This Startup is Making Stem Cells Accessible | Meet the Drapers S9: Próspera

Haven't really figured it out, or do you have a model?

For biobanking, they would pay us.

They would pay you. These four are good, huh? We are in Prospera.

Oh, we are!

We're in Prospera. Special Economic Zone.

Would be a real breakthrough if we prolong human life more than 120 years.

Brilliant, brilliant, and supporting brilliant. Freedom forever. I'm Tim Draper. I'm traveling the globe to find game-changing entrepreneurs with world-transforming ideas. Thousands applied, but only top entrepreneurs have made the cut for a chance to win an investment of $1 million. It's a journey packed with unforgettable moments.

Yeah!

$1 million investment.

A million dollars.

A million dollars.

A million dollars for the company would be huge. That would go such a long way to getting our bank off the ground.

Build out our technology so that we can distribute stem cells.

The ability to keep building world-class technology, advancing towards a path of hyper-bloody-chronization.

It would allow us to expand our portfolio and bring more therapies and combo treatments To solve human aging, and having the Drapers involved in our project—they're heavy hitters.

We want heavy hitters on the team.

Master blood, stem cells. Give us a million dollars. See, Tim, you gotta.

Yeah. Welcome everybody to meet the Drapers. We are here in Honduras. We are here at Prospera, the beginning of something really extraordinary, the freedom capital of the world. We're here with the founder of Prospera, Eric Bremen. Doesn't know it yet, but he is now adopted as Eric Bremen Draper.

Oh, all right.

He's built an extraordinary community here. Place is lit up with entrepreneurs, and you've really done something extraordinary here. Eric, what am I missing?

It's been a massive team effort. Nicholas over here is also a judge, Infinita, and a massive team, including the framers of the underlying legal foundations that has made Prospera possible in Honduras.

What are you gonna be looking for here?

Prospera is all about creating the conditions for entrepreneurs to solve the world's most meaningful problems. Wanna see in these startups that they're after ambitious issues with a business model that makes sense.

And on my far left, we're— here we have Nicholas Atzinger. Draper. Welcome to the family, brother. And he is the first layer 2 of Prospera with Infinita.

When I came here to Prospera for the first time almost 3 years ago, I was thinking, if this works, this will have a civilizational-scale impact. With the Prospera legal and regulatory system, we can solve the world's biggest problem.

So I'm 66. What do you think my odds are of 120 and then 220?

Well, you have a good influence on that by funding some of the longevity companies.

And on my immediate left, you know him well, Adam Draper. He runs Boost VC, built a zillion unicorns from scratch. My son, and I am very proud of him. Anything you're gonna be looking at, or—

I think what I'm constantly looking for is the spirit of the rebels amongst a bunch of institutional players. People who sell tools to the rebel rather than building the empire.

I have felt that spirit Yeah, it's sort of a simple solution, this Prospera, to a very complicated problem, which is basically drop all the stupid regulations and start from a good place. Brilliant, uh, brilliant, and, you know, supporting brilliance. Bring on our first entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on. Behind the scenes, and this is an eyebrow test.

So my name is Juliette Humer, and we are Muse Bio, and we are supplying the most abundant source of stem cells that's gonna enable regenerative medicine to advance much faster than it currently is. When I learned that there are stem cells in menstrual blood, and then when I kept going deeper and deeper into the science of it, I was like, why is nobody doing this? All the pieces are here. They just need to be put in the right order. There were a few variables. One is that I have this spine injury that isn't treatable by anything except stem cells. So I have to manage my pain every day, carry around this seat so I can sit places. The doctors are always like, oh, you're way too young for this to happen. Stem cell therapy can increase the survival rate of burn victims by 20%. Largest population of victims of war are burn victims. I had a partner who was a burn survivor, and so I really got to see the big impact. When I started this company and I started researching, this was around the start of the Ukrainian war. And I have a friend who is a stem cell scientist in Ukraine doing work specifically for burn victims. She was the one who was like, hmm, maybe they're in menstrual blood. Yeah, I wouldn't have known that I'd be doing this 4 years ago. My background is in biochemistry, and I worked in biotech the past 4 or 5 years in the Bay Area. I worked for Google for one of their startups on the Google campus. It was a circular economy company. I ran the chemical analytics for their pilot facility. Being sick, facing my own mortality, kind of makes things easier in a way, or like clearer. Like I said, you have a limited amount of time and energy. To do something on Earth, and why not take some risks and try to do something impactful? And so I was poised to start a PhD. I needed to go through a different route because academia is too slow. Right now it's like perfect timing, and we have all the machines and pieces and expertise to make it happen. It's just about somebody putting them in the right order so that it's easy for other people.

So how does it feel being here, like, in Prospera working on this?

Oh, it feels great. They're going to build me a lab.

Awesome.

Yeah. So we are in the Verandas area of Prospera. It's been incredible for my company. I made a lot of progress focusing Collectively with all the other entrepreneurs that are here, the ecosystem of having everyone else really focused really helps. In the walk from Pristine Bay to Duna, it's through the jungle. I really love to do that walk because the trees are beautiful. I found a few different fruit trees that are fruits that I'd never tried before. The sea life and the reef here is, is incredible first thing in the morning. Personally, I, I do better in warm environments. We've got the cold plunge and the sauna and the gym and everything, the ocean. It's pretty great. I think it is a pretty simple concept, and it's just not obvious because of the way that our society has been and the way science has progressed. So I'm here today to tell you that menstrual blood can save all your lives. Muse Bio, my company, is going to be the company that does that. So we are a stem cell supplier and biobank. Most people don't know this, but menstrual blood is the most abundant source of stem cells than any other source that exists currently. We are going to allow our donors to collect their stem cells in the privacy of their own homes, noninvasively, for 10x lower cost. We would be supplying other companies so that they could advance regenerative medicine. I have a permanent spine injury, but the only cure is stem cell therapy. And the obstacle for me has been that I can't afford it. I decided to put together this team to solve this problem with me, and together we hold expertise in stem cell science and engineering, and we're coming from companies like Google and Roche and institutions like Stanford. And we've partnered with Infinita so that we can build out our first labs and utilize the special economic zone to go to market faster. We've also demonstrated that we can collect the stem cells from menstrual blood. We've differentiated them into different tissue types. and we bio-3D-printed organs that can be implanted into the body. Cardiovascular disease, heart tissue damage. To get enough cells to treat one person, it costs $100,000 currently. With our technology, we're gonna bring down that cost to $1,000 for that amount of cells.

Why?

Why is nobody doing this?

Why has this taken so long?

Yeah, well, academia takes way too long. The person who discovered the stem cells in menstrual blood just started The first menstrual blood collection bank, and that was 20 years, and nobody's collecting stem cells for supplying for regenerative medicine.

And does it only work in women?

No, you can take stem cells from menstrual blood as well.

Where are you going to get your first revenue from?

From partnerships. We're aiming to be business to business. However, we have seen a massive demand from every woman that I've spoken to to bank their menstrual blood for future use. So we're also doing a B2C biobank cryopreservation.

Who do you sell it to again?

Other companies, clinics, biotechnology companies, research institutes.

How hard is this for someone else to do?

No one's done it yet, and I think we have all the pieces here, but people are a little squeamish. Menstrual blood and breast milk are the 2 least studied bodily fluids, and we're going to change the game. We're going to change the story.

How much of the hesitation you think has to do with taboo versus regulatory and legal barriers?

Well, we do see a pretty rapidly changing regulatory field right now. The FDA just approved menstrual blood as a diagnostics tool.

There are other startups who are going after menstrual blood.

Only for diagnostics.

And it's only for diagnostics. You're saying, I'm gonna be the leader in stem cells.

Yes.

Hey, would men's sperm be something you could go after?

I get this question.

But I'm not hearing an answer.

Well, there's not nearly as many.

Men?

Well, you don't regenerate your organ every month.

Oh, good point.

Good point. Thank you so much.

Thank you. This was great.

Are you going to do anything tonight to celebrate?

Maybe. Probably. Definitely. Definitely. This community. Yeah, this community's really supported me in so many ways.

Okay, judges, what'd you think?

Prospera has been this place where I feel like the entrepreneurs have this yes-and mentality, and she fundamentally represents that. She's like, I'm gonna give away tampons and I'm gonna pay 'em. I'm very excited for her to solve this problem for the world. I'm amped.

Nicholas, what'd you think?

My mind just goes to how can we do this faster?

Yeah, I love that. Urgency, agency. Eric, what'd you think?

I love how it presents an opportunity not only to generate profit solving meaningful problems, but also changing the narrative. Every month you have the opportunity to give life. I think it's a beautiful opportunity beyond just the business angle to it.

Yeah, this could actually change the cultural All of a sudden, hey, I got something cool now. I can save Grandpa. All right, with that, with Grandpa, it's all about the eyebrows, everybody. What's going on behind the scenes?

Hi, I'm Ken Krueger, the co-founder and CEO of The Network Bank, and we are building the bank of the future. I read a question that really struck me. spoke to me. If you had $1 billion right now, what would you do? And I thought on that and I said, well, I need to do something in the Bitcoin space. I need to do something in the payment space. This is stuff that I'm actually passionate about. It's funny because I am a technical person, so a lot of people think, oh, it must be the technology that attracted you to this. It was actually the politics that brought me into it. I like freedom. And when I learned about Bitcoin, I was like, well, wait a second, we can exist, we can transact without the government being involved? And that drew me into the industry and I haven't looked back. If you look under the hood, you'd be surprised how few banks there are involved in this type of business. And that's why I'm so motivated to build a bank that's gonna be the most in favor of this industry possible. I've always been of the mind of being the master of my own domain, running my own business. Even when I was in middle school, I was making websites and fixing computers for people. So that's one side. The other side is I've always had problems with authority. I'm very good at following rules. I can get all the grades and, and be a good young man. I don't like being told what to do. I had started a company about 7 years ago that allows consumers to spend Bitcoin anywhere Visa is accepted. That was a wildly profitable and fast-growing company. And one day I had a bank partner, and that bank partner said, hey, we got to get on a call. They said, you know what, Ken, we can't do this anymore. My business went from 25% month-over-month growth, profitable, to nothing. Very, very quickly due to the situation happening in the United States at the time, Operation Chokepoint 2.0, the regional banking crisis, FTX collapsing, went around to every other bank in the United States and not a single one of them would work with us. That really inspired this idea. But then we found Prospero, we found some other locations where we could build our own bank and really build something special. so that I won't get debanked ever again. When I first came here, I didn't know what to expect. Sometimes I'm like, is this gonna be a whole bunch of like kind of weirdos, libertarian weirdo type people? And I'm like, no. Well, they're libertarian weirdo type people, but they're my kind of libertarian weirdo type people. We are in Prospera. I love it here. It's really fantastic. While it's very beautiful, what's even better is the community. The people are smart and they're working on really, really interesting things. It's like absolutely wild, innovative stuff's happening. We are on a boat going from Las Verandas to Duna. So at Las Verandas, that is a resort. So if you want to come here on a vacation, you want to check the place out, you go to Las Verandas, you're going to have a great time. Over here at Duna, this is the Builders District, right? These are the entrepreneurs. It's a fantastic place for people who want to get things done. And, uh, it's a good time. You never know what an investor is going to ask you on the spot and in front of a live audience like that.

Give us your pitch.

Now imagine this, you're building in a frontier industry like crypto. And one day out of the blue, due to no fault of your own, you're suddenly debanked. This is what happened to me in 2023. Or imagine this. You're one of the billions—

Wait, what happened to you? You were trying to bank with a group, but you were a crypto guy. So they said, we don't take your money.

Yeah, a fast-growing payments company. We worked with crypto. And then one day they said, sorry, we can't do this anymore. And they couldn't even tell us why.

Can we talk about who they is? Is it, uh—

I'd prefer not to name them.

Blink twice if it's Wells Fargo.

Yeah. But imagine you're one of the billions of people around the world that doesn't have access to a US dollar bank account. You're unbanked. Or maybe you're one of these people right here who are building the next big thing here in Prospera, but you don't have the financial infrastructure to really meet what you're trying to do. So whether you are unbanked, underbanked, or debanked, Finally, there's a bank for that. We are targeting the fastest-growing market segments that are clamoring for banking options. We're giving them exactly that, a world-class banking experience. But we're not just a bank app. Everything we provide, we also provide via APIs. We've done the heavy lifting of integrating with the global financial ecosystem so you can bring your company, your app, your AI, your DAO, or your network state and build on top of our infrastructure. So we've built, or we're in the process of building, a series of full-reserve banks chartered in special economic zones around the world. This gives us an advantage over traditional banks where regulator alignment is what's missing and it is stifling innovation. 2 weeks ago, we got our full bank charter in Prospero.

How long did that take?

It actually took a little bit over a year.

Oh!

Not the— no fault of Prospero.

And how much money?

I want to say $50,000 all in, probably.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's $30 million in the U.S.

Exactly. To be here.

In probably 5 years.

So we're on track to be the first bank chartered by a Native American tribe in U.S. history.

Which tribe?

Catawba.

We talked to them. Catawba. They're in South Carolina, right?

Exactly. I hope you'll join us on revolutionizing banking and banking the unbankable.

So now that we have crypto, do we even need banks?

100%. You want to buy Bitcoin? It's going through a bank. You want to sell Bitcoin? It goes through a bank. All those stablecoins, they're often backed by dollars in a bank. All of the innovation that's happening in crypto, people like to think, oh, there's no bank involved. Banks aren't going anywhere for a while.

And what's the dream? Like, you succeed, you take over. Is it just to take over all the banks?

I see us as the next JPMorgan Chase, the largest global bank in the world. And what we're doing is focusing on the areas where there aren't currently banking services. AI, right? What happens when AI needs to use a bank account? All these traditional banks, they can't even comprehend this idea right now.

How will the next JPMorgan of the future look like? Because it won't look like the current JPMorgan.

I think it's really a matter of making sure that you're interoperable with digital assets. I'll give you an example. HSBC, that's the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation. It grew with that special zone to become one of the largest banks in the world. And that's how we see the future for the network bank. I think Prospera is the future. We call it the Hong Kong of the Americas.

Thanks so much for being on Meet the Drapers.

Thank you. There was no gotchas, nothing like that. I just thought they were very encouraging and they really were truly interested in what we're building.

What I would be looking for primarily is can the team take advantage of the conditions that are here and within visibility? In a manner that lets them evolve rapidly. Because whatever we think the right niche is now, it's going to change. I'm a bit biased because I know that the companies here—

Is this the first bank charter?

It is not. I would say this is the most promising.

And banking is a perfect example of how overregulation kills businesses. Like much of the new regulations from 2008 after the financial crisis. Since then, there's 98% fewer bank charters issued. The banks messed up. Let's give them more power.

That was exactly what happened, and that's why Bitcoin was so important to give an alternative.

So here's the good news: when this thing finally airs, 30 million people are now aware of the network bank. By the time it airs, they better have it up and running. Let's bring on the next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

My name is Anna Vakhroshova. I'm CTO and co-founder of Unlimited Bio, where we build combo longevity treatments against aging. I hold PhD degree in bioengineering. I wanted to work on aging since school, so it's like my, like, childhood dream. We have so many technologies, but why people still age? And I've decided to devote my career and my work to work on problem. So crazy that so many people, like around 100,000 people, die every year due to age-related courses. They all feel like it's going so slow. So we wait like for 10 years to get just one drug to the market. We understand that regulations, they care about safety, but is it like really favorable risk-benefit ratio? Overall, the goal of our company is to solve aging, and we utilize special zones to combine multiple therapies because aging is so complex and, and we need to tackle hundreds of processes. Here we can work on aging itself because in other regulations we can work only on the diseases. It's like a big difference, and it's like really unique place for Longevity companies to work in this environment. It's like very difficult to repair and restore, but when we work preventive on the earlier stages, it's much more easier to us to tackle these different processes and restore, for example, some expression of the protein that will decline. I would say that it's people who we love, who we care, but overall it's like all human beings. From our understanding, the main limit is 120 years, so it would be a real breakthrough if we prolong human life more than 120 years. And it's like really interesting to see what kind of future will like will wait for us. Like if we live like hundreds and thousands of years, so how like everything will change, our way of thinking will change. I would say it's the best life that I can have because I really enjoy what I'm doing. And I feel that if I was doing something different, I won't be so satisfied and happy.

Viewers, usually I'm pretty easy to reach. I mean, there are only 300 million of you. I'm making it a lot easier for you to contact me. I have downloaded my brain into this digital twin, and you can scan this QR code. You can pitch me your idea. You can talk about your business, anything, and I'll answer it 24/7. Enjoy it. It's great. It's a new feature of Meet the Drapers and Draper TV. I think you're going to have some fun.

For us, it's a really like unique and special place. Yeah, it's very beautiful nature, great views all around us, and we have a lot of jungles and like wild nature all around. So it's actually have kind of cool sea with one of the Biggest reef where we can snorkeling, diving, and do some water activities. Technological startups can do different things they can't do in other classical regulations. Currently, we are at the Duna building and the building of Infinitar City, where all of us actually live, work, build connections, and just spend some time together. I made speeches, but mostly in Russian, so in English it's the first time for me. Yeah, it was like cool experience. My name is Anna Vakhrushova. I'm co-founder of Unlimited Bio, where we develop the first combo treatment against aging. So far, zero therapies exist for aging. Pharma companies deal with one disease at a time, with one drug at a time. But to solve aging, we need to tackle hundreds of processes. And here, in special zones, we can first combine multiple therapies, not just one, and use them for longevity purposes. Here we can move fast, and we've proven it by launching our first gene therapy in less than a year, in comparison with 10-year timeline in biotech, with FDA level of safety. This year we are launching 5 gene therapies and first combo treatment for muscle growth, cognitive enhancement, and more. We've reduced the average cost of bringing drug to market from $1 billion to $200,000.

How do you reduce it? Are you going through PROSPERA's FDA or are you trying something else?

Yes, through local IRB. So we are concentrating currently on the low-hanging fruit, the therapies that already have some safety and Efficiency profile, but they are used for disease, and we bring it here and repurpose them for longevity purposes to slow down and reverse aging. He understands like biotech and positive, very optimistic. I liked his technological view on things.

Within Prospera, you can start to commercialize once you clear the safety hurdle, not necessarily efficacy hurdle, which in the US is different.

Here we just need to prove the safety of our therapies, and if already the drug, the therapy already have all the safety profile, so we just ensure that it's safe and we can commercialize it.

Do you have any drugs on the market yet?

Yeah, we have already our first gene therapy on the market. So we started this February and we've already generated 5-figure revenue. And will we be the first generation who breaks this limit or the last who runs out of time? Join us to rewrite this future.

Anna, thank you so much for being on Meet the Drapers. Really good job. Thank you.

Fantastic. All right.

My main mission was to raise awareness about these unique possibilities. I think that I've completed this and I'm very excited and I think it was great.

I love how they are taking advantage of the unique conditions here and leveraging it to get to market faster. They can actually start to monetize while developing the therapies further and the data to go along.

So what'd you think, Adam?

I mean, I think success of startups is driven by iteration cycles. And the one common theme I'm seeing is like whether it be banking, blood or bio, everyone's going to market 50 times faster than the United States. Is there— and less cost.

$200K versus $2 billion. Yeah, it's a lot more than that. It's 10,000 times cheaper. Yeah, it's a good deal. Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy that the FDA is not doing this.

There's really this one thing that makes Could make this company a 0 to 1, which is the combinatorial part, right? So you can't solve aging with just one therapy, one drug. You probably need tens, like maybe 40, 50, right? And there's like interactions between those, right? But no single company can do that, right? Because the FDA or traditional drug approval just allows like for one disease indication. We literally can't solve aging with traditional regulations right now. And it can only happen here in Prosper right now until we also convince other regulators that this is a reasonable thing to do.

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

So my name is Juan Mayen, and I'm from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The company name is Blink, and we make Bitcoin payments incredibly easy. I actually went to college in Central Arkansas, and then I went to Bible Institute in Memphis, Tennessee, and then I went to get a master's in the University of Memphis. In 2019, I moved back to Honduras, and kind of fast forward, I ended up being part of the founding team of Blink. My dad is an entrepreneur. My grandma used to sell watches, to wholesale watches. My mom used to wholesale watches, even though she's a lawyer too. She had her side business. Sometimes at the beginning, they think that I'm a bit crazy for believing in this digital currency money. After seeing that El Salvador made it legal tender and president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, gave it credibility to the region, they started to believe a little bit more into this Bitcoin thing. When you're an entrepreneur, almost everyone says, no, that's a bad idea. No, you can't do that. And so I've always kind of been of like, we won't know until we try. One time I spoke to one of my customers and I asked him, you know, why are you interested in Bitcoin? Like, why do you want to buy some Bitcoin? He approached me to buy some Bitcoin. This 65, 70-year-old man looked at me and said, power has to be decentralized. And I was blown away. It's this older gentleman Understanding that Bitcoin was providing decentralized power from the chains, breaking free from the chains of fiat printing and fiat money controlled by central governments.

What would the younger version of yourself, like a college kid back in Tennessee, think about what you're doing now?

I think he'd be pretty puzzled because, you know, I was studying to to like be an ambassador, to get involved in government. So he'd be pretty puzzled and be like, that's a completely— working in tech is a completely different line than what we were— than I was— my younger self was working in earlier. And so I think he'd be pretty proud as well of ending up where I'm currently. Right now we are in Prospera, Roatan, Honduras, in the Bitcoin Education Center. So the Bitcoin Education Center is the place where you come to learn what Bitcoin is, how to use Bitcoin, how to send and receive Bitcoin payments, anything and everything about Bitcoin. You come to learn it here. I love the liberty to innovate, the space to meet other founders, and bounce off ideas, and where innovation is welcomed here almost in every aspect. The Bay Islands of Honduras. We have pristine waters. We can go to the beach. We can go and relax. I mean, we're living literally in an island that looks like paradise. Really, it's God's gift in Honduras. I was a bit nervous. Like, this is Honduras. It's where I grew up. And so to have these opportunities here, you want to make the most out of it. So what is Blink? We were the spark that ignited the creation of the first Bitcoin law in Central America, in El Salvador, and therefore starting the Bitcoin journey of millions of people, not only in Central America, but around the world. But why does it feel like one has to be a mad scientist to simply pay with Bitcoin over Lightning? It requires dedicated hardware, 24/7 uptime. It's just all very complex to simply make a Bitcoin payment. And that's where we come in. For the first time ever, anyone around the world can join in on this global monetary network. You don't have to ask for permission. And Blink is the solution to that. Not only are we a wallet, but a Bitcoin platform. Whether it's a small shop in the beaches of El Salvador or a surf school in South Africa to accept the soundest money we have ever seen, we enable that and no one can stop that. This is a map of our merchants around the world who are already using Blink today to accept Bitcoin payments. And you can have StableSats, which is a dollar equivalent account, where you can learn within the app how to use Bitcoin, what Bitcoin is, and you can convert Bitcoin from your local currency to Bitcoin and vice versa. And this is probably what we're most proud of. This is more than 50 Bitcoin circular economies around the world in Honduras, in El Salvador, Brazil and Peru and Germany, all of them already using Bitcoin as a circular economy. That means they're buying their groceries, they're paying for their gym membership, they're paying for their coffee, all with Bitcoin. Not in 20 years, not 5 years ago, today.

When we're just getting started and I'm a sender and I'm saying I want to buy this—

Cantaloupe.

Dozen of cantaloupe.

So this matches.

With Bitcoin, then I give it to the The retailer, and the retailer says, well, that's fine, but I don't have a Bitcoin wallet. Does it automatically give the Bitcoin wallet to the recipient?

No, he has to download the app, but the only thing we need to make an account is a phone number. And after you create the account, you can delete the phone number and put an email. Yeah, so the questions were mostly about the product. So one of the features that he mentioned was sending sats to phone numbers, which we're actually working on.

I've spent a lot of Bitcoin on pizza that I wish I hadn't. But, but, but, but like generally, you know, everyone pays that to be able to spread the word of Bitcoin at any given time. Why is now like the moment that you feel like merchants, it makes sense?

Well, it needs to be a bottom-up grassroots effort. Like it's really hard, as we've seen, when This change wants to come from the top down, but it's a lot easier when your friend, your neighbor says, hey, there's this thing called Bitcoin. It's great money. No one can stop you from it. You should accept it. And so that kind of took more of a viral effect in 2021 with the creation of the Bitcoin law in El Salvador. And then, yeah, so we were the spark that created that.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Juan. Okay, thanks for being on Meet the Drapers.

I think the conversation developed naturally. They asked a ton of good questions. Definitely gonna go celebrate, jump into the beach, and maybe, I don't know, smoke a cigar.

Adam, what'd you think?

A big part of winning in a startup is timing, and like, they might be hitting the right time. But, you know, It's been 12 years, you know? It's been a long time.

The killer feature of their app is the stable sets. Because in my experience, the thing that keeps merchants and consumers from using Bitcoin on a day-to-day basis is the price volatility.

The bet is that the future of finance will be decentralized. Right now, banking is a global cartel that forces the same unanimous AML/KYC regulations on everyone. In every country, it's an oligopoly, right? So, and the bet is the future is decentralized. So there will be communities that will be using, you know, USDC stablecoins, others will use IC, the Infinita City Credits, and others will use Bitcoin. And in that world, I think there will be a passionate community of tens of millions of Bitcoiners. And the one who will have that wallet for that community will be a multi-billion company.

We are here in Prospera, the developer of economic freedom zones. All these entrepreneurs are free to do whatever their minds take them to, and it's beautiful. Oh my gosh! Let's go tour it. Yeah, let's go tour it. Fear twenty-one because there are twenty-one million Bitcoin. Oh, we just hit freedom. I feel it. Oh, look at this! Oh my gosh, they got a pool up here. Wow, look at that view.

Huh?

And this is the 2nd greatest barrier reef. Whoa. Trash coin for Bitcoin. Look at those mushrooms.

I know, that's like 2 days of growth.

Oh, thank you. Hello. Okay, a latte and a cold brew. I'm paying in Infinita City credits. Paid. Done. Home.

Freedom forever.

Now we've got the tough, tough decision. Which of these 4 are gonna go up to the semifinals to go on and win a million-dollar investment? Let's bring up the 4 entrepreneurs. I'll just take it one at a time. Juliette, with MuseBio, I think it's a major breakthrough. I know cheaper stem cells are gonna make a big difference in the world. The thing I was concerned about was I didn't feel like you had figured out your business model and what the customer was going to get or do. It wasn't clear. Is it an experimental thing and you don't— haven't really figured it out, or do you have a model?

Well, we're a multi-sided model, so it's B2B and B2C.

With your customer, the C.

We would offer them the kit. And then we would pay them for cell procurement. But for biobanking, for the individual use, allowing individuals to secure their futures by banking their stem cells, they would pay us via subscription model.

They would pay you?

To store it.

So they get their own cells?

Yeah, their own cells. Perfect.

But how do the men get to use those cells?

Well, if you have a sister or a mother or a daughter, you have a close 60 to 70 plus chance of having a perfect match to them. Plus, with half the population menstruating, given we can see how many people would want to donate, your likelihood of having a perfect match is incredibly high.

God, this—

these 4 are good, huh? NetworkBank, the only issue we had with you—

Just so many issues.

How are you gonna grab the market? How are you gonna get the world to know about you?

Companies integrating with our APIs are eventually delivering our product to individual end customers. Only takes a handful of relatively successful businesses built on our platform that delivers to millions of people around the world. We're starting being the most boring bank in their eyes possible. There's enough innovation with Prospera. Once we get that integration, then we can start gradually being a little bit more innovative.

Ona with unlimited bio. Very clever because there are always other uses for drugs. What I was wondering about was, I mean, the reason the FDA does what it does protects people based on certain conditions. Ozempic was for high blood pressure. Somebody with low blood pressure gets Ozempic and then they have intestinal problems. How are you going to deal with that?

Currently, we are focusing on these therapies that already have the safety and some efficiency data. We understand that classical regulations cares a lot about safety, but still, like, every day 100,000 people dies due to age-related causes. We need to do something with this, and we need to accelerate. We need to move. Yes, we should do it carefully, but we need to do something.

Blank one, the greatest thing that could happen to the world. Is that we create the circular economies all over the world. The concerns are that we haven't quite nailed the viral effect. What are you gonna do?

So we have a learning section in the app where people can learn about Bitcoin, and they start to do it like a video game. It's education, and that's why we're partnering with organizations like in El Salvador, like Mi Primer Bitcoin, who educate. just the general population on what Bitcoin is, that's causing a multiplying effect. It's going to be slow, but we're working towards that.

Here, we'll start with Adam so he gets the tough job. Who's your favorite? What do you want to do? And all of this, by the way, feeds the crystal ball, and the final decision made by the crystal ball, there isn't anything we can do about it.

You know, I spent my career trying to find where the rebellion from the institution That's sort of like what I've been obsessed with for the last 12 years. It does feel like the spirit of it is in Prospera. So in the spirit of that, my favorite company was MuseBio. You can tell that she's incredibly passionate and she's on to— I mean, she's on to something.

All right, Nicholas.

Every of these companies will be successful.

Yeah, I should have started there. That is a good political answer. Yeah.

All are there at about point where they're highly fundable. For me, my favorite is Ana. This is really the most zero-to-one, and zero-to-one is really what is changing the world the most.

Boy, oh boy.

All right, Eric, what do you think?

Well, it is tough, and I agree with what has been said. I think all 4 of you are— have been phenomenal. I guess I'll disclose my bias in how I'm gonna choose. I'm gonna choose on the basis of which one has the most traction so far and can have the most positive feedback to helping accelerate prosperous success. And for that, I would choose Blink.

I don't have to choose. We'll just leave it up to the crystal ball.

Crystal ball. The good news is, is that the world's in good hands.

Yeah, I really loved all 4 of these. I thought they were really amazing. We'll go to the crystal ball. Can we get everybody's energy here? Let's go to the crystal ball. Quiet energy or like loud energy? It's quiet, confident energy. The winner is— all of you are going to the semifinals!

It was mind-blowing. I was not expecting that. Like, I was expecting to hear one name.

I thought that he's joking.

I was shocked, and also I was like, well, okay, that makes sense.

Of course. Completely blown away at the end when they said everyone gets to be the winner.

This has never been done before. That literally hasn't been done before. I literally had no idea who he was gonna pick. Never in the history of Meet the Drapers have we sent all 4 to the finale. I saw Sarika panic. I was feeling the spirits and the energy of this incredible This is an incredible place of entrepreneurship. Congratulations, you're all going to the semifinals.

I'm thrilled. I'm very happy. The other part of me is like, oh man, I gotta do this all over again.

Yeah, actually I liked all of the pitches. Very cool idea, very good traction. So it was a strong competition.

I'm happy that we're moving on. You know, we won, they won, we all won in this case. Maybe in the semifinal it might turn a little bit more competitive. I'm competitive, but I'm just happy.

What Unlimited Bio is doing is incredible. Yeah, I've been rooting for Unlimited Bio. I'm excited to continue to work next to them and hopefully maybe with them.

You know, at least I'm not the loser.

We'll see you next time on Meet the Drapers!