Where Curiosity Meets Courage | Entrepreneur Stories

Let's just start out with an intro, the name of your company, your full name, and just kind of an elevator pitch, just like what the company's doing in one sentence.

In Quebec's aerospace corridor, Jesse Michelberg engineers tomorrow's launchpad. Reaction Dynamics crafts hybrid rocket engines fueled by non-toxic propellants. The sky isn't the limit anymore, it's just the beginning.

My story begins a little bit before me with my, with my grandfather, who came to Canada as a child refugee after World War II and provided, you know, me and my family with all kinds of opportunity to pursue our dreams. For me, that actually meant studying neuroscience and genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. I kind of call that my, my first life, after which I enlisted into the military. I spent a few years in the Middle East as a combat soldier and paratrooper. That's my second life. And when I came home, I pursued a master's in business. That was my third life. And each of these 3 areas, expertise and knowledge across science and research, national security and public service, and then business and strategy came together to allow me to excel in a role in the space sector. Space is a part of our everyday lives, whether we like it or not, whether that's at the individual level or at the national level, where governments are using this to protect our borders, inspect fishing lanes, look for pinhole leaks in the oil and gas industry. So really, space makes the world go round, and we're trying to find a way to make that access more affordable, more convenient, less toxic, less hazardous, and much more flexible in nature.

Small satellites need dedicated rides to orbit. Jesse's answer? Proprietary propulsion that's greener, leaner, and ready to fly. Reaction Dynamics delivers payload precision without compromise.

My name is Jesse Michelberg. We at Reaction Dynamics, we are delivering critical space assets and satellite infrastructure for governments, agencies, and commercial operators alike. So my first job in the space sector was at a Canadian startup launching satellites. We were launching satellites to take images of assets in space. And while working for that company, we came to know all of the most difficult problems preventing startups, companies, corporations from launching their assets. Launch was the limiting factor when it comes to a successful and thriving space economy. And that's when I met co-founder Bashar Alzien, a researcher at the Reaction Flows Laboratory up north, who was working to solve a problem plaguing the launch industry. We've got a team of about 30, about 90% of which are PhDs in rocket science and fluid dynamics. We've got a really fantastic team of scientists and engineers, and the vast majority of which are based in our laboratory, in our factory. Yeah, so our first launch vehicle, Aurora, will launch up to 200 kilograms. And that could, you know, that could be one 200-kilogram satellite. It could be 4 50-kilogram satellites. And they have many use cases ranging from geopositioning systems and communications to Earth observation and space situational awareness.

What would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean for your company right now?

Working with Tim would be such an incredible opportunity. He's an absolute mogul who has seen a lot of a lot of potential in the space industry very early on. We happen to be working with some of Tim Draper's portfolio companies, and we're very excited about that.

Jesse Michelberg believes space belongs to everyone. His rockets prove it. Affordable access powered by sustainable chemistry. From ground tests to orbital insertion, Innovation ignites here.

What would $1 million mean to the company right now?

Sure. A $1 million investment in Reaction Dynamics would mean a lot to us. In fact, it would enable us to achieve our first spaceflight scheduled for next year, taking place from Australia. You know, when I was a kid, when people used to ask me what you wanted to be when you grow up, I used to say space cowboy. And I like to think that, you know, today I'm somewhat of a space cowboy. I think my younger self would be proud. You know, I can confidently say that. I certainly struggled a lot with mental health growing up, and I still struggle with mental health. And it's a— I mean, it's a struggle every day. But what makes me get up in the morning is the fact that there's a team of, you know, dedicated, you know, people who care about each other, who care about what it is that we're looking to do, you know, changing the way that human space travel and spaceflight is done. space logistics influences the world is a really big problem. I certainly can't do it alone. And so, you know, I get to show up to work every day with people who really care, and I love it.

We just could start with like your Your full name, company name, and like the kind of elevator pitch, just like the core mission of the company.

Arif Iqbal traded Silicon Valley skyline for Lahore's heartbeat. After shaping products at Meta and Pinterest, he launched Laam, a digital runway for South Asian elegance, heritage, So I was born and raised in Lahore.

I did my undergrad in computer science, got into AI, then got a chance to move to the US, work for Microsoft, Pinterest, Meta. And eventually then I came back and then I started Laam. I would say 80% of the people thought I'm crazy. The fact that, you know, after you have worked for this big tech or you have seen the journey of these products like at Pinterest or at Meta, I wanted— I was getting to a phase in life where I wanted to have a bigger impact, especially on the community that I was raised in and I was a part of. So I think when we, when we think about our South Asian ethnic fashion, it's extremely different from the way fashion is perceived in the West. If you just think about the amount of colors, the fabrics, the texture and the embroideries, the embellishment and how all of these things come together. It's a lot more creative and complex, and a lot of people, a lot of creative people put their heart and energy into it. We do not believe that it has gotten the right exposure yet in the world. So we want to be that representative of South Asian fashion and be the flag bearer of making it accessible across the world because it's so rich and so beautiful.

Laam weaves tradition into e-commerce. Aarav's algorithm curates. His logistics deliver. His marketplace thrives. Artisans from Karachi to Kolkata now serve customers across 6 continents.

My name is Arif Iqbal. The company name is Laam, and our core mission is that we want to make South Asian fashion accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. If somebody's getting married in, let's say, California or New York, and they get all of their clothing from Laam, as a platform and we give them all the technology recommendations and customer support as well to make the decision easy. And they are like, oh, we had a fabulous wedding and Lom really came in and elevated that. Then people are celebrating these events like Diwali, Eid, and all of that. And for those events, this is their go-to place. This is becoming one of their go-to places for all of their ethnic shopping fashion, ethnic shopping. So I think for us, when we read those messages, I think that's the impact that we see on the consumer's life, that they are able to celebrate their events a lot better than what we have built. The second aspect is that essentially all of those outfits that I'm talking about that they get for those events is essentially the ones that are produced by people who did not have access to this audience in the first place, right? So essentially anytime a new order comes in, it's like somebody among the 1,000 sellers that we have on the platform is getting that order. We are a fairly big team. We are 170 full-time employees. We have 80 contractors that do our warehousing and supply chain on top of that as well. So in total, we are around 250 people. So I think that's where both sides— I think the impact on the consumer lives and the impact on the seller's life, I think, is the one that kind of like keeps us going and keep pushing us forward. That if we can create 10,000+ jobs, why can't we do 100,000 and then go for a million jobs? So if I look at a decade from now, I think people who are shooting this show, I would love them to be wearing, wearing a kurta with an embroidery which is coming in from, let's say, a part of Sindh or a part of like India and different places in Southeast Asia. And I think today it's very, very rare. I think there is a lot more chance that this is how the fashion is going to evolve in the next few decades, and we would love to be the one playing a part in that. What would the opportunity to work with Tim mean to you and your company? So the opportunity of working with Tim is that I really value people who have kind of like walked the path that you really want to walk. And I can see that the journey that we want to create a lot of a great product and a great business, we see Tim has walked that path for outstanding companies and really enabled them in the last multiple decades, right? So for us, like, if Tim's come behind us and that advice and supports, that would mean that our probability of success and moving in that direction would definitely be a lot higher. So We're very, very excited if we can get that advice.

For Arif, Laam is more than retail. It's revival. Centuries-old craftsmanship gains modern momentum. Each transaction writes a new chapter for makers and their timeless art.

What would a million-dollar investment mean for your company? So we want to— it's essentially if somebody in Manhattan or in California or in UK gets our order in like 4 days or 5 days. We want to create our operations done in a way that they can get them like next day or maximum 2 days. So by getting this investment, I think one of the things that we will do is that we will really go out and like invest in our operations so that we can delight those customers a lot more. So when we were deciding on the name, my daughter whose name is Lamia, she was like, I think around 4, 4 and a half years old. And we had nicknamed her Lam since her birth. Because I think one of the things is that she keeps saying, she keeps telling me that you need to take care of my name now as you have to take care of the brand. It's like looking back 4 years ago to now, like we have created more than 10,000 jobs on the ground by just like making this fashion accessible, especially for SMEs, especially for creative people on the ground. And this was the core reason that really pushed me to go and like do it. And that exact moment I decided.

We'll start with an intro.

Yeah, like your full name, your company name, and then a very concise sort of elevator pitch about what you guys do.

Yeah.

Amit Sinha decoded a problem at Harvard. Genomic analysis was brilliant but brutal. Basepair became his solution. Cloud infrastructure that turns DNA puzzles into answers. Science streamlined.

Yeah, I never had much of a job before this. I've done smaller startups as part-time, but this is my first full-time startup. And the origin was pretty much when I was doing a PhD in AI. Before it was cool, back when we used to call it machine learning. And the application of AI that I found most fascinating was in medicine because the data is very messy, very noisy, but the impact is so much higher. So after graduating, all my friends went west to the Silicon Valley tech companies. I went east. I joined a Harvard Medical School cancer research lab, and that is where I got introduced to genomics. Medicine broadly is becoming more data-driven. So genomics is one such tool. So IVF is an example. Cancer is a huge example. Cancer is a genetic disease, but most often diagnosis is based on a subjective view in a microscope. But now there's a lot of work in genomics and cancer as well. Similarly, for infectious disease, if you look at COVID with a PCR test, you can say on or off, COVID or not. But with sequencing, with genomics, you can say exactly what variant you have— Delta, Omicron, what have you. So that is the future of medicine, very data-driven. And that's what we want to do, go across all disease areas. We are about 20 people and we are distributed globally. What we as a team do very well is connect the dots between the science, the software, and the commercialization.

Researchers click, not code. Amit's platform handles RNA-Seq, Variant calling and visualization in hours, not weeks. Basepair accelerates the path from raw data to clinical revelation.

My name is Amit Sinha. I am the founder of Basepair. Genomics is one of the most powerful innovations in medicine, but data analysis is the bottleneck. We develop software to allow scientists to run complex analyses very easily and quickly. We have several paying customers, 13 enterprise customers. One of the most satisfying ones for us is we have a product in the reproductive medicine space. So if you go through an IVF procedure, there's a genetic test called PGTA, and we have the whole software suite to do the analysis, interpretation, and reporting for that, which is already helping multiple families having more healthy pregnancies. I personally took a big bet in this industry almost 20 years ago. Because I could see where this is going with genomics and AI and more data-driven. So what we do very well as a team is we, the science and the software people, we get together, we collaborate, and the way we collaborate and the way we connect the dots is more effective than anybody else in the industry.

What would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean for your company right now?

Yeah, working with Tim will be a game changer for us. He's one of the most recognized venture capitalists in the Valley, and we need these kind of resources to go to the next level. So this is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us.

Amit's ambition? Genomics for all. Partnering with AWS and NVIDIA, Base Pair removes barriers so labs worldwide can chase cures. Intelligence amplified.

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

A million-dollar investment will really help us scale up our sales. We have had a lot of success with customers, and with this capital, we will be able to go to so many different markets and 10x our business. I don't come from a very business family, so nobody really understood what I was doing, but they knew that they need to support me, and they did support me a lot. My then-girlfriend at the time, now wife, so they all supported me without understanding what I was getting myself into.

What would like that other, you know, previous version of yourself working in academia, what would that guy think about you now sort of leading a business, being an entrepreneur? Would he be surprised?

Would he be proud?

Like, what do you think he would say?

Yeah, so I think that guy will be extremely surprised and proud because the things I've done in the last few years I had never done before, like hiring a team, raising capital, building products, doing sales. In academia, you're like so far removed from any sales or any, any of those things. So looking back, that's— that learning has been very important for us to be where we are today, being able to learn these adjacent skills.

So we can start with just like an intro, just like your name, your company name, what you guys do with the company, and then like kind of the shortest elevator pitch, you know, the most concise version.

Leo Trottier designed hexagons. Alexis Devine taught dogs to use them. Together in the Pacific Northwest, they created Fluent Pet. Where animals spell out thoughts one button at a time. Silence shattered.

The original reason, like, why was I excited about being able to communicate with animals? I think they have these vivid and exciting and super interesting inner lives, and I would love to kind of just like rub the window a little bit and open up a clearer view on exactly who they are, how they think about things. what their experience of life is like. I think it could help us connect with them and discover an entirely new universe. I think it's— to me, it's at least as exciting as humanity going to another planet.

What I very quickly learned and recognized was that dogs are talking to us all the time, right? And we just haven't been listening. And by giving my dog a way to communicate very clearly to me what she wants, I was able to curb some of those more challenging behaviors like demand barking. I was able to gain access into her world and know about the things that she was thinking about and the things that she wants that I might not have known otherwise. And since then, so many amazing things have happened. She's been able to tell me when she's in pain. She's been able to tell me when my other dog has an ear infection. And there are learners all over the world that are having these incredible experiences with their animals that they couldn't otherwise have had.

The Hextile system is deceptively simple— recordable buttons arranged for learning. Yet it's revolutionary. Pets articulate hunger, happiness, requests. Alexis and Leo turn behavioral signs into living conversation.

I'm Leo, founder, CEO of FluentPet. Um, started FluentPet Along with Alexis about 4 years ago, right in the middle of COVID I'm Alexis Devine.

I'm the co-founder of FluentPet. 2019, I brought home a dog and I decided that I wanted the most connected relationship with the best communication. And we've been working towards that goal ever since.

When we made this switch back in 2019, when we saw that it was possible for dogs to communicate, using these recordable sound buttons. But at the time, no one had recordable sound buttons that were designed for dogs.

So when I got into contact with Leo, I was really excited about the possibility of having some of my decisions in this process be informed by cognitive science. And we began working together and iteratively designing a canine-specific AIC device, which has taken us to where we are now. And it's been a really wild ride.

Yeah, there were thousands of people who, like Alexis, were having to improvise their own soundboards to communicate with their dogs. No, there was no pre-existing product and definitely no community. And so I posted to a Facebook forum where these people were talking about it, and I said, hey, I'm a cognitive scientist. I've got a few designs for ways to organize buttons that I think will help dogs and cats. Well, at the time it was just dogs. That would help dogs and cats learn how to— the locations of the buttons better, and maybe use the buttons and communicate in a clearer way. And actually, hundreds of people signed up to kind of be a part of the beta testing community. And we got together with a number of the people who were the most successful with buttons. And Alexis was the one who, like, stood out. Stood out. Like, she had one of the most advanced dogs, and She was extremely gung-ho, and we got her some of the first prototypes, and kind of the rest is history.

Mad help?

Because bird?

Yeah.

You sure showed them, Bubba. We launched the product and people were just all over it. And I don't know, within like 6 months we had like thousands of people in the community that were just like, how do I do this? Then building the community and designing the process and figuring out sort of step by step how to find success in communicating with buttons with All sorts of animal learners, not just dogs, but cats. And there are some zoos that are using the technology as well at this point. There's a Santa Fe Teaching Zoo that is using buttons to promote breeding behaviors with tortoises, which is just fascinating.

One of the things that I didn't know getting into, like, with starting a company or with starting a business was I had thought that it was mostly like, you know, accounting and Excel spreadsheets and, you know, setting goals and, and like, you know, it looked like business, you know, like just people following instructions. Turns out business is not like that at all. There's a lot— business is a lot more like psychological. That's what I was super surprised by when I got started.

I tend to be the type of person that like picks a goal and then is like fully committed to that goal. I didn't even know I was a co-founder until about 3 years in. He'd just been calling me co-founder behind my back and One of the other employees told me that and I was like, oh, well, that's cool.

It was a really kind of bit of a rocket ship when we started. We were on the Wall Street Journal like literally within 60 days, you know, front page. So it was quite the experience with this brand launch.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean for your guys' company right now?

The opportunity to work with Tim Draper would be incredible. for us. He's got such an incredible network. He brings so much energy. I've heard he is a fan of dogs, so I think that could be a really great matchup.

Fluent Pet fuels research at UC San Diego while transforming homes everywhere. Leo and Alexis prove cognition crosses species, understanding deepens, Relationships flourish. Language expands beyond human lips.

What would a million-dollar investment mean for your guys' project?

We could do so much with it. My focus right now is on education and community and really bringing people in and showing them how this can positively impact their relationships with their animals in so, so many ways.

So there's a lot of amazing technology that we would love to bring to market to enable that, and that's just like a bigger ticket item for us. This would allow us to have that happen a lot more quickly.

What do you think that another— that earlier version of yourself, would they be proud of you? Would they be surprised? Like, what do you think?

I think an earlier version of myself would Look at, you know, the journey of my life and I'd probably be surprised. It's really kind of turned out significantly differently than I might have exactly expected. On the other hand, I do think that it's the kind of outcome that I've been excited about achieving my whole life.

I think earlier me would be like, what?

LOL.

And then like, you do you, weirdo. This is awesome. And then they would just like go do something else.