Unfiltered Ep.8: Reviewing Microscopy Wearables, Edu-Fintech, Delivery Startup Ideas & more

Welcome to our 8th episode of Unfiltered. I'm Rachel Shepherd, Director of Global Marketing here at Founder Institute, and I'm joined in the studio today by Mike Supravici and Dustin Betz. You guys want to introduce yourself?

Hi everyone, my name is Mike Supravici. I'm the Managing Director of Portfolio Success here at the Founder Institute, and our role is to help our alumni companies scale. and we try to do that in any way that we can. Sometimes we do that via one-on-one type of hand-to-hand combat, help in any way that's necessary. Other times we do it through various structured programs and things like that. So, you know, we manage a portfolio of over 4,000 companies, so it's very likely that I've seen ideas or companies in a pretty adjacent space, uh, and I'm happy to share my thoughts on that.

Yeah, and I'm Dustin Betts. I am the editor of the Founder Insights blog and newsletter, and so I am really trying to help our early-stage companies get exposure, leverage, you know, some media that we gave them through our blog with their early traction milestones and leverage that into earned media.

Awesome. So together we're going to run through some of the startup ideas we've received in the ideas@fi.co inbox. Thank you to each of you who have sent in your ideas in advance. We really appreciate that. And we're going to deliver some honest feedback. So an upfront warning, as always, the feedback will be blunt, direct, and unfiltered. Let's get started. So Bose from Los Angeles says, my company, Micro Eyewear Inc., is developing eyewear enabled with a microscopic vision to help scientific professionals see at micro and nanoscale 24/7 as needed on demand. We're reinventing the microscope into a wearable technology.

Yeah, so it sounds pretty cool on the surface. The challenge with products like this, and I can tell you this just from personal experience, You know, being early is the same as being wrong, right? And so whether it's in a pitch or whether it's just for you yourself and everybody on the team, you probably will need to have some sort of like a why now, you know, whether it's in your pitch or whether it's just in general understanding. Because if the pathway to commercialization for a product like this takes 5 to 10 years, there's going to be other competitors that are going to jump in. So If you've created some sort of technology that enables you to do this, great. But if you look at other companies in your space, particularly all the companies in your space that have failed, such as Google Glass and things like that, part of the reason for that was just they were a little too early with this. Like, the technology is very revolutionary. They try to go into healthcare applications and things like that. There was actually a company in the space that did exactly that. But, you know, the form factor, the user behavior is just very, very difficult, right? So I'm not telling you not to do it. I hope that you can actually You can make this work, but just make sure that you have a very powerful like why now, like why are consumers or in your case customers ready to adopt something like this as well as obviously is this even viable? Can you actually do this now?

So the next step for him would be to go back to his customers and start talking about if they're ready for something like this.

Certainly you should talk to customers and I also certainly think that you need to ensure that the development timeline of a product like this is, you know, it's reasonable, you know, because you might just run out of time. In other words, you might run out of money. So, you know, can you actually pull this off quick enough for the market to adopt it?

Yeah. In addition to the, yeah, having that customer use case, I think making your IP defensible in some way, shape, or form, given the longer product lifecycle development, will be really important for, yeah, bring to market something like this. It's going to need to be defensible.

Fantastic. Awesome. All right. Next up, Joe from Dayton says, my software startup Flourish uses machine learning to analyze videos for aspiring YouTube personalities. And offers suggestions to improve their watchability. This includes comparing audio patterns, physical movements, cuts, etc., versus a database of successful YouTubers.

Yeah, so again, sounds like a really interesting concept. I think that in your case, what I would do is I would go very deep on kind of like the actual customer archetype for a solution like this. It's very likely that just given the limited information that I know about your pitch, that it's very, you know, hardcore, high-end, like YouTube influencers that have very, very large followings that would want to spend money on something like this. And if that's the case, then the way you price it, the way you get this in front of them, it's going to be fundamentally different than the way you would get it in front of, say, like a hobbyist or a person that's just kind of trying to get started. And things like that so they can improve, right? So if I were you, I would really, really try to hone in on, on who you're going after with this. You know, are you going after like the high-end like YouTube influencers that are trying to consistently add more and more people to their channel, or are you going after folks that are just kind of starting out? I think that'll be a first step. Awesome.

Yeah, I think, uh, honing in on what their follower count is. Yeah, what their real pain point needs are for somebody who's Yeah, if it's not the— because selling to a really big YouTube influencer, somebody who already has a huge audience, I could imagine might be more like a B2B process actually. Whereas if you go and you're really looking at the more user-generated creative type content that's more organic, maybe on YouTube, yeah, I think that their needs are going to be, yeah, very, very different.

A lot of times with companies like this, it's more about like the personality, right? Like the personality of the influencers and things like that. And I'm just not sure that machine learning can fix that, right? And so if you could be a little bit more specific, certainly within your pitch, but, you know, just for your team and yourself, like, give me an example, right? Like, the average YouTube influencer has 3 commercial breaks, and they introduce the sponsor this way, and they do this, this, and that, and that has been proven to increase conversion by XYZ. This is a pattern that machine learning could actually, like, help with, and so, and that helps them drive traffic somehow. If you can kind of connect that back, that would be really helpful.

Interesting. All right, sounds good. John from Curitiba says, my company, Suiam, is developing a marketplace to help podcasters to monetize their content. That's us. By submitting their media kit, the podcasters will be connected with advertisers. These advertisers can buy ad spots, which is currently a tricky and time-consuming process and often requires technical proficiency from the advertiser's end.

Yeah, so this is true. It's still kind of like blue ocean right now with regards to podcasts in particular, like monetization and how you find sponsors. Usually it's a pretty kind of like manual process. You need like an actual direct sales team in general, particularly like the big podcasters where that makes sense. And so you certainly might be onto something with that. The key success to like a marketplace is matching, right? And so What I would do in your pitch is two things. Number one, I would try not to use the word marketplace at all. I would try to say, hey, we are developing a website that enables podcasters to solicit bids from advertisers. And I would even maybe even go more specific as a type of podcaster, but that would be a good place to start because marketplace can mean a lot of different things and just you want to kind of make sure you let the person kind of understand what that is. And then you go in and try to actually say what the problem is, right? It's like the average podcaster spends 2 hours a day on this and they have to spend this much money to hire a salesperson, right? And so what we solve it by basically providing a website that allows people to solicit the type of advertisers that they need and insert them directly into the podcast. So I would do that for you for your pitch. But that being said, I do think this is definitely pretty viable. And what I would do is, you know, really try to understand the entire ecosystem to understand how this would work with all the other podcast players. Like, is there special types of regulations? Do they work differently? Because all these people, unfortunately, all these people have different formats, you know, and different like type of podcasts, right? So getting someone like our podcast to use it is very different process for you than to get like Tim Ferriss to use it, who might not need it, right? Because he's very popular podcast. So something to think about as far as your go-to-market strategy, because that's going to affect the product that you develop, right? Like, you know, if your go-to-market strategy is going after like small podcasters that are just kind of getting started, the way you acquire them is going to be very different than if you're going after big ones. So just, just a thought.

Yeah, I don't really have too much to add. I also think that there's definitely opportunities in this space. But yeah, be specific about, yeah, exactly the audience size of the podcaster who this marketplace is going to facilitate ads for directly.

Yeah, it's kind of similar to the YouTube idea in that sense, right? Like you have to find out exactly what type of customer within that larger space is going to pay for your product and/or need it to begin with.

Also, I mean, I think you mentioned that it was the gentleman was from Brazil, right? And so, you know, podcasting in Portuguese versus podcasting in Spanish versus podcasting in English. The marketplaces are great. If you can get them to scale. Where most marketplaces fail is getting to scale. So it's really hard to like kind of seed these marketplaces and make them work. So in your case, the cool thing about a marketplace though is that you don't really need a product. It's something that you can just do. So you can literally just start connecting people, ideally in Curitiba where you're from, just connecting like a podcaster in Curitiba with like an advertiser and see what's going on, how it works, right? And then do that until you can no longer do it. And when you can no longer facilitate these transactions manually, then at that point, you know, maybe hire an intern, right? And then have the intern help you. And then when the intern breaks and can't do it anymore, then at that point maybe you can try adding like a, some sort of a tech solution to kind of help you and your intern be more efficient, right? And then When that breaks, then start building a little bit more tech and so something like that. And one thing you may want to do is listen to the Masters of Scale podcast with Brian Chesky from Airbnb, where they really talk about kind of like the early days, which is like super manual like this. Highly recommend it for any entrepreneur listening to this that's considering building a marketplace.

Fantastic. All right, next up, Oliver from Berlin says, my company is developing a platform to help VC analysts search for more deal flow with an algorithm that searches through news sources and public in corporation documents. Through this, we can determine each company's sector, location, and other vital information for analysts.

Yeah, this is a pretty tough market for a variety of reasons. So it's really hard to find, like, signal, okay? So the earlier the company is, the less information that's reliable that you can find. And by the time the companies get to a point where the information is good online, let's just say, let's just use that for just the sake of this conversation. It's too late because people have already got in. Right. And so I guess you're trying to solve the following to kind of summarize this. How can you help VCs get in early into deals that are going to be good? Essentially, that's kind of like the product that you're trying to build here. And it's a really challenging thing to do based on data, right? Just based on things that you can crawl on the web, right? What I would do if I were you, at least in your pitch, to, to make this a little bit more convincing is give me an example of some signals that you have seen that correlate to potential company success. Like, we crawled Crunchbase and we saw that this company added a VP of operation from XYZ company, and that we believe that that's something that should be surfaced, and that surfaces us to like the analyst and and does that. On the other hand of this, like, be careful with talking about VC analysts, right? Because, you know, a lot of founders generally try not to chat with VC analysts, right? They always try to talk to the partner because the partner has check writing abilities. And so I do think that while it's true that the VC analyst would be the number one user of this tool, it's probably like the managing director of the fund or the general partner, the GP, that will benefit the most from this tool and who you will have to actually make the sale to. So just kind of think about it like that. But look, you know, you're on to something for sure. Like, the big funds are already building this stuff internally. So I think what you need to think about is, okay, since the big funds have already built this or are building something like this internally, you know, who are the next generation type of fund managers that make sense? Is it like a new fund manager with a $10 million fund, for example, that doesn't want to spend so much of their, you know, fees on building this out. So I can just give them a tool. So just kind of think about that when you, when you go and build this out.

Awesome. Yeah. So like if they're stage-specific too, like is it pre-seed or— sorry, seed VC funds?

Yeah, that's actually a really good point that you brought up because at each stage you have like different signal and the earlier you are, the worse the signal. Like honestly, I don't know that you can actually do this at the pre-seed stage. I mean, you might be able to, but there's just so little information. Because you're essentially pre-traction with something like this, that it might be just challenging for you to kind of surface information. And the type of info that you have is just so noisy, essentially. You have like just so much information about like stuff that might not be relevant that you might not be able to find like patterns, essentially, right? But then at the seed and later seed stages, as more information becomes available, then you might be able to get this information, you might be able to be more accurate. But then the issue there is, is like the competition, right? So, you know, you just got to be early enough. So the way I would think about this for you, I would say, how early can you be before everybody jumps in, right? Can you be like a month early or maybe like 2 months early before everybody jumps into this deal to know that it's hot? And that could be the difference between winning or losing, and then maybe it's worth it.

That's a good point. So that basically puts a success metric on whether or not somebody needs your platform or not, right? Because if they're— if you're only like a week early, then is that worth anyone paying Yeah, it might be.

I don't know, that's something that they would have to kind of look through.

Awesome. All right, next up is Ashlyn from Seattle. My startup is building an equity crowdfunding platform for university students, solving the issue of abusive student loans by enabling working professionals to crowdfund student loans. Crowdfunders will be able to conduct due diligence by viewing students' high school application information.

So I guess the part about this that's a little confusing is the equity component of this. You know, you talked about we're building an equity crowdfunding platform for like student debt. Now, in a pitch like this, you really got to be specific because if you're going to introduce that, then you're going to kind of have to talk about it. It's like, well, you know, here's what we do. We, we take a piece of the principal or something on this loan, and that is what enables the model to work. Otherwise, you're kind of in the, you know, like the GoFundMe kind of sector, right? Like, I'm just— I'm trying to crowdfund something for like a good cause, right? And so like, this is more like a model, kind of like a model type of pitch. And I think it's kind of important for you to just at least give us a little bit of information on that. That way we can give you like better feedback on this. I agree with you that this is— this is a big problem. I worry that it's just a very difficult way for you to solve it. Because in order for you to solve something like this, right, you need to have an incredible amount of scale. So you need to have a lot of people that want to do this, right?

It's—

this is hard enough to do for companies, by the way. Like, equity crowdfunding is a very difficult, like, task. It works for certain companies, and sometimes it works really well, but it's still very difficult. Like, you need a very big pool of investors that want to do this, right? And so now what you're saying is, I want to do this for, like, something that people are just not used to investing in. Like at least with startups and companies, people are kind of used to investing in them because they maybe have invested in the stock market or maybe they've invested in some sort of like an ETF that holds a bunch of companies. So investing in companies, investing in real estate is something that people know about. Investing in loans is a very challenging thing for people to kind of wrap their heads around. It's like, this is worth it, right? And so then, there may be an investor for this type of security, let's call it that, but then that's a very different type of investor. It's most likely a very sophisticated investor that really understands how to finance debt, how to finance like obscure things, right? And so that's something to kind of think about as you kind of position this, you know, because maybe they don't need it or maybe they don't want other people to have access to this, right? So it's kind of, it's a little confusing. So I think part of the reason you're getting this feedback though is mostly because you just didn't explain the model well enough for us to really dive in on it.

Yeah, I think the category that you want to explore more is like this income share agreement. Like there are a lot of people who are really interested in disrupting the financing of higher education and who see this as a really big, big problem in at least the American economy. So yeah, it's a big, big space. But I think like Mike was saying, I mean, honing in on maybe how this is going to be repaid back, basically, you know, how does this financial tool actually work? It's huge. But tapping in maybe to like, there is energy, definitely, if you look into ISAs, into this income share agreement type financing. And yeah, there's got to be communities out there, but I think you're going to have to tap into other people who are really interested in this, like Mike was saying, because it's just fundamentally like it's pretty crowded. It's really complicated, but other people are interested. So you're going to need a lot of momentum if there's going to be a bunch of investors, you know, getting pieces, financing little pieces of your college education.

Yeah. The first thing that came to my mind was the Kiva model. So Kiva, you know how like you usually you can take like $50 that would just be sitting in your savings account and you put it towards a microloan for somebody who's going to use it to make a bunch of jackets and sell them in their local market in Afghanistan or something like that. That's a model where you could replicate that in this way and say, is it small loans? Are these people making small loans as professionals? If I have $100 I'm sitting on, can I give that to a student who could then pay me back later? But what does the payout rate look like and stuff like that? I think we're all on the same page. We would like to hear a little bit more about the how and the specificities of what this model looks like. Awesome. Claudio from San Francisco says, my company Fastel.io is a food delivery service, think Uber Eats, to help intermittent fasters break their fast in a healthy way by delivering stomach-friendly meals like juices, fruits, and bone broth.

So the challenge with a business like this, and just food delivery in general, but in particular for your business, is that— is this challenge of frequency. So in order for somebody to use Uber Eats on a regular basis, which is essentially what you would need for this business to have a shot at being sustainable— and if you actually look at the people in this business, it seems like it's not that sustainable. Like, many of the big players that are kind of trying to do this independently right now are actually struggling because the cost of customer acquisition typically is much higher than the lifetime value of the customer. So in order for you to build a business that works like this though, you basically need repeat usage, right? You need like people to constantly be using like the app to go and deliver 2 to 3 times a week. This way it becomes a habit. It's really difficult for you to create a habit-forming product unless the product is being used on a regular basis and it becomes part of your life. And the challenge that you have with this is that intermittent fasting— usually most people will do these type of intermittent fasting things maybe on like a, for a small part of their life. Maybe it's like for a month, maybe it's for 3 months, sometimes, sometimes it's less depending on how you, I guess, the, the program that you're following, right? And so this is kind of something to think about, you know, it's like Are you able to generate enough frequency for something like this? And are people going to want to use this type of product to basically break their fast on a, on a regular basis? Or could they just use like a smoothie or something, you know, right away and just bring that with them? Like the people that, that I know that do it, for example, they'll just have something with them to basically break that fast at like 5 PM or whatever that time is. So I think frequency is kind of a challenge here. And again, So you've got like a double whammy, right? You've got like a— you're going into a market that's very difficult to work, so you have to essentially charge more. And so you have to kind of figure out, would people that are intermittent fasting willing to be charging a lot more? I'm talking like 2x more, if not 3x more, than what like Uber Eats would charge, right? And adding this whole entire thing on it, right? So, you know, in startups, you know, one of the things we say here at the Founder Institute is that you only get like one miracle. Like when you have multiple miracles in your startup, the startup will fail. So in other words, like, you know, maybe the miracle is, is that the market is big enough, but then there's another miracle where the revenue model needs to work. And then maybe there's another miracle that I don't know, like that the technology can support this, right? There's too many miracles, right? Like you just need one miracle and then if you can fix that, it can work. So just think about that when you think through this idea.

On the plus side, I think that the niche kind of user case makes this interesting, that it is specifically for intermittent fasters, that in the word intermittent, there's some time period of whatever's in between. I don't know that much about intermittent fasting, but I like how specific the use case is. And I can sort of imagine building a direct-to-consumer brand where maybe it's a ghost kitchen or whatever, where you're actually producing the stuff too. And maybe that makes the unit economics somehow work.

Yeah, I mean, I like the niche idea too, but then you're trying to get people to like, like order this food and you don't know when it's coming and all this, and like the timing aspect of it. And it's like, I want to break my fast like 5 PM, and then the Uber Eats gets there like at 4:30 or 4:45, and I have to sit there and like watch. I don't know, it's like, it's like you've got so many like things that are like difficult about this, you know, that it creates like a very difficult business opportunity.

Or worse, what if it's delayed? Like the food's delayed, right? And you're supposed to break your fast an hour earlier. Um, but yeah, it sounds like a riskiest assessment test might be next, right? So yeah, yeah, yeah.

And a very specific audience too. For example, like maybe you can target people that are going through like Ramadan, right? And that is kind of forced upon folks, and then you can like really go after that audience.

Spanish. Fantastic. All right, Kenneth from Gothenburg said: Cabibus is developing a vehicle and modular system for sustainable mobility and parcel delivery with autonomous electric vehicles on demand, a door-to-door service to help societies reach the goals for fossil-free traffic. Our competitive advantage is a patent for a vehicle with separate passenger cabins which can be repurposed for parcel deliveries.

I love, uh, kind of like what you're trying to do here. I think it's like important. I think you're trying to do too much stuff, and when you're trying to do too much stuff, it's just really difficult for you to execute. You know, one of the biggest advantages that you have as a startup is that you can do one thing and you do that extremely well. All of your competitors are so big that they're like already kind of unfocused. They're working on other things and But even so, I mean, we just got done talking about like Uber Eats, right? Like if you look at like what percentage of Uber's business is Uber Eats, I think it's like in the single digits or something like that percentage. I don't, I haven't looked at their S-1s lately, but like it's a very small subset of the business, right? So they're basically, it's still the one thing that's going to work. So it's either going to be like the passenger thing or like the delivery thing that's ultimately going to be the thing that's going to work for you, even though like the idea can scale to this, right? So narrowing this down would be really, really helpful. Another thing is that you're not really solving a problem for a market. You actually can't. Like, it's like, I want to solve global warming. I mean, one person, one company can't solve global warming even if they wanted to, right? You solve a problem for a customer archetype, right? So this is like a person that, or an entity that will give you money for your vehicle, right? And so as you build your pitch and like all of your tests and things like that, you want to kind of start with the customer in mind. So who's the customer? Is it like a school district? Is it like a Amazon, right, that may need something like this. And then go into like, is it smart cities? Yeah, yeah, if it's like a city, right? And then that affects everything that you do, right? Like, you know, Rachel just talked about the smart city example, right? The sales cycle on a smart city, it's like 12 to 24 months to close one, right? So can you sustain that long, right? If not, you don't have a business, right? But if you do, then maybe that's good because then you have lock-in. You're in that city for like the rest of your business's life, essentially, right? Because you're not— they're not rip it out. So just something to think about as you kind of build this out.

Awesome. Okay, we've got one more. Brian from Pittsburgh says Martian Technologies designs intelligent control systems for missiles and rockets. We have struggled to secure contracts with the DoD and NASA, and we are considering shifting our business model strictly towards the development of a patent portfolio for intelligence, defense, and space technologies.

Well, I think that Just because you struggle with NASA, that doesn't mean that there aren't other customers out there. I mean, I think if you were to look at it like holistically, space is arguably the biggest market in the world because it's space, you know, literally the biggest market, literally. And you're going to start seeing a lot more launches, a lot more things like that coming out, right? And so if you are developing a system to help smart missiles, right, there's conceivably going to be very many like launches and things like that that are going to happen. And maybe there's private operators that, that can make sense. In addition, a lot of these folks that are trying to win contracts with NASA and things like that usually need a much more like complete end-to-end solution. And it's very rare that like the satellite provider also has like the launch component, or the launch component has like the satellite provider, but you kind of need all of them to basically win this like proposal for NASA. So maybe your customer, potential customer, could be like someone that's trying to win on one of these bids and actually has a realistic shot at winning it. And what you can do with your thing is help them make that better. Like, and how do you do that? Well, I don't know, because I don't— you haven't gone into specifics. But let's say you're able to help them test out certain things faster so they can get to space faster, or, you know, you're able to like reduce their cost because you're able to kind of pick like a very specific flight pattern that reduces fuel consumption by XYZ or something like that. And that helps them win the bid, right? And so, and then, right, then all of a sudden, instead of you going directly to NASA or whoever, or the DOD or whatever, maybe you go into like the 20 companies that are competing for the bid and you try to get them to work with you, right? And then now you just expanded kind of like your customer base. And I don't even know if it's 20 companies, maybe it's 6, but it's still, it's a potentially bigger pool instead of like 2, right? And so just something to think about. The patent portfolio thing is kind of a tough business, right? Because you're kind of like no longer in the product business, which seems to be like your core competency. Otherwise you probably wouldn't have gone down this path. You're kind of going to have to shift your core competency from doing that into basically being like a really good lawyer that just litigates the hell out of people when somebody quote unquote violates your patent. In other words, you basically become a patent troll, right? And that's a tough, like, business to be in, although, you know, it can be very lucrative. And so, like, you know, that's more like something that you want to ask yourself. And this is really just general advice now for, like, everybody that's, like, listening to this, you know, not just you in particular. But as a founder, you want to make sure that you can work on this business for the next 5 to 10 years of your life. And part of that is, is who you're working Who are your customers? What do you wanna wake up every day and, and, and deal with, right? And so if you don't like working with a very specific customer archetype, and that's kind of suboptimal for you because like the worst thing that can happen for all of you on this podcast is to actually have a somewhat successful business and you're 4 years in, you've raised money, you have employees and you're like, I don't wanna do this. I don't like working with this customer. I hate this customer. I hate waking up every single day and trying to close this, I don't wanna like deal with this annoying customer that I have to deal with, but you can't get out, right? You can't get out because you've got investors, you've got customers, you've got people that rely on you. And so you need to kind of have these like conversations, like soul searching, whatever you wanna call it, in this kind of like formation stage. And also when you're trying to consider a pivot, like this person is trying to do right now, right? Is it worth me doing that? Well, part of this pivot, this isn't a technical question, this isn't a technical advice from my end, is I can't tell you, like what you should do or you shouldn't do based on like this data and all this. Is this like more like a personal question? Like, do you want to do this for the next 10 years of your life? Do you want to get like involved in doing a ton of like lawsuits and litigating stuff and you're trying to sell patents to people and access to patents and stuff like that and, and enforcing that? Do you want to get into the patent enforcement business or do you want to continue down the product development, trying to get people in the space and stuff like that, right? So this is more just something for you to think about.

Awesome, fantastic. Okay, well, thank you to everyone who submitted their ideas. We'll see you guys next time.

All right, bye-bye.