Founder Showcase: Pre-Seed Startup Pitch & Networking Event, with Lisa Besserman

for this event. Uh, you may remember me from the last one back in December. We got a great show for you again. Uh, got 5 amazing founders that are going to be presenting their businesses, and they're coming from all around the world. We have people dialing in from every corner of the globe. So let's get to know you before we jump into a little bit of what to expect from this event, if it's your first time joining us or you've been to many on-air meet with us. Um, but let's start by just figuring out where you all are coming from. If you kind of hover over that People tab, click the X, you can see the chat. So we have people from Colombia, we have people from Australia, we have people from Luxembourg, California, Monterrey, Mexico. Keep it going, share your LinkedIn, connect with each other. This is some of the most fun things that you get to do. You know, obviously, the world is still crazy heading into the third year of this maddening experience that started in 2020. But that doesn't mean we can't connect with each other still. So we use this platform called Airmeet that allows you, regardless of where you're coming from, to be able to connect with people from all around the world. And it starts with just getting to know each other in the chat. So drop your LinkedIn, tell us what you're working on, whether you're a founder starting a company, whether you're a service provider looking to support startups, or you're an investor looking for interesting companies to help grow and partner with. This is the event for you. All right, another couple things about Airmeet. Right now you're seeing the big broadcast. If you had just come in before we started the broadcast, you noticed some virtual tables. The first few tables you're going to see are for each of our presenting companies for this evening, morning, afternoon, wherever you're coming from. So feel free to sit down at those tables where our founders will be after their presentations and learn more about them, connect with them. Whether you want to see if you can support them. Maybe they might be a product or service you want to use as a customer. And maybe if you're an investor, they might be exactly the kind of company you're looking to partner with and help grow. So definitely take advantage of that. There's also the ability to do one-on-one direct conversations with other attendees. And just looking at the audience now, we're hitting about 250 attendees, ladies and gentlemen. So again, welcome. If you're not on Airmeet directly, you may be watching us on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. So welcome from across all those channels. We will be sharing the links in, in each of those channels to join the air meet. We'd love to have you here in the actual event room proper, but if you just like watching us in the background on YouTube or wherever, more than welcome to. Thank you for joining us. So a little bit about Founder Institute, then we're going to get into our first segment of the evening. So Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed accelerator program. We start with our FI Core program where we work with founders that might just have an idea. They don't know where to start. And that might be a bunch of you in the audience right now. You might have an idea, you might be thinking about building a company, might be ready to quit that job, be part of that big resignation that we've been seeing across the world and build something that matters, build something that's gonna impact the world. And this is the place where you can start it. We have chapters from all, all across every continent minus Antarctica. So head on over to fi.co and learn about some active chapters that are in your region and see what it might be to work with our 4-month core program. I'm also noticing y'all discovered the little emoji tool here on Airmeet. So hit that little emoji right there and you can give me a wall of emojis, whatever you're enjoying on that. So I appreciate the hearts, appreciate the celebratory emojis and sunglasses and the laughs. All right. I'm coming from Austin, Texas, by the way. So I apologize in advance for that little twang you might hear from time to time. I try my best to mute it, but it just comes out. It just comes out. So as I mentioned, Founder Institute, we've been doing this since 2009, heading into our 13th year. We got a lot of amazing things in store for you for the year ahead, but we'll just wait for a future event to tell you a little more about what's in store there. So let's get right into it. We're hitting about 10 minutes into the event. I want to introduce our keynote speaker who's gonna be sitting down with me for a fireside chat. This evening, morning, afternoon, wherever you find yourself. Um, Lisa Besserman, managing director over at EXPO VC. So let's bring Lisa up to the stage and, uh, give everybody— everybody in the audience, throw them emojis up. Big round of welcome, uh, to Lisa Besserman over at EXPO VC. Lisa, welcome. How are you?

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Oh, I'm excited to have you. Yeah, I'm glad to have you too. Just for everybody watching in the audience, Lisa and I know each other a little bit and we've done a few events together. This is the first time we're actually going to get to do it one-on-one. So it's just going to be everything. We're going to get to know about Lisa and Expo. I'm really excited for this conversation. So thank you again, Lisa. Let's dive in. So you are the managing director over at Expo VC, but before then you've actually been quite the journeywoman. Around the world, really. So I'd love to just for you, just to tell a little bit about your background, what led you to Expa and kind of the things that you've discovered and were able to do building communities in regions where startups may weren't as recognized or the communities weren't yet established.

Sure, yeah. I'm what I would call a recovering entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. So I've definitely seen both sides of the table. I understand the challenges as well as the opportunities. So my first entrepreneurial endeavor was Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm originally from New York, although if I say Martín, you might think that I spent a little more time in LATAM, but originally from New York. I got my start in the startup space running product and operations at an early-stage startup in New York City. Did that for quite a few years, and then winter was coming, for all of my Game of Thrones fans out there, and my lease was up in my overpriced Manhattan apartment, and I wanted to work remotely just to escape the New York winter for a few months. And my company obliged. We were a distributed team. We had, you know, half of our dev team was in Silicon Valley, the other half in Europe, and I was in New York running operations. And so I wanted to work remotely. My company said I could go for a couple months just to avoid that winter. And I looked at a map and I said, where is it warm and where can I be in a similar time zone? And that's where I came down to Central and South America as as the options. And so looked into places that I could potentially work, but also have a fun, you know, work holiday adventure. And then came up with Buenos Aires, Argentina. I didn't speak a word of Spanish, didn't know anybody in the country, but it was meant to be a short-term adventure, a working holiday or working remotely adventure, if you will. And I got down there and immediately fell in love with the city. I packed my suitcase and my laptop, went down there. The plan was to be there 3 months. And when I got down there, I met just an incredible community of entrepreneurs, the most resilient entrepreneurs I'd ever met in my life, really incredible tech enthusiasts. But I noticed one thing very quickly, and that was that the landscape was incredibly under-resourced. So founders found it really difficult to raise financial capital. The community was very disjointed and fragmented. You know, companies like Google and Facebook and other companies that were looking at the rest of LATAM to do events or initiatives, they were kind of skipping over Argentina because it was a very challenging landscape in terms of political instability and macroeconomic climate. And so I just fell in love with the city, saw just this incredible opportunity to build a startup community in Argentina. And through, I don't know, hubris, naivete, sheer will, dedication, I wound up building an organization called Startup Buenos Aires. It was originally meant to be a place where founders can go to connect with one another, similar to the Founders Network, like founders helping founders type ethos. It was meant to be just a small side project, a way to just maybe leave a little bit of an impact in the city before I left, help founders get resources, connect them with one another, and then maybe build small bridges to and from LATAM to other more mature ecosystems for startup development. And I did this for a couple months and, you know, validated the thesis. And then I realized that there was just this incredible opportunity for growth. You know, Argentina is home to some of the most incredible entrepreneurs. And it was one of those moments in my life, like where you're at the crossroads and it was time to go back. It was, you know, I was at the 3-month mark and it was time to go back to the States. And it was one of those times where I was like, if I go home, I might regret this for the rest of my life. If I stay and I fail, which is probably likely because 90% of startups fail and I didn't know what I was doing and I was in a foreign country. But if, but if I fail, at least I'll have a great time failing. I'll learn a ton in the process and I'll be able to go back to New York at any point in time. But I was very lucky that an incredible team and community came behind me and were able to mobilize the organization. We wound up pivoting to become an early-stage startup accelerator. We were one of the first startup accelerators in Argentina. This is back in 2012. So accelerators weren't as ubiquitous as they are today. And so we built this early-stage startup accelerator, which provided education, community resources, access to financial capital to entrepreneurs throughout LATAM, specifically in Argentina. But then in addition to those resources, we also built bridges and served as a conduit to Argentina from the States and brought a lot more initiatives, opportunities, funding to, to the region. And so I was able to build that out, did that for about 5 years. So what was supposed to be 3 months turned into 5 years in Argentina, you know, met just really some fantastic people in that time. And I was able to scale the organization. I was very lucky. We wound up working very closely with the government. Other partners like Uber and Facebook and WeWork and other companies that were looking to have a presence in Latin America. And we, we helped to be their partner and their boots on the ground. And then after about 5 years, I was ready to move back to the States. And I was very lucky that the government was looking to put more resources into entrepreneurship. The national administration was betting on entrepreneurship and they wanted to build a public incubator program. So I was very fortunate that we were able to work out an acquisition deal with them. And I transitioned Startup Buenos Aires from a private accelerator to work with them to build a public incubator to provide financial capital, equity-free financial capital to founders in Argentina, as well as an educational component to support entrepreneurs in the region.

That's fantastic. So I feel like you've seen it all from at least at that point.

When it comes to accelerators, I've seen it on the private side, I've seen it on the public side. And then when I moved to Austin, where I currently am, I was recruited to run Indeed's incubator. So Indeed is the world's largest job site, and I built and ran their corporate incubator program. And so then I saw incubation and acceleration on the corporate side, and then now I switched over to the venture side. So I've certainly seen different iterations and, you know, lots of really great ways to accelerate startups and work with them in a myriad of opportunities as well.

Yeah, all right. So before I get into what you're working on right now, I mean, obviously, again, you started like grassroots, you know, like really working with startups, building just the communities from the ground up. You got buy-in from government organizations that were helping kind of fuel a lot of that to continue economic development. Then you bounced over into corporate, doing that from like an inside standpoint, right? Without having like picked too much of a favor, like what was kind of the most exciting one, at least bucket out of that?

To be honest, what I'm doing now is my favorite. I like being on the venture side because I loved being an entrepreneur. I'm what I would call an accidental entrepreneur, a phrase I thought I coined until I Googled it like years later and saw there was like hundreds of thousands of hits. But I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I was never one of those kids that had a lemonade stand or aspired to be an entrepreneur in my adulthood, but I saw a problem. and I was crazy enough to think I could build a solution. And in that process, I accidentally became an entrepreneur. So there were a lot of elements of entrepreneurship that I loved, like the passion, the grit, the tenacity, the hard work, the dedication. There was a lot I didn't. I never really felt truly comfortable in living in that instability, not knowing if I was gonna be able to pay my employees, not knowing if I was gonna be able to pay my rent. I loved a lot of elements of entrepreneurship, but I never truly felt comfortable doing it. Corporate was great. I learned a lot. I truly like Indeed was one of the greatest places I've ever worked. But being on the venture side, I think is the best of all worlds because I have the stability of being in venture. I know I'm going to have a paycheck. I know I have health insurance, but I also get to work so closely with early-stage founders and entrepreneurs that I get to be a part of that building and a part of that, you know, that grit and that hard work. And I get to see that firsthand. So I feel like it's a really comfortable way to make an impact. So for me, it's really being on the venture side that I appreciate the most.

Oh, I love that. I love that. If you have questions for Lisa, please drop them in the chat. Our production team behind the scenes are going to bring them up to me and I'll read some of the best ones out loud. Can't get to all of them, else we'll be here all night. But please feel free to ask questions in the chat. We'll do our best to get to as many as possible. So as you mentioned, you love working in venture right now. So tell us a little bit more about Expa. Tell us a little bit about kind of where it started, what's it focusing on right now, and maybe some of the companies that you're working with already that are really exciting you.

Sure. So Expa, we are an early-stage venture fund, but we're also a venture studio. So we were founded by Garrett Camp, who is the founder of Uber. I'm sure all of us here are familiar with that small little startup, Uber. And he was also the founder of StumbleUpon. And so he built Expa in 2011. 2013, originally as a venture studio, similar to an incubator where they built companies in-house, scaled them, and so on. And then a few years later, they decided to go the more traditional venture route or incorporate that into the platform. And so now we also invest in early-stage startup, primarily pre-seed to Series A. So in addition to, we still have the venture studio, we're still a VC of builders by builders for builders, but we also have that traditional venture investment arm. We are agnostic, so we're a generalist fund. We invest anywhere from aerospace to fintech to climate tech to SaaS, all across the board. You know, for us, it's really investing in the founders and the problem space rather than, you know, a specific vertical or sector. We have, you know, quite a robust portfolio, but I'd say some, some, some that like come to mind, we recently invested in a company called Farm. And so they're a climate investment platform. They have a community-powered tool for investing in undervalued land assets. And the goal is to significantly reduce carbon emissions. So it's just a really beautiful mission. Another exciting startup we have is called Detect. And I hope everybody remembers this one because what they do, they're a diagnostic company and they developed an accurate and affordable molecular COVID-19 test. To give everyone access to PCR lab accuracy. And those are available online depending on when you check the website, 'cause they sell out in like 6 minutes, but I'm hoarding my Detect COVID tests, of course. Another one that's really interesting is called Prometheus. They've created a zero-net-carbon fuel. So their product actually pulls CO2 and water from air, and it combines it with electricity from solar and wind power. To produce zero-net-carbon gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. So that's really interesting. And then on the mental health side, which is an area that I'm quite passionate about, we've recently invested in an early-stage startup called Chill Pill. They haven't launched yet. They're going to launch in a few months. And they're a mental health platform for Gen Z women. So a big mixture of like climate, aerospace tech, fintech, SaaS, all the cool things.

That's awesome. Yeah. Again, across the board. I love the fact that you're you'll have the ability to really get like across the spectrum in this variety of different verticals, hold different kinds of sectors and really make impact in those areas. Whereas again, in traditional firms, you know, they're really centric to maybe just one region or one specific vertical of industries. So it's really unique what y'all are doing over there. So now we know a little bit about Lisa, we're gonna, let's learn a little bit about what, you know, What's great for a founder, maybe somebody who's in the audience right now that wants to talk to somebody, but you don't even know how to get in touch with you. You know, there's certainly good ways of doing about it, doing it. There's some really unique ways to really kind of separate yourself from the pack. There's certainly ways to definitely not do it. But in your perspective, in your experience, what have been some pretty solid standard or best practices for founders that are maybe starting that first pre-seed round. They've gotten through the angel friends and family kind of round. They need to start building their circles. They need to build that investor pipeline. You know, what are some good ways for them to set themselves apart, but also ensure they're not running afoul of any etiquette things that they're still learning on the fly?

Sure. I would say that the first rule of thumb or the first suggestion is warm intros go a very, very long way. So if there's some way that you can be connected to a certain VC or investor that you're interested in, interested in, I would say absolutely scout your LinkedIn, see who your second and third-degree connections are, and try to get that warm introduction because that has a lot of weight to it. Another thing I say is really important is to ensure that there's alignment. So whether it's in the thesis of the VC, the stage that they invest, or the value that they can add to your startups, relationships should always be mutually beneficial. And it's really important to understand that when you're reaching out to VCs, make sure that they're actually investing in your space. Check out their portfolio. Understand the stage that they invest in, because if you're an early-stage startup and you're going to a late-stage investor, it's really not the best use of your time or their time. And it might actually provide a missed opportunity in the future when you are at that stage. So I'd say do your due diligence, but I also tell portfolio companies that due diligence is a two-way street. It's, you know, it's important that you're doing diligence on the investor. And it's not just about who can write a check, it's who can be the right strategic partner, not just the financial partner, who can help you scale, who can help you make introductions, who can provide those resources, and also most importantly, who's gonna be there when the time gets tough. And so for founders that are looking to take payment or take financial capital from investors, I always say, you know, don't only talk to the portfolio companies that are succeeding, talk to the portfolio companies that have failed and see how those investors reacted in those, tough times because, you know, an investment, when you're dealing with venture investment, it's a marriage. You're in it for the long haul. And so I'd say, you know, the tips are, you know, warm intros, making sure that there's alignment, and then also doing your diligence on the investors themselves.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I see this often, you know, with our work with Founder Institute. I've been with the organization running our Texas programs for the last 5 years. Just recently joined our headquarters as our entrepreneur in residence. And you just— first-time founders don't realize that they really are getting into a marriage. It's a long-term relationship. It's not just going to be transactional and you set it and forget it. It's, you know, you're going to be with them for a long time. They're going to be with you. So you really need to understand that and manage your expectations before you start trying to dive into those relationships, just like you would in real life.

And do your homework. You know, like, it's really important. We get So many startups that we just don't invest in that sector, or it's just a much later stage than we're usually investing in. And it's just not a great use of your time. So, you know, make sure you do the homework before you do the outreach, I'd say.

Absolutely. So, you know, you've mentioned a little bit about what not to do, but is there any, has there been anything that's ever like really stuck out at you? It's like, wow, they really shouldn't have done that. Maybe something that might be good for somebody in the audience.

We're already sitting with 100 people in the audience right now. I mean, like, one of my pet peeves is when I get, like, a cold outreach email, which is totally fine. We've actually, we've invested for plenty of cold outreach emails, but the emails don't include the deck. It's like, let's schedule a call or, you know, email me back if you want my deck. It's like, well, you have one shot. You know, we get, you know, 50 cold emails a day. So really, if you want to have them look and give consideration, and we look at every single deck that we receive. Send the deck in the first email. Don't leave it on to the investor to follow up to get that information from you. So I'd say one of the, one of the dos and don'ts is don't forget to add the deck, especially if it's a cold outreach. Another thing that I see sometimes is in the deck, they don't include how much they're targeting to raise. So, you know, a lot of times with VCs, they're either early stage or late stage, or they might have different, you know, principals or associates that are targeted on the pre-seed versus the seed. So, Sometimes it just needs to be routed to the right person. So it's really important to include your funding amount so people know if it's a good match for the fund. Another, this is a rookie error, but don't CC all of your targeted investors in one email. We've been in emails, just like cold emails with just like a list of investors and we're just like, that just doesn't feel great. It's a little spammy. It is quite spammy, yes. And you're not going to get the response that that you'd like in that case. And then the last thing, and this pretty much goes without saying, is, but don't lie. You know, we do diligence. It's not great. You know, like VC and investment is so relationship-based. You wanna have that trust from day one. And if you start off on the wrong foot, one, we'll probably find out, and two, you might burn that bridge and it's just not worth it. So always be honest and upfront in all stages of your communication with your potential investor.

That's fantastic. Very concise too. I hope. Hope people in the audience are really getting some, some good tidbits because I'm learning a lot right now myself. Um, you know, I'm going to transition a little bit. You talked about some of the things that you're already doing and investing over at Expo, but you know, as you look to, you know, say 2022, we're just 2 weeks in, less than that, into the new year. It's already been a whirlwind, just like it has been the last few. Um, is there anything that you're seeing already, maybe from some of the emails and then startups are coming are really, maybe it's not stuff you have looked at traditionally that are really starting to excite you?

Yeah, there's some, yeah, 2022, it's crazy. It's already 2022. Where did the time go? But, you know, I'd say a few sectors that we're starting to see really big trends and emergence in, in the venture space is one of them would be like climate and energy tech. So, you know, the UN Climate Change Conference, I believe that was in Glasgow, that showed us that politicians are willing to support improvements in energy transition and climate change. Need to lean on, on tech to do so. So climate and energy tech entrepreneurs actually have a really wonderful opportunity to build companies that can make real impact and help us meet the world's ambitious net-zero targets. And if you match that with the investment community that are looking more closely at ESG policies, you have the ideal mix for more investment dollars flowing into climate and energy tech, especially this year. And, you know, there's, there's been a launch of a dedicated ranking of investors in the sustainable energy transition. It's called the Climate 50 this year, and that's even more evidence of the gathering momentum in that space. That's, that's one space that I think we're going to see a lot of startups emerge in at the early and late stage. Next is, I mean, this is pretty obvious, but healthcare, you know, the trends precipitated by the pandemic for health tech entrepreneurs are going to continue, you know, as national health services continue their focus on pandemic prevention and treatment. And similar to the future of work, which is also another one that I'll touch on briefly, the way that health services are provided has been forever impacted by the pandemic and, and startups that focus on areas such as, um, like remote patient management, um, or are working to remove frictions, uh, for research and drug discovery, they're particularly well positioned to benefit from more funding and, and less inertia. So that's another space I think we're gonna see a trend in. Um, third is fintech, like financial services was the leading sector for venture investment in 2021. Um, I believe there was over $134 billion invested with like almost 200,000— sorry, 200% year-over-year growth. So that in itself is— I think that'll continue. You know, there's this desire for personal financial stability and security amidst all of the economic uncertainty that's unfolding in the world right now, unfortunately. But I think we'll see more B2B payments being digitalized, BNPL, like the buy now, pay later platforms. And then I expect to see innovation in the infrastructure layer as well, and consumer tech and business payments. And then not to mention, of course, growth in investing in crypto assets. So I think they're gonna, like, the investments and the financial services, fintech will continue to be a leading sector for early and late-stage investments in 2022. And then the last is one of my favorites, you know, coming from Indeed, I've seen it, you know, as we were building new products in, at the start of COVID is the future of work. You know, there's been a very obvious tectonic shift in how, where, and why we work over the past 2 years or almost 2 years. And it's no surprise that the future of work has a huge potential to be a major area for investment this year. And the next generation of HR tech startups will create richer methodologies to measure top talent, both at the hiring and across the employee development experience lifecycle. And then that also, you have to consider the creator economy, you know, as the creator economy considers to grow and it shifts our cultural mindset and workers are redefining their definitions of work and career. And there is market validation that a sustainable living can be made as a creator. So yeah, I'd say those are my, like, top few, like climate and energy, healthcare, fintech, and future of work.

Oh yeah. Again, I have a feeling like a lot of these things are just— we're going to see not only that, but even more discoveries in these fields. I learn something every day talking to founders that are really exploring this space. We got a couple that are tackling a lot of stuff in environmental sustainability that we're going to be presenting a little bit later here in the evening. So thank you again. We're going to change it up a little bit and get some questions from the audience. We've been getting so many. We're sitting at about 330+ people here. Thank you. If you're just joining us from the start of the event, my name is Martin. I'm the entrepreneur-in-residence for Founder Institute. I'm joined over with Lisa Bessman, managing director over at Expa.

VC.

And we're going to take some questions now from you. We got a few. We're going to try and go through these rapid-fire as much as we can. And then, and then once we'll wrap here, we'll get into the presentations for the evening.

One thing to mention also, if we can't get to some questions and you guys want to connect, feel free to tweet me. It's just my name @LisaBessereman. Happy to connect offline as well.

Absolutely. I'm sure our production team will drop that too. Follow us all on Twitter. It's an easy way to get in touch with VCs. I've seen it. I've seen it firsthand for many founders. Twitter is a strong conduit of communication. Just engage, engage, engage. So yeah, we'll start with our first question. So Sohail really resonated with, you know, those cold outreach emails and making sure you have the good information in there. You know, Sohail asked, you know, are there, what are some key data points to include, maybe necessarily in a deck, but, you know, maybe in bullet points that it's gonna make that investor open the pitch deck? Is there anything that you love looking at that's already gonna be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna see what's up with this attachment?

I mean, to be honest, we look at every single deck and a good investor will look at every deck. It's, I kind of skim the body if I'm being completely honest. So I mean, you can incorporate some data points in terms of like how big the TAM is, any traction you have. Also like what stands you out? Like that's the most important when investors are choosing their investments. It's not, Necessarily the product they're investing in, it's the person. So if there's a reason that, or whatever it is that might set you apart or position you to be the founder and you to be the person to solve this problem, I would say focus more on that and the story because that'll catch the attention of the investor. But always include the deck. Please always have the attachment.

Yeah, always have that there. Always have that there. So good. I hope that was helpful. Sorale is also asking, how did you get from, you know, building a community to becoming an organization? Like, was there like a process of just, all right, now we've got so many people, how do we standardize this a little bit? How do we actually turn this into something that is like whole?

I mean, when I started Startup Buenos Aires, we— the first meeting was 12 founders in my friend's living room sitting there. And that's essentially like what I aspired it to be. I'm like, okay, it's like a small little grassroots club. And then really what changed the trajectory of the organization is the community mobilization. More people found out about it. We were doing something altruistic. We were providing resources and asking for nothing in return. And in fact, that's one of the best pieces of advice I ever received from a good friend of mine, Andrew Hyde, He was the founder of Startup Weekend. And, you know, at one point I asked him like, how did you become so successful? It's incredible. He's like, I do good things for people and ask for nothing in return. And that's essentially like what the ethos and the mission of Startup Buenos Aires was. It was help founders and ask for nothing in return and just pay it forward. And so for us, we didn't plan on being this major organization. We had no idea what an accelerator was at the time. We knew we wanted to help people and that resonated with people. And so just, people, they spread the word. We helped people, they wanted to help us, uh, they wanted to provide resources. People were asking for resources. So it was really about kind of connecting the dots, synthesizing the data, and like solving a real problem. And then from there, we were just really like very lucky in the way that we scaled. But it was really just doing good things and asking for nothing in return and enabling a community to get behind the vision and the mission. And so a lot of that had to do with like building a volunteer team, you know, having the right marketing and positioning, building communities like grassroots. Like we went to events, we built a Facebook group, we built a forum. So we made it— we reduced the barriers to entry and tried to make it as frictionless as possible for people to be a part of what we were building. So it wasn't an exclusive community. It was incredibly inclusive. And because of that and because it was built like that from day one, enabled more and more people to be a part of it. And then because of that, we were able to community mobilize that.

That's awesome. It reminds me a lot of when we were starting Founder Institute in Texas. We have about 500 active members that are mentors, grads, partners. And yeah, there was never really like an immediate like, oh, this is when it changed. It just grew. And then we figured out ways to coalesce a lot of those things with those nodes that you mentioned, these little hubs to communicate and bring people together. So that's awesome.

Well, one thing I want to mention is that it's It wasn't all like candy canes. Like, I mean, we didn't have a business model. Like, I invested my life savings into building this without any idea of how we were going to monetize. You know, the first iteration was like, oh, we would survive off of corporate sponsorships because I saw that work in the States that didn't translate to LatAm. There just wasn't that budget in the LatAm groups to provide that, that, that financing. And so we were at like a really rough to the point where my team was split because we realized we're running out of runway. We're just living off of my investment at this point, which wasn't much. And our assumed business model just didn't work. We couldn't validate it. And so half the team wanted to start charging to be a part of the community and the other half, and I was against it. I was like, we started this because people didn't have access to resources. We can't charge them. It goes against our entire mission. And so we were able to find, we were able to find like a business model within that and it was leveraging technology. So we recognized that Argentina had really incredible developers and designers and programmers and the cost of them were at a fraction of the cost of the US. Like a, like you can get 3 Argentine devs for the cost of 1 in the US. And so what we did was we essentially created an agency model and connected like dev shops and like tech studios in Argentina to build technology for companies in the US who are looking to outsource or offshore or hire augmented staff solutions. So for us, it was, you know, it wasn't easy. There were a lot of like challenging moments and a lot of times where we almost shut our doors. But I always like to say like, it's easy to talk about the success, but there was a lot of failure along the way and a lot of missteps. But staying true to the mission is really important. So it's really about like being rigid in your vision, but flexible in your execution.

Awesome. Awesome. So, so yeah, we're hitting, we're just about out of time. At least I would know you and me could talk here probably hours, hours and hours and hours, but I know we got it. We have some founders that I know you're excited about seeing and some, some great panelists gonna help give them feedback. So I wanna leave with one last just thought from you. Before, you know, we let you go for the evening. For the founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, and even maybe some of the investors that are people that are looking to invest and don't really know where to start, you know, what's a great first step to just get going? Be it if you are, you know, a founder trying to start a company, or you're looking to get involved in entrepreneurship and supporting them from an investment standpoint. What's just the first— well, what's like a good first step for any of them?

I would say, I mean, there's two very different paths. I'd say for the founders, my one piece of advice for founders just starting out is fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Make sure you're building something because you absolutely love the problem, not because you think you have a solution and you're trying to find the problem. It's not going to work. That would be my advice to entrepreneurs, like marry the problem. Date the solutions, figure out what solution works. My advice to investors or people starting funds or, you know, people, you know, first-time angels, it's figure out how to add real value. This day and age, like, capital's commodity. Like, there's so much cash everywhere. It's really not about writing a check and waiting for that return on the investment as it might have been historically. Right now, it's about how can you add the most value to your portfolio? Whether it's through introductions, whether it's through human resources, whether it's through support and guidance and advising. So I'd say, like, don't just write a check and wait for it to return. You have to be a part of the journey with the founder in good times and in bad.

Love it. That's fantastic. We are out of time.

Bummer.

I know.

I know.

I hope I can bring you back for more of these.

Anytime. Yeah, you guys have been great. Thank you for the questions.

Thank you so much, Lisa, for joining us. One more emoji round of applause down there, ladies and gentlemen. Please, best man at Expo VC. Um, so let the— I'll let you go. You feel free to stick around if you want to watch some pitches. Yeah, I'm sure you got some things to do, but yeah, if you want to stick around and come join the panel, let's—

let's—

we, we could always use another, uh, set of eyes on these founders that are about to present from all around the world. So, so let's do that. Um, for the 340 of you joining us at this point, welcome to the Founder Showcase. I just said we just had a conversation, fantastic conversation, with Lisa Bessman at Expo VC, and now we're heading into the next phase of the event. So let's start by bringing up our, uh, our judge panel, uh, for the evening. Looks like Lisa is going to be, uh, with us, uh, but let's also bring up Rajesh, Sak, uh, Waleed and Juan. Let's get to know our investor panel for the evening. We got 5 presentations from FI grads from all around the world. We're going to get to know them. We have a prerecorded tape of each of those pitches, and we're going to bring them live. So as I said, we all know Lisa, so we will— if our production team can keep Lisa up here for the panel, that'd be great. But let's get to know some of our invited investors for the rest of the evening as well. So we'll start with Waleed Al-Bashir. Waleed is coming to us from Middle East. He is the general partner of Intuyo Ventures. So, Waleed, how are you today? This morning, good morning for you.

Good morning. Thank you, Martin, for the introduction. Yeah, my name is Waleed Al-Bashir, and Managing Partner, as he said, of Intuitive Ventures, and glad to be with you.

Awesome. Yeah, well, thank you for joining us. I think you're going to have some fun this afternoon— or morning for you, afternoon for some. Um, next up, our next investor is going to be Rajesh Gopi. Uh, Rajesh is the founder of Tides Capital and the co-founder and CTO of 212. Uh, Rajesh, good to see you, man.

Hey, likewise, man. It's awesome what you're doing. Um, fantastic, uh, conversation before we just, uh, started here.

Right on. Yeah, well, thank you for joining us. Tell us a little about yourself.

Um, so I am the managing director of a new fund called Tides Capital. We invest exclusively in, uh, founders on the 212 platform. And 212 is an equity management, uh, and, uh, financial modeling and valuation platform. Um, and we also get into SPVs and anything around equity management. So we have a lot of customers that come and use a product And Tides Capital is a fund that is set up to invest in some of these companies.

Got it. Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us. I think we'll have some fun with you as well. We're dropping everything in the chat, so if you want to connect with any of these investors, please check out their links in and feel free to reach out in kind. Next up, coming to you from Latin America, we have Juan Cruz Valdez Rojas. Juan is the founder and managing partner over at iThink VC. Juan, welcome and thank you for joining us. I know you're spending a little bit of time with the family out and away from the normal desk setup, but thank you for being with us.

Hey, Martin, thank you for having me. Hello, everyone.

Yeah, you mind telling us a little bit about what you're doing over at iThink?

Yep, yep.

So together with my partner, Jasmin, we launched last year iThink VC, which is a VC fund investing in Spanish-speaking LATAM with a special focus on those young ecosystems within the region. It's important to mention that we launched this fund after going through the VC Lab Acceleration Program from Founder Institute.

Awesome. And just one thing to note, all the investors that you are meeting this, this afternoon or evening or morning, I have to say that because we're a global organization, have all gone through our VC Lab Program. Brand new program that we are doing to help emerging fund managers really get off the gates running and starting enduring emerging funds all around the world, not just regulated to Silicon Valley that we've all been accustomed to for forever. So a lot of great things in store with VC Lab, and I'm glad we're able to tap into this community and really help merge these two things together. Last but not least, I want to invite our final investor judge to, to the floor, Saka Siddiq-Nuru. Saka is the general partner and main tech investor at Funder. Saka, how are you? Welcome.

Hi, I'm good. Thanks for having me. So I can talk a little bit about Funder if that's all right.

Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great. Great.

So Funder VC is a pre-seed stage fund that focuses on fintech and martech, specifically within the European and North American regions. The reason I started it is because there's been a huge trend towards democratizing access and also lowering barriers to entry within the fintech and martech space. So I'm very excited to be here and thanks for having me.

Thank you as well. And yeah, one last thing, I forgot to recognize Waleed too on what you're doing over in Tuíta. So Waleed, before we head into our presentation, I want to bring you back up to the main floor and just give you a chance to tell us a little bit about what you're working on with your fund and who you're focusing on.

Great, thank you very much, Martin, again. I've been in technology as a developer, as an entrepreneur, and later as an ecosystem builder over the last 25 years. And for the last 10 years, we have been working in mobility logistics sector in one of my ventures here. And we figured out that there are a lot of challenges that are faced by this venture. In 2018, we started a venture studio based in Estonia, and we had a couple of successful spinouts out of this venture studio. And we decided in 2021 to launch a venture studio and a fund together. And we joined Foundry Institute in Cohort 4. We've got very great support from the, from the ADION team. And right now our venture studio and fund is focused on pre-seed targeting Middle East and North Africa startups. And we focus on the industry of logistics, mobility, and industry for us generally.

Awesome.

Well, everybody in the audience, we're— yeah, we're still doing strong at 300, 330+ in the audience all around the world. Let's get into our panel of presentations for this event. So first up, coming from one of my programs at Houston, Texas, I'm really excited to introduce this founder, Maria Burgos, of Trendy Seconds. So let's roll, let's roll the tape. Let's learn about what Maria is up to, and then we're going to bring her up to the stage for some live Q&A with our investor panel. So, um, let's get our— let's get that going, and we'll take it.

And I'm the founder of Trendy Seconds, the online marketplace to buy secondhand and new sustainable clothes for women. The fashion industry is one of the most polluting in the world, yet over the last 15 years, we basically duplicated the items in our closets. Mainly driven by fast fashion that gave us access to a lot of different cheaply made designs several times per year. Now our value perception of clothes is so low that we only wear on average 7 times one item before throwing it away. Luckily, consumers are beginning to understand the impact of their choices. They are going from just buying anything from any brand to buy from those that are eco-socially friendly, and they are going from throwing away in the trash what they don't want anymore to learn how to resell the items on the secondhand market, where they are also becoming shoppers. And this is great because sustainability is getting people's attention. However, consumers still find the sustainability fashion space too hard to navigate. They think it's inconvenient, it's confusing and overwhelming. Almost half of them won't buy because they find it hard. They think they have to do a lot of research. They don't understand what really makes clothes sustainable and the platforms that they have to research on are just too much. I know this firsthand because it happened to me, and this is exactly why I created Trendy Seconds, because being a more responsible shopper shouldn't be hard at all. Trendy Seconds is an e-commerce site that combines the best of the sustainable fashion world. We offer secondhand clothes and also new sustainable items. To make the experience even easier, we aggregate dozens of different sustainable sites We vet every merchant according to the United Nations Sustainability Goals, and we work with fashion stylists to curate our product inventory. On top of that, we offer our vendors an integrated checkout to enable shoppers to buy at the point of inspiration and from multiple retailers at once. We launched our MVP in November, and we already have over 50 different merchant partners. 10% of those are integrated into our checkout, and we have had over 3,000 unique visitors to the site. Our business model is based on affiliate marketing, which means that we get a commission every time we make a sale. We don't handle any inventory or logistics, and this is completely free for the user. We are currently evaluating a second revenue stream by vendors' request, which is a special product placement within our site. We want to become the specialist at the female sustainable fashion world. This way we will differentiate from competition. I'm working with a great team of hands-on advisors with a lot of great partners and suppliers, and we are currently looking for a full-stack developer with e-commerce experience and introduction to potential investors. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Fantastic. Let's bring Maria up to the stage, and we'll open it up, the floor, to our investor panel once we get Maria going. Maria, good to see you.

How are you?

Hi, Martin.

Nice to see you.

How are you?

Hi, everybody.

We're doing fantastic. So investors, I'm gonna shut up, and I'm gonna let you get some one-on-one time with Maria. We got about 4 or 5 minutes, so hopefully everybody gets a question in. And Maria, feel free to take it from here.

Sure.

Who goes first?

I can ask you the first question. So do you have an inventory problem with your solution? No, we don't. Is it a dropshipping type of platform?

Yes, it's a dropshipping model. I don't handle inventory or logistics at all.

Fantastic. Love it. And what's your margin on each of these sales?

So on average it's 10%, but you know, this is the first revenue stream. We have a roadmap to open up new ones as we learn and go.

And what's your traction so far? What's your revenue? What have you done so far?

So we have a couple of sales. We are working on improving the experience and we are getting a lot of feedback from the users. So we actually soft launch, not to spread the budget across across, you know, the whole United States in terms of advertising because we want to get feedback, improve, learn, and then go back. So the traction has been so far 3,000 unique visitors, most of them from the States, and our social media is growing daily and newsletters as well.

Okay, love it. Good luck.

Thank you.

Good.

I can, I can go next with my question. Hi, Maria. Nice to meet you.

Hi.

So help us understand how big can this be? Help us understand what's the size of the secondhand clothes or items you market?

That's a great question. So the sustainable apparel world, which does not include donations, just secondhand and new sustainable clothes, in 2019 was worth $13 billion. Poised to quadruple that by 2024— by 2025, I'm sorry. So there's a huge opportunity here. And we want to participate not only on selling the clothes, but actually within other points of the circular process of the clothes within its life cycle. So we are getting to reach out to many different companies in that area, and we are hoping to have some partners soon.

Okay, if I could come with a question. You said you're doing a dropship sort of stuff, and I think there are many logistic challenges that are coming.

One second, Wally, I think we may have lost Maria. Well, technical difficulties, y'all. Give us a second. I think we might be able to pull her back in from the audience. Um, there she is. All right, let's get her back up and running, and then we'll get back to you. We'll restart right back with you, Wally. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah, I'll disappear now and get back to Wally. Wally, floor is yours.

Hi, Maria. Um, my question, since you're doing a dropshipping I think there is some challenge in the logistics, you know, as if you're talking about used clothes, you need to clean, sanitize them, groom them, and pack them properly. So how are you planning to manage this and to assure the quality assurance, you know, providing things? Also, right now we're in a pandemic stuff, you might need to do sanitization and all. This is the one question if you would like to answer. I put another question also.

Yes, that's a, that's a very good question. And we are like dropshipping, but we don't actually handle the logistics. So we work with these brands and they are the ones that handle all the logistics. When it comes to secondhand clothes, we only working with partners that handle their own inventory. So we're not working with marketplaces that have thousands of sellers because we want to guarantee the customer experience exactly on that regard. So we curate all of the clothes, even on the secondhand market. We only work with items that are either new or like new. So we, we don't have any hands on the merchant the merchant's clothes at all. We confide this on our partners.

Great. Regarding the value proposition, how do you convey the sustainability message to your audience? I mean, like, it's a really nice cause, but how would you convey this message as a part of your value proposition to the consumer?

Yes, so definitely, in my opinion, the future of fashion is more responsible and consumers are becoming aware of their choices and their impact. So I believe by empowering them and transmitting this message to them, like, your choices make a difference, they are more willing to enter into this space. And in my opinion as well, we need to make it easy for them and we need to make this super exciting. And also, this is why we offer on top of everything, a curation of the product. We're not just aggregating everything in one place. We are curating and we are organizing these items into different capsule wardrobes to make the job easier for the users. So we're kind of combining the impact message with the stylist part of the deal.

Have you got any competitor in the place who help you, you know, pave the way, making consumers understand this concept to, you know, in a better way.

Can you repeat the last part, please?

Yeah, do you have any competitors that help you, you know, bring this awareness in terms of the sustainable?

Yes, actually there's a one platform on Europe that is going really good and they are kind of opening up this space on that side of the world. So they're the first movers.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Maria, I've got two quick questions. The first is How easy is it for companies to integrate with your solution in terms of either the API documentation or things like that? And the second is around your background in terms of, I know you worked at 3M and Santander, which are not necessarily fashion related. So what is it about your background that makes you think you can execute and how you got into this?

Yes.

So the first question, we are partners with Shoppable. They provide the technology solution for multi-vendor checkout. The integration is pretty simple. Most of our brands are hosted on Shopify, and in that case, they need to download an app, install it, and that's it. And for the other platforms that are standalone, then Shoppable takes care of this procedure. They don't have to have another system of inventory management or anything like that. It just syncs with what they already have. And regarding my background, I've always been the incumbent. Like, I, I have pursued my passion throughout my life. Um, when I decided what to study, you know, I got a dentist degree, so I went to healthcare because I always like to help. But in the middle of those years, I founded my first company. It was an advertising company, and that was my aha moment because it kind of like It was an experience almost by mistake, and I loved it. So when I got my degree, I decided to explore, and, you know, I got into, um, my first job was in a financial institution. After that, I got into an MBA and ended up making career in big companies like 3M on sales and marketing. But always I would like to, uh, you know, my job needs to have an impact. So during my last job at corporate world, I also started another company back in Venezuela. And now I stumbled upon this because I had this problem and I've been always have this entrepreneurial heart. So it's kind of like a natural skillset combined with passion, what makes me suitable to solve this.

Perfect.

Thanks, Maria.

Thank you.

Thank you, Maria. Great start to the evening. Any final words you want to give to the audience before we let you go? And then when we wrap, they're more than welcome to come visit you at the table.

Thank you. No, this is great. Everybody on the audience, please, if you like what we're doing, follow us on social media. We are Trendy Seconds and just, you know, give us a shout, give us a hi. We want to hear your feedback and go to trendyseconds.com. Www.fundify.com to check out our site.

Awesome.

Thank you, Maria. Thank you, judges, for, for coming and giving her some great, great questions. Um, let's keep moving. Um, I just got news from our next founder. We're still going to play his video, but, um, just like many of our friends and family all around the world, he's not feeling too well right now. Uh, so just got the last minute word just right now during the middle of it. So I want to make sure that he still gets some recognition, and it's an incredible pitch video. So we're still going to play it. We'll throw his contact information in the audience just so you can connect with him afterwards. But I really love what this next founder is coming and doing, based in West Africa. Um, we're the founder of Grow4Me, Nana Opoku-Agyeman-Pempeh.

Founder of Grow4Me. So last year during COVID we started our agritech. Within 6 months, we've been able to build our first MVP. A crowdfunding, crowdfarming, and commodity trading platform. We've been able to recruit 18 people and raise $150,000 from 700 sponsors. In addition, we've been able to trade a quarter of a million in commodities, specifically soybean and maize. Did you know that the agric industry by 2030 will be worth a trillion dollars and there'll be 2.5 billion mouths to feed? So what are we doing in that space? Looking at the specific area called the commodity trading space valued at $100 billion, there's a couple of problems that we solve in that particular space. First is the offtake or large processing factories or value addition agents who need large quantities of commodities like maize and soybean to produce products that have longer shelf life. The challenge is that they do cannot get the commodities when they need them, and if they do, it does not meet the quality they need. On the other hand, our farmers, small farmers, large-scale farmers, who produce large quantities of commodities, yet do not have a ready market, hence a lot of it gets rotting in the villages and commodity-producing places. This produces an opportunity for people we call aggregators, who typically will buy from the farmers farmer and sell off to the off-taker. However, the aggregator has a number of challenges. One, he lacks the needed financing to buy from the farmer when he needs to. Two, he lacks the required standardization to ensure that the commodities that he sells to the off-taker meets the right standards and quality, in some cases even quantity. Finally, all the activity around around his commodity trading, buying and selling, is lost because everything is done offline. So that's where we come in with our micro-aggregator platform. Through MAP, we are able to KYC the aggregator, provide him with the needed financing, and ensure that he has the right skills to purchase the commodities and ensure they meet the right standards. On the other side, the farmer also has a ready market because the aggregator can buy his commodities whenever it is ready to be purchased. The purchased commodities are then brought into a warehouse where the standards in terms of quality and quantity are assured and then shipped off to the off-taker who makes payments and everyone benefits across the value chain. So what are we looking for? We are raising a seed round of $400,000 to enable us to build a powerful aggregator network. The power of MAPP resides in this network of aggregators. We are creating jobs for thousands of young people in rural farming communities by enabling them to use their phones as a means of receiving financing to aggregate from farmers. For farmers, we are providing a ready market, hence cutting away losses. And finally, for large industry, we are providing consistent and available commodities at the right quality and weight. This is revolutionizing revolutionizing the industry. So join us, create the needed impact by making food affordable, accessible, and available to all. Thank you.

Wow, thank you, Nana. Wish you were here with us right now. Hope you're doing okay. Before we get into our next video, I just want to open up the floor. Any comments, thoughts, impact from our investor judges? And of course, we're live across many, many social media channels. You'll be able to watch this video as soon as he's able to. So hopefully if there's anything that's really resonating and you want to follow up, he'll be able to answer those outside, offline.

So just a quick comment.

Yeah, comments, any impacts? Yeah, Juan, I guess we'll start with you.

Yeah, in my past life I used to work on the ag sector and I can see, especially in Africa, which is a market I don't know, but I can see the impact that leveraging technology within an existing and big industry in Africa can have. So nice to see the impact that the entrepreneur is having.

It's fantastic. Walid, I know you mentioned you, uh, you do a lot of work and you're looking a lot at like North Africa and just the African markets in general. Anything that kind of resonated with you that, that might be worth a discussion later on?

Yeah, I think, uh, I think he's, uh, he's tackling a very, a very big problem in terms of the size, because especially in Africa and many of the other developing countries, you know, the access to finance, the logistic challenges, and in terms of the mediators, you know, cause a lot of chaos, you know, in this industry. I think by combining, you know, crowdfunding, microfinance, and aggregator model. This can help sort out a lot of issues, particularly in Africa, because what we see is that neither the farmer nor the consumers are getting a lot of value in the whole value chain. Mostly mediators are the ones who are getting the values, and sometimes some of the crops, they get bad on the field. Just because the lack of proper aggregation and the lack of digitization in this industry. I think he's tackling a very important problem, especially after the pandemic. I wish he will get well soon, but he's doing some great job.

Fantastic. Awesome. And yeah, it's been eye-opening just getting to know him and watching kind of where the progress and the momentum has already been there. Rajesh, Saka, any other thoughts or comments that might be worthwhile for Nana?

Yeah, so I've spent a lot of time looking at a similar program in India that's one of the biggest ones called ITC e-Choupal, and there, the additional value proposition besides funding and finding a ready-made market was probably a lot of knowledge around scientific method for farming, providing information about weather, the market pricing, any hedging strategy that has happened outside that can basically make the farmers determine, okay, whether they should go into maize farming or rice or cocoa or something else, and determine the risk management piece of it and sale of all the farm inputs. So there's a lot of ecosystem that ITC eChoupal built, and that became one of the biggest markets for farmers. And so, so I think the idea is fantastic. He can definitely add a lot more value to farmers by adding some additional pieces and trying to seize some existing models out there. So, but super impressed with what he's, what he's accomplishing.

Awesome, thank you, Raj. Last but not least, Saher.

Yeah, I have an interesting purview on this. I actually went to school in Nigeria, and I'm from Botswana originally, so I understand the problem pretty acutely. What I think is interesting is the fact that he has a technology platform, but technology is one layer to the holistic solution that he has to solve. So I'll be very specific here. In Nigeria, for instance, in developing markets, doing something as simple as KYC, you're making the assumption that people have ID cards, right? That they have email addresses, that they have some of the basic things that you would assume consume in a developed country already exist. Another second layer problem you can think of is the logistics, right? Beyond having the aggregator, you need a car to pick up the materials, transport them, you know, the roads might be bad, there might be damage or theft along the way, you know, armed robbers, you know, there's just a lot of different things that you might need to solve. So technology is one aspect of the solution that needs to be end-to-end across the value chain for all the players, and that could involve logistics, you know, ID recognition, all those types of things. So he has a great problem that he's solving, he has a decent solution, but I don't think it's only technology that will solve the problem he's trying to solve. But it seems pretty interesting.

Ah, it's fantastic. Thank you all for that feedback. I hope, again, I hope you get a chance to follow up with every single one of these investors shortly. So thank you all again for that. Let's keep it moving. We're hitting the halfway point of the presentation of the evening for the Founder Showcase. We've been hovering strong, 300 attendees plus. Thank you all for sticking around. We got a few more left, so let's get right into it. Our third pitch of the evening, morning, afternoon is Hazmousa Aki, based out of Naperville, Illinois. Let's get— and his company is called Staple.

CEO and co-founder of Sable, a digital health platform moving post-op rehabilitation from the clinic to the patient's living room. Last year, my 13-year-old cousin had ACL reconstructive surgery after blowing his knee out playing basketball. During his discharge process, he was given a set of exercises he had to start performing immediately to ensure that he had an optimized recovery. However, a lack of adherence delayed his post-op work extended his recovery timeline by 3 weeks, in which time my aunt was unfortunately exposed to COVID. This sparked my interest to launch Sable and help patients recover from the comfort of their own homes from surgical procedures. But my cousin wasn't just a one-off scenario. In fact, last year over 5 million Americans failed to adhere to their post-op recovery work, and a recent study identified 3 leading reasons: inconvenient exercise programs, program, a disconnect with their surgical staff, and no visibility into whether their recovery was actually helping them progress. Poor surgical recovery is costing hospitals over $27 billion annually in the form of patient readmissions, federal fines, and over $200,000 of lifetime value loss. Stable is here to solve all of that. We're a post-op rehabilitation platform focused on patient adherence. We create custom recovery programs, facilitate facilitate daily rehabilitation sessions and share quantitative insights and progress back to show them their recovery is working. We're able to do all of this by leveraging live motion analysis on a smartphone or laptop camera, allowing us to accurately calculate a patient's range of motion and increase their engagement during their remote recovery. And to make adherence 3 times higher than what it already will come, we share all of the recovery data back with the patient's medical team at the operating hospital, allowing them to remotely monitor the patient's progress. Unlike alternative solutions on the market, Sable's the only one to maximize the patient-provider relationship established throughout the surgical procedure. Our unique positioning within hospitals allows us to take key patient data going into surgery to help them identify what an optimized recovery looks like and effectively allocate resources. Our value prop became so announcing that the largest health system in the US, the Veterans Health Affairs, is collaborating with us today. A facility with a health system with over 600,000 surgeries every year in 1,200 facilities across the nation. Converting the current collaborating hospitals into paying customers over the next 2 years has the potential to generate upwards of $25 million per stable. While targeting private institutions, we validated our business model with an annual licensing and a per-patient recovery for every patient's recovery that Stable manages. Over the next 7 years, we plan to scale from our current pilot opportunities all the way up to large health systems in the US, allowing us to take the industry by storm in already growing opportunity. As a CPA and CEO, I have vast experience working in digital health enterprises. Abhinav is a key developer and leading the tech development of our product, and behind us is a team of successful advisors. We're currently raising a $400,000 pre-seed round to help fund our current pilots and get to the point of commercialization.

Thank you. Awesome. Hamza, let's bring you up to the stage. Hamza Saikh, I think I stumbled on your name earlier. I apologize. I have a very difficult— I totally heard that one.

It was not bad.

Hamza Saikh, everybody, give it up. So let's open up the floor to questions. The floor is yours, sir.

So I can start. Hello, nice to meet you. I'm Juan. So, um, this is a question regarding traction so far. So, so what have you done so far to understand and, and eventually show that there is a real demand for the service that you're offering?

For sure. So we started off on the patient level. We've started managing 5 patients' recovery coming outta surgery just to first gauge whether they're willing to adopt technologies to help them recover remotely from these procedures. And we've gotten great feedback and engagement on our platform. We then targeted clinical specialists within the hospital. So now these are the surgeons, the physical therapists, key users of the data, and they're even more eager to adopt our solution because we're not eliminating them from the workflow of managing their patient's recovery and still keeping them engaged with them beyond the clinical walls. And then we went to the decision makers within the hospitals and showed them that the financial value that we're able to provide in terms of allowing them to monitor more patients using their current capacity, but also creating a transparency in terms of a patient's recovery as they're doing it remotely, allowing them to actually maintain the profitability of each patient going through surgical procedures.

Good.

Awesome.

Hey, I'm so— so, um, I've, I've so tried to sell, uh, my previous solution, my previous companies, uh, into, uh, into Department of Defense, Veterans Agency in particular. It's a very long, uh, sale, sale cycle. So, uh, what is your traction outside of VA? I, I did see in your chart that you're trying to target some private companies next a year, or I don't know if that is Spanish, I didn't see the number very clearly, but yeah, but that's really where I would determine your traction.

And yeah, for sure, the VA definitely moves like molasses, and we realized that as soon as we started it. It's a great organization to get started in because of how big they are, but they definitely move slower than private institutions. So in the private industry, we've started focusing on clinical rehabilitation hospitals that are private organizations themselves. We're in the process of closing a 2-paid private hospital pilot right now. Once we just sign that, we're gonna be able to publicly share that. However, they move exponentially faster than any other private institution and private hospitals because of the fewer number of kind of individuals and decision makers and or kind of like groups within the hospital to make these pilots go faster. So within 3 or 4 calls with the CIO and the chief clinical officer, we've been able to close that opportunity exponentially faster.

And how about your recovery program? Is that set of program that each hospital will provide onto your platform, or is there a data engine here that basically optimizes for the patient?

Our algorithm creates the most optimized recovery for each patient because we take the preoperative mobility data for each patient going into it, allowing us to create a baseline of what their post-op recovery should look like. Based off of that and a lot of non-biomechanical information like the patient's lifestyle, access to exercise tools, or even the recovery goals, we curate the most effective recovery protocol for that patient. Um, the surgeon at the operating hospital does have the final say in any adjustments on how the patient's recovery goes. And that's primarily because certain things can happen coming out of a surgery that patient's recovery has to be adjusted for.

Mm-hmm.

However, our protocol is designed to help the patient get back to the recovery that they need to, um, from the comfort of their own homes.

Okay, last question. So you said there's an iPhone component, a phone component. Is there any other device that's also used in addition to a mobile phone?

No, we just use laptop and smartphone cameras. That's all we need for a patient to access our tech. It's one of the biggest reasons we're able to differentiate ourselves is that we're open for all devices and all the information is then automatically relayed back to that medical team back at the operating hospital.

Awesome.

Good luck, man.

Thanks.

Awesome. Saker, let's bounce over to you and then we'll close out with Waleed. Yeah, sure.

So I've got 2 questions and I'll take them one at a time. The first is, what are the top 3 objections that medical facilities bring up in your conversations? And then I'll get to the second one afterwards.

Yep.

The first is proof of capacity. So a lot of these medical facilities have hundreds of thousands of patients. That they're working on every day is that, can your technology maintain this workload? And so as we're building it, we're testing it on iterations in that way. Second is the patient acceptance of it. So our first medical procedure is hip replacements. Now, those are generally older individuals, so giving them tech to recover from home might be a turnoff for them. However, we've overcome that through this VA collaboration by working with the patients within the VA. We perceive those as the toughest patients to adopt technology probably in the US. And so we've overcome that and we validated it there and we look to work backwards to tech-focused individuals. The third is the variability of our solution. Like I said, we started with hip replacements. It's what's next? How can you kind of provide solutions to every medical procedure that they provide? And we clearly indicate that we're gonna go from hips expand across orthopedics and then have the potential to work— go upwards into cardiac rehabilitation as well.

Sure, this sounds good. And can you summarize in 2 sentences how you will prove the ROI of your solution to any future medical institutions you're trying to pitch to?

Absolutely. So the first would be transition to telehealth, so from in-person appointments to remote care, freeing up a lot of time for providers. And 2 would be patient engagement and net provider score. So are patients more satisfied being able to recover from home as opposed to having commute to your facility to meet you consistently?

Fantastic. Sounds good. Thanks, Hamza.

Awesome. Waleed?

Great. Actually, a couple of questions regarding market differentiators and objection has been answered, but my other question will be like, When you're doing a post-surgery sort of rehabilitation, you know, the potential of injury could be there. So how do you mitigate this? Do you get like physiotherapists, you know, online? And what sort of liability this could bring to your venture in general?

Absolutely. So the first question you had was on differentiation, correct? So Unlike alternative solutions that either isolate a patient with a fully artificial intelligence-based program, or they connect them with a provider that they have no preexisting relationship with. Both of these limit adherence to treatment because there's no incentive for the patient to follow what this either AI bot is saying or this provider that they have no relationship with. Us connecting back with the surgical staff that you have a relationship with throughout your whole procedure allows them to be more incentivized to adhere to this recovery protocol and more importantly, be addressed if they're lacking of any adherence. So that's our unique positioning there in terms of our solution, but also by taking the pre-op data, being it within the hospital, we can now identify what a post-op recovery should look like. And other solutions aren't able to do that because they're directly within the chronic and musculoskeletal space. Um, Secondly, for our solution, we're completely autonomous in the sense that a patient is able to do the recovery work without having to see a physical therapist in live time. We allow— that's why our information relays using the backend for the pt to remotely monitor the recovery whenever they get a chance. We do analyze the patient's form using our algorithm to make sure that they're not overexerting themselves in terms of range of motion, repetitions or anything that can put their body at risk coming out of surgery. But we do monitor also symptom-level issues in the sense of bleeding, swelling, pain, and share all of that back with the pt and the surgeon as well so that they can identify risks of a readmission earlier than what they would generally be able to.

So you're basically transmitting the liability to the health institution rather than keeping it in, in yourself.

Do you need any sort of clinical trial or any sort of specific regulatory approval We are not FDA regulated or Health Canada regulated, and that's primarily because we do relay all that information back to the medical expert at that hospital so that they can make that final decision. We don't eliminate any of the decision that they're making.

The last question: who pays you, the insurance, the patient, or the hospital?

The hospital pays us upfront for our license, and then for every patient's recovery we manage.

Thank you.

Awesome. Um, thank you, Asim. Any last things you want to tell the audience before we, we, we let you go and move on to our next one? Floor is yours.

Um, no, we're just definitely looking to connect with investors across the US, um, as we're actively trying to close this pre-seed round and capitalize on a lot of the pilots we have in place. Like I mentioned earlier, since we're not regulated, these pilots give us the commercialization data we need to start scaling and selling to hospitals across the US. So we're in this unique situation in digital health that's to our favor and in this growing market that we look to expand on.

Awesome.

Thank you, Hamza. And yeah, make sure to connect with Hamza as well as all of our founders presenting tonight at the virtual tables. If you're really enjoying what they're working on and want to connect with them more, we'll get to the networking after these next two pitches. So thank you again. Good luck. We'll catch you at the virtual tables. Let's keep moving, ladies and gentlemen. Our next, our fourth pitch, we got two more. As I mentioned, we got two more. This next founder comes from Bucharest, Romania, uh, and I love this organization. We're all over the world and we get to feature founders that are working on amazing things, not just in the markets that you normally would expect out of a usual pitch event. So the next founder, and as I mentioned, coming from Bucharest, Dan Huru, uh, founder, CEO of Meat Geek And I'm the founder of Meetik, an AI meeting assistant that maximizes the value of your online calls.

Meetings are an integral part of a company's life, yet they are still inefficient and left outside any automation flow. Teams lack methods of measuring efficiency or taking proper actions. In addition, remote work affects team spirit and knowledge sharing, and these are all missed opportunities. And this is why we built MeetGeek, a meeting assistant that automatically joins your Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet calls. MeetGeek records, transcribes, and takes notes so that you can focus on the conversation. It helps you share the key highlights of your meetings with others. With MeetGeek, you can go back in time and search through past conversations. And finally, you can now understand where your meetings suffer and take proper action. Customer-facing teams use MeetGeek to capture notes and insights from their calls while understanding what works best and coaching themselves for success. Internal teams use MeetGeek to run fewer meetings and more productive calls while staying in sync and sharing knowledge. They can also repurpose recordings into training materials for their colleagues and new joiners. Recruiters use MeetGeek to summarize and share interviews for peer review while delivering more visibility into the hiring process. We, the founding team, have a strong technical profile and have been working together for years. Our advisors have complementary skills in sales and marketing. We have an extended US-based SDR team and a digital marketing team helping us raise awareness and find new opportunities. We've launched publicly in September and so far we have onboarded 100 SMEs into the platform with over 2,000 hours of meetings. If you want to supercharge your meetings, try out Meetik for free today and join our pilot program so that we can shape the future of meetings together.

Wow, production value for pitches is just getting astronomical these days. To think we were doing this but not like this just 2 years ago— is astronomical. Dan, welcome. Good morning. I appreciate you spending the early morning with us. How are we doing today?

Hello everyone, really nice to meet you and very good presentation so far.

Yeah, again, yeah, you're just stepping it up another level. Again, thank you for coming to the Founders Showcase. We're very excited to have you. So I'm going to shut up.

Thank you.

The floor is yours. Sakha, if you want to start up first, you've been kind of running the caboose up until this point. Let's kick you off with some questions.

Yeah, sure. First of all, congrats on all the success so far. There's a company I've used similar to yours called Fireflies.ai, and I didn't use their solution because I came across 2 or 3 key problems, and I wanted to ask how yours differs from theirs. Those problems are number 1, Sometimes Fireflies would join the meeting and other times it wouldn't. And so there was sort of a technical glitch there or issue. And even when it did, there were other parties in that meeting that would be confused with this random entrant or person on the call. And they'd be like, "Who is this? What is this? Are we being spied on?" You know, there's a bit of skepticism around a third party listening in on your calls. And the second problem is the notes that Fireflies would take were often incoherent. So I'd look at the transcripts afterwards and it didn't necessarily capture all the bullet points or the spelling mistakes or it wouldn't capture accents, things of that nature. So that's my key question there. How does your solution solve those two problems or differ from Firefly's AI?

Yes, thanks for the great question. So first of all, we use native integrations. That means we have native integrations with major platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. So that means that, you know, the solution is technically stable and it joins your calls. Now the thing is that you have to be the host, so only the host has an account and he is responsible for recording the call. And using native integrations, you also We are also compliant, I mean, because we are based in Europe, we are also GDPR compliant. So we need to show consent, we need to show a pop-up, you know, asking for the consent of the participants. So this is very transparent. Now, yes, there is a part of the— and we've seen that in our work so far— there is a part of people, there's always a percentage of people that are skeptical to being recorded. But it also depends on the industry and on the use case. And on the use case that we have been working so far, it's usually under 10%. And that is sometimes very easy to manage if the benefits are explained properly. Now, the second question was about the note-taking. So, yes, so the speech-to-text text, let's say the speech-to-text technology in general is not perfect, and it also depends on the industry, of course. We have various ways to tackle that, and we don't rely only on the transcript. So when we create the notes, we also create automatically video snippets that can contribute for the, maybe for the speech-to-text errors. And also we have In our product, we have a templating mechanism built in which applies different templates to different types of meetings because not every call is the same. So that gives a higher accuracy for the notes and a better context for them. And, um, that, that usually, you know, uh, solves a lot of the, uh, missing items that might be Sorry, sorry, real quick question again. Yes.

You said you have about 100 SMEs that have signed up, right? What percentage of your customers that trial your product end up, A, staying with you beyond 3 months and B, paying for the solution?

Yeah, so we actually reached more than that. So these 100 are weekly active users, meaning that they passed— so we launched publicly in September, right? So it's only been a couple of months, but After the 2-month initial period, we, we have like this 100 base, uh, 100 customer base of weekly active users, meaning that they, they use the software, they either have the bot joining the calls and as well they use the platform, the web platform, in a way, in ways like loading meetings, sharing content, creating highlights. So specific key actions that, that they are doing regularly on the platform. I think there was another question, there was another detail in your question that I—

Yeah, so I'm trying to get a sense of, let's say 200 people signed up and then 100 of them are active users, which means 50%, or like, is that the metric? And then maybe 25% of them are paying, so maybe 50 of them are actually paying on a monthly basis. I'm just trying to get a sense of the funnel metrics.

Uh, yeah, so it's not 50%, it's actually less. So we have like a lot of subscribers coming from different directions, and, uh, we, we all rely on, uh, you know, on, um, we don't rely on Google Ads, we don't rely on ads, we rely on organic growth. Um, so out of that percentage, because they come from so different, from so many different areas, uh, it's maybe roughly 20%. But what we did So 20% is converting them into active users and then into paying users. I don't have those numbers yet because we haven't turned on the payment plans yet. So we have a couple of users that are paying, but it's hard to, you know, put a number to it yet. Now, what we did in, in the initial phases, we invested a lot in the customer discovery, and that's why we also chose to work with smaller-sized companies which are the majority of them are US-based companies, by the way, we wanted to iterate very fast on the, you know, on the features that they need and, you know, on how to present those features to them. So, you know, we actually invested a lot in reaching out and finding the, you know, the ideal customers, although it didn't make so much economical sense at the beginning, but it was it was for a discovery phase as well for us.

Yeah, yeah, don't be ashamed to share that 20%. I mean, that's actually a good metric. A lot of businesses maybe get 4 or 5%, so 20% is actually good for a pilot, and it might even go down over time as your funnel gets bigger. But, you know, celebrate that success. 20% is actually good compared to the baseline. But thanks so much.

Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you, Saca. Rajesh, Juan, Wally?

I can go next. Uh, first thing, Juan, for your presentation. So I always wondered why these, uh, big companies like Microsoft, Zoom, or even Google didn't have those features in their current tools. So glad to see this. So, so I have a marketing question. How do you acquire the customers? How do you reach your customers?

Uh, it's different strategies. So, um, as I mentioned also in the, in the pitching, uh, we, we work with, um, several companies to help us reach out to potential customers. And what we do is, you know, we offer them a free trial at the beginning to try to work with them and see which is the best pricing model, which is their usage patterns, because it's a fairly new product. And so we are trying to learn as much as possible, and we did a lot of those things. So we are basically doing outreach out ourselves, outreaching. We are also leveraging the networks that we are part of to, to gain, uh, you know, pilot companies as well. So it's also Founder Institute. We have, we have some companies that are, were part of Founder Institute, from, um, not, not necessarily startups, but people involved, um, as mentors that have their own companies and so on. And also Microsoft for Startups Network And we are also doing an important part of the strategy is because we have a close partnership with Microsoft and we are part of the Microsoft for Startups program. We are also, you know, trying to get as many customers from, for the Microsoft Teams experience. And what we've seen so far is that, you know, the Zoom ecosystem is getting crowded, but the Teams experience, inside the Teams experience, there's less there's a lot of, let's say, underserved customers there, and we are one of the first applications to be published in the Microsoft Teams App Store.

Good, thanks.

Hey Dan, question for you. So to me, this looks like kind of crowded space. I've been looking at this AI meeting assistant kind of segment, and I see like there's a lot of players out there. In your website, you have different use cases that you've identified based on this 100+ customers or prospects that are using your product. Have you identified any one of those use cases that are more— that are used more often? In which case, have you considered trying to kind of narrow down your focus on that particular segment to try and differentiate yourself from other players in the space. So how are you thinking about that?

Yeah, so there's definitely a lot of interest and awareness in the sales use case market, which is also dominated by big players like Gong and Chorus, which are, you maybe have heard of, I'm sure of it. Um, but they, uh, they have like very high-end price tickets, and usually the small-sized companies are underserved by that, or, or the entry barrier is too high for them. So that's one of the things that we are— that's one of the approaches that we are going for, and, and that has good results so far. We have a lot— we have a couple of sales companies in the platform. Um, and the second use case we are looking at is recruiting space, which is less aware of these kind of solutions and how they can help. There are some other players as well there, and it requires a bit more time, but it's, you know, we are more new in that space. And yes, the general feeling is that the space is crowded, but also there are around 2 or 3 markets which are close nearby are adjacent in this space. And I'm talking now about the automated transcription market, which is, you know, basic transcription software. Then is the conversation intelligence market, which is also doing some level of transcription but insights. So there are players in these markets as well. So the general feeling is that it's crowded, but we are trying to narrow on these two use cases specifically.

Okay, so I think you should seriously consider that. Let's say you see a lot of traction on the sales side, then integrating with Salesforce or HubSpot, for example. So that will kind of give you a differentiator. And more salespeople start using it, it can automatically percolate into other organizations.

Awesome.

Good luck, Dan.

Thank you.

Hi, Dan. Actually, a couple of questions have been asked maybe by Saka. Regarding the comparison with Fireflies and all.

Yes.

But again, there is an area where I wanted to know how your startup is tackling in terms of users with multi-emails. There is a bit of dilemma regarding calendars and which invitation are going where and all this stuff. If you support any sort of value-added solution into that. And the second part, for example, when you have a conference with several users, you know, like what we're doing right now, for example, there are some LinkedIn, you know, profiles and stuff like that, whether you would go to that level to aggregate specific stuff. Like for example LinkedIn profile or whatever. These are the two questions in terms of the solution. In terms of the marketing, I would like to know what's your cost of customer acquisition, lifetime value, or I think like expected lifetime value because this is yet to be decided, and retention rate as Rajeev said it's quite busy space, so I think those metrics are very, very crucial differentiators if you want to position yourself on the best quadrant.

Yeah, thanks. So the first question was related to multiple calendars, if I got it right, or managing multiple calendars and managing appointments, multiple calendars, multiple emails here. Yeah, so in the platform we support connecting multiple calendars, meaning that if you create an account, you can link your Zoom and you can link your Microsoft Teams account. So that means that it will join both of your conferencing calls if you are using multiple conferencing calls, and you can also link your Outlook calendar, for example, and your Google calendar if you also use both. So that's supported in the platform. Is that what you were looking for?

Yeah, basically aggregating everything in one place and then putting the notification. Because again, if I want to use your solution as a place to go for post-meeting or maybe pre-meeting and post-meeting sort of for a follow-up, then I, I, as a consumer, I would like to see, uh, everything in, in one place, you know.

Okay, got it. The second question was about LinkedIn accounts. I'm not sure what, what you meant. Uh, we are not scraping LinkedIn or we are not taking LinkedIn information from— we are not doing that. So what we are collecting as data is the calendar information and the conferencing information. And with these two types of data, so we have the calendar, which is the, you know, the theory, what should happen, and the conferencing data, what is really actually happening.

My question was about the transcripting. When you have chats, let's see, and people share their profiles or whatever, then you, if you're doing similar to Fireflies, for example, by getting all this transcript and put it back. Does your algorithm have any feature to segregate specific metrics, for example, like profiles and all for further reference?

So if I got it right, yeah, so the algorithm is able to detect specific entities like names, profiles, numbers, So yes, there's ways of recognizing those things in the transcript if I got it right.

It's clear. Yeah, yeah, it's clear. Regarding the cost of customer acquisition, lifetime value, and retention rate at the last part.

Yes. So as I said, the customer— so I'll start with the lifetime value. What we are seeing is, of course, that the lifetime value spans across a person's job position or job role, right? So when they change their job role, they might not need a tool like this, or they might start to want to need a tool like this. So that depends, of course, on the market. It's usually maximum 1 year, maybe. Then the cost of customer acquisition. Well, in our phase, what we did, it didn't make sense because we reached out and we put a lot of effort in staying at the table with the companies and seeing what they really want from the tool. So it didn't really make economical sense to, you know, book meetings for 3 licenses or 4 licenses. So we are still evaluating that cost of acquisition, cost of customer acquisition, and I cannot tell you, can't I can't tell a number right now, but of course on the long term it doesn't make sense economically to, you know, book a meeting and have a person buying one license. It makes more sense to buy more subscriptions. And the third one, the third point, sorry, what was it about?

Was retention rate. I think Saga asked a party about that if if consumers are, are, are staying with you post, you know, like month 3 or month 4, or if you have any churn rate, like major churn rate.

Um, so it's, it's somewhere about, uh, somewhere around, um, 60 to 70% of the customers that are starting to use the platform, uh, 60 to 70%, um, are remaining. But, uh, still the history is it's quite not that big, but these are the numbers that we are seeing right now. And of course this can be improved, and there's various reasons for that. I mean, there's also, you know, they realize that maybe they don't need a tool, or they have— there are also competitors. It's different reasons, but usually it's around 60 to 70%.

Awesome. Thank you, Dan. Yeah, last, uh, last minutes for you. Any final things you want to say to the audience while you still have the floor?

Uh, thank you. So, um, yeah, so if you are interested to, to talk, I'd be happy to connect. We are planning to raise a second round for Midik. We, we raised the pre-seed round in April, so now we are targeting to, to raise the second round to to scale the application and scale our go-to-market efforts. And I'm happy to chat and, you know, get into— dive into details more and show you, show you the product as well. So happy to connect, and great session so far.

Fantastic. Thank you, Dan. We'll catch you at the virtual tables. If you like what you're listening to so far, we're getting to one more pitch. We're going to wrap up the broadcast, and then the floor is going to be for all of you out in virtual air meat land to connect with each other. So let's get to it. Let's get to that final one. Thank you again to all our judges. Thank you to Lisa for such an amazing conversation to kick off Founder Showcase for 2022. So let's get right into it. Coming to you from Mexico City, our final pitch of the evening, last but not least, I'm excited to introduce founder and CEO of Tallyligo, Mr. Pablo Rocha.

Thank you, Carlos, for the invitation. This is Pablo Rocha, co-founder at Tally Legal, and in the next couple of minutes I'm going to talk about Tally, what we're building, our vision, and why you should invest in our company. So to begin with, we're building Stripe Atlas for LATAM's exploding market. We help founders incorporate a local company in 7 days. Through our platform. And this is a real problem because in Mexico specifically, you can lose more than 40 to 45 days to incorporate a company and open a bank account in the traditional way. So we believe that's crazy and ridiculous, and that's why we built Tally. Right now, you can incorporate a company in 7 days using our platform. And we've been crushing it in the incorporation side of our business. This year was an amazing year for us. We grew more than 20% MOM, and we closed the year with more than $20K in revenue in December. So we've been doing a great job in that end. Our customers are loving our platform. We have a lot of issues to resolve, of course, but we're in a good direction. This is a little bit how our product looks like. You have your dashboard with all your documents and your information, and that's an important thing. And this is an important slide because the KYC and the KYB we have of our clients is the most important part of our business because the KYB is as robust as a bank needs to open a bank account. So this is important, keep that in mind. And we— let me move to the next problem we encounter. Entrepreneurs lose a crazy amount of time onboarding 7 or 8 different service providers to get a bank account, a credit card, payments, accounting, etc. And that's crazy because they onboard these 7 or 8 different service providers with the same documentation over and over again, and that's crazy. And on the other end, these companies, these B2B companies, spend a lot of money acquiring the same customers and doing KYB verification. So what we're really building, we call it the Open Compliance API. This single API will enable these B2B businesses on the right to acquire customers, to do one-click onboardings, and to do KYB verification. So this is the, the real problem we are solving, and our vision is to become this KYB verification layer for SMBs in LATAM. This is important because why now? An important question. Right now there's a race to become the X for LATAM. There's a race to become the Bricks for LATAM, the Mercury of LATAM, the Gusto of LATAM, and they are all after the same clients, and Tally will become their top acquisition channel to all of these Brexit for LATAM. We are raising $2.5 million to accelerate growth and to build this API and to hire an awesome team. Right now we have amazing advisors and investors, and you should join them and invest in Tally. And thank you. This is my email. If you have any doubts, happy to answer them and continue talking. Thank you.

Fantastic. Final pitch of the evening, ladies and gentlemen. Let's bring up Mr. Rocha to the stage. Pablo, how you doing, my friend?

I'm great. Thank you, Martin. Thank you for the invitation.

Absolutely. Last but not least, final pitch of the evening. Let's open up the floor to our investor judges. I'm going to disappear into the ether. and then I'll let you take it from here.

Hola, Pablo, ¿cómo estás? This is Juan. Nice to hear your pitch. Congratulations. So how do you navigate all the technicalities among the different countries within LATAM? So I understand that you provide a one-stop solution for SMEs. But how do you navigate the different legal aspects of the different countries throughout LATAM?

That's a great question, Juan. I like to speak of LATAM, of Spanish-speaking LATAM. I don't like to speak about Brazil because it is another monster. But speaking about Spanish-speaking LATAM, Mexico is the biggest country by far. So when you have a successful company in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, you always think about expanding to Mexico. So we are helping a lot of founders soft land in Mexico. So even though our vision is to expand throughout LATAM, we are not in a rush to expand anytime soon. Anytime soon, I believe in the next 24 or 18 months, we are not planning to expand to another country. Country.

Okay, so now you're focusing only on the Mexican market, which is huge as you mentioned, and also for other companies to establish in Mexico.

Yeah, yeah, we currently have a lot of customers or clients from Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and we help them with top plans, and we set the company, we open the bank account, we help them like navigate through the Mexican bureaucracy.

Okay, I'll take that into account for our portfolio companies.

Thank you. Thank you, Juan.

Awesome.

Cool, Pablo, awesome, man. So maybe 2 questions for you. I'll start with the first question. So you said you went from 40 days, that's traditionally, to 7 days. That's amazing. How do you go from 7 days to a few seconds? Can you do that?

Right now we cannot. That's our dream, but there's a couple of steps we have to do with the Mexican government and the bureaucracy is— we have to acquire the name of the companies and that takes us 48 to 72 hours. If we didn't have that step, we could incorporate a company in 1 day.

Okay, fantastic. So I think, I think if you continue to be the champion to kind of drive that, uh, then there's a lot of press, uh, for you. So that'll give you a lot of marketing edge. Uh, second question is, uh, you talked about, um, uh, raising capital for growth. So can I assume that you completely understand all your unit economics, the cost of acquisition, your churn, your LTV? Have you run different tests to see where your customers sit, what is the right channel to go find your customers, what your margin looks like. Have you clearly understood all those different metrics?

Yeah, yeah, we know our metrics. We want, like, we right now we're not focusing on, we have a lot of issues to be resolved before we can scale. The first one, we know our unit economics, our CAC is around $90 per client, and we make per constitution $150. So it's a small margin product, but if we deliver— if we manage that to get the incorporation, a bank account, and a credit card with our partners, a small margin product delivers $950 in gross profit if we manage to do that. So our focus right now is to get 100% of our companies, a bank account, and a credit card from our partners.

Okay, understood.

Okay, so then one suggestion for you is in your slide you talk about you need $2.5 million for growth, so maybe it should be— you should rephrase that to determine growth metrics. It's two different connotations. So anyway, so it's fantastic. So good luck, uh, good luck to you.

Thank you, Rakesh.

Sure.

Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll go next, Pablo. Well, first of all, I'm a fintech geek and I absolutely love fintech. So seeing your solution, I'm literally like, my eyes are lighting up. So congratulations on getting to where you have so far. I have two questions. Number one, is there any competitor doing this in Mexico or in any other Latin American country? And I'll come to the second question, but let's answer that one first.

Yeah, we have one other platform incorporating companies. Like we do. But other than that, there's absolutely no competition. And an important thing about the Mexican market in the incorporation side is that in Mexico you need a notary to incorporate a company. And in Mexico there are only 4,400 notaries for 150 million people. So they have this monopoly, they are really rich and powerful. But that's a good thing for us because the market is really fragmented. But these notaries make their money mostly in real estate transactions. Every real estate transaction, you have to go to a notary. So they have zero incentive to incorporate companies to be efficient. And that's where Tally comes in. And we partner with these notaries and we provide them clients, the KYC, we automate the bylaws, and they just have to sign and make money. So that gives us a leverage to set the price with our partners because we have the volume and to pay them, we have 40 days to pay them. So that's a nice free cash flow we have.

Nice. And then the other question is around, I guess, the value proposition. So to the end customer, you help them incorporate pretty quickly, then you came into this sort of API where you're talking about Brex and all these companies that are trying to come into the Mexico or South American market. That's a huge trend that's going to continue, but I'm trying to understand there What is the specific value proposition to those kinds of companies coming to Mexico or starting up there? Because on the one hand, you're saying that you help them find customers, but on the other hand, you know, an API is something that perhaps helps them onboard customers easily because you have all the information like, you know, their IDs and all that kind of stuff. So which of those two are you really solving for the Brexes and all those guys, or are you kind of just still kind of figuring that out at the moment.

Yeah, let me— like, there are, of course, there are US companies going to Mexico and expanding to LATAM, but there are also local companies with deep pockets trying to be the Brex of LATAM. So we are serving these local companies. Like, there's right now a race to become the best, and we have players like Clara Jeeps, A55, Delphi, and there's a list of 6 or 7 more. And to answer your question, we right now we're helping them acquire customers. We are, we are pre-API, but we have been speaking with them and it makes completely sense to, to do the KYB verification for them because they spend a lot of money hiring lawyers and reading that they're reading like bylaws and reviewing documents all day. So we can do that for them because we already know who are the partners of these companies, and we did like— we created the bylaws and the incorporation documents. So it makes completely sense to charge them for each KYC verification we do. So both of those, we help them with do both things. Right now we are focusing more on acquired customers.

Yeah, no, fantastic job. Honestly, I give you a lot of kudos for getting to where you are now. It's a hard thing to do, but if you win, you win pretty big. So nice job.

Thank you, Sagar.

Awesome.

Great.

Hi, Pablo. Yeah, Pablo, this is Walid from Dubai here. Yeah, I've been using eShare early, I think in 2000, 2013, 2014. And everybody knows right now it has turned into Carta, you know, what is one of the leading competitor in the space right now. My question to you based on this is, are you targeting companies only or you're targeting investors as well? Because eventually on the roadmap, you know, since are you doing this, are you targeting also investors, and venture builders, or you're only going to target founders or people who are establishing companies?

That's a great question, Walid. First, we love Carta. I think they're an amazing company, and Carta X is really exciting, and we love Carta. So to answer your question, We are focusing right now to become kings of the incorporation market. After we get 50,000 companies in our ecosystem, we can begin to think targeting investors because we're gonna have all these startups and companies' information in our platform. We can do a lot of products from there, but like we're not focusing on investors right now. It makes no sense. We have to grow before we can focus on building a product for investors and maybe a cap table management like Carta. Yeah.

So yeah, my second question regarding the GMV and the valuation. If I got it right, your GMV by end of the year is $45,000, right?

Yeah. No, no, that $45,000 was for Q4.

Q4 only.

Okay.

Okay.

So what is your total GMV up to date today?

It's about $150K. $150K. For 2021.

Okay. And you're raising $2.5 million now. What is the use of fund? Do you have a breakdown on the use of fund? Fund on this?

Yeah, we can, we can dive deeper if you like in another call, but basically we're gonna hire a bunch of engineers. We believe in— we're a product-led company, so we're gonna hire a lot of engineers. And we have like the rest, we're gonna like build product, half of the money, and then we will acquire customers. We have several strategies to acquire customers.

What's your burn rate today? What is your burn rate today? What is your monthly burn rate?

20K a month. So we are capital efficient. Yeah, so, and the rest of the money we're going to acquire customers. We have 3 strategies. Word of mouth is really powerful. We want to double down on that. We want to make it an amazing experience when you incorporate a company and an unforgettable experience. So we want to spend money making it amazing for founders because you don't incorporate a company every year or every day.

Uh, SEO, what I was going to ask about, about cost of customer acquisition and lifetime value as well, you know, because your customer will come maybe for every couple of years, he'll come to do a company if he keeps doing companies.

Yeah, definitely. Right now, uh, tax is around $90, like I said. But we think it's gonna get like a little bit expensive once we scale. And lifetime value right now is $950. But we are not converting 100% of our clients. Like our next goal is to incorporate company, get a bank account, and get a credit card. If we do that, the lifetime value of our clients is $950. And that's pre-API.

Okay, the current ask will take you for how long, how many months, and what is your next milestone to, to, to raise fund again?

Yeah, 18 months, um, and our next milestone, like, these $2.5 million get us to 4,000 companies incorporated in the next 12 months, uh, and to a $3 million ARR. So our, our next goal is to to raise a Series A within the next 14 months.

Okay, thank you.

Awesome, thank you, thank you, investor judges. Pablo, just like everybody else, final word is yours to close out the very first Showcase 2020 for the Founder Institute. Pablo, any final things you want to say to the audience?

Yeah, yeah, thank you all. Uh, if you're a an angel investor or VC watching this and do you want to invest in Tally, please reach out. Happy to talk with you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pablo.

I want to thank the judges and Martin and everybody that invited us. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Pablo. Appreciate it. Thank you for closing it out strong for us. Um, so that's it, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank you all again for, for joining us for this this fantastic event. I love hosting this event. It used to just be reserved to our esteemed founders of the Founder Institute. And so I feel a little privileged that I'm able to do that myself. So for all of you watching, I hope you get to stick around. We're about to head into the final phase, but thank you again to our fantastic panel of judges, Rajesh, Saka, Waleed, Juan. I know you got busy things. Y'all have some other stuff to go. I'm sure morning might just be starting for some of you too. We got a global community. So thank you again for your time. If there's anything that I can do personally for each of you, please let me know. If you want to connect directly with any of the founders that you have met during this event, please let me know and I'll make sure that happens. So now we're heading to the final phase of the evening, which is networking. The broadcast is just about done. I want to do give a shout out to our support team behind the scenes, Felicia and Elisha, who have been managing the chat running the background behind here and just making sure that I don't make a fool of myself when I'm going live on a broadcast for 2 hours straight and change. So thank you again. We can't do this event without a great supporting team behind the scenes here at the Founder Institute. So be sure to give them a shout out in the chat for all that hard work because again, you rarely see that work really come to fruition unless you recognize those people. So for those of you that might be watching us again on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and or LinkedIn, please click that link. We shared it in each of those threads. Head on over to Airmeet if you wanna do some networking, regardless of where you're at. What's gonna happen? This is gonna disappear. World broadcast's gonna be done. You're gonna find yourself at a series of virtual tables, or you can do some one-on-one networking. Make sure you're using a Firefox or Chrome browser for optimum experience. It just doesn't really work, unfortunately, the Airmeet platform to network. So if you want to get your camera on and get your mic sorted out, I'd start testing that out before you jump at a virtual table. But you're going to notice a whole series of virtual tables that you can just take a seat at. Each of the first few are going to be for each of the presenting companies that you just saw present their businesses during this event. And if you really love what they were doing, you want to meet with them and learn more about what they're working on and maybe ways that you might be able to become a customer, join their mission, or support them as an investor, I encourage you to do that. Get on there. We have, you know, we have a whole bunch of people, have hundreds of people in this room still, and people tend to stick around for a very long time here. So we're going to leave this room open. We're not going to close it down. I may come back tomorrow morning and there's still a couple dozen people just get getting their conversations going. So we want you to have that optimum time to do so. But that's it. Stick around, do some networking, Once again, thank you for joining the Founder Showcase for 2022. We'll be back in early spring, sometime in April. Be on the lookout for the next showcase where we're going to feature a whole nother round of amazing investors, great keynote. Thank you to Lisa for joining us earlier this evening, as well as of course some amazing founders presenting some companies from all around the world. If you want to get involved and pitch on the global stage, we do have applications that are open. We announced that event so that you can apply. You have to go through a series of evaluations to get to that point, but of course if you're a Founder Institute graduate, we'd love to feature you as well. So thank you all again. My name is Martin, Entrepreneur in Residence over here at FI. Can't thank you enough for spending, spending your evening with us, or your Wednesday and/or Thursday, wherever it is you out in the world. Hope you find yourself safe and Well, please take care of each other, take care of yourself. And if you're building something and you're hoping to change the world, don't stop. Love that problem, solve it for the people that matter, and build something that's going to make a big impact for the generation ahead. So without further ado, we're out. We'll see you next time. Be well, be safe, and we'll catch you here another time.