But we want to build some great content for the year ahead. So I have a couple polls just going out. So if you see the chat over here on this side, click on over from the chat into the poll section and fill those out. We have a couple that are live right now. I always want to know where y'all are coming from. Y'all are always really good at telling us, like Alan right now telling us he's coming from Sweden. Muhammad telling us it's our first time. We got a few first-timers here, but definitely head on over the polls and just really let us know kind of where y'all are coming from.

Overall.

Okay, I want to check out the, the event poll section just so I know how many of y'all are starting companies, right? How many of y'all are investing in startups, or you're maybe you're working with them, or you work for that startup, you mentor, or maybe you just want to get into this world and start a company but you don't know where to start. Either way, you're in the right place. Founder Institute, uh, since 2009 has been the most premier and largest pre-seed accelerator in the world. We've helped over 6,500 companies to date launch through our core program. We're currently operating in over 200 cities in 100 countries around the world. We have 3 chapters active just in Texas alone. So we, we'd love to work with, with people that are just aspiring to get into the entrepreneurial game, that want to build something enduring but don't know where to begin. we're always a great first step. Um, so you're gonna meet 5 great pre-seed, seed-stage companies today showcasing what they're working on, and they're from all around the world, y'all. I, I've had a chance to, uh, look at all the pitches in advance. They're going to be great. You're going to love them. A lot of great energy. And just for you all know— knowledge, you know, I review all of these pitches myself. I go through a lot, a lot of videos. So if, um, if you're worried that maybe your application, if you submitted, didn't get accepted, uh, for one reason or another, take a look at some of the videos here today. Maybe take some notes. You can always reapply. Again, applications for the May showcase are already open. We'd love to get those applications back in. But see what, see what's going on. See what gets my attention. See what gets the team's attention that we get to put on this live stage in front of— now how many people we got in the audience?

223 people.

So again, there's a lot of you that want to get on this global stage. We've had amazing companies over the years from Thumbtack and U2Me, Turo. We were doing some research. They were formerly called RelayRides. Turo pitched on this way, way, way back when they still didn't have the name. And you're going to see some companies today that will be in the annals of those in that Hall of Fame in due time. Before we do that, we always love to have some great thought leadership in the investment space. We've had some amazing speakers in the past. Today's no different. People that are really setting the tone for what being an investor in startups means for the future and how people like myself, people maybe in the audience, could get involved on that side of the business, not just building startups but supporting them. And encourage them to grow and partnering with them to do so. So today, we'll bring him up to the stage. Let's begin. Before we bring him up to the stage, I'm gonna just check out those polls a little bit more.

One more time.

One more time on those polls. Majority of half the room right now, keep hitting those polls. I don't have a lot of y'all voting, but I'm gonna leave them open throughout the entire event. So let's bring up our keynote today, Adrian Mendoza, Mendoza Ventures, We're going to learn a lot about what he's working on. He has some amazing news that just came through the wire just over the last month. And I think this might be one of the first times we're actually going to get him to speak about it right now. So coming all the way from the Northeast out of the Boston area is Adrian Mendoza. Adrian, while you get your camera on— there he is. How you doing, man? How's it going? Well, I think I got you on the audio side over here. I don't know what's going on the mic side. Let's see if we can get you on. I'm losing you on the audio right now, Adrian. You were good before we went live. I don't know where your mic is. Hold on. Want to try again for me, Adrian? While we do that, let me give some shoutouts to the audience. Let's see what we have going on over here. Let's bring it back in, Adrian. Oh, no, my production team, are we getting anything on him as well? And this might get you— might get you a refresh and about back in in. These things happen online sometimes, y'all. But while we get Adrian back in on the audio side, let's get you a test one more time. Nothing.

Huh.

That's weird. No, everyone is saying that too. Do we— did you turn off the mic, the actual mic down there? Let's test that out. I do that time to time. Let's see. Well, while we get Adrian to come back, he's going to refresh his browser and come back in. I'm gonna look over in the chat. So we got some people out of Spain, we got people out of it, we got Italy over here. Sometimes it is the wrong, my island, it does, does like that, Berlin. I'm coming to y'all from Austin, Texas. Just that I had a question out of the audience there too. Been working with Founder Institute for almost 6 years, over 6 years now. Um, and it's been an amazing time, uh, to support entrepreneurs. We've had over about 100 companies launch just in the Texas programs alone. So let's give you a quick mic check. How are you doing?

How's that, guys?

There he is!

Audio—

you gotta do it live sometimes. You gotta do it.

I know, it's all about— if this doesn't make it exciting, I don't know what is. It was going to be me.

You're getting my blood pressure up today. I needed it.

Spanish.

I need a little bit of that. I'm telling you, you're on mute.

And audience, y'all already know, y'all already seen the emoji down there beneath the screens. Y'all are clicking them the right way. So if you're feeling what we're saying, something's resonating to you, we're making you laugh, we got emojis for that. So click them. I see the claps. I see the claps. So thank you, Adrian, again for joining us. Congrats on the new fund. By the way, too, I'm not the first one to break that news. It's been all over the news. First Latino-led fund on the East Coast, $100 million. And I was one of the privileged to learn about that before it really could make the wave. So congrats one more time. I'm really looking up to everything y'all have been doing over there, and I'm really excited to now share kind of your story with nearly 300 people here in the audience for the showcase today. So tell us a little about yourself, Adrian, before all— before, before, before, before all you could jump into the VC game. Um, where did— where was that beginning? Tell us that origin story.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I love that I can tell this story at the Founder Institute because for me, I was a founder. I built 2 startups, I'd raised venture capital. I know what everyone's going through year, you know, creating the first pitch deck, create, you know, pitching VCs, all of it. I did all of it, everything, everything, you know, from accelerators, all of the above. And really, for us, we started our journey, you know, I, I'll, I'll roll the clock a little bit forward. So I'm originally from Southern California, um, I'm a child of Mexican immigrants, so grew up in LA, and '98, applied for grad school, you know, in Boston sight unseen and came. And I came right in '98, right in the middle of the dot-com boom. So I was put right into it. I got to see the building of companies, the failing of companies, I got to see all of it. Everything most people read about, I was in the middle of it. And it really, for me, put this idea that there was this other ecosystem of tech and tech founders. And the majority of money was being made in VC. And it was pretty incredible to see it. And really, it shaped my, my real life, the realization that someone can start something. You don't have to come from family wealth, you don't have to come from any privilege, but you can create something and make a life-changing opportunity in technology. And so I ended up staying in Boston, um, doing work at some of the banks, at IBM. And mid-2009, when the market is losing 800 points a day, I was at a startup and I was talking to one of the other founders, and they were like, hey, we've had this crazy idea, let's do it. And being that I came from a family of entrepreneurs, we did it. And we said, let's go it. And, you know, we spent about a year requirements gathering. We were, you know, true startup. We were living, you know, our, you know, running an office out of our house. You know, the first employee was my partner, Jennifer, who became one of our founders. She was our COO and my wife at the point, because we were literally working with everything. I once— years later, when the VCs sat down with us and said, hey, I want to do due diligence, and tell me about everyone you got to help. And I said, well, I got the senior DBA, network DBA, who helped us build the databases. And He's like, well, how'd you pay him? I said, well, I installed molding in his house. And they were like, wait, what? I bartered with him to build our databases. Okay, what about this guy? You had a senior IBM engineer that helped you. Oh, I paid him in barbecue. And I also bartered with him. I mean, this was the true startup experience. You'll hear me say, you haven't had a startup until your credit card's been declined buying milk. Because that's been my experience.

No, you got me flashing back.

I mean, really, it's like that touches everyone here. Um, and for us, it was, you know, this was a family business. You know, I grew up in a Latino family where we were, you know, out on Christmas Day, Easter, whatever holiday, I was working with my dad. I was, you know, we were, we were out doing it. So when it was my turn to build the business we treated it very much the same. And, you know, we got really lucky in the experience. We had amazing people that were part of our community. We had amazing people that helped us. And, you know, mid, you know, mid-2014, we pivoted one company to another, raised more money. I think in total we ended up raising $5-6 million. Um, I didn't really know the number until PitchBook called me one day and said, hey, here's how much you raised. And I was like, well, what do you know, I guess that's how much we raised. But mid-2015, when the company went into acquisition mode, and like all early-stage founders, the board said, go find something to do, we did. We took a step back from our experience and we looked at everything that we had gone through, this whole process of raising money, being in startups, in our ecosystem, and we realized there was nobody that looked like us. There were no Latinos writing checks. There were no Latino investors. There was definitely no women investors. And this is mid-2015. And so at that point, we were being courted by the VCs. Hey, can you run this company and run that company? And we took a step back and said, I think we could do it better. And so we put whatever we got out of that exit and some of our, you know, whatever we had saved up, and we started Mendoza Ventures Fund 1 between my wife and I. We, you know, we called it Mendoza Ventures because the two owners were the Mendozas. And we said, hey, let's give this a shot. We're going to do 3 little investments. And the first investment was an amazing founder, um, now has been about 20x back. Um, he— we renegotiated the first seed round in like under a playground structure. The company now has about 120 employees, backed by some of the top funds. And as incredible it was, that wasn't our incredible one. Second founders that we met, cybersecurity company, and it was actually introduced by a really good friend who's an attorney and said, hey, I know these Latino founders and I want you to meet them. So took them out for dinner and, you know, I connected with them instantly. They grew up poor in South Texas, and for the first time— and I'll even tell them right now, they'll come up to me and say, hey, Adrian, you understood us as an faster. You know where we came from. They sold the company in 5 months and returned a 10x back to us, and it was a life-changing event. And what I love— and you guys can Google this— there's, uh, the two founders are Aldo and Dino Pietropalo. They actually wrote an article that came out on Austin Inno that said, goodbye Massachusetts, but I'm coming home to Texas. We're gonna come back and we're gonna be part of this, you know, this, you know, the ecosystem, and we're going to get back. And really, for us, it's about— from going to founder to funder, it's about how do we give back. Because in our experience, like the guys at Good Dog that had this amazing opportunity, it— the reality is there's a lot of overlooked founders out there. There's founders that looked like a lot of us, that aren't the white guys that went to Stanford, but female founders, diverse founders, Black and brown founders that are building incredible things and they're a missed opportunity. And just like us, like, I didn't come from a network of wealth. We built that network. We hustled. We pitched. And look, I do it now in my own fund. It doesn't matter how far along. I always feel like we're running a startup. And really, for us, the incredible, you know, of what we've done is change the narrative that, you know, I— my parents were a carpenter, cabinetmaker, and a bookkeeper. And if I can do it, anyone can do what we're doing now. Anyone can start a company, anyone can start a fund. And for us, it's about changing the narrative that more Black and brown and more female founders can start company, more Black and brown and female founders can start funds. And really for us, the mission is change the way generational wealth is being built in America because it's all built through M&A. Let's change that narrative so that it really comes and looks more like us, and it looks more like what this country and what this world looks like, to not be homogeneous but find incredible people that are out there building companies. And when they have success, giving it back and now funding, you know, the companies.

Oh, that's fantastic. And, you know, a lot of that's resonating with me. When I was My first company, I guess I could say I helped start, was with my pops. We had a lawn and pool care business that I couldn't even drive a car yet. I was just being dragged around from spot to spot and did all the work. Um, but, uh, it's— we did a lot of those deals similar, right? Uh, but what doing a service-based business, doing kind of a small business, is so much different than, you know, later on in like my career where I started just try to do a startup, try to go raise money, raise a little bit of money. But still, there's so many other things. And, you know, for people like you and me and many people in the audience that are trying to break into startups and they're navigating these waters of dealing with investment, there's just like a lot of uncharted territory. There's a lot of big unknowns, things that people don't tell you about. Well, maybe, you know, as you were going through that, again, you raised a ton of money, didn't even know until PitchBook called you, right? Or was— what were some of those big reveals, if you could recall any? At all that might really stick out to you that was just like a watershed moment? Anything that was like—

I mean, right, I, I will tell you the first one. The first one is keep learning. You know, I had this amazing opportunity that one of our— you know, we had another founder with us, and his dad was in the legal business, was actually a filing clerk, and he reached out to one of the people in his network. I mean, this is about tapping your network. Who do you have? And same thing, didn't come from a wealthy network, but what he had was an intro. And so the dad went to a top law firm and said, hey, my son is, you know, and these were Portuguese of background, you know, these weren't white guys and said, my son is starting a company. And they said, hey, well, why don't we add you to this program where we can bring you in as a startup? And this was way before, you know, lawyers were like, not paying reduced fees and all of that. And they sort of did it for us. For 3 years, we didn't pay legal fees until we raised money. And we had this, like, I didn't know it until afterwards, we had this like top senior partner at a law firm that was handling our like legal stuff. And one day he sits us down and goes, well, do you have any questions? And I was like, oh yeah. And he's like, well, you have me, ask whatever you want. And I did. And guess what? Every time we went to a financing, I sat and I read everything and I looked at everything. And funny enough, years later— this is like 10 years later— people would ask me like, hey, Adrian, where'd you learn all this stuff? Like, you obviously know this deal mechanics. And I was like, it was this experience of having someone to ask, not being afraid to ask, not being afraid to learn. Like, we closed a funding round on a plane. We were literally on a plane and I'm reading every document. Every time there was a question, I read every article, every purchase and sale agreement. I'm the guy who even signed the stock certificates. Um, and really it was, look, I don't know what I don't know, so I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to learn it. And years afterwards, one of my proudest moments is I met that attorney and he said— I said, you know, Alex, when people ask me And he was blown away that that little impact could actually make such a big, tremendous sort of, you know, it's like a little drop in a pebble just does ripples. Um, a couple months later, he came in as, as an investor into our fund because he's like, I want to do this now for other people. How can I help? And what I love about this is when you do something, um, it's always about how can I help. Little things. It's a little drop can create massive ripple effects. The more you do that, even as a founder, don't ask for something. Ask for, hey, how, what, how can I help you? Because that's how, you know, as you build your life as a founder, the relationships are the most important thing. That's the one thing that I learned, because everyone thinks that VC is about writing checks.

It's not.

25% of VC is writing checks, 75% is building relationships. With great founders, with great funders. That's really the power of this, is the more you build your network. And even that, we have this, you know, when I looked at VC, I was like, great, you know, VC is a black box. How do I break apart that black box to put the investors in our fund together with the founders and build collaboration and build transparency? Because not only do the founders keep learning, but the funders the people that are writing the checks also are learning too, because we're also building that next generation of investor.

That's incredible. Yes, yes, I, I feel like you've been reading my mind because I, I have a presentation where I talk about kind of difference between like, um, like great founders and founders that aren't really founders. And especially like on the mentor side, when you talk about how can you help, it's like an A-player, B-player kind of methodology, but more on the mentorship side. Especially for Founder Institute, we are give first, how can I help community, right? And so any mentor that comes into our programs in Texas specifically, I'm looking for the words, how can I help, or some derivative of that. If I don't hear it in the first conversation, instead I'm hearing, what's in it for me? What are you getting out of this? What do I get out of this? Why are you doing all of these more objectionary kind of responses? I already know that how this is the right intentions for supporting entrepreneurs or even the ecosystem at large. So you hit it right on the head. How can I help is critical. Giving back from the successes that you've seen, telling people what not to do that you wish you knew not to do, is utmost critical on passing not just the generational wealth, but that knowledge on the way down.

Well, and Martin, being connected to a community is more importantly, you know, the great thing about being Latino is we're always surrounded by communities. And you as a founder also have to be connected by communities too. So find Founders Institute, find other accelerators, find places where it's as much as it is about the education is building a community of other founders around you. That's the one thing that I give advice to every founder is you've got to build your, you know what, your band of brothers, people that are like you, that are doing exactly the same thing like you. It doesn't matter what background you come from. But building people that are around you locally to get that connection, to— so that when something happens, when something happens in the development side or an investor, you can go to someone and say, hey, is that normal? Is that weird? You know, or how do I talk to this? So that you're not talking to an advisor, you're just talking to your founders itself, the people that around you that are building companies around you at at the same time, they're also going through the same experience that you are, because that's so critical to everything.

That's true, that's true. And not a lot— not, not many entrepreneurs at the very beginning of the journey think that, you know. Again, if anything, they're, they're scared of sharing their idea because they have this common fallacy that someone's just going to run away with it, right? Yeah. You know, so, so I think as we, we get into that, because, you know, you are— your investment thesis is looking for, you know, again, up-and-coming under, uh, on overlooked founders, and a lot of these predispositions are already baked into them because they just don't have that community. So, you know, is there any advice you would give them, uh, in terms of maybe breaking through that shell that they've built around themselves, that protective shell, um, maybe, and putting themselves out there maybe more to connect with communities before they think they really need it?

Yeah, find communities that are like-minded and also find communities that are different. Because here's the thing, pitching to a group of people that are all yesing at you is great, but in terms of it's pitching to people that are completely different from you. And really, the, you know, and this is the change. Pre-COVID, like in Boston and in San Francisco, there was an event every day, every, you know, every minute of the day, 2 to 3 events. And so if you're not in a geo that has, you know, an ecosystem Finding, and, you know, either whether it be an accelerator, an accelerator, finding communities, finding founders, finding where they are because they're out there. And also not being afraid to just say, you know what, I want to go into a couple events in the Bay Area, I want to go into a couple events in New York, and just go. Because the thing about it for a lot of founders is they kind of want to stay in their bubble, and you have to break apart the bubble. It doesn't matter if you're picking up and going from, you know, San Antonio to Austin or California, you got to get out of that bubble because that's what sort of changes. And also, you're also pitching to a group of, you know, more sophisticated investors, founders who have done it before, to get your story. Because in our case, when we pitched, like, we were pitching every day, you know, every day there was a different event, and the pitch is getting better and better and better, and we're finding out what's working and what's not working. And that's the part of when you're there. And if you want to go that route, you know, at the same time, I just had a great conversation with another Latino, you know, just a few minutes ago before this call. And he was like, well, I personally won't, you know, be a founder. Then I said, well, be a funder. Start writing angel checks, start writing checks into funds, start participating participating into that world to be able to sort of engage in that ecosystem. Because that's the thing, whether you're going to be a founder or you're going to be a funder, it's about being part of an ecosystem and supporting it. Because you may not, you know, there, you know, because there's a lot of people that will be founders and they need your support too. They need that little $5K, $10K angel check. And this isn't about, you know, writing, you know, $10 million to, to a company. This is about that little check. The first, you know, little check we did was small at a fund. It was just ours saying, hey, we're gonna try this and we're gonna see if we're crazy. And don't let it stop you, because that was the thing for us. It was, all right, you know, the big regret for us is not having done it early, not having written checks, not having advisors when Other startups were like, hey, can you help me with advice? Because when you're in this network of founders in an ecosystem, everybody needs help one way or another. You know, it might be something you know, something you don't know, and just being interconnected to help everybody out, that sort of asking for help and be part of it, that's what really makes you sort of know that world and be part of how you interact with everyone.

Oh, that's awesome. And, and again, for many of you in the audience that You know, looking at the polls, there's still a few more of you that need to jump over in the polls and let us know where you're coming from, what brings you here, what describes you. But there's certainly a bunch of people, you know, that mentor for us that, or that work with startups in the FI community and just kind of champion everything startups. Yeah, they're terrified that starting a company is not their cup of tea. That's not what they want to do. They want to be around that energy. They want to be on the ground floor and support as best as they can. And writing a check is, as nominal as it might be, is important for a founder that's just trying to get through that first year, trying to get through that second, make it to the third year, right? Because this is a long slog. It's not going to happen overnight. It's like a 10-year overnight success for many an entrepreneur, right? So you're completely right.

And you have to be ready for the long haul. And one of the things that we did is when we first started, we saw a gap in that pre-seed to seed stage, that first money in for founders that looked like us. And, you know, a lot of the money had moved upwards. And, you know, the great thing that we've seen— and there was literally only a handful of investors, there were only 5 to 10 names that you would pitch, and everyone else was either angel groups and— or you had to go away. Well, the great thing is the— the capital has changed. More people are angel investing, more people are starting funds that look— that are Black and brown, that are female fund managers, that are angel investors. You know, there's now other crowdfunding communities. There's so much out there versus when I started, you know, 10 years ago, you know, or more than that, and realizing that it was fairly limited. Now there's a lot more access to capital than ever before, and you as a founder and even as a funder have to be selective on not just who you're backing, but where your capital is coming from, asking how it can help, you know. All right, great, you wrote me a check. How it can help? Because that's really, really important. And at the same time, as you're going through this, you're kind of seeing, all right, who is just supporting me? Are they just sort of helping me once or twice a month or a year? Are they coming in and saying, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be part of this, I'm gonna help you? Um, and that's being really careful about you bring into your circle. Because we do that, the same thing as being a funder. It's about building great relationships with it. And so one of the things that we did with Mendoza Ventures Fund 3, the one that just got anchored by Bank of America, was we realized that there was a new gap. And there was a gap for those that are hustling, that get that first check, that get— well, you know, they're freaking ready to explode. And then there's no one that's going to write that next big check. You know, you're, you're hustled, you've done everything to get to that $1 million in revenue, and you have that Series A stats, and you're like, great, now I've got it. And there's people that aren't going to write you a check. And that's where we said, this is where we're going to come in, you know, at supporting when that company's ready to grow, to just give them the moonshot and put in the fuel and invest in 15 incredible founders that are just ready to scale these companies. Because that's where we see the next gap and where we can come in is not just with that capital, but the network of other people that are not just investors but want to give their time and expertise. And that's what was incredible about something like Bank of America is they said, hey, we not only want to back you, but we want to help your founders out too. We want to support them where we want it to be like, how do we bring you into the bank? How do we create more relationships and really build an ecosystem around us, you, and your founders?

That's, that's awesome. And so the— and I want to change gears into that because, again, as you mentioned, breaking into VC is a big black box for many people. And, uh, and but there's a whole world there too of expectations and value adds that we, that you all, we all like call in the VC Lab. Before I do that, we're about hitting the halfway mark, uh, ladies and gentlemen in the audience. We are looking at 320+ people holding strong here for the Founder Showcase, first one of the year. I'm sitting down with Adrian Mendoza of Mendoza Ventures, uh, my theme entrepreneur residence here at Founder Institute. First $100 million Latino fund on the East Coast, uh, the newest, I believe, $100 million fund on the East Coast as well. Um, so I want to learn more. And then some of the— there's a lot of people in the audience that do invest. Looking just at the polls, we got majority of, uh, of you that have voted on here. It just said you're half the room's a startup founder. Um, y'all are in the right place. Got a lot of people that also invest, a lot of people out of North America, Europe. Um, but for, for some people that want to break into VC, uh, and, and they're just trying to wade those waters as well, it's very much like the startup experience. Especially when you're fundraising for the first time, from what I, uh, from many, many anecdotes, myself included, is, um, as you're working with people we call limited partners, you know, the limited partners are the investors for the, for the venture funds, just like venture capitalists are the investors for startups. Um, and, and different kinds of relationships, you're still building relationships, but, you know, if you're looking for value adds to give to founders, you know, having great limited partners to give value to the funds as well, like Bank of America is incredible. So are you seeing that more? You know, if there's, if there's anything you can glean from just this most recent fundraising experience, are you seeing kind of the interest shift in how LPs work with funds? Is it been staying the same since Fund 1, or are you discovering that, you know, again, people want to get, get their hands more involved? You know, not just outside of writing big checks.

I think we have to take a step back and look at the traditional venture. You know, venture is what's called a blind pool. That means you start a fund, you fundraise just like a founder. You're funding, you're raising capital. I mean, we're, we're raising capital just like we were a startup founder. That's why we call that what we're doing is, is a startup. You know, you get investors, and then from there you're deploying into the companies. And venture traditionally has been a black box. When I raised money from VC funds, I didn't know who any of the investors were. I wasn't connected with anyone. I was meeting with the GP of the fund, the managing director. And years later, I ran into several people, not just one, that said, hey man, I know you. I was an investor in you. And I was like, wait, who are you? And they were like, oh, I came into this fund and I came into that fund. And I was like, Man, if I had access to you and who you were— and these were incredible people— this would have been life-changing. So when Jennifer and I started Mendoza Ventures, we said, look, VC is a black box. Let's break that apart. You know, if we're going to change how VC looks, and, you know, differently, not just by a woman and Latino, let's change everything about it. And so we did a couple of things that were very different, and The first one was, you know, be very transparent with the LPs, the investors in the fund, by connecting them directly to the founders and building the network. Today is our annual meeting. We get all of our LPs together in the room to meet with each other and build a personal and professional network within— with each other. They— we do events where we put the founders together And wouldn't you know that one of the things that I love is one of our startups just built an incredible partnership with a brand name. It came from one of our limited partners who said, look guys, I'm never going to join a startup, but I want to help. And we want to— and we go in to harness this, these LPs that say, I want to help, I want to be part of this, because that's our model. And wouldn't you know how it's resonated is that when BofA reached out, it was about a year ago, over a year ago. First thing they said was, hey Adrian, we've heard about what you guys are doing. We want to help. 80% of our last fund went to diverse and female founders. They said, with a track record like that, we want to be part of this. We don't want to be passive, we want to be active, and we're active investors. And we say, great. And so the fact that that model has resonated and resonates with investors that say, Yeah, I want to be part of this too. I don't want to be passive. I don't want to sit back and get some email that means nothing. I want to be part of how— and just by doing something small, by making an introduction, it's that how can I help? Doing something small, even by just taking the phone call to mentor or founder and just say, hey, I just want to talk to you. You obviously know my business, you maybe know me. Um, and one of the things that I love is that create. It's about creating these relations. If you want to break networks, you have to get people in the room. And I had this incredible experience where I was at an event here in Boston, and we're, you know, still raising one of our smaller funds. And I had a guy come up to me and said, hey, I'm a bank president, you know, I want to be a limited partner, I want to just invest. And then he stops me and said, God, I wish my son could meet him. And I said, well, I'm having an event next week, bring him. And he did, and he brought his 16-year-old son with him, and he had this shit grin on his face. He was just excited because that's how you change how, you know, wealth is created in America. You bring people into the rooms that normally wouldn't have access to the rooms, and you say, hey, of course you belong here. The gift that his dad is going to give him is about access. And really for us, and we use our space a lot, we have a space here in downtown Boston, we have one in San Francisco now. And in our Boston space, we do things like we get Latino founders and funders together. And it's about creating these collisions in the room to get our LPs talking to not just our portfolio companies, but the ecosystem. And it really is about changing the perspective of who is the access to capital, because the hardest thing is breaking into a network. And so we use this as a way of just, let's get these people that are first-time LPs and break them into the network. So one of the things that we did, but in order to do this, because we realized that, you know, my story I was an accredited investor for 10 years, but who was going to give me access to their fund? I mean, I'm a short brown guy with a plush dog. Let me be an LP. Now everybody's like, hey Adrian, you want to be an LP? And I'm like, where were you 10 years ago? Yeah. And for us it was like, great, we created what's called the Inclusion Fund, and it's a small $10 million fund that allows us to have up to 250 LPs. You know, 250 limited partners at smaller amounts to give them access to venture capital.

Yeah.

And one of the things that we saw from our last fund is that when you do this and you give access, 50 to 60% of our LPs are now co-investing. They're now startup investing. They're now helping other portfolio companies out. They're helping. They're now like, you've just lit a fire under them. To be like, hey, I want to start angel investing. No, 20% of them are now LPs and other funds that are predominantly owned by women or other diverse managers. And what I love is by being able to give them access— again, they may not, you know, start a startup, some of them do, but they can participate and say, hey, I want to make sure that the capital that we have, the investment dollars that we have go to Latinos, they go to women, they go to, you know, Black and brown founders, because that's how somebody can change how and where dollars go. And so for us, the mission has always been not just creating access and equity to the founders, but how do we create the next generation of investor that creates, you know, not just a little bit of wealth, but I'm talking multi-generational family wealth. That's how we change, you know, the, you know, not just in the US but in access to capital in the world. And that's why we did it. And it, for us, it's been incredible to be able to have a vehicle like this. And we went back to B of A and said, hey, we're going to do this. And they said, we love it. You're giving access to people that would never have access to a company like this or an investment like this. And really the end goal for me is about education. How do we get more people to build track records? Years ago, I had an endowment that had lunch with me and said, hey, what's success? And it was really a good loaded question because they wanted me to talk about like this. And I said, you know what, I'm going to make a bunch of people a lot of money. I'm going to make a bunch of founders a lot of money. That I'm not worried about. You know what success for me is, is that people that we spin out of Mendoza Ventures more Latinos and women and Black fund managers to start funds and build their track records out of us. That's success.

Yeah.

And so in order to start doing that, to help people break into VC as well, we started a Venture Fellows program for those that are in university, whether it be undergraduate or graduate school, to get their first job in VC. And not just as an analyst, not just as, you know, the, a mailroom person, but they're working with a GP. And wouldn't you know, we've gone in 5 classes that have done this. 3 of them are now allocators. They're now investors themselves. And really for us, this is really incredible to be like, okay, look, we're gonna, we're gonna really create a launch pad for you. And not only are we going to do it to try to get that next job in venture, because you want to break in. You want to be able to, you know, the next investor who now has the confidence to say, well, of course I can be an investor. I want to be an investor in this fund, in that fund. And it's really about, you know, breaking that, you know, that little shell that we talked about and just say, I'm going to do it. And what I tell people, and, you know, as silly as it sounds, is like, look, the white guy that went to Stanford That guy's not gonna double, you know, think he's gonna say, of course I'm great, I'm amazing, of course I'm an LP. Um, and that's what we need more of us as founders and funders to think like that and say, of course I deserve this, of course I'm going to raise $5 million, of course I'm going to have a $100 million fund. Because if we don't, you know, there needs to be the next Martin, the next Adrian Mendoza doing this.

Warm my heart, man. There's just so much in there that I resonate with personally as a Hispanic man, multigenerational Texan. There's a lot of parallels there, not only just in my own personal experience, but just what we do here at Patter Institute, how we've seen the future and how I've always envisioned what programs like FI can do and the communities that we've built just in my own purview. what I've seen around the world, can do, affect change and, and give access to people who never really saw themselves as a startup founder. And in some cases now, in that, like, where we're going now, seeing themselves as a startup investor. Um, so please keep doing that. Please keep doing that. I will recommend people all day long for you to go be a part of that fellows program.

And, Marty, look, if, you know, I say that my door is always open. If you're a founder and you want to send us your deck even if you're early, send it to us on the website, send it up to me on LinkedIn. If you're a funder and you want to say, hey, I want to learn venture, I want to be part of this, reach out. We literally have a little button that said I'm a founder or a funder. Yesterday I had an incredible couple that has known me for 10 years and they said, hey, we saw what you're doing, we want to be part of this. Actually, the guy messaged me on Facebook and was like Hey, did you get my email? And I was like, I went through it, I was like, wait, that was you? And he's like, yeah, you know, reach out, reach out on LinkedIn, uh, reach out and say, hey, I want to be part of this, I want to be a founder, I want to be a funder, because that's how we do it. We want access. The first step is reaching out. You know, I had, uh, a Latino attorney just my call before this who is connect— who is a mentor in Founder suit was like, hey, I want to reach out. I saw that you're going to be on this today. Can I reach out? And I want to learn about what you guys are doing. And I'm like, yeah, of course. Did a call with them, sent them our deck. Share it with your community. Let's get more people, like, you know, more, you know, more Latino investors investing in Latino funds.

Oh, that's what I want to see. That's what I want to hear. Uh, thank you for that, Adrian. We got about 12 minutes left on this discussion. We're just sticking around a little bit for the pitches. I know the audience is warmed up at this point to see some amazing startup founders. But before we get into that, if you do have questions, I may pull one or two. Drop them in the chat if you have questions for Adrian. My production team's pulling them up, some of the best for me. I'll try and get to a couple towards the end, but we're only going to be able to do that. So don't worry about the raising hand functions or any other stuff. We're not going to click on it, unfortunately. Too many of y'all. But I want to change some gears real quick because, you know, in startup land, it's always constant churn of just ideas, founders. It's really tough. But we're seeing a lot in the corp world right now. Just recently, just this week, we had a bunch of like local layoffs for some of the tech companies here in town. You're seeing it all across the board. Hundreds of thousands of people are now out of the tech workforce. And we had a great question from our Founder Institute program here in Austin. Just yesterday about this uncertainty. How is it affecting venture capital, if it is at all, in that watching just the local or just the US economy, American economy, just kind of lower valuations, check sizes. Is it affecting anything at the pre-seed right now? Is this still a great time to start a company?

Yeah, that's a really great question. CNBC asked me the same question. And look, I raised money the first time during the global financial crisis when the market was losing 800 points a day and there was no capital, and a typical seed round was $600K. And I have founders that were like, oh man, this is tough. And I was like, guys, the first time I raised a funding round, it took me a year to get a term sheet, and then 6 months after that to get funds wired. Um, the reality is there is close to $160 billion in VC and PE sitting on the sidelines. There is still funding rounds happen. This is a great time to start a company. This is a great time to say, hey, I'm going to get out of my comfort zone. If you've been laid off, if you want to try something, because there is capital. And during the global financial crisis, there was no capital. There was no, you know, everyone was affected by everything that had happened. Right now, there are still a lot of funds coming to market. There's a whole generation of brand new funds that are emerging. You know, you'll look at the news and, you know, one of the great things is when Bloomberg covered our first close, about a day later, I had a great friend who works in San Francisco who called me and said, Hey man, it hit the Bloomberg terminal first, which is, you know, the old Bloomberg terminal that's like some private computer system. And he said it was on the trader's desk for 2 days. And he said with all the uncertainty in the market and layoffs, and he's like, that story resonated with us because it shows us that things are still happening, that funds are still being raised, that companies are still being started. That. And that's what we're still in this great time where a lot of this is happening, because there's still great programs that are, you know, helping founders. They're still great seed investors. And the great thing is that we're at a time that it's— you can.

That's— yeah, and tried to say it almost as eloquently as you did right now. Um, but I'm not surprised CNBC also asked that question. CNBC, you might want to give me a call. I'm pretty decent. Uh, and again, we got— we're running short on time. We're getting closer to about 8 minutes. We only have time for a few more questions on this end, but, um, let's talk about a little bit more about the fund, uh, the current fund right now. Again, congrats on the close.

Thank you.

Um, you know, what, what's, what's the vision for, for, for this, uh, for this new fund? Um, you know, tell us a little bit more about the thesis. I know we've kind of danced around it, but, you know, tell us kind of deeply where the thesis is.

Yeah, we should have started that at the beginning. I mean, uh, we invest predominantly in fintech, AI, and cybersecurity. And the reason we do that is I built the first mobile app that went through FINRA approval for a large bank. Like, I built financial technologies, it went through risk compliance. And when we looked at what we wanted to invest in, you know, we were going to invest in spaces we knew, and more importantly, spaces where we could help. Because so many investors will invest in things and say, hey, uh, I want to get it and start investing in this world. And everyone's like, dude, you're gonna lose your shirt because you know nothing about that world. And it was, for me, it was finding like-minded founders that were said, hey, we're one, you're going to invest in a, you know, to be part of a VC fund that is very hands-on. So we're helping with everything from helping raise money, go-to-market strategy, hiring to LPs and investors in the fund that also want to be very hands-on, and really looking at spaces that we know that we could provide value. Someone— one of the questions I saw was like, hey, do you invest in healthcare? We don't, because I know nothing about healthcare. I was terrible at biology and chemistry. Um, and for us, it was let's get in spaces where we know who the customers are, we know who the partners are, we, you know, we can call, you know, our network of banks to say, hey, you should look at this company company, that company. And really, for us, it's the power of leveraging our own network that we have to help these founders. The other thing is I'm a huge believer that there are, you know, companies that are at the intersections of things— AI, fintech, fintech, cybersecurity— really have an amazing growth potential. Because what's happening now is, you know, there is still going to be a rise of decentralized finance. In decentralized finance, cybersecurity is now being built in. There's now an excitement about generative AI. Well, great. How to use it to solve business issues within cybersecurity, within financial services. And really for us, it's about finding these spaces, but also building our own ecosystem. The Mendoza Ventures of ecosystems of companies that can help each other that fit in very beautifully, but are about helping each other, but also being part of this ecosystem where we can provide a lot of value, our LPs can provide a lot of value, and our founders get the value. And also one free plush dog.

Oh yeah, and that was going to be one of my last questions. Tell us a little bit about this adorable—

oh, my little free friend. Yeah, he's— this is the VC puppy. He has an Instagram. You can friend him on LinkedIn. He is— he goes to every investor in our fund, hence the one free plush dog. He also goes to every founder. The reason that we have him is the first company we ever sold was the one out of Texas called Good Dog Labs, and we had him as a mascot. And you know what? It's after the company sold and the founders left, we said, hey, well, it's really weird that we have this dog with this other startup. Why don't we say that he came working, uh, that he works at Mendoza Ventures now? We didn't have an associate, he was our first hire. But it's also, it's a little bit more unique. It's a reminder for us, hey, if we can help this company grow and scale, to the founders it's a, hey, you can do this too. The other thing is, to the investors, it makes them part of a network where they're realizing that they have the power to help. Um, what I love about BC Puppy is that he goes everywhere, you know, he goes everywhere with us. Our, you know, he— my kids take him everywhere, our founder's taking him everywhere. Um, and a couple of, you know, and I used to joke that we have him because he's— we're the underdogs. And one day I was at Latitude in San Diego and another Latino investor came up to me from a family office and she asked me the question. I said, hey, we're the underdogs. And she went up to me and goes, no, Adrian, you guys are the top dogs. So be the top dog.

Diane on our team, she's hanging out in the audience. She's asking if, you know, if VC Puppy was the first hire and is he under an NDA.

He's like, keeping secrets for our founders and for our investors. He doesn't say anything.

Yeah, never be too careful on that end.

He doesn't have any exclusive fun for her, so he can't do anything. Oh, fantastic.

Well, we are just about out of time, Adrian. I did You did condense that question with some of that we got from the audience. So thank y'all audience for sharing your thoughts. You're just going to be hanging around for the pitches here too. We're going to bring up another special guest to duo on this pitch feedback session. But last question, I always love to pause it before I ask kind of just how we can get in touch with you. But last question, I ask every single person I've had on the showcase, any big event that I like to host here with FFI. But if there was just one thing, only one thing you could tell an aspiring entrepreneur in this audience of 300 plus that just wants to build something beautiful, meaningful for the people that matter to them, what would that be?

You know what, I heard this great, great quote from Daymond John, said I'm gonna steal this one if he's on it. Okay, he said, a no is a request for more information. And I love that. Because for me, everything is just don't stop. Hey, a no means keep on going. And that's, I think, for all of us, because if I heard enough and listened to all the nos, I wouldn't be here.

Yeah.

So don't accept no.

That's, that's the first one I've heard of that I've heard. I've gotten a lot of patterns. I could put a dang book together at this point with all just what to do that one thing. But that's— that one's new. I like that. I like that a lot. Thank you, Adrian. Uh, last but not least, of course, um, what's the best way to learn more about Mendoz Ventures or learn more about yourself? Maybe connect with VC Puppy on LinkedIn.

Yeah, um, go to LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn. I'm always posting. Feel free to reach out to me and say, hey, I was on the call with Martin and Founders Institute. I am a founder. I am a funder. Go on the website and say, hey, here is, you know, more info. Reach out to us. Don't feel afraid. Remember that advice of ask for help. You know, there's sometimes that I can help, there's sometimes that I can't. I try to, you know, help as much people I can, either make a connection if I can, take a look at a deck if I can. And if you're like, hey Adrian, I want to be an investor and I want to learn more, reach out and say— and literally say, hey Adrian, I'm an investor, I want to learn more. And help with that conversation.

Adrian, thank you again for joining us. Fantastic conversation. I want to— I want you to come back when you got the $500 million fund. I know it'll happen at some point in time. We're gonna have another combo just like this. Maybe I'll get a VC puppy by then. We'll see, right? I'll hang out back over here with all my other menagerie of backdrops. Um, but let's kick it in high gear. Uh, I don't know if my production team's ready to go, but I think we got the energy rolling. I think we're ready to roll right into the showcase. We got 5 amazing pitches. We do have a special guest also coming up with Asia. So let's bring Sai back up from backstage, get him on stage. We'll meet him. While we do that, I'm going to lay some ground rules. I get DMs all the time during the live event from amazing people in the audience that want to come up onto this stage and pitch. We can't do it on the fly. I didn't get a chance to watch your pitch or know what you're doing. So if you're, if you're putting that hand up or you're DMing me, it's going to be in vain for right now. But there is a possibility for you to do that. Our next showcase is going to be on Wednesday, May 24th. Applications to apply to pitch are live right now. Head on over to foundersshowcase.com, get your application into its completeness. Again, I review them all personally. We review them with the team as well, and we want to select some of the best. So if you feel like you have something that you want to showcase in front of our global audience, in front of amazing investors like Adrian and more, get those applications in because that's going to be the best chance for you to get front and center. And we always pick a couple. You're going to see a couple from outside the FI network present today. So my production team will drop some of those links in, especially towards the end of the program. But otherwise, sit back, enjoy, and take some notes. Because each of these pitches are amazing. They're very well thought out, they're very well mapped out, and you're going to understand what makes a great and compelling pitch to be shown at the global stage here at the Founder Showcase starting right now. So let's bring up our other guest today, besides Adrian Igaro, the current managing partner at Ripple BC. But also the investor across the board in other areas. So, Adrian, sorry, let's get— sure, got two Adrians.

Can you see me okay?

Not seeing you yet. I hear you, though. Seems like we were having that false start issues on the air meet today, just like— but no worries on that. While we get reset, and start— and my production team starts getting their video or getting the videos queued up. Just let me know in our private chat backstage when we're ready to go on there. I'm gonna go check out some of these polls, so I'm going to close a couple. Um, majority of y'all again are coming in from startup founders, investors. We got a lot of great, uh, people coming out from North America, Europe, a little bit out of the Middle East as well as Africa as well as Central America. I think everyone in the Asia-Pacific region is asleep right now, but no worries, we'll have some evening ones as well. We will have one more poll that I'm going to launch just to start as soon as we start the showcase about audience choice. It's just bragging rights, just like the— I turned on the leaderboard too to see how many of y'all are engaging. So you can check out the leaderboard. I'm just shouting out the top 3 names: Mark Cohen, Fabio, and Samuel, who's actually presenting later. Are the most engaged people in the audience. You don't get anything. Again, maybe I can get a box of VC puppies and we'll send them out at some point. But as of right now, you're just getting bragging rights and I want to be shouting your names out towards the end of the event. So definitely keep engaging, answer the polls when they pop out, and you'll see your names highlighted on the leaderboard as well. But I think if my production team's all set, let me know and Asai, we'll get you back on. Your audio is sounding good. Let's see if we can get your video playing. Just give us an up or down, my friend, if we're sounding good. He is there. So while we do that, our first pitch while we work through Asahi's audio is Yes, fantastic, is going to be coming from Europe. Actually, it's an FI Amsterdam 2021 grad, Bonnie Boonjeman of Vestas Labs. Before we cue them up, though, I just do want to check and make sure that we got Sai's audio and visual going. And then as we are ready, we will kick it over to our first pitch. Each of these pitches are about 3 minutes in length. Again, if you want to apply for the Founder Showcase, definitely get your recordings in. You want to keep it in a tight 3 minutes. It is kind of a standard here for the Founder Showcase, but also in many, many places as well. Once we are finished with the video, we are going to kick it over to our panel here who is going to go in and just start asking questions, just a feedback session, QA, see where maybe holes are. We're going to spend about 7 minutes on it. Each of these segments are going to last about 10 minutes in general, and we'll be pulling our speakers from the audience or presenters from the audience. They'll be sitting here right now front and center, and they'll be joining us on stage as well. Without further ado, let's play that first pitch from Fanny of Vestas Labs.

Hi, I'm Fanny and I'm the founder of Vestus Labs. So I love fashion. I worked in the industry for 15 years and during this time I've personally experienced how wasteful, inefficient, and highly non-digitalized the fashion industry is. And I want to change this. We have a mission to accelerate fashion industry's digital transformation, build, um, digital ecosystem for a greener and more efficient fashion industry. So the design and development process involves extensive workflow. Imagine, to produce the clothes that you're wearing right now, multiple physical samples are normally created before it goes into production. On average, 5 physical samples. This creates high waste. 35% of material are wasted in the process. High cost. Unit sample cost is 2 to 3 times on average more expensive than unit production cost, and it can take up to 8 months to develop. Vestes Labs can solve these problems. We help small to medium-sized fashion brands get lean and digital by providing a cloud-based platform, help them to digitalize and streamline the product development process, reduce waste, time, and cost by leveraging 3D technology and automation. By doing this, we are able to provide an immediate value to our users by reducing the number of physical samples by up to 60%, sampling costs by up to 50%, and development time by up to 75%. So our business model is 3D-as-a-service with an annual subscription plan based on the number of styles developed, and we have a target MRR of €750 per subscriber. Last year, our focus was to build the product and services. We successfully conducted our proof of concept with 10 users. One of them has turned into a paying client, and we have also received 4 LOIs. We just launched the first version of our platform, and we started our pre-seed funding round. This year, the focus is client acquisition and raising funds. This is the team that made it happen. I'm the founder and CEO with 15 years of fashion planning and merchandising with brands such as Burberry, Stella McCartney, and Karen Millen. Prior to that, I was in investment banking. Steve Fries, our CCO, has more than 30 years of experience in fashion management and business development. Leo, our fractional CTO, has more than 10 years of experience as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. And Nico, our lead engineer, has more than 8 years of experience as a software engineer. We are looking for funding of €200,000 to achieve €15,000 of MRR within 12 months. We've just closed €50,000 of angel investment in January, and now we are eligible to receive €100,000 of government grants. I invite you to accelerate digital transformation in the fashion industry together. Thank you.

Awesome presentation. Fine. Let's bring Fanny up to the stage. Fanny, how you doing? While we get everybody's audio on, I don't know, Airmeet's acting funny with the AV today. Fanny, how you doing? Good evening.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me tonight.

Yeah, no, thank you for joining us this evening. I know you're across Pon right now, so it's already evening time for you. But before I kick it to our judge panel here, I don't think I've ever seen anybody do the team slide with avatars, so that was cool. That's all I'm going to say there. I liked it a lot. But let me kick it over. Sai, while we get you here, do a quick intro on yourself since I know we were working on some audio issues and then roll into that first question.

Awesome. Can you hear me okay?

Oh yeah, you sound great.

Brilliant. All right. Hello everyone. I'm Osayi Osun Adrian Igaro, founder and managing partner of Ripple Venture Capital, which does early-stage investments in deep tech companies out of Africa. Not sure how often you hear those two words together or three words, I guess. But I was also head of investments at for Africa at Expert Dojo, which is based in Southern California and Santa Monica, where we work closely with companies for 4 years to get them to and beyond the Series A. I'll stop there. And let's— unfortunately missed the presentation, but I did catch the avatar slide. I just logged in and saw it. I was like, whoa, that's nice. But yeah, I'll let Adrian take it from here.

Yeah, well, thank you, Adrian. Um, you know, funny, one of the things that I would be interested in seeing more is look at like how much you're selling to the customer, pricing to the customer. Like, you know, how big are these enterprise deals? How, well, how it's going to take to get to $500K, $1 million, and then upwards of there. Because you really didn't talk about who are the customers, you know. Are these the manufacturers? Are these the brands? Are, you know, e-commerce has been playing a big role in sort of figuring out because, you know, someone like e-commerce, they deal with so many returns because the modeling of the body isn't accurate to what the clothes looks like. So they're trying to find ways to minimize not just the waste of manufacturing, but the waste in customer return. So walk me through who those are, those customers and deal sizes as well.

Yeah. So our main customers is small to medium-sized fashion brands. So it's a very targeted market at this point. And what we are trying to reduce is actually during the product development process where we reduce the physical samples and using virtual samples to get the sizing right before it goes into production. Now, the next stage would be not if when the brands have already had these digital assets with the right sizing, then it can be pushed into the customer facing, as you mentioned just now, which is virtual fitting. For the end customer. There are virtual fittings solutions right now, great technologies out there. The missing piece is actually having that digital asset with the right sizing because, you know, the brands will then have to recreate the assets with the right sizing. And that's basically, you know, the barrier for that virtual fitting industry customer-facing, which has a lot of, you know, market potentials. So I'm coming from ground zero, from design development, um, creating digital assets from the design development stage before it even goes into production, and then it can be used for customer-facing in the later stage.

So what's the price point you're selling to these brands?

So it is a subscription, um, uh, base. We have a target MRR of $750 per, per subscribers. It really depends on the, the plan, but it can be from €295 a month for 10 styles. Then the next one is €595 a month for 25 styles, and this is an annual subscription. The next one is €1,150 for 50 styles, and then for enterprise it's going to be, you know, custom. Since we are targeting small to medium-sized brands, you know, this is what we find the right package to begin with: 10, 25, 50 styles annual development.

Can I ask, what was your revenue in 2022?

7,500.

What is the target revenue for this year?

This year we have a target revenue of Um, 250, 250 grand.

How much are you raising right now?

Uh, right now I'm raising $200,000 and, um, we will get also $100,000 of government grant.

Okay, that's good. Do you know when your next round will be?

We are still in the middle of the round actually, because we just started this VC/angel round in December. We have just raised 50 out of the 200,000.

Oh, great. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. You're tracking well in that direction. What is the—

sorry.

Well, obviously, you know, I think Adrian alluded to this, but what are you— what is the— it's probably too early to know, but if you've thought about it, I'd love to know what is the plan to scale growth? Of just the level up from the $250,000 that you're going to do this year to that every month in 2024?

Yeah, so 2024, we project $2 million of revenue, and then, you know, that's when, from 2024 onwards, that's when we think that we can kick with the automation, and that's where the high growth will kick in. So we can expect 12 million in 2025 because of that. What we are doing right now is that it's still, you know, last year was proof of concept and this year we want to get us— the focus is client acquisition and then process automation where we can shorten the path from 2D to 3D and that's where scaling can actually go.

Okay. What would you be automating?

So I'm sure I missed a bunch of your pitches. Yeah, it is actually quite a complex process. What we are automating is basically the path from 2D, which is from sketch, to a 3D virtual sampling. So using, you know, AI and automation, it can capture um, the— it can capture the sketch in, you know, with several parameters, uh, 2D sketch, and then turn it into a pattern that can be then, uh, converted into 3D in seconds.

And this was done online, or, or in terms of converting the, the, or submitting the sketch?

Yeah, yeah. So the sketch is done online where the designers can upload Yes.

So what's the turnaround time? Oh, sorry, what's that? I'm just getting stuck in here. Well, what's the turnaround time? Last question. What's the turnaround time? The turnaround time for, um, for your client who submits the 2D drawing, for them to get back the 3D model?

Okay, so at the moment we are not automated yet, so that's kind of the automation plan. The turnaround time, it really depends on the complexity of the garments. So it can be, you know, an hour or less, you know, for a t-shirt. But, you know, of course, you know, for like a complex, you know, like wedding gown, then it can be, you know, 6 hours, for example. We give 1 to 2 days working days as the lead time at this point.

Okay. All right.

So there's a lot of professional services that have to go from your end to make the transition, you know, what's it going to take for the automation? Because even if you're like, oh hey, I'm going to use AI, you would still need hundreds of thousands of garments and patterns to be ingested in order to make sure that something drapes the way exactly that it would have to drape. So what, you know, how much money? And I think that's what's missing in the pitch, like that scale part that, that other Adrian talked about is like I think has to be in your story of, you know, we like to say the Mount Everest. You're not going to just sit and climb the Mount Everest. You're going to go from base camp to base camp to base camp. And I think you need to show that in your pitch to say, here's where we are now. It's a very manual process. Here's where our use of funds help us automate some of this to go so it's less people-intensive. And having metrics around how many patterns you could do. Because right now, if you had an amazing large customer, they would just crush you to death because there was no way that you could do their 50 to 100 patterns in like a day because they would want to turn around. So I think telling that story of where you go and how that lines up with revenue will be helpful for the next round of investor, even the current round, to say, hey, where does the business go? And I think that'll be helpful to make it a clear story of how do you go from, you know, the $250K to the $2 million to the $12 million that you're saying, or $25 million that you're saying. Because right now I think there needs to be a clear path of going from one step to the next step to the third step.

Yeah.

Okay, fantastic. Um, thank you all for that. We are just hitting on that time on the Q&A piece. Connie, you do have some questions in the audience, so once you're done on the stage, definitely jump in there and interact. It seems like we have a lot of really good discussions going.

Okay, great.

Yeah, thank you for being our first one.

Thank you, and thanks for all the feedback.

Thank you, Fanny.

Absolutely. That's a lot. We'll catch you at the tables too. When we're done with the showcase, we'll leave the open networking. Each of these presenting founders have their own virtual table. Please have a seat, connect with them directly if there's anything you want to do to learn more. Support, invest, definitely reach out to those tables. They'll be sitting there waiting to talk to you. But until then, let's pop over to our next presenter. This one's coming out of Houston, Texas, Space City. Came out of one of our Texas chapters over the past year. Taya Dronis, founder and CEO of Tempest Drone Works. Let's take to video.

Hi, I'm Ty Adronis, founder and CEO of Tempest Drone Works, and I literally grew up in paradise. Paradise, California was a wonderful place to grow up, but on November 8th, 2018, it burned. My childhood home was lost that day. But 85 people died amidst the over $10 billion in damage. And it became clear with this tragedy, and many more since— environmental disasters, terrorist attacks, and construction and infrastructure failures— hindsight may be 20/20, but insight is far more important. And that's where Harbinger comes in. Tempest Harbinger software offers real-time multispectral 3D maps and visualizations to help prevent minor issues from becoming real problems. Harbinger aggregates data from multiple sources, from drones and robots it can control to static sensors like security cameras, even crowdsourced drones and mobile cameras. Then it presents that data using a game engine across multiple types of devices across the entire command chain simultaneously and in real time. And the best part? It's sensor and drone agnostic. We can use almost anything to contribute to our visualizations. Tempest is the right company to bring this platform to market. I'm a US Navy veteran with over 24 years of recognized experience in the drone industry. I spent over 4 years as supervising editor of science visualization at California Academy of Sciences, and I'm a 2-time Frog Design alumni. My co-founder has her PhD from Columbia and her MSM from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is a serial entrepreneur who had a successful exit to Ubisoft in 2009. We built and are continuing to build an all-star team of creative thinkers who are simply obsessed with our mission. Now, Harbinger has 3 pricing models depending on company size, budget, and service contract, and the markets for our solution are certainly there with the conservatively estimated $42 billion obtainable market per year split between 4 use cases. There is some potential competition out there, but with our unique and protected IP, we're the only company doing it in real time and in a way that is sensor agnostic. And we've made a ton of progress in the only 11 months since Tempus was formed. We've proven the software works with our MVP We've formed critical strategic partnerships, even forming a partnership with the FAA testing facility in Corpus Christi, and with a carbon offset company for monitoring our oceans. And we're starting off 2023 right. We just secured a direct-to-phase-2 contract with the US Air Force for $1.25 million. And in the civilian sector, we've begun negotiating pilot projects across 3 industries. Letters of intent are forthcoming. We are currently raising $500,000 to help bring Harbinger to market. By investing in Harbinger, you are literally investing in saving lives, saving resources, and saving our planet.

Thank you. Bringing up Ty back up to the stage. Ty, how you doing, man? I like the animations on that one.

Thank you. Uh, can you hear me all right?

Sounding great. Sounding great. Let's kick it over to our panel and see if there's any first thoughts, notes, feedback.

Oh, first question. Uh, hey Ty, how you doing?

Uh, pretty good.

Awesome. So first question, when I saw the 1.5 $1.25 million award, I'm thinking, well, how much have they raised? And then I see half a million. So the $1.25, you received it, it's funded, right?

Selected and funded.

Correct.

What do you still need half a million for?

Uh, more materials for our demo products, as well as to hire some developers to finalize the user interface for our beta version of the product.

Okay, so obviously the $1.25 million doesn't cover everything that you want to do, basically.

Correct. Okay.

Um, we were looking to raise somewhere around $1.75 million this year, so.

Okay, so that helped a great deal. Yeah. Okay, awesome. All right, okay, now it's clear. Um, I love to see— I'm a trend guy. Um, First of all, super tragic to what happened in Paradise and, you know, similar places around the world. And I think this type of product is incredibly necessary. It's important that it exists. I would have loved to have seen more information about how it would— this product would prevent those tragic situations. And I guess maybe I'm possibly less important angle is what's the— I mean, you talked about the $42 billion. Um, that number is great, but I think what's more important, what's more helpful, is a trend. So where's that market trending? Is it— because if it was $40 billion last year, it's different from if it was $15 billion last year, right? Um, or maybe $50 billion last year and trending So it would have been great to know how that market is trending or the market that you're looking at and how that's trending. I'll let Adrian jump in.

Yeah, I'd like to learn more about the use cases. What are the use cases that the Air Force is using? What are the use cases that the energy companies are using? Like, what is it that they're saying, hey, I need this and I'm willing to write the $1.25 million check? What is it that sort of thing that is really getting traction right now?

You want me to answer that, or is that for—

Yes, that's what I'd love.

Yeah, so the biggest thing that we're getting is for real-time security, as well as, for instance, our construction is not for security. That's mostly for monitoring the build progress. And one of the biggest expenses that happens after a building is built, especially a large high-rise, is that every time they want to drill a hole in a wall, they have to bring in a sonar or radar system to figure out where all the pipes are routed and where all the rebar is. Well, if you have our system monitoring constantly and cataloging and archiving all of that data, you can effectively rewind and literally see on the 3D model where everything is. And because we're using a video game engine, you can and use a phone with augmented reality to literally scan around and see where the objects are. So that's one of our biggest use cases. As far as the fires go, if you're using thermal cameras, the fire that burnt down my hometown was shooting sparks for 4 days off of a 97-year-old transmission line. That certainly would've been found with persistent patrols using thermal cameras in the sky. And one of the biggest advantages of us over, say, satellite is cloud cover blocks satellites. We can operate through the clouds.

So are you launching a network of these, like a distributed network, and then sort of data's coming back to you guys and you're sort of putting it in the model? Walk me through how that network works of different, like, you know, cameras, drones. And is there an opportunity for when you get to one of these enterprise customers to say, hey, I'm just going to feed data into your API, and then it just, you know, because the key here is, and this is what we're going to see, is data is the new currency, you know. Yes, you have inputs, but the ownership and the transformation of data, like, how do you fall into that play?

Well, we're both agnostic on the input and on the output, so, uh, we You can use any sensor as long as it meets our minimum specifications, being where it is and what kind of sensor it is, can be added to our database very quickly. So not just drones, but satellite data, static sensors like security cameras, crowdsourced mobile data, doesn't matter, we can add it. On the backend, you can plug in any AI to analyze our data and we can and send to other user interfaces. For instance, with the Air Force, they had an interest in us transmitting to their ATAK system, which is their Android tactical kit that everybody has out in the field. So yes, we can transmit data. We aggregate the data. We can present it using the video game engine or send it out for analysis or another UI.

That's good stuff on that. Yeah, I think we're just hitting right on time on that, Todd. Anything else you wanna share coming up since we got about a minute left for you here?

Yeah, we had some exciting news a couple of days ago. We've been invited also to participate in a NOAA grant. They've asked us, or not grant, but contract. So they've asked us to go ahead and give them a proposal for wildfire prevention.

Specifically.

So, um, they like our product and said it's likely to be responded to. So that's— I guess that's the exact terminology that they say. But yeah, that was pretty exciting.

Fantastic. So yeah, if you're in the audience and you're really a big droner like me, definitely head on over to Ty's table after the showcase, and he can tell you everything about what's behind him. I thought I had a complex background. He's got a pretty much cooler one. But thank you, Ty. Always good seeing you. I will catch you soon. And well, let's keep it rolling. I'm sorry, I see like half your face. If you can like pull over a little bit. There you go. Just like that.

Oh, is it the light?

Yeah, get that full face in there. Right on. Well, let's kick it over to our next. We're hitting the halfway mark. We're cresting over and these next two pitches are submissions from the FI network outside of our graduate core program. So again, If you're in the audience and you want to get on stage for the next Founder Showcase in May, definitely apply at foundersshowcase.com. You might be one of these two selections that come up later in the spring. But for our next one up, we are going to present founder and CEO Leon Bandstone of Verde Code. Let's hit it to that video.

Hello, my name is Leon Bankstone. I'm CEO of Verticode, and we want to make cloud computing green and save you money. The cloud computing market is set to grow to $1.6 trillion by 2030 as many businesses migrate their infrastructure to the cloud. Verticode exists to help businesses save on their computing costs and do more with less. A major contributor to cloud computing costs is power usage. Cloud computing will use about 8% of the world's power by 2030. This means that if cloud computing was a country, it would be the third largest consumer of power in the world. This power usage will make cloud computing a top contributor to climate change, putting about 3 billion tons of CO2 into the environment. To put that into perspective, cloud computing will be about as bad for the environment in 2030 as fossil fuel cars are today. In a nutshell then, soaring power consumption and CO2 emissions will cost money, limit server capacity, and damage the environment. Verde Code wants to address this problem. When we give our tools to developers, we find that on average they can make their code 30% more power efficient. This is a very significant cost saving. Our solution then to soaring cloud energy costs is developer-driven, but also provides meaningful insights to executives, allowing companies to do more with less through actionable metrics. It does all of this without the addition of any new hardware. We are purely a digital solution. From the perspective of our customer, the interface is intuitive and easy to use. Our models do the hard work of producing these metrics, and this technology is at the heart of Verde Code's product. The coder market is very similar to the same one that launched cloud computing. Verde Code's product is self-service, low-touch, and freemium. We have low barriers to adoption with developers getting started in minutes with little work. We expect customer acquisition costs will be relatively low owing to network effects from early adopters driving awareness of the tool. The business model is encouraging. We have an opportunity to create a $500 billion producer surplus in the market. Even realizing a tiny fraction of this, we can expect to make $20 billion in profit each year. Even if this is off an order of magnitude, the total valuation of the company is still over $1 billion. And of course, the opportunity is there to capture much more and see Verticode grow massively in the coming years. The Verticode team currently consists of myself, Sean, and Zilian, with a number of advisors. I have previous executive experience growing a startup from $10 to $100 million and broad technical expertise. I bring together the disparate topics of machine learning, sustainability, and coding together with the business acumen needed to realize Verticode. Sean has significant experience launching and running companies, having raised millions of dollars and taken companies public. Sean brings decades of entrepreneurial experience to our team. Finally, Zilian has been actively researching program power efficiency for almost 2 decades. He brings a deep expertise in power modeling that is core to our product and provides a 20-year head start on our competition. We are looking to raise $250,000+ on a pre-seed to build our first product and establish our customer base. Verticode is a real opportunity to scale massively with a first-to-market product. We're looking for the right partners to join us on this unique SaaS blue ocean play. If you have any questions or want to know more, please reach out to me. I look forward to talking more. Thank you.

All right, all right, yeah, it's bringing you live. All right, yeah, you're framed up all nice now. Looking good, looking good. Leon, how'd it go today? Oh, can't hear you, Leon. Gotta love Airmeet today, they're having some fun buggy stuff. May I check the mic on you where you're at, Leon?

Rejoin for us, get him back in.

While we do that, while Leon comes and resets some of his audio. And it's a feature, not a bug here. You're hearing great. Let's see, let's go back to you, Leon. Let's test that out. Nope, not yet, not yet. Uh, Jeremy's just being fun today. While we wait on Leon, you sounding— you hearing him? Um, we have another new poll, final poll of the day. Head on over to polls, definitely vote on your best while we bring him back. He's got to reset, similar to what we had earlier today with to some of our guest speakers. We got one poll, audience choice. Again, this is for bragging rights today, no prizes of any sort, but we may invite you for a future event, potentially in-person in the future. So let's go to that audience choice, head over to the polls, and then also that'll get you some more points on the leaderboard. So let's see where my production team is doing on getting Leon back up here. But while we do that, any, initial thoughts while we prime up from that one. Very forward thinking. I would describe that in one phrase. Leon's coming back.

Yeah, he's back.

Hello, can you hear me now? There he is.

Perfect.

Yes, we're doing it live. We do it live. That's why we record the pitches.

That's a good idea.

There we go. All right, then. Y'all take it away.

All right. Other Adrian, do you want to go first or should I?

No, go on, Adrian.

I kind of want you to walk us through what really in-depth the solution will be. We've looked at things like this and most of it have to be from the hardware side. I mean, at the end of the day, yes, cloud computing will, you know, be very prominent in, you know, most network infrastructure. But power management and the use of power usually has to be at both one at the data center level. And we've also looked at companies, you know, I saw some wacky entrepreneurs that were looking at the chip level because the majority of consumption and processing is at the chip side and then across power management for servers and infrastructure at the data center side. So walk me through what you guys are trying to do and what that solution solution looks like.

Yeah, so I mean, you appreciate that you can optimize a code for runtime, right?

You can—

there are various ways of doing it, even in the compiler or the way you write it, etc., etc. So we are interested in optimizing a codebase to run on less electrons, right? So instead of making it run as fast as possible, trying to make it run on less electrons. There are a lot of different ways you can do that. I won't go into this here, but it is ultimately the software that controls all of that hardware. If you're not being diligent, if you're not providing metrics to the software developers or to the people consuming the software, they have no way of knowing that their software is actually not particularly power efficient. This is actually really meaningful in a place like the cloud where things can run, scale enormously, and you have no idea potentially as a customer that you're burning through all this electricity, which is costing you money. And so that's at the heart of our technology, is to, for the first time ever, provide those tools to people, provide that visibility to the coders and the customers so they know what they're doing because it's costing them money.

Yeah.

Have you guys run a POC already to see what the metrics would be with, like, some, you know, not internally but outside with with a potential customer?

So that is what we want to go out and do, is to do a major validation piece. We've done some micro stuff, right? We, I can not obviously now, but I can show you stuff we've done with other people where we've shown the kind of power savings you can achieve. 30% is pretty typical, sometimes more if you optimize for power efficiency. We're now looking to go into, you know, we want to build a partnership with someone like, you know, the Army, for instance, is an area, or possibly possibly, um, like we were exploring Travis County, um, lease department. They have a large sort of data center, they own the whole thing. It would be a lot easier, right, to go to them and show the macro savings that we can bring. So that's the next piece we want to do is prove that out and then use that, that, you know, um, validation that we get from that to then go to a major cloud provider and become part of that toolkit.

Why do you need the $250K? I mean, that should just be to just hustle, you know, do it, you know, find someone and say, hey, we'll do this for free and get, you know, and not get them to pay you, but just say, actually pay me if I show you I can reduce power consumption by 30%.

Yes, we need— there's a sort of a little element of deep tech here. We have to build the models, right? This is coming out of our co-founder, Zilian Zhang, right? This is 20 years of his research. It's coming off the back of— so this is really new, really cutting-edge stuff. We need to go and build some of it. And so we need a bit of money to find someone, right? To bring someone in that, that can work on this for, for a few months to build those models up as we leverage this with this partner.

Yeah.

Why not get equity to say, find someone, make them part of the team because you're gonna need that person. Models have to get updated on a, you know, weekly to monthly basis to make sure there's no model drift. So why not just find a core team member? Because most investors are going to say, why am I gonna give you $250K to build the product? Why not just sort of bring in a team member and say, hey, you're part of the core team, and then go to market? You know, for me, my advice to every founder is don't raise money until you have to, you know. And I think you guys still need to prove it out, but like, find that person who says, hey, I want work with Leon and his team and I want to be part of this and build the models for you guys.

Yeah, certainly we had considered bootstrapping it. We're really interested in, in being very quick into this market because we think it's going to be a very large opportunity. And so we want to scale quickly and that's why we're willing to, to give up some equity to move faster on that piece. Because if, if, if I find someone and they build it, you know, that, that's going to turn into probably a year plus if they're part-time and everything else and so on. So does that answer the question?

Or—

yeah, yeah, I, I was going to ask similar questions. So, so what's already been asked, um, and give similar comments. I was going to ask you to walk me through, because I didn't know what the product was, I was going to ask you to walk me through a use case, um, and then also ask ask about your traction, your monthly revenue, uh, but you know, you haven't done a POC yet. Um, and then the question would be, so why are you raising money? What are you going to tell the investor, you know, that would come out of this raise? Um, anyways, it's, it's, uh, uh, oh, I guess the VC, because you can go ahead and raise this from friends and family, right? Love you and, you know, want to see you succeed, um, you can definitely do that. Um, if you can get someone to come in and build this with equity, that'd be even better. Um, because then you know, okay, that person really is passionate about what you're building and they aren't going to leave once the check runs dry. Um, because you don't want that either, right? You don't want to be raising every year to fund, some you'll hire to build a thing or to keep the thing alive. Yeah, Adrian asked really all the questions I was gonna ask. That just all came out from there. Just, yeah, definitely this is an angel and friends and family conversation or pitch. For you, I would focus on angels and family and friends, especially angels in the field who really get what you're doing and get the value proposition and see, you know, beyond the horizon. Um, a bit difficult for investors at the moment, for VCs, because we, we like to see something Italian, because we're not your customers, right? Um, and we want to know how your customers are reacting to the product, right? One another market's reacting to the product, and without that data, and it's difficult to make an investment decision. Um, except, you know, there are other— there's other bits of information that they know that tells them, okay, yeah, this could be something huge. Um, but yeah, It sounds like a pretty important part of the bill. I, you know, that's incredibly disheartening that the cloud computing market is really destroying the planet that terribly. Or at least, you know, hopefully you can help shave, even if it's that 30% off of that. I think that'll add a lot of heartbeats to all of us. So thank you for embarking on this journey.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

Awesome. And on that note too, we're out of time on that segment. So Leon, appreciate you coming up. Thank you. Thanks everyone. One of our submissions from the public. And we'll keep moving to our next one. Thank you, Leon. You have a good one. Definitely hang out at those tables. You got a lot of chat going on for you. Our next one up, is actually coming out of Bucharest. Actually, no, based in New York, but the founder is from Eastern Europe. Chamber founder and CEO Gabriela Constantinu. Let's take to that video.

Ageism is a form of discrimination against A) Gender. B) Age. Dear audience, raise one hand if you think it's A and two hands if you think it's B. If you said B, congratulations, you won! But what have you really learned? You are memorizing, not learning. Meet Jane. Jane spent 100K creating a training for 1,000 employees. But Jane's training tools use outdated learning methods such as quizzes, which only enhance memorizing, not learning. And because of that, Jane lost 90K after 1 month. That's why we created Chamber. Chamber helps learning managers like Jane create learning games that increase content retention. And this is how it works. Players solve scenario-based challenges and receive feedback from their peers, while Jane creates a game in less than 1 minute and fully customizes the content, the session length, and the game type, competitive or collaborative. Our main competitors are Kahoot, Slido, and Mentimeter. These guys have really figured out engagement, but the problem is they engage learners in a broken system. They enhance memorizing, not learning. Chamber, on the other hand, uses evidence-based learning methods that are proven to increase content retention. During the past 7 months, we achieved a 69% month-over-month growth rate. We have 22 paying organizations running Chamber across 22 countries. Also, we have an LOI from T-Mobile. We're about to become part of Microsoft Marketplace, having just finished integrating Chamber with Teams. And our yearly revenue for 2022 was $35K. We are B2B SaaS. We sell annual subscriptions to learning managers in software companies with more than 1,000 employees. And by 2025, we want to reach $3 million in ARR. Our vision is to create Nintendo games for learning. We're building our own world with memorable characters who will have their own game specialized on various learning topics. And this is the amazing team who's gonna do that. My co-founder and I are serial entrepreneurs having founded 3 businesses before, and we have 18+ years of combined industry experience. While our CTO Aurelian is a full-stack developer with 12+ years of experience in leading tech teams. We are looking to raise $800K as our first round of investment. So ping us if you want to talk more and Let's help Jane together. Thank you so much.

Gabriela, I love the energy of that pitch. I watched it a couple times and it just always jazzes me up. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you too. Can you hear me well?

Yeah, you sound great. Yeah, no bugs on this one. All right, y'all take it away.

Hi Gabriella.

Hi, thank you.

Thank you.

And congrats on the progress so far. Um, how much of the $800K have you raised so far?

So we are currently in the due diligence process, uh, with an angel group that wants to put in a $100K ticket, and we've just started fundraising like one week ago.

Okay. Oh, okay. So probably take you Maybe a couple of months or so, or another quarter.

Yeah, that's what we expect, right?

Okay, so beyond that, so what, what are your revenue targets for 12 months beyond that?

So for this year, we want to hit, uh, $200K.

Okay, and next year?

Next year, uh, $800K and then $3 million.

Okay, what are you gonna raise for your— so this is what, a pre-seed round?

Yes, it's our pre-seed round.

When's your seed round and how much will you be raising?

So we plan to raise in, uh, 2025. Um, and sorry, you, you said something else?

Your seed round, when and how much?

Yeah, uh, how much? Yeah, so 10 million probably.

Okay. Okay. I don't know if you have time for me to kind of expand, spend a bit more time here.

Yeah, we got some time.

Okay. So here's some advice that I like to share with founders who are raising. Not a lot of founders spend a lot of time with Series A investors, and it's important to understand how Series A investors think so that you can kind of work backwards. And position yourself for a successful, delicious, as I like to think about it, Series A conversation. So Series A investors are coming into a conversation thinking, I'm going to take— how can I take this company to IPO, right? And for that to happen, for that to be a compelling yes, you have to be growing fast enough so that over the years as your growth dissipates, You're still an attractive IPO candidate in several years from today. Now you're growing 69% month over month, which is wonderful. Um, but the metric that you really want to be thinking about is the actual, like, growth, the actual revenue that you bring in. The growth rate is great, but if it's, you know, $1 and then 6 to 9% of that, not so great, right? So the first question Series A investors are going to ask you is how much did you raise in your seed round and how much did you generate in the 12 months following that seed round, right? And the right answer to that question for all the founders here is multiples, right? So if you're looking to raise $10 million seed round, then you better be in a position to generate $20 million in the 12 months of follow close of that round, right? Not $800 grand or $3 million, because then you get tossed into this group of companies that are raising post-seeds and series seed extensions and pre-series A, which you— that's a group you do not want to be in, right? Because you lose your luster at that point. I know we've gone off track, but I wanted to— I thought that was critical because I love what you're doing, and you're obviously getting a lot of attention. Great positive attention. Um, your growth rate is fantastic again, but I don't want you to hit a wall down the road. Um, and I think it's important for you to know this now so that you and your team, um, your very stellar team by the way, can start to think about, okay, how do we make sure that we're in a position to generate 2x whatever we raise for our seed round in the 12 months that follow?

Does that make Yeah, it does. And thank you so much, I really appreciate your feedback.

Okay, I'll let Adrian jump in.

Yeah, my advice is don't waste your time with Series A investors. Don't focus on the— so many founders are like, let me talk to these guys. You're raising for them. Yeah, you're raising for the people that can do $800K and write 50 to 100 checks and fill it in fast. $250K. And look, because in order to get to that Series A, two things are important. Um, one, when are you going to get to profitability? That's the important thing. When are you going to get to $1 million in true ARR? The rest doesn't matter. It doesn't, you know, because here's it, you know, and I think other Adrian is right in terms of like, you don't want to be in the position of I spent $800K to make $200K, I spent $600, you know, $6 million to make $2 million. It's profitable, break-even, and velocity. And really don't think about, oh man, I'm gonna IPO this thing. IPOs are dead for the next 3 to 5 years. It's how can I create an amazing business with the MELD that may have an amazing, like, exit? Um, and don't think about, you know, most founders fall into the trap about Oh, the end state. All just for now, be in the moment, because when you're in the moment, you're also focusing on the right investors, the right time, the right customers. And just between now and then, it's like, how do I get to ARR, true ARR subscription? Um, everything else doesn't matter.

Thank you.

Great pitch too.

Yeah, again, I love the energy on that, Gabriela. Thank you for sharing that today. Definitely hit up the tables. We got a still big pack crowd audience. Again, vote on the audience choice in the poll, last poll, and then I'll shout out who wins the leaderboard. But other than that, thank you again for jumping on the Founder Showcase.

Thanks, Gabriela.

Thank you for having me and thank you for the feedback.

Absolutely. All right, ladies and gentlemen, last pitch of the day, first Founder Showcase of 2023. Last but certainly not least, I'm really excited about this final pitch coming from our Colorado program, but in a fintech— with a fintech product that's serving two continents. So I won't steal any of that thunder. Let's kick it over to founder and CEO Samuel Adewale Dotun of OnePurse.

Hello there, my name is Samuel Adeowale and I'm the co-founder and CEO of 1Forrest. African currencies are not being accepted globally, and so business owners like Abisola who imports essential products into the continent need to first convert the local African currency into foreign currencies like the US dollars before she can pay her suppliers abroad. However, the scarcity of foreign currencies in many African countries hinders the domestic banks from being able to meet the dollar demand for business owners like Abisola. And so the alternative for many business owners like Abisola is the black market. Not only does she pay a premium to purchase US dollars on the black market, she risks dealing with fraudulent individuals who might sell her counterfeit or money laundered. And that's why at OnePurse, we are changing the status quo. We have built a global payments platform to help African business owners like Abisola make international payments securely and on time. We source the foreign currencies by providing low-cost remittances to Africans living in the US that want to send money to their friends and families back home. And we then take the US dollars that's been sent by Africans abroad to sell to businesses like Abisola in exchange for local currency. And we earn a revenue of 3% margin on every, on every dollar transacted on our platform. Abisola is not alone. According to the World Bank, there are 8 million other business owners like Abisola in Africa with a total demand of $250 billion yearly. With our current proof of concept using third-party platforms, we have manually processed over $3.5 million in transactions, and we achieved this 100% using word of mouth. And we won't stop here until we become the most preferred cross-border payment platform for every African everywhere. We are seeking a $250,000 investment to build and deploy the beta version of our scalable platform and bridge us to our pre-seed round. I moved to the US 2 years ago and started OnePurse as a way to send money to my family back home. And knowing that my sister graduated from college debt-free is what makes the problem in solving our OnePurse personal for me. And I also have a team of dedicated people who is working with me to deliver OnePurse to the hands of millions of Africans globally. And my co-founder Alex co-founded 2 fintech startups that exited to publicly traded companies. Get in touch with me today if you'd like to join us to building the next unicorn. Thank you.

Awesome. How you doing? I'm doing great.

Can you hear me well?

Oh yeah, you sound awesome. Thank you for closing it out for us. That was awesome pitch. Um, I'll kick it right over to the panel. We got wrapping up on time on this, but I want to make sure we have everything on the table for you too. So take it away.

How do you do it?

What's the technology behind it? Like, to be able to get the cost savings? I mean, so much is lost in FX rates. How— what are you guys doing to be able to be more efficient, to be able to make sure that it's happening at, you know, and be able to get margin out of it?

All right, so for us, innovation is more on the business process than the technology itself. So as an immigrant myself, I came to the US and said, send money. And that's how I got the experience, like how expensive it is to send money between the US and Africa. But then coming from Nigeria, I realized there was a much bigger problem for businesses, right? So literally what happens today is when you send money using like WorldRemit or Western Union and the likes, they usually have like other FX partners they work with to convert these currencies to local currency. What we've done is bypass those different middlemen and take those foreign currencies directly to sell or exchange by selling to business owners like Abisola in my pitch. And so the whole idea is essentially cutting middlemen and different forex brokers by creating a direct marketplace where business owners who import products from other countries into the African continent can purchase foreign currencies through remittance services that we provide.

Yeah, a couple of African startups in the past have been sort of using tokenization of currencies, whether it be blockchain, whether it be other currencies, to be able to move it without FX rate. How are you guys competing with them? Because for you guys, when you have Let's say you have a middleman that you happen to have a partnership with, you know, that's a risk because if they decide to kick you off, you're now shopping around for another middleman and there goes your margins. Your 3% is really small compared to what you're making.

To clarify, we don't work with the middleman. We're essentially creating a platform, so bypass the middleman, if that makes sense. And so essentially it's the end consumer on the African side, which are businesses. And for the most part, this is a problem that's been existing for the longest of time and nobody really like seeks to solve. So most businesses are just left there to like find alternatives or means to convert local African currency to foreign currency. For us, what we're doing is taking the first step to solving this problem. It's a multi-step solution that we're offering, but in this first initial stage. It's the first step in solving the problem.

I mean, I'd like to dig in more. I mean, are you guys building a digital wallet?

Yeah, so there's something— what we're doing differently is on the business process side. I can explain further if we like get on a call, but there's a market insight that we're leveraging that most, most players are not using today, right? And to give you like an insight, right now foreign remittances from the US to African corridors, there is 65% of informal remittances between US and Africa. And what we found as leverage is where the bigger opportunity is on those informal channels that people who do not use formal channels like Western Union and Co. or like send money using all these different middlemen. And so we've created a platform business process to leverage what many of our customers currently use today. We're creating a platform. So think of it like Uber. Before Uber, there were already taxis and people were going to taximens or to other rides around, right? And what we're doing is building a platform for all of the different informal channels in which money moves between the US and Nigeria today and creating a tool platform to make that more efficient. Efficiencies, and that's how we get cost savings. 3% margin, it might seem small, but compared to industry standard, we believe that would definitely make us more profitable than most companies in the space.

Can we do a comparison, um, a hypothetical scenario here of you sending money to me in Casablanca? Right? So States, Africa, right? Let's start with WorldRemit and then compare that with OnePurse. What would that process look like?

Like, so basically, um, for, for WorldRemit, essentially it only works for the people in States who are sending money to Africa, right? So it's more of a one-way marketplace. So you go to download the app and then you enter the amount of money you want to send and recipient information, then send the money. And then WorldRemit behind the scenes has partners that does the FX conversion for them. What we've done on our platform is when you install our platform to send money, right, it's very similar process to WorldRemit. But what's happening behind the scenes is we are aggregating all of these US dollars being sent to sell to business owners like Abisola in exchange for the local currency that's settled to you. Does that make sense?

Wait, no, so do it with me. Like, if I download it—

yeah, so let's say you're sending menu to your friend in Nigeria as an example. You live in the US, right?

No, um, with you sending to me, what would happen? Who downloads what?

Oh, I get to download the platform and then I send it to you, essentially.

Okay, and how, like, How, where would the money, where would I get the money from? From a partner, from my bank account? Like, walk me through. I want to understand your process.

Okay.

It's just sending money, but what really happens?

Okay. So basically, right. Um, I'm living in the US. I have a US bank account, right? Then I download the One First app using my debit card. I can get to enter your bank account information in Nigeria to send money to you. What's happening behind the scenes, so when you go to the platform to send US dollars, when I go to platform to send US dollars, I mean, I'm sending you the equivalent in local currency. That's what I want you to receive in Nigerian naira. And so what 1Purse does is 1Purse takes my US dollars, right? And then sells those US dollars on your behalf to business owners who purchase US dollars in exchange for local currency.

Business owner where?

In Nigeria. So I use, using, using Abisola as the persona. Abisola imports products from the US to Nigeria. She has local Nigerian currency and she wants to pay vendors in the US. She needs US dollars because they don't accept local currency. And so we sell my US dollars I'm selling on the platform to Abisola so she can pay of NGOs in the US.

I see. Just, um, I should, I should add that this is a very real problem, um, in Nigeria. If, you know, anyone on the call isn't super familiar with it, it's extremely real. Um, in October, I remember going to a bank in Nigeria to try to get dollars and the bank telling me they can only give me $5 in single dollar $5. Yeah, you believe it. There was serious dollar crunch at that time, but that's how bad it gets, and it hasn't gotten much better since that. Um, very cool product. I definitely love to dig in more and learn a bit more about how you're doing things differently, uh, which is what I'm trying to suss out.

But I like the idea of being that solution for the businesses in Nigeria.

And then by doing that, um, being able to also serve people like me who just really want to move money, um, receive or send money, um, to people. Um, very cool. They're attacking two problem markets at the same time.

So to mention something as well, because I see a question in the chat For us, there is, like you mentioned, there's two sides of marketplace, right? And one thing that works for us in our advantage is the two sides already have alternatives they use, right? So they find like solutions that are not very efficient. So what we're doing in essence is creating a platform that makes the whole process efficient. So right now our goal, and it's impossible for us to solve the problem for businesses completely, but what we're doing is is the first step into, um, into a 10-year journey, kind of like creating a new standard in which foreign currencies is being traded across Africa. So it's kind of like a long-term vision, and in this first phase it's creating a platform, but it's like there is other, like, um, there's other ways in which we plan to evolve with the company as we scale, which—

yeah, right on, Samuel. Thank you. Appreciate that. And definitely, again, that's what the Showcase is all about— connecting amazing ideas with amazing people around the world. So definitely drop at the table. We still have a ton of people in the audience. We are out of time for the live segment though, so I appreciate our VC panel for sticking around a little bit past the top of the hour. Samuel, again, good luck, fantastic presentation. See you continue to grow. But that's a wrap for our first Showcase. August of 2023, y'all. I don't know about you, but I am very jazzed up for the evening ahead. We have FI programs in person back here in Austin tonight, and I know a lot of my founders in class have been watching and taking notes. But until then, I do want to give one more thank you. Adrian Mendoza, thank you for the conversation. Thank you for sticking around for those pitches. Así, Adrián Higuera, thank you for tuning in in Morocco. I didn't even realize you were already all the way up there for the night. So hope you have a great evening as well. And thank you for you both for bearing with us through the bugginess today on the Airmeet platform. It's not always like that, but again, when you're going live and dialing in people from around the world, it tends to be like that from time to time. But in any case, I'll definitely bid you gentlemen adieu. So I know y'all have busy, busy days and evenings to go. Um, best, best of luck on the, on the meeting this afternoon.

Awesome.

And we will be connecting soon. So as I wrap up, ladies and gentlemen here in the room, we're going to keep the space open for several hours moving forward. So just hang out. When I disappear into the ether, you're going to see a bunch of tables. Our founders that presented today all have their own virtual tables right at the top. So definitely, if anybody resonated with you, and you want to talk to them or all of them, definitely drop by those tables. We have certain capacity limits, but definitely try to connect with as many as possible and get to know them, learn their story. And if you're an investor in the audience, because I know we do, and one of these is right up your alley, definitely get that contact info, follow up. We've seen magic happen in the past. I have no doubt magic will happen today as well. But without further ado, let me see who actually answered the polls. And we'll just call out our People's Choice in 3, 2, 1. Closing the poll now. And just by a squeaker, I don't know if y'all can see this, but Chamber, congrats for winning the People's Choice today. Squeaked by 1 vote right behind, right in front of Tempus. But everybody got some dang good votes. All in all though, Congrats, Chamber. Gabrielle, that energy I think might have sent you over the top. But in any case, we're gonna keep going on that. You just got bragging rights for that. Also shout out to our most engaged people in the audience on the leaderboard. Samuel, who just left the stage, most engaged person, then Saad, and then Mark Cohen. So right on. Again, y'all just get bragging rights for being some of our biggest fans in the audience today. We'll keep doing that hopefully for the subsequent ones. But that's a wrap for me. My name is Martin, entrepreneur in residence. As a, as a, as a founder many times over, it's always great to see entrepreneurs taking, taking the leap and building amazing things for the people that matter the most to them. But until next time, applications again are open for to pitch on the global stage. As, as you noticed, we had people from outside the FI network come and present what they're working on. So if you think you have what it takes and you might be ready to get up on this stage and talk to a few hundred of your closest friends around the world about what you're building, uh, definitely get those applications in right now. Head on over to foundershowcase.com and apply today for that May 24th showcase. We'll have another great keynote, another great set of presenters, and some amazing investor judges to give them feedback. But until then, y'all, definitely keep coming to these events We host them weekly through at FI HQ with not just hosts like myself, but tons of our great hosts at HQ who will be doing— we have another one great next week for feedback on your pitch and many, many more just for the FI network coming into March and the rest of spring. But in any case, I hope all of you are safe and well. The tables are going to be open for the next few hours, so please mingle and meet with each other. As well as our founders. And we'll see you again in the spring for the next Founder Showcase. But until then, hope you stay safe, stay well, take care of each other. We'll see you next time.