Eco-Friendly Rockets? This Startup’s Changing Space Forever | Meet The Drapers Global: New York

Entrepreneurs and help them secure a spot in the finale. Who will rise to the challenge and secure the funding to, to turn their dreams into reality? Let's find out together on season 7 of Meet the Lakers! All right, New York City. I think we're gonna find a lot of entrepreneurs here, whether they're down here on the street selling hot dogs or up there in that big building doing big deals. There are entrepreneurs everywhere here. Should we meet up with a few entrepreneurs?

Have my own business.

Well, how about later?

Maybe, but I haven't even brainstormed yet.

So how about we brainstorm right now?

Right now.

Should we try it?

Yeah.

Let's tiene visión de negocios.

No sé.

Sí. Yeah.

Qué tipo de food? Food. Como esto.

Yeah.

Qué tipo de comida? Latino.

Latino.

Oh bueno. That was fun. We're on Seventh Avenue. This is the fashion avenue. How's my fashion? Pretty good. So are you thinking of starting your own business? No.

No?

Gotta crawl before you walk.

Not yet, but later on maybe?

Yes.

What kind of business?

I would like to open up a laundromat in Harlem.

Oh!

Make the business more reliable and more credible.

That's a great idea. We're looking around for the great entrepreneurs of the world. Maybe that guy. Hey, you want to be on? Have you ever started a business?

I haven't started a business.

I'm not doing this, but I have ambitions of trying.

Good. What are you gonna do? I don't know.

I'm trying to protect my dream though, so I don't know if I should share the details. Oh, always share.

Always share.

Yeah?

Always, because it gets better and better the more you share.

What if you steal my dream?

I will— I got too many dreams of my own.

Hey, well, I'll tell you this. Whoever has a dream out there, I wish you nothing but the best. And if you want to achieve, you gotta chase it wholeheartedly. Every day you wake up, grind, grind, grind, and push toward that dream. And if you push hard enough, one day it will come true. What's your name?

My name is Reggie. Reggie, I'm Tim. Good to meet you.

God bless you, Tim.

This is great. Excuse me, sir.

You don't got to be Rockefeller to help a fellow.

I don't have anything but Bitcoin. Bitcoin? Do you have a Bitcoin wallet?

Bitcoin wallet?

That's about to save the world.

I could send Bitcoin.

That's a very convenient answer, I'll tell you that. That answer is very convenient.

Terrific. God bless you, brother. Thank you. God bless you.

I wish you nothing but the best, all right?

New York, my gosh, it just keeps thriving.

They've been through so much here.

And they just keep coming back.

Good morning, I'm Pierangelo Raiola, the CEO and co-founder of Nora LTI.

I'm Erin Dewicki, and I'm the CEO of Lime Alert.

I'm Brenda Ong, and I'm the COO of Lime Alert.

I'm Lucas Poça, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Takenos.

My name is Jesse Michelberg, and we at Reaction Dynamics are delivering critical space assets.

What would a million-dollar investment mean?

Nothing, because we raised— will be just a testament To our vision, and we can enable all of you to use our product globally.

A million dollars would help us to test our product-market fit.

And further, would allow us to test for multiple diseases from a single tick.

Very proud to be a profitable company. The thing is that in order to grow, you have to invest.

It would enable us to achieve our first spaceflight.

I want to get the money!

All right, welcome everybody to Meet the Drapers!

Whoa!

It is so great to be here in the Big Apple. We have 2 new Drapers here, 2 old Drapers and 2 young and new. We have Ryan Bloomer. Ryan is an entrepreneurial investor.

New York's my home city. So I'm really excited for the entrepreneurs to come and bring it today.

We have Lauren Burnham. She is really extraordinary. She was the 6th employee from TikTok. That was before anybody even could tick.

Just really excited to be here and excited to make everyone meet the Draper famous as well as TikTok famous.

And to my left is Polly Draper, actress, writer, producer, director. She has received a Writers Guild of America Award But I never knew she won. Congratulations! High five! That was a high five, old people high five. Here's the big question. What are you going to look for in an entrepreneur? Lauren, you can tell me, how are you going to mold that into a TikTok?

I think it's all about communication and having that hook. And what's that one-liner, that elevator pitch that's gonna be really TikTokified?

And Ryan?

What's the problem that you're solving? The product typically changes multiple times over the course of any entrepreneurial journey. What is your insight to be able to change and solve that problem?

Polly, what about you? You've been on this show so many times you've become like an extraordinary venture capitalist.

The passion for their, their product, and if something is about a cause that I believe in, I'm going to be more inclined probably to Crystal Ball has similar passion.

It would be remiss of me not to mention AI here. It's going to take all of our jobs. Then our jobs are going to be more interesting and we're going to move to another level. So with that, let's bring on our first entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

You're never ready to do a startup. It's not an easy decision to make. So for all of us, we had to give up good jobs and a stable income. But if we don't do it now, there's no other time in our lives that we will be able to do it.

I grew up in a fairly financially unstable type household, and I always vowed I would give my kids stability. I have 2 kids. This is not a great time in my life to be not having a stable job and starting my own business. But at the end of the day, like, I'm helping to create a world where my girls are seeing me setting goal and go after it because I do want to see them see a team of women in science, like, kick ass and do this.

Actually coming out and being in that startup environment is very, very refreshing. It is very challenging. I would say, like, the journey has been like a roller coaster. So far we're enjoying every minute of it.

Just started our first field trial, so we're in the process of collecting ticks and bringing them to the lab, and we are going to go out into a field with a white sheet and drag it and Collect them in fields too.

Not something we thought we would be doing one year ago.

No.

My family, I think when I came to MIT, they thought I was just going to come here and find a normal job. I think the last thing they expected me to do was to pursue entrepreneurship. But for them, it's also that part of them that seeing their daughter being able to pursue her dreams, being able to do what she needs to do, I think my entire life I've been considered an underdog.

I didn't grow up with the right background, and yet I've continued to defy expectations. I was a 5-foot-3 Division 1 soccer goalkeeper, you know. Like, I don't like when people tell me I'm not going to succeed at something because I love to prove people wrong, that I'm just going to fight harder and be a success no matter what.

Who would have been your first Who would you first call if you do win?

I'll call my parents. I think they will be secretly proud of me.

I like the secretly.

I think like New York is a place with a lot of energy. It's always bustling and people here are always doing something interesting. Every time I'm here, I always head down to Urban Hospital. I go for a taste of Singapore, especially when I miss home.

I'm looking forward to a really good meal, checking out some museums while we're here, and seeing some really good artwork.

MoMA is one of my favorites.

MoMA is great. The people here, they always seem to be hustling, and like there's always something to do in New York. People are eating their lunch by the bench, just enjoying like life.

Green spaces like this are just so important for people's mental health in general.

Clearly having it be so vibrant here is New York is very different.

I think you, you really see all sorts of people here, like from all over the world. It's a melting pot of many, many, many cultures. So there's definitely always nerves every time we pitch. I think even if we've done this like 10,000 times, we still have nerves.

There was a helicopter hovering in the background. There were sirens. All right, so I'm Erin. This is Brenda, and we are Lyme Alert. We are the first home tick testing kit for Lyme disease.

Does it work?

It works.

How long do you have to have the tick in you before it counts?

So that's based on a human test, not on— we're testing the tick, not the patient. So for example, this is my patient.

So we gotta find the tick and send it to you?

You know, we put a lot of work and preparation into having a really cohesive pitch, so to not even have the chance to start that pitch and get interrupted, it felt really disrespectful. This is my patient. He found a tick on himself over a month ago. It was embedded behind his ear, which is a common spot, and the pediatrician said, just wait, see if you get symptoms like a fever or a bullseye rash. But those were symptoms he never got, so by the time he ended up in my office, he had a huge Hot, red, swollen knee. At age 12, he has Lyme arthritis.

Hey, would you do something? Will you check behind my ear?

I've been—

it's that one.

You know what, you should see a certified physician.

We had a possible emergency there.

You know, we weren't really sure how to respond to that. As somebody who works in orthopedics, definitely out of my scope. Healthcare is super expensive. So people delay treatment. When you do get an appointment, blood tests miss up to 60% of early-stage cases. So many people think they don't have Lyme disease when they actually do.

Is this a blood test or a pee test?

We are testing the tick. So if you find a tick on you or your dog or your horse, you test it and you'll immediately know.

Out of all the ticks that you've tested, what percent of those have Lyme?

54% of ticks in the New England and Greater Atlantic region, like here in New York, Have Lyme disease.

Lyme? Oh boy.

To build awareness about Lyme disease is super important. A lot of people here in New York don't know you can get Lyme disease sitting in Central Park. So our solution is an easy-to-use home test kit. If you find a tick anywhere, crush it. The solution inside works just like a COVID test, and that will clearly tell you if your tick carries disease or not and what steps you should take next.

If we're at 54%, if we've got a tick I'm gonna put a tick on us.

Yeah, you might as well do that.

We're almost there.

So if you treat everyone with antibiotics, then antibiotic resistance is a real growing threat, and there are superbugs starting to form. So the global Lyme disease testing market is valued at over $10 billion last year.

But Lyme disease diagnostics in humans, not in ticks.

So we are the first one. So the status quo is either you find a tick and you mail it to a lab, which is expensive, or you get a blood test. But the blood test missed 60% of early-stage cases. We are the first one coming up with a home tick testing kit. You can know if you need prophylactic antibiotics, which prevent disease.

The problem with this disease is not the lack of a cure. The problem really is in the lack of an accurate diagnostic tool.

We are a team of 4. We're recent graduates from MIT.

So 4 MIT students, is that going to be a problem down the road? What if 2 years down the road when one of them just decides to bail? You know, and all that stuff happens that normally happens with entrepreneurs.

The stories we're getting from people who have been personally affected by this are really driving us. We could be doing anything, and frankly, we could have really well-paying jobs, but we chose each other and we chose this problem.

Is it standard consumer behavior to remove the tick and keep it, or do people typically throw it away?

Yeah, that's what inspired it. I am a healthcare provider and I get calls every single week from people who have found a tick and say, I found a tick on me, what do I do with it? And my answer typically is, is nothing. I'm going to treat you just in case. But that's also contributing to this antibiotic resistance issue.

So we're going to have to train humans to save the bug.

To pull out the tick.

Pull out the bug and save it.

This is one of the things we were hoping to achieve also, like some awareness About the treatment for Lyme disease.

And the go-to-market is B2B?

Go-to-market is B2B, but it can also be B2C2B.

So that's business to consumer to bug? Business— sorry, B2B2C.

There we go.

But I love that.

Are payers paying for this?

Not yet, because it doesn't exist in the market yet.

Is there a through line to why they should?

This prevents a lot of healthcare So the average cost per person to treat Lyme disease is over $4,000.

Yeah, that might be the bigger problem, paying for all of the treatments.

Lyme disease cost the U.S. healthcare system over $1.3 billion last year, and antibiotic resistance cost over $4 billion. So this is a huge issue.

Terrific. Well, thank you so much for coming and being on Meet the Drapers.

Yeah, you know we kind of had our prepared pitch and there was a lot of questions in the middle of it. It made the flow a little bit tricky, but I think we did okay.

Maybe they should change the name to Tick Tock.

Oh, I like that.

For our very first fund, we saw a diagnostics company and I asked a bunch of investors about diagnostics and they all said stay away from diagnostics.

Pfizer made a lot on those. COVID test.

But like, for a startup, it's so hard to get the distribution. It's so hard to get a cost that makes sense.

Lauren, what'd you think?

I'm concerned about changing consumer behavior to take the bug out, keep it, and then crush it. I feel like there's a handful of steps that are kind of adverse to what your normal reaction would be. I've taken a tick out of my 3-year-old son, and the first thing I did was throw it in the Yeah.

Everybody hates bugs. No one's gonna be like, ooh, I have to take this point in it.

Yeah.

You need a quick test and a quick cure.

Yeah.

I think the cure would solve the real problem.

Then we got some.

Yeah, and I was so all in.

Lime alert! All right, let's bring on our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

My story begins a little bit before me with my with my grandfather, who came to Canada as a child refugee after war. World War II provided, you know, me and my family with all kinds of opportunity to pursue our dreams. For me, that actually meant studying neuroscience and genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. I kind of call that my, my first life, after which I enlisted into the military and spent a few years in the Middle East. That's my second life. And when I came home, I pursued a master's in business. That was my third life. Each of these 3 areas came together to allow me to excel in a role in the space Space is a part of our everyday lives, whether we like it or not. If you are, you know, swiping your credit card, that's bouncing off a satellite. If you're shipping goods to your loved ones across the country, that's guided and navigated by satellite technology. If you're checking the weather, this is all coming from satellite technology.

To have a thriving human economy, we need a robust space economy.

I never knew that I was going to be an entrepreneur. I think my parents probably always thought I was a little crazy. Going from academia to military to business is very winding. You know, I found myself in that journey and it's brought me, you know, to where I am today. And I'm currently a student at Columbia University studying negotiations with a thesis in space and defense.

How do you feel about the fact that you're working on rockets?

Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty proud of myself. I don't know if I should like— I'm thinking of like getting a little deep, but—

You get deep.

Yeah.

I mean, how does some— If you're comfortable sharing.

How does somebody say that they struggle with mental health, you know? And it's, I mean, it's a struggle every day, but what makes me get up in the morning is the fact that there's a team of dedicated people who care about each other, who care about what it is that we're looking to do, changing the way that human space travel and space logistics influences the world, I get to show up to work every day with people who really care, and I love it. I think my younger self would be proud. You know, when I was a kid, when people used to ask me what you wanted to be when you grow up, I used to say space cowboy, and I like to think that, you know, today I'm somewhat of a space cowboy.

It feels like everyone in New York is a bit of an entrepreneur, so whether you're going out and getting drinks or sitting by the park, you know, you meet somebody And they're building a business, and it just makes it a fantastic opportunity for networking. There's all kinds of you know beautiful communities, fantastic restaurants, a great vibe, a great culture. I'm a big fan of sushi. There's a lot of great omakase around here. I'm still finding my way around New York. I just moved here, so it's hard to know what I. And so being here at Columbia with so many different communities, cultures, and nationalities is a really great fit. Columbia has been around for quite some time. Obviously has its foundings in an Ivy League school.

Actually.

We actually just recently had the president of Chile. Other folks like Hillary Clinton are teaching classes here, so there's a really high caliber of professors. The program is the number one in the country, and as a result, my classmates are just really top-tier.

They come from places like South America, Africa, Europe.

I've never been in a place that, you know, everyone you ask just loves it here. Everyone is just emphatic about being based in New York, living here. It's a bit like jumping out of a plane. You know, there's a lot of preparation that goes into packing your parachute, but once you jump out of that plane, ride with the wave. So I'd like to tell you all about my story, but that begins far before me with my grandfather, a man who had come to this country with $2 stuffed into his left shoe. It was his relentless work ethic that would separate him from the rest, his obsession with economic development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The passion with leveraging technology to build resilient communities has been deeply instilled in me and in our pursuit of a stronger and more resilient society. We at Reaction Dynamics, we are delivering critical space assets and satellite infrastructure for governments, agencies, and commercial operators alike. Our launch and delivery vehicle systems can be deployed both from Earth or from space, ushering in a new era. I really took the perspective that just being on the show was a win and trying to make the most of the opportunity. We've raised nearly $10 million in private capital to date and have secured an additional $10 million in government grants. But we're also here to service the communications and entertainment sector, launching the network in social networking.

God, you are smooth. But you started by talking about your dad and—

My grandfather.

Your grandfather. And then all of a sudden we're talking about satellites and rockets and why is one connected to the other?

Well, it's important to me and it's sort of my origin story. You know, for me, my grandfather was a real estate mogul leveraging technology to build really resilient communities. And in my role today at Reaction Dynamics, we're doing exactly that.

So it's more about your grandfather escaping to the U.S. and now you're defending the U.S.

Exactly.

Absolutely. And I'd like to actually invite all of you to our launch pad next August as we demonstrate the world's first and only hybrid rocket to fire in the vacuum of space.

In space? Outside the atmosphere?

Yes.

You can fire this rocket?

Yes. Our rocket uses hybrid propulsion. I'll give you maybe an intro to rocket science. I do think that rocket science is a bit tough to explain in under 2 minutes. Hybrids are a lot like logs burning in a fire. As a log burns, it reduces in size, which reduces its surface area. So at any given moment, less of the log is burning, which produces less heat and less energy. What we've been able to do is patent the engine architecture, leveraging fuel very similarly to an onion, where there are layers of fuel with increasing gradients Maintaining our performance but increasing storability. It's non-toxic, it's non-hazardous, it makes it incredibly easy to use, maintain, operate, and that's why our first customer is the U.S. Department of Defense.

Now you've got $10 million in orders, is that what I heard?

So we've raised $10 million in private capital to date. We've matched that with another $10 million from the government.

Oh, okay.

Any revenue?

I think each of the judges sort of had their own relationship with the company. Tim was really focused on our revenues, our customer traction. We're actually on track to do $5 to $10 million in revenue at the end of this year. That contract will turn into a quarter of a billion dollar contract in 2 years' time.

Have you launched the rockets yet?

We've tested the engine over 300 times. It works. Next August, it will be the world's first hybrid rocket to fire in the vacuum of space, which has really big implications for human space travel and space logistics. It lowers costs incredibly. And it makes things very easy to store and stockpile.

He gave me a little remedial class before we did this because I was confused.

They all understood that we were doing something really critical, and I think Polly in particular really took hold of that and saw the value in it.

I asked why Elon Musk doesn't use this, and he said he's invested billions and billions of dollars in this certain way, and it's like a tree that has roots.

It's hard for a big company to shift.

It's hard for a big company to shift.

That's why entrepreneurs succeed.

Yeah, but the government— doesn't Elon Musk have some stake?

We're actually going to be working with Gravitics and SpaceX on this US government contract.

So you're gonna go up on a SpaceX rocket and then you're gonna launch off of that?

Launch his rocket.

Our 6 rockets will be housed in a Gravitics station, and that Gravitics station will be housed in Starship.

People are gonna be going up in Starships.

So to start, it will only be payloads.

Do they all bounce off each other? Like, if you shoot 6 at once in 6 different directions, do you get that— the thrust off of each of them?

So do you mean the satellites or the rockets?

Your rockets. If they're stuck together and you shoot them against each other, wouldn't they go a lot faster?

Okay, that's an interesting question. Yeah, Tim's a character, but most people who who have, you know, an incredible amount of success are. It takes somebody who's got vision to really pick and choose those companies that will succeed, and he's got that in him. They are housed and they will launch individually. Within each satellite, we have up to 200 kilograms of capacity. Sometimes that's just one satellite. Other times, if, for example, payloads are only 50 kilograms, we can launch 4 payloads at a time, and that's called rideshare.

Jesse, thank you so much. Thanks for being a part of Meet the Drapers.

Well, it's over, or it's just beginning. We'll find out soon.

I think he's fantastic in every single way. Explaining so that I can understand what he's talking about, it's quite a feat. There, there's no foothold for me, and he explained it, that the onion, each layer gets hotter. That's a vivid image. It gave me an idea. I think Elon must go in a zillion different directions and Now I'm confusing everybody, but I felt like when he explained it to me, somewhere deep inside I got it.

Seems like he's creating economies of scale in what's typically a very CapEx-intensive business to send things to space, which I think is, is important.

So let's bring on our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

Good morning, I'm Pierangelo Raiola, the CEO and co-founder of Nora LTI. As you can probably hear, I'm originally from Italy. I'm born in Napoli, which is in the south, but when I was 7, I had this crazy passion for the mountains and I started doing a competition in alpine skiing. And very soon my, my dream was to be an Olympian ski racer. I was drafted Professionally, when I was 17 years old, I had the pleasure to travel the world. In this particular moment of my life, I was just about competing at the highest level. Unfortunately, when it comes to any sports, you are exposed to, you know, injuries. I made all the possible wrong choices, and that unfortunately culminated with a chronic deficiency of my knee, which compromised my professional alpine skiing career. When I immediately stopped, I worked on our family business. When I was an athlete, I wanted to compete at the highest level. With all due respect for my family, I wanted to recreate the same intensity that I had when I was skiing. There was only one place, which was, of course, the United States of America. Since I stepped my foot in the United States, I have only one mission in life. I want to create an environment in which anyone has access to a better life. It comes with empowering ourselves with the right information. This is all that matters, to be honest, you know, like, because it's something that I've experienced myself. To be successful in this business, we want to count at the end of the year how many people feel better, they're free of pain, or they just are more self-confident because they're taking care of our health. When you are an athlete, you're very present because you compete every day. You don't know whether you're going to be in the national team or you're going to make the Olympics. And I would say that that's the same as an entrepreneur. Like, you never know whether you're going to be successful or not, and you got to be crazy to try, right? There's a lot of uncertainty on the outcome, but what is certain is what we can do every day to improve ourselves and to improve the business. I've been in New York for seven years. It's the best city in the world, in my opinion. With the right mindset here, you just can grow both professionally and personally. The first moment I was in love. One of the beautiful things about the city is that it's always full on. It's 24/7, which I can imagine that can be chaotic for a lot of people. But I think it's the perfect platform from entrepreneurs or any other person that. Want to succeed. Here on the piers, we have so many courts where we play with friends, we do tournaments, even just pick up, which is a great way to meet new people. If you like outdoor sports, I think you will find the perfect vibe here in New York City. Of course, being Italian, one of my passions is, of course, the food. I mean, when you are in New York, you're just amazed by the quality and the different type of cuisine that you're surrounded. So of course, I will always go for Italian. It's incredible because there's a couple of restaurants that are even better than in Italy. Even after seven years, I'm here to discover day to day, and I think that's one of the main reasons why I chose this city to live in.

It reminds me of the good old days when I was competing.

You have the moment while you're preparing, rehearsing, then you go on stage. I would say one word.

I think, you know, it all comes down to a story. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Olympian ski racer. And when I made it professionally, as all of you that practice sports, I've experienced injuries. I spent hours and hours navigating on the internet trying to find the right solution, and because of it, I made wrong choices. I had unnecessary steps, late intervention that culminated with a chronic deficiency on my knee. I couldn't ski top level anymore.

You, you feel the power of The city, there were the skyscrapers, fully Manhattan. I don't think there's any better environment to have a live event, to be honest, because you, you get the New York energy.

But the same Piranjio right now will have Nora. Nora is the first AI assistant that enabled me to navigate with confidence and precision. With Nora, I can chat about my symptoms. I can talk to the agent, so instantly I can have tailored, actionable educational content.

What was the problem you had that an AI would have helped you with?

I think all of it.

Like, we have so many acute injuries, very small injuries that we don't take care of. It's all about all the symptoms so that we can be preventative. A clear example is my ankle. I twisted my ankle just walking. I made the wrong choices. I thought, you know, I just could have healed by myself, but in reality I had a torn ligament. I should have gone to an orthopedic immediately. I lost 2 to 3 months, and then I had a deficiency. A deficiency that then, because I was working in a different way, it impacted my cartilage on my knee.

I felt the energy in that specific moment with all the jury that they were really grasping what I've been through as a consumer.

From the very little things that we don't take care on a very daily basis, we pay the bill.

Is this for the consumer?

It's for the consumer, because consumers, when they are in pain, they turn to content. You want to empower them. How do we empower them? First, you want to chat. Words will only take you so far. We gotta see you. Then we can understand whether you have mobility impairment, strength deficiency, just with simple imaging, motion tests. Then we provide precise care options that you can navigate.

Why are you better than all the other AI for medicine? General AI companies can provide me with a lot of good medical I love the style.

I think it's very direct, comes from what I would call it the old school.

I've been, I've been an athlete, so I love to talk about track record. We have big domain expertise. The founding team has built a previous startup, a screening solution in computer vision with 6-digit revenue. We will always see the rise of AI agents for traditional workflows. You want to provide the level of integration with also what you can purchase. We are in New York. Where is the orthopedic that I can see? Or maybe a dietitian? All the information must be fine-tuned precisely through the best clinical guideline for you.

Can you walk us through this? What do you do? You have some— an app on your—

Probably I took for granted a couple of terms that, because I come from digital health, in my opinion, they were easy to understand. But in reality, again, I could have been More a storyteller.

I want to give you a precise example of the most successful use case that we had so far. Julia had a problem on her shoulder. For 6 months, she went to primary care doctor, she tried CBD products, nothing seemed to work. She came to the agent. Nora was able to dequalify with very simple LLM chatbot and then a computer vision range of motion test that most likely was a nerve impingement. And we connected Julia with a neurologist. Now Julia is free of pain.

You inputted a scan of her shoulder?

Correct. It's all about imaging. Very simple things.

She did it herself?

Yeah, she did it.

She had the imaging, she had the CT scan or whatever, and she put it into this?

I used a couple of terms like imaging, computer vision. At the end of the day, it's much simpler than this. Our phone has a camera.

Our images and certain movements, we can understand whether you have a very severe condition When I talk about range of motion test, it can be, can you just extend your elbow? Any limit in your mobility, your strength? And every single data, it's pivotal.

Does your AI incorporate the scan from a CT?

As of today, no, but this is a tremendous feature requested by most of our consumers.

Yeah, that would make it much more interesting.

I know what I bring to the table, and I'm sure that if there's any specific weakness It has been fully addressed with all our team members, which are rock stars.

What's the go-to-market? How do you want to roll this out?

We wanted to have immediate iteration, so that's why we have 400,000 people in less than 6 months.

And what does that mean, 400,000 people?

400,000 people have used our product. We're already more than 50 enterprises in the marketplace, and all of these enterprises, they want to white-label our agent for care navigation. So imagine that The agent is not only available on your fingertip, but has a level of integration with the enterprise.

We're going to have to end. It's starting to rain. All right, great to hear, Angelo. Thank you very much.

A lot of interaction.

That's what we love here. It's always beautiful to express yourself and get insights on what you're building.

Oh, umbrellas! I didn't know we had them. That's great.

I would like someone to give me a remedial course in what he does. You take it and you put it up to your Shoulder.

That seems like the end of it.

Have you used ChatGPT or anything yet? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

So you can ask it anything. You can put in anything.

But I mean, physically about yourself, my shoulder hurts this way, this way, and this way. And they're like, well, it could be this. This is your specific shoulder that we're talking about. That's the difference.

So they get more data that's more specific.

I think it's It's a custom in Japan. If you're under the same umbrella, you have to get married.

You have to kiss.

Oh, kiss.

Okay. You have to kiss. Oh, this show is so much fun. Let's move on to our next entrepreneur and let's hope that they're very hardy. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

It's my first startup. I'm from a small town in the south of the Patagonia. When internet came specifically to my home, like, I got hooked. I believe that that was the moment when my journey started. I spent hours trying to understand how the computer worked. I've discovered this very specific hobby, which was like ordering freebies and samples. So I said like, okay, maybe I write about this. That was the beginning of a blog that went viral in Argentina. I was 15 years old and And I made that into a business. I was getting like $3,000, $4,000 checks at my mom's name, and I used to ask my mom to cash them. And she's like, I don't want to cash these checks. What are you doing online? And I was like, no, no, it's legit. It's like I have this blog. She's like, what is a blog? And I think that at the end, like, she just trusted me and said like, okay, let's cash these checks. That went on till I was 17, 18. I started offering my services and that's when I discovered the cross-border freelancer world. It was very hard for me to cash that money or to make it available to spend it locally. It was not as hard as the beginning when I had to make my mom cash the checks, but it was still hard. And I made my own tricks, you know, around it, like how to move the money. Like, that's when I think that everything that Then became Takeno Start. Beginning of 2021 and like the pandemic, I had a lot of friends asking me like, how do you get your money out of here? Like you work in fintech. So I pitched the company where I was working in. We should like build something around this product, this segment. And I was like, yeah, it's not our focus. It's like we do other kind of products. I was like, okay, I just like quit and build it on my own. Like, you're making a lot of money, you could buy your home being very young. Yeah, I could, but I want to do this. I mean, she was, she was always supportive. She sees me like very happy building what I've built. I was a kid and I used to watch Friends. So it's like, oh, this is a place like somewhere else, like very, very far. It's kind of watching something from the movies, but like in real life. So the first time I came, I came with my family, so I was like 15 years old. It was like a great experience coming from the small city in the south of Bologna to one of the biggest cities in the world. It was shocking but amazing. It's pretty inspiring being in one of the world's most important financial districts. All the movements, all the people gets in your energy. What I love about New York is the artistic scene, and I love the SoHo scene, visiting stores, Brooklyn, and see the murals on the street. It's like that— those are the things that I enjoy the most. 2 years ago, with one of my co-founders and my best friend, we made our burgers tour in New York. You know, it's pretty fun when I come here. Like, I always remember that And it brings me like great memories. Yeah, I'm more like one-on-one meeting kind of person. Pitch is not kind of my thing, but I practice a lot. I was very excited. Well, hello everyone. I'm Lucas Posada. I'm the founder and CEO of Taqueros, a financial app for cross-border workers, freelancers, and contractors. You can Open an account and access virtual account in the U.S. and Europe, and get instant access to payments or cash or even stablecoin.

Wait, so who's paying whom?

Yeah, from Europe, the U.S., the rest of the world.

And they're paying people in Latin America.

And they are paying people in Latin America.

They're using Bitcoin. What are they using?

I love that he's pretty fun. He's heard so many pitches in his life. It's been around forever. So I think he knows. Also to make you feel like comfortable. They start with fiat, on-ramp that into stablecoin, and that's the way we disburse it.

And then from stablecoin back to the other fiat?

Yeah, so we have 50% of them that use the stablecoin.

Oh, they just keep it?

They just keep the stablecoin and send it to different wallets.

You've got so much competition. Why, why you?

I don't fully agree. I think there is value around brands. We are the only app that today is reaching about 10K monthly active users, and we did it bootstrapping it. It's very common for the fintech industry to be very well funded. We didn't take that path. In our 4th, 5th month, we were generating profits, and now we— thank you very much. Now, looking around, you really feel that you are in this place where everything is Yeah, so why, why raise money?

You got your— you got it.

There are about 50 million people in the region that are working, that at least once a year they're working for another country or someone in another region. We want to take like around 6-7% of that market to reach a $1 billion in revenues company. We need a little bit of boost to capture different markets, to launch new products.

Love to learn your monetization strategy. Strategy? Is it fees?

Is it subscription?

Or the user gets to deposit for free, but then we charge different fees depending on the products that you're using to withdraw the funds, to take the funds out of the system. We also work with a yield system. It's very segmented, but it's like we try to be competitive on every one of them.

So is the competition based on price or is it based on something else?

There are some competition in price, like in the financial ecosystem. The community today is eager for the kind of products we are building. That's one of the key aspects of what makes Takenos Takenos. But I don't see that going deep into the future. We are creating like a brand that people love, and we are like reaching new segments that are a little bit far of the traditional developer or designer. We work with therapists, we work with teachers, and even like fortune tellers. That there is, there is this Chinese saying that water is fortune, is wealth. So I kind of took that message from nature in that way, like the people like appreciate how the brand reaches them.

So the brand is the main unique differentiator? Like what is the particular problem that that you're solving for a therapist. I mean, there's even companies that are now starting to verticalize their wallets and payment systems for very specific people. Like, how do you compete?

So if you take the example of Fiverr or freelancer.com, yes, they verticalize, but you have like more than 400 platforms in Latin America that are reaching the different kind of segments. So it's getting hyper-segmentated, and they don't want to invest or like develop the financial infrastructure. So what happens at the end is they ended up working with PayPal or Payoneer, whose infrastructure is like not really built for this use case. So at the end, like, they get a pretty bad user experience.

Exactly. Why would they upload the money to your wallet?

Basically, there are like 3 big issues around the cross-border transaction, and these issues come for like small amount transactions. So they are slow, they take from 3 to 5 business days. They are Very expensive. We're talking from 5 to 10% on fees. And it's also hyper-segmentated. So it's like you have to go from one step to the other. So you start in like an international wallet, but then you have to go like an intermediary, a peer-to-peer, an exchange, a local player. We solve all of that in order for the user to have the experience of someone using like Venmo locally.

Terrific. Lucas, thanks for being on Tim Draper.

That is exciting. The questions helped a lot, really like put you in a conversation. I'm very proud of like building something that is actually valuable and it's useful in the market.

I actually think he's on to something. The problem that he's going after is a real problem. We actually have a company that is partnered with TikTok to do the dispersal It ends up being really expensive for both the freelancer and then for the platform. If you could actually create something that's regional, you could create something really big, which is tough to do.

And it was interesting, it seemed like he was leaning into the social components, creating a brand of something that's not traditionally, you know, glorified and gamified, but still kind of struggling with his competitive angle, especially in that marketplace. And if the pricing's the same, what would be the advantage?

How does he get through the red tape? Because it's individuals?

He turns the money from US dollars to cryptocurrency to local currency, but so do a million other companies. He'd have to get a bunch of big companies to all agree before it really got super big, and he built it from scratch, so that's pretty cool. The time has come. To consult with a crystal ball. I'll go through and I'll give my little thoughts, then we'll just have to consult the crystal ball and see how it all comes out. Starting with Lyme Alert, what you're going after is really important. Lyme disease is insidious. Looks like you got a The bugs may or may not be good enough because you're going to have to change behavior. Reaction Dynamics, space is opening up and we're going to have to figure out how to get around out there. It's capital intensive and you seem to be able to raise capital. I was watching to see how upright you stood. You seem to be slouching in the rain here. Maybe you can pull this all off. It's going to be a lot to pull off. Thank you. Pull off. Nora, very exciting. AI has taken over the world. My concerns with Nora are going to be related to, can I do pretty much the same stuff with any of the other ones that are out there? As you get better with like grabbing imaging, when you start pulling that stuff in, you might be able to separate yourself. Takanos, of the group, you're the one who's bootstrapped it the best. And you've gotten to where you're actually making money. Now you're going into the most competitive world ever, and they will continue to chip away at your margins every way they can. You know, I can't decide. The crystal ball has heard from all of you. Let's all hold hands and everybody give your powers into the crystal ball. Is it ticks in Is it money for healthcare? I'm getting a very strong vibe, and it's actually a reaction, a dynamic reaction. Reaction Dynamic, you are the winner. You will move forward.

I was, I was staring into that crystal ball. I think every team did fantastically well. I was happy just to participate. When I looked out at my mom and my dad, they just had this big smile on their face, and I think, you know, You know, it couldn't have ended any better.

Other 3 can also move, jump straight to the finale. Go out, vote.

You should vote for us because we're gonna have all the tools, all the knowledge at our fingertips so that all of us will make the right choices.

You probably have a friend getting paid while they are working cross-borders. You could help us solve all the problems related to our cross-border transaction.

By the time the final airs, we'll be a lot more ready.

Female founders get less than 2% of all VC funding.

We're looking forward to the opportunity to prove people wrong and show that we can be successful.

New York City's full of great entrepreneurs. This is a great city. See you next time on Meet the Drapers! Not bad, everybody.

Yeah, that was so fun.