Democratizing Digital Realities - Entrepreneur Stories

Your full name, company name, and the shortest kind of elevator pitch of what the company does.

Deep in Dubai and Pakistan's tech labs, Umer Masoom unlocked tomorrow's greatest breakthrough, decentralized streaming. His company, Myco, is reshaping how we experience digital content forever.

I was pretty much at the peak of my career when I was the Chief Marketing Officer for Gargash Group, which was like my last employment. My early career was in media, and I had always lived, you know, media life, even though I was on the marketing side and I started a corporate career. But I always believed that media can be disrupted with decentralization, and I think it was about figuring out the how. And the moment I realized that, okay, this is— the viewer economy is the next big thing in media, and I think I can do it, it was very easy to take that jump. When was the last time you actually heard or realized that you can actually monetize your consumption? When was the last time you actually thought that you can invest into content that you can consume. And if as a consumer you can invest into all sorts of assets, whether it's stocks or bonds or cryptocurrencies, why can't you invest into content? So the consumers is broken, consumers are not empowered. The second big stakeholder is a creator. You know, I, I, when I use the term creator, I refer to anyone who's looking for a share within the attention economy. It doesn't need to be a content creator per se, but even an athlete, for example. What does an athlete need? They need share within the attention economy, right? And all of these people who are creators, in our books, they don't have access to funding. There's barriers to entry for all of them, and a decentralized platform can solve that.

Beyond traditional streaming, MYCO transforms viewer experience into earning powerhouses that democratize content ownership.

I'm Umer Masoom, and I'm the founder of MYCO. MYCO is a Web3 video streaming platform, and we're trying to decentralize the world of video streaming. So we've got around 80 people now across different offices for Myco. You know, our largest office is obviously this one where we're sitting, which is in Karachi. A lot of the users are benefiting. I mean, like, we've had people go on X and, you know, do these posts about them being able to pay their electricity bills just by watching a cricket game on Myco, you know. And these are like fabulous stories because we're living in a world where everyone wants to take from the consumer, you know, and we've created a brand which is actually giving back to the consumer. We did something for the Pakistan women's football team. No one had done that, right? The film that we made for them, it just won an award recently. We went after this guy called Shahzad Brind, you know, no one was looking at him, you know. He went ahead and he became the first combat sport world champion for Pakistan in the world, you know, ever in history. And there are so many other stories, you know, so So there's empowerment, you know, when you provide empowerment to the consumer, the consumers are going to trickle that back to the creators.

What would the opportunity to work with Tim mean for you?

I think what's really exciting is Tim Draper is a brand, you know, I mean, like, he's taught in universities. I mean, like, you see his books all around, and, you know, some of the early deals that he did are, you know, phenomenal. But I think more so for me Other than the fact that he's a huge brand and I would love for him to be involved in some way. I think he's the best person to be able to understand how this intersection of media and Web3 could potentially change how the industry operates. So yeah, I'm really excited.

In a world hungry for innovation, Umer proves that sometimes the boldest technologies carry the biggest dreams.

What would a million-dollar investment mean for Myco right now?

I think a million dollars from Tim Draper is a big thing for Myco, as I said, because, you know, we need the right strategic partners on the cap table. We need the right ambiance as far as, you know, the messaging that goes out of the organization is concerned. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. So, and this is the funny thing because people ask me, you know, did you want to be an entrepreneur? And I was like, no, I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. I know you just want to, you know, have great jobs and then grow on them. And, you know, that's how I was until, you know, this particular thing came in and I realized that I need to do something about it. The only message that I give to my kids is be positive, be naughty, you know, but at the same time, always be positive. And, you know, if you're positive, then you're going to attract positive energy towards you, and then whatever, wherever life takes you, it's gonna be good.

We're gonna start with like an intro, so basically like your guys' full name, you know, the name of your company, and kind of like an elevator pitch, you know. Like a very concise, the simplest pitch of what you guys do.

Imagine a world where news is digestible, informative, and accessible to all. That's the vision behind The Orbit, founded by Joshua Kim and Sonaju.

Before we worked on this startup, we kind of started off with trying to make just M&A, the process of mergers and acquisitions, a bit more accessible. And through that, we worked with a lot of summarizations of companies' portfolios. And we realized that with the more mass of a market, people struggled with just news in general of understanding, reading. And one of the traits we actually realized was most people our age have stopped reading news just because there was too many things going on, too much stuff. And they just felt, I guess, overwhelmed. And that's where we were like, Maybe this could be something that we could work on. We actually know each other because we go to the same university and study the same thing. In terms of my background, I have entrepreneur parents. So especially my dad growing up, he was always doing a lot of entrepreneur stuff. He ran his own businesses. So I grew up helping him out or watching it.

My dream was like science communicator, and I came to the data science university with Tim. And I decided to do with Orbitz as the things I— with my own mate, and I can impact people positively by summarizing some stories and overload information into concise and neutral information.

Their AI-driven platform streamlines news consumption. providing users with essential insights and knowledge in a concise format.

My name is Suno Joo, and I'm the co-founder and CTO of The Orbit.

And my name is Joshua, or Minsu Kim, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Orbit. It's not just news that we're doing. We are currently doing news, but our very long-term vision is that we're seeing a world where all sorts of information is simplified and made easier to understand. Because we're now living in a world where just any type of information quadruples nearly every day, and it's becoming overwhelming for people to keep up just in general. And so in a sense, we're sort of trying to become a place where people can learn or grow as a person through new information.

It's like some fundamental problems that what people decided or willing to start something, but they couldn't find any information about that. And there are so much fake information and overwhelming information. So we are making tools to help them start and self-considering and self-thinking for what actually they wanted to do.

So basically we take longer articles, summarize them, but we're also now looking into maybe taking different sources, using a variety of sources just so that there's less repetitiveness in a sense, because each media outlet covers the same news or same, like, recurring events with different phrases, different article lengths, and different perspectives. We are using an AI model to basically tune it and be able to not only find and select information but also be able to summarize it. So far, the feedback has been pretty good. A lot of people are sort of rediscovering their love for news. They've been being able to keep up a bit more now.

And we're motivated by that feedback of the people, and we really liked it.

So what, what would the opportunity to work for Tim, with Tim right now mean for your company?

Back when I was younger, I actually reached out to Tim back in 2014— 2018, when I was 14 years old. And it was my first ever no, which sort of motivated me to keep working towards becoming just a better person in general, a better entrepreneur.

And as a winner of TikTok Pitch, we have discovered some chances to come here in USA, San Francisco. And I'm feeling like really enthusiastic to doing our works. And I'm feeling a lot of chances are coming to us just by going here. Coming here for the Tim Draper's pitch, we're still a very early stage.

I know that with his experience with working with a lot of the early-stage startups would be not just the funding-wise, but also just a big mentor to us in general.

With a focus on neutrality and clarity, The Orbit is redefining the future of news and information sharing.

Like if you guys were to win, what would a million-dollar investment mean? For your company right now?

I think $1 million of investment is really going to give us that kickstart that we really needed. As you know, working with AI is cool and everything, but it's quite expensive. And having $1 million just means that without having to worry about any of the financials, we can just really focus on what we really love and create products that people will really need. I guess our first impression of me and him, we sort of met at like a university event. I just remember just Meeting him, he was very, very outgoing in a sense, and we sort of just clicked along from the beginning. So we just stayed as good friends.

And I think he's really an animal, and he's literally impressive that he would achieve something in the future, what he wants to do. Getting a lot of money is important too, but the fact that we actually achieved something And we got a prize and really, really big. This pitch series could give us self-esteem or some belief or trust to our family or friends. So we will really challenge— challenging to hear.

So can we start with an intro with your name, your company name, and sort of the most concise elevator pitch of what you guys are doing?

I'm an immigrant food stamp kid from Jersey. Parents worked really hard to, to kind of get us through schools and those types of things, and ended up going to Drexel University in Philadelphia, did engineering, and moved out to the Silicon Valley way back in '96.

In Silicon Valley's shape-shifting studios, Deepak Patel sees what traditional media cannot— the immersive stories behind every virtual experience. His team at Zeality weaves reality with digital understanding.

Entrepreneurialism has kind of been built into my family. You know, for, for a long time, just with my, my parents and, and family before that. You know, I'm a single parent here in Silicon Valley. 2 kids inspire me every day, and they check me every day, which is always cool. And yeah, I mean, I see them, I say, all right, well, what are we building? What are we building? Why are we building it? And how can we support their existence and their friends' existence and their family's existence way into the future? I'm a big fan of like figuring out how to connect our legacies.

Beyond screens, Zeality creates VR experiences that illuminate pathways for businesses to thrive with purpose.

My name is Deepak Patel, founder of Zeality. We're looking to bring the z-axis to the masses. I feel that social media disrupted traditional media around 3 pillars: connections, 140-character headlines, and videos. And videos, actually, not until the founder went to the zoo, filmed an elephant, that they realized that they can go from tape to digital. To streaming. I think that social media itself is ready for disruption, and social media 2.0 is coming because currently entire generations of people just consume media in 30-second clips. And from my point of view, when you add that z-axis, you can create a completely new way for storytellers to interact and engage with their audience. I believe storytellers shape humanity, right? And for me, there's almost this war between storytelling and big media companies. To some degree, there's a war with censorship and propaganda. And so I want to use our team to help tip the scale on the side of storytellers, create new ways for them to engage and monetize with a completely new media format that we created. You know, I've got a great software development team around the world. Croatia. I've got people in India working on our intellectual property and patents. We've got people in the Bay Area. So we're all over the place all the time. Our customers are across, across the globe as well, whether it's Places like what's happening in the Middle East or Ukraine or sports properties here in the, in, in the US.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim mean for your company right now in the stage that it's in?

So the opportunity to work with Tim would be a phenomenal partnership because like what we believe He believes in game-changing technology that can have significant impact around the world.

Through immersive technology and bold leadership, Deepak proves that the future isn't about replacing reality. It's about amplifying human connection through virtual experiences.

What would a million-dollar investment mean to your company right now?

So a million-dollar investment for Xiality would allow us to accelerate what we want to do with existing customers or existing partners, not only on the college athletics side, but also what we are doing with organizations like Elnet. And Elnet is a nonprofit that is building relationships between Israel and European countries to start surfacing stories about what's going on over there, to start to really bring down the tensions and start to move towards peace. My kids would be excited. My son specifically, he's been along this journey with me. He's one of my beta testers. In fact, he's one of my grips when I go shoot content. He's right there with the camera, holding onto the backpack, and capturing content with me. My internal New Jersey food stamp kid, That kid would tell me that I'm not going hard and fast enough, right? He would say to me, you can do better.

You can go harder.

You can go faster.

You can go bigger.

So To start, can we get an intro with your name, your company name, and just like the shortest, most concise elevator pitch about what your company does?

In Lahore's crowded classrooms and quiet villages, Haroon Yasin witnessed dreams deferred by distance.

His team at Talimabad decided that geography would no longer dictate Before I was anything else, I was like a very bored kid and a very bored student. I haven't really enjoyed schooling that much. It's— it should surprise everyone that when you ask the majority of people in the world what they enjoyed about schooling, they'll have one teacher or one class or some rare moments in the middle that were really exciting. And otherwise, it's a drab, unforgettable experience. Most of the stuff that humanity has achieved, it's been achieved by people who are so obsessed about learning something that they forget what time it is. And that sort of entire deep dive takes them to discovery. If you want our kids to do that, then schooling should look the way it should. That's why I became a teacher.

Through storytelling and gamification, Taleemabad transforms smartphones into doorways where every child discovers their brilliance.

My name is Haroon Yaseen. I'm from Pakistan, and I'm the co-founder and CEO at Taleemabad. And in a nutshell, this company makes it very fun for young kids to learn. We never think about the fact that teachers need to be taught as well, and teachers need to be taught the art of teaching. And I think fundamentally, when I was done teaching one classroom, instead of doing another one or building a school, I decided to invest my time and my energy into building the next generation of teachers. So over the course of this long journey. We've trained thousands and thousands of teachers using technology, and we've used technology as an aid to make sure that they're supported in their classrooms and they can be magical day in and day out. And that's, that's how I think this can spread, and it has to because most of the kids that teachers are teaching now— an average kid in a primary grade right now will graduate By the time they're graduating, they will have a job that probably doesn't exist today. And so in order to build towards that world, all teachers have to shift over to this reality. And I think that's what the mission has become now, to create the next crop, the next generation of teachers, and give them all the tools, resources, and inspiration necessary to get there. And so as soon as we would be done teaching, We would go back to my garage in the back of my house. It was like a team of 3 people. We would turn that into an animation and we'd put it up on YouTube. And when we started putting these videos up on YouTube, they started achieving millions of views. And before we knew it, they were on public broadcast television, much like Sesame Street was in the US. And that went up to 8.5 million children watching it on a weekly basis. We then made a mobile app, again from the back of my garage, and that reached 1.5 million kids in just about a year.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean to your company right now?

I think we're at a very critical stage. of the company, and working with Tim would mean that we don't make those critical mistakes. You know, I do firmly believe that a journey can take 10 years or it could take 2, and I think the difference is you don't take the wrong turns that you do.

Because Haroon believes that when you educate a child, you don't just change a life, you ignite a generation What would a million-dollar investment mean for your company right now?

I think a million-dollar investment primarily would mean that we get to take this company to scale in Pakistan. But then more importantly, I think the whole thing about scale is that it is kind of like looking down a well, I'm not seeing the bottom of it. You know, you can scale across Pakistan and get to 40 million kids. That's what this investment helps us unlock. As a teacher, I think that's one of the most enjoyable things that I've— like, the most rewarding things about this profession is that you get to pick up the underdog and you get to take them to the top. You can't ever write someone off, and if you can believe in them, They're the capability of ordinary people to be extraordinary, then that's where all the magic starts to happen.