Impact Founder Hotseat: See Social Entrepreneurs Pitch Startup Ideas to Experts (9 June 2021)

Welcome everybody, we're live now. Welcome to this Impact Founder Hot Seat event. If you're just joining us now, please tell us in the chat where you're joining from. Everybody's been doing a lot of online events the last month, and so you probably know these are best when they're really interactive, so we really want everybody to participate. We had Over 160 people registered for this event from all over the world, and so we should get some really diverse feedback from, you know, just a broad range of perspectives during this event. We have an esteemed panel that I'm going to introduce that's going to provide their feedback, but for the founders who pitch tonight, they want to hear your feedback too. So, um, yeah, please let us know in the chat where you're joining from. My name is Dustin Betts. I'm the content editor at the Founder Institute, and I'm joining today from central Pennsylvania outside of Harrisburg, PA. And I want to kick it off here with just a quick agenda, let us know what we're going to talk about for the next hour. Basically, first I'm just going to introduce our panelists quickly tonight, and then we're going— I'm going to give a really brief presentation, less than 5 minutes, on just best practices that we have at the Founder Institute for delivering an elevator pitch. And then we're going to go right into the pitches. So this is the main content of the event. We had a lot of people, as I said, more than 160 people RSVP, a lot of those founders pre-submitted their pitches. And so we've gotten in contact with a lot of the founders who are going to be attending, let them know we're going to invite them on stage to pitch live. And then at the very end, if you're joining us more last minute or weren't one of those people who were pre-selected, we'll take some audience pitches if we have time to run through as well. So if you don't know who we are at the Founder Institute, we are the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. We've now helped launch more than 5,000 portfolio companies across 200 cities around the world. If you're interested in learning more about the Founder Institute, uh, so we're enrolling, uh, virtual accelerator programs on all 6 continents virtually. And some of our leaders for programs that are upcoming, currently enrolling, are going to be some of the panelists today. So you'll get to meet some of them from Boston, uh, from, uh, uh, Montreal as well. And so, yeah, you can see the whole list of all the cities that the Founder Institute is enrolling in around the world at fi.co/enrolling. And next, I'm going to introduce the panel without further ado. So our first speaker tonight is Paloma Lecheta. Paloma is a board member and co-founder of an organization called We Are All Smart. The website is waas.ninja. They help empower underprivileged Brazilian youth in vulnerable communities to grow their critical thinking and problem-solving skills using technology as a tool. Paloma is also helping entrepreneurs succeed by serving as the program director and regional manager across all of Founder Institute's Brazilian programs for a wide now, and now even further are helping us manage across all of our chapters in LATAM. Paloma, welcome. You want to add anything?

Sounds great. Thank you, Dustin, for having me here, and it's going to be a pleasure to meet you all today, hopefully a few Brazilians and LATAM founders. We have applications open all across LATAM right now, and it's a great opportunity for you to practice your English here with us today.

Absolutely awesome. Okay, so our second speaker tonight is Ignacio Castro. Ignacio is an entrepreneurial technology professional with a really long track record in his career delivering on complex project portfolios for global organizations, working with senior executives. He's worked in the US and in Spain and Europe and in Latin as well. Ignacio is also the founder of Get Hackers. The website is gethackers. And they're helping augment data science teams with some of the best talent in Latin America. Ignacio has been serving as a director of the Founder Institute Accelerator Program in Boston, helping founders launch and grow businesses with the Founder Institute for more than 7 years. Welcome, Ignacio.

Thank you very much, Dustin, and super excited to be here and to hear the pitches. I saw already some some Bostonians in the chat, so welcome and feel free to connect. I'm also originally from Costa Rica, so if there's any Costa Rican in the audience, happy to connect as well. And I might actually launch the Costa Rica chapter a while ago as well, and I think it's been relaunched now. So thank you for having me and excited to be here.

Fantastic. Thank you, Ignacio. Okay, and our third and final speaker by way of introduction is Sergio Escobar. Sergio's tenure includes supporting early-stage startups for more than 15 years now across a variety of stages from inception the whole way up to growth stage. So he currently runs BCF Ventures, which is a Montreal-based venture capital fund. The website is bcfventures.vc, where he invests in B2B enterprise software startups, seed and Series A. Primarily in the US, Canada, and Israel. Sergio is also the managing director of Montreal's accelerator, or Founder Institute's Montreal accelerator program, and has been recognized for— he's been with us for many years as one of our top program directors worldwide. Welcome, Sergio.

Thank you, Dustin. Delighted to be here with all of you. We also launched a couple of months ago, La Lotte Ventures, which is a a sports tech-focused venture capital fund at the seed stage, and we're investing across US, Canada, Europe, and Israel. So we have two funds and looking forward to see, I mean, amazing entrepreneurs across the board.

Thank you. Awesome. Welcome, Sergio. Okay. So this is the part where I'm just gonna give a real quick run-through on like how to deliver an elevator pitch. And so this is a one-sentence formula that we use at the Founder Institute. Basically the error that we see a lot of times with early stage founders founders is they really try to go into all the details and all the minutiae of their company because they're just— they haven't quite refined the offering yet, and so they're talking about a lot of things using a lot of industry jargon sometimes. This is a one-sentence formula, an elevator pitch. The concept is you can deliver it while you're riding up with somebody in the elevator, and so it's a one-sentence formula. And so it basically goes like this, you know, my company X, my name of your company or just the idea, is developing a defined offering that will help a defined audience solve a problem with secret sauce. So just to break down the sections, you know, really quick, like defined offering, what is it? Again, avoid the industry jargon, try to, you know, ignore words of machine learning, AI, stuff like that. You know, is it, is it a mobile app? Is it a website? Is it an e-commerce store? You can use those kind of simple language. A defined audience, right? If you say your defined audience is women, well, that's half the world. So you need to kind of be more specific in the demographic or geography of who is your defined audience. So if you say stay-at-home mothers who are aged 24 to 36 in the United States, that's a much more specific defined audience. Solve a problem. Try to fit this into the one-sentence pitch, because if you don't solve a meaningful problem, it's probably not going to be a real business that somebody is going to pay for, right? So try to have the problem that you solve in your elevator pitch as well. And then secret sauce is just, you know, what makes you special? Why you? You know, what's your unique sales proposition if you're coming from more of like an MBA background? And so yeah, that's the one sentence pitch formula. We'll have it up while people are actually pitching, so you'll be able to reference it. If you want to kind of dive into more details, there's a Bitly link at the bottom of all these slides. It's bit.ly/FI-hotseat. And there's kind of a whole worksheet that you can go through to create an elevator pitch like this if you haven't before. Okay, here really quickly, you know, this is an impact founder hot seat. We're going to be hearing from impact companies tonight. We have some extra resources here that I think are just worth mentioning really quickly for impact startup founders specifically, if that's you, kind of what you came expecting to see. And so the main ones, we have this really great tool. It's free to access. You don't need to make an account or anything. At fi.co/progress that will help any stage entrepreneur really to define impact metrics that are measurable and tie your impacts to one of the sub-goals of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. So it's just a really cool tool, fi.co/progress. This Impact Startup Thesis exercise kind of goes along with the tool. There's a Bitly URL for that. I'm going to mention this Pitch for Progress competition. This is an impact startup elevator pitch competition, very relevant to the audience here. The website is pitchforprogress.com. I'll talk about it just a little bit more in a second. Yeah, and if you wanna see some more examples of SDG-aligned impact metrics, you can see FI's own impact metrics that we're tracking at fi.co/ikpis, or impact KPIs is the term that we use. And so I mentioned here this Pitch for Progress competition. This is going on right now. The deadline to enter is Friday, so 2 days from now, at pitchforprogress.com. It is open to any founder or team making progress on one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. And so yeah, even if you're not a founder who's pitching here tonight, if you have an elevator pitch, that's what this is. We're not looking for video submissions that have a lot of production value. We're looking for elevator pitches just like you're going to see founders deliver here tonight. So whether you participate or you're in the chat sharing, you can go to pitchforprogress.com and submit your pitch now through midnight Friday Pacific time. And we would be really glad to see your pitch there if you don't get a chance to to pitch tonight. Yeah, we have really great prizes, really great partner organizations: HubSpot, Shopify, ChangeNOW, and we're really excited about this contest. Okay, so without further ado, we're going to get into the main content of tonight's event, which is our founder pitches. So we have my colleague Felicia, who is our producer behind the scenes, and she's going to invite each of these founders to come up on and share your pitches, and we'll give feedback. So We're looking for less than 1 minute. Try to keep it to 1 sentence. If you need a second sentence to make the impact clear, still try to keep your pitch under 1 minute, and then you'll get about 2 minutes of feedback from each of our judges. And so they're going to primarily give you feedback on your pitch itself, right? The clarity, the presentation, and the content of the pitch. Then the idea— is this business idea valid? What are the potential risks? And then on the impact, does it seem like it's something impactful, is this impact that's measurable and scalable? And so I'm going to leave this resting slide up while we invite our first founder to come on and do their pitch, and then we will kick it off from there.

Hi Dustin, this is Faz Bashy. Should I go ahead?

Yeah, go ahead, Faz. All right, all right, great.

Most countries' largest use of antimicrobials is for food animal production, and by 2030 antimicrobial use will grow by two-thirds. Antimicrobial resistance affects UN Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 3, 8, and 10. My company, Anubis Bio, has developed a patented natural food platform made with eggs and milk, which we refer to as a microbiome cleanser that strengthens and supports companion and agriculture animals' immune and gastrointestinal systems and quickly resolves GI distress, diarrhea, from many causes without the use of antimicrobials. Our first product is for dogs. It's called doggystat.com, which is scaling in revenue through a B2C2B model and signed distribution partners at MerisourceBergen's MWI Animal Health and a major pet health media group in the United Kingdom.

Thank you. Thank you, Faz. That was great. Judges, please feel free to jump in if you want to go first. Paloma, do you have any feedback for Faz?

First of all, congrats on the pitch. You can see that you practice, you train, and that counts a lot. It shows the respect you had for the time of the mentors that you're meeting and the preparation before. So kudos on that. I do think it's a— your market is very technical, so I have no idea what antimicrobials are. It's just not my field. So it would be maybe good for you to tell me a little bit more, less scientific terms, what it is and what can be applied. You started telling me about food, eggs, and milk. And then in the middle to the end, you talked about this is your first product is for dogs. So it got me a little confused. Maybe if you brought that information early on and tell me about the problem you're trying to solve, like the diarrhea for the dog, and that you found a solution for that problem and focus on the problem and the solution. And then bring me the secret sauce, which is the antimicrobial. It will be better structured in my brain, in my way of understanding your pitch.

Thank you, Paloma.

Ignacio, do you have any feedback?

Yeah, Dustin, I can go next. I think Paloma hit the nail on the head, right? I mean, I think it's very important to know the audience, I mean, to know who you are pitching to. And know if they have the kind of expertise to understand some of the jargon that you will be using, right? So I would say that, and I think when you're pitching this to investors especially, you have to figure out how to dumb it down so that anyone can understand it, right? So make sure that you, and again, if you have a scientist, a doctor in the audience, Or is that the purpose of the others, that you can go as fancy or as complex as you can, right? But let me make sure that you know the audience. I know that, I mean, having said that, I know that the 1-minute pitch is really, really hard, right? So that's not easy. So what we are giving you is some feedback, but I guess in terms of giving you positive kind of feedback as well. I think as Paloma said, you really kind of did it very kind of articulated. You kind of did it in the time that you had. You get the points across. So I think you did a good job. It's just a matter of maybe moving things around and making sure that you have kind of the story kind of from beginning to end and trying to make it very simple, very clear.

Faz, congrats for the pitch. I think you have the right tone and you prepared for this. You can see that. So maybe my advice is that on the pitch side, you never follow the structure. So maybe that's why you have the problem. So usually it's a problem-solution framework. So you started right away with the solution. My solution is this. Okay, but what's the problem? And you frame the problem at the end. So, you know, that's why maybe you kind of lost some of the judges and the audience. So you have to explain what's the problem. So let me reframe it. Like, let's— if you say, for example, "Do you know that the small dog market is currently," I don't know, "$47 billion due to the heavy impact on gastroenteritis," like a diarrhea on small dogs, "to the excessive diets from small dogs," and I don't know, "from genetics, behavior," because they are just kind of specific races on that. So then I have an idea that it's a common problem within a specific segment of the dogs and what's the value of that market. So then, you know, I kind of have a different feeling about what's that. And you never talk about the competition. So what's your secret sauce? The secret sauce is not, it's a patent pending or patented. That doesn't mean anything to me because, you know, in the corporate VC fund that we have, You know, we are attached to a patent office which has a corporation. I mean, on average, every single startup company has enough portfolio patents, you know, and most of the patents are conflicting. So what specifically is your secret sauce? Is it because your product is 50% less expensive than the competition? Is it because it's kind of 50% more effective than the kind of other antimicrobial drugs or enzymes and so on. So you— I mean, better define what's the problem, explain the market size, explain what's the main differentiator that you have with the competition, and better clear how are you gonna be selling this. You said B2C and B2B. What's like B2B? Are you talking wholesale? B2C, are you doing that through an e-commerce? How are you gonna open retail offices? What's the plan? So it was too much, but congrats.

Yeah, just to kind of reiterate what some of the judges said, I felt the same way. Well, I will personally want to commend you for tying it back to specific SDG goals, which I think is important. But yeah, I think just kind of reversing the order, take a look at the template elevator pitch, and I think that would help you. I think tying it more at the end because it feels to me that, well, as I said, I commend you for linking back the sort of larger framing within this health context. I think your go-to-market is this really specific, basically household pets, dogs. I would frame the first sentence of the pitch in your go-to-market much more around that and then talk about those SDG connections afterwards because I think that context just made it a little confusing.

Thank you so much.

So thank you so much, Faz. Okay, next I believe Alisa can invite up, we have Alex Mulvaney. Hi Alex, go ahead whenever you're ready.

All right, my company Transform Energy is developing a radically affordable torrefaction kiln to help the global poor generate many jobs right in their villages and and the world reduce carbon emissions. Our special sauce is that we use a micro-franchise business model to empower millions worldwide to use a radically affordable torrefaction kiln. The one-sentence explanation is that remote villagers own and operate the kilns, creating jobs while they manufacture and sell a carbon-neutral coal replacement.

Perfect. Thank you, Alex. Paloma, do you want to go first again? My first piece of feedback for you, Alex, this is just off the top of the head. I would define torrefaction kiln in the future for those who are not familiar with the concept because that's quite a technical word. But Paloma, do you want to start with the feedback?

Totally. Yeah, I do not know what that means. So maybe dumb it down for us who do not know, but I got super interested. I would definitely want to talk with you more. So I think you captivated my attention to there's a real problem. You're able to create a financial solution. In something that's a clean energy source for those villages and for those communities. Something that maybe I missed, and I would love to hear a little bit in your pitch, and you did have time to add it to that mix, was what stage are you on? Is that only an idea still, or do you already have something going? And how viable that is to actually implement would be one of my main questions.

Yeah, definitely. And Ian, do I have a chance to reply a little bit, or is this—

Yeah, I'm just going to cut you off after we got like 4 and a half minutes left. So, um, yeah, you can have some two-way dialogue, but try to keep it short as well.

So sorry, I wasn't sure. Yeah, uh, we've got some working prototypes and we're kind of looking to scale, and it's, it's, it's very viable. The kiln is, you know, radically affordable, so we're going to manufacture them locally all around the world, and the Profit margins are pretty healthy also. Um, so I really wish I had more time to share. Thank you so much for these great questions, Paloma. Love to chat more.

Ignacio, did you want to jump in next?

Yeah, so, so Alex, please help us understand what the torrefaction clean is in 10 seconds, 15 seconds if you can. In 10 You're on mute.

Sorry.

In 10 seconds, if you roast wood just like you roast coffee beans, you increase the energy density. With our process, we turn wood into a carbon-neutral coal replacement, or any biomass.

Got it, got it. So, Alex, again, similar to the previous pitch, I mean, I think making sure that you that you put that into the pitch so that the audience understands what you're talking about. Because the moment you mention that term, you get us as panelists and kind of mentors here kind of just trying to figure out what it is, and then we lose kind of— you lose our attention in terms of the rest of the pitch, right? I think it would be interesting to hear also, especially when you are early stage, and we didn't get a sense of the stage, but assuming you are, what is kind of your initial traction? You mentioned that you have some proof of concepts, some initial prototypes. So mention that, and mention, because I mean, the go-to-market that you have with this kind of franchisees, micro-franchisees. I mean, that sounds good, but that's really hard to implement, right? And you're gonna have to have a lot of resources to do that. So that also is kind of a challenge. If you go and try to pitch that to investors, they're gonna be very skeptical of how you're gonna do that.

Thank you.

Can I go?

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, so I mean, Alex, congrats from the beach again. I mean, great effort, and I see the baby, so kudos for being a dad building something for the family. I like that. You know, usually we tell entrepreneurs not to use kind of, you know, specific words to describe, but in this case, it would have been wiser Instead of maybe saying a manufacturing kiln, says an autoclave. You know, I'm an engineer, I know it's an autoclave. But then, you know, it was putting more questions. Okay, but this is not new, you know, it's been like more than 50, 100 years that we have that kind of technology available. So, is it— so, on my mind is, is he manufacturing kind of a specific wood autoclave? That he wants to put in the hands of villagers? And then, does he want to put kind of— does he want to build cooperatives in the small villages, like with the micro-franchise thing? And then, you know, and if the technology— does he have anything innovative with this kind of torrefaction kiln? But he never mentioned that he has a specific process that he implemented, or he's just purchasing the kilns from a random manufacturer and just reselling. So I wasn't sure on where it was located, the secret sauce. Was it the secret sauce on the autoclave? Was it the secret sauce on the business model because of the micro franchise system? Or where it was? I was confused based on those elements. And you know, and you close, I like how you close it. Like, you know, is going to be a coal replacement. But again, kind of the same thing as Faz, you kind of missed giving me a sense on what's the market opportunity, what's its market size. Do you know that in the US there is like in small villages across the states, villages spend up to, I don't know, $100 million every year by burning coal, and we're going to be replacing that. So we're going to be cutting the emissions by an estimated amount of this. We're going to cut the cost by doing this. So I mean, keep going because I think you're up to something, but it was just some elements that I was— it was missing for me.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Sergio.

Yeah, Alex, I similarly echo a lot of the same sentiments. I really am interested, you know, not just the environmental impact of the physical product, but I think you have your secret sauce in sort of this worker-owner franchise model is also like this the more social impact, I guess. And so yeah, just work on tightening, I think, that up and making that a part of your secret sauce. And maybe, as Sergio mentioned, some metrics that sort of speak to the opportunity. But yeah, really great job, and thank you for your pitch.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we should have Natalie, or Natalie, sorry, Hi, hi, Natalie.

Hi, hi all. So I'm Natalie Bibrac from Fins in France. So my company Fins is developing a web app to help financial development decision makers as foundation, international organization to evaluate and fund underfinanced SMEs for essential-to-life projects around water, energy, or climate mitigation in Africa or Asia. Did you know that more than 2 billion people don't have currently access to these basic needs? Well, our solution is an extra financial score of risk and opportunities providing human and environmental data by a collaborative team of 50 data scientists around the world, united for AI for good. With FINS, vital projects in emerging markets are de-risked, guaranteed, and have a measured SDG impact.

Thank you. Thank you, Nathalie. Do you want to keep the same order going, Paloma, if you're there? If you want to give feedback first.

First of all, Natalie, congrats on teaching, I imagine, English as your second language. It's always an extra challenge. There is something very important to say here. You're a female founder. Founder Institute loves female founders. We have the Female Founder Initiative. So I just want to congrats not only you, but all the other female founder entrepreneurs there in this call. Really important to see you here today, and I'm happy to see you, you all female founders joining us in this call. It was a little bit hard for me to understand. I don't know if you were reading the pitch, but you gave me the sensation that you were reading word by word. It just did not feel like natural in the pitch. So I know that we have the benefit of being in virtual right now, and we can kind of like use extra support help, but it was a little bit hard for me to follow just the rhythm of the pitch. So related to the idea and the business, I think what you're doing sounds like it will be a great impact in this— and if I'm correct, in this small-medium businesses that people will be financing in Africa. It was a little bit hard for me to understand How would that work? How does your business make money in these transactions? And what is the real problem you're trying to solve? It wasn't that clear for me.

Okay. Thank you.

I'll go next, Dustin. So Natalie, again, thank you. You guys are doing a great job at the pitches. We work with very early-stage founders in general, so we know that pitching is hard and as Paloma said, right, I mean, reading it is not ideal, but if you have to start there and start kind of reading your pitch, it's perfectly fine, right? I mean, it's a way for you to just get used to it and continue to improve it. So don't I mean, just keep doing it and eventually you will memorize it and you will practice it enough so that you can just do it without reading. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I would say that you also try to— and it's been a similar trend in all the pitches, right? You have to simplify it. And looks like what you're going after is for these financial institutions, right? I mean, but you are also talking about the the problem that you are trying to solve there in terms of finding these opportunities. You also talk about this data scientist. So there was a lot. So it was hard to put it all together at the end, right? So I would say that try to make sure that you know who is your main customer because these financial institutions is probably who are going to be paying for your service. So those are the— even though you are going to be benefiting others in these emerging markets, right? But make sure that you make a clear statement of how you are going to help these financial institutions and what is the challenge that they're facing, right? Besides of what you're going to be providing in terms of benefits in the major markets, but these stakeholders in the financial institutions, what the problem is that they have. I mean, it's really hard to find these projects, I mean, or you cannot find it because, I mean, you don't really know, I mean, you don't have local, they don't have local teams, they don't know if they are credible and things like that. So, try to make sure that you really explain kind of to your paying customer what is the solution that you're giving to them and what's the problem that they're facing.

Okay, thank you very much for your feedback.

Bonsoir, Nathalie. Toujours un plaisir d'entendre des entrepreneurs francophones. Ici Sergio du Canada, de Montréal.

Bonsoir.

It's always fun to see francophone entrepreneurs. I'm from Canada in the French part, so you know, we have the luxury to also have the language of Molière. So congrats for the effort. I mean, I think it's more that you need to have more, a bit more practice on the framework, on how to structure the ideas. And that's pretty much the Anglophone, Anglo-Saxon way of presenting, you know, problem solution. Usually in the Francophone, Latin thing is the other way around. So, I mean, if you want to capture maybe, or talk to investors who are more in English-speaking countries, you have to, you know, be more tailored to the kind of problem solution framework and it's a lot of practice. I think that you lost a magnificent opportunity to pitch to a banker. I mean, Ignacio is based in Boston, but he works with the— he's a C-level executive at Banco Santander, which is kind of, you know, it's the largest European bank with operations in Europe, I mean, US, but also in emerging countries. And if you have followed the problem-solution framework, I mean, kind of the same feedback I gave to Faz and to Alex, You have explained, do you know that financial institutions nowadays spend billions of dollars in emerging markets trying to finance huge problems in water or energy, but there is no way for them to accurately report KPIs to the board or to the main organization as a way to improve you know, the kind of the funding that they provide. So that's the problem. TrueFins, a SaaS solution where we're gonna have a financial score where the financial institutions, we kind of measure this, this, this, this, this. So then you change it. And in this case, because if you had done your research, you have found that Nacio works at the Banco Santander, you will have even put like a little little thing, you know. Banco Santander is spending $1 billion to support, yeah, I mean, emerging needs and water energy globally. So then Ignacio will say, okay, I don't know what she's pitching, but I have to talk to someone at the bank, you know, I have something for them. So that's kind of the opportunity-wise and how you have to turn, you know, this kind of pitch opportunities into a business for you. But besides that, kudos and Buen trabajo y continúe.

Merci beaucoup.

Merci beaucoup.

And thank you very much for your feedback. It was a great feedback.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Nathalie. OK, in the interest of time, we're going to keep plowing ahead here onto our next pitch. If Felicia can bring up Brianna Taylor, is next in line, if we can find her in the audience. Hi, Brianna. You're on mute right now.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yeah.

Perfect.

Okay.

My company, Well and Hued, is in the process of developing a US-based plat— digital platform to help minority patients who feel unseen and misunderstood get the health and wellness services they deserve by connecting them with medical and holistic practitioners who understand them culturally, physically, and mentally. Currently in the US, minority patients experience 30 to 40% poorer health outcomes than non-minority patients. So the goal of WellinHUED is to produce healthier outcomes and build generational health for minority communities, one patient, one family at a time. Thank you.

Thank you, Brianna. Yeah, pretty, pretty tight pitch you just delivered there. Do you want to go first again, Paloma?

Oh, congrats on the pitch. Um, so, uh, from my understanding, you're trying to connect, uh, patients to health providers, uh, and I'm guessing what, uh, what, uh, you're gonna do is charge some sort of fee or, uh, maybe help them book and find. So I think you did have some time to tell us a little bit about, uh, what your secret sauce is. I understand that you have a niche that you chose, which is minority patients, but there is a lot of places right now that provide places where you can go and find health professional holistic cares. And I think— I feel like something else was missing other than just focusing on a niche, right? So I would try to bring a little bit more to your pitch the market that you're going after and what is different from the competitors that are out there?

If I could jump back in, so the real value add with Well+Hue is the fact that it's a platform that has both medical and holistic practitioners in, in the database. So for competitors like Zocdoc, Health in Her Hue, and Hue co, they only list medical practitioners or medical physicians. They're not listing holistic practitioners. Actually see one for myself who actually had tried to have a meeting with Zocdoc, and they said they didn't feel the need to add holistic practitioners. So I'm trying to make this that one-stop shop for those who are interested in both services so that they can have that option.

Ignacio, feedback for Brianna?

Sure, thank you, Dustin. Brianna, congratulations. I think this is very interesting. I would say that, again, if you think about the flow of the pitch and kind of you can move it around, I think you started with the solution and then talk about the actual problem and kind of the impact of what the market has in terms of— for this audience, right? So I will move around and I'll start with the problem so that it helps frame the pitch better in general. I think this definitely, it's a hot topic. I mean, with all the challenges that we're having with diversity, I think now with— I feel like you missed kind of mentioning kind of what's been the case with COVID during the pandemic. I think this— what I have heard is that this population, it's one of the ones that have been more impacted with access to healthcare. And so if it was bad before, it just is becoming a nightmare now, right? So I think— having that kind of timing of kind of what the current situation is, and then that's a big assumption on my end because I don't really know this space that well, but I feel like that might be something that you missed, and that would be important to mention in your pitch if that's the case.

Hi, Brianna. So, I mean, congratulations because you practiced and we can see it. Yeah, you are very— I like the tone on how you were presenting. You seemed to be a convincing— I mean, I could— I was hearing you and I wanted to hear more just because of your tone or just because you're a likable person, but that's also very important. You were not very serious, you were kind of charming, so I like that empathy that you showed during the pitch, maybe because that's your personality, but That's something that I appreciate. Regarding kind of the pitch structure, I think that you had more time to elaborate. So you know, you add a comment about the competition, but if you follow the framework, I mean the extended one, you can have said, you know, unlike patati patata and the competition, we are focused on this, you know. So follow the framework. I really like the fact that you added some KPIs some measures, 30-40%, because then I had an order to measure things. Okay, like, it's like she's solving something for real, and she has at least some kind of, you know, order of magnitude on how is she solving this. Now, I had a bunch of questions on my head as you were presenting, because, you know, my minority is kind of large. I don't know in which city you are, but, you know, I live in Montreal, 40% of the people in Montreal, I mean, were not born in Canada. And you go to Toronto, we're talking into 60 to 65%. So, you know, you can claim that Toronto, it's a minority-based city. So what I'm trying to say on that is that minorities seem to be very large, very broad to me, because then I was thinking on Ignacio, because now he's Latin, and he's based in Boston. So is she focusing, Brianna, maybe on specific communities? Then I was thinking, you know, what's— and I was Googling, what's the market size for the Latin community in the US? There's like 50 or 60 million Latinos. Oh, okay. So she was kind of— instead of saying minorities abroad, I'm targeting the Latin community because they have issues with maybe the language barriers to have access to practitioners that understand their language, their culture, and so on. And 50 million people is like a big enough market, you know, it's kind of a country. So then we have understood, you know, maybe it's more on the Black community, maybe it's for Indigenous. So, you know, minority is too large. So maybe you have kind of segmented on saying, you know, maybe it's a minority-based platform, but we're going to be starting with this pitch head market, which is ta-ta-ta, and the need from that specific segment of the minority is the language barrier, is the culture barrier, is, I don't know, the racism barrier, what it is exactly, why they have this problem. Is it because— and you never said it— is it because of the language, is it because of this random discrimination, what? But besides that, I mean, I want to keep hearing about how are you going to solve this. I mean, you were missing elements like the business model. Is this going to be kind of a monthly subscription that the person has to pay? Is it going to be commission-based, that the doctor is going to give you a commission and it's going to be free for the consumer? You miss that, like all of the great things there. But so keep going. Good job.

Thank you, Sergio. We got to keep moving on. But Brianna, yeah, really great pitch. Thank you. For joining us. I think, yeah, your follow-up question kind of clarified some of these things. That was my first reaction was I was missing some of the secret sauce, but then when you really drove in and said, well, what differentiates us is both the physicians and the holistic practitioners. Yeah, we definitely try to work that in, keeping in mind that, yeah, elevator pitches are really hard to get this level of detail, but thank you so much. Our next founder to invite on stage is James Miller. If, Felicia, you can find James. James, you're next.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Go ahead whenever you're ready.

Okay.

My company, Blue Coral Learning, is developing web-based educational interactives to help middle school and high school students learn science, art, and history through bite-sized immersive explorations. All interactives are built on 3 design pillars: flexible, usable, and accessible to reach as many students as possible.

Thank you, James. All right, yeah, somebody who at least, yeah, embraced the brevity. Uh, so very good. Thank you, James. Uh, Paloma?

Oh, congrats on the pitch. It was, uh, very, uh, well-paced as well, uh, and, and easy to understand. I do, uh, believe education needs, uh, a lot of work and rethinking, especially now after the pandemic. I think we gotta rethink a lot how we teach our kids, and, uh, that's one of my passions. Uh, it wasn't clear to me, so this bite-sized immersive, uh, experiences, is it physical? Like when you say flexible, like I was imagining like a physical thing that they learn, or is it like a virtual thing?

It's a virtual thing. They're all web-based.

Okay, it's a web-based. Okay, so it's bite-sized information that are easily digestible.

Yes.

So I think when you were explaining, I was trying to picture how is this delivery of this information. And then I think one of my big question is, who is your client? Who is your customer? Because usually when you're talking about mid, mid school, like high school, is the school gonna buy your software and provide to the kids? Are you delivering that directly to the students? Students, through their parents? How are you delivering that kind of information? And who is your core customer? And who are you solving that problem to? I do think there's a lot of schools right now looking for new ways of teaching their kids since they are in virtual, and there is going to be probably a mix hybrid model in the future. So it wasn't clear to me, who is your customer? How do you do that delivery? But yeah, good job. And like, I think there is a great market there. There's a lot of ways that we have to rethink our education. There's a lot of opportunity for you to build on top of that niche.

Ignacio?

Yep. So James, yeah, I think you could have extended your pitch, right? I mean, you keep it short, which is fine, but I think you you kind of missed on explaining a little bit more. I was— when you just stopped after just talking about the 3 pillars, I mean, I was kind of expecting to hear more. So I think that's something that you would need to add around kind of the secret sauce. And then very important is what is actually the problem, right? I mean, we in this virtual world world that we live now and especially with education, with kids being in school, right? I mean, and we are about to hopefully be transitioning to an in-person setting going forward, hopefully soon. So you will have some challenges from mentors, investors, whatever, Because I mean, now the trend, and you will need to figure out how this is going to be more relevant in the future because I guess there's going to be more of a need now for in-person education and kind of tools in how to improve education than remote. I mean, we were in remote for the past year and a half and everyone is sick of it, right? So, I think you would need to really kind of go after trying to figure out what the differentiator is, how you're going to get to your customers. I mean, as Paloma said, I mean, there's— even though you are kind of in location, at the end of the day, either your customers are going to be schools, which is a difficult market to go to. After, or the parents, which is also a challenge given how busy. But again, they have an incentive to find very interesting opportunities for their children, right? So that's about it from my end.

James, on my side, well, first congrats because I think you are one of the few people who clearly follow the framework of the structure. And so it's very clear, so kudos for that. Now, remember, the purpose of this kind of short pitch is to get the interest to have a second pitch, right? So that's why it's so short, and based on how you have formulated your first pitch, like as an introductory, kudos. Like, after hearing that, my initial reaction is I want to know more. Please elaborate, let's have another meeting. So that was the purpose, so you master that. So then, so that's kind of, you know, the kind of the 1-minute pitch that you have. Now you have to have some kind of 30-second or 1-minute pitch to explain me how would you do that. Is through augmented reality, through virtual reality, to explain me a bit more about, you know, is it gonna about the market, is it gonna be As Paloma said, it's going to be being paid by the schools, they're going to be paid by the parents. How are you— if it's using kind of VR, the headsets, who's going to pay for that? Are you going to be using some kind of factoring system so they have to pay monthly installments because, you know, the headset is expensive, $400, $500, so maybe they have to pay a monthly fee and includes the headset? I don't know. So there were a bunch of questions, and then of course, I mean, those very positive questions because you triggered the interest. And then, you know, you have the experiences, the immersive exploration experiences, but how often would you produce? So I was questioning myself, like, you know, so what's the database of these kind of experiences? Where is he sourcing those experiences? Because once I see a museum, I see a museum, you know. So then, you know, I'm a 7-year-old or 9-year-old kid, I get bored easily. So I watch once, I watch twice, a third, you lost me, you know. So, but based on the framework that Efi gave you, kudos, good job.

Yeah, thank you, James. Thank you for the brevity, that is appreciated. Yeah, these follow-up questions are generally a good thing, as Sergio said. Because you want to hook, you know, get somebody's attention so that they have additional follow-up questions. And I think that's great. Obviously, everybody's experience with edtech has been much more personal, I guess, the past year and a half maybe than before. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. But thanks again for your pitch and for your brevity with that and following the format.

If you want to apply to Montreal, apply up. It will be a pleasure to work with you. I have to say it, I like you.

Okay, our final founder who we're going to invite up to pitch before we hopefully get to one or two audience pitches is Varun. And so if Felicia can find Varun and invite you up, you are our last pre-selected pitch.

Yes, I am here.

Perfect, go ahead whenever you're ready.

Great.

My company, KaiKai, is developing a peer-to-peer platform, food platform, which is more of a fresh produce platform to help urban farmers, e-bike users, and urban consumers to exchange their skills and knowledge using blockchain technology and the internet of things. We are based in New Zealand. Where every year 1.5 million people spend roundabout $726 million on fresh produce like fruits and vegetables, which are grown using sustainability and health principles. Also in 2019, leading grocery retailers in New Zealand experienced a 40% increase in online sales, and e-commerce represented 59% of the supermarket dollar growth. Our solution to— or sorry, the problems that consumers face is knowing where their food comes from and not being able to afford premium organic produce. Urban farmers face problems in accessing local markets, And e-bike users face problems in actually utilizing their e-bike experience for revenue generation. So our solution is backyard gardens meets Uber Eats meets Ethereum. What we do is we grow local communities through the use of information technology, um, to actually help urban farmers ebike users and urban consumers to exchange their skills and knowledge. And our business model clips the ticket on every transaction and creates a platform where we have more urban farmers, more e-bike—

Okay, Verena, I wanna cut you off there. We let you have a little bit of extra time, but it's supposed to be a bit of a tighter pitch format than that. And so—

I think that's it.

Okay, well, perfect. Then you got most of it in, at least. But I just wanted to thank you, Sharon, for your time. Paloma, do you want to give some feedback first?

Yeah.

So congrats on the pitch. It did feel like you were reading a little bit, but it wasn't— it was easy to get it, but it was way over 1 minute, right? I was waiting for Dustin to cut you off because that just felt like way more than a minute. I don't know exactly how much it was, but it was way past. So I love what you're doing. I buy organic box delivery monthly, like it comes every 15 days. And it's always a hassle to know where it's coming from, to find good producers, and then it doesn't come with my products. So I do feel like there's a lot of people like myself, they're looking for better solutions to buy their your produce. But it felt to me that, that you're trying to solve a lot of problems. So when you talked about the, the, just the one side of your, your solution, which is the people that are buying, you already listed two main problems, which is knowing where your food comes from, and not having access financially to organics or something like that. So I do feel like at this stage, at this early stage, is always good to, as Sergio mentioned one of his feedbacks, to find a beachhead strategy, to find one specific kind of user that has one specific kind of problem and then solve that very well and help that. And then if it's going to be with blockchain, Ethereum, maybe, maybe for tracking, but not to get that attached to the technology itself and to try to figure out who is the ideal customer, what's their real problem, and how am I going to solve that very well. And it just felt like there was a lot of moving parts. So I think you, you're, you have something very good there. Love to hear more and see what you guys are doing already. But maybe converging to one specific problem of one user, and then building that whole network of producers of transportation with the bikers to solve that specific problem you found.

Thank you.

So, so, Varun, and this is— I'm going to use you as a— just to make a general comment here, but be very careful with some of these buzzwords in technology, with blockchain and IoT and things things like that, because— and then you will— we were expecting to really understand how the solution, how the problem is linked to those technologies. And in your pitch, even with extended pitch, was more than 1 minute, I think it was not clear to me. I mean, how you're going to be using that technology and how that kind of your food platform differentiates from others just because of the use of that technology. Right? I mean, and again, I've been in technology 20 years, so it's not like— but just be careful. And in general, I mean, if you're going to use some of these words because it's attractive, it sometimes can make the opposite effect because I still don't understand it. And then I don't know what the— what the link is between your solution and the technology, right? So, and the other thing is, I think as it was mentioned before by Paloma, I think is there's a lot of things. You started by mentioning that you are gonna help the farmers, but then you start talking about the customers. So it was hard to follow, and I think you really have to simplify it, make sure that you have a story as mentioned we have mentioned before, and try to narrow it down to something very specific that you are making your pitch on, right? So, and again, 1 minute or even more than 1 minute is difficult, so it just takes practice and you have to really, really figure out how you condense in 1 minute what you really want to to say and just pick the attention of the audience so that you get more time, you buy more time as Sergio was saying, and get more time with whoever you are going to be pitching this to.

Thank you.

Hey, Varun. You're welcome.

You were kind of the opposite of James, you know, instead of giving, making sure it is clear, concise, short and sweet, you were the opposite, you know. You were long, tedious, you were repeating the same thing but like 2, 3 times but with different kind of frameworks, and at the end of the day it was like, you know, okay, I got it the first time, you know, can you get to the bottom, explain how it is? So try to avoid that, you know.

Be—

it's better to be clear and concise than long and tedious and repetitive. I think as Paloma said and Ignacio, and echoing both of them, You're trying to do too many things and you're not explaining how or how you're solving the problem, so there's a problem-solution, you know, and you kind of mention different problems and this platform seems to be complex, so, you know, first you're saying, um, it's gonna be an exchange of skills and knowledge, so then I hear— that's the first sentence— I hear mentoring, okay, Is it kind of a network of urban farmers and they're going to be acting as mentors between urban farmers so they can improve their backyard production? Is it this? And then I was putting in my head, is it going to be maybe a commission-based per hour? How is it going to be the business model you never mentioned? And then you add, is it going to be transportation? Okay, but transportation where? Transportation to supermarkets or transportation to the consumer? Then it gets more complicated, you know? Okay, but who's going to handle all this? Because, you know, you need to have a facility to store, you know, to take everything, or it's going to be something like a couple of tomatoes every time with a bike. Complicated. Oh, okay, maybe he's not mentioning supermarkets, supermarkets, or the panaderos, the panaderos, 5 to 11, that's a French word here in Canada. Is it for consumer? Okay, but he never mentioned how he's going to get the consumers. So how are you gonna meet supply and demand? Then if it's supply and demand, that's pretty much logistics platform. He's in a supply chain business. So is he in the mentoring educational side? Is he in logistics supply chain? Too much. So keep it short, keep it clear, make sure you're solving one problem, one solution, and then you're expanding.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Varun. That's exactly how I was gonna end it with Sergio said sometimes we have what we call the rule of one, right? Solving one problem, you know, for one customer. And I think, yeah, looking at that and the elevator pitch template will help you kind of create that specificity and, yeah, not have this creep of different problems for different customers. But thank you so much, Varun, for pitching and joining us today. That is— we're up against the clock. We're over the hour, so we don't really have time left for our audience in the chat, but we want to say thank you again to all of our founders who pitched. Thank you to everybody for joining. Thank you for giving feedback in the chat. Thank you to each of our panelists who joined us here this evening: Paloma, Ignacio, and Sergio. And yeah, stay healthy everybody out there, and thank you again for joining us tonight.