Unlocking Startup Success with 7 Lessons from Jilliene Helman

We are live. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Founder Showcase. My name is Ryan Micheletti. I'm head of global operations for the Founder Institute and a venture capitalist at the Veteran Fund. The Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator that's helped launch over 7,000 startups across 200 cities with a mentor network of 35,000 mentors. We've got an incredible event for you today. I'm excited to be your host. We had almost 1,000 people register for the event today. So if you're in the audience, please let us know where you're dialing in from. Tell us a little bit about yourself and where you're located. You'll also see that at the bottom of the screen, there are emoji icons that you can use to share the love with the presenters today. The Founder Showcase is Silicon Valley's leading international startup pitch event, helping pre-seed and seed stage startups launch, learn, and connect to investors. We run this event quarterly and have a great agenda planned for you today. First, we'll have Jillian Hellman, founder and CEO of Realty Mogul, share her lessons learned while she built her company into a real estate tech juggernaut with $5.9 billion of real estate assets. After, we'll have 6 companies pitch to you. These are pre-seed companies across a variety of industries such as fintech, tourism, IP, e-commerce, AI, and more. They're also dispersed across several different geographies such as the UK, US, Canada, Spain, and Germany. And each of these companies have strong early growth metrics. So while they're pre-seed, they're growing very quickly and most likely out of that stage in the very near future. The pitches will be a quick 3-minute pitch. We'll do some audience Q&A. So when they're doing their presentation, if you have questions, you can go ahead and put it in the chat and then we'll try to get to as many questions as possible. And then after the pitches, we'll host an international networking session where you can meet with other founders, investors, and mentors from the audience. Uh, in the lobby of this event, we've set up a couple group video chat tables organized by topic and geography, uh, in addition to general networking tables. So let's go ahead and get started. First, I'd like to thank HubSpot for Startups for sponsoring this event. Um, it is now my pleasure to introduce Founder Institute alumni, Jillian Hellman, founder and CEO of Realty Mogul. Jillian, welcome to the Founder Showcase. Thanks for joining us today.

Thanks so much for having me, Ryan. Excited to be here.

Yeah, well, I'm excited to have you. I know you have a presentation teed up, so go ahead and share your screen. And as part of that, would you mind doing an introduction both on yourself and Realty Mogul? Um, for, for those in the audience, um, Jillian graduated, uh, the Founder Institute very early on in 2012. I think it was from the LA program. And you've been, you've been crushing it ever since. So I'll let you take it from here, Jillian.

Yeah, thanks so much. Let me just make sure that this is working.

Okay, perfect.

Let me pop it open a little bit bigger. Okay, great. I think we're ready to roll. Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm Jillian and I'm the CEO at Realty Mogul. Just to give a little bit of background, we're a digital platform for real estate investing and we allow individuals to invest in both funds and individual properties like apartment buildings, office buildings, industrial buildings, retail shopping centers, and sort of all different types of real estate. After graduating the Founder Institute, I raised a seed round, I raised a Series A, and I raised a Series B. You know, we've grown substantially, but we've also faced what feels like every challenge in the book. I've had a ton of fun along the way, and I wanted to spend a couple of minutes today sharing a bit about what I've learned. So I've called this presentation 7 Lessons Learned Crowdfunding $7 Billion in Real Estate. We just crossed the $7 billion mark. So really, really excited excited about that and excited to kickstart, you know, 2024. Um, this is really geared for entrepreneurs, so for the investors in the room, hopefully this is interesting. But I really geared this towards early-stage entrepreneurs and sort of thinking back to when I first started the company, you know, what do I wish that I knew and how could I help support, you know, early-stage entrepreneurs. So the first lesson is it's all about passion. You know, I grew up in a big entrepreneurial family. I'm the youngest of 7, and my dad was in the export-import business. He used to manufacture goods predominantly in China and then sell those into the US market and also Latin America and Europe. And we used to talk about business at the dinner table every night, and my dad would talk about all of the challenges that he had with physical goods— a lot of returns, a lot of faulty product, shipping delays, challenges at the port, strikes at the ports. And so when I went to college, I remember my dad asking me what I wanted to do with my life, and I told him that I wanted to sell money. And he looked at me sort of with two heads and said, you know, why do you want to sell money? And I said, Dad, I've been paying attention. I never want to deal with inventory. Um, I was the kid at 8 years old who was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You know, I hate to say it, but I was really obsessed with how do you invest money? How do you grow it? How do you live a life of passive income? And so I came out of college and I went to work for a bank so that I could once and for all sort of learn how to sell money. And that was really my passion. And so I encourage you to build a company where you're passionate. It's so much easier to close a sale when you believe in the product or service that you're selling. You know, companies take a very, very long time to build. And it's really, really hard if you're faking that passion. So first lesson is it's all about passion. Lesson number 2 is find a business with tailwinds. I believe one of the reasons that we've been successful at Real to Mogul is because of the tailwinds behind us. First of all, I think there's a lot of opportunity when there's political changes. So there could be political changes, you know, no matter what country you're in, the laws are constantly changing. The local laws are changing. The government laws are changing. In our case, in the US, it was the JOBS Act. So this was a piece of legislation that passed in 2012 in the United States. And it was the first time that the securities laws had really changed in the United States since 1933 and 1934, which is really hard to believe. Like, literally since the 1930s, they haven't changed. And what the JOBS Act did was it legalized making private investments on the internet. So when we look at the JOBS Act today, it's really what enables us to market our real estate deals. When we're acquiring a real estate asset, we can market that on Facebook. We can market that on Google. We can market that on Instagram. We can market that on TikTok. And it allows us to acquire new clients into the company, new members into the company. And there's a lot of examples of startups that have built businesses around political changes or industries with tailwinds. Why does it matter? You know, one of the advantages of building a business with tailwinds is that the press cares. And press is your best friend as a young company with no money. It's free and you can start to build your brand, but you have to be able to actually get press, right? I don't think there's a way that I could have been on Fox and Bloomberg and CNBC if the media didn't care about the JOBS Act, right? If the media didn't care about what was changing and adapting and happening in sort of the political arena. And that really allowed our company to ride those tailwinds. You know, believe it or not, it was easier for me to get media coverage in the very, very early days of the company when we were an early-stage startup than it is today. Because, you know, a piece of legislation that changed in 2012, that's old news. The media doesn't care about it anymore. But for the first couple of years of business, they really, really cared. So that was something that really helped us to grow our membership base and build the business that we have today. Lesson number 3 is get started. When I have early-stage entrepreneurs come to me and ask for advice, one of the things that I always say to them is entrepreneurship is a disease. If you have the disease— or sorry, if you don't have the disease, then be grateful. It's not everybody's cup of tea to be an entrepreneur. If you have it, then you are obsessive. You know, I remember before starting my company when I was working in banking, I would wake up every single day for years saying, I have to start this company, I have to start this company, I have to start this company. And if you feel that, if you feel that urgency, then you need to get moving. You know, tomorrow is too late. Today is the day. Be bold. Make the first move, even if you don't know what the next move is. You know, the first deal that we ever did at Realty Mogul, we made $3,000. This is our first check. It was via check, you know, so this tells you sort of how long ago it was. But literally our first revenue ever was $3,000, and we earned that $3,000 by providing a $110,000 loan on a duplex in Compton, Los Angeles. For those of you who don't know where Compton is, it's a very rough neighborhood. I'll never forget my first site visit. This was my first real estate deal that I did at Realty Mogul. And the— our partner in it, the real estate operating partner, picked me up from my house in LA and we drove together to the duplex in Compton. And when he got out of the car, he went to the trunk and he grabbed a crowbar and a gun. And literally, this is where I started, you know, the first deal in Realty Mogul. You know what, I'd never done that $110,000 deal. I never would have gotten started because I didn't have the ability to do a bigger deal. I didn't have the money to do a bigger deal. I didn't have the connections to do a bigger deal, but I had to get started. And if you fast forward to today, we're working on a $110 million deal in Miami. So I went from working on a real estate deal that nobody in the country was interested in to now working on a deal that's $110 million. And it all is because I got started, right? So that lesson number 3 is you gotta get started. You don't know where it'll land, you don't know where you'll end up, but if you're not in the game, you can't even imagine what could happen in the future for you. So definitely get started. Lesson number 4 out of 7: believe in yourself even if nobody else does yet. And I put the yet there because eventually, as you continue to hustle and you continue to grow your business, others are going to believe in you. But in the beginning, you really have to believe in yourself. Um, when I first started Realtor Mogul, I had no idea that it was going to work. I was really afraid, you know. I had a cushy corporate job, I made a lot of money, I quit my job, I went full-time into the startup. I wasn't taking a salary in the early days, and so it was It was scary, but I had believed in myself and I had that belief that this business was gonna go somewhere and that I really, really knew that I can make it go somewhere. And so when I raised our first million-dollar seed round, I had over 100 coffee meetings with investors and I heard no 100 times. The worst part is that I don't even drink coffee. So I had 100 meetings, I heard no 100 times and I don't drink caffeine, but kidding aside, any rational person would have quit. Right then and there, they would have thrown in the towels. But, you know, we're not rational people, right? Entrepreneurs are not rational people. We have grit, we have fire in the belly. And I think that that's one of the most important things as an entrepreneur. You know, in the very early days, there was a lot of signs that the business was working. But one morning I woke up and I checked our bank account and somebody had wired us $500,000 into our bank account for an investment. And I called one of my teammates and the investor's name was Jack. And I said, you know, did you speak to Jack? My teammate said no. And I called my other teammate and I said, hey, have you spoken to Jack and he said no. And so I picked up the phone personally and I called Jack and I said, Jack, I'm the CEO of Realty Mogul. I saw that you wired half a million dollars in this investment. I want to say thank you. I want to give you my personal phone number so if you have any issues, you know how to get a hold of me. And this is what Jack said to me: I invested with you online because I don't want to have to talk to anybody. Click. And Jack hung up on me. And that was it. That was the moment when I said, wow, I really believe in this business. You know, I really believe that this is going somewhere. This is sort of the early, early stages of us knowing that there's a real business here. And at that time, really nobody else believed in us yet, right? We hadn't raised our Series A, we hadn't raised our Series B, we didn't have a lot of teammates. You know, we were very, very, very early on, but I believed, right? I believed in sort of the story behind Jack was really, really empowering to me. You know, if you fast forward today, we've had over $1 billion of capital invested on the platform. We've made investments in over $7 billion of real estate. There's over 250,000 registered members of Realty Mogul. But if I didn't have the grit and I didn't believe in myself to go through those, you know, reminder, 100 failed coffee meetings, I would have failed, right? So, it's that determination and that sheer force of will that really makes entrepreneurs who we are. So, really encourage you to believe in yourself even if nobody else does, because once you get momentum, other people are going to become believers. All right, the next lesson is lesson number 5, which is get the basics right. We have this mantra at our company which is perfect the basics, and it's shocking to me just how many companies fail at the basics. So I, I put a little list of the basics here. Um, answer the phone, respond to emails same day, have sales reps making 15 to 50 cold calls per day depending on the company, run simple but effective Google and Meta ads, process quotes and invoices timely, use software to leverage your business, hire, manage, and delegate so you can scale, provide simple products and services with repeatable systems a new hire can learn quickly, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Really get back to basics. If you just do these core things right, you're gonna be better than 90% of the businesses out there. And in the beginning, you don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to do things that scale. You know, if you don't have employees yet, you can be the one to answer the phones and respond to emails. When I first started Realty Mogul, I personally called the first 1,000 signups to welcome them to the platform. You know, it would be impossible for me to have called the 250,000 members that we have on the platform today, but at the beginning, I could tackle it, and that was the culture that I wanted to build. I wanted to build a culture where we picked up the phone. I personally answered all of our inbound emails in the beginning. There's no one else to do it, right? We had no employees. I had an intern in the very early days, and I created a customer service email address that I would email from so that it didn't look like the email was coming from the CEO. I wanted the email to come from customer service so that we looked like a bigger company. But it was really me, right? It was really me, sort of the alias of customer service. So it was really, really, really critical to get the business right or get the basics right, rather. So lesson number 5, get the basics right. All right, lesson number 6. We're in the homestretch here. Lesson number 6 is have fun. You know, you've probably read about all the sexy startups in TechCrunch that exit after 18 months for, you know, billions of dollars, but the odds are it's not you, and the odds are that it's not me, right? Businesses can take decades to build. What I found with Realty Mogul is it's become an integral part of my life. You know, there's definitely blurring of the lines between work and play, and, you know, I'm working on the weekends and I have a lot of friends now who are in the real estate business that I've met through Realty Mogul. So, I really challenge you to have fun while you're doing it. You know, part of how I have fun is imagining. I challenge my team to think about what does real estate look like 30 years from now, and I'll give you a couple of examples of that. You know, with everything going on in climate change, one of my big questions is, is the ocean our new landmass? You know, this is a project that's actively being worked on in Miami to bring these beautiful houseboats to life. So, as climate change continues to, you know, impact and the water levels keep rising, you can actually live right on the water. When we think about real estate, what about air rights? You know, are those going to be much more valuable once we have a working car, a working flying car? And I think eventually we're going to see a flying car. So what does that mean for air rights above, you know, big buildings and in downtowns and in big cities? What about water rights, right? Maybe the most precious resource on Earth. Can we start to acquire water rights or land rights or wells with water access? These are all sort of ideas to keep the juices juices flowing and keep people having fun at work. So I really, really, really encourage you to have fun as you're building your startup or you're investing, right? If you're investing in companies, make sure you're having fun. Life's too short and it takes too long to build a great investment portfolio or to build a great company. And finally, if you have one takeaway from this presentation as an entrepreneur or as an investor, it's lesson number 7, which is keep going. I have faced so many setbacks in building this company. You know, I remember 3 of my employees quitting on the same day to go work for a competitor. I literally cried for a week. And I fast-forwarded 3 years from there and the competitor went out of business. You know, I never gave up. About 5 years ago, I was totally burnt out. I didn't give up. I dove headfirst into becoming an expert in functional medicine, which is sort of root cause medicine. I completely changed my diet. I completely changed my exercise routine to cure myself so that I could get back to the business of building the company. I remember when investors took their first loss on our real estate platform. It was a hotel deal that we did, and I wanted to crawl under the covers and never come out. I licked my wounds and we reemerged as a stronger company. We didn't give up. You know, the best way to stay in business is to stay in business. I'm gonna share that again. The best way to stay in business is to stay in business. As the CEO of companies, you get to decide if you throw in the towel. You get to decide if you stay in business. There's always a way. There's always a way through, even when you're completely out of money, even when your business idea isn't working yet. There's a way to pivot. There's a way to fund money. The best way to stay in business is to stay in business. So there's always a way if you keep going. And I'll end on that, which is lesson number 7. Whatever you do as an entrepreneur, keep going. The longer you stay in business, the more opportunities are going to come your way, and the more you're going to fight through, and the more you're going to learn, even when it gets so, so, so hard and challenging. And that's where you have to remember to have fun, right? Remember to work on something that you're passionate about. Remember to work on something that you can have fun doing because that's what's going to keep you going when those, when those days get tough. All right. That's what I got for you today.

Jillian, thank you so much. I love that presentation for many reasons. You know, I'm also part of the Robert Kiyosaki generation. I don't know if kids these days are reading that, but just that book was transformative. And it wasn't until maybe like 10 or 15 years later when I was having dinner with him and Ken McElroy, it really was kind of like that moment when you're on top of the mountain, like, I can't believe like this is happening. And that, you know, that advice of perseverance to just keep going is just so incredible. And I think it's also so basic. So I appreciate you also sharing like the basics of like making sure you're answering your email the same day. Making sure your sales reps are doing the 15 to 50 cold calls a day. So really, really solid advice for the founders here. We do have a couple of questions. You know, one here is how did you make the initial connection with the 100 investors? And also, did drinking 100 cups of coffee make you like it more or less?

Well, I drank no coffee. Decaffeinated tea was my go-to. Peach tea from Starbucks was about— I had about 100 of those. So how did I make the initial connection with 100 investors? So I really subscribe to this idea called tornado networking. So every time that I would meet with somebody, I would ask for 5 introductions. I'd usually get 2. So ask for 5, you get 2. And what would happen is I would have to get far enough away from the investor who told me no. So even if an investor told me no, I said, look, I totally understand. It's not the right fit for you, you know, in your portfolio today. Are there any other investors that you would make the introduction— or the 5 other investors that you would be willing to make the introduction to? And so because I asked for 5, they'd make 2, I'd meet with those 2, and then I'd ask them for 5 more. So that's really how I, how I started. A lot of it was also meeting with real estate folks. So the beauty of my particular real estate vertical is that all of most real estate folks raise capital. So I'd also be meeting with a lot of real estate investors and say, hey, you're invested in real estate. This isn't a real estate investment if you're investing in the operating company. But, you know, would you look at an angel investment? Um, so that was really how I got started. I pitched a lot of Founder Institute mentors. So I was a part of the Founder Institute. I pitched a lot of mentors. I asked every mentor that I met with for introductions to investors, um, and really used kind of that concept of tornado networking to grow and expand my network.

I, I love the concept of tornado networking. I've actually haven't heard that in, in that context, but certainly that the principle behind it. I know we're pretty much out of time. You know, one question here that I want to ask is for the investors in the audience, Can you share a few recommendations as to how real estate, particularly funding platforms like RealtyMogul, fits into an investor's portfolio? A lot of the time, like, tech is very, like, long-term, high-risk, high-reward, and I think a good counterbalance is real estate. And you're at this interesting intersection of real estate and tech. How do you think about that, and what advice do you give investors?

Yeah, I mean, it starts with what are your goals, right? So for those investors, what are they trying to achieve? You know, they're trying to achieve outsized returns with a lot of risk, in which case venture makes a lot of sense, right? That's kind of the pocket that venture sits in. Are you trying to achieve, you know, cash flow with lower risk? Are you trying to achieve something in the middle? Um, so it starts with goals, right? What are you trying to achieve? And why— I try and encourage investors too, why are you trying to achieve that? Do you want more passive income so you can spend time with your grandkids? Do you want, you know, to buy a home, to buy a second home? Sort of what's the North Star? And then you can build a portfolio around it. You know, I think the beauty of online investing platforms is they're very, very easy and they save you a tremendous amount of time. Part of the reason why I started RealTymobile, in addition to the political changes that were happening, were I had a need. I wanted to invest in individual real estate deals. And so, I started networking to find them and it was incredibly challenging. This was 10 years ago. So, you know, it was harder 10 years ago than I think it is today with a lot of online platforms. But we do a lot of the networking and we source a lot of the product and we source a lot of the real estate companies so that the underlying investor doesn't have to. And so, one of the beauties is that you can build a diversified portfolio. You can come in and you can say, I want to invest in, you know, 10 deals or I I want to invest in a fund that's diversified across 20 deals where historically that would've been a tremendous amount of time, energy, and effort. So it starts with your goals and then it starts with sort of education and then finding, you know, deals that meet those goals and meet that risk profile.

Yeah, I think that's great advice as well. Well, I know we're out of time, so Gillian, thank you so much. There are some questions here in the chat. Feel free to hang out and answer them if you have the time. And if not, you know, that's okay. We'll be transitioning to the founder pitch part of the session today. Once again, thank you and congrats on all your success.

Thanks for having me.

All right, we're going to go ahead and kick off the founder pitch session now. Here's how it's going to work. Each pitch will be 3 minutes long and then we'll do a short Q&A afterwards. So similar to this, if you have questions at any point during the founders presentation, go ahead, pop it in the chat. We'll do our best to get to as many as possible. And then if there's a founder or a pitch that resonates with you, you'll be able to meet with them using Airmeet after this event in the virtual networking tables that we've set up in the lobby. So let's go ahead and welcome our first pitch of the day, Edward Donazu, co-founder and CEO at Offblocks.

Hi, my name is Eduardo and I'm the co-founder and CEO at Offblocks, a banking as a service platform for Web3 developers. There's currently over $700 billion worth of digital assets locked on blockchain wallets worldwide, sitting there doing nothing. Our SaaS platform helps blockchain wallets and other decentralized application providers offer banking services to their customers, unlocking their liquidity and empowering them to grow their ecosystems through real-life payments. As of today, we can safely say that digital assets are simply not easy to spend. From the user's perspective, using digital assets such as Bitcoin to pay for things is a cumbersome, multi-step process that involves third-party risk and redundant fees. For wallets and other Web3 application builders, there's currently no solution on the market that offers all necessary components to launch regulated card products compliantly and initiate payments in a single Web3-native integration. Authblocks solves just that. By connecting Web3 applications with banking rails and card networks, Upblocks offers a developer-friendly solution that helps Web3 companies process crypto-to-fiat payments compliantly, offering users an easier way to cash out their cryptocurrencies. Our initial product is a non-custodial debit card solution that helps wallet users spend their digital assets instantly on e-commerce and point-of-sale transactions. Our developer-friendly API helps Web3 companies launch these white-label debit cards to their users in under 3 months. And it's built specifically for the Web3 wallet stack. Our all-in-one solution covers all software infrastructure components, regulatory coverage, and compliance controls needed under a single integration. Our innovative use of escrow smart contract also allows users to preserve custody of their assets up until purchase confirmation, a crucial differentiator that aligns really well with decentralized organizations. And we have just the right team to build this. I've spent the last 8 years scaling fintechs such as Emma and Afterpay to millions of users and millions in revenue. My co-founder Alexander has 10 years experience building trading infrastructure and payment networks for Deutsche Bank, Bloomberg, and Blockchain.com. We've also recently hired a senior blockchain engineer and a product designer with experience working on banking products and decentralized applications. The blockchain software market was valued at $50 billion in 2021 and is forecast to grow steadily at over 20% a year until 2027. We're currently focusing on selling into self-custody wallet companies and servicing their European customers through our partnerships with regulated financial service providers. We achieved significant traction since starting work on this project in the summer of 2023. After interviewing over 50 wallet founders and senior developers, most of them confirmed their plans to launch card solutions in the near future and the appeal of a solution like Upbloxx. We've secured 5 letters of intent from early customers and are in the final stages of negotiating commercial agreements. We've also completed multiple accelerators and have been featured in international business news as well as industry publications. There are a few adjacent competitors offering card payment infrastructure to Web3 companies. Unlike these firms, Authblocks was built with the wallet stack in mind, supporting direct integration with all EVM blockchains, in other words, covering over 80% of industry-wide transaction volumes, enabling wallets and decentralized applications to grow their ecosystems no matter which blockchains they're actually building on. We're raising £700,000 in pre-seed funding to cover a 24-month runway and reach £100K in monthly revenue by early 2025. We've already received £70K in commitments over the last few weeks and are excited to add more strategic investors to our cap table. Pre-seed funds will be used to bolster our engineering, compliance, and business development efforts, as well as applying for necessary licenses with local regulators in the UK and European Economic Area. Thank you so much for your time.

Edward, thanks so much. You know, one question that I have for you is, who is your target customer? What's that archetype? And then how can folks in the audience today be helpful to you?

Sounds good. Thanks a lot for, for letting me here. Our current customer archetype is very much self-custody wallet companies, so companies that provide digital wallet services to manage, send, and receive digital assets such as Bitcoin. We're currently selling a software to this initial customer segment and we'll be looking for our services to decentralize financial applications and provide services such as lending, staking, etc., and are also looking for card services for their customers.

Do you—

there's a big trend right now where a lot of companies are slowly turning into their own fintech companies providing these types of solutions. What's your vision with merging that trend with crypto and the wallet that you're building?

Well, we're, we're very aware of that trend. We've actually identified a number of companies that are either stemming from traditional e-commerce or traditional fintechs and are now adding these Web3 or fintech rails, if you will. So building card products, new banking experiences within their existing products. We've actually partnered with a number of infrastructure companies that are already selling to this, this particular segment, and they're able to effectively cross-sell our services to any of their clients that are looking to either launch a card solution or a sort of a payment solution for their users to spend digital assets on, whether it's point of sale or e-commerce transactions.

One question here is less about a question on the company, but more of your advice around how you built your team. Someone in the audience was asking kind of about your background and then, you know, what was the process you used to find the team to help you build the platform? And I think this kind of connects to the proverbial question of how do you find a technical co-founder to help you build your vision?

Sure. I mean, it wasn't an easy process just to start. I've basically been working in fintech the majority of the last 7, 8 years, so I had fairly good connections when it came to meeting, whether it's engineers or senior people to join the founding team. I actually built a previous business about a year and a half ago That was the sort of previous version before two pivots of the current business that we have now at Offblocks. And we had a previous co-founder whose skills were suited to the previous product we were building. But ultimately, when it came down to pivoting, we realized that we're going to need a totally different skill set to put this together. That's when in January I effectively changed co-founders, went back to the market, used all my connections, whether it's through events, people working in Web3 in London and previous bosses, etc., and effectively found my co-founder this way through recommendation. And I think I've been using recommendations for most of our recent hires, even though we post jobs on LinkedIn and Wellfound and, and all these platforms. Usually, um, the best hires that we've had come from people, uh, that we know, and, and they're usually people that have worked with them.

Yeah, that, it's pretty interesting because a lot of early founders don't realize that whether it's finding a co-founder, finding customers, or finding investors, they all fundamentally follow the same sales process, right? You need to come up with like your leads list. You need to find out who your connectors are. You need to go and work your network, you need to ask for introductions similar to what Jillian was saying about tornado networking. So I think there's, there's no real shortcut there. There are networks and things that can be helpful. Last but not least, Edward, when we go into the networking session, are there types of people that you're looking to connect with after this event?

Absolutely. As mentioned, I guess in our ask, we're currently raising a pre-seed. So any investors, either angels or micro VCs looking at the Web3 and payment space or more than welcome to reach out. Another type of relationship we're looking right now is anybody that with experience dealing with regulators in the US. We're currently a European company and we have partnerships to cover all the services that we offer in the Europe and UK areas, but we're actively looking for partners to essentially bring our services over across the US.

Awesome. Edward, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much.

All right, we're gonna go ahead and move to the second pitch. Um, I'd like to welcome Carlos Carrera, CEO and co-founder at WeKeep. WeKeep allows travelers to find verified stores that they can use to store their luggage for as long as they need in a safe, reliable way so they can enjoy their trips even more.

¡Hola! Soy Charlie, cofundador y CEO de Wikeep. Déjame contarte lo que estamos trabajando en nuestra startup de viajes. Cada día, miles de viajeros enfrentan el reto de esperar con sus maletas durante horas de espera o después de la salida. Especialmente si viajas usando alojamientos temporales como Airbnb, no tienes una recepción de hotel para dejar tus maletas y explorar la ciudad sin maletas. To get a sense of the magnitude of the issue, in 2022, just on Airbnb, more than 100 million travelers have rented a temporary rental facing this problem. That's where WeKeep comes in. We are an app that connects travelers with local shops and hotels where they can securely store their bags so they can fully enjoy those waiting hours and make the most of the trip. The stores that keep your bags create a new stream of revenue using their current facilities and also attract potential customers to their businesses. Securing your belongings is very simple, just make a booking through our app at a nearby store and drop off your luggage. You can then freely enjoy your day. There are other platforms offering similar services, mainly based in Europe, however they might not prioritize some critical aspects that are important to us, such as ensuring Ensuring the security of their belongings by providing insurance coverage and security seals. The option to pay in local currencies. And most importantly, making the service available across LATAM. That's why we were born with the mission to bring this service to Latin American cities and become the leaders in this region. We have achieved this goal in these 2 years, expanding to 10 countries, being present in over 40 cities with more than 200 stores. During this time, our consistent growth shows our ability to acquire new customers at an efficient cost. This enabled us to reach our breakeven point in the last quarter. Wikkip was created as a university project. We started with Sofia, my co-founder, and now we are a team of 6 people working to propel our growth. In the next year, we want to expand to Europe and the US market. That's why we are seeking a €100K investment $100 million, half of which has already been committed by our previous investors who are interested in a follow-on. As we expand into new markets, our current presence in LATAM will continue growing in terms of revenue, and we see a clear path to a $10 million revenue on the long term, propelled by our expansion efforts into new markets and efforts to increase our discoverability. We invite you to join a validated business model established in Latam, set to be expanded globally. You can participate in a profitable startup with strong profit margins per sale and significant potential for valuation growth. Thank you very much.

Carlos, thanks for joining us today. A few questions here from the audience. You know, the first, um, that I see here is, how do you ensure that the content of the luggage stays safe?

Great, yes, that's a very common question. We provide with every piece of luggage that is stored by our app, we provide insurance coverage and a security seal that is put on every bag, on every piece of luggage, so you can stay safe that your luggage is being, being safe and it's it's well protected. We have stored more than 20,000 bags and we haven't had any claim or any inconvenience with a bag or any piece of luggage.

What is the feedback from local stores been? I mean, it seems like you've got 200 stores, they're, you know, they're interested in turning on these other revenue channels. What's the feedback been from them?

Yes, that's a great feedback. We have a very good response from them because they can use their current facilities without investing in anything new to get a new stream of revenue. And they also get more customers to their businesses. Especially, we aim to partner with hotels, with hostels, or any other business on the tourism sector. So they got more customers, but especially tourists on their shops that usually end up knowing them for the next trip or consuming or spending something on their business.

What about on the, the other side of the equation, the actual travelers who are paying for the service? How do you acquire them and what's their feedback been?

Well, we aim to a very specific type of traveler, usually the traveler who stays at short-term rental because they don't have a hotel reception to leave their bags. So we aim them by Google Ads, Meta Ads, and we also have some partnerships that are our kind of special sauce that get to get more tourists and get more clients on our app.

What do you— you know, one of the other questions here in the chat is that airports and hotels also offer this service. This, is there a differentiator, and, and is there maybe even a different type of customer that you would target, um, outside of the ones who would just drop the, the bags off at the hotel?

Yes, exactly. Usually the, the traveler who stay at the hotel has the service at the same hotel, but the traveler who use, uh, short-term rental doesn't have a hotel to leave their bags, so we provide that solution to leave their bags and get the most of those waiting hours. And in terms of airports, not all airports provide the service, some of them does, usually it's very expensive, and sometimes people need a more convenient place. Our differentiator is to have a point to leave your bag, your bags, your luggage nearby that it's open at the time you need to drop off and get your luggage. So that's our main differentiator. We fix it places like airports or terminals.

Final question here is, how can people in the audience be helpful to you, and is there anyone that you're looking to connect with during the networking session?

Yes, we are expanding our service to Europe, so everyone on the travel tech sector, especially in Europe or any other market, is very welcome to chat. And I saw someone called Alexander from Airbnb, from the seed angel investments, so that would be very, very nice to meet.

Carlos, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you soon.

Bye-bye.

Okay, up next is Perceive Now. Founder and CEO Vinita Upasana. PerceiveNow delivers actionable IP expansion strategies to executives and their teams.

Everyone, I'm Vineeta, founder and director of PerceiveNow. We provide context-rich IP and market intelligence report. The most confusing, exhausting, and even expensive part of an intelligence report is not the data, but the context. What does this data mean to me? How am I going to use these graphs, metrics, and KPIs for my business growth? One such use case was identifying IP licensing opportunities for our recent user. Even after using a combination of free and paid tools, spending $20,000 and 500 hours later, our user still ended up with an incomplete list. No report was generated and just 60,000 rows of raw data that they had no idea what to do with. With PerceiveNow, we provide a complete comprehensive solution using our proprietary large language model that is fine-tuned to provide context analysis on IP and market research reports. With our platform, we provided instantaneous access to a decision-ready report for just 1/10 of the cost with actionable recommendations and unexplored discoveries. The users simply had to search for the keyword, provide the context on why they are looking for this data, and what are they planning to do with this data, their business goals, and directly jump to the last step of getting a decision-ready and comprehensive report for decision-making purposes. Our largest market size are patent attorneys, IP, and litigation law firms. There are 600,000 patents that are annually filed, and even if you are able to attain just 1% of those use cases, it's still a whopping $336 million market. The other largest set of users we work with are technology corporate companies, decision makers in investment banks, private equity firms, M&A advisors, and VCs who are performing diligence. There are a lot of different market intelligence and IP intelligence platforms that are currently available. I somewhat hesitate to call ourselves direct competitors to them because what we provide is a layer beyond the insights, analytics, and aggregations that are usually performed. Currently, we work with about 30 users from 10 different versatile companies with a revenue of $15,000 and 50% growth in month-over-month sales. In our own users' words, our intelligence is not just indispensable but also extremely unique and competitive in nature. We're a team of 3 co-founders. My background is a PhD in biomedical engineering and computer science engineering, and together we're not just skilled in developing a software platform but also in scaling them. Currently, we're raising a $500,000 pre-seed round and raised $315,000 from 3,000— from 3 different investors. But we're also looking to know your thoughts and feedback on our platform. If you are a corporate venture innovation team member or an IP attorney, please contact me.

I would love to know your thoughts and feedback, and please let me know if you have any Vanessa, thank you so much, and we should definitely connect after this because we have some resources that could be helpful. But, but thank you for the presentation. Um, one quick question on my end is, who is the, the individual user? Like, what's their title at the company that mainly would use your platform? And is that the same person that has the buying decision to actually purchase it?

Absolutely, that's a great question. In fact, uh, we've understood that just based on the, say, 3 or 4 market segments we have identified, um, in law firms and in within IP attorneys realm, it is directly IP attorneys themselves. And of course, they choose to purchase the reports and they order these reports right now, which are getting done in a manual manner. Within technology corporate, uh, realm, it's usually decision makers. And we've realized in mid-sized and small-scale companies, it's usually CIOs, CEOs themselves. And yes, they are also the decision makers to buy and purchase these reports. Whereas in very large-scale companies, there is usually a second tier that happens where the users happen to be data analysts. There used to be VPs and directors, but they're not usually also the decision makers there. So I would say about 80% of our segment are both users, decision makers themselves, and about 20% would 2 different set of people.

There is a couple questions here around like giving more details about the product, or is it, is it a consultancy? Um, can you talk a little bit more about how the user uses the product itself, like maybe just a 1-2-3 walkthrough?

Absolutely. So let's just assume a use case related to an IP, and if the user happens to, uh, wanting to understand the licensing pathways they have for their IP portfolio, they would literally come onto platform, type in the keywords, converse with our personalized AI, which would guide them through the steps of providing context on why they're looking for this data, what are the most important metrics and parameters that are going to be helpful for them in assessing the report, et cetera. This would probably take anywhere between 3 to 5 minutes. Followed by that, they simply click on a button, generate, and the report generates in real time using our proprietary large language model, which very specifically focuses on the context and the requirements that the user provided initially with the AI.

The note is asking, how real-time is the data that gets ingested into your platform from the various data sources?

Absolutely, that's a fantastic question. We update our data almost, I would say, at least 3 times a day. So our IP data gets updated pretty much at the same rate where, where you're able to see the patents in Google Patents or in IIFY. I think most of them go to Google Patents because it's the easiest free source, but that's how often we update all our IP data.

Yeah, that's great to hear. Last question, Monica is asking, are you looking for more team members to join your team?

We're always looking for passionate individuals who understand the problem, especially that we're solving. I think as a team ourselves, we've been together for about 3 years and looking for members who are expertise in enterprise strategy because we are getting into the stage where we're expanding and scaling our marketing and sales efforts. And in fact, even working in parallel with engineering team to work on different features related to their feedback too. So definitely if you're interested in the domain or if you have expertise in that area, we're always looking to add more members.

Yeah, that sounds great. Um, Vanitha, let's, let's connect after this. We do have a legal tech program, um, run by a VC that could be helpful. So let's make sure we, we pull on that thread. Thank you.

Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you at the networking session.

Thank you so much for your time and attention. Take care.

Okay. Next up, our fourth pitch. I'd like to welcome Ridwan Sansouni, founder and CEO of Haul Credit. Haul Credit provides hassle-free and interest-free inventory financing for African merchants.

My name is Ridwan Sansouni and I'm the founder, CEO of Haul Credit Technologies Limited. Imagine for a moment you are a merchant operating out of Africa where there is already a huge credit gap, and you've been operating your business for close to 3 years, making an annual income of about $100,000. But you can't access credit due to institutional lending biases, use of traditional credit scoring, and more importantly, little to no institutions that offer credit that align with your faith, values, and principles. And these ultimately result into huge losses of revenue and customers on an annual basis. This is the story and challenges that many African merchants like yourself face. Annoying and frustrating, right? At OurCredit, we've built a simple profit-based inventory financing platform that gives merchants access to financing that are in line with their faith, values, and principles with 0% interest. and we ensure they have access to reliable cash flow to increase their sales by at least 2x. The journey didn't start today. In about 3 years, we've been able to generate close to $550,000 in revenue, achieving about 95% jump from 2022 to 2023. And in the process, we've also disbursed over $3 million to 19 merchants, achieving a high success rate of 99.5%. Our product is simple. Merchants are required to check their eligibility status, upload their supplier invoice, and upon approval, we fund their inventory purchases. Business model: we charge about 2.5% to 4% on the total credit dispersed to the merchants. Our market size is huge. We're trying to target just about 1% of the MSME financing gap in Nigeria, which is about $32.2 billion. On an annual basis. The team is made up of seasoned professionals. I have 13 years experience in banking, investment, and product management, and I've also been a two-time founder. Fumi has 15 years experience in credit, and Faisu leads our engineering team, has 11 years experience building e-commerce and fintech solutions. When I got to Canada in 2022, I saw a huge opportunity for business owners and immigrants who can access credits that are in line with their faith values and principles. We're looking to launch our products in Canada, Kenya, and Ghana over the next 2 years. The competitive market is huge. We do have a number of interest-based lending platforms that offer interest-based financing solutions and a handful of traditional non-interest banks that offer similar financial solutions that we do, but they focus more on the corporates and we focus more on SMEs. Our ask is $600,000 to help us achieve $1 million in ARR 2,000 merchants in 12 months. And I'm glad to inform you that we've been able to raise about $120,000 out of this $600,000. We intend to deploy these funds to intellectual property, technology, marketing, and operations. Thank you.

Juan, thank you for joining us today and, and congrats on all your success. Um, one question here is, um, did you bootstrap the company? To the revenue levels that you're at today? Yes, absolutely.

Um, the revenue that we generated till date, bootstrap, yes.

I think there's a lot of founders who think that they need to raise money first before they go and build the product or, or get traction and drive revenue. Um, you did the opposite, right? You bootstrapped in a hard market to raise money in and got to levels where Now it's a very compelling investment opportunity. Could you share a little bit more about your thought process around that and your journey going from bootstrapping to now raising capital? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, if you're operating out of a very competitive market and a market where a lot of VC funds, you don't get to see a lot of VC funds like Africa where I come from, you have no choice but to bootstrap. And that's essentially how we started. So my advice to a lot of founders is, depending on the solution and the problem that you're trying to solve, it's critical for you to have a product that the customers really want to pay for. And I think it also boils down to my own personal philosophy of raising funds. I always like that whenever I'm running a business, I have product-market fit with my own funds. I'm able to, you know, generate enough revenue before investors can start coming in because because your venture becomes easily sellable to investors when you can present to the investors what you have achieved with your own personal funds.

Yeah, I think that's solid advice. Two questions from the audience. The first is that, how do you ensure, uh, profit disclosures from the merchants? Is your target client a high-end merchant? Yeah, absolutely.

So we get that question all the time. So one of the things that we have done in our products is for the merchant to disclose their profit analysis, and we make sure that this goes into the credit application process. So one of the things that we do is we have agents in this market that help us to confirm the information that the merchants are providing to us, right? So like I said, it's also one of the things that we use in approving their credit, because Of course, a lot of this information about the products that they sell in terms of the cost and the margins that they make, they are available on the market. It's just for someone to go into the market and confirm, you know, this information. So we use agents to confirm the data that the merchants provide to us.

One other question here similar to that is, what is your KYC program and approach to fraud that prevents the these false purchase orders leading to credit issued?

Okay, so one of the things that, you know, is a bit unique in our model is that we don't, we don't give the founders forms. We pay directly to the supplier. So that ultimately reduces, you know, the risk of fraud being carried out, you know, from our credit application process. So a merchant would definitely submit an invoice that has been provided by the supplier, and then we we, we relate with the supplier. So before we can make, you know, the final payments to the supplier, we confirm if the purchase order is genuine. So I think that model, you know, helps us to reduce, you know, the incidences of fraud.

Yeah, that's really helpful. Last question here is, you know, before we go into the networking, what are some of the ways the audience can help you, and are there other asks outside of investment capital?

Yeah, so we operate in a very niche market. It's a market where you don't really have a lot of platforms that are currently operating in. So we're looking for strategic partners, even though we've been getting quite a number of interest from, you know, VCs through FI Network. But we've been very, very deliberate about the partners that we want to bring with us. We're looking for strategic partners who understand how to scale fintech products, across different markets, especially within Africa and North America. I did mention in my pitch that we're looking to expand our product to North America, so we're looking for strategic partners that understand how to scale fintech products.

Great, yeah, that's helpful. Well, you know, let's be sure to connect as well. Thank you so much for joining us, and, uh, we'll look forward to seeing you at the networking session here momentarily.

Thank you.

All right, we're going to move on to our fifth pitch. This is our second to last pitch. I'd like to welcome up Christina Link. She is the co-founder at Clean Ocean Coating. Clean Ocean Coating is revolutionizing the commercial shipping industry with a new type of hull coating. Christina, we'll let you take it from here.

Hey, I'm Christina. I'm co-founder and chief octopus at Clean Ocean Coatings, and today I need to talk with you about biofouling. Biofouling is the growth of algae and seashells on ships. It causes up to 40% higher fuel consumption and an estimated damage of $150 billion annually. And therefore, more than 100,000 tons of toxic antifouling coatings are applied every year. Year. And they are the actual problem: so-called self-eroding coatings, which are designed to wash off over time, leaching toxins and microplastics into the ocean. 50,000 tons of self-eroding coatings end up in our ocean per year and therefore in your sushi. And here comes our innovation: eCoating, a toxin-free hard coating that does not wash off. Our magic is a uniquely smooth surface which is easy to clean, and it is more durable than conventional coatings. Due to the smooth surface, we save fuel. E-Coating can save the shipping company €600,000 per vessel per year. Our target market is the global marine coating market, which is in the size of $11 billion, and it is forecasted to grow by 7%. E-coating is disruptive. 80% of the market is owned by 5 global players, and our product not only stands out in sustainability but also in longevity and ease of application. Customers validated our product. The oldest of 4 test patches is already 7.5 years old, and we just coated a whole vessel in a paid pilot project. So we have an exclusive license for highly scalable technology. So imagine 2030 when we will coat 400 ships and generate €120 million in revenue. And this is the amazing team that makes it happen. That is me, an experienced international engineer, and Patricia, a material scientist who developed the coating. And the team is completed by Jens with his 20+ years experience in growing businesses. And so far, we successfully adjusted the coating for the spray application and we've realized a paid pilot project. Also, we got €170,000 funding granted by the EU to coat further 5 further vessels. So next year, we will scale production and we will enlarge our facilities and move out of university. And we will coat 9,800 square meters and make €500,000 in revenue. So we're raising our seed round in the size of €2 million, which will allow us to kickstart production and go to market fast and to satisfy the needs of our customers. We establish the anti-fouling management of tomorrow, and you are very welcome to join us on that mission.

Christina, thank you so much. Um, you know, it's interesting because we, you know, I think it was 2030 you're gonna do 400 boats or 400 coatings, and that seems like such a small fraction of the market. I mean, what is— how many, how many coatings do you think you'd be able to get up to even beyond that number? And, and maybe you could talk a little bit more about the market size, like how many boats need to be coated and how How often does that happen?

Yeah, so there are currently, there are around 90,000 vessels cruising our ocean, which does not include fishing boats, but the general cruise and cargo. And around 3,000 vessels are built new per year. So that's the scope of the global market.

And when they're looking at competitive offerings such as other paints or other applications, coatings, how economically, how does yours stack up? And from like a durability standpoint, like, is it, is it one for one? Is it cost the same? It's just more eco-friendly? Maybe talk a little bit about like the positioning of your company and solution.

Yeah, price-wise, we're very competitive in the premium price, uh, second with our coating. So we're not that much more expensive than current coatings, but ours is much more durable. So currently coatings are used for 1 year to maximum 5 years, the very premium ones. And our oldest test patches are already 7.5 years old. We are very optimistic that our coating will last for 10 years and save our whole docking site.

And is your IP in the coating itself or is it in the actual application of the coating to the vessel?

No, it is in the coating. So we do have nanostructured patented particle where we do have the exclusive license to use that.

Great. We should definitely connect offline. One of our alumni called Paint Jet is actively working on being the applier of the various coatings. So I think a partnership there makes natural sense.

That sounds amazing. Yeah.

So let's be sure to connect offline after this. So can your coating be used in other markets for automotive? What are some other applications besides vessels?

Yeah, we don't see it in automotive. That's a very different type of coating. But we're definitely currently looking as well into other offshore applications like offshore wind parks, parks and other offshore constructions. And apart from that, a market we can look into as well is tanks for like food or fuel, like these big tanks under other industrial coatings applications.

That sounds good. Last question here: what are some of the other things that you're looking for besides investment capital, and how can the audience be helpful? To you?

Yeah, so, of course, I'm very interested to meet investors. And besides that, we are also currently looking to get connections into other offshore industries, like offshore wind parks, any connections for interviews there, as well other boats or ferry operators, boat owners that are willing to talk with me about biofouling, anyone who wants to talk with me about ships and biofouling. And as well, we're currently having two positions open, one for business assistance and one for product development. So when you're in the Berlin, Germany, Berlin area, look into that as well.

And then one last question here: are you a US-based company or Germany entity?

Germany. Germany.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Christina, and we'll see you at networking here in a few minutes.

Looking forward.

Okay, last but not least, our final pitch for today is Got It Life. I'd like to welcome Armin Arustamov, CEO of Got It Life, here. Um, Got It Life is a self-care app that uses AI technology to enhance psychological resilience for employees. Armin, I'll let you take it from here.

Hi friends, I'm Armen Arastau, the founder and CEO of GuidedLife. This is an AI-powered mental health coach in the pocket of corporate employees. It allows them to overcome their mental challenges and achieve best results in work, in daily life, and even in sports. I'm a former professional tennis player, psychologist, and co-founder of Tennis Academy in Orlando, Florida. So our early adopters are athletes, but our current audience are corporate employees and managers. Mental health issues cost very high for employers— $225 million a year in lost productivity. And we decided to create AI therapy and self-coaching app that improves employers' employees' resilience, and productivity while saving employers money. Our current version of app allows user to talk to oneself like to another person with modified voice, role-playing game. And as a result of the app, you have a chance to listening to your internal dialogue from third observer role and get some insights or aha moments which you haven't received before. For example, I'm late because I hate to wait people. And then you will have a chance to write some steps of implementation, these insights into your real life. But it's not all. The app allows you to talk to yourself, to talk to AI mental coach and collective mind. It's, it's real people. So we created some integrated model of AI-powered internal and external communication. We have already MVP of AI mental coach, which is working already better than ChatGPT-4. On psychological issues. And to the end of this year, we're going to create the collective mind, and AI will select the best real-life story, advice, or question from the real people and customize for every particular user, uh, for every particular situation. We have already 4 corporate pilots with 2,000 happy users and excellent feedback. And we have feedback from different types of users, like HR directors, professional athletes, mental health professionals, and scientists. The mental health apps market is growing so fast, and in the next 10 years it will reach $25 billion. Our business model is a B2B2C. Its annual packages are billed every 6 and 12 months based on the number of enterprise employees. And our goal for this year: attract 10 paid enterprise customers, and it will give us $1.6 million in revenue. We can attract first 50 corporate clients with $0 marketing budget.

Why?

Because we have 7 great board advisors and behind them around 50 big American and international companies. Some of the competitors are working like YouTube. They provided some pre-recorded video or audio content with any interaction with the user. Some of them AI chatbots. Which allows user to play only from client role and see on their situation only as a client. Got It Live allows user to see on the situation from client role, from coach role for them, for myself, and for coach role for another people. That's way user have a chance to see on their, on themselves and their situation from different perspective. Our dream team consists of 6 developers, 5 AI team members, designers, quality assurance engineers, and different— and other people. As I said, we have 7 great board advisors, experts from different spaces like investments, business development, psychiatry, clinical research, etc., etc. Thank you for your attention. I would love to answer your questions.

Armin, thank you so much for joining us. There's a few questions here in the audience. We can go ahead and get started. With the surge of AI-powered employee mental health apps being rolled out, what do you— what is your big differentiation?

Uh, yeah, hi friends. First of all, sorry, uh, camera is not working. Uh, our first differentiation Yeah, among the competitors, or—

Yeah, exactly. How, like, how do you differentiate yourself when employers are looking at a variety of different mental health apps?

Yeah, sure. Uh, first of all, a majority of these guys, including unicorns, uh, are working like YouTube. They try to provide you, uh, and employees some pre-recorded video or audio content without any interaction, or, or almost any interaction with the user and customization, with low customization content. Another one, uh, actually is not, uh, mental health apps. They are, uh, like marketplaces. They connecting the user with the professionals. So, and, uh, they, um, give the user some fish, like some ready-made solution some fish road, and we don't give the user some ready-made solution. We allow the user to act as their own mental coach.

I got it. And then that's the— a follow-up question to that is, um, do you have data on where it helps the most? Like, uh, for example, toxic workplace, unhappiness, unhappiness with pay, etc.? And are there, are there key issues that you see across different organizations?

We are working like with the 4 corporate pilots, and before, before that, them worked with our competitors, some of our, and they didn't like because the engagement of these tools was around 12%, right? Right now we have engagement around 20%. Uh, why? I think because we give the user some more space for their, um, acting as their own mental coach, and, and more space for vision of their situation, an opportunity to solve, to find their own solutions on their own.

Along those lines, maybe could you share some case studies of how users have used the app, and then what is their feedback been? Maybe some anecdotes.

Um, yeah, for example, for example, like a lot of salespeople, like a Player's Health, it's our first— it's our second pilot. They sell insurance for the athletes, and there is a lot of of salespeople who feel anxiety and depression and burnout. And the feedback which we get, it's very difficult to— among the huge, among the tons of mental health content in Account Headspace and another tools and they try to— they are looking for some environment to find their own solutions. So like salespeople feel that all the answers are in their head, but they didn't have a tool to do this, you know, to find this, to talk with themselves professionally. And, uh, we try to become this.

So, so it sounds like a lot of that, like, self-talk and, and, um, internal dialogue is what helps. And, and you actually, you originally started with professional athletes, um, where that's a huge component of, of, you know, being a, being a champion, right? It's that inner dialogue that's important. Um, how have you seen that translate to the business world with, like, individual employees and maybe share more about like sort of like the athlete mindset and, and the employee mindset.

Sure.

What, um, I recognized working with more than 2,000 athletes from 15 countries, uh, during the 6 years in, in Tennis Academy, several things. First, um, uh, that high performers in sports and in business are the same. They need to achieve big goals under regular stress, constant stress. The second, the mental work should be the same systematic and continuous like a physical and technical work. All the same in business, the mental work should be the same systematic and continuous like developing the hard skills on the position. So I think high performers in sports and in business very similar. And we just, we just translated. We tested 80 mental techniques with more than 1,000 athletes into behavioral therapy, and internal dialogue was one of the most demanded mental techniques from 80 tested. Why we try to build like an integrated model which consists from internal dialogue, dialogue with the AI mental coach, and collective mind client, which is the real people, because we recognize based on the feedback that it's not so easy to talk to oneself for people, for regular people. That's— it's not so easy to talk from client and coach role at the beginning. That's why, uh, we implemented right now AI mental coach, and you have a chance to talk to AI coach from client. And then then, uh, you have a chance to talk to client and cultural both, you know.

Thank you, Armen. Uh, we're gonna go ahead and start the networking session here momentarily, so we'll appreciate you joining us and we'll see you over there. For everyone in the audience, I'd like to thank first our speaker Jillian and all the founders who pitched today. Also, thanks to the, the members for asking great questions and participating. This is recorded. We are going to send out the videos via email shortly, so you have a recording of this event. Here's how the networking piece of the session is going to work. In a moment, we're going to end this broadcast, and you're going to end up in a room with a bunch of different tables that you can join. The networking room will stay open for as long as people want to connect, so there's no time limit. Audience members can click one of the tables to join the video chat and the tables are broken up by topics and presenting companies. The individual founders can also create their own tables if you'd like. So if there's a topic you don't see there that you want to chat with others about, feel free to create your own table. And you can also— there's a feature called speed networking that allows you to randomly match one-on-one with someone from the audience. So thank you once again. This has been a great event. It's been a pleasure being your host. Um, and we'll see everyone at the tables here momentarily. Take care, everyone.