Meet the Drapers Season 6 Episode 14: Semifinals 2

Tesla, Skype, Hotmail, Coinbase.

What do these revolutionary companies have in common?

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper, who invests in big ideas before they become the next big thing.

Now he's traveling the globe to find game-changing startups.

Entrepreneurs from 10 countries and 6 continents will share their ideas for changing the world.

There are some entrepreneurs everywhere, and they all have a different approach, and those cultures bring more creativity. Then 12 finalists will fly to Silicon Valley to compete for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to launch their company on a global scale.

100,000 units?

But only one can walk away with the grand prize—

$1 million.

It's go time.

This is a true entrepreneur here. Meet groundbreaking technology. We've built Denmark's first flying car.

Meet rejection.

I've seen 15 How are you going to be better? Meet innovation.

The blockchain is built for trust.

The sky's the limit.

Meet the Drapers.

We've got the semifinalists here. Takadale, moving forward.

We have been put against another drone company.

We make a heavy-lift drone. They make a heavy-lift drone. How would you be able to compete? We have scoured the entire world.

Taiwan.

Kenya.

Canada.

India. Denmark. Germany.

Hong Kong. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Brazil.

For these 13 entrepreneurs, Game On Silicon Savannah has come to meet Silicon Valley.

Let's get the 1 million.

It'll be grueling. It'll be rough, horrible, scary. It'll be fun.

We're gonna give it everything we got.

They've been vetted from all over the world, from thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs.

Green pass.

Contra.

It's torn. Stacks and Xverse, it's boo pass.

Buck sell!

We are down to these 13, and we're gonna be moving 3 to the finale. We should be backing all these guys. Welcome, everybody, to Meet the Drapers semifinals. We've been all around the world. We've seen it all. We've evaluated thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs, and we're here to show you the top 13. Top 13. 3 of those will go on to the finale that we choose, and you will choose the other 3. Well, let's hear our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

Made me look.

I've lived in San Mateo 20 years ago. I'm going to still see where I used to live here in San Mateo, my old house. Arriving here was very special because I don't remember even this building. Walking up, seeing the Draper University on the horizon, it was such a warm welcoming. I just felt at home immediately. I feel very, you know, lucky that I get to do this on behalf of Stacks. But I do miss our co-founder and CEO, Alexandra. We do things a lot of times the two of us or with the whole team, so just to be here on my own is kind of different. I met Stacks through the German Entrepreneurship Program. Stacks was hosting a party. We just hit it off. It really drew to me that it was female founder-led, and Alexandra and I just get on really well. She's mainly tech and I'm mainly commercialization. I think technology That matters is really important. Reliability and security of autonomous mobile machines, we all have a stake in this. If we could all work on technology that matters, the world would be a different place. I have no words. I have no words. Any last words before I pitch? This is a first for me because last time I wasn't there. So it's all new.

All right. Our next entrepreneur in this group, this is Paxi. She's from Berlin. Tell us about Stacks.

I was very excited when I walked on stage. I was ready to pitch. I knew it was going to be fun. Our current network infrastructure was never built for autonomous mobile machines. Stacks is a very unusual software. It came out of the need to address cyberattacks. The upcoming 40 billion devices that are going to be on the internet, a number of these will be roaming in our physical space. That poses a danger if the human cannot maintain agency over these machines. We are helping customers address the reliability and the security of their network. We're working with a telco operator that owns 80,000 towers across Europe. The asset owners will actually have an opportunity to work with new partners. And we're doing all of this on the blockchain. And we're doing micropayments and crypto payments.

So why do you care about the security of machine-to-machine communications? I know your partner is the technologist and she's sort of come up with a lot of this. Why does this matter to you?

I do miss our co-founder and CEO, Alexandra. I think it's a huge burden because we do things a lot of times the two of us. Just to be here on my own is kind of different. Well, first of all, we are addressing a real human need, right? This is a challenge for all of us. We unleash this onto the community and then start thinking about safety, now you have things roaming around in our physical environment, flying above our heads. We should all care about this. If I could work on one thing, that would be human agency over machines.

I'm trying to wrap my head around exactly what the problem is. It's securing the messaging between autonomous robots to make sure that they aren't hacked by drones or walking around the hospital or navigating our infrastructure.

Basically, if this is— this is a very thin software layer. You can now have the car speak to the drone, to another machine as long as they run this really thin software layer. It's as heavy as a PDF file.

Everything that's not human, this is to make sure that someone doesn't tamper with it.

I ran out of time, so I couldn't finish the pitch, unfortunately. 2, 3 minutes. Literally every slide you need to just have one sentence and just move on, whether they— people understand or not.

Exactly.

I mean, we have all seen what happened in the Bay Area. If you lose connectivity even for a few Right? And what happens then when you have a box flying over your head? We could immediately help these companies accelerate because we could add this layer and strengthen their security and their reliability in their connection.

And you said you've got some customers. Are they paying?

Yes, we have by the end of the year $30K MRR. We have 4 customers, mainly in the mobility and energy space, and then we're doing another project. With the projects— When you say doing another project, But deep tech, you need time to explain it. Entrepreneurs build crazy things. Oftentimes it's not very easily explainable. We're actually electrifying a DeLorean, so we're turning that into an EV charging station. We have a customer that's an EV charging station on a mobile grid. And so now we're connecting all the dots here.

Well, Paxi, thank you so much for being on Meet the Drapers. Thanks for showing us this.

Thank you.

Great to have you here.

Thank you. When I walked off stage, I felt, oh, I've done better. I would have just wanted to share our team slide and showed people our great team that is very committed and passionate building this company.

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

Being part of this competition, being part of this like global entrepreneurial movement, it's something that is like always great, inspiring. We can learn a lot of different things. We have come a long way. We have seen amazing growth for our company, for our startup. It has been just amazing. Any kind of opportunity like this, like I take it with open arms. So it's great. And being back in Silicon Valley, being surrounded by a lot of different entrepreneurs from around the world, it's a great experience always. It's great to hang out with Tim and, you know, see his energy. He has been doing it for a very long time, but he still has that passion. Meeting Tim and the entire team around, getting that exposure and even that training on its own is just extremely valuable and just a great experience. And even here, like today, just kind of hanging out with all the other entrepreneurs from around the world, I think it's just interesting experience overall. Tim loves Bitcoin. We all know that. So we're kind of aligned in terms of the mission, pushing Bitcoin forward. If we won the million dollars, I mean, ultimately it would be a great validation. that what we do is exciting and that people like Tim respect that, that growth that we have had so far. So I think that would be the most important thing. It's not only about the money, to be honest. It's really about just being there and having that validation from some of the best investors in the world. Every time I go on a stage, I get a little bit nervous, but I think that's good because ultimately I want to do the best job possible. So yeah, let's see how it goes, but I'm excited.

All right, our next entrepreneur here is Xverse. Jan is operating from Hong Kong, but he's from the Czech Republic. He's a man of the world. Jan, give us your pitch.

I think just like pitching to the Drapers family, I mean, it's just like super inspiring to see that they're— even Tim's father, like, being still so involved at this age is just like crazy inspiring to me. We're number one Bitcoin wallet for Web3. When you look back maybe 2 years ago, not many people really talked about building on Bitcoin or Bitcoin Web3. But that has changed rapidly with the rise of Bitcoin Ordinals because now you have hundreds and hundreds of builders coming to Bitcoin or even coming back to Bitcoin from other chains like Ethereum, Solana to build all sorts of different applications. And for us as a wallet, we're basically at the center of this revolution, I would say, that is happening in Bitcoin. We have validated the market. We have had some really incredible traction. We have reached around 400,000 downloads, quarter million of monthly active users. We're the most integrated wallet in the Bitcoin Web3 space. All major applications or, you know, be it marketplace or DeFi protocols that are operating within Bitcoin, they already integrated with Xverse and they're pushing it to to basically their users as like the go-to solution. You guys love Bitcoin. I can see it. You have Bitcoin socks. We are enabling a lot of—

We gave it away.

I'd love to get a pair. We're enabling a lot of new great use cases for Bitcoin and ultimately bringing it to more people.

Is that the mission? The mission is that— what is your mission?

I mean, ultimately, yes. Like, we basically want to simplify and make the user experience great. you know, for people to use Bitcoin. Because right now, ultimately, the number one use case for Bitcoin is you buy Bitcoin, you store it, you never touch it, and you hope it's going to go up in value. But, you know, we believe that for Bitcoin to really, like, reach the mass adoption, you need to have many different use cases. And Ordinals kind of proved that concept because now people can buy digital assets, and that didn't really exist.

So 250,000 monthly active users is a lot. Who is your user? Is it all Ordinals?

I think the combination of the fact that we are the only Bitcoin company here, I think that's something unique and definitely puts us in a really good position. If it's going to be enough to win the entire competition, obviously that's yet to be seen. And I don't know. I'm obviously confident. Let's see. So most of the growth came from Ordinals because that has been really the meta this year. Yes, the Ordinals were the driver, but we do support, for instance, Stacks as well.

He owns a couple of Bored Apes.

He should get some Ordinals for sure.

Well, that's the question. Are those Bored Apes? Can they be transferred over to Ordinals?

I mean, it all depends on Yuga Labs if they want to do it officially. There are some people that actually did it, but Yuga Labs doesn't. They basically say, okay, it's not official, so we don't give you the same rights as you would have on Ethereum.

It's a little like Coke and Pepsi, where the ones from Ethereum are the ones people want and the ones From Bitcoin?

I mean, there's only one Bitcoin, right? So I wouldn't really compare it to anything else. We like to call Bitcoin the OG chain. And basically because of Bitcoin, we're all here. The entire crypto space is all here. And again, like, we're building a wallet that supports all of these things that people want to use on Bitcoin.

How do you get paid and how much have you generated?

We have been around for around 2 and a half years already. We were actually, before Ordinals, were mostly focusing on Stacks because that was the ecosystem that had a lot of developer activity. When we were doing that in the previous bull market, we generated more than $1 million. We generated around $100K this year in terms of like some sort of transactional fees. We also have around $20 million of user funds actually locked in the xverse Earn.

Terrific. Well, thanks so much for being on Meet the Drapers. Great to have you. Thank you.

Great to meet you.

Tim loves Bitcoin. We all know that. So we're kind of aligned in terms of the mission. We have come a long way. Ultimately, we have to win, right?

Coming up on Meet the Drapers. One of you will move forward to the finale. Welcome back to Meet the Drapers. Let's hear our next entrepreneur, but before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

You start with a why before you do anything. I've been asking the same question for years, so I felt I have a strong, compelling vision and mission to achieve. So the why My partner and I have been working together late at night, so I think for him, it's proud for both of us. We equally share the pain and the gain of what we got so far. I think all the team will be happy because we don't want to just launch a startup, we want to launch a business. This journey has been very intense and therefore I love it. I'm very much passionate for what I do. For me, this is very free to go To get better, to do more, and to deliver a better value every day to our customer. I really think we have built something pretty unique. We have built something awesome that we believe that will make a difference, and that's what matters to me. And I don't want to stop to dream that that things come true.

All right. Now we're going to hear from our next entrepreneur, Dario from Kaja. From Italy. Go ahead, give us your pitch.

I feel good.

I feel scary at some point. He's a big man, right? So it's like his presence, both for his charisma and his stature, is like, wow. The nerve was growing. I can make it. I can make it. I can make it. Let's stay focused. We built Kaja with the objective to help real estate agents and brokers firms with the ability to give a number of tools to satisfy the client, to sell faster and better their property. We built a site able to take bookings for showing, to make offer, transaction, sign deed, sign contract online, be able to do all in blockchain, have the ability to have a secure transaction online for real estate agent. We did that with a conviction that real estate agent and brokers were easy to adopt our technology. We start to work with banks, firm institution, financial institution, legal firm, asset manager. And as we start to work with them, we also realized too there was a value upfront like earlier than engaging with agency, which is a collection of all the documentation, the sorting, the certification of the documentation, the writing on a blockchain, all instruments that were not available in Italy until then.

Can I ask a question?

Please do, please do.

Why do you care about this?

I like when they ask it because it was a human side to it and it went to the core of my long hours, my lack of sleep, and my lack of money for a long period of time. I do care a lot about this because I think there is a transparency in this sector that has never been before. We, Kaja, bring very much clarity on the transaction. Everything is written in the blockchain, so everything has been vetted before it gets published. Because of that, we want to make something simpler for the final consumer, buyer and seller.

I sort of remember this from when you talked last time, that it's better to go through Bitcoin. And also you could literally buy a house and then go and get your property and find out that someone else actually owned it already.

Correct. What really happened, really, that you can discover that there is not just necessary owned, but it is called a servitut. From Latin means that there was some duty that the owner has to give somebody else. We ensure there is not this obligation out there. And when you own the property, 100% own it, you don't have some services to give somebody else or some right of way to somebody else.

Right now you're doing a new leveraged sale now rather than going one at a time.

Correct.

Is that going to be better for you long term because you'll end up with a network effect, or is it worse because you get less on each transaction and you don't have that complete control over the customer?

I know you invest a lot in blockchain and crypto, so I know he was familiar with it, and I like when he asks questions on it. Clearly, he has the common— the very good understanding of the blockchain and the cryptocurrency as well As he was curious to understand how that applies to the real estate. It's a very good question, Tim. We do get an FS instance less per transaction because the servicing has a much lower fee than a brokerage commission has. However, our objective is by engaging the selling firm first, the bank, the asset manager in this service, we are guaranteed a brokerage fee at the end.

Dario, isn't 2 in the morning your time?

3 o'clock in the morning, to be precise.

That was an amazing pitch. I can't believe it's 3 in the morning.

Get some sleep.

It's a great opportunity. I believe what we're doing, and these people are giving a lot of courage, I have to say. If they say the best are not the smartest, but the more resilient, right? What do you imagine? The first didn't work, so now I'm excited that these people is giving an incredible opportunity to us. So that's why you feel me so upbeat.

Terrific. Dario, thanks so much for being on Meet the Drapers.

We have an amazing team. They deserve to go farther in this competition. Everyone, no one excluded, no matter what they do, everyone worked really hard. And luckily, they get pleasure to work together. And I really, really want to go to the next phase. And we all, I think, deserve it.

Okay, so what do you all think? We saw Stax, which allows machine-to-machine communication without crashing an F-15. We saw Airflight, the company that could take 250 kilos, which is— can actually lift me up. The 3 of us.

Hope so.

And can fit— I don't know, I weigh a lot. We saw BonVie Aero, another drone company that is working more with the Indian military, and they can go higher with less weight. We saw Xverse, the Web3 number one Bitcoin wallet in the world is the way they presented it. And we saw Kaja transforming Italian real estate with the blockchain.

Well, the only thing that matters is the crystal ball. We, we talked all this time.

Yeah, that's right. We'll bring him out. We'll see what happens. Okay, we'll see what happens.

Stacks, what's your valuation?

It is 6.5, so we're raising 2 million next year, and then it will bring us 8 something. Deal of the century.

Airflight, what about you? Our valuation is 8 million dollars. Bon V, what's your valuation?

$15 million.

And Xverse?

We already closed at $27.5, but obviously happy to chat with you guys.

And then Kaja?

Kaja, $4.5 million.

Well, the crystal ball will take all that into consideration. You know, we were really torn. We were having a lot of trouble here. I don't really know who we're gonna choose, so we're gonna have to go to the crystal ball. One of you will move forward to the finale. The drum roll. One, ah, hoishka, one, Bonvi! Bonvi, you go forward.

So we're super excited that we are going to the finals. We are really humbled and we really want to thank all the Draper family for showing our confidence in our journey.

Maybe a little disappointed in our communication, but definitely not disappointed that Bonvi won.

Give us more motivation to work more hard. and make sure that we win this show.

Take a million.

Coming up on Meet the Drapers. What is the doctor's attitude toward this? Welcome back to Meet the Drapers. Hey, let's see our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

It's, uh, good to be back after 5 years. That was my last travel here, and this time I came back with a different purpose— try to win the $1 million.

It's always exciting to be back in the Bay Area. A lot of energy, a lot of innovation. You can feel it in the air. It's always a place where so many people with great ideas congregate and meet and a lot of brainstorming and everything. So really excited. I've been here in the Bay Area many times. Like Ken, it's a different purpose this time, a different focus, but super excited.

Why do you believe you are the team to win a million-dollar investment from Tim Draper?

We believe that we can change the world and help people, and this is a dream our team is working very hard. To achieve it, and this is also the dream I make promise to my mom. My mother, she passed away 5 years ago, so it's very important milestone to our company.

I've had a lot of people inspire me over the years. In the context of Stream Tech, Ken is actually very inspiring to me. The friendship and relationship that we built through the years and the amount that he has invested in Stream Tech, sticking with it, the drive that he has for the company and just the passion to see this forward.

In a startup, the only thing you need to do is you need to run fast, and right now we are running very fast, so we believe that we should win this competition. Let's get the $1 million.

There you go. Let's go do it.

Let's go do it.

Okay, let's hear from our First entrepreneurs, StreamTech from Taiwan. Give us your pitch.

A little bit pressure, but need to keep calm and relax to do the best performance. Smart Care T60, an AIoT service applied to the medical facility and home care, which helps to make care easier by prevention, prediction, and personalize. We focus on algorithm of millimeter wave radar. We are medical AI and biodata service provider. Our solution is the first and only one currently in the market that's certified by Taiwan FDA Class II medical device, which provides non-contact, privacy-protected, and continuous vital sign monitoring. We have launched service at 8 hospitals and 1 nursing home this year, expect to grow up to 1,700 beds by 2026. The current accuracy is 89%.

So that thing's in the hospital looking at you, basically?

Yes, mounting on the ceiling.

And monitoring you without having Anything hooked up to me?

Yes.

What is the doctor's attitude toward this? I imagine that they would not like a machine recording everything that goes on.

I thought Bill was very interested.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, it seemed like he was intrigued, but then had his own set of concerns.

The current issue that we have from the hospital is the patient They don't want wiring, but something could happen during their stay at the hospital. So then we got an inquiry from doctor to see—

What do you mean something would happen?

Yeah, because the original request—

Their heart stops.

Some people might pass away suddenly, especially when the patient are doing the dialysis.

If you were a nurse, this would be okay with you? This would be awesome.

Be awesome.

Because I don't have to keep replacing the guy's thing. Measuring his heart, his blood pressure. You'd know always if the heart's beating. I mean, this is exciting.

I think that we got some help from Tim in explaining a little bit when there was some possible misunderstanding about how the device worked, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, he seemed very energetic about it.

Why is he going to the hospital? Shouldn't I just like—

this will be eventually deployed to home, but first we want to ensure that reliability. And the maturity of this product. Medical facility got all the professionals like doctors, nurses. So that's a good feel for us just to make sure this product is well fit to the user scenario.

Isn't it hard to get people to put things in hospitals?

We try to create a win-win-win for the hospital, nurses, and patient. So they all get benefit from the solution.

This would replace a bunch of other gadgets with one device, right? Both doctors and nurses like that fact with the contactless. They're not messing with the wires and sensors and everything.

Is there pushback from the other buyers, like the blood pressure cuff people?

There will be.

I think from our standpoint, we're trying to create an ecosystem for the smart hospital and smart home, and based on the foundation from our Smart Current T60. So instead of being pushed away from each other, then we try to integrate and collaborate You said you're going to do 1,700 beds by 2026.

That doesn't seem very ambitious. That's like just $2.3 million, something like that.

Yeah. I mean, at this point, this forecast from our distributor give us for the next 3 years. And actually there will be more potential.

I see. That's one distributor.

Yeah.

And so you might actually be in the US too and other places. That's— this is the Taiwan distributor?

Yes, that's only the Taiwan. But in the US, like I mentioned, we're partnered with Intel from its technology initiative. So we're going to be an ecosystem with the bedside monitor for the smart manufacturer here in the US.

What does that cost to make?

Like $300.

Wow. That's a great margin. You should make it for a lot less than $300.

Well, it's the whole ecosystem too. The device plus the server to collaborate with.

How much do you sell this to the hospital?

Our business model is monthly subscription per vital sensor per bed.

$89 a month. 3-month payback. Oh, wow.

For the home, and then the hospital—

The hospital is even faster. How many hospitals have you already sold it to?

8.

8 hospitals. So your revenues are already—

$200K. $200K this year.

It makes sense, but don't you feel like you need to get to direct contact with a hospital so you know what the real problems are?

Yes, we also sell directly to hospitals.

All right, Ken and Steven, thank you so much for being on Meet the Drapers. We'll be back to you shortly. Terrific product.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for being on the show.

They were great to speak with. They were wonderful to interact. I like their questions.

Yeah.

Right. The feeling after was a lot more enjoyable than, you know, lead— the lead-up, because we didn't know what to expect.

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

Whoa!

Check, check, 1, 2, 3. Audible audio check.

Can you hear me?

It's my first time in the US. So just really excited about the whole trip and the opportunity to be here. There are so many startups here from different parts of the world doing incredible things in their own spaces. It's just a great experience to be able to meet so many different people and learn from them. After working for 10 years, you're sort of at that crossroad where you know that your life would look a certain way if you continued down the corporate path for the next 20 years, but if you took a big risk right now, things Things could really, really change. I wanted to do that and really see what we're capable of. So I think if I'm able to do that, then I'm sure that we'll get where we need to go. I think the next phase of our growth is really on how well to get into the US. Being able to pitch to them, given that they've been there, done that, seen it the world over, it's just a really massive opportunity for us and we want to make the most of it. I've never done something like this before. I never thought that I would be doing something like this. It's exciting It's challenging. It's a whole new ball game. So really looking forward to it. Really grateful, excited, nervous. It's a beautiful blend of all of it.

Okay, here's our next entrepreneur. It's Arvind from India with Neuropixel AI. Arvind, give us your pitch.

It means a lot to us to be able to be here in front of these kind of venture capitalists who really made venture capital what it is today. We're a 2-and-a-half-year-old generative AI startup out of Bangalore, India, and we specialize on synthetic humans like what you see on your screen. My co-founder and I just—

so those are all fake?

Those are all fake people. Those are all people that we generate. We specialize in this tech.

Now, are they people who you've taken pictures of and then you kind of generate, or are you actually making the person from scratch?

We generate them from scratch. So we train our algorithms on people of different ethnicities, and you can say what kind of ethnicity, what kind of hairstyle you want, and we will generate people from scratch suiting that.

Why are you doing that?

Didn't even make it through my opening slide, which just had a startup name on it, without a question coming up. We think that there's a tremendous opportunity using the latest technology. We thought it's a great business to build. It's exactly between me and my co-founder's expertise.

What's your expertise?

So I'm from the fashion e-commerce business side of things. I used to work for India's largest fashion platform. My co-founder is really the brains. He's done his PhD, he's done his undergrad from a very good engineering school. He's a guest faculty over there, specializes in applied machine learning for image processing. We are squarely at the intersection of this. We build our own proprietary datasets in our office out of Bangalore.

So explain what you do so that we—

Absolutely. There are different ways that we can look at this. One is to generate high-quality images which are outdoor, which are typically expensive. We can do it much cheaper. We can also enable catalog image-based personalization. With our tech, you can see models of your ethnicity, of your size, and make a much more relatable sort of purchase decision.

So why would I want that?

Got asked a lot of curveballs. Clearly something that we need to think about internally. To enable you to decide better what you want to purchase and And for the fashion brand, it actually saves you a lot of costs as well. So we have some very cool tech that enables a few different interesting solutions in this area. So what you see over here on one side of the screen is a small image with a person shot in a plain background. Then we change the model— that's a photorealistic synthetic human— we put it in an outdoor environment that suits that apparel, and we match the lighting. So it becomes much cheaper, and these sort of images make it a much more appealing proposition for the online consumer.

Why would they? The consumer wants that.

I think what he's saying is this is not actually for the consumer. This is for the company.

They want it for the fashion brand. Right.

Absolutely.

So you don't need the model, photographer.

You don't need the place.

You don't need the dress.

The dress is the only thing you need. You don't need the dress.

The one twist that I kind of thought that I liked about this, because everything else about it is just terrifying to me since it signals the beginning of the end for everybody in my profession This is even better.

They don't, they don't even have—

This is worse. This is worse. They don't need us at all.

The truth is that every time there is a new revolutionary technology, these sort of questions get posed.

What I was going to say was the thing that made this sound kind of cool to me was the customer could take this image, use their own face, use their own body shape, and see how that outfit looks on them. In terms of AI. Is that true?

That's the next solution that I was going to show you. We actually have a cutting-edge virtual try-on solution, so you can upload a photo of yourself and you can swipe through the catalog and see what different items look like on you. So only one image is real and all the other 3 images are generated in near real time with zero post-production.

My dad and I, we both have invested in the virtual trying-on space. With okay results, but why is now the time that it's gonna be a big company?

So people have been trying to do this for years, to be absolutely honest, but nobody's really cracked it for clothes. It's there for shoes, it's there for watches, it's there for makeup. We've been working on it for 2 years, and as you can see for yourself, I don't think there are any online fashion retailers right now with this level of quality in a virtual try-on solution.

How far along are you? What do you have in revenue?

We spent our first 2 years in development. Over the last 5, 6 months, we've got early green shoots. We're at about $100K ARR right now. Just closed another project for another $100K over the year. So we'll double up in the next 1 or 2 months.

And that $100K, is that models?

Generative AI editorial images. The first ones that I showed you.

The first one?

The first one.

Yeah, that— because I'm not sure that second one's gonna work.

Why are you trying to go after all these?

So we specialize in synthetic humans. We saw that there were different opportunities using the same technology. core technology. We also wanted to work on virtual try-ons, but that takes a long time to get there, so we wanted to start monetizing early with what we have.

This feels like there's a lot of competition in each of these, so I was just like, if you go all in on one, you win.

Yeah.

The key lesson for me is that less is more. Maybe we don't try and pitch all our solutions, maybe we just go a little deeper into one or two. So the same synthetic humans and the stack that we've built can be used in these areas. And it's the same client that we're attracting. We're purely going after fashion e-com brands and platforms.

Terrific, Arvind. Thanks so much for being on Meet the Drapers. Thank you, Tim.

Have a great day.

Great job.

I think I could have done a lot better, especially looking at the quality of the other startups that went before and after me. Hopefully we'll hit it out of the park next time.

Let's hear from our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on back there.

This competition means a lot to the Voxel team, so I think they will be quite proud if we win this whole competition. It's basically a validation to all the hard work that they have been putting every single day together with me, so I'm here for them, with them. Every day is a little bit different. Every day is a new challenge. Every day We get one step closer to figuring out how to have this massive impact. Getting to this stage of the competitions, getting to the semifinals, is really a validation of all the amazing work and the impressive technology that the VOXEL Group is creating. Who is going to be the most proud if we do get to the finale? It's not going to be one person, it's going to be really 16 people that are every day in the lab working quite hard together with me to be I'm very excited about the opportunity to go and speak with Tim again and all the Drapers. The whole experience has been quite unique. SOM at Yale is a little bit different. It's really focused on entrepreneurship. It has been great to meet the other entrepreneurs, to feed from their energy, to learn a little bit more about their business. They all have very, very strong business, and they're all very, very good at pitching their business.

So I think we are Coming up on Meet the Drapers. We've got to figure out who goes on to the finale. Welcome back to Meet the Drapers.

I'm feeling excited about the finalists. But I, to be quite honest, I'm also feeling very grateful to be here and grateful for their time to listen to our company, to listen to our pitch. So thank you.

We've got Voxcel. This is Carolina and she is from Canada.

When I walked on the stage, the main thing that was going through my head is to make sure that I would be doing a good representation of all the hard work that our team has been putting every Did you know that 95% of oncology drugs fail to get to the market? And they are failing because we do not have a way to predict how the drugs will behave in humans. Until now. Voxel created a platform in which pharmaceutical companies will screen the drug candidates in this platform and will select the best drugs to be tested in humans in clinical trials. We are using bioprinting technology to create human-like cancer tissue models, and they have artificial blood vessels. And the idea is quite simple: let's inject the drugs into the blood vessels of our tissues and select what is the best drugs. Because we are using this selling directly to pharmaceutical company as a screening platform, we actually do not require FDA approval, so we can go directly So how do we know it works?

I mean, you've got this artificial blood vessel.

Yeah.

And you're running a drug through it.

Yeah.

The drug might get stuck or it might get whatever. But how do you know that that simulates what happens in the body?

In that moment, I was feeling a little bit nervous, but mostly very excited to share all the amazing technology that Voxel is creating. So we have all the puzzles of the technology That we need to create these samples. So, and we are using real angiograms, so image of your own blood vessels to create these samples. And we are validating the technology right now in-house in combination with pharmaceutical companies.

So let me get it straight. You take some sample.

Yeah.

Which is their blood or their tissue?

So we can use cells that we are buying or we are taking their own cells. And from there we are mixing our mixture, doing our mixture, and then creating their So are you growing more cells? Yes, basically growing the cells in the lab.

Oh, I see. So you grow the cells.

The moment that everything clicked was when Tim actually mentioned, oh, you guys are actually taking the cells and growing in the lab and then creating the tissues. And at that moment, I realized that they all had understood exactly what VOXCELLS technology is all about.

And something like this happens It's a 3-dimensional growth.

Exactly. So we are printing.

So it grows around the printing.

So we mix your cells into our, what we call, our printer's cartridge. Basically, it's almost like a Jell-O material, and we are printing layer by layer, creating that 3D structure.

So you put the drug into that Jell-O stuff?

Yeah, directly into the blood vessel. So very similar to how you would receive an injection directly in your arm from a chemotherapy drug, for example.

That's how So how close is it to an actual outcome?

Right now we are gathering the results and we are hoping to have everything validated by the end of the year. And the main goal here is to decrease the drug development process by 30%.

What are you doing to end up with that validation?

They were really paying attention. They were really engaged on everything that I was explaining about the technology. So all the questions were quite fair. So we are using We are using a drug in which we have human results on it, and that drug is already approved. It's already on the market. So we are using the same drug in our platform and comparing the results. Our goal is that our results are very similar to the results that people had and experienced when using that drug.

Eventually, you need FDA approval to make a test against a drug.

I do not, because we, we only need FDA approval People think that we're implanting these in people, and we are not. We are providing a platform that pharmaceutical companies can run their drugs.

You're basically giving information, right?

Absolutely. So we give them the information that they need to decide which drugs are now going to be tested.

Oh, so you're giving the drug company information.

Yeah.

So they're saying, we don't want to use these anymore, they don't seem to work.

Exactly. And we can bypass the time and tell them to really invest their time and money into the drugs that are looking successful in our platform.

I understand why Big Pharma would want this. Why is it better for me?

When they were asking me all these tough questions, especially in the details on the personalized medicine, was to make sure that I was being as clear as possible, to make sure that they understood what Voxa was actually doing with our technology. tissue models. The idea is really pharmaceutical companies as the end customer, but not just big pharma. Actually, small pharma wants this too.

Small pharma?

Our market is basically any kind of pharmaceutical companies because we can accelerate for all of them.

I was thinking it's actually great for the patient because the patient then doesn't have to get all the wrong meds.

And that's really the future for us, continue working with hospitals in the future and really focus on personalized medicine space. We can create any kind of disease using our platform.

Terrific. Thank you so much for coming on Meet the Drapers.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

What a treat.

When I left the stage, I actually thought that I did a very good job. I was able to convey the mission, the vision of Voxell, and also paint a little bit of the picture of how the future is going to look like once we put these technologies on the market.

Let's hear from our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind those scenes.

Who will be the most proud if you win the show?

I think our team back in Nairobi—they're rooting for us. They'll be very proud if we go through and win the million dollars.

The million-dollar prize will go a lot in helping Bupas grow and also. Also, it will mean a huge boost having Draper Nembackers as one of the startups from Africa.

This experience has been very unique. You know, we got to meet founders doing amazing things all over the world. It's super diverse. There's founders from all the continents in different fields as well. It's pretty interesting to see what happens behind the scenes.

It's our first time being on reality TV show. To make it more exciting being on reality TV show, show at Silicon Valley with amazing startups from all over the world. It's a unique opportunity and exciting one at the same time.

You can feel the energy and innovation here. It's a very surreal experience, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited to be pitching to the Drapers again. There were a few questions especially Tim had asked us. And I hope we have convincing answers this time.

Let's hear from Sonia and Wycliff from Kenya. This is Boo Pass. Give us your pitch.

Silicon Savannah has come to meet Silicon Valley.

Did you know more than 70% Africans use intercity transport to transport people and goods? That is more than 200 million transactions a day, or more than $800 billion worth of annual opportunity. The transportation market is very undigitized, fragmented, and broken. Our solution is creating a seamless ecosystem where we use the power of data, digital payments, APIs, and analytics to connect bus, train, flight, and intercity parcel operators to individuals, enterprises, and e-commerce players. What we are doing is digitizing the intercity transport supply and connecting it to B2B and B2C demand. Our product Our products include point-of-sale and SaaS solutions for transport operators, apps for consumers where they can book their services, and also enterprise solutions like corporate travel and e-commerce logistics management. We have an IP that is unique for the market, and we are asset-light, and we are controlling the value chain end-to-end.

And when you say a ticket, it's like on a digital phone?

On a digital phone, yeah.

How many cities are using it?

So we are in over 800 cities. So what we are focusing on is intercity transport. So right now in Kenya and Uganda, we are connected to over 800 locations. It was keeping us quick on our feet.

You're saying from city to city?

From city to city.

So anyone using city-to-city buses—

Exactly.

Uses you?

Uses us.

So are they paying with M-Pesa or Bitcoin, or what are they using?

Right now, M-Pesa is the biggest payment gateway for us, and we also are working with other mobile money operators. too. Whenever we onboard a transport operator, great network effects happen. All of their consumers start using our digital solution, and they get transparency and reduced cash leakages, therefore increasing their margins.

And how do you two know each other?

So we went to school in the States, so we have known each other for over 10 years.

Where'd you go?

A liberal arts school called Earlham College in the Midwest, in Indiana.

And what did you study there?

So I studied biochemistry and computer science, And Vaiklav studied economics.

Are you writing the software then? Do you have programmers or what? How'd you do it?

So I built the first MVP and then we hired programmers.

Oh, are you a coder?

Yes, yes, I'm a coder. So now we have a CTO, but the MVP was built internally.

How many people do you have now?

32 people in Kenya. Right now we are expanding in other, other markets.

What keeps you from going to other countries? Why are you just limited to Kenya?

Sub-Saharan Africa is really facing a huge challenge with transportation. We've actually started scaling to other countries. So every—

Is there a regulatory thing that gets in your way?

No, no.

You can just— anyone can do it?

No, we go— we scale with the bus operators and train and flight operators. So in Kenya, you can go via bus or train or flight to Tanzania. So every new country we open up, open up an adjacent country. So there's no regulation.

Do you spend your time in Africa?

Yes. Both of you? Yes, yes, yes. We moved there since we graduated. We moved there to start the business.

Do the cities want the data that you are collecting?

No, no. Every transport operator is a privately owned entity and they keep their own data. So unless it is requested by law, They do that.

So most of the buses are privately operated? Yes, yes, they're privately operated. Oh, so that's different than a lot of cities in the US.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Oh, so you have to get each privately operated bus on your system?

Yeah. Are you thinking about taking over and buying up all those bus lines and being the person who actually operates the buses too?

No, we are purely focused on the software. So we started with intercity buses, but now that you've been in Kenya, you've seen the trends system in Kenya. And when the government launched that, every person used to go and queue to buy a ticket. So the government approached us to do the ticketing, and now 90% of all the government trains pass through our platform.

Are the buses your customers?

Yes. An average bus company would have 40 to 130 buses. That's the inventory.

And they're all privately owned?

Yes, yes.

So when you go to them, you say, hey, You guys should be on this. Everybody's buying their ticket with phones now.

Yes, yes.

And that's the, that's the sale to them?

Correct. For the first 5 bus companies, we had to do that. But now after 1 year, 2 years, they've seen how their competitors have transformed their operations. So 80% of our clients come through referrals.

And we have partnered with banks and super apps, so we are providing them with APIs. So that gives us big distribution channels. So now when we go to a bus company, We tell them once you go online with us, you're live on all these banks and M-Pesa app as well, where we are the sole provider for bus, train, and flight tickets.

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

Thank you very much.

That was awesome.

We've made tremendous progress, and we hope to be part of the finals. Hoping for the best, and please choose us.

So, what did everybody think of StreamTech, which was the medical AI and biodata service provider? Neuropixel AI, which was the synthetic human business? Voxell Bioinnovation, which is putting its artificial blood vessel into this and checking for cancer before a big drug goes to market and they waste $2 billion? And the Boo Patch, Which allows people in Africa to use their cell phone and get on the bus and go. So what did everybody think?

My summary is magic, magic, magic. I'm magically taking down all your information when you're in a hospital bed. Hey, I'm magically testing therapeutics on your body. I'm magically inventing new human beings.

I'm still torn, but we've, we've always got The crystal ball. Let's bring them all out.

Voxel, what was your valuation? $7 million. Neuropixel, what is your valuation? We're looking at $14 million. And then Streamtech, $20 million. BooPass, what's your valuation on this?

$17 million.

How much money have you raised, Streamtech? We haven't done any fundraising yet.

Oh, this has all been bootstrapped?

Yep.

Oh, good for you. Neuropixel, how much money have you raised?

We've done $1.15 million. We've also got about $50,000 in grants.

And Voxell?

$4 million total.

So with that, we have to choose one. We are struggling with this one. I think we all are in agreement that maybe it should be more than one of you that moves up. We're just gonna go here and we're gonna What does it say, crystal ball? Oh my gosh, it's very conflicted. Oh my God. Oh wow, it's going off in all different directions. What's gonna happen here? StreamTek, you move forward.

We're moving forward a step and we're just approaching our goal slowly, slowly, but progressively we are heading our direction. We need to think about what would be the next update during our pitch.

The rest of you guys, you were all awesome. Congratulations.

Thank you, sir.

Great, great to have you on Meet the Drapers. So we'll see you next time on Meet the Drapers!

2 companies have already said that they are gonna test Stax, so in the end, I feel like I won as well.

We made a lot of great friendships, you know, actually even started talking about partnerships. With some of those entrepreneurs. It was really great just to meet, you know, diverse group of entrepreneurs and, you know, learn from one another.

I think the other companies were terrific, so I didn't feel bad in the sense I'd seen their vision and execution to be absolutely awesome.

It's a privilege just sharing the stage with these guys. Everybody's worked really hard to get here. We're hustlers, we're hungry, and we're here to change the world. Hopefully we'll hit it out of the park next time.

It's never great to lose. However, other companies had also amazing technology, and those are technologies that also are going to change people's lives.

This experience has been very unique. We got to meet founders doing amazing things all over the world. It's super diverse. There's founders from all the continents.

We do all need the Drapers!