Watch Founders Pitch to Investors - Startup Ideation Bootcamp Pitch Showcase

Hey everybody, welcome to this Founder Institute webinar. My name is Jonathan Gritchen, co-founder and CEO of the Founder Institute. We had over 300 people register for the event today, so thank you for joining us. We are expecting a very international audience. This is a live event, so if you are joining in, let us know where you're joining in from. I already see here Praveena from Issaquah, Washington, and I know we have some presenters today as well from all over the world, so it's always great great to, to see an international audience here, uh, at this event. So let me, uh, give you guys a little bit of a rundown of, of what we're doing today. So, um, a couple of months ago, the Founder Institute, we launched something called the Startup Ideation Bootcamp. And the idea was that, you know, we see a lot of people that are applying to our accelerator programs really struggle at that idea stage. And the biggest misconception, I think, um, for idea stage entrepreneurs— and we've been working with idea stage entrepreneurs now since 2009 across 200 countries— um, the biggest misconception that I see is that they sort of have this idea in their head that great startup ideas sort of come from this light bulb moment, right? It's like this one proverbial light bulb just lights up one day and now you have this perfect idea, and now it's time to go conquer the world with perfect idea, right? But in reality, uh, great startup ideas aren't kind of born, right? What we say is that great startup ideas are built, right? Yes, there may be some initial light bulb, but then it's time to just get out there, start getting feedback, and building that idea over time. Um, all value in a startup idea, right? And people will say, oh, startup ideas have no value, right? And there's a lot of truth to that because startup ideas only become valuable valuable, um, when, uh, the founder then takes that idea and evolves it and then executes, executes it over time in response to market and customer feedback, right? And we see especially a lot of first-time entrepreneurs have a lot of trouble going out there, kind of breaking through that analysis paralysis, so to speak, to really start getting out there, getting feedback on their idea, and starting to build it. Over time. So the Startup Ideation Bootcamp was a program that we put together. The next one will now be coming up in a couple of months. So if you're interested, you could see more about this at bootcampfi.co/bootcamp/ideation. But we had over 100 people. I think it was about 120 or so, 110, 120 people were in the first ideation bootcamp. And all of these participants went through for 2 months working on their projects, getting feedback from customers, getting feedback from a large panel of mentors. We had over 30 mentors that were supporting them and giving them feedback throughout this process as well. And, you know, part of our job in the Ideation Bootcamp was to push these aspiring entrepreneurs as well, right? So we were pushing them every single week with pretty aggressive growth sprints to continue building out their idea and getting feedback. And who you're going to see today are the ones that, you know, when we push them they responded, right? They're the ones that really came through and stood out. So we have 7 companies today. They're going to be presenting to a panel of judges who I'll bring on here in just one moment. But these 7 companies, you know, have gone through the process, they validated, they've improved their ideas, and now they're going to kind of pitch what they've come up with. We're going to choose a winner today based off the judges' ratings. And also, in case there's a tiebreaker, which is somewhat likely because there's 7 people here, we will then go to an audience vote. So, be $500 cash prize to the winner. And just for everybody that participates in the ideation bootcamp, they're able to take the fee that they paid for the bootcamp and apply it to an FI Core program. So, with that being said, I'd love to bring on our esteemed our esteemed judging panel. We have two VCs here, both from the United States. Maybe I will start with Tahirah. Tahirah, it's great. Thank you for joining us. Tell us a little bit, Tahirah, about, about Resilience VC.

Thank you, Jonathan. It's great to be here, and I'm really looking forward to hearing all of the founders pitch. My name is Tahira Dasani. I am the co-founder and general partner at a fund called Resilience VC. We are a fintech-focused fund here in the US. We invest at the seed stage, typically writing million-dollar checks into companies that have a product live in market and help those companies go from proof of concept to true product market fit. We're really focused on fintech models that build financial resilience. The majority of folks in this country, over 70% of Americans, are not financially healthy. People lack access to the financial products, tools that they need to live stable, healthy financial lives. And so we're really focused on that massive market opportunity, on the technologies that help people build net income, build assets, reduce risks to create more stable financial lives for consumers. And because we believe that the companies that help those customers do that will not just drive more financial resilience, but will drive returns.

Yeah. No, it's a great, it's a great mission. We have a number of startups in the space as well. One of them in New York, Asusu, that you may know in the space, you know, definitely Yeah, there's a lot of ways, guys, to create impact and profit, right? They are not diametrically opposed, even though, you know, most people tend to think that. So, Tahirah, it's great to have you. And let's bring on our next judge, Olivia O'Sullivan, coming from New York. Hey, Olivia.

Hello.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, tell us a little bit about Forum Ventures.

Happy to. So I'm Olivia. I'm one of the partners at Forum Ventures. We are an early stage firm really focused on helping to make the zero to one journey more accessible and successful for founders. So I'm very excited for this ideation session as it fits kind of very squarely in one of the areas we focus on. So we invest in B2B technology broadly. I would say our team spends probably most of our time across applied AI, vertical SaaS, fintech, supply chain and logistics, modern manufacturing, as sort of the big spaces where we're spending a lot of time. And we have 3 different ways that we work with founders. On the very earliest side, we actually run a studio where we're concept-led studio. We do a bunch of ideation internally, and then we go go out and find incredible founders to help co-build companies with us. So we launch 6 AI-native companies every year through that. We invest $250K on the balance sheet. We also run a pre-seed accelerator program. We write about 70 checks a year through that program. We're generally looking for folks who are post-product, but oftentimes pre-revenue or have some early signs of customer traction, writing checks between $50K and $200K, and then working very closely alongside those companies on go-to-market and sales. And then we have a more traditional pre-seed, seed fund, slightly larger checks, looking for slightly more mature businesses, a couple hundred K in ARR. But that's a little bit about us. So we love working with founders in this zero to one stage. And our team is made up of former founders and operators. So really like to get into the trenches and sit on the same side of the table as founders. So really looking forward to the pitches today.

Awesome. Yeah. And it seems like we're speaking your language here too. You guys also running a a studio, which is a really, really, probably the fastest growing trend, right, that we're seeing in this space. Not necessarily venture funds running studios, although that's happening, but just the number of studios that are launching kind of, whereas before you used to see a lot of accelerators launch, now it's a lot more studios. Definitely. But yeah, so it's interesting to see that you guys are doing that while also doing the accelerator and the traditional funding and kind of working it all together is a super interesting approach. Um, okay, well, with that said, guys, let me just give a quick background on how we're going to do the ratings today. Okay, and this is something that we've done in Founder Institute for a long time, and the reason why we did this was, um, you know, we used to have a 1 to 5 rating scale, but we allowed 3s. And when we did that, guess what? It was something like 70 to 80% of the ratings were 3s. Right? And unfortunately for founders, that doesn't give them really good information. And for mentors, a lot of times, you know, it's like, hey, these founders, they're following their dream and, you know, I don't want to be nice or I want to be nice. I don't want to be mean kind of thing. So it just wasn't, it wasn't super helpful for anybody. Right? So now just removing that 3 means that it has to be inherently negative or positive feedback. And at least from what we've seen, A lot of people will say, hey, you know, I would give you a 3, but I can't. So I'm going to give you a 2, right? And then actually in making that decision of inherently positive or negative, that's where a lot of the good feedback comes from, right? Because it's like, what was the tipping point? So that's the same kind of rating that we're going to do here. So we're going to have you guys give a rating to each of these pitches. And, you know, to just give a general guideline, Right? 1 would be not a viable idea. 2, you know, has the potential, needs some work. 4, it's promising, right? You're on the right path, need some refinement. And then 5 would be, okay, you're definitely, I think, in my opinion, on the right path. You know, continue to move forward, continue to validate. But I will just give the last caveat here. You know, as I was describing the Startup Ideation Bootcamp, I would consider these founders would be sort of a pre-accelerator. Type of founder, right? Um, been working on the idea, validating it. So maybe, and in a lot of cases maybe not, uh, you know, within your thesis at the moment, right? But, but could be, uh, in, in due time. So, okay, with that, guys, let's get to the pitches. So I'm going to take my, uh, presentation off the screen here, and we have an amazing lineup of pitches. We're going to go through 7 pitches today. We have people coming from Dublin, Ireland, the Philippines, the United States, France, and the UAE. So also a really nice mix of founders presenting. All right, so the first founder that's going to present today is Anna from Dublin, Ireland. So let's start the pitch for Anna, and then Olivia and Tahira will come on afterwards to get your ratings and and do a little bit of feedback from there. Hi, I'm Anna.

After 20 years in hospitality industry, I've seen one problem everywhere: people who make your stay unforgettable often go home feeling invisible. And you might think, but I always tip well for good service. Well, tips aren't the same as recognition. The problem is clear: frontline hospitality workers lack a simple tool for on-the-spot personal recognition from guests for the service they provide. Tips are not the same as sincere appreciation, and guests rarely take the time to write reviews, and when they do, they praise businesses, not individuals. All existing review platforms recognize companies, But no one is building a recognition system for the individual. The result? Staff motivation drops, turnover rises, service suffers, so does the business. That's why my solution is ThankYou. It's a simple mobile app where guests can scan a staff member's QR code and send instant recognition in under 10 seconds. A like, an emoji, or short thank you note become permanent part of that staff member's digital portfolio. The feedback belongs to the individual forever. It can't be lost, erased, or forgotten. In the past months, I've interviewed 10 frontline staff and 2 hotel managers from 6 different nationalities, and every single one confirmed the same: recognition motivates more than money. One hotel and one wine bar are ready to test the app. My aim is to to pilot ThankU by the end of Q4 with 3 businesses here in Ireland. ThankU business model is simple. Businesses are our primary revenue driver. Staff get the app free, but they can upgrade to premium to unlock career tools.

Why me?

I've lived the problem for over 20 years, from family-run businesses to luxury 5-star properties across Europe and the USA. I know the industry inside out, I've managed teams, and I have the network to bring Tinku to the hands of the people who need it the most. Today, I'm raising €150,000 in pre-seed funding. This will allow me to build the MVP, run pilots, and scale to the first 50 to 70 paying businesses, representing over €75,000 in recurring revenue in year 1. As I mentioned before, Hospitality employs 320 million people worldwide, but this problem isn't just hospitality. It exists in every service industry: retail, airline, healthcare, education. I'm starting in hospitality, but the potential is global. With this simple app, I want appreciation to become visible, personal, and everlasting, creating a social movement that spreads with every thank you. Because I truly believe a thank you should be as easy to give as it is powerful to receive. Thank you.

All right, great start, Anna. So it's, yeah, there's definitely a need for this product. I think it's a super interesting approach, right? I'd love to start, maybe Olivia, I'll start with you. And maybe guys, maybe we'll hold off on giving the rating until after. We do the question and feedback, right? And then we'll finish off with the rating. So Olivia, was there any feedback or questions that you had?

I'll start with one point of feedback. I think at the end you talked about your own sort of personal background, having spent decades in the hospitality industry. And I always like to tell founders to lead with their strengths when they're pitching. I think oftentimes we have this templated format of a pitch needs to start with the problem and then we move into the solution and then we go into the market or the business model. But I think you have to give people a reason to pay attention and lean in. And that might mean if you're later along, you have a ton of traction or you have an amazing team or you have this unique earned insight. And so I think starting with your own personal experience can help build that strength, have investors or people that you're speaking with lean in and also create that aha moment for people of saying, oh, Ana has this unique earned insight because she has spent her career in this space and understands the nuance. So that's my one point of feedback. The one question that I had on the business model side, you mentioned that businesses will be, you know, the primary revenue source. And it seemed like your pricing scale within that was like $49, maybe to $79, if I'm remembering correctly, a month. Can you help me understand a little bit more clearly in terms of how you're monetizing? Is like, if I'm a hotel GM and I decide to move forward with this product, am I paying a flat SaaS fee every month? Or what does that actually look like? Or what have you kind of learned from your discovery?

Well, I thank you for, for first of all for the question. What I've learned from my discovery is that hotel managers are looking for easy tools and they are not willing to spend lots of money on them. So having this in my mind, I was thinking that all the hospitality businesses can be scaled depending on the size. Some smaller family-running restaurants or hotels usually don't employ more than 10 people, so obviously for them there will be a lower, a lower monthly fee. And then moving to the bigger scale hotels, restaurants, bars, etc., depending on the number of the staff, obviously the fee will reach up to 99 Europe, because now I'm talking about Europe. And this is, this is my main idea, that managers, that hospitality managers actually see this problem very well, but they don't have tools. They don't know what to do because they can't invest every time between €3,000 to €5,000 when they're losing a member of staff. So the retention of the staff, that's a huge problem. But unfortunately, as you know, the hospitality industry across all the other industries, that's the lower, uh, the industry with lower, lower, lowest salaries. It's all, all around the world, which means that this is investments are just completely not appropriate in this case.

Thanks for the clarification, I appreciate that.

Okay, great. Tahira?

First of all, thank you, Anna, great presentation. A couple of quick points of feedback on my side. One, echo Olivia's point around moving your experience and credibility up front, I think, and maybe building on that a little bit, I think you talk about your experience in the industry giving you insight into this challenge and helping you see the market opportunity. I would also think about how you can frame your experience as a driver of success in terms of being able to acquire customers, shorten the sales cycle, have better connections into buyers in the industry. Because so much of the challenge with a business like this is the go-to-market piece, right? Is getting the restaurants, the bars, the hotels, getting in front of the right people and the decision makers there, and then closing that sales cycle. Because I think you're pricing the product affordably, which is important for this segment because it is a low margin industry. Um, but given the relatively low price point of the product, you need to make sure that your customer acquisition costs stay low and that you're able to run really tight sales cycles and close customers quickly. So positioning your experience not just in terms of your ability to identify this challenge and opportunity in the market, but in terms of your ability to sell, I think will be really important.

Thank you. Thank you, Tahirah. Thank you. That's very Very useful.

And then the other thing I would say is, and this may just be a technical thing, but your volume right now is much louder, and I think you're much clearer now than when you were pitching. And so just make sure that when you are pitching and when you're telling your story, you're coming across as really confident, that you're projecting effectively. I found it a little bit hard to hear you during the pitch.

Thank you, thank you. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you so much.

Okay, yeah, and one, one piece of feedback that I would give too, and this is similar to what Tahir was saying, you know, I think it's the go-to-market here. There's an interesting dynamic because you can leverage the actual workers to help push the products to the, to the, the, you know, whether it's the hotels or whatever, right? Because ultimately it benefits the workers. So I think that's where, because I have seen a lot of like review things that, you know, trying to create quick reviews and stuff with restaurants, they always run into that customer acquisition problem. But this, you know, you could have a really unique kind of bottom-up growth strategy here, you know, through the, um, through all the workers, right? So I would, um, you know, definitely I think that's, that's something it would be good to, good to point out and highlight. So, okay, well, thank you, Ana. Why don't we, you know, quickly, maybe Tahira, I'll start with you this time. Do you want to give a rating, 1 to 5, no 3s allowed?

Yeah, absolutely. Ana, you know, I think you've really identified a challenge in the market and one that needs to be solved in terms of creating better feedback loops for these workers. It is still really early. But I think you've chanced on something promising where your experience gives you both the credibility and the ability to ultimately sell a product like this. So I'm going to give you a 4.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Tahir.

Thank you, Olivia.

Amazing. Echo Tahir's sentiment on you being— having very strong founder market fit. And I think identifying a problem that deserves to be solved. I think some of the risks that I see, one is, uh, the go-to-market. That would be something as an investor I'm thinking a lot about. You also have a very horizontal approach right now. You know, you're not starting with, or at least not as you articulated today, one specific segment. So I think that's sort of one concern that I have. I think the second piece, and you echoed this in some of your feedback, is I don't really have conviction in the actual willingness to pay here. And I don't think that you received necessarily that feedback from the discovery. It sounds like this is a problem I wanna solve, but I don't necessarily have that much budget to be able to solve it. And so I'm thinking about, I think that this could provide real value for your customers and they will probably pay something. I don't know if I see this having the potential to grow into a venture-scale outcome, um, based on kind of the revenue potential that I would see here. And I think my third risk is around the tech side. I think one of the questions I would be asking is, you know, why can't, uh, any one of these providers put a QR code that links to some type of form that can still provide this type of feedback in a, in a low-fidelity way, um, versus going through some type of as, you know, tech provider, I'd want to see like some additional sort of stickiness maybe in that wedge and what that looks like. So, um, from my end, I'm going to give this a 2 for those reasons.

Okay, okay, Oliver, thank you so much.

Um, and just for me, I'll keep it quick and we'll move on to the next pitch here, but yeah, I'm, I'm giving it a 4. I think it was just really clear what the problem was, what you're solving. Definitely there are some hurdles to that need to be overcome here. But I do think it's a unique approach. And if you could crack that kind of bottom-up growth from the workers, that could, that could lead to, you know, a decent unit economics in terms of getting the product out there.

Right.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. That's very, very handy. And I'm very happy that I have this opportunity to share my ideas with you. Thank you so much.

Great, thanks. Okay, so let's move on to the next pitch. Next up, we will have, uh, Mary or Marie, uh, coming from the Philippines, all the way from the Philippines. Uh, so welcome, Mary, um, and let's start that pitch, and then we'll come back on screen here in a moment.

Hi, my name is Grace Perazo, and my startup, The Bailiwick Academy, is developing a subscription app that helps home-based baking business owners bake smarter and grow faster with our AI-powered voice-enabled assistant that simplifies every step of their business. I believe that home-based baking business owners hesitate to grow because they feel overwhelmed by the demands of running their business. On average, they spend more than 15 hours weekly on manual tasks like costing, pricing, and tracking orders, which limits productivity and growth. To make matters worse, their systems are scattered. Recipes, orders, and marketing are spread across notebooks, spreadsheets, chats, and apps, causing frequent switching, and this wastes up to 40% of their productive time. As a result, 68% of entrepreneurs spend most of their time working in the business rather than planning and scaling it. That's why we're building an AI-powered voice-enabled assistant app designed specifically for home-based baking business owners. This smart assistant acts like a digital sous chef, helping them learn, develop, and organize recipes, manage orders, track costing and inventory, plan schedules, and even automate marketing, saving them time, boost sales, and grow their businesses faster. We already have a strong foundation with 20,000 email subscribers. 6,000 of them are paying users and 3,500 on repeat, and 40% are already selling. We interviewed 10 of our active Baker Entrepreneur students and validated the problem. Many of them feel overwhelmed because they're doing everything manually, making them quit before they even start growing. Together with my co-founder Nico, we're the right team to build this business. With over 2 decades of experience in tech and customer service in the BPO industry and years of growing the Bailiwick Academy, we've successfully built, marketed, and scaled online solutions that have helped thousands start and grow their business. With Nico's analytics skills Carlos and years in working on operations efficiency and my experience in customer-focused solutions, we deeply understand how technology and great user experience drive success. As a next step, we're seeking mission-aligned investors to help us raise $50,000 to launch our Agentec AI assistant by the first quarter of 2026.

All right, thank you. Whoa, that— my camera started here very zoomed in. Thank you so much, Marie. So maybe we'll start with Olivia. Olivia, any questions for Marie?

One question I did have for you guys on the customer validation side, how did you go out about finding some of these home bakers? Were these people that you were kind of targeting or maybe doing some like paid ads? What it— I was very impressed by kind of the number of people that you were able to talk to during this validation. So curious to understand how you ended up getting in front of these folks.

And we're part of different baking groups and also some of them are our students already. We also do paid ads.

So that's how we acquire our customers.

Awesome. Okay, Tahira.

Is it, is it Maria or Grace? Sorry, I—

you can just call me Grace.

Grace, okay. Grace, thank you for your presentation. One thing that I'm curious about is the size of the market opportunity. You know, it is a very specific customer segment. And, um, you know, for something to reach venture scale, investors are typically looking for large addressable markets, which often means that either you are building a product for a market that's large on its own, or you're building a product where you're starting with a very specific customer set, but the product has applicability to other segments with similar characteristics. And so can you talk a little bit about the size of the market opportunity and how you think about that?

We're going to start— I'm planning to start it here locally in the Philippines. So in the Philippines, there are about 150,000 registered home-based bakers here in the Philippines. And then if we're going to go global, then in the US alone, there's already 10 million registered home-based baking businesses.

Wow. Interesting. Yeah, that was— it's— I was thinking along the same lines. That was my question, was, you know, when it's a market like this that is niche, right? And I know we instructed you guys to, to, to look at a niche market, right? But it's— there is always a little bit of education to just say like, hey, how big is this market even in this region, right, where you're starting? And then what is the potential in other places? Because that number blows me away. 10 million US-based home baking businesses. I'm like, wow, I never— I would never think that, right? Um, so, so yeah, at least that would be my my piece of feedback there. Okay, um, why don't we go with the, the ratings? Um, I can, I can start first this time. I'm gonna give this one a 2. I think it was a little—

it—

I would say, um, on the pitch you want to slow down a little bit because there was a lot of information in there, especially in the beginning. Um, you know, that it was, it was, uh, Part of the time I was trying to figure out, oh, what did that mean? What did that mean? Um, so I would just, you know, just slow down and try not to fit so much in, um, and just try to make sure that people understand what it is. And then the second thing would be, you know, just kind of on the, on the market size and things like that to just make sure. Um, you know, that to me felt like something that was definitely needed to be, to be addressed because now that you tell us, I'm like, oh wow, that's That's impressive, right? So I would definitely include that because I think that will be something that a lot of people will just be surprised by, right? So I might even like lead with that. Like, you know, it's like the home baking business is a really growing large business that is somewhat untapped.

Thank you for the feedback.

Maybe I'll go to Tahira.

Thanks, Jonathan. Uh, Grace, you know, nice job with the presentation. We'll echo what Jonathan said around, um, it being unclear from the pitch what— how big the market opportunity is. So it would certainly, uh, encourage you to lead with that, but also break that down a little bit, because when I hear that number, especially the U.S. number, it feels surprisingly large and almost to the point where I'm not sure I fully believe that number just being here in this market. And so understanding kind of the segmentation within that, right? Who is a home baker where they're just doing it for friends and family where they don't necessarily need an agentic AI tool versus people who are looking to commercialize and scale. And so some segmentation on the market, I think, would also be helpful there. But I, I'm going to agree with Jonathan and also give this a 2. I do think you've identified a challenge facing a specific demographic, but I really would need both more on the market size and more on the product side to really get excited about it.

All right.

Okay, Olivia.

Thanks for the pitch, Grace. Um, I think my biggest point of feedback echoes John and Tahira around the market size. I think I love when founders are starting with a very specific wedge or segment. I think it's very hard to, you know, do everything all at once or go horizontal. So I think starting with this specific niche and wedge problem that you're solving for makes sense. But having that articulation of how does this grow more on the market size, what does this actually look like? Maybe you're starting with people who are running baking businesses, but you actually see a lot of applications downstream for folks who are just cooking recreationally and, you know, need someone to help support. I think from the validation side though, it seems like you've had a lot of strong feedback from the bakers that you interviewed. I noticed you had over 50% kind of come back multiple times over the month, which I think is very indicative that you are onto something interesting. I'm going to give this for that reason a 4. I think that if you're able to build that sort of rabid engaged fan base and users with a very small group of people, there is a lot of opportunity to expand. And I have passed on businesses in the past that I thought, oh man, this is tiny. Like who's going to use a recipe tool or like all these home chefs. And I have seen some of these explode just because of people's obsession with some of these things. So I'm very interested in kind of fandom niche hobbies and this kind of cultural obsession. And it seems like you're onto something. I think the refinement I would be looking for is how this grows from a venture scale standpoint. But I think that you're onto a, into a smart problem.

Thank you so much.

All right, thank you, Grace. I know it's probably late there, so thanks for joining.

Thanks, everyone.

All right, so next up we have Matt, uh, who will be joining from a little bit closer to us here. Uh, he'll be joining from Tampa, uh, Matt Spaulding. So, um, let's get started with the pitch, Matt.

Hi, my name is Matt Spaulding and my startup Beesla is developing a sourcing and screening tool that helps recruiting teams eliminate resume spam by blocking AI-generated resumes at the source. Recruiting teams have a resume spam problem. There's software available for job seekers that'll take their resume and custom tailor it to a job description, stuffing in keywords with promises of beating the ATS. It could do this automatically for 1,000 jobs per day, answering any knockout questions that get in the way. While this sounds like great news for job seekers, if you happen to be a recruiter on the other end of this, this is a nightmare. The result is wasted hours and costly misfires, and this problem is getting much worse. Gartner predicts that by 2028, a quarter of all candidates will be fake. Beesla solves this by blocking AI-generated resumes at the source. What differentiates Beesla from other solutions is its unique system design. Beesla is specifically designed to prevent candidates from altering their resume during the application process. This means recruiters can be confident that their candidates are an actual fit and not just trying to game the system. The best part about it is Beesla integrates at the top of the funnel so recruiting teams can have better applicants without having to change their core workflow. I'm seeing validation on both sides of this market. On the seeker side, beesla.com has generated a million impressions on Google search, leading to 18,000 organic clicks just over the past 3 months since launch. On the recruiter side, I've interviewed over 20 recruiters and they're all validating that resume spam is a problem. And I got 5 of them interested in joining the beta launch coming this October. That's me, Matt Spaulding. I'm the founder and CEO. I come with 16 years of software development experience and a master's degree in computer engineering. I specialize in SEO, which is driving the traffic on the job seeker side, and as I develop the recruiter side, I'm confident that I can organically draw in recruiters in the same fashion. This fall, I'm joining the Founder Institute Core Program under the Traction Track, where I'll be developing a scalable growth engine. Beazle is raising $500,000 to reach $1 million ARR. With this money, we're gonna onboard 50 recruiting teams and integrate into popular ATS like Greenhouse, Lever, and Workday. We're gonna bring on a quarter million job seekers with 1 million monthly site visits. So who's ready to join the hive and tell the resume bots to buzz off?

All right, awesome, Matt. That was one thing I'll point out there because, you know, we're seeing a bunch of the ask slide here, right, on people raising funding. I thought that was definitely the best ask slide because you actually went into detail on the business metrics that you aim to achieve from the money, right? I think that's something— it's a very common mistake where people are saying like, okay, you're telling me how much gas you need, but where are you going to get with that gas, right? Like, what metrics will you achieve in this, you know, to kind of either get sustainability or to get to that next round of funding? So I thought you did a really good job on that, Matt. Um, but, uh, we'll start with, uh, Tahirah here. What did you think, and, and do you have any questions?

Yeah, great job, Matt. Appreciated the presentation and certainly think you've hit on a challenge. I'm running a recruiting process right now and the amount of AI-generated resumes that I'm seeing, you know, makes it challenging. And certainly there's a mismatch often between the resumes and the candidate once you speak to them. So that certainly is a pain point and one that I can only imagine will continue to grow. Um, I think you did a great job talking about how your experience, especially on the SEO side, can help bring job seekers onto the platform. I would have liked to hear a little bit more as to how you'll acquire recruiters, HR teams, etc. Um, you know, willingness to pay— there is also a real question for me because I think that's where it's probably easiest to monetize. Um, but, uh, you know, HR teams tend to be cost centers, don't have huge budgets, are limited there. And, you know, you mentioned that you're confident in your ability to reach them organically, but I would love to hear a little bit more as to your plan for acquiring on the recruiter side.

Uh, yes, so the Money that I'm raising is going to go towards building a go-to-market team. So this means marketing, sales, um, and this team will be responsible for bringing on recruiters. And the idea is to bring 50 recruiting teams on next year. So that means they're responsible for bringing on one per week. And I believe that, um, we're gonna have to have a dedicated team to bring in recruiting teams on.

Okay, Olivia, I echo some of the sentiment of Tahira, but first off, I thought you exuded a lot of confidence in your pitch, which I think is really important. I think pitching can feel really unnatural and kind of like icky sometimes to people, but I think it's great if we can build, kind of bring forward our like most confident self, even if that's not generally how we present ourselves in our day-to-day life because we're hoping to build confidence with investors or potential customers or whoever it is in both ourselves and our business. So I thought you really exuded that in your pitch and it was very easy to follow. So great work there. Similar to Tahira, selling into, I think, HR and recruiting teams is really challenging. There's a lot of kind of point solutions that exist across their stack. As she mentioned, small budgets, long sales cycles generally. I think it's very promising to see that you had sort of 5 people confirmed for the beta launch. One question that I had as you've done some of that initial discovery was, what would those people need to see for their kind of beta pilot to be successful? Like, do you have a sense? Is it You know, it's just reducing the volume of AI applications that they're getting. Is it like speeding up the hiring process? Is there some type of like initial ROI that if like, hey, if you can do this for us, like this would be a huge home run win?

Yes. So actually one of the people coming on, they are a technology recruiter company.

There's—

it's a small team. They're just 5 of them. So one job that they were tasked to hire for, they put out a job description for 2 days, it received 1,800 applications, he had to lock everyone in the office. And they spent 2 days, the entire team of 5, 2 days going through all of these applications. And at the end of it, they had only 3 qualified candidates. So if you can If we can take how much time and money was wasted on what they're currently doing and just, you know, show them the 3 at the end immediately, then that would prove the value that they're seeking.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think getting clear kind of for those initial customers what success looks like is really important kind of ahead of going into these pilots and then really understanding You know, what does budget look like? What is willingness to pay? You know, how, what is their budget cycles? What, what, what can you kind of expect on that side? I think it's notoriously hard and challenging to sell in here. I think there are a lot of tailwinds though, given, um, the shifts in how people are using technology to be able to apply for jobs and kind of the candidate spamming side. I also think we're seeing a lot of consolidation internally on recruiting teams, and so like they are forced to do more with less and looking for tools that can kind of augment what they're doing. I think my only other kind of point of feedback that wasn't super clear in the conversation, in your pitch is this feels like a very crowded space to me. I see stuff popping up all the time that's, you know, we'll have you do AI interviewing so that we can only send you the most qualified candidates or like, hey, we're gonna prevent kind of this more spam coming into the application process. So I wanted to have a better understanding of, you know, how you guys see yourself differentiating. And then I didn't really actually understand the mechanics necessarily of how this was going to work. You mentioned, you know, you've got the recruiter side and the candidate side. I was like, oh, is this gonna exist as like a marketplace and you're actually gonna be taking applications? Or is this something that, you know, embeds directly into like an Ashby or a Greenhouse? So that's something maybe in the future just to kind of, uh, clarify and maybe if that's not unsure yet exactly how that's going to work, that's totally fine. But that was kind of my last point of feedback that I was wondering after the pitch ended.

All right. Yeah, the idea is to integrate into an ATS like, like Greenhouse, and then that would be— that would open up the channel into enterprise. So it could just be an add-on purchase when they're already purchasing their ATS. That's the idea.

Okay. All right, well, thank you, Matt. Um, I'll go, I'll go first here maybe. So, Matt, I'm going to give this a 2. I think the pitch, I think you're on the right track, okay? Um, but I do think, yeah, just leaving out some, some, a couple of things that are— I like to call them like the gorillas in the room, right? Or the elephants in the room, I guess, is a better, better thing, right? It's like, it's, it's a notoriously hard, um, segment to sell into. And then I think the other one too would just be like defensibility ability, right? Like what's the, what's the keep an Indeed or somebody from, from launching something like this, um, you know, in the short term. Uh, so maybe, uh, Olivia, I'll go to you next.

Um, I'm also going to give a 2, and I think in part this is like, this is one of, I think, the hardest segments, uh, to build in from a competitive standpoint, sales as well. And I think I see a ton of inherent value for the customers and certainly also the folks who are applying. But I feel like building— my piece of feedback to you is like, if you are wanting to build a venture-scale business in like sales, marketing, recruiting, HR, that is a crowded and saturated space, the bar that investors will be looking for to raise institutional capital from a traction standpoint is going to be much higher. So they will look for like much more proven out. And so I think that there's certainly a problem here. I think there's just a lot of noise in this space. And so there has to be something really unique and different to be able to kind of stand out and cut through that noise. But wishing you the best of luck with these pilots coming up.

Thank you. Okay.

Tahira.

Matt, I very much echo the points made by Olivia and Jonathan, but I am going to give you a because I do think that the pain point that you are solving for is incredibly acute and is going to grow. And so, you know, I think you being laser-focused on solving that and the fact that you've had some traction already with folks saying they're willing to sign up for the beta, is promising. I do think that you have to directly address in your pitch, um, your go-to-market strategy for recruiters. And to Jonathan's point, the competitive landscape, how you create a moat, how your product would be differentiated from others in the market, because this is such an acute pain point that others are also going to try and solve it. But I think that The market opportunity is real. I think that the initial traction that you've had in your first few months is promising. And so I'm excited to see where it goes.

All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Matt. So now we will move on to the next pitch. Next up, we will have Patricia. Joining in from France. So welcome, Patricia, and, and we'll be back on here shortly to give ratings and, and ask questions.

Hi, my name is Patricia, and my startup, Co-Feel Pulse, is developing a wearable device to help couples in committed relationships achieve emotional alignment through real Time Biometric Sensing, that signals when and how partners should connect. I believe that couples in committed relationships struggle with emotional alignment. They want to support each other but don't know when or how to step in when their partner is overwhelmed or shutting down. Timing can make or break a moment of connection, but we're terrible at reading emotional signs until it's too late. The cost is real. Relationships end not from lack of love, but from repeated emotional misses. And current communication happens after damage is done, not when prevention is possible. So to solve this problem, we are building Cofield Pulse, a discreet wearable system that uses biometric sensing to detect emotional states and provides real-time guidance to partners through simple traffic light system. Green means connect, yellow means give space, red means immediate support needed. So far, we have validated this problem by interviewing and surveying 25 couples and individuals about emotional timing in relationships. And through this work, we learned that around 95% experience emotional mistiming weekly, calling it their biggest relationship challenge. These couples, they're already spending money on apps, relationship apps, relationship books, couples therapy, counseling, but these require an overwhelmed person to ask for help when they are least able to. One woman desperately told me she wanted an emotional translation system. That phrase really stuck with me and confirmed that we're solving a real painful problem. So here we are, Thomas and Patrizia, and we believe that we are the right team to build this business because we are a couple who has lived this problem for 25 years, 15 out of them in a marriage. Myself, Patrizia, I bring wellness retail and business expertise, while Thomas contributes it project management skills. And we are not just building a product, We are solving our own relationship challenge and have the technical and business expertise to scale the solution to millions of other couples. So as a next step, we are looking for early-stage investors as well as mentors who could help to take this product to another level. Mentors who understand both relationship dynamics and preferably consumer hardware. We would love to build our first prototype and validate Viv 50 better couples by next year, quarter 2. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Patricia. Um, I love the, I love the, the variety of, of companies that we're having here. Um, so thank you, Patricia. Uh, maybe Tahira, we'll start with you this time.

Thank you so much for your pitch, Patricia. I You know, I think your research clearly shows that you've identified a challenge that couples face. I struggled a little bit to understand how exactly you solve for that, um, how the wearable captures the emotional state and enables that more effective interaction or solves for the emotional timing mismatch. So I would have loved to hear a little bit more on the product and the solution, as well as, you know, particularly with a hardware business, because that is, um, it is more challenging than software, really, you know, what enables you and your co-founder team to succeed there, because it's, it's a hard thing to to build both the hardware, the accompanying software, and then take this product out to market. So, you know, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more on just how the product works, because I didn't feel like I had enough clarity there.

Hello. Hi, Tahira. Thank you. Thank you for your question. So at this stage, it's still idea, and we are doing a lot of research. What shape this product could be. So the— at, at this stage, we're thinking it's like one piece, uh, wearable, uh, maybe it's like jewelry piece, a bracelet or a ring. Um, and the solution is really simple, is just traffic light on your bracelet or on your ring, without overthinking, you know, at this stage for like app or it's like second stage, you know, the main problem that couples saying is like timing. For example, I come back home, my husband feels green, he's open, he's relaxed, and I'm so red, you know, I had a terrible day. And sometimes, you know, I'm reserved. I don't want to overwhelm him. If he would see that let's say on my bracelet there is a red color, he would give me a hug, he would support me. I don't know if I answered your question.

No, that's really helpful to understand, and I think a little bit more detail in the pitch about where you expect to start and then where you, you can go from there would be useful. And even the solution, I think what you're describing right now solves the problem of awareness, it doesn't solve the problem of timing, right? Because someone's still red and someone's still green. So the timing is still a challenge. Now, how does awareness of that mismatch drive better outcomes? Because that hasn't been made fully clear. So that, that I would just make sure that you incorporate that in.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much, Patricia. I think echoing some of that sentiment, Clearly, there is a— I think relationships are probably the problem of forever. They cause so much chaos. Our inability to communicate. I think that that is the root of many problems that manifest then in different ways, but the root. So I would agree that this is clearly something that plagues a lot of people and causes, I think, a lot of stress and tumultuousness in people's lives. I agree though that I didn't necessarily see this like super clear tie between the problem and the solution. And I think even my mind when it came to this, as you were just saying, like this color, it's like, okay, are we just, are we unable to communicate to our partners like, hey, I'm not feeling great right now and like I need a little bit of space? Like, is that actually, you know, what we're trying to solve for of helping people become better communicators in their relationship. You know, I, I think some of the things, I think only like in the US, maybe 35% of Americans wear any sort of wearable device for health tracking. And so I think like you, it's already a very small kind of subset of people who I think have, you know, the means to be able to afford something like this. I do wonder if maybe there is potentially a an easier way to solve this problem that might be a little bit stickier and maybe eventually you move into some sort of hardware device. I think one of the biggest questions— I'm an avid runner, so I wear a lot of wearables when I am training. I wear a heart, a chest strap and an armband. Like, my question for you is, do you have some sort of indication or research that demonstrates like you know, generally what these types of devices are measuring is heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, body temperature, respiratory rate. Are there certain things that, like, if I've had a bad day, I'm going to have certain signals that will directly point, you know, this means I'm red, this means I'm green, and that those tie very clearly to, you know, what's able to be tracked from a biometric sensor.

Yeah. So I think this is where we would need help. From mentors or where, you know, open even to bring on board like a third co-founder to help. But what we're thinking is based on your mood and the stress levels and your heartbeat. Overall, I agree with you, it's a lot of wearables on the market and I wear one myself. So we want this solution to be super simple. And at this stage, we're thinking because overall in the world, we have really big mental health problem. And, uh, we thought maybe it's like a jewelry piece, it's like a status piece to show not just to your partner, but to the world that I'm emotionally intelligent. I do care about my emotional intelligence and the one who is in the house. I am the one who wants to repair the relationship, not to get out of the relationship. So Yeah, thank you.

All right, um, let's start with, with ratings.

Uh, Tahira, I'm gonna give it, uh, a 1 here. I think that, you know, there's just a lot of open questions, um, and, you know, in your response just now where you talked about this kind of more as a status symbol, then you're talking about a very premium luxe market that's much smaller. Uh, I just felt like there wasn't enough clarity here for me, and I do think you either need a pivot or much more specificity around what exactly it is you're trying to solve and how you're trying to solve it. It's not to say that there couldn't be something here, But I do think that if you're looking at a hardware solution for a mental health challenge where this is a space that is competitive, is high entry points, is incredibly capital intensive, it is tough to make work.

Thank you.

I'm also, yeah, I'm also gonna give this a 1. I think in order for this to be viable, you would need to have some type of medical expertise on the team. I think that being able to determine how you match heart rate, oxygen saturation, body temperature to these types of outputs would require that level of expertise. Expertise on the team. And I think without that, it will be very tough to continue forward in terms of figuring out kind of the minimum viable prototype of this and also being able to raise capital from investors. But agree that this is, I think, is a big challenge. I think through maybe further discovery, you guys might stumble on another opportunity to solve this in a way that is kind of more aligned with your and your co-founder's kind of background and expertise.

Thank you, Olivia.

So this, I went the other way on this one. I'm going to give it a 4, and it's more, I'm giving it a 4 more because of the validation that you've done in terms of discovering this problem, right? Because I do think it is a really important problem, and I loved how you, what was the quote, like an emotional translator, right? I think that was what it was. So I mean, I agree that I don't think, you know, it could probably be done with an app to start, right? You know, and then expand maybe into hardware if there's traction or something. So I think you still need to figure out the solution part of it. But I do think, you know, as a first step, kind of finding that problem and then now diving more into it to figure out the solution, I think you could be on the right track.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Okay, thank you, Patricia. And next up we have Stephanie. So we got 3 more pitches left, guys. I'm probably going to try to speed it up a little bit on the feedback just for the time, for the sake of time here. But 3 more left. So Stephanie joining us from Seattle. So welcome, Stephanie, and we'll bring you on screen here in just a second.

Hi, my name is Stephanie, and I am the founder of Merkavi. We are developing a product to enable first-time home espresso machine buyers easily discover their preferred roast profile and purchase beans through a data model that harnesses user feedback and behavior insights to unlock personalized roast profile and make purchase recommendations. But why did I choose this product? It's because I was the first-time espresso machine owner who faced all these challenges and frustrations. And I believe that other first-time owners, especially millennials and young professionals, struggle with similar issues going from machine purchase to a great cup of coffee. This is due to people feeling overwhelmed by all the options, confusing labels, and countless roasters and subscriptions claiming their beans are the best. Also, getting consistent results is tough. The machines are tricky to learn, many use stale beans without realizing it, and most lack general understanding about coffee and how to taste it. Plus, there's an overload of resources with thousands of conflicting tutorials, expert opinions, upselling, and so many niche tools like specialized portafilters making things even more complicated. To solve this, we're building a system that helps first-time home espresso machine owners master their machines, discover their favorite roast, and connect with their local coffee community. It starts with our Tasting Starter Box, a curated blind kit featuring 4 locally roasted 4-ounce bean samples with unique roast profiles. With simple brewing and tasting guides, online support, and a QR code for quick feedback, the process is painless. Then our recommender matches each person with their ideal roast and local options while collecting valuable consumer insights that don't exist today, leading to a curated private label brand and facilitating smarter sourcing practices. But most of all, we're creating a welcoming community where first-time owners can share Learn and connect. So far, we have conducted over 50 interviews with new owners, performed hundreds of machine demonstrations to help owners understand the machines and find their favorite roast, and dug into online forums. Most people we've talked to in interviews and in stores say they haven't found a coffee they love or don't know how to start looking. New owners are willing to learn, but get frustrated by the lack of simple guidance, making trial and error with beans confusing. Espresso is tricky, beans are complicated, and the online coffee scene often feels unwelcoming to beginners just trying to learn the basics. This is where I come in. Coffee is my passion, and I'm uniquely equipped to build this business thanks to years of firsthand experience helping espresso machine buyers and learning from their challenges. I have over 12 years of global experience launching new businesses, products, and services with specific expertise in customer experience and ethical sourcing in agriculture. As a next step, I am looking for a digital marketing and content partner with expertise in story building, online community engagement, and content creation to help us prepare for product launch in late November. Thank you, and I look forward to answering any questions you may have.

Okay, thank you, Stephanie. Um, somebody said it here too, uh, Spencer, coffee play from Seattle. Story checks out. I just wanted to share that. So I thought that was funny. So maybe we'll start with Olivia this time around.

Yeah, I'll keep this brief. I'm a huge coffee snob and fan, so I love this and can resonate a lot with the problem that you articulated. One question that I had, how are you planning to kind of take this to market? Things that were kind of popping in my head was like, oh, interesting. Is she gonna partner with, you know, different brands who are actually selling, you know, these machines and kind of have this as like an insert that someone has? Or I didn't really get a good sense of, I got a very good sense of what you're doing for the consumers, but wondering how you're thinking about kind of taking the product to market and getting it in the hands of people who are buying these machines.

Absolutely.

I really appreciate that because we don't have time obviously to go in that into the pitch. So I've been working at Crate and Barrel for 3 years. My product developer actually is part of— well, just ended his time at Breville and was in Williams-Sonoma. We already have approval to be in store in both Williams-Sonoma and Crate and Barrels in Seattle for this holiday season. And the hope is to use that in-store experience to then grow it with any luck into both Crate and Barrel and Williams-Sonoma, including it in their product catalog. The roaster I work with here in Seattle has the ability to scale fast on a commercial level. So we're not really concerned about that aspect of can we turn product around if we were to get into market with Crate and Williams-Sonoma, but it's more proof of concept this holiday season to see if we get good traction and then hopefully expanding from there.

Amazing. I would have led with that, but I'll, I'll leave it to Tierra for her comments.

Yeah, I would certainly include that in the pitch. I mean, I think You know, any notes on traction or how your experience has enabled you to have a real advantage here and here, that distribution advantage is so powerful, is worth including in the pitch. The question I have is around kind of pricing and willingness to pay. I, unlike Olivia, I'm not a coffee drinker, so perhaps I'm just a little less familiar with the market and, and my view on kind of willingness to pay may be a little bit different. But, you know, if someone's already made a big purchase, are they at a moment where they're willing to spend more? Do they feel like, I think I can figure this out? How do you think— how are you thinking about pricing and, and, you know, making sure that customers are willing to pay the price point you have in mind?

Absolutely. So just for kind of a US understanding, in the specialty market right now, if you want to buy a specialty bag of beans, you're going to already spend between about $15 and $25 average for a 12-ounce bag of beans. So it's already going into that more luxury side when it comes to this experience. And we understand that. And in our conversations, we've kind of been testing out some different price points. Right now we're landing around about the $50 price point that customers are feeling, you know what, I'm willing to pay because I'm already paying, you know, $15 to $25 for a 12-ounce bag of beans. You're going to give me 6 $15, but for the additional experience, guidance, and output, I'd be willing to improve that cost price point to around like $50 or so. So that's right now where we're looking at, but we're going to start validating that more with our customer interviews just to kind of test the market.

Okay. All right. I'll start out with the rating. I had it as a 2 because we're tracking it here on a table, but I'm moving it up to a 4. Because of this traction that you said. Now you gotta put that lead, lead with the good stuff, okay? Um, because that shows more than anything, you know, obviously you, you have the validation and you're, it looks like you're doing the work, right, that's needed to validate it with the customers. But to show that, hey, even, um, you know, these big retailers, you know, it's something that at the very least is appealing to them. Right. Um, that's, yeah, you just gotta include that, but I'm giving it a 4.

I'll echo that.

Oh, go ahead, Olivia.

Uh, I was just gonna say, I'll echo that. I mean, I, it, it, it wasn't in the pitch, but I think you're, the way you answered these questions, both on, uh, the distribution side and, uh, the pricing side just show, I think, more progress and trackability. Than your pitch reflected. And so given that, I will also bump up to a 4. Thank you.

I also will put this at a 4. I think some of the things that my mind was thinking of after this is like most brands who are selling in through retail, like, lose all visibility into their customers. Like, I have no idea who's buying through retail through Amazon. So that's like a black box, even though You know, D2C, you have tons of insight about those and retail, you have basically none, even though most brands are doing most of their volume through retail. So I think one of the things I would love to see you kind of noodle on or explore if I were thinking about investing in something like this is like, is there data that you can collect, first-party data about these customers that is valuable to sell back to these Brands who are creating espresso machines, are there interesting, you know, I'm always thinking about B2B angles given my sort of seat of like, are, is there interesting, you know, opportunities for you to be able to partner with, you know, different coffee brands that people love, you know, that are maybe not in your, in your city that you can't get these specialty beans also that maybe there's some sort of B2B revenue side as well. But I think you're onto something really interesting and the early traction's very promising. Promising. So congrats.

Thank you. And Olivia, you hit the nail on the head. That's actually where we're headed, is, is there an opportunity to license with the Brevilles of the world as an add-on to buying their product? Because it is blind, it's agnostic to any brand. And so we're headed that way, hopefully.

Awesome. All right. Thank you, Stephanie. Next up, we will welcome Omar. Omar is coming from the UAE. So welcome, Omar, and we'll let you have the stage.

Hi, my name is Omar Munder, and my startup is about accessibility. Imagine being forced to use messengers with your eyes closed. It's virtually impossible, yet somehow blind people do it all the time. So how do they do it? They use screen readers. Unfortunately, these create unnecessary yet unavoidable barriers in messaging applications. For example, a screen reader is supposed to navigate items on a screen sequentially, but sometimes they jump to random locations and force people to start over again. They usually take anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes to recover depending on what is what is it that they wanted to do. And this problem is especially amplified in group chats. Another example is update regressions. An update is released, it's not compatible with your screen reader, a function now is no longer working, and you are forced to spend at least 30 minutes looking for a workaround until the company issues a fix, which usually takes days to do so. And these workarounds aren't necessarily easy to find or easy to execute. The solution to these problems and more isn't complicated. It's Jamo, an AI-powered voice assistant that links itself to all your messengers and executes any task you ask in plain English. You no longer have to deal with broken accessibility. Your layout changed? Not a problem. Jamo handles it. And forget about random navigation jumps. You now control your messenger with your voice. To validate Jamo, I interviewed 15 blind users. 100% validated the problem and the solution. 67% are willing to pay for it, while 33% would use it if it were for free. As for my progress, all my interviewees agreed to become testers. I have joined multiple online groups groups, started building relationships with its members. Through my contacts, I'm attempting to secure meetings with organizations in the US, UAE, and Sweden, and I have been invited to two podcasts hosted by blind users. I believe that Muhammad and I are right for this job. I have been working with him for almost a year now, part-time, on a similar solution before we had to pivot to this one, and he was instrumental in the development process. I myself, other than the contacts in the market that I mentioned earlier, bring years of experience when it comes to managing different teams and projects. In my last job, I worked as a part-time project manager as a, at a startup called D1, which was founded by an ex-Deloitte member, where we built an MVP tool that automated the valuation process for startups and SMEs. As a next step, I'm looking to secure $50,000 and one technical co-founder that would allow us to launch our MVP early 2026. Thank you.

All right, awesome, Omar. Um, definitely an important, an important problem that you're looking to solve here. So, uh, I'll, I'll start this time with the question. It's— you went through the product side really quickly, right? And it was basically like, okay, these problems gone, this problem gone, this problem gone, right? Can you talk a little bit about how you are actually going to solve those, those problems? Like, you know, and if you have the, the technical capability between you and your co-founder on the team to do that. You're, you're muted, Omar. Yeah, it's muted. But while Omar is figuring that out—

I do apologize. I do apologize. I kept looking at the left side, completely forgetting that there are extra buttons down in the middle. Many apologies. Okay. Um, you said I went through the product side very quickly without explaining. Are you looking for a technical explanation, or how is it that I'm sold?

I guess, like, I guess I would just say, yeah, um, I guess it really wasn't so much of a question, it was just feedback that there was, you know, there are big claims made on the product side, right, that are, um, so I would just, uh, I'd probably go into a little bit more detail on how your team is able to solve those problems. Tahira, would you like to go next?

Yeah, I was actually going to say something similar. I don't feel like I had a clear understanding of is there a technology advantage that you have, is it a design advantage, what is enabling your solution to solve the challenges that other screen readers face. And what would make your advantage sustainable over time?

Can I respond?

Sure, yeah, please.

Okay, so you're looking for a technical solution. So the high-level part is, like I said, voice assistance. So think of Siri working with WhatsApp, okay? The reason why I do not have trouble sending messages is because I just tell Siri to do it and it does it for me. So that's at a high level. If you want something more specific, there are bridges which are built. These are ready tools which we can take and integrate into our voice assistant, and it will act as the middleman between us and all these messengers. So the tools do exist, we just need to modify them for our use case.

And got it.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I think that covers it. Olivia?

My question also was more on the technical side. I know like for something like iMessage, for example, I know that Apple Messenger has an SDK for their business side, but my understanding was like there is not direct developer access to like their broader accessibility, you know, you can use it for broader accessibility features, but not outside of that. Is that kind of how you guys are planning? I felt like the piece I was missing was like the actual messenger side of things. You did the kind of like the discovery on this side. I was curious how you guys are thinking about that other side of the platform.

Let me tell you how we started. So in the pitch, I mentioned that I've been working with my developer for almost a year now. What we wanted to create was an actual messenger, a completely standalone messenger. Completely voice-controlled, AI-powered, it should solve all the issues. But like many of the founders, I worked on the solution before validating it, okay? Until I found myself, no, this is not going to work. Everyone was worried about the network effect. So we pivoted to this. We'll just build a voice assistant where through these frameworks, which are readily available and we need to modify, they can connect to all of these. I will admit we do not have a prototype. I mean, I just pivoted maybe 5 weeks ago. And if that doesn't work, we are also ready to pivot into something which will definitely work on all these platforms. We will build a navigation panel. So in my pitch, I mentioned that the main issue is navigation. Focus jumps go all over the place. And when you change your layout, people lose their— their muscle memory is gone and they have to relearn the screen. But if we have a navigation panel which adapts to any changes, then all you have to do is keep pressing next and previous and you will get there. People have been using screen readers for— the youngest person has been using it for 10 years. So instead of switching to voice, we'll just give you a panel and everything is there. So these are the different solutions in case we run into a problem, because again, I admit we've only been working for 4 weeks on this.

Okay.

All right, may I add one thing since you've all commented on it? To all the previous founders, the market size, can I please talk about that very quickly? I would like to start with the GCC. They have 2.4 million people who are blind and suffer from severe vision loss. Globally speaking, there are 80 million users And the market, as Jonathan has taught us, we need to focus on one segment, but this application addresses people who have physical disabilities, it addresses senior citizens who are not tech savvy, who have bad memory, and it can even help people who have dyslexia because the assist— I'll stop there. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you, Omar. Olivia, maybe we'll start with you on the ratings.

I'm going to give this a 2. I think there's a promising idea there, but to your point, I think you're still figuring out some of the feasibility and what exactly this initial wedge product would be. So I think you are solving a real problem. I have family members who have pretty severe dyslexia and in school had an IEP and auditory things were really important to them. So definitely see that this can be a very big market as it continues to grow. And I think to kind of move this forward, you need some kind of additional validation and work on the technical side and what that actual wedge is going to be. And so that's why I'm going to give it a 2.

I will echo that, agree with Olivia's point around the technical wedge as well as kind of the, the, the go-to-market distribution and the willingness to pay around it and what then creates is the advantage that makes it hard for the incumbents in the space to replicate.

So that's a 2, Tahira, just to—

That is, yes.

Yes, okay. And then I'm giving it a 2 as well, and it really was just, yeah, just the lack of clarity on the product itself and kind of what makes it unique compared to other screen readers. You know, and I would say, Omar, even though you are going through a series of pivots and stuff, right, if you want to get feedback on something, you know, I would just— you need to just pick one thing, even if you may pivot again, right? Just one thing so you could start to validate, OK, is this message resonating?

Thank you.

OK. Thank you, Omar. All right. So we have one last pitch, last but not least. Vishal coming from Fort Worth, Texas. I was just at that airport a couple days ago, so welcome Vishal, and the, the floor is yours.

Hi, I'm Vishal Gandhi, founder of Linkwise. We are the one-stop parent-powered carpool coordination platform for kids' activities that's safe, reliable, and affordable. In most US metros, parents spend an average 8 to 12 hours a week shuttling kids, causing stress and time poverty for parents. No alternative options, be it informal carpool or kids taxi services offer the trust, reliability, and affordability that parents seek. With more dual working households, back-to-office mandates, and more kids activities, the pain is growing and largely unmet. That's why we are building Linkwise, a community-powered, membership-based ridesharing network where verified local parents with matching kids' activity schedule can give and receive rides. Linkwise is powered by preference-based matching, smart scheduling nudges, real-time tracking and safety features, and a points-based system for a fair and transparent exchange between carpooling parents. Parents can also import and manage their existing carpools, making Linkwise the true one app for all kids' activities for all kids in a household. With Linkwise, parents can cut their time demands to half, one-third, or even more. So far, we interviewed 48 parents. Most parents drive solo, few carpool, and they agreed coordination does get messy from time to time. All parents expressed that kids' safety is paramount and discovery of like-minded parents is the clear gap. We also spoke with 6 activity providers. They acknowledged the problem and 4 in Dallas are ready to support our MVP. Now you may ask us, why us? As parents of young kids, We have firsthand experience of managing these challenges daily. Myself, Vishal Gandhi, as the founder and CEO, have extensive experience in building products and partnerships. Balaji runs operations and design. Sushain brings logistics and marketing experience, and Himanshu leads engineering with startup chops. We are launching an MVP in Dallas soon. With, with select providers. As a next step, we are looking for a marketing lead with B2C network platform experience to drive our Dallas launch and scale Linkwise to other metros. Post our product-market fit, we plan to raise money to execute our expansion targeting 5% market penetration in each metro, amounting to 700,000 families and $25 million ARR by end of year 5. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, thank you so much, Vishal. Um, Olivia, any, any feedback or questions for Vishal?

Um, definitely a real pain point and problem, and I was even seeing in the chat everyone's like, as a parent, I can also agree. I think one of the things I always like to dig into on marketplace businesses is kind of the supply and demand. Obviously, it sounds like you guys are talking to activity providers, so maybe that's one way that you'll be able to both acquire, you know, parents and also coordinating kind of where kids are going. But I'm curious how, how you're thinking about that as one. And then my other kind of point of confusion in the pitch was, are you just connecting kind of individual, you know, I'm one parent, I get to pick up 3 kids, including my own and take them to soccer practice, 'cause we're all going to the same place. Like how you're thinking about kind of phasing, it seemed like you need to match, you know, the destination, the neighborhoods, the families, like. That was another piece that I wasn't sure.

No, thank you, Olivia, for that question. So clearly the, the idea, it's based on the hypothesis. That's why we are doing an MVP to establish the product market fit. The hypothesis is simple, right? The hypothesis is that, you know, the communities that co-locate, they are providers that serve a localized radius. So for a case in point, I spoke to a learning center and she has around 200 parents or families, uh, subscribe to their center. And she gave me a statement. Of course, not everybody is very open to that, but she was a little close. So she said, within a 1-mile radius, I have 60% of the families, right? So if you think about this, there's a huge concentration. If you look at our school system, if you look at our activity providers, they are serving a localized radius. And that's the hypothesis, that there's enough demand and supply among parents The biggest thing that parents don't carpool is because they don't know people, right? I could have a neighbor living two houses down or in the other street having kids going to the same activity. I just don't know about them, right? And there's this awkwardness around, hey, how much of load share are we doing? So we plan to solve all those problems and demand and supply. The idea behind this is tempo, right? We want to It's a B2C app. We want to market it through B2B channel, if that makes sense. If you look at the providers in the space, they are school-only carpooling apps. They go through school admins setting it up, right? Uh, but to market it, we want to go through B2B. But essentially, if I'm a parent, I'm inputting all the activities that I have for my kids, all the kids, uh, and all their activities, and it's the app which brings people together to help them form new carpools where they didn't even know parents to begin with, right? And manage them all in one platform.

Thank you.

Okay, um, any feedback, um, from your side, Tahira?

Yeah, uh, you know, I really— I like, uh, I mean, you've clearly hit on a pain point. I like the solution that you are, are providing and really trying to aggregate the demand across families, I think is powerful. You talked about some of the barriers and challenges that parents face, particularly around safety and security. I would love to hear a little bit more around how you create trust on the platform because if it's a parent, I don't know, even if they're highly rated in an app, what gets me comfortable that the app has legitimacy and that I should let my kids get into a car with them? And so how do you, how do you build the trust, especially in the early days?

Sure, thank you, thank you for that question. So I'll address it two parts. If you look at parents, let's say if I already have a carpool, right, the platform helps you manage that. You already know the parents, so the trust is kind of already built into the fact that you're carpooling with people. Then there's the other side, you are trying to connect with the platform tends to connect you with people who are unknown. If you look at the TNCs in the marketplace, it's a crowded marketplace outside of kids industry. They do background verifications, Uber, Lyft, all of the other kids specialized providers, they do all of that checks. We have elevated that to the next level because not only the parents are going to be background verified, be it their sex offender list, their criminal record, their permanent address that they're providing in their profile setup, but also the fact that this platform is closed group in the sense that it's only parents with matching kids schedule, right? So when I send my kid with another parent, if that's the first time, right, of course I'll have the way to rate them after my first experience, but I know that parent has a kid at the back, right? His he is living where he's living at. He is background verified just like the Uber and Lyft drivers are. And this is not day one, but eventually we'll have providers help us verify that they are indeed coming to the activity that they are saying that they are taking their kid to, right? So it will be like a holistic background verification that's much more safer compared to even the Uber and Lyft drivers that we use on our daily lives.

Okay, awesome. So for the sake of time here, maybe Tahira, why don't we get your rating?

Yeah, Michelle, I think you did a great job with the presentation. I'll give it a 4. I do think there's details to be worked out and, you know, security and trust are going to be big obstacles to surmount. But I do think that you've, you've really focused in on a core pain point. I like the idea of starting with taking existing carpools, putting them on the platform to create easier optimization, and then going from there.

Sure, thank you. And that's our MVP, uh, uh, that's focused around bringing new existing carpools and then graduating from that. Thank you.

Olivia.

I'll give it a 4 as well. I think echoing the same sentiment of questions that Tahira articulated, I think some of the other ones that I think about as well is, you know, once I have a kind of setup, you know, carpool going with a few parents, I'm curious what keeps people, you know, staying and continuing to use this versus going off platform and continuing kind of to coordinate elsewhere. So definitely still some things I think to work out on kind of the business pricing. Also, as things I think get more complicated, if I have, you know, 10 different activities, like how does that all kind of work logistically? But definitely think that you're onto a real problem.

Okay. And I'm gonna be giving this one a 2, Vishal. I do think there's a real problem here, but to be honest, I've seen a lot of these projects done in the past, and I do think it's the, the user acquisition side of things is big. So I would say that, you know, while it's definitely a problem, right, and I have this problem myself, it's the kind of thing where it's a lot of people have tried to solve it. So I would kind of probably be going in there with a little bit more of, uh, like, hey, this is how this time is going to be different sort of thing, right? Or what is like the, the super, super unique approach that you might have on this. So I do know that we have kept— and thank you, thank you so much, Vishal. So we've kept our esteemed judges here for a long time. These are very busy people. So I just want to say thank you all so much for sticking through with this. We do have now, and I'm putting the doc together right now, but we do have the Champion here ready to go. So let me bring this up in just a moment. So, oh, whoops. Okay, thank you everybody for joining, and let me share my screen here. It'll just take one second. Here we go. All right, so we tabulated all the ratings. We didn't have a tie here, so that was good. So we don't need to do kind of the runoff vote, but to look at the rating, so Vishal and thank you came, it's basically a two-way tie for second place. So Vishal and Anna, Congratulations for tying with 10 points. So basically a two-way tie for second place. And that leaves the winner to be Merkavi and Stephanie Kripke. We don't spare any expense here at Founder Institute with production value. So congratulations to Stephanie, you win the $500. We'll move Stephanie to the stage. Stage here for just a second. Any words, Stephanie?

I'm not going to lie, I'm shocked. I just have, you know, a great little simple problem. These other presenters have had some phenomenally good ideas that I'm just shocked. That's all I can say. And thank you and good luck to every other presenter that gave today. It's just, I think we're all on some really cool journeys and I hope I see them in the future.

I definitely would echo that, guys. And it's been a lot in the chat as well. There's been a lot of dialogue around the ideas, a lot of people saying, hey, these are all really cool ideas and you guys are making some real progress in validating these and really getting on the right track. So thank you guys so much for joining. Stephanie will be in touch on the next steps here. But if anybody is interested in the next ideation boot camp, it's coming up in a couple of months. You can go to FY.CO. Bootcamp/ideation. All right, if people do want to stick around, you can go into the networking rooms after this event, see, meet some other people that are like-minded, hopefully other aspiring entrepreneurs from around the world. But I'd like to thank you all again for joining, and I hope I will see you all again soon. Thanks, everybody.