Where Vision Breaks Boundaries | Entrepreneur Stories

So, um, let's just start with like an intro, like your names, your company name, and the most kind of concise elevator pitch about what your company does.

Stefan and Joshua saw empty listings screaming for life. PropTex transforms bland property photos into irresistible visions. Processing photos daily across dozens of countries, they're selling possibilities.

So my first startup was in the year 2000. Um, that was a company in Switzerland. Which I exited in 2003. Did a good exit. Went back into it, went a bit different. And then I went a bit into corporate, into oil and gas, and then got tired of that and back over to the startup game. And today, PropTechs.

I've worked in sort of engineering for around 8 years. Been involved in multiple startup projects in Web3, you know, blockchain and AI.

Being a home buyer, it's a difficult journey for everyone, including us. I mean, when, when I was looking for a home back in the days, a few years back, that journey was just difficult. It was very, very difficult, stressful. You couldn't find the right home. So we were like, we've got to fix this. There must— there has to be a way to fix this. And this is before AI became the AI what it is today. So we said, okay, through AI, there has to be a scalable solution to allow people to engage and see and visualize property.

So PropTech is streamlining the house search. So you're finding, you know, relevant listings. Relevant properties that suit your buying preferences and your wants and needs when it comes to locating the perfect property. You know, whether buying an investment home, a starter home, you know, upgrading, downgrading.

From Singapore to New York, Stefan and Josh cracked real estate's visual problem. PropTex lets buyers visualize renovations before stepping through the door. Every pixel becomes a promise.

My name is Stefan Gunnarsson. I'm the CEO of PropTechs.

My name is Josh Lamerton, and I'm the COO at PropTechs.

It's amazing that listing sites on property are not doing the same thing. So we said, okay, well, let's lift the level a bit. Let's bring property real estate to the same level as— to the same engagement level as you would have on Netflix, for instance. So that was the driver, and here we are today rolling it out across the planet, actually. So we're a US-based company, and we decided to set up a tech hub, an R&D hub in the south of France on the French Riviera. We did that in July, a few months ago, and that kicked off a very good or interesting momentum in the company where we could bring home that decentralized startup environment that we built in the beginning, like any startup does initially.

We have recently integrated with the 4th largest property platform globally, which is Immoscout in Germany. So that's, that's a very big win for the company.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim mean for your guys' company at this point?

Working with Tim would be, I mean, it would be a validation that would be great for us. It would kick us further. It would bring us to the next level for sure. And having that kind of amount as an investment would, you know, $1 million would bring us to the billion-dollar business, the beginning. So yeah, that would mean a lot for sure.

Stefan's energy expertise meets Josh's commercial instinct. PropTex reimagines first impressions, turning static images into interactive futures. Real estate will never look the same.

What about the people around you, like your friends and family and significant others? What do they think about your What's your sort of journey in entrepreneurship? You know, it's like a windy road maybe compared to being involved in a larger institution. Are they supportive or they think you're crazy? What do they think about it?

Oh, crazy, I guess.

Considering where PropTech is today, you know, in 60+ countries, you know, with a very active pipeline, there's a lot of sort of travel that goes into supporting those kind of accounts and And of course, getting the business off the ground, countless hours, it's just incredibly challenging. But the people around me personally are incredibly supportive around that, believe in everything that we're doing within the business. So yeah, full support from friends and family.

Same thing. I say my rock is my wife, kids. I mean, I've been in this game for a while, so they knew it before, before. So, but having a family that supports you, you can't do it without it.

It's impossible.

You can't battle the market, the business, and at home as well. So if at home it works, you can make it work out with the business.

Yeah.

So we can start with like an introduction, just your name and kind of like an elevator pitch for your company. Just sort of one statement of what you guys do.

Years at IBM taught Serena strategy. Singapore showed her speed. Fuzzy Sequence deploys AI models in hours, not months. Edge computing Accelerated.

Every time I've shown a customer our product, they're like, crap, why didn't— why hasn't someone thought of this earlier? And so a lot of our customers said, one, it saved them a lot of time. So previously, something that took them probably 40 hours to do or 20 hours to do now takes them like a few minutes because we are using AI and automation to make things a lot easier. Two, they're getting way better response rates as well. So when they are reaching out to customers, more customers are responding to them and they're getting more relationships built off the back of that. And then also what they're saying is they're able to meet a lot more people a lot more quicker, which they wouldn't have been able to do without my product, which has been pretty cool. So I think from young I always was very ambitious, and I always— I think the TV shows always is The Great CEO or someone who's done something amazing. But the movie, weirdly enough, that inspired me the most was The Social Network. I remember— I don't, I don't think I remember the whole movie completely, but I remember there was a scene where Dustin and Mark got in trouble. They got into the headmaster's or the dean's office, and at that point in time, I remember when they got in trouble, the dean said, at every other university, they create great CEOs, but at Harvard, we have great people who help hire CEOs. And I think that was a moment where I knew that I wanted to hire CEOs and not create CEOs. And so That was when I was 19 years old, and ever since then I knew that I wanted to be a founder, and I tried to build the skills to be a founder. And so I remember after that movie, I started my first startup, landed my first $20K check, my first small investment from my university, and we built a startup called The Perfect Date. So back then there was either the two extremes, either Tinder or just RSVP.com. The thing about a dating startup is if you're a successful customer, leave, which means that you're in high frequency and have repeat customers. So I also realized that I wasn't in a space that I was entirely interested in, and there was a lot more skills to learn. And so ever since then, I've pushed from a corporate career, tried to learn skills either from a tech side. So I've, you know, worked at IBM for about 7, 8 years, and then I worked at a bank looking at strategy and transformation. Again, realized that there was a lot of things that I lacked. So every time I lacked something, I tried to find it in my corporate experience and learned it there. Um, after the bank that I was working at, I finally felt like I had enough money saved that I could risk it. Spent a few months trying again to build a startup, but that's when COVID hit, and it was actually a very lonely journey. And I realized the zero-to-one, which is the side, the business side, was really hard to do. So, um, after 3 months, I found it was really tricky being alone, and so decided to join a startup and learn the zero-to-one sides. And then last year After getting all that experience, I finally had the confidence to build my own startup. And so we've gone through a few pivots now, actually, but after this pivot, it's like my calling and my mission. So that's a bit of an overview of my story today.

Data scientists wrestle chipsets for months. Serena's platform liberates them. Automated deployment, instant results, zero friction. Profitable. Lean. Real.

Hi, I'm Serena, CEO of Fuzzy Sequence, and we are transforming the way people do sales. We've got a humble team of 4. So our company is in Australia, Singapore, and then we've got some employees in Philippines as well. We're an Australian company, and I'm from Australia as well. And at the moment, what my day-to-day looks like is a bit of sales, a bit of building. Because we're small, we still have to do everything. And where our product is about 2 and a half months old now, and we've already got paying customers and people using our product, which is really exciting.

So what does the opportunity to work with Tim and the Drapers mean for you and your company right now?

So the opportunity to work with Tim and the Drapers would be absolutely amazing just because of the network that they have and the presence they have in every single country. I'm building a horizontal product in the B2B space, which means that I have the opportunity to spread the product around the world and with a global TAM. Being able to access Tim's network and the Draper network means that the customer base will incredibly— will increase at an incredible rate just because he has so many footprints in every country, and being able to access that would be incredible.

Serena ensures digital sovereignty in an AI-driven world. From robotics to devices, intelligence moves closer to action. Practical innovation Powered by purpose.

What would a million-dollar investment mean to your company?

So what a million-dollar investment would mean to me is that for our company right now, we're in pre-seed, which means that we're building a business, but at the same time, people are asking to get off our waitlist and use the product. The really tricky thing for us right now is we're not building fast enough. The $1 million investment will allow us to build more quickly and be able to reinvest those resources back into technology, build the features that the next set of customers need so that we can grow and scale the business. The fact that I've already had investment is crazy to me. I would have never ever thought someone would want to invest their money into me, believe in me. 10 years ago, even having a dream of someone even putting like $10 grand into me sounded crazy, but I think looking into it, the skills that I've had, the places I've been able to travel, the people I've got to meet in such a short amount of time, and also having people believe in me. I almost wouldn't have believed where I'd be today. Like, I knew I wanted to get there, but I think some part of me always— I guess you're always worried that you wouldn't be able to get there. And to be able to get to where I am now, I think I'd be quite happy and inspired by So, um, can we just start out with like an intro?

So like both your guys' names and what you do at your company, and then kind of an elevator pitch, just like a very concise—

Okay.

One sentence answer.

Pakistan's courts hold millions of pending cases. Adil and Daniyal saw justice delayed. Qazi.ai became their crusade, legal tech for a nation waiting.

We have been together. We did our high school together. We did our university together. We went to our first job together. We ran away from that first job together. Then we did one startup, second startup, third startup. More or less, you get the gist, right? So the first job that we had was a corporate job. I think that was, you know, fun to begin with, learning the tips of the trade and everything, but it got really boring in a couple of years and we wanted to do something more cool. So we are in litigation for about 2 years now. It's a business litigation. We were told by the lawyers that it will be resolved in 2 months, maybe 4 months tops. And we're like, let's go for it because we had a higher moral ground, and we felt that the law is on our side. It's 2 years and it's still unresolved, and we felt that there's this need, and we are entrepreneurs, so why not try to solve this, right? We have seen the system, people don't know about legal rights, they don't know how to navigate legal formalities, how courts work, how can we accelerate courts, and all of these thoughts basically converged onto this idea That we started funding through our services business that we had.

So at the moment, given our journey and our experience, there is a barrier to entry. People, when they have a problem and they have a dispute, they think twice or maybe 10 times before going to the legal system that, yeah, who will draft the petition? Will that petition be accepted or not? Will the lawyer Turned out to be, you know, a turncoat against us later on. So our system will reduce that barrier to entry.

So basically, we are trying to cater to all 3 segments: the government/judiciary, the law firms, and the citizens. So on the government end, our aim is to accelerate the processes. Right now, it takes up to 15 years to resolve a civil dispute in Pakistan. Like, 15 years, right? Like, you know, pretty much a quarter of a lifetime, right? So we want to bring it down to about 1 to 2 years. So that's one part. For the law firms, we want to equip them with better, you know, paralegal services, AI-based paralegal services. And for citizens, we want to empower them so they can understand the law, know that if their rights are being violated in the first place.

Kazi AI drafts documents. researches precedents, predicts outcomes. Adil and Dhanyal aren't just automating workflows. They are modernizing an entire judicial ecosystem. Code meets Constitution.

Hi, I'm Adil.

Hi, I'm Dhanyal.

And we are from Qazi AI. We are making an end-to-end platform to transform judicial landscape using LLMs. I fundamentally believe that the core system that needs to be fixed in any country is the access to justice and the determination of justice. I'm not sure how to put it, that the justice should be served.

Deterministic. It should be deterministic.

So I fundamentally believe that if you fix this, you can fix almost everything.

So in Pakistan, and you must have heard of us in the news, we are a bit cash-strapped and the economy is not going good. And in our opinion, one of the core reasons for that is that people do not trust the system. They don't trust the justice system. They don't invest their money in the economy. If they have more security on that, people have money even in Pakistan, but they don't invest it. So that investment can take Pakistan's economy forward. So this is the first thing that we need to fix as a country.

What does the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean for your guys' company right now?

So working with Tim Draper would be huge. So we come from a services background and most of our ventures have been bootstrapped. This is probably the first time we are going to work with VCs, and the kind of project or the venture we are looking at cannot be bootstrapped. And Tim seems to be the right sort of guy.

And another aspect of this is that from what we understand about Tim and his venture with the Draper University, he's very passionate about mentoring people into this entrepreneurship journey, and we need that mentorship.

They collaborated with Supreme Court advisors and IT ministers from Lahore to courtrooms nationwide. Kazi AI proves technology can serve justice. Access amplified.

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

I think it will be the, you know, the sixer in the cricket, as you say it. This will actually, you know, take our boat to the shore. We will be able to implement the complete thing and probably do much more in the regional context as well. It's probably more than we are thinking of raising right now. Yeah, so it's really good money.

And people are still asking the same questions. So whenever we visit distant relatives, they're like, you left the job for entrepreneurship? How does that come about?

So I had full support from my family. Alhamdulillah, they were very supportive. But yes, I got this a lot from other people like my friends or distant relatives, what are you doing? You are dropping a secure job with possible post-pension benefits and whatnot. But I think we knew that we have to do this. We knew that we need to do something exciting. We can't keep on doing something we don't like for, you know, next 40 years maybe. We want to do something that we like, and that's how it worked out for me.

So let's start with an intro.

Yes.

Your name, your company name, and the most concise pitch that you can give me for what your company does.

Mario saw a growing problem: cybercrime striking where people should feel safest. Instead of accepting vulnerability, He engineered a smarter solution. CleverFi was born. Automatic, secure Wi-Fi you can trust anywhere.

I've been in Wi-Fi technology for over 25 years. I know the technology ever since it was born, and I realized that, you know, sharing passwords is not secure. It happened to me that somebody on my Wi-Fi did a cybercrime. And so law enforcement came out and I had to deal with it. And I realized that the issue was with the password. And so the problem was not that we needed to remove the password, because at the end of the day, if you remove it, then there's no security. The problem was that we were sharing a password. And so from this episode, I realized that I needed to work on it. I came to America in 1998 and there was no Wi-Fi at the time. It was just like dialing in, asking people, hey, can I use your phone line? And connecting your laptop to just like send and receive your email. Then, you know, there were Ethernet cables that were available only in colleges, so I would just go in and out of colleges in New York City just to connect to the internet, you know, asking permission. But the first time I saw a Wi-Fi router, I immediately fell in love. I'm like, wait a minute, we don't need a cable to be connected on the internet? So I simply fell in love with that, and I realized that that technology was going to be the next big thing, and it did become the next big So the impact of CleverFi being like everywhere in the world is that at the end of the day, internet is not, you know, like just a place for going on social media. It's access to knowledge. It's access to your monetary bank account, you know, like, so the world needs to be connected. I envision a world where my mom, she's not tech savvy, you know, if I buy her a ticket from Verona to Rome, I want her to get on the air, you know, get on the train and simply be connected in the whole ride easily.

CleverFi. Automatic, secure Wi-Fi that travels with you. No passwords, no apps. Devices connect instantly, safely, anywhere. One Italian reimagining connection.

My name is Mario and I'm the founder of CleverFi. I created a new solution that allows people to connect to Wi-Fi automatically and securely without having to ask what is the Wi-Fi password every time. We basically started doing pilots in New York City because that's where I used to live and that's where I had my first Airbnb. So we put it on Airbnbs. We have 3 different locations where our technology is running in New York, in Miami, and in Milan. We also put CleverFi in, you know, a few coffee shops, a few restaurants, and now we're implementing into a coworking space. So literally everywhere I go and I touch and I get to meet people and I tell them about CleverFi, they're like, oh, can we try immediately? Can we put it on my place? One that stood out to me was like a mom that's not tech savvy and she needed to travel with a baby camera and she had to go into an Airbnb. And what happened is that while we were helping her with the Wi-Fi, we're like, hey, We can actually teleport your home Wi-Fi from wherever your home is into the Airbnb so that your camera will connect automatically. She also had an Alexa or like a smart speaker to do like a white noise for the baby to sleep because the baby had difficulty sleeping. So the moment we used CleverFi to teleport her home Wi-Fi into the Airbnb, she immediately got their device connected. She was super happy and she's like, oh my God, we need this We want this everywhere. We want this everywhere we go. Our company is basically all remote people. We're all remote, all in different cities. One thing that we do have is that most of us are people that were born in one country but actually live in another country. So it's kind of like we're all transplants.

So what would the opportunity for you to work with Tim mean for you right now?

So the opportunity for me to work with Tim is to basically be with one of the most important innovators. Like, he is a sponsor of innovation. For me, it will mean like getting access potentially to Tesla immediately. You know, he's obviously one of the first investors of Tesla, and that will mean a lot for me because it will unlock certain type of relationships that are not possible otherwise.

From pitching Airbnb's co-founder to securing patents, Mario transformed frustration into innovation. CleverFi isn't just convenience. It's security, portability, and freedom.

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

So basically what a $1 million investment for CleverFi means, it means that we will be able to bring this to the market as quick as possible. We will be, you know, stopping our fundraising because with $1 million we'll have enough to get to the next stage and we will be all focused on CleverFi. Me and my team will take this to the next level. We'll grow to over $1 million in revenue in the next 12 to 18 months. I cannot be happier of what's happening within my family and, you know, CleverFi. 'Cause, you know, I have 2 daughters and my wife, all 3 supporting me a lot. Like my older daughter who's 23, she's helping me create video content about CleverFi. We did like some commercial, you know, like she's very good in social media and so on. My little one who's 10 years old, she already came and pitched with me. And most importantly, you know, it's my wife Monica. Behind a successful man, there's always like a great woman. And so I can't be happier to have her support me.

So that, you know, that younger version of yourself who first came to America and was obsessed with Wi-Fi, if he saw what you were doing right now and the project that you were working on, what do you think he would think?

Oh my God, that would be like a sci-fi movie. You know, I'm like, oh my God, I'm so in love with this. And then I see me working on this Wi-Fi technology 20, 25 years later. It would just be like, yes, that's it. Continue to live your life. That's where you're going to be. Keep going and you'll get there. So I will be like amazed to see that.