Technology With a Purpose | Entrepreneur Stories

The times today are both befuddling and exciting, with entrepreneurs cooking up algorithms that make yesterday's sci-fi look like yesterday's news. Let's meet these digital pioneers who are crazy enough to think they can change the world and just smart enough to actually do it.

First off, can you give us your full name, the name of your company, and sort of an elevator pitch, like a couple sentences, what your company does?

Sure.

In the often overlooked space of nail care, accessibility and precision have long been a challenge. But Aurelia Edwards, the talented CEO of Standard Measure Technologies, is reshaping the landscape Right from sunny Miami.

I am just an everyday person like yourself who had a big vision and a big dream. Started off with a personal problem that I thought I uniquely had. But after reaching out to the community, doing customer discovery with my pop-up, I found that others had that same problem. And I set out to find the right people to help me build this. And look how far we've gotten.

So it's an interesting story. I was a massage therapist for a very long time, and as a massage therapist, I always wore press-on nails. And one particular day, I almost missed my cousin's wedding because I couldn't find all the sizes that I needed. I ended up having to stop at Target on my drive to their wedding to get another set of press-on nails and got stuck in traffic. And that entire experience had me question, why couldn't I just buy the 10 sizes that I need that fit? Aurelia Edwards. I'm the founder and CEO of Standard Measure Technologies, and we are a virtual sizing technology company that helps brands and retailers allow their customers to size efficiently online. Our first product, Nail Street, innovates in the beauty space where we take precision fingernail measurements to help customers shop for custom-made press-on nails online. Because right now you buy 30 nails knowing that they're not all going to fit, and sometimes you can't even find your 10 in that box. I was so determined to find a problem that 6 weeks after that wedding weekend, I opened a pop-up store in New York City to test the market. We manually measured customers in-store and asked them if they had a similar problem to what I was experiencing. And what I found out was that women had a love-hate relationship with getting their nails done. The other thing I found out is that a lot of women wanted to shop online, and we wanted to fix that sizing problem online. And so we went out to build out the technology, and in building it, we built something really special that not only can size for fingernails, but we see other innovations in the future in jewelry, in prosthetic fitting, virtual stores like Web3 retail, and And even more in the beauty space, like for wigs and lashes. So we're really excited to see where the technology takes us.

NailsTree offers custom-fit press-on nails tailored to individual measurements, making bespoke nail care easy and accessible.

Well, it's a big opportunity.

This market has been growing exponentially, especially since COVID And I want to say at that point, the nail industry really catapulted because people were looking for easy at-home nail care. So press-on nails, nail stickers, nail wraps, all of those came to the forefront. And it also allowed the customer to really play with nail art, which is something that was really challenging to do in the nail salon because not every nail salon has an artist. And getting nail art at the nail salon can be time-consuming, really expensive. And if you can't find your technician, you might have to wait weeks until they're available.

It's one of the beauty industries that hasn't had a lot of innovation. And like I mentioned during my pitch, for the first time ever in history, press-on nail sales is surpassing nail polish sales. And that's a really big deal because for a long time, the industry was dictated by nail polish and nail salons alone.

So really excited to see how this industry, how big this industry can really get.

How is the journey to like a larger entrepreneurship where you're leading a team? Like, how's that been for you personally?

It's a roller coaster.

You have hills and you have valleys.

I find it interesting because I feel like as an entrepreneur, the low days or the days where you don't have as many wins seem to outweigh the wins. So I've made it like just something intentional to make sure that I celebrate my wins and really sit in that a lot longer and not let the days that are hard kind of take over and have a gray cloud over the entire journey. It's hard. I think in the beginning what I found is that having a network is really important, having mentors and people that you can ask for help. It's not something that I think we learn in traditional school, like how to ask for help, and that's something that you really have— it's a muscle that you really have to kind of strengthen. As an entrepreneur. So learning how to ask for help and then networking, because I've seen a lot of the opportunities that I've had had come from my network.

Why would we need the technology moving forward if we can just find what 80% of the population or the global population, what their sizes are? If our technology— if as a brand, being able to figure out those sizes and only selling those, I think there's a misconception in that there aren't enough sizes. And we believe that with our data that we're collecting, we can make that sample size more inclusive, that moving forward we'd be able to say, we think we got it right. We have been able to produce sizes or give the manufacturers a wider sample set of sizes that we can really include a larger amount of people in this beauty space. I feel like we're still working on antiquated models of a one-size-fits-many, but we're leaving a lot of people behind, and we really want a more inclusive experience.

So at this stage, what would it mean for you to get to work with somebody like Tim Draper?

It would mean, number one, I could sleep at night. I think it will help just validate what we're building. It'll help us be able to bring on some of these bigger customers that we'd like to bring on. Our technology is amazing, but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. And I think having that backing would get us into the arena where we can bring on some of the major customers that we're, that we're working with currently and kind of close those deals.

Standard Measure Technologies, now a thriving force, owes its success to Aurelia's unwavering passion and the invaluable guidance of her mentors. And it all began in Miami, a vibrant hub of innovation where female founders And minority founders are empowered.

And, uh, what would the million dollars mean for your company in this phase?

It would mean growth and expansion. We have a pipeline of customers that we're working with, and we also have some really cool innovations that we want to start building out because we have interest from other retailers. So being able to execute on those requests would be a huge deal. It'll also mean being able to pay my staff and give them benefits. I think it's really important It's so important for the people that we work with to be supported and for them to feel like they have a future with us. And that's something that I've been striving to do. So being able to win that $1 million will help me really support my team and build out a culture that will help us get us to the next milestone.

I met 3 other amazing founders on a wonderful journey that we can now share together. I met 4 judges. I met Tim Draper, and I believe these will be people in my life for a very long time. Look past winning and losing and just like build meaningful connections because those connections can blossom into a really amazing relationship later on in your founder journey.

Start with just your full name, the company name, And kind of, you know, the elevator pitch, like this, you know, kind of tagline. Tagline.

Sure.

Yeah.

So, you know, although I was a musician and I've played on really big stages, going on stage and pitching in front of an audience like that is always nerve-wracking. And so, you know, before going up, I always have that sort of ball in the stomach, right? Um, but once you're up there and you're doing your thing, you kind of get in a flow.

In the increasingly interconnected world, global transactions can still be a tangled web. But Adrian Stern, the driving force behind Reveal, is building a universal peer-to-peer payment network to streamline global transactions for individuals, business, and AI agents right from the heart of Paris.

Hey, my name's Adrian Stern. I'm the founder and CEO of Reveal, and we make it easy to send money to anyone, anywhere, I have a pretty non-traditional journey for an entrepreneur, I guess, because I started my professional life as a musician. I grew up in Switzerland and fell in love with reggae music when I was in my early teens. And so I started a reggae band with a couple of friends and we started building a following. And so I decided I would manage the band. And so I started working with Tim. And we, you know, went from a small local act to an international touring band, played in some of the biggest festivals all across Europe. And I got to meet a lot of artists, started producing for some other artists, and we founded a record label. And that's really how I kind of built my entrepreneurial chops, but I never thought of it as an entrepreneurial journey. I was just making music and trying to make my way through the music industry.

Reveal simplifies blockchain payments, enabling users to connect and transact globally with a single click.

Did a full 180, kind of stopped music, got a job in banking doing digital transformation at BNP Paribas. And that was sort of my first steps into, you know, what one could call the bigger business world, if you will. And definitely my first steps in financial services. And that was sort of my first steps into what one could call the bigger business world, if you will, and definitely my first steps in financial services. So worked at BNP for a couple of years, learned about crypto when I was there because it was the very early days of crypto. I think I learned about it in 2014. Maybe early 2015. And after a couple years, had learned a lot, didn't love the corporate culture, so decided to go back to school to do an MBA to figure out what was going to be next. And that's when I started connecting the lines between, you know, my experience in the music industry being entrepreneurial, what I had learned in banking. And so I started working a bit more in the venture building space and in fintech. And eventually got to a point where I was like, okay, well, I wanna start my own. And that's what led me to start Reveille. So one of the issues that I realized was really potent when I was in the music space was that it's, you know, you collaborate with a lot of people from all over the world. Maybe a songwriter from, you know, Latin America and a producer from Northern Europe and And so you constantly have partners and people that you need to pay out. And, you know, payments, cross-border payments are a nightmare. And that's really what we're trying to get to with Reveal is like, how can we enable people to send money anywhere around the world to anyone simply by tagging that person and, you know, abstracting obviously all of the The blockchain technology elements so that, you know, I can just tag you and send you money and you receive it instantaneously no matter where you are in the world. You know, that's how payments should work. Yeah, I think they didn't fully capture the simplicity in which the experience is for the user, which is really one of just tagging another user And that's what the user experience is like. On the backend, obviously, there's a lot of data that each user can choose or not to input in order to enrich that specific tag, right? So that their friends can find them with a phone number, with an email, with a specific crypto wallet, etc. Yeah, so we released the first version of our peer-to-peer payments application in December, and in just 4 months we've grown to over 65,000 users. So we've seen really rapid growth so far. And, you know, that's super exciting as a team. The whole team is, is really pumped to see this type of momentum. At the same time, it puts a lot of strain on the company to grow that fast, right? We have a lot of customers that we need to support. You know, there are so many users that there are new bugs that pop up that we need to fix, and, you know, and so that sort of delays our roadmap. And so there's a lot that we're trying to juggle with these sort of growing pains, if you will, of a fast-growing business.

So at this point, you know, what would working with Tim Draper do What would that opportunity provide you?

Yeah, I think working with Tim would be amazing. I really believe that success is contagious and that, you know, the quickest way to be successful in business and in other areas is to surround yourself with people who have, you know, been there, done that, and done it successfully. And Tim is clearly one of those people. He's one of the leading investors in the world. And so being able to work closely with him, understand how he thinks, be able to reflect with him on the problems that we have as a business, I think would be invaluable.

Imagine seamless, borderless transactions simplifying payments for everyone. That's the future Reveal is forging. Making global payments quick, easy, cheap, and secure. And as more and more users embrace Reveal's streamlined approach, the company is scaling rapidly, keeping pace with the ever-growing demand.

What would a million-dollar investment do for your company, right?

Yeah, a million-dollar investment would really allow us to scale the team and scale our marketing efforts. So that we could reach our first million users, which is what we need to get to break even. And once we're there, we can just accelerate the business because every new injection of capital helps us acquire more and more users. So that first million users would be, would be a big unlock, and getting a million in investment would allow us to get there faster.

What? What would that reggae artist say? What would he think about what you're doing now?

That's a great question. I think he would probably say, WTF, man. I think he'd be quite surprised that I'm working in this space. But I think he would buy into the vision and would understand why I'm doing it.

Okay, so to start, could we just get your names, like your roles in the company, and The amount of grit, the amount of effort, the amount of struggle that we're going through to achieve what we want to achieve. And again, the timeline that we've achieved it into, it's a very short timeline, but there's only one way of doing it, and that's grinding it out.

As artificial intelligence reshapes the future of work, José Martin and Martin van der Heijden of Crew are pioneering a path of respect for the human condition.

Yeah, so both of us have started a business before Kru as well. Actually, Kru is a bit of an extension from, well, your previous company, but we're second-time founders and we came together through an intro through mutual friends. You know, skill sets aligned, values aligned, and then we started working together. Cool, amazing. So my name is Martin and I'm the CTO of Kru. I've been working in the tech industry for 10 years.

And I'm José Martín, although my friends know me as JJ, and I'm the CEO of Krew. And Krew is a deal copilot for private equity. Yeah, so look, I never felt super safe. I came from a very normal middle-class family. My dad was the first one to have his own, uh, to have a college degree. So I always thought I had to take a safer path. Then eventually I learned, you know what, I get excited by all sorts of shapes and colors coming at me because I have ADHD. So I went from a very safe corporate path. I did like big tech, then management consulting, to, you know what, there's never a right time and I want to make a positive impact in the world. So I think entrepreneurship is the best way to do it. Launched my first company, it started fantastically, then it went well, but it was growing rather linearly instead of the exponential curve you want to see. We saw a lot more traction with this aspect with private equity, so I decided to focus on this.

And how about yours?

So I started my career helping San Francisco-based companies with their product and engineering. Then I joined an early-stage startup here in London as a founding engineer, and straight after that I realized, okay, I got the skills now to do it myself, and I joined an incubator to start my own company. I eventually started a company called 11X, which did quite well, but after that I've started working with Jose on Or JJ on Crew.

Crew aims to create autonomous systems for complex tasks, with plans to expand from London to San Francisco.

Biggest cost in AI is processing consumption. So most firms will charge for processing. You consume more tokens, more words, so you charge for more words. However, when you're telling people we're automating an entire job, an entire team, you want to look at how much value that team produces, right? In the case of private equity, if you spend $3 million on a 2-week project with dozens of advisors telling you whether to buy this company or not, there's so many ways to price this where we can make a lot of money. We're figuring out what's the best one. You can do a cost perspective where you say that team of advisors costs you $3 million. So now we're going to charge a tenth of that. Still a hell of a lot of money, some margin for us. And still it's better for the client. Or there's a value point of view. You know, how much is it worth to find the weak spot in this company so that you don't get screwed because we found it for you? How much is it worth to find the right company because we found it for you? So there's a huge— there's so much to explore and the sky's the limit.

What would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper at this stage in your project do for you guys?

Part of what I want to take away from working with Tim is I want to latch onto his energy. I love this, sorry Tim, but like unhinged energy that he brings to the table. I think the ecosystem in London can be a bit sleepier than that in the West Coast. And I just love that, you know, he's so plugged into all of these ecosystems that I wanna share that kind of energy that he brings to the table.

Amazing. And what would I like to get out of working with Tim Draper as well? Obviously everything that JJ just mentioned, but opportunity to think bigger, have even more ambition. And again, it goes into exactly what JJ just said, but sometimes I feel like in Europe there's a— not a lack of ambition, but America seems to have just a lot more of it, which is something I've always been gravitated towards, sort of opportunity to work.

They don't just want to witness the rise of AI, they want to be responsible leaders. Guiding this transformative technology, they are building Crew to shape a world where AI empowers us, changing how we understand and interact with the world today.

What would a million-dollar investment do for your company right now?

I think 2 things. We have to worry about compute. So what a million dollars would do for us is 2 things. On the one hand, we need to worry about compute these days. We say we need to get extra freaking smart about how do we call agents, which providers do we use? Because it can be really expensive if you do these things at scale. The other day a client told us, we want to work with you, but only if you can ingest our 5 terabytes worth of data. 5 terabytes is, for context, 1.4 million PDFs. I don't even know how they have 1.4 million PDFs and the like. So we want to not have to worry about that as much at the beginning and rather focus on the features that actually add value. And we want to hire a couple more 10x developers because right now we've done everything ourselves. And this guy's a genius, but, you know, there's only so much we can do together. Actually, he's there.

I think, I think it just opens up the realm of opportunity. It's, again, we used to be stuck to very rigid workflows that we can automate and get, like, it's great, you can automate stuff, but not everything. You're able to automate a lot more now. When it comes to kind of the dangers of AI, I think we're not going to get there anytime Real soon. Um, I think at the moment there's just lots of opportunity, and I don't think there's a need to be too scared of what AI is going to bring.

We're going to start with like an intro and then kind of an elevator pitch, like the most kind of concise version of what your company's doing.

In the rapidly expanding world of blockchain, security is paramount. But Anirin and Ari, the co-founders of Failsafe, are building a robust shield for digital assets and smart contracts right from the innovative hub of Austin.

Yeah, I think, you know, the, the, the gateway for the rest of the world into Web3 is going to be through their mobile phones. And the single point of failure is humans. We're emotional. And so social engineering attacks are only going to get more creative. But myself, I've been a serial entrepreneur. I've loved tech, been tinkering around ever since I was a wee lad. Built my first website at like 11 years old on Microsoft FrontPage. Eventually, my life took a bit of a turn when I was called to come back and serve in the military in Singapore. Joined Special Forces for a couple of years, was a Navy intelligence officer, and then went back into the startup space. And by stroke of luck, met Ari through, through Atlas. Hi, my name is Anirin Flynn. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Failsafe. In a nutshell, blockchain security protocol, and we're on a mission to end crypto theft and fraud.

Hi, I'm Ari Medvinsky. I'm the CTO and co-founder of Failsafe. We are a Web3 security protocol. Our value prop is in taking a defense-in-depth approach to the security landscape on, on, on the blockchain.

Ari and I met building a company called Ethless. Shout out to that entire team, phenomenal team. And that's something that we continue to expand today. We were serving hundreds of thousands of users in the Web3 space, and we found that Web3 is one of the most adversarial environments. Not only were our users getting hacked, but, you know, we were being targeted. And I think eventually I ultimately ended up being the victim of an attack. And yeah, one day we decided, hey, it's not enough to make Web3 fun and exciting, we also have to make it safe and secure.

Failsafe uses AI to secure Web3, protecting users' assets through fraud detection, smart contract protection, and treasury security.

Being able to feed in into our system other signals, like for example, let's say you're a customer of Failsafe, you signed up and you are being engaged with in some way, whether it's on the web or somebody called you. I mean, we already have a safe mode. So closing that loop and detecting that, hey, we know this call is coming from obviously like a a known fraudster. It's just that the channel is not the web, right? But incorporating that and putting, automating it to where you go into red mode and your assets are protected.

What do you guys think the opportunity to work with Tim Draper, maybe Adam Draper, like the Draper What would that mean for you guys at this point?

We'd be excited to work with the Draper empire, and I think this opportunity is very exciting for us because the Drapers have always been proponents of Bitcoin and they've always been there at the beginning.

Yeah, and just to add a bit to that, I think I really appreciate— I think it's a It's a very conscious or selective pick in the sense of, you know, we are a Web3 security company. It's not— DeFi protocols are great and there's many of them and all sorts of NFT projects, but I think that Draper's look at and consideration of startups that are innovating in the Web3 security space.

What would a million-dollar investment mean to your project at this phase?

A million-dollar investment would be a life-changing amount for the team. I think we would, first of all, take some time to celebrate the win. But beyond that, we'd be excited to double down and continue expanding the team. particularly in the States, and continue pounding the pavement where we have conviction.

A blockchain ecosystem where security is not an afterthought but a foundational pillar. That's what Failsafe is creating, ensuring peace of mind for enterprises navigating the complexities of Web3.

I mean, nothing being Failsafe, I think Yeah, at the end of the day, we espouse defense in depth, I mean, as many layers as possible. But to be honest, strategy to scaling to $700K, there is a direct path to that. We're expanding the sales team. We have a very, I think, robust and healthy sales pipeline.