🚀 Draper University | VeChain Web3 Accelerator Demo Day

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Welcome, welcome, welcome! Hello everybody, my name is Subhazain and welcome to today's event, which is the Draper UV Chain Web3 Accelerator Demo Day. So I'm heading alumni relations at DraperU, and joining me backstage is my lovely colleague Mo. He is the orchestrator and the DJ for today's event. Say hi, Mo. Well, you can't see him anyways. All right, guys, and with that, uh, I hope you liked, uh, the video. It was a short but very power-packed intro video about DraperU. And whilst we have more and more people joining on the link, I am going to take this opportunity to talk a bit more about who we are at DraperU. We are the top immersive entrepreneurship and largest co-living program for founders in Silicon Valley. Founded by Tim Draper in 2012, Draper University is a pre-accelerator and venture capital firm that trains and backs entrepreneurs building the future through technology. Um, yeah, we're also part of the wider Draper ecosystem of companies. Uh, we invest anywhere between pre-seed to Series A and are sector agnostic. Talking about the alumni, we have 3,300+ founders from over 102+ countries. How crazy is that? And that is just in the last 10 years. That's right. We have our 10-year anniversary this year. And yeah, so collectively we raised over $950 million+ in US dollars. So that is crazy. To talk a bit about the fund, Draper Funds in the last 3 decades have invested in some of the most iconic companies of our times, products and services that we use every day, and some of the major names including Tesla, Skype, Twitter, Hotmail, Robinhood, Coinbase, uh, that you might recognize. And so with that, uh, talking a bit more about today's event, um, yeah, all right, I see. Hi, hi, Haji Musa from Bangladesh. Okay, so talking about today's event, we have, um, We've partnered up with VeChain, of course, and we ran our first fellowship program, which was training our lovely founders on fundamentals of entrepreneurship and fundamentals of Web3. And the winners got to be part of this amazing Web3 accelerator. And today they get to pitch to our investors, to our lovely panelists who are investors and partners at their funds and firms respectively. So without further ado, I think we should invite them on front stage. There they are. Hello. Hello. Hi guys. So we're going to, in random order, I'm going to let you introduce yourself, starting with Asra at DraperU Ventures.

Hello.

Hi everyone. Thank you so much, Siva. I can definitely not match your energy. So I'm just gonna be like, hi everyone. My name is Astra. I am the CEO of Draper University, and I also manage our fund, Draper U Ventures. And I am excited about this partnership with VeChain. We have actually been partners with VeChain from very early on, and there's been tons of collaboration between us investing in them. They are also LPs in our fund. We've done quite a few deals together, so this should be fun. And welcome, Jack, Jackson and Matt, and thank you for being here. I'll pass the ball to Jackson.

Hey guys, Jackson here. So I've been involved with VeChain for a very long time, starting from 2017, and I'm the partner within the foundation that usually takes care of the more on the community side and also on the investment side. My background is Wall Street. Merrill Lynch investment banking and private equity with Starwood Capital. So pretty excited about looking at early startups in Web3 and very excited about the positioning of VeChain right now that we have. We're little by little transitioning from a just a regular, you know, layer 1 blockchain into a sustainability-focused layer 1 blockchain where we will be utilizing our reach and our war chest to enable Web3 entrepreneurs to do good for our Earth. So I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody, the host, DraperU, for partnering up with us to further our agenda.

Awesome.

We're gonna move on to Matt from Draper Associates.

Awesome. Thanks, Subha. Jackson, great to meet you. My name is Matt Harris. I work at Draper Associates, which is the institutional venture fund that has the privilege of being partnered with Draper University. The idea being that you attend Draper University and then you come to us at the institutional fund. I'm based in Austin. I focus on everything but deep tech and Web3. And what we do at Draper Associates is, you know, we invest in completely crazy companies at the seed and Series A stage. So I'm really looking forward to hearing all the pitches and good luck to everybody.

All right, you heard it, guys. You've got the good luck from our panelists. And so now before I can see that our founders are lined up backstage, stage and they're excited to start their pitches. But I thought I'd take this moment to ask a few questions just to kick off our event about the current landscape of Web3. I'd like to really ask you guys one word for the current Web3 landscape and where do you think ideally, where would you want it to go in the next 5 years? Is there any particular product or service or solution or problem that you'd see what is not there already. No one has worked on it or identified it, and you would like to see it happen in the next 5 years. So, yeah, starting with Usra.

Oh, I was going to say, let's start with Jackson since he talks about this all day.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah.

So, yeah, let's start with Jackson.

That's such a broad topic. So the term Web3 is literally like a you know, advancement from Web2, right? So when you think about the internet, so your question is basically what can the internet change, right? How can the, how can the internet progress to change humanity and civilization, which is pretty much on every single aspect. So that's what I feel like Web3 is, is the future, back— the backbone of the future sort of new type of interaction that is based on the idea of connecting everything together, right? And individualizing a lot of things and making the world a more connected and more transparent and more trustless state. I think that's on a very, very general level. At VeChain here, what we're looking for is, you know, we have to believe that Well, in order— so as I mentioned a little bit earlier, sustainability right now is a big topic around the globe, right? And how the most fundamental thing of sustainability is right now, just throwing out there, how do you track that you are sustainable, right? How do we trust you when a big corporation published their sustainability report, how do we, how do we people trust you that you actually release the right document? I mean, that's, you know, obviously they're very trustworthy entities, right? So, uh, so when it— when sustainable— since sustainability meets Web3, then automatically you're gonna have to use blockchain, uh, as a tool to solve this sort of greenwashing problem that is going on right now around the world. How do you report? How do you know it's real? How do you know that you're doing sustainability and not just saying that you're doing sustainability? So at VeChain here, we're trying to— on that, we're trying to sort of on that broad direction to encourage the utilization of blockchain technology to solve the— well, to mitigate, I guess, the worsening of the current environment and to better our sustainability efforts throughout all countries. And this is actually a big topic. So for us, that's where we are looking at very deeply going into investments and entrepreneurship.

Sustainability. Absolutely. All right, thank you, Jackson. That was, uh, that definitely changes my perspective on the way I look at Web3, so thank you for that. All right, we're gonna move on to Matt.

Sure, that's a great answer, Jackson. Um, the— I mean, I think, like, like Jackson said, it's a big question. So, uh, 3 things come to mind that I think we're looking for. One is just more decentralization, more, more trustlessness. So we're looking for these decentralized applications Yeah, I think, I think, I think, I think we're all looking and finding that, that web, you know, Web3, crypto, whatever, whatever word you want to use here is, is being applied to the real world now, right? So we're, so we're looking for real-world applications like the ones Jackson mentioned, and we're finding them, which is really exciting. And then I think one thing that's always tough in Web3 deals is just finding alignment with the founders, right? Like when you find a founder you really like and they're doing something you really like, Because of the structure of equity and tokens, it can be— it can— it's really easy to lose trust when you start to find alignment because of the way the founder sometimes positions the capital structure and the valuation in the deal. And so, and so we're, we're always looking for, for that alignment with, with the great founders doing the great things that we like. And I'd say the, the 3 things that I'm interested in and looking at at the moment in the Web3 space— and again, these may not fall in the Web3 bucket for how everybody defines it in their, in their mind. Um, but one is I think there needs to be, um, there sort of needs to be a lot more liquidity in the pri— in this, in the private markets for venture capital and later stage private equity. And I think, I think tokenization, uh, may have an answer to that, and it's something that kind of needs to happen. Um, and then this may not be in the Web3 bucket for a lot of people, but I'm fascinated by how Bitcoin and the oil and gas world are merging together on the mining side. Uh, I think it's one of the— I think it's just very interesting.

And then we're—

and then we're just always looking for things like decentralized escrow and just like, you know, uh, you know, just decentralizing all the— all the capital flows so that nobody's in the middle.

All right, decentralization. Awesome. And now we're going to move on to Asra. Thank you, Matt.

Yeah, thank you. I agree with a lot of what Jackson and Matt are saying, and kind of— I mean, obviously because Matt and I work together, we have kind of the same thesis around this. But one thing I'm definitely very excited about, and we're seeing more applications of that, so I'm all about this, like, giving people financial freedom. But I think now the next application of that is not just creating opportunities for that, more financial freedom for— in markets where it doesn't exist, but also giving people access to more financial products and services in a decentralized manner. And I think we're already seeing lots of applications around that, around decentralized identity, trust, and also just like, you know, more options for people to capitalize on the markets in general. So that for me is exciting. And then being a big gamer, I definitely love this intersection of where gaming and AI is going. And I think that's going to be definitely interesting to see what new market opportunities arise because of that. And especially decentralized identity and decentralization as a whole is going to play a huge part in it because gamers are very used to this and they're kind of the first person to adopt technologies. And this intersection of crypto and gaming is very interesting for me. And when you add AI to that, I think that kind of adds fuel to the fire. So yeah, I'm very excited about Um, that trend in particular.

It is exciting. All right, awesome, guys. So I guess we're now ready, uh, after that wonderful discussion, uh, we are now ready to move on to our pitches. So the format is something like 3 minutes of pitching and 5 minutes of Q&A. All right, guys, so with that, let's bring on— drum roll— we are now ready Oh, there he is for our first founder. Hi, Ian. Ian from OS Biome. Now, a little bit about— hi, Ian. So OS Biome is a personalized digital health company. Now, they combine gut microbiome technology with AI to provide bespoke nutrition and lifestyle recommendations to improve gut health and overall wellness. All right, Ian, are we ready? Let's start the clock.

Go. Right, so thanks for joining us, guys. So my name is Ian, I'm the CEO and co-founder of OS.Bio. Together we're actually putting poop on the Web3 to actually save lives. Now, the sad fact is today, every year, 20 million people die, and this is preventable by simply living and eating healthier. For context, every year, I think for COVID, we lost 6 million plus, and we actually put the whole world on halt, right? But the thing is, nobody's talking about this. Now the question is why. Now the key, the word simply is actually not as simple as it seems. Our health, our relationship with health is actually toxic, right? Number one, it's complicated. Every other week you hear a new fad, a new trend that is being pushed by your influencer on social media, right? All these approaches are highly generic. It's supposed to work for everybody, but somehow it doesn't work for you, right? So people don't actually talk about the fact that we are all built differently. And last but not least, going through this entire journey is very costly, not just in terms of money, but also in time. Okay, so we're trying to actually solve this. I'm not excluded from this problem. This is my fridge at home. I have a whole bunch of products that I'm trying out, I'm testing, and I don't even know if it works, right? It's so confusing. So what we're trying to do is to build a solution to actually halve the amount of time and money spent on health and drastically increase the chance at success by actually making it highly personalized. So our solution is very simple. It's a bio-persona that's going to be built onto an NFT and a health dashboard. So how it works is very quickly fusing stool sample data, which is your poop, with wearable data, genetic data, and also blood data, passing it through our proprietary omic-based bio-AI, and then embedding into an NFT, which is our cute little OMI here. And users can extract immediate benefit out of it, right? So now you can actually see immediately your health analytics live and understand the gaps of what your body is facing, use those gaps and information to actually power your search on shopping on the different commerce platforms and go and just sift through all the products out there and understand which are the ones that are safe for you and are beneficial for you. And lastly, you can actually earn rewards back by staking your biodata in our ecosystem. So how do we make money? So number one, we have the ability to actually power a mix of a personalized supplement subscription and assess together to generate recurring revenue. Second, we also have our own home-based test kits and also other products that we can sell on a physical basis. Thirdly, we charge purchase commissions on on-chain transactions by actually helping other e-commerce platforms curate their selection based on our biodata. And lastly, we actually combine all this biodata into metadata and then partner with labs and charge them fees, which we then redistribute back to the biopersona holders who actually stake their biopersona. So this is a huge opportunity. We're actually using Web3, a scaling technology, into a very mature but fast-growing use case. So right now, we actually completed a lot of testing of POCs, right? We have a validated BioML model on an actual live population. We also have a live Web2 and Web3 product. We actually also have recently closed a regional partnership with a genetic lab for our metadata partnership. So moving forward, we are looking to hit profitability by Q3 this year, and this is done by acquiring a health e-com brand that actually achieve about $400K annual revenue to put them onto our books. But it also gives us the distribution channels to actually launch our personalized health subscription. And lastly, we're also working to integrate our OMI NFTs into a metaverse environment so that users can actually interact with their health in an immersive experience. So we have other things in the pipeline as well, and this is the team that is actually going to make it happen. I come from a more entrepreneurial background where I co-founded and exited 2 companies prior. My partner is Dr. Maria. She's an award-winning scientist in the microbiome field. And we're actually supported by industry veterans that cover our blind spots. So we're actually raising $400,000 US. This is a bridge round for this year. And these are for the reasons. These are going to be happening in a very favorable valuation, understanding the current market conditions. By the end of the year, we'd be raising a larger round in the seed round. So yeah, so that's all I have for you. Hope this is okay.

All right.

All right.

Amazing. Now we're going to jump into our 5-minute Q&A.

I'll go first. I'll probably ask this question to every pitcher just to prepare you. Can you like really drive home the value of blockchain in that application and not just, you know, like a web— just a website with a password? Yeah, for sure.

So I think first and foremost is as a business, it's very advantageous for you going on blockchain. Number one, talent and capital are entering blockchain and Web3 at a very fast pace, right? That's the first thing. But secondly, the cost of doing business is going to be much, much better. So Web3 companies are already proven to be more profitable and easier to manage versus a Web2 company. So in terms of the unit economics as well. But of course, what we're dealing with is biodata, right? So there is no way in a centralized environment that this business is going to work or this product is going to work because there's no way consumers and users are going to allow a centralized entity to actually hold all this biodata by themselves. So by actually integrating biodata into NFT in a decentralized environment, users will have full control and access to how their biodata is being used. If they want to pledge it or stake it to get rewards, or they don't want to, they just want to enjoy the benefits of the platform, right? So that's the reason why we decided to integrate into Web3.

Yeah, the third one especially, I think it makes sense. Can you say a little more about why you think blockchain businesses make the second point you made about making more money? What do you think is behind that?

Yeah, correct. So I think a lot of things is in terms of a lot of resources are being spent on compliance and trust and establishing trust within the platform or within an organization. So by using smart contracts, you are already programming that amount of trust, right? It's a trustless application within an organization. So you, for example, trading exchanges like your Web2 or your traditional trading exchanges versus DEXs. Right. The amount of volume that you're transacting on the platform versus the amount of money you're spending to hire people is drastically different. Right. So the revenue per employee is definitely much higher in Web3. So for us, that's a plus point, right? For us to actually go into that as a startup.

Yep.

Okay.

Jackson, Ezra, I got others, but I don't want to hog them.

I was just, you said that You said that the data needs to be decentralizedly stored. How do you do that right now? Are you not having any custody over users' data right now?

Sorry, Jackson, I think I missed it. My audio might have something wrong. Can you repeat your question again?

Can you hear me now?

He's— can you hear me, Ian? I can tell you what he asked.

Sorry, I can't hear you guys.

I think he can't hear any one of us. We could just write the question in chat. That might be easier.

Okay.

How much time do we have?

Well, every time you see me, I'm like that bearer of bad news. It means time's up.

All right, awesome. So we can, um, yeah, we can have Jackson's question answered offline. Let's do that. Okay.

All right guys, we're now going to swiftly, uh, have the Our panelists move backstage and we're going to have our next founder pitch. So bringing on our next founder, we have Saurabh from ChampionFi. ChampionFi is building the infrastructure and platform to bring Web3 gaming through the— to the masses through easy-to-play casual and hyper-casual games.

All right.

Take it away, Saurabh.

Thanks, Oba. Hey everyone, thanks for joining in. So at Champify, we are changing how Web3 game commerce works. Champify is a mobile gaming platform where users can compete and win either fiat or token rewards. Currently, we are targeting 2 main regions, Southeast Asia and India. We have more than 10,000 active blockchain wallets on our platform. With a gamer base of more than 200,000, and we have conducted so far more than 15 million gaming sessions across all our games. In the past, we have worked with many prestigious partners, some of which includes Razer, where we power all the games on Razer Play Malaysia, and we have also worked with Samsung and CompAsia to provide them opportunity to reach out to our gaming community. So currently Web3 gaming is going, uh, a lot of problem, and the major problem is the barrier to adoption. The critical issues is, uh, poor user experience because most of the Web3 games currently are built to serve crypto users. Then the infrastructure is fragmented because all, all the games works on different kind of blockchain networks, and switching between them is very, uh, difficult. Plus, users have to go through multiple steps like having a native wallet and then integrating them with the games to get even started before they can actually play the games. And awareness is one of the most critical issues. So distributing a Web3 game is, is very, very difficult because of the restriction that is there. So what we provide is a Web3 game distribution hub. So we provide multi-chain game distribution. So we work with games across multiple chains like Binance, Polygon, etc. We provide game localization feature where games can be used in local languages as well as using local payment methods. And we provide a B2B solution which is a mini dApp integration where which any games can integrate with our gaming solution. So we work with multiple partners like the game studios. So any game that is built using different gaming engines like HTML5, Construct, or Unity can simply integrate with the SDK, and they can distribute not only to our mobile app but also to our partner network, reaching millions of users in one go. And they can integrate and launch it on multiple platforms. So apart from the game integration, we also help our partners to do these NFT sales and sell game credits, so the users can actually pay for all these in their local payment currencies using local e-wallets, etc., and they can directly receive these NFTs or the game credits either in their linked wallet or their inbuilt Jamf Wallet. We provide a B2B mini dApp integration which helps convert any dApp into a super dApp so they can easily integrate our gaming solution and increase their engagement and revenue like we already did with many of our Web2 partners. So our app is already live with the inbuilt crypto wallets and the localized payment feature. We already have 17 games on our platform and our B2B gaming made-up solution is also live. In the next phase, we are increasing our number of games to reach a capacity of 25 games, and we are soon launching our gaming solution on directly on Telegram also, so user can firsthand experience our gaming app directly on the Telegram. And then download our app. And in the third phase, we will be implementing many features like supporting direct fiat-to-NFT transaction, etc. So we have the privilege to receive backing and support from some of the prestigious investors and advisors in the Web3 industry, uh, something like Funfair Ventures, Lucid View Ventures, VeChain, and some of the angel investors from Google and Grab. So we are a very powerful team. So I have worked in the tech industry for close to 10 years where I have previously worked with companies like Google and Grab, and I take care of tech and product side while my co-founder have experience in the marketing side and have worked with VCs like Antler. And our blockchain lead have more than 10 years of experience in the blockchain industry. So currently we are looking for partners where we can extend our solution to include more games and to reach more apps. And we're also raising our next rounds of funding, both in terms of equity and the token. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Saurabh. I like how he referred to his team as, this is my powerful team, because we do refer to our alumni founders as superheroes changing the world. So that was great. Okay, we have our investors back on stage. We are now ready for 5-minute Q&A. Go ahead.

Can you—

yeah, good.

Okay, can you help me better understand, from— for these 17 games, what's the distribution been like and what has been the actual application of, uh, crypto or decentralization in these games? Let's start with that.

Okay, so currently the games that we had initially on Web2, and all these games are playable directly on the apps, you don't have to download each game separately. So all these, the first layer of blockchain that we are adding them is providing a token layer. So all these games users will be able to play using our own crypto-native token. And the next layer of integration that we are doing with them is the NFT integration. So users who have the NFTs can directly put these inside these games and play with them.

I'm sorry, I don't understand how that— so if these are Web2 games, what are you using NFTs for? Are they being used for identity or are they being used for characters? How does that work?

So currently they are used for in-game feature. So like we sell some of the game assets like knife, that you can use across our 3 or 4 games. So if you have powerful, uh, that NFT feature, then you have more, uh, capacity to score more points in that game.

And out of these, just like in-game, 17 games, none of them have been launched yet, is that correct?

So all these are in-app games, so we already have that live on our platform.

Okay, all right, go ahead, Jackson.

So the NFTs are basically equipment where you can, you can use in different, different games, right? So how do you solve the problem of, okay, are you a gaming distribution platform or are you— do you build your own games?

We are a distribution platform, so we work with casual and hyper-casual gaming studios to integrate on our platform.

How do they— how do you align everybody's game design to be using, for example, this one knife? to, to do the same amount of damage in different games?

So it depends on the game genre type. So each NFT is not usable in all the games, but there are common NFTs. So like each NFT can be in 4 or 5 games. And we, uh, because we closely work with our gaming partners who modify the game for us, so we send them the requirements and they do all the modification for us. It's just the game mechanics remain the same.

What's the utility of your tokens?

So currently the token can be used to play, uh, competition on all these games because all these games are like real winning, uh, gaming tournaments. So people can stake those tokens and play the game and win the money at the end of the tournament. And apart from that, these tokens—

It's a reward token?

Yeah, it's a reward token.

What's its utility?

So utilities, people can like earn more money, so they can stake more money and they can earn more money. And another utility—

Utility, man, you gotta give me the utility. Just give me now these tokens and not utility.

Yeah, and, uh, the second utility is the game studios can use it, uh, to integrate the game. So all the rewards that we collect from the user is distributed to us as well as to the game studios.

So you guys take fees in your own in-game token?

Yeah.

How's that working out for you?

So currently, initially when we partner with the game studios, they buy the tokens and then we distribute to the users. And depending on the money in between, we take the fees.

Why do they want to publish their games on your platform?

So mainly with our distribution. Because reaching to the gamers is the biggest obstacle that they have. So either you can upload the game on Google Play Store or iOS and monetize through the ads, or the second way is to do affiliate and competition powers.

Yeah, who's doing the distribution in your company if you're— that's, that's your selling point?

So currently, like, we distribute that through our own apps but also through our partner network. So our B2B system can be integrated into any app. So whatever is the users on their app, they can also play directly our games. So we have like B2B2C distribution.

Matt?

Cool.

You guys asked all my questions.

So what is the current relationship between your partners, founders? Are you guys all full-time? You bootstrapping this? Like, what do you like?

Oh, so currently we have raised like 2 rounds of funding before. So we have raised an angel round before that. funding through the VCs. So we have a full-time team of around 8 people.

Sorry, it's okay, I'll just hang out here.

We're done, I'm done.

All right, thank you, Saurabh, and thank you to our amazing judges. And we're now going to move on to the lovely Dasha from Izzy Labs. Izzy Labs makes NFT P2P trading simple through Telegram. Hi, are we ready? Ready. All right, let's go.

Hi, I'm Dasha from Easy Labs, and we are integrating an NFT stack inside Discord and Telegram, where communities live. Web3 is fundamentally a great tool for community management, but there's very little infrastructure available, especially for NFT trading. Discord channels are flooded with open ceilings and price negotiations. There are imposters pretending they own NFTs when they don't. Existing solutions are very niche, made for the crypto community, and are too complex for an average user to understand. To enable basic functionality, you have to integrate multiple bots, and they only allow you to— they only display data, but they don't actually let you buy, bid, and sell. Most of the solutions are made for Discord and very rarely for Telegram, while Telegram is huge in the crypto community. We have an NFT marketplace up and running inside Telegram and soon Discord. Apart from the traditional functionality of buying, bidding, and selling, we also enable extra features like airdrops, which are already being used by one company, and we're soon starting to develop a web app. To manage those features. Currently, it's done manually by our technical team. We aim to grow into a full-scale Web3-based— Brands want to nurture deeper relationships with their clients. NFT market is moving from speculative assets to more utility. Big brands like Starbucks and Louis Vuitton are hopping onto the trend of integrating blockchain-based programs. Telegram is pumping out crypto infrastructure, and we're responsible for the NFT bit of it. Telegram is 5 times bigger than Discord, and just 1% of it is 5 times bigger than OpenSea, the entirety of OpenSea. And if you're a traditional company and you want to integrate NFTs, you would prefer to use a familiar solution rather than something that was built for the crypto community. And I know that because we already did a beta launch with one of the biggest food franchises in Eastern Europe, and they love the simplicity of it. So we can target not only the Web3 community but traditional companies too. We can enable airdrops via link inside Telegram and Discord. There's also a token sale and auction function which can be done inside Telegram and Discord. You can actually have a separate channel on your Discord where you onboard people, where they can buy NFTs and see listing notifications. Our marketplace enables streamlined buying, bidding, and selling. The only time you need to leave an app is to sign a transaction inside your wallet. We have a variety of features. For instance, we sync wallets with usernames. Which enables users to view each other's collections and also for us to verify NFT ownership and distribute automated rewards. There are sales and listings notifications on the platform to keep up with the collection news. We have a wide functionality inside a familiar interface, and it's easy to use for everyone. We have a full-scale marketplace We also have additional features, so you don't have to use multiple apps anymore. It's all in one place. We're integrating inside the homes of the communities, so the members won't have to switch between multiple apps anymore. By automating a lot of these features, we're eliminating clutter and fraud inside the communities. We raised our pre-seed from a top accelerator. We did a beta launch with a huge franchisee and have a bigger collab coming up with them. We monetize through a subscription for communities, which would be priced at $500 a month. There are also additional features priced separately, and of course a marketplace fee of 1% per transaction. Our team is set up to do this. Alexander is responsible for the Telegram and Discord integrations, as well as databases. Rustam for the blockchain part. and for everything else. Uh, we are raising our seed round to grow functionality and develop a web app to manage this functionality, and we're incorporated in Dubai Made in Free Zone.

Oh, there was a mic drop at the end of that pitch!

Wow.

All right, thank you, Dasha. We're now going to bring on the Q&A. Let's go.

Great, great pitch, Dasha.

Um, thank you.

The, uh, can you tell us a little bit, say again, the traction? Like, like you mentioned how Starbucks and Louis Vuitton are doing NFTs, and I think you had like a, you have one corporate partnership, but like how many NFTs are trading? I don't know what the exact right metric is, but how do you measure traction?

Yeah, so we have a partnership with Dada Brands, which is, uh, and, uh, Drink It, their, their company Drink It. And right now we did an airdrop with them and we're also talking about integrating the Web3 loyalty program into their app. So they have this huge digital infrastructure and yeah, they're also huge. They have over 900 locations around the world.

So what does that mean? That's awesome. What does that mean in terms of Like, are NFTs trading on Discord using—

Yeah, the NFTs can be traded inside Telegram. So we did for this launch, in particular Telegram. Right now we have an integration, a marketplace integration inside Telegram and an airdrops feature inside of it. We'll be soon connecting Discord as well. And we are also growing the extra functionality, you know, Yeah, got it.

So you did an airdrop and someone that got an airdrop NFT traded it to somebody else?

Yeah, they can trade it. Yeah.

Okay, awesome.

And you can just trade it. So I'm registered in the bot and you're registered in the bot. You can see my NFTs, you can bid, you can offer me a price, I can accept it and Awesome. So it also has a huge social aspect. You can just share with your friends.

Yeah, very cool. Um, and this, this is probably a dumb question, but like, do you have to partner with Telegram in some capacity to, to do this, or do you just, just do it?

At the moment, we're using a Telegram bot API, but we're looking to integrate the TON network, which would enable us to create even an even deeper integration into Telegram and even more streamlined experience for the users.

Very cool. Awesome. Jackson, Ezra?

Yeah, so how do you do it now? Is it just a— if I'm a user and I want to, how— what do I do? Do I go into a channel?

Do I go into a group?

What do I do?

Yeah, so, um, you can join the bot. Like, you could search it up on Telegram. You can join via link. Airdrops are done via a link with a specific— you join, you connect to wallets, so it leads you to the wallet app. You sign a transaction, so it's then connected to your Telegram profile. Then you can view your NFTs. You can view the NFTs of other users by typing out their username. And, uh, yeah, it's Trusted Bot.

Is that, is that the one that I'm interacting with? I should be.

Yes.

So with the, with the interactive to the bot, I will be able to buy and sell NFTs?

Yes. Uh, so there are smart contracts in place when you— so for example, if the NFT is listed for sale, then you click buy and then it leads you to the wallet app to sign the transaction. So inside the bot is an interface.

So like the NFT, right?

About OpenSea, we're just using a Telegram interface for the same thing.

Uh, is it a— is it a bot that I'm interested— is it a bot, the Easy NFT, or it's a bot, right?

It's a bot. Yeah.

Okay.

It's a bot that enables a marketplace. So you can create an entire marketplace with a bot.

Yes.

Pretty cool.

I sort of understand that. So how do you— if I want to do an airdrop and I call you up, how many people can you reach?

As many as you want. You just share—

Do I have to provide the list or do you give me the list?

Oh, okay. So you have a link. And then you can share it with whoever you want to share it with.

Okay, so you're, you're basically a third-party tool, a bot tool that enables me to do airdrop to my community?

Yes, and then if you have a community inside Telegram, it can be shared right away. People can view the entire collection inside of the community or in private messages with the bots.

So probably the biggest bottleneck for your product right now is the trust problem of Telegram users to you.

Um, not really, because we are non-custodial. So you sign the transaction in the, in the wallet app, so we don't have access to your wallets.

And that's all, all the open source code is on GitHub and everything, right? Otherwise, how would I know that you're non-custodial?

Yeah, so you sign a transaction for each action, you sign a transaction yourself. So when you're connecting a wallet, it shows you in the wallet tab, it shows you what rights you're giving us. And in this case, you're just confirming that the wallet is yours during the wallet connection process. And then if you want to send like money to someone or an NFT to someone, that's a separate transaction.

All right, thank you.

All right, thank you everybody. Thank you, Dasha. Moving on from the world of NFT to Stefano, BChained. All right, so BChained is a smart energy digital twin designed to cut recurrent inefficiency in production processes that unlocks a new distributed energy market with flexibility and CO2 credits from sustainable innovation. All right, Stefano, let's take it away.

Thank you.

I'm Stefano. I'm CEO of VeChain. Our ultimate goal is to unlock market assets to energy business consumers. Can I see the— can you see my screen? Hello, can you see my screen?

Yes.

Yes, we can.

Okay, now, first of all, because the energy, energy, energy business consumer have a lot of available energy assets. Second, because they don't have any control over the market, the market price. So during the last 1.5 years, their bills skyrocket more than 200%. For instance, we work with manufacturers like Tubos Reunidos and Tubasacs in Spain. They are leaders in the stainless steel mills for mainstream industry, but they also need a huge amount of energy resources and their bills are evaluated around millions. We have a solution for their problem. We built an energy— an artificial intelligence power digital twin to help them save money. We are like the ChatGPT for energy efficiency. Clients provide access to the real-time data from their factory, like consumption, setting of the machine, and production. We return answers like real-time instructions for their production system. So we execute them to cut unproductive consumption at their bills. But not only that, we get— we allow them to get new incomes from offering unused free capacity in the market. We would love to explain the secret sauce in a next meeting or later. We secure each energy transaction with a Web3 information system. Which is key to secure trading and market reporting. So our wallet collects energy assets and CO2 credits and allows consumers, business energy consumers, to direct sell those assets in the flexibility and in the ETS market. And this is a new and unexpected revenue stream. We did it different from the competitors. First, we addressed our solution to consumers and we never compromised the production continuity. Second, we identified the best cost-effective asset for the energy market to pave the way for clients to direct sell their asset. While working on a Spanish market, we are preparing for a UK and Nordic a Nordic challenge. We are a team of superheroes with the young talents with but more than 45-year experience in the energy tech space. Our business model is a software as a service where we make money through a setup cost and a monthly fee which is proportional to the savings that we provide to the customers. So far we grew with the B2B direct sales, but it's very slow. That is why we are now partnering with the professionals in the energy space, like a battery manufacturer in UK. But to get there, we need to add 6 times more capacity and asset along 3 years. So we need sales managers, data scientists, and web talents. This means that we are needing €600,000 fund. We already banking more than 20% from the Draper University program with thanks to VeChain to develop the Web3 interfaces. So at the end of this journey, we would love to set up a call with you to pave a new market asset and business opportunity not only for the consumers, but also to decarbonize the energy system. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Stefano. Now we're going to start our 5-minute Q&A.

Jackson, this sounds up your alley based on what you were saying.

To be completely frank, I didn't really understand the business model. So can you keep using just normal words, you know, like normie words? Can you explain what the business model is? Are you a creator of carbon credit?

No, exactly. First of all, we use— we built a digital twin that we install into an energy consumer, a steel manufacturer, for example. Sure. So this digital twin learns from real data like consumption per individual machine, the setting parameter, the working parameter of each machine, and the production. Sure. We crunch that data And we learn the pattern of the consumption and the artificial intelligence identify what are the key parameters. Let me say the rotation speed in a pulp, in a paper pulp, or the temperature in a furnace. How can we reduce or increase those parameters to optimize the consumption? And this is efficiency. Energy efficiency. So when we free that capacity, we you you can use that capacity as an asset for the energy market. Why? Because traditionally, the grid operator ERCOT in Texas need to keep balance the demand and the response. But now they use to compensate unexpected peak with extra production and especially with natural gas or fossil fuel power plant. What we foster is why don't big consumers reduce the consumption during a small amount of time, 1 hour, 2 hours, not supply interruption, small reduction, and they sell that availability to the market and get money out of it. Second, about the CO2 credits. We get information directly from smart meter per individual device. So from one side, we know the consumption, and from the other side, we can also know the CO2 emission generated to provide that kind of supply. And if we optimize the consumption, we can reduce the CO2 emission through optimization mechanisms. And this allowed us to use energy— sorry, to tokenize energy transaction and CO2 reduction and create tokens to certify what are the benefits of our technology for market reporting and also for a certification of the carbon footprint within the the company factory.

So, so just your business right now, you explained to me 2 parts. So one part is your ability to actually make more efficient the users of energy, right? And the second part is, will you— will you attempt to try to monetize that ability of yours, right?

Absolutely. Because in Europe— Do you have—

do you, do you have, do you have a, uh— we should, you know, our, our people should reach out to you. You should come to our, our conference in Vegas in March that we're gonna kick off a large sustainability summit, um, and with VeChain. And, um, um, you should, you should, you should be present. There's a lot of sustainability-related, um, parties, uh, who are going to be there, and you should be there. I think you're— I think if, if your AI little twin AI can actually do the first thing you talk about, um, I mean, it doesn't matter right now what the second part is. I mean, the monetization of it, it doesn't really matter now. If you can prove that you could do the first part, then there's definitely value in your company.

Yes, but the second part is the incentive that now energy consumer doesn't have, you know.

But there's, there's a lot more than That out there. I mean, if you could do that, right? There's a lot more than that.

Yeah, definitely.

It's a lot more than the 2 or 3 examples that you just gave.

Yeah, um, there is a study saying that you can reduce up to 19% in industrial, uh, manufacturer or industrial sector, uh, optimizing consumption using your AI bot, uh, using, uh, Demand response system to optimize consumption and to make efficiency within the industrial processes.

Okay.

This is not a study from me, study from grid operators.

So what you should be doing is you can do better than 19%, right?

Yes.

Okay. But this is the minimum target.

All right.

Thank you.

Welcome.

All right, thank you, Stefano. We're now going to move on to our last pitch for the day. All right, we have Alice from CryptSense Digital Group. CryptSense Digital Group is the fastest growing digital assets capacity building and management platform in Africa. Take it away, Alice.

Hi, everyone. I'm Alice from CryptSense. So CryptSense is the first digital assets capacity building and management platform in Africa. So Africa is the home to 1 billion people with a median age of 30 years. However, we have quite a number of challenges such as high unemployment rates, high inflation rates that create a lot of economic stress within Africa. This explains why the adoption of digital assets has actually accelerated within multiple African countries. We have Kenya actually leading with about 9% of the population holding and trading cryptocurrencies, followed by Nigeria and South Africa with about 8%. We have about 40% of Africa with less than 1% data trading in cryptocurrencies, and another 50% of African countries with no data in as far as cryptocurrency adoption is Our mission is to actually build capacity and systems that enable individuals and institutions in Africa benefit from the digital asset ecosystem. So our target market is family offices, finance institutions, funds, banks, fintechs, savings and credit companies, blockchain startups, Web2 institutions that are also transitioning to Web3, and students who are building a career in Web3. This is our amazing team, myself with more than 12 years experience in as far as technology is concerned. Irene and Jeff are also directors of the Africa Blockchain Center. And we have Avery, Dylan, and Frederick who are actually based in the United States and Europe respectively. They're actually also our algorithm traders and support us a lot in as far as empowering our team. Our focus areas are in 4 main areas. We have our academy that is gamified and incentivizes our users as they go through the learning process. We have our virtual trading floor where we actually build our own algorithms and facilitate institutional trades via APIs using these algorithms. We have the Cryptsense Bank where we facilitate OTC institutional payments, settlements, on-ramp, off-ramps, custody solutions, and financing solutions. And lastly, we have a launchpad where we support institutions to tokenize and launch across global platforms. So we generate revenue from service fees on our academy subscriptions. We charge transaction fees on our OTC trades. We charge management fees and also find interest on financing and generate revenue from performance fees. Once a customer onboards on our platform, they actually go through the learning process as an institution, and we help them set up their digital asset department where we look at policies and infrastructure support. support. We now link them up through our Cryptsense virtual trading floor where we link our APIs and support them in as far as increasing digital assets under management and increasing revenue internally. Then we facilitate their payments across border using cryptocurrencies through our bank settlements. And also using this, they get to save time and also costs in as far as transactions are concerned. And at the same time, we give them access to custodial solutions and also crypto-backed financing. Then we launch them on our launchpad where we tokenize their projects or their companies, their solutions, and launch them through our global network of partnerships. Our students go through our academy and we give them an opportunity to get placement and jobs through Kribsa's digital group. So far, we've actually managed to train 1,500 users all over the globe. We have traction across multiple countries, and at the same time, our goal is actually to empower 10,000 traders within Africa. We've managed to manage $1 billion worth of assets and generated $70,000 worth of revenue since our inception. We have a global team and also more than 20 global partners. We have tokens and are fundraising both through token and equity. Our institutional partners are some of the best top global partners you would expect, both in as far as education is concerned, banking and fintech exchanges, and we also have infrastructure and impact partners. Thank you. Join us in building the future of Web3 in Africa.

Awesome. Now we move on to Q&A.

Very cool.

Which—

what, are you in Africa, Alice?

Yes, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Oh, Nairobi.

Yeah, that's—

Nairobi is the new spot.

Yes.

Do you know the Gridless team? Gridless?

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, it's really, really interesting. Well, I guess, are you seeing adoption in any one token over the other or any one country over the other, any particular application over the other? Like, what are the biggest things happening? happening with on Curve Sense?

Well, I would actually say in as far as making payments across more African countries is a headache, it's a really huge headache. It takes a lot of time, even days to actually settle payments from country to country. Yeah. So this creates a lot of problems in as far as cross-border transactions are concerned and also part of the reason as to why, you know, Africa's adoption is accelerating. So majority of volumes that are moving across Africa are actually stablecoin volumes to settle payments, you know, across different institutions.

So that's the biggest use case is the, just the classic cross-border payments. What, what's, what's second and third?

Education. Yeah. Because we have still huge population that hasn't gotten access to these types of technology. Basically they don't understand, or maybe there's no access to good connectivity, or maybe it's just, you know, the adoption gap. Yeah. That is there. Language barrier is also a huge challenge. So even as we build our courses, we are also looking at ways to translating it into different languages so that we can capture the masses. Yeah, there's also financial exclusion. We have so many people who are unbanked in Africa, and crypto definitely brings a very good use case to onboard these people onto, you know, affordable products on the blockchain.

Yeah, I think I heard— I forget if it was crypto or Bitcoin, probably both. Crypto or Bitcoin to GDP, uh, is like the, the highest, like 5 countries are all in Africa, I think. Uh, I think I heard that. Yeah, that's fascinating.

That's true.

Is it true there's a premium for Bitcoin in either Kenya or Nigeria?

Actually, Nigeria.

I wouldn't say that.

I wouldn't say the same for Kenya. Yeah, but Nigeria, because of the economic crisis that is happening right now, and you know, the fact that crypto has actually been banned, uh, trying to accelerate the adoption of Central bank digital currencies, it's causing a lot of economic strain, in turn also accelerating the adoption of crypto within Nigeria itself, right? And, uh, yeah, and, and at the same time also increasing the value of Bitcoin.

Yeah, I think there's definitely opportunity there, um, just like what Cyprus did, uh, back in the days for Bitcoin, right?

Yeah. How do you, how do you Um, how do you— what— how do you build moats around this, this business, right? It's clearly a huge market. Um, the— it can be a great business, it can be a great service business sort of without, without moats, but how do you like take over all of Africa with a company like this and not, and not have competition come in and lower margins and things?

Basically, um, uh, you just have to build a product, right, that can go out into the masses, especially an education product. Yeah, which is where I go back. You need to go back down to the communities, to the people. You need to find ways to very easily communicate to them what this type of technology does and how it revolutionizes, you know, the entire financial sector. Basically, it boils down to going back down to the communities, speaking their language. So basically also translation of the content is is, you know, a big opportunity in as far as the education sector is concerned. So the first thing I always, you know, tell different people and users is you must first understand it, go down to the, you know, basic processes, understand the basics of blockchain, of crypto as an application, and then now they can begin onboarding once they show good understanding.

Yeah.

It sounds like you're building a brand. Right? Like I like I'm I'm loyal to my college.

Yeah.

No other reason than I went there and that's a brand to me.

Interesting.

Yes.

Basically yes.

Awesome.

And so was back.

All right, everybody. Thank you. That brings us to the end of our demo day. Thank you, Matt, Jackson, and Asra. We got to hear so. some amazing pitches today. And also for our audience that is tuned in, if you had any favorite pitch from today, let us know in the comments. And last but not the least, I'd like to thank all our founders that got to pitch today. That was— that takes a lot of guts. Of course, they've been working hard. It brings in a lot of passion. But yeah, also, if anybody has any questions for our investors, Now is your chance. In the comments, uh, let them know they're right here. Or you can leave us your comments later on, uh, we'll be happy to receive them as well. But yes, um, if you want to learn more about our programs, you can always log on to draperuniversity.com. Uh, applications are open for our next Hero Training cohort. All right, and with that, Moe, our DJ, has an ending video. Thank you, everybody.