Startup Fundraising Strategy & Pitch Practice Office Hours Replay! [VIDEO]

Our free Startup Fundraising Video Office Hours help early stage company founders worldwide learn how to raise money for their startups. 

The fun, friendly live video Q&A sessions answer financing and strategy questions from entrepreneurs from all over the world with FREE expert startup advice.

The latest free session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was January 27.

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here.

Startup Founder Discussion TOPICS This Month

In this episode of our free Startup Fundraising Office Hours, StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox took lots of questions from startup friends worldwide - both on camera and via chat. These mostly focused on helping startup founders accelerate their fundraising process to raise money from angel investors and venture capital firms including:

• Pratishka (PG), San Diego / Orange County: She asked how to find strategic investors for Co-Cardio, a preventive cardiology franchise that focuses on cash-pay wellness, and Scott advised her to pivot away from venture capital toward the franchise world or individual doctors who understand cash-pay models.

• Mike, Laguna Woods, CA: He asked if taking small early funding could ruin his chances with major accelerators like Y Combinator, and Scott warned that high early valuations can "price you out" of standard accelerator terms while emphasizing the need for due diligence on all investors.

• Mustafa, Irvine, CA (UC Irvine): He returned to practice his much improved investor pitch for his medical device AI software startup A1 Diagnosis. Scott recommended focusing the pitch on the revenue model, specifically Medicare reimbursement, and clarifying that the solution is software-based.

• Sean, Delaware: He asked about the new differentiators for founders now that AI tools like Codeium are making product development much cheaper, and Scott noted that core differentiators will shift toward high-level organization, executive function, and human empathy.

• Kyle, Orange County, CA: He pitched Smart Nosis, a concussion monitoring app for contact sports and schools, and Scott suggested including specific contract values and financial numbers in the pitch to demonstrate the actual scale of the business.

• Plus, Scott and the chat room audience together answered many questions from the live chat, too, as well as sharing feedback from other viewers who offered suggestions and advice for each other.

• And (as usual) everybody wanted to know the best resource to find early stage investors interested in their startups. Answer: Google + https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory...

And much more, as usual!

Watch the free replay for startup founder pitches, and the expert investor feedback they got!

To watch this month’s Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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Plus, get details on StartupCouncil.org's worldwide network of Meetup groups that can help you to promote YOUR local startup events in YOUR city, too.

Great to see everyone and congratulations on progress you are making with your startups! 

JOIN STARTUP OFFICE HOURS LIVE NEXT TIME to WATCH & COMMENT:

The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 900pm PT / Wednesday 1200am ET. Questions and practice investor pitches are hosted LIVE by Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council/Angel Investor/Serial Founder/Author/Startup Expert.

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for january 27, 2026:

0:00

Welcome to Startup Office Hours. I'm Scott Fox. I'm the CEO of the Startup Council. I'm a serial internet entrepreneur and a longtime um maker of

0:09

things to happening. I try really hard to help and engage startup founders all over the world. I travel and speak all

0:14

over the world uh specifically to help empower local ecosystems and founders to bring them the knowledge and the

0:20

expertise that we have here in California that I feel hasn't been adequately shared. I've written these

0:25

books behind over here. Uh the three in the middle are in English. Uh, and the others are all foreign translations. You

0:31

can see a Polish and Turkish and Russian and Japanese and Vietnamese and so forth. Uh, and these are all books about

0:37

how I made the transition from being a corporate executive to realizing I was really an entrepreneur and how I could

0:44

use that to build companies and businesses of my own using the magic of the internet. I've been doing that for

0:50

25 plus years now. I and haven't had a corporate job in a long time. And I spend most of my time these days

0:56

actually as an angel investor. So I have a lot of experience on both sides of the table as both an investor and as a

1:02

founder and that's why I'm writing a fourth book. I'm actually working on that right now which is about how to raise money. So that's going to be

1:08

really helpful I hope to a lot of you. It's uh basically an answer to all the questions I get when we do this show and

1:13

hopefully it will be useful to you. It's coming in uh probably four to six months I would guess. All right. So that's the

1:20

concept and that's who I am. That's why I have the microphone. But mostly I have the microphone because I chose to make

1:25

this happen. All of you have the opportunity to build things and do things with less friction and startup

1:32

capital needed than ever before. And that's partly why I do this is just to show you guys, hey, you can do this too,

1:39

right? If you have opinions or expertise, uh, grab the microphone and see what you can make happen, right?

1:44

That it's the world is your oyster these days. It's a lot easier than when I started. I raised my first venture round

1:50

almost 30 years ago after I finished grad school at Stanford. And um, it was

1:55

hard. there was no support and no expertise and yet these days it's all

2:00

available online you can just ask a hundred questions to chat GPT and you'll be an expert by tomorrow so I encourage

2:06

you all to do that all right so those of you who are just arriving um let's see Tai and Mustafa and John and uh Beacon

2:15

wealth looks like we got Orange counties in the house right all right Tustin and Irvine and Westminster and is

2:21

Westminster and Orange County I'm not sure uh Newport Beach certainly is so hi to all of you. Let's get going with some

2:27

of our questions and answers and see what kind of um what kind of discussions we want to have tonight. So, I'm going

2:32

to bring the folks backstage over to let's see how do I do this. So, we've

2:38

got I'm going to bring everybody back here. So, Kyle and uh PG and Sean and

2:44

Mustafa and Mike. Okay, you're all going to come on for a second here and turn up. Make sure your cameras are on. Looks

2:50

like they are. Yes. Yes. There we go. There we go. Okay. Some familiar faces

2:56

here. Good. Good. All right. Very nice. Hi guys. I guess you can hear me. Is that right? Everybody can hear me?

3:02

Yep. Hear you clear. Okay. Cool. Um that's always a danger, right? You're never quite sure. [laughter]

3:07

Um all right, cool. So, nice to meet all of you. Let's see. Um let's just go

3:13

around. Can we do a quick round? Actually, can we take a quick photo? Everybody kind of just look at me for a second if you don't mind and smile and

3:19

look like look like I said something smart. I don't know what that look. Maybe [laughter] like maybe a thumbs up.

3:24

It would be great to see all of you and awesome. Thank you that you know it

3:29

doesn't happen unless we take pictures and post them online. So, um now this is official. So, thank you. All right. So,

3:35

maybe we'll just go around kind of clockwise. Um and I think most of you have written in so I might have a clue,

3:40

but let's just hear what uh some of you submitted your stuff a while ago. So, maybe we can um just and just give me

3:46

like the the 10second version, right? Not not the whole pitch because I'll come back to you. I'm just trying to figure out what order we're going to

3:51

talk to people in. Right. So, okay. So, this uh who let's see who is this? This

3:58

is I see your name's PG. Hey, PG. Nice to meet you. So, what did you you wrote in actually,

4:04

right? Yeah, I think I have written in Yes. Yeah. Hold on. I need to turn that mic up, man. So, I can't hear you. Okay,

4:11

hold on. All right, say that again, please.

4:17

Pardon? Yeah, there we go. Good. That's I just want to make sure I can hear you. All right. So, Patricia, okay, so you had a question about raising money for

4:24

cocardio, right? This is good. Okay. So, I know what you're here for. Good. Um,

4:29

and that sounds like a cool company. I'm looking forward to discussing that with you. Okay. Co-cardio

4:35

fundraising. Okay. So, that's good. And then be who's beneath

4:40

Mike. Yeah. Mike, you're Mike. Okay. Hi, Mike. You wrote it, too. You guys are all doing

4:45

you're all following instructions. My god, this never happens. [laughter] every now and then.

4:50

Nice to meet you, Mike. So, you are looking at accelerators and should Okay,

4:57

about timing of funding. Would that be kind of a way to say it? Yeah, timing and and whether taking on

5:04

somebody else would hurt getting in an accelerator, right? Okay. Yeah, that's an interesting question. Great. And both of you guys

5:11

are members over at Startup Council. Thank you for your support there. We've got a whole bunch of cool stuff coming,

5:16

so stick around there. It's not fully finished yet, but it's we're ramping up. Um, and you guys are going to get in

5:21

early. Awesome. And then Mustafa, hey, nice to see you, Doc. How are you?

5:27

You're muted, though. Mute. Yeah. Can you hear me right now? There we go. Yes.

5:32

Okay. Hi. Um, I'm good. How are you? Good. Good. Did you want to pitch

5:38

tonight? Is that what I saw? Yeah, I would like to pitch tonight. Yeah,

5:44

we have own our AI power platform for age rates macular degeneration.

5:50

Yeah, that's right. I remember. Excellent. Well, glad to see you again. All right. And then we have there's

5:56

another familiar face there, Sean. Nice to see you, Sean. Um, God, I think you all wrote in. This

6:03

is unprecedented. Everybody followed instructions. No, I don't have that one. Sean, I'm lying. Did you write in?

6:10

I did. I did write in. I got an email even confirming it. Did you? All right. Well, I don't have it. What What's on your mind tonight?

6:15

Nice to see you. I wanted to talk about um AI accelerated coding and the

6:21

you know idea to product and how that's you know I did see that. We're just coming off an accelerator. So

6:28

I'll give you guys a brief update about our product and how we're doing. Oh great. So you can chime in when Mike we talk about Mike's question then.

6:33

Excellent. Yes. And I did see your question. I'm sorry I just must not have printed it out. gets a little crazy in that hour before the show.

6:40

Okay. And that leaves us uh last but not least is Kyle. Oh, hey Kyle. We've met,

6:46

right? Yeah, plenty times. How are you, Scott? All right. Yeah, nice to see you. You're still working on the uh um concussion

6:54

protocol thing, right? Yep. Yep. Still working on the the concussion app, uh Smart Nosis. I wanted

7:00

to pitch tonight, get some feedback. Um, you know, we're in the process of, uh, raising some capital, so wanted to

7:07

discuss that as well. Okay. Looking to, I should say. Perfect. Okay. So, so far we've got two

7:13

questions and and three pitches. That's that's an interest. That'll be good. That'll be very interesting. Okay. Well,

7:19

thank you all. Let me uh just digest that for a second and then say hi to people in the chat room and then and then we'll figure out how we're going to

7:24

get this started. So, um, see, and I think everybody tonight is in

7:31

America, which is a for change. So, the time zone is not quite as difficult. Sometimes I feel bad. We have people

7:37

come in the middle of the night from Germany and stuff. [laughter] Well, there some of them are probably watching. Okay. So, um, all right. Let

7:45

me just check in on the, uh, uh, the chat here and see if there's anything on

7:50

fire. Let's see. Good. And sounds like you guys can hear me. Jags Tech from the

7:57

valley. Sanjie from India. We're in India. Sanjie and Florida. Rita, hi. And

8:02

then Jags, I'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm in care for care for decades. Life-saving medical invention design

8:09

tested. Oh, okay. Well, that's interesting. You're going to have to tell us more. Uh, Jags. Um, or we can

8:14

come to that later. And Julia from Detroit Homecoming. Nice to see you. Excellent. All right. Um, so let's get

8:20

started then. Let's see. Um, let me just look at what our notes were. Why don't we Well, let's do a pitch. We've got

8:26

several of them. So, um, let's see. Well, I maybe we'll just go in the order

8:33

that you guys showed up in. Um, I'm most curious about um I'm curious about all

8:38

of them, but uh PG, you had a uh uh I had a kind of a threshold question for

8:45

you. So, where are you based? Hey, you know, actually I was in Orange County. I've been following you since

8:51

more than 3 years and last I met you at SOA University and I was actually going to book a call with

8:57

you uh one-on-one offline but I thought that since I got your email after being a

9:03

member I thought let me at least you know today talk to you and get to know whether this is something would you be

9:10

interested we can talk offline where I can book a call so great great wanted to start a conversation with you

9:16

today super no that's great nice to see you I apologize I meet a lot of people. I don't remember but I I was speaking

9:23

there, right? That was the technical stage. Yeah, you're speaking. I I I actually I do hi-fi all the time, but you see a lot

9:28

of people, so I totally get you. That's totally [laughter] fine. Okay, no worries. Excellent. Um, let me

9:35

just remind folks if you have friends who want to join us, this could be useful. We're doing free pitch feedback and we're doing strategy questions and

9:42

just trying to help. So, if that's useful to you, tell your friends you got a couple minutes here. Um, and uh, you

9:48

can also like and subscribe, of course, that's, you know, the the way of the internet. Um, but mostly we're going to

9:53

talk about uh, Practicia's uh, startup. And the key here is she's going to give us a twominute pitch, right? So, um,

10:00

she's going to mostly just practice her pitch and then we can talk some strategy, too. But really, the focus is

10:06

I will try to add what I can, but I don't know everything. And she's a I think she's a doctor, right? So, she's

10:11

got some cardio fancy thing going on here. So, I'm I'm only going to be able to address one angle on this and even

10:17

that might not be right. So, that means the rest of you who are watching and I know there's other doctors and medical

10:23

people in here um your feedback would be really helpful, right? So, don't make me do this by myself is what I'm saying.

10:29

[laughter] So, um and so when people pitch, we're gonna give them feedback and help. All right? That's the idea of

10:35

the startup council. We try to help everybody. So, okay. So, uh, Praticia, let me put, uh, two minutes on my phone.

10:41

And I know this is an artificial length of time. Uh, but the idea is that it teaches you to go, you get it. I mean,

10:48

you're an educated person, right? It teaches you to under pressure, how do you deliver? Because two minutes go quickly. So,

10:54

yeah. No, I actually, yeah, fine. I'll just say because I actually I had a question, but I'll just quickly uh give

11:00

a little bit introduction to what I do. So, basically, uh, hi everyone. I'm

11:05

Pratikra Gandhi. I'm a preventive cardiologist with more than three decades of experience and I founded uh

11:12

co-c cardio which is a revenue generating franchise ready preventive heartare company. So what we are trying

11:18

to do at co cardio is we are shifting the entire focus from reactive sick care

11:23

treatment to proactive prevention where we are helping people to avoid uh you

11:29

know first heart attack or repeat heart attacks. So uh our model is like very

11:35

simple like uh you know we we focus on uh detect early protect fully connect

11:41

deeply and we have a pre-launch clinic here in NCUS where we have already done

11:47

more than 300k of revenue in last 18 months because we wanted to demonstrate

11:53

product market fit drisk everything. We have a physician uh buy in of uh 250k

12:01

and uh we have profit margins we have strong unit economics of profit margins of 44%. So and we invested into getting

12:09

ready for the franchise we have filed with California for the FTC. So we are right now at a very nice inflection

12:16

point. We are going to start fundraising. I think we are fundraising 500k because we want to now uh uh scale

12:23

and grow into three or four more franchises in this year and then uh we

12:28

also want to like uh do hiring and you know like marketing and all those things. So

12:34

this is where we are at and my question was uh to you Scott like I just want to be very strategic because I have been

12:41

moving around a lot and meeting people but very few people are interested into in healthcare wellness retail space uh

12:50

because in cardiology technically what I see is that it is all the medte or you know those pharmaadriven things but I'm

12:57

into a very different space which is cash pay wellness space Uh so uh I I get

13:05

lot of objection that oh who will pay in in spite of doing so much of revenues.

13:11

People keep on saying that oh who will pay and all. So I I just wondered that where to find the kind of investors who

13:18

would be interested into wellness preventative models you know. Right. Right. Okay. So I apologize. I

13:25

thought you wanted to pitch and you're right. That's not what Yeah. Yeah. It was Yeah. That's not what your thing said. I got,

13:30

like I said, it gets a little busy here. That's totally fine. I get you, though. So, but that was a pretty good pitch

13:36

anyway. Those of you in the chat room probably impressed. She's obviously been through this a couple times. So, um, let

13:41

me just comment on your pitch a little bit even though it wasn't a formal pitch. Sure. It was good in terms of specifics.

13:47

That's what I want to highlight because she said some key phrases like she actually has revenue and said how much.

13:53

She talked about unit economics, which is a a phrase that most civilians don't know, but is dear near and dear to

14:00

investors hearts because unit economics is how much it costs to make something and then how much you sell it for and

14:05

therefore how much profit you make. That's that's the heart of a business. So the short phrase for that is unit

14:10

economics. And she the fact that she's conversant with that and it sounds like unit economics not only does she know

14:17

them but they're good. It's of course very positive. So nice nicely said. Um okay. So, yeah, you're having trouble

14:23

matching to investors. That makes sense. Um, that was what I when I read your uh submission. Um, this was my question

14:32

because you mentioned a couple times here and then you mentioned it also as franchises. Venture capitalists don't

14:38

fund franchises. I mean, I I that I've ever seen, right? It's just not our business, right? So, if you want to

14:45

raise venture capital, I I'm not sure that's going to work. Um, that doesn't

14:51

mean there aren't people that won't fund it. It's just probably not venture capitalists, right? So, um, and I don't know who it would be

14:57

because I'm not a franchise guy, but there's a whole world of franchises. Absolutely. I spoke at a conference

15:03

once. Um, actually, did you say you're an Ensenus? Yes, in San Diego. Yeah. Not

15:09

Yeah. Yeah. Um, like, oh, I'm looking around. I I don't think I still have it, but like 15

15:14

years ago, I was in a magazine called Success Magazine. I don't know if you ever I don't even know if it's still around, but it's all about franchises

15:21

and it's based I swear to I think the CEO lives in Instinus. I went and had lunch with him. He was right near there anyway. Um anyway, it doesn't matter

15:28

where he lives, but [laughter] my point is there's a whole world of franchise and that's a different thing.

15:34

You already found that medtech is not your thing. I'm not sure venture capital is your thing either if you

15:39

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing that pe people are not like excited with this model like you know because Yeah. So

15:45

that's the reason I wanted that strategy. That's why my question was on strategy because we have like we have a

15:52

very good LTV CAC ratio everything is like there but uh not understanding

15:58

where to focus you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I can understand that would be really painful and

16:03

frustrating and I have got a very good franchising uh like uh so my franchising development

16:08

is being done by Chris Connor and he he has he has done lot of companies you

16:14

know like UPS, Yoshinoa, Costco and also he's advising me like our franchise uh

16:19

like entire model plan is very good but the point is that right now you need

16:25

a capital you know to do to develop all the things and that is where

16:30

I I think uh angel investors and physicians uh that is the only route but

16:37

now I wanted to go a little bit you know when you want to scale and grow you it is not only getting the investors but

16:43

also bringing that expertise right because uh who can help you grow. So uh

16:50

yeah I I think you're on the right track. My my recommendation would be

16:56

talk to franchise people and I I don't like I said I don't know where they are other than this magazine that I I went to their conference many years ago. Um

17:03

but there are conferences and there's a whole industries around franchising. It's just it's a different lane, you know? It's like it's a it's a freeway.

17:10

It just goes to a different city, right? So pick a different freeway, I think. And you you probably just it's hard. I I

17:15

I see this a lot with people who have really good businesses, but if it doesn't fit the venture capital model, which is very specific, you can waste a

17:23

lot of time and a lot of money going to conferences and applying to speak at things and incubators and accelerators,

17:28

which we'll talk about in a minute with Mike. Um, and they just don't do it right. So, you end up really frustrated.

17:34

You think that there's something wrong with you or your business, and there isn't. It's just it's like you're speaking French and they want to speak

17:40

Spanish. It's it's just different, right? So, don't feel bad. I think you I think you need to do some different

17:46

research though and to the one more practical suggestion I would have you kind of said it already so you know this

17:52

but I'm saying this for everybody else too part of my new book is about how to find investors when you don't know

17:58

investors right and this so this can apply to franchises as well but the easiest way of course is to find people

18:03

who are going to like and trust you faster and who have money so in your

18:08

case obviously like you already said doctors right what other doctors they'll get this and they don't have to be

18:14

venture capital doctors. they can just be doctor doctors who have some money and would understand a cash pay model

18:19

like so I would be looking at people who have had success with other cash pay franchises especially in medicine but

18:27

like you said maybe not even just in medicine maybe it's a Jiffy Lube you know oil change or it's a you know

18:32

Arby's restaurant or whatever it is it's just a whole different way of thinking about money and most of us aren't smart

18:38

enough to think about money in different way [laughter] too many different ways so I don't know if that's helpful I'm

18:44

sorry I can't be more direct No, that that's totally fine. It makes sense. But I think my biggest takeaway and I'm thank you. Thanks for this Scott that

18:50

that's the reason I wanted to speak to you because my biggest takeaway is that you helped me feel the relief because

18:57

I've been applying everywhere and you know like I'm facing this. So one thing is good to know that okay nothing is

19:03

wrong with me. That's right. I I said what's what's happening you know like I've got doing everything right. We

19:09

have got amazing testimonials and yeah everything is there. So what's happening? So, I think I will narrow

19:16

down my search and look more into the franchises and then uh that that helps.

19:22

Okay. Yeah. Good. Good. Well, I'm glad. I I hope so because I I' I've seen this a lot and people you end up thinking it's

19:28

that you're wrong, but you're not. You're ju you're just in the wrong room, right? That's [clears throat] true. You got to be in a different room. Yeah.

19:34

Okay. Thank you. All right. Nice to see you again. Thank you. All right. So, that's uh PG from uh San

19:42

Diego. Nice to meet her. I guess I have met her, but nice to see her again. And uh sounds like she has a real business

19:47

there. But this is for all of you, right? Just because people aren't vibing doesn't mean that you're crazy. You may

19:53

just be talking to the wrong people, right? So the media makes it sound like venture capital solves all problems. And

19:59

it really doesn't. It's it's a it's a very specific tool, right? You may need a hammer, but they're a screwdriver or

20:05

whatever metaphor you want to use, right? So don't don't be shy. um branch

20:10

out, do your research, and try different angles, different places, right? Because

20:16

venture capital is not one-sizefits-all. Cool. All right, let me check back into the chat room, and then we'll move on to

20:22

our next um our next pitch, I think, uh or discussion. Let's see. And the chat

20:28

says, uh here we go.

20:33

Okay, a bunch of questions about ergonomic handle invention. Okay, Ty. Well, maybe we can come back to that and

20:40

JAGs as well. Um, yeah, your passion to heal and save lives is good. Just be sure it's

20:45

compliant with medical safety laws. Have you done any clinical trials? You're a doctor, I think, right? So, or I'm sure

20:51

that's crossed your mind. So, but it's still good advice. Yeah, be careful about that. And

20:57

okay, excellent. So, I haven't seen any comments from LinkedIn still. Is anybody

21:04

here from LinkedIn? Is that working? I'm afraid it's not working. Um,

21:12

so hold on one second if you don't mind, guys. I'm going to pop another window and see what I get the feeling that the

21:20

LinkedIn crowd is not here because there's not enough people here. [laughter] So, hang on a second here. I can pull

21:27

this up on my other screen hopefully and I won't lose you all. Um,

21:32

how do I do this? Okay, there. Yes. And here

21:40

events. Here.

21:46

Okay. So, I'm almost there. Sorry. One second. So, what's happening? Your event is live. Okay. It says it's live. All

21:52

right. So, is anybody here from LinkedIn? This is This has never happened before.

21:58

Um Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to keep going. But anyway, if you're watching on

22:03

LinkedIn, please. Nope. LinkedIn. What does that mean? Beacon Wealth, you moved

22:09

over to YouTube. Jules did. Why? Can you just tell me? Just I need to learn for next. I'll keep going, but um it looks

22:16

like [clears throat] it's live on LinkedIn. I don't understand why. So, if you guys could fill me in, that would be great. Okay. So, let's move on to our

22:23

next um so Mike wanted to talk about

22:29

uh here he is. Mike. Well, he can tell us what he wants to talk about because he knows better than I do. And here's Mike. There he is. Hi, Mike.

22:35

Hello. Hey, nice to see you or meet you. Um, so you're local, too, right? Is that is

22:40

that right? In the booming metropolis of uh Laguna Woods. Lagona Woods. Okay. Excellent. Leisure

22:46

world. [laughter] Traffic's crazy. Yeah, I'll bet. Um, okay. So, maybe you

22:53

can review for everybody and for me your your questions about funding and timing and accelerators sort of ideas, right?

22:59

Yeah. So, signed up for an accelerator or two and then had thoughts on a company that seemed like good fit for uh

23:06

funding or approaching uh for the lane that I'm in. And I was wondering is does

23:13

going for any money that you can find, you know, the runway short, trying to get any money you can find to

23:18

keep going. Uh is there mistakes that could be made with that that would affect the application into an accelerator or it's

23:27

just it's just a new world as far as u acquiring funding. So Sure. Okay. Give just give me the the

23:34

super quick what what does your company do and how what stage are you at? Uh, we're we're pre-revenue. It's BPS Pro

23:42

Score Plus. We do hands-free scoring for the game of pool in augmented reality

23:48

training and come to find out there is no infrastructure for data in the pool industry. So,

23:54

right, I am near near uh I'm in examination for patent. I'm patent pending and I have a

24:02

a pro with 14 years of being sponsored by the league. 250,000 people in the

24:08

league I play in, which is how I discovered scoring such a drag. Okay. Yeah, I remember this now. You you

24:13

joined you were part of the startup council. I remember your application. I never seen I'd never seen the uh a Q

24:19

sports focused startup before. Cool. [laughter] And it's been the same the industry's been the same for 100 years.

24:25

Yeah. Right. Makes sense. Yeah. Um Okay. So, all right. So, what So, and

24:31

how much money are you talking about, do you think? Do you want to write uh 100,000? Okay. So, really small. Okay. And do you

24:38

have specific accelerators or incubators in mind or is this more of a theoretical question? Well, I haven't sent in for TCA yet, but

24:44

the the Y cominator and uh text tech

24:49

stores. Uhhuh. Sure. Okay. Um Okay. So, all right. So, here we go. So, TCA, first of

24:55

all, TCA is not an incubator and accelerator. It's an investment group. So, they won't um that's that's a

25:01

competing path at least for the terms of this conversation. You could do both. that one doesn't exclude the other which is your question but um I wouldn't call

25:08

them an accelerator or incubator that's what I'm saying we we invest in all kinds of stuff um but we invest we don't

25:13

incubate or accelerate um so the tech stars and y combinator model um I think

25:19

the big question is in terms of so are there things you could do that would screw one or the other up for sure um

25:25

the problem of uh bad investors is a

25:30

thing right there are people out there that are scammers or bullshitters or liars just like in any other business.

25:37

So, I have certainly seen uh and I hope this doesn't happen to you, but I have seen people get ripped off or fooled or

25:43

or even just waste a lot of time with people who are fake investors. Um and

25:49

I've seen worse than waste time of course as well um lawsuits and stuff. Um

25:55

so that's that's obvious I think. But just starting at the base case, right? Can can things go sideways? Yes, in lots

26:02

of ways. Um, presuming you do a lot of due diligence on the anyone that you're going to take money from, I I really

26:08

would recommend that. And the easy one on that is just ask for references. I'm shocked how many founders will take

26:14

money from people and they're so blinded by the money that they don't check a person's references. Um, and I could

26:21

tell you a horror story or two involving federal prison [laughter] that people, you know, they get intimidated because

26:27

people have a checkbook and they don't do the simple task of saying, "Where's your money from?" you know, and and can you tell me other people you've funded?

26:34

Right? If they won't tell you that, then back away, right? So, um due diligence is highly recommended. Okay? So,

26:40

assuming you cross those bridges and you find adults who are going to behave and have real money and you know, so forth,

26:46

um and that they're going to be helpful and not give you terms that take over your business somehow, right? Um

26:52

assuming, you know, best case. um I don't see a lot of conflict between uh an accelerator incubator and investors

26:59

except perhaps in the in the uh area of dilution and control. So it's typical

27:04

for accelerators and incubators to take something like five to seven maybe even

27:11

10% for a certain amount of money. Um maybe 100 grand, 200 grand, something like that. And that I don't know how

27:19

much you or other people watching know about venture math, but basically as soon as you take money uh for a certain

27:25

percentage that implies a valuation for your company, right? So maybe it's a $2 million is what that if you work the

27:31

math out, it's a $2 million company. So that may be fine. That's up to you to make a decision. You and your board and

27:37

your founders or you and your spouse or co-founders, right? If you're cool with that, cool. the but if there are already

27:43

investors in the deal and you raise their money at $5 million and now the

27:50

incubator will only take you because they tend to have standard deals an accelerator or incubator um and you want

27:56

to sign their standard deal but it's at half the valuation that you took the money from your mother-in-law. Yeah,

28:02

problems, right? Um, and and perhaps vice versa, although not necessarily because if if if you had a valuation of

28:10

2 million from the accelerator and then your mother-in-law wanted to put in money, presumably you could raise the

28:16

valuation or at least match. You would you'd have a floor, you know, that was established by a third party so that wouldn't be as difficult to negotiate.

28:22

The harder one is the other one. And I see this all the time because I I meet people who um perhaps like you who have

28:28

real businesses and they're excited about it and they may have even funded it with friends and family money or even

28:34

VC money um and especially if they um have raised several rounds and like

28:40

stacking the the safe notes or the convertible debt their valuation you know it's their

28:45

friends and family. So they want to you know they whatever they might have started at a reasonable number two or three million and then you know a year

28:52

later they needed another 500,000 and they have good friends and rich friends. So then they raise a valuation to 5

28:57

million and then 6 million and 8 million and they still haven't gotten anywhere. Now their valuation is 8 million. They

29:02

can't go to Tech Stars or to uh Y Combinator or anywhere because they're

29:08

too expensive. They'd have to if they took the money from Tech Stars, even though it might be exactly what they need to do, the implied valuation of the

29:15

incubator accelerator around cuts the valuation of all their friends and family who invested. And then that means

29:20

they have to go back to their friends, family, mother-in-law and say, "Hey, you mind if I write down your investment by 75%." [laughter]

29:27

That's not not fun, right? Not fun. So, maybe you knew all that, but is that is that helpful?

29:32

No, I'm not I'm not strong on the money side of things. Just product and uh contacts.

29:38

Okay. Well, good. Well, maybe that's that is that the kind of answers you wanted then. Okay. Yeah. So, I would I think the short

29:44

version of all that is figure out what the offer of the accelerator incubator is and then

29:50

kind of set your expectations and and outreach around that so that you don't

29:55

get out of whack basically. Right. Well, the Y cominator I think is 500,000 on 7%. Is they're flat? Is

30:01

that how they're doing it now? Okay, that sounds What's the What's the formula off hand? Did you know it quick? Um well if it's

30:07

500 on 7% then is 7% uh 7% so 93% of it

30:13

is the other is the other right so it's 500 divided by 7% I think um something

30:19

like that or vice versa yeah more or less um so the uh

30:26

let's see I'm just looking at my notes from what you said sure yeah that's the kind of that's the the main thing um the other thing is just to

30:33

be careful in general about accelerators and incubators I mean the two you're talking about are amazing, right? So that I wouldn't have real concerns

30:40

there. Um, but there are a lot of kind of mid-tier ones or ones that were great 10 years ago and aren't so much anymore.

30:46

Like really again, check references because you're giving up a chunk of your company. Um, do they really like they

30:53

they may have a list of amazing contacts that they're going to wave at you, right? But when's the last time they

31:00

actually raised money from those contacts, you know, or did they ever or are those people who just dropped by a happy hour one time, right, and left

31:05

their business card, right? It's it's a it's a real business. You got to check credentials. Can I can I ask another question?

31:11

Yeah, sure. So, I'm a solo founder and I bootstrapped up to where I'm at, which is in examination with utility patent

31:18

with it and patent pending. I'm about 90% on the prototype being finished,

31:24

which is what my pro is waiting for to go to the league. Uh there is no scorekeeping system in pretty much in

31:30

the world for amazing whole is amazing. The timing of everything has been crazy. So got here me and good old Chad

31:38

GPT and Claude and you know doing things solo and you know all I read is uh being

31:44

a solo founder being a drag for you know so searching it it's you know I I'm 100%

31:54

in here. So yeah, and so far along it's um well that's another I I we'll have to

32:00

move on but a couple ideas for you. One is well like I said to Pratishka

32:07

PG you're not crazy. It's tough. It's okay. I mean that's how this is this is

32:13

the grind, right? Um but most accelerators or incubators

32:18

certainly funding opportunities are going to want you to not be solo. Um they're going to want to see that you

32:24

have not just customers but that you've convinced other people to join the team

32:30

right so I think you're I don't know the current specifics of the Y combinator

32:35

techars um applications but I know like at techos angels we're not interested we don't talk to companies much anymore

32:41

that don't have revenue already and probably at least a couple at least a

32:47

few people they don't all have to be co-founders but it's got to be more than a solo act with no money right um it's

32:53

so easy to spin stuff up now, especially with AI, that you're going to need a little more traction than that.

32:58

Um, and then I guess the other good news is I I have a book coming for you. It's going to take me about six months, but

33:05

this is exactly what it's about. It's like how how to go through this uh

33:10

journey uh and survive. Uh and then last I'll just say I think you're a member at the U Startup Council. Yeah, you are

33:17

right. At startups.org site there, we have a function there down on the bottom of the homepage. You can post if you if

33:23

it if it's useful to you, you could post an ad for a co-founder and just see if anybody shows up, right? Because there's

33:29

not really, as far as I know, many places where people can find co-founders and, you know, it's it's a it's hard.

33:35

Um, so that would be maybe a prevetted place that you could do that if that would be helpful to you. That's why I

33:41

created. Thanks. All right. Well, nice to meet you, Mike. Hope to see you again and hope to see

33:47

you in person since you're nearby. Maybe we'll cross paths one of these days. Um, all right. Cool. Well, nice to uh meet

33:53

him. And let's see what's going on in the chat room. I see some It looks like people are helping each other out, which is awesome. Um, so LinkedIn Live is

34:01

working, but the chat isn't. Is that what's happening? Okay, that's weird. Yeah, they're they're kind of wonky over

34:08

there. That's frustrating. Sorry about that. But, um, actually, you know what? Maybe did anybody who's there I I I'll I

34:14

won't do it. Maybe one of you who's who was there, could you just post come over to LinkedIn? because if I stop, you'll

34:21

have to be watching me while I do that. But anyway, I'd appreciate that if somebody could just say that. Come to it's a YouTube.comcottfox.

34:28

That's our channel. Um, so if that's possibility, that'd be much appreciated.

34:34

All right, so um, so what are Ally and Cat talking

34:40

about here? Let's see. Pitchbook.

34:46

Okay, I'm not sure which way to read this. Okay, here we go. Official orders. Okay, that's Jags again. We'll come back

34:52

to you Jags. What's Alice says? What's the best channel to onboard first customers for cash management,

34:59

forecasting, AI, and MVP? Target customers or startup CEOs after

35:05

series A funding with fast cash burn.

35:11

Huh, that's cool. Um, yeah. So, I don't know. Cat DSNY,

35:18

but um nothing from LinkedIn. That was a good idea, though. Yeah, you got to be real specific. I agree with that, too.

35:25

Uh you need to do the lab work. Yeah. Okay. So, Alla, I guess, uh sounds amazing. I don't know. I'd have to know

35:31

a lot more about it. I agree with that advice that cat gave you, but I would also suggest um that you are picking a

35:38

highly impacted audience, right? Everybody wants to talk to funded series

35:44

A founders, right? That's that's the dream for every service provider, right? There are young companies uh that aren't

35:50

sure what they're doing and don't have their full stack of services lined up yet and they've got money. Like that's

35:57

what everybody wants to do, right? So, anybody who's a series funded series A founder on LinkedIn or anywhere else is getting lots of calls. So, I don't know

36:04

if you have a um if you have a uh background in sales or business

36:10

development, but you're going to need it. So, uh I'm just I'm trying to be helpful here. Realistic. That's what

36:15

this show is about. But because if you're an AI genius, but you don't know sales, your product better be extra

36:22

amazing because those people are hard to reach. Full stop. Right? You picked like

36:27

one of the hardest angles. So I guess what I would do is I would drill down and find a specific angle in a specific

36:35

industry. Um ideally one that you have specific connections with like uh just making this up you know like uh your

36:42

spouse is a nurse and uh they know the chief financial officer at the local

36:47

hospital and this will work really great for certain kind of insurance billing for hospitals, right? Like drill down

36:54

and you could probably get even more specific than that, right? like maybe it's not hospitals, it's specific uh uh

37:00

rehabilitation centers or postsurgery care centers or something, you know, really specific or apply that to, you

37:06

know, lawn furniture or car manufacturing or whatever your niche is, but find a niche because cash management

37:13

is a really lucrative area to be in and everybody wants to be there. So, you're going to need to be more competitive in

37:20

some differentiating way. uh and maybe you already have. Apologies if you've already gone through that, but that I

37:27

think that's the only way forward, right? Is to really be specific so that when you contact somebody, you have

37:33

something specific to offer them that's a proven solution specific to their needs. They they hear you and they're

37:38

like, "Oh, this person gets me, right?" Not just some sort of generic, hi, I, you know, I manage cash and I can make

37:45

you an extra 50 basis points or whatever. You know, that might work and if you're good at that, awesome. But it

37:50

will get easier for you the more tightly you identify what we call an ICP or uh

37:56

ideal customer profile and then hit them very specifically and personally. Uh

38:03

that would be the way I would u uh pursue that. Okay, next up we're going

38:10

to um who's next on our list? Our hit list here is Mustafa Mustafa. Nice to

38:17

see you here. I think you're there you are. Okay, here comes Mustafa. Hey, man.

38:22

How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, too.

38:27

Mustafa's been a You're almost gonna be a regular here now. So, you're working hard and that's that's great. I mean,

38:32

that's why I do this. I'm happy to help repeat, you know, repeat offenders and come [laughter] back and uh and polish

38:39

things. So, um did you want to pitch tonight? Is that what we're doing? Yeah. Yeah, I would like to pitch. Uh I

38:44

based on the last hour conversation I little bit change I a little bit more

38:49

polish right now. Excellent. Okay. Well so let me just remind the audience um Mustafa is going

38:54

to have two minutes and he's going to talk and tell us about his business and then I will give what feedback I can

39:00

offer and then all of you too please chime in and you don't need to be um an expert in his field. I mean he's a

39:07

doctor so this is extra complicated but that's not the point. What we're looking for because we don't have time to debate

39:12

like the whole strategy. We're going to presume that the business is is a good idea and that he's on his way. What we

39:17

can help with and all of you can help with too is his style, his things he

39:23

didn't say, things he should say differently. Did he speak too fast? You know, that kind of like structure and

39:28

and style critique. That's easy for anybody to say, you know, I think you should have said more about the revenues

39:35

or less about the whatever it is, that kind of thing, right? That's kind of the vibe. If all of you can help, that would

39:40

be awesome. And by the way, everybody, keep going in the chat room. That's great. If you all are connecting with each other, that's awesome. You should

39:46

all post your LinkedIn um your LinkedIn uh URLs and connect that way too. We're building a community here. And of

39:51

course, come and join the startup council and then you can all meet each other there, too. Okay. So, here comes Mustafa. I'm going to put two minutes on

39:58

this. And like I said, this is an artificial amount of time, but the idea is just kind of to simulate the pressure

40:03

of a real pitch and then we'll uh we'll talk through with some feedback afterwards. Okay. Ready, Mustafa?

40:08

Whenever you are. Okay, I'm ready. Hi everyone, my name is Mustafa. I'm a medical doctor and AI

40:15

developer and CEO of A1 diagnosis startup. We are building an AI powered

40:21

laboratory service for risk assessment of H8 macular degeneration. The problem

40:28

20 million Americans have age macular degeneration which cause central vision

40:33

loss. It is irreversible. It is detected after damage happens. Our AI powered

40:40

platform detects AMD risk years before vision loss. This is the first

40:45

bloodbased risk assessment platform for H8 macular degeneration. Our thing I

40:50

would like to explain our technology in a simple language. When we get older, some cells in our eyes start dying.

40:57

Where do they go? They go into the blood. Previously, we couldn't detect them. Now we can. How it works? The

41:05

patients go to the family doctor office. Blood is drawn and send it to our laboratory. We analyze it with our AI

41:12

platform. We provide the risk assessment results to patients and family before

41:18

vision loss happens. Who we are? I perform research at University of

41:23

California for six years and wrote our AI algorithms and co-founder Dr. Murat

41:30

Bada is a Stanford scientist who raised over over 10 million for his medical

41:36

device startups. What we have done proof of concept studies completed. We are

41:41

raising over million for clear lab certification. Revenue start first

41:46

quarter 2027. A1 diagnosis startup preede stage see

41:52

the future clearly. Thank you very much. Wow, that is way better. Good job.

41:59

Thank you very much. Yeah, that was a pretty clear story. Well, so okay, so everybody before I get

42:05

excited that everybody in the chat room, offer what you can. I mean, it wasn't perfect, right? So, what suggestions

42:11

everybody out there has could be helpful to him. And there goes the timer. It was under two minutes, too. Nicely done.

42:17

Thank you. Um Okay. Well, cool. All right. So, how could it be better? Well, um you're

42:22

enthusiastic. You're qualified. Um it was a good story. you made a complicated

42:28

subject much more easy to understand. Um, yeah, I thought that was very good.

42:33

I guess if I was going to pick on anything, I would I didn't hear much about the revenues or the model, right?

42:39

You said revenues coming in 2027, so that's fine, but it would be interesting for investors to know actually we might

42:46

have talked about this before. Is it software? Is it hardware? Laboratory service. AI powered laboratory service.

42:52

Laboratory service. Okay. So, I don't know what that means. like that may obviously means something to you but you'd have to unpack that more for me.

42:59

Does it is that well that's yeah what is it? Basically there's a in the in the

43:04

field there's a exact science grail like a the people send it to our doctors or patients uh or quest diagnostic

43:11

everybody knows they go and then give the blood they analyze it and provide the results actually we are doing the

43:17

same way we are doing the very early detection for for the disease

43:22

okay so it's like very roughly like a quest diagnostics for this one specific macular

43:28

AI powered quest diagnostic for early detection. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. So, that might

43:34

be a metaphor to add. So, what I'm driving at is it wasn't clear who the customer is, right? Because what the investor wants to know is where the

43:40

money comes from. So, is it do I pay as an individual? Is it insurance? Is it through a hospital? Is it a charity? You

43:47

know, like uh this is actually B2B and B2C. Uh the

43:53

patients can like a quest diagnostic. The patient can go and order online and then they we can come and give the

44:00

result or they can go to the uh primary doctor office. No need of themology

44:06

because the specialist we try to do like a democratize the people just go to the

44:12

primary doctor office or just order online come us give us the blood we

44:18

analyze and tell the person before vision loss happens hey you have a risk.

44:23

Very cool. Okay. So, that you need to say that because that that's a big deal, right? If it's B2B is different than B

44:30

TOC, and if you're doing both, that's probably good. But I'll warn you that might also suggest that your focus is

44:35

split. So, that may or may not be good. Um, but that that's helpful, right? So, I guess the thing I would want to know

44:41

then because and both of those have different marketing approaches. Yeah. First approaches is BTOC. This is

44:49

our first approach. So, direct to consumer. Yeah. Uh uh no uh B I'm sorry yeah I'm

44:55

sorry B2B sorry B2B okay sorry directly to the uh to the doctor

45:01

office when the people go and uh to to doctor will give give the order

45:08

and this is a reimbursement also open I talk with the people in Medicare one of the AI director who provide the

45:15

reimbursement and uh he he he told us if you get the certification they they are

45:22

open to reim reimbursement. There you go. Okay. So, that's what I was after. So, that needs to be part of your pitch. It was only two minutes, so

45:28

you can't say, but that's the piece that investors are going to know who's the customer and then if it's what you said is B2B and

45:35

it's Medicare, the next question immediately is, do you have a reimbursement code yet? So, that may be farther down the road.

45:41

There's a possibility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But that can be a that can be a deal killer right there. So you need to be ready to deal with those sort

45:48

of questions because that's a big deal right the payment. So the direct to consumer

45:54

the direct to consumer opportunity is exciting as well and that's what I would call it. I would B2B and direct to consumer. Uh if you can go direct to

46:00

consumer that's also very interesting but it takes a whole different kind of marketing stack and personnel and outreach and budget. So I would talk

46:08

about those either either don't talk about it or talk about it as phase two someday if we get there just so that

46:14

people can see there's opportunity but it's not going to be distracting to you while you build the first core business.

46:20

Right. Yeah. Let's see what the chat has to say. Looks like people were appreciative of your um your pitch. Let's see. Um

46:31

okay. Sorry. I'm just trying to scroll down here. Um,

46:39

great presentation. What's your revenue model? Well, that's pretty much exactly what I asked. Are you using a homegrown?

46:45

So, we don't have time for you to answer all these questions, but these are the kind of questions you should think about. So, are using a homegrown AI

46:51

model? Right? What chat GPT API open source pre-trained? Like that kind of stuff people are going to want.

46:57

We wrote our AI algorithm not using the generative AI. We have own algorithm.

47:02

Oh, wow. Okay. And is it for hardware or software? This is uh this is software basically.

47:09

Yeah. Yeah. I think you need to say that a couple more times because um if this is

47:14

a software company that that's it's a different path, right? So say software

47:19

more. [laughter] Yeah. Um yeah basically we are actually

47:24

our model they did exact sciences the company exactly what we are doing for the cancer

47:31

actually and this company was $10 million last year. Okay. And this year is Abot purchased them

47:38

like a requiring 22 23 billion right now. 23 billion

47:44

billion. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I think I would mention that. [laughter]

47:49

That's a great comp. They call that a comp, right? A comparable. Yeah, that's worth mentioning. Abbott Labs bought the

47:56

closest uh analogy to our company for 23 billion. Yeah. Okay. That'll get

48:01

people's attention. Nice. Well, cool. Well, it sounds like you're making progress. Congratulations. Nice. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.

48:07

Yeah, we we are we are I was following this company and then you know all of a sudden last year the ABOT decided to buy

48:14

in a one day to stock like a double it. Yeah, bet. That's amazing. All right.

48:20

Well, cool. Well, there's so much opportunity in uh in biotech and medtech and all this stuff. It's exciting. I'm

48:26

I'm glad glad you're like somebody said in the chat room, great great cause. I'm glad you're working on it. [laughter]

48:32

Awesome. Well, good to see you. All right. So, that's our friend Mustafa. What an interesting company that is. So,

48:38

um, so you get the vibe there for how to pitch. I hopefully the the revenues are what we really need to hear about. I

48:43

know everybody wants to talk about the product. That's why you got into it or even the solution because that's why you got into it, but investors want to hear

48:49

about the money. That's that's the key thing. Okay. So, we got a couple more folks uh backstage here. Um, let's see.

48:57

Well, let me just check the chat room again. Oh, it's almost been almost an hour already. Let's see.

49:04

Okay. Um, [laughter] come on you. There we go. Okay. So, all

49:11

right. Hey, if you're if this is being helpful to you, likes and comments would be really appreciated, guys. Are trying

49:17

to be helpful here. Um, okay. So, there's a co-founder equity

49:22

um early stage investors. Okay. Yeah, we can come to those. Um, and this is one I

49:29

think for you, Mustafa. How are you managing systems to manage clients, patients, insuranceances, medicine?

49:35

Yeah, that's that's a good question for anything medical related, right? So, um that's worth thinking about. I presume

49:41

you have answers for that as well, but it's a good point. All right, so let's go on to our next uh person here. And uh

49:47

like I said, uh these we're giving priority to folks who are members of the startup council here. This is our

49:52

organization. It's worldwide organization, community service-based um and we're trying to help connect you all

49:58

and accelerate you. So if that sounds useful, our primary function is uh publicity really to try to help you get

50:04

attention from investors. So if you join the startup council, there's you can get a profile and um you can write we'll

50:11

give you your own blog that you'll get your articles published in our newsletters. You can publish ads for

50:16

co-founders like I mentioned earlier. You can submit new articles. You can um

50:22

we have all kinds of discounts for software and services and we can make introductions to lawyers and and

50:28

accountants and that kind of stuff and um it's it's a whole bunch of stuff but um the folks that are coming on camera

50:34

are members of this organization already and um that's why they get priority. Okay, so next up was who was next? Was

50:42

Kyle I think Kyle. Okay, Kyle, here we go. Hey, Kyle.

50:48

How are you, Scott? All right. Nice to see you. Same here. I gota I gotta tell you, I'm glad to hear that you're still at it. That's

50:54

awesome. I don't think I've heard from you in maybe a year, whatever. I don't know. Time flies. But anyway, that's great that uh I think people are going

51:00

to enjoy hearing about your your company. That's great. I'm looking forward to the update. Yeah, thank you. It's, you know, taking

51:05

a lot of different turns and just uh building traction and stuff like that. It's, you know, a lot of bureaucracy

51:12

that happens in the fighting world as well as just combat sports and contact sports anyway. So, just working

51:17

on that. Sure. Sure. Okay. Well, great. Well, I think you've heard the drill, the two-minute thing. I don't think we've

51:24

done this here before, have we? I don't remember. But, no, we haven't. Okay. So, but yeah, if you can want to

51:29

do a two-minute version, I'll give you what help I can, and hopefully folks in the chat room will, too. And we can start whenever you're ready.

51:35

Perfect. I'll get started. So, uh, according to the World Health Organization, over 56 million

51:41

concussions occur worldwide with the majority being sports related. Parents, athletes, and staff unfortunately all

51:48

don't have the ability to recognize, report, and monitor symptoms report remotely until now. My name's Kyle, the

51:55

founder of Smart Nosis, a concussion diagnosis app for contact sports. Our

52:00

solution revolves around a proprietary questionnaire and scoring system that monitors athletes over the critical

52:07

first seven days after a head injury. Treatment and recovery suggestions are generated depending on the athletes

52:14

answers. We proved our concept in the most dangerous sports in the world, combat sports. Approved by the World

52:20

Boxing Council, the Association of Boxing Commissions, the California State Athletic Commission, and the

52:26

Confederation of Brazilian MMA. We've piloted with seven fight promoters, and have secured a Canadian commission as

52:33

our first paying sanctioning body, making Smart Nosis mandatory. We also

52:39

secured our first private high school in New Jersey, and that begins in Q1 this year. Uh we're raising capital to scale

52:46

worldwide, targeting youth sports organizations, private high schools, colleges, sanctioning bodies, and local

52:53

and federal law enforcement. Our team and advisers consist of sports neurologists and influential decision

52:59

makers in sports. Safety starts with awareness and awareness starts here.

53:06

The end. Very nice. Cool. Just going to stop the timer.

53:11

Awesome. Well, that you paint a really good picture there. Congratulations. That sounds like some progress since we

53:17

last talked. You've got some real credentials with uh uh third parties, right? Like it's not just your mom,

53:23

right? [laughter] It's like real real stuff. Um awesome. Well, that's very cool. Um okay, so

53:29

everybody uh in the chat room that's listening or on the air, right? Um, please go ahead if you have suggestions about what he could do to improve the

53:36

pitch, please, uh, chime in and offer your help or connections. If you have resources that would help him as well,

53:42

potential customers, that's always welcome, I'm sure. So, um, and I'll go first and then we'll talk about whatever

53:47

comments other folks have. So, um, that was very good. You painted a good picture. Um, I like I mean the idea that

53:56

concussions need better service just makes sense. uh you know anybody that watches football or worries about kids

54:02

or you know combat sport. I mean it's just it's a universal thing. I guess I'm glad this is kind of a negative thing

54:08

that's actually a super positive. Most pitches I hear like this people would take half the time just to try to

54:14

convince us that concussions are bad, right? All these statistics blah blah blah and you just you kind of I mean you

54:19

need to do some of that, right? But you you got past it quickly to all these sanctioning bodies and and that stuff.

54:25

It's very very impressive. Um, I guess what what it didn't have was numbers and

54:31

investors really like numbers. So, I guess I would want to add, again, it's only two minutes, right? But I would

54:37

want to add if you have any any numbers, um, and I think those fall at least roughly into two buckets. One bucket

54:45

would be results like how many uh ho how often does this help or how many people

54:51

has it helped or um what percentage increase or you know like I don't know

54:57

how to quantify it exactly but you know how many people has it helped and what difference is it making you know if you

55:03

could say something like we helped whatever 73,000 people and they improved their concussions by 17% or you know

55:09

something like that that is investors eat numbers the whole time we're listening, we're trying to

55:16

put together an equation in our head to model your business. Like we're spreadsheet crazy, right? So, if you

55:23

tell us a good story, that's great, but you didn't tell us enough to know whether I want to learn more or not

55:29

because we hear lots of stories, right? Um, so that's one numbers about

55:34

performance or adoption. And that leads to the other one, which of course is numbers about customers and revenue. So,

55:39

it sounds like you're still pre-revenue. Is that right? Well, we we've got um we're starting a pilot uh in March with

55:46

St. Peters Prep in New Jersey, and they're going to be transitioning into a paid customer. We're giving the first

55:52

semester for like their kids um like as a a pilot, right? And then they'll be uh

55:57

transitioning into a paying customer, and we just uh secured a Canadian um

56:02

left bridge left bridge uh combat sports commission in Canada. Uh they're going

56:08

to be our first paying sanctioning body actually. Um yeah, we've doing a nominal fee for them. We're doing a few fights

56:15

for them uh next month and the following three months. So it basically one fight every month. Um but it's kind of like,

56:22

you know, it's kind of like set the precedent, right? Like so that was a big part of what I've been doing

56:27

is figuring out this business model with the sanctioning bodies, you know, how is that uh the fee who's who's paying for

56:35

it, right? How do you get that to promoters? you go directly to promoters or through the sanctioning body who

56:41

makes it mandatory. So, we were lucky to do that and um with the that's all the stuff that's all the

56:46

stuff you need to unpack for an investor because that's your unique domain knowledge like I I don't know you that

56:53

well I presume you don't have a PhD in this stuff. I don't think anybody does, right? But like but you have this which is like

56:59

intimate knowledge of sanctioning bodies in multiple countries and what it takes that this business model that you're

57:05

developing. you should unpack that for us like show us that that's a differentiator you've done this homework

57:10

and particularly you did it again here you talked about all that not a single number right you got to give you got to

57:17

get in the habit of saying numbers and I know you that's because you don't want to commit but you should at least say

57:22

something like um we project that the average contract for a sanctioning body

57:28

like LeftBridge might look might look like $1,000 a month or a million dollars

57:34

a year or whatever like give something because otherwise I have no idea how big this business is, right? And this whole

57:40

thing could be only a $10 million business. It's not big enough for venture capitalists to be interested in,

57:45

right? I think you know that because I've I've seen you at bigger events where this kind of stuff is discussed, right? So like but if this has a

57:52

potential to be a billion dollar business, you need to give us some numbers to understand why that is. And particularly this goes back to what I

57:58

was saying with um Mustafa, who's the customer? And that's what you were kind of talking about there, like is it sanctioning bodies? Is it individual

58:04

fighters? Is it schools? Like it could be all of those. I don't know. But but that's what you need to tell us like

58:10

who's buying, how often, how much. Like that. Gotcha. Yeah. Right now it's the sanctioning bodies and the uh the

58:16

schools like private high schools and colleges. The schools and colleges that's 10 grand uh for the year. That's

58:22

what they're doing. Um and then the sanctioning bodies is about $500 per card. And a a card is like, you know,

58:30

Jake Paul's fight had maybe seven or eight people on the card, right? So it's like four fights. You know, amateurs

58:35

have maybe 30 people on a card, right? But we're just giving it, you know, 500 per card and you multiply that by every

58:42

card across, you know, sanctioning bodies. So you can do the math with that real quick and the numbers get big fast,

58:47

don't they? Very fast. [laughter] Yeah. Okay. So that's work that into your pitch because without that it's

58:52

just a story, right? Okay. Um and you can see in the chat room people are talking with Mustafa about his Tam Sam. I don't know if you're

58:58

familiar with that kind of terminology, but for those who aren't, it's total addressable market, serviceable

59:04

addressable market, and serviceable obtainable market. So, it's like this kind of three circles as you home in on

59:10

exactly who you're talking to. And putting numbers to that helps us understand. Uh, and that's what you want because investors will want to size this

59:17

up. Um, so that they know whether they're interested because otherwise, like I said twice already, it's just a

59:22

story, right? So, cool. Oh, sorry. We should check the chat room, too. Let's see what other folks had to say about this. I thought

59:28

it was cool, but I hope that feedback was helpful. Okay. Bunch of questions for uh Mustafa there. Uh

59:36

the addressable market. Yep. Oh, they're talking to each other. Okay. Uh

59:41

okay. Thinking about this. Maybe I'm off base, but I see potential SAS through channel partners visav middle school and

59:47

high school through parents. Yeah, that's kind of what I I'm with you. Egggite media. AIT Media. a Ignite

59:56

Media. I'm not sure how to say that. Anyway, um yeah, and you've probably thought about that, right? Because as a parent, like you could certainly see

1:00:02

paying whatever, you know, five bucks a month or whatever it is. So, for like youth athletics, right? So, let's say like the American Youth Soccer

1:00:07

Organization, right? Like they would be the actual customer youth sports, but they'd be passing that fee on through

1:00:14

membership to the parents, right? So, the parents would be downloading the app. Same thing with, you know, high

1:00:19

schools. Like what St. computers is doing is they're just, you know, buying it and then giving it out to the parents and the parents are basically going to

1:00:26

be monitoring their kids or having their kids download it uh and monitor, right, as they go throughout the season and

1:00:32

things like that. And when it comes to fighting, it's the sanctioning body and it's just a web app, which is a little

1:00:38

bit different from the schools and the colleges on what they're doing. It's a web app. Each fight, each card, they

1:00:43

just, you know, scan, register, and then they get their automated messages. Yeah,

1:00:48

that sounds promising. Uh Jules chimes in and says, "Travel teams." Yeah. Yeah, I can see. Yeah, that makes a lot of

1:00:55

sense. So, just pull that into your pitch, right? Tell us how it works and who's paying. That's critical stuff.

1:01:00

Awesome. Well, good to see you. Congrats on the progress. I'm glad, like I said, I'm glad you're still at it. I think it's a cool business.

1:01:06

Thank you, Scott. Yeah, you're welcome. Nice to see you. All right. And come join us over at the startup council, Kyle. I think hopefully

1:01:12

we could help you more. Um unless you have already. I don't think you have, but everybody here, please come and join

1:01:19

us. Um, we can all help each other. Okay, so we got one more, I think, which and then we'll do a bunch of the ones in

1:01:25

the chat room for a cleanup. Who didn't I talk to? Sean. Yeah, Sean's still here. Sean is back. Hey, Sean, how are

1:01:32

you? I think um you're east coast somewhere, aren't you?

1:01:37

I am in Delaware. That's right. I saw that on your form. That's right. So, you're up late. Well, thanks for sticking with us.

1:01:42

Yeah, I'm a night guy anyway. Okay, super. Okay, so uh I saw your form, but

1:01:49

now I can't remember what you wanted to talk about. Can you remind us? Yeah, so I just give you a quick update, but we had spoken, I guess, uh about

1:01:55

three months ago, and I just just starting an uh accelerator program. It's called Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Conscious conscious venture labs.

1:02:02

Um really, we just finished it. Did our you know the big finale pitch um last

1:02:10

uh wonderful group of people. Um, and they're all about um, conscious

1:02:15

capitalism, which is, you know, more it's not like, you know, having a business is not about making money, but

1:02:21

about making the world a better place. Cool. Yeah. Very, very, um, just a great group

1:02:27

of people. Can't say enough. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, it looks like we're gonna we're gonna probably get some

1:02:32

funding and we've got a couple of clients. We have some traction going. So, you know, and you had a background, right? Don't

1:02:37

you? you've done this before or I've I right [laughter]

1:02:42

this is my third this is my third startup third right right had a couple of exits so okay

1:02:47

um so you know so my my advice regarding that is you know just keep with it um

1:02:52

you just keep going and and it's you know it's not easy and you have to connect with the right people and all of

1:02:58

a sudden it works um awesome yeah so uh my question um you know I'm a

1:03:05

software developer by trade um been sea level executive in programming for the last 30 some years

1:03:12

and in the last six weeks or so um just you know the the the types of tools that

1:03:18

have come out and in particular I'm going to mention codeex uh as as a tool

1:03:23

that's used for development um have really

1:03:28

revolutionized you know what you can put together [clears throat] um in a very short amount of time and

1:03:35

you know I'm wondering I first of all I think that you know it creates a ton of of sort of equity right people who don't

1:03:41

have $50,000 in nine months to build a product all of a sudden they can almost

1:03:47

do it themselves or much much cheaper but I'm wondering what do you think is now um the differentiator right because

1:03:54

it used to be oh I need I need VC funding to build my product you know fund fund my 10 developers for the next

1:04:01

nine months to build this thing I need 200 grand that's like you know that's coming to an

1:04:06

end. You know, what do you what do you think what do you think the landscape starts to look like over the next six months as this really gets mainstream?

1:04:14

Yeah, I wish I had a great answer. [laughter] I I've thought about it, but I I I my

1:04:20

main answer would be I think we don't know. It's still too early. Um I'll try harder than that, though. But I think that's really the answer, right? Who who

1:04:27

the hell knows? It's moving so fast, especially if it starts if the ais start

1:04:32

teaching themselves and it becomes recursive. God only knows what's gonna happen, right? I mean, even anthropic uh

1:04:39

what's his name? Daario. Mario was just saying yesterday that he thinks AI is gonna, you know, could could kill us

1:04:45

all. So, [laughter] there's lots of that point. That's interesting though. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of opportunities here.

1:04:53

But, um so yeah, I've been seeing that even in my own work. I'm not a coder by any means, but I've been increasingly

1:04:59

working. I started with Gemini and then Chad GBT and now more and more Claude and the things it can do just for like

1:05:05

with my new book, right? It's helping me revise and edit at scale, not just like a paragraph at a time. It's it's crazy.

1:05:12

Um, and it takes a lot of organized thinking um to get it to do what you

1:05:18

want. But I think I guess that's that's where I see value. I actually posted on

1:05:23

LinkedIn yesterday or Sunday. Anyway, a post um

1:05:28

it's a post you might actually find interesting because um there's a guy named David Mattton M-at Tin and he has

1:05:35

a newsletter called uh New World Same Humans and it's on my LinkedIn page uh

1:05:41

from the other day. But anyway, he wrote his guidance because he's an AI commentator specifically, right? But

1:05:46

about what we should be teaching our children, right? Like what do you do,

1:05:51

right? It's one thing if you already have a career or you're as old as you are or I am, but if you're 12 or 20, you

1:05:59

know, what are you going to do? So anyway, um, so I think the differentiators hopefully are going to be first of all the organization. Like I

1:06:06

find that the the prompts that I need to do to get really good results require such a level of focus that most people

1:06:12

are not going to be able to do it. um the same way that you as a software developer people might get the concepts

1:06:17

but the actually writing all that code you know command line stuff that you can do you know that you're fluent in as a

1:06:25

language it's a high bar just intellectually so um I I think that there I'm hoping that there are still

1:06:31

skills required in terms of organization and not just the organization but the

1:06:37

the being judicious about what matters and prioritizing you know that kind of stuff like higher order thinking

1:06:42

executive function. Um, and then the other big one which this post is about on Sunday is I I would really like to

1:06:48

see I think there's going to be a lot of disruption. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs, but maybe this isn't

1:06:55

answering your question, but um especially and you're into this conscious capitalism stuff. I guess I am

1:07:01

too. One of the things I'm hoping it happens is that it frees up a lot of people from the wrote work, the

1:07:07

processing of papers and the transaction verification and reconciliations and maybe basic coding and maybe

1:07:15

human empathy starts to be valued finally more like it should be and people can we can come up with incentive

1:07:21

systems that allow people to do something that I don't think AI will be real good at which is interpersonal communication and support for people

1:07:27

especially as our society ages uh here in the states anyway and worldwide honestly. the birth rate isn't replacing the old

1:07:34

people. We're turning into a gerontocracy, right? Um, and if maybe AI can can free up a lot of people, even

1:07:40

truck drivers, from that work and allow people to be more kind to each other.

1:07:46

That's pretty utopian, but [laughter] that's kind of what I'm hoping for. That

1:07:52

answered your question at all, but No, I I I agree too. I think I think that's um part of what my vision is is

1:07:58

is around that is you know that that there does become some more equity and and some more um people people actually

1:08:05

talking to each other more you know so yeah right I'd hope so yeah um in the in

1:08:11

the chat room uh Ignite Media is saying uh iteration speed is yeah you can

1:08:17

create a company that can be unkillable incentive mismatch because we have needs

1:08:22

it doesn't and it doesn't yeah that's right we have more needs than it does. That's very insightful. I agree. Yeah.

1:08:27

And post World War II hierarchy is collapsing. Yeah, that's right. And Oh, they they said I am right in all caps.

1:08:33

Cool. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be right. Um Yeah. Well, I mean, I hope I'm right.

1:08:38

Right. I mean, if we could have a focus, a shift of focus from some of the craziness that's been going on towards some some kindness and and supporting

1:08:45

old people, that would be man, that would be that would be real progress in my book. Um, but to your the heart of

1:08:52

your question, um, for the coding jobs and the entry level jobs, I I'm I'm not

1:08:58

I'm not sure. Yeah, I I worry about that. You know, I don't know what where are the next level of where's the next trunch of entry

1:09:04

level jobs going to, right? Those people, they're not going to have any purpose.

1:09:09

That's right. And and yeah, I I for years have thought about a uh back during the depression, they had this the

1:09:16

Civilian Conservation Corps, kind of a national service thing, you know, and I I'm thinking we should be I've been

1:09:21

thinking that for years, we should do that. But now, especially with AI coming, we should take all these people and train them how to be nurses and and

1:09:27

and and counselors and help old people do their laundry. You know, [laughter]

1:09:33

that's valuable work, you know, and for centur for millennia that was valued and now it really isn't because we're all in

1:09:38

a com compet competing to buy a Bentley, I guess. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. Pretty

1:09:44

philosophical stuff, but thank you for the question. I don't know if that was helpful. That was great. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Nice to see you and congrats

1:09:49

on graduating from the the the incubator. That's cool. Um hope we hope we'll see more of your your creations.

1:09:56

It's always good to find guys that are thoughtful and pleasant when they're building companies.

1:10:01

[laughter] Nice to see you, Sean. All right. Well, hopefully, yeah, I'm coming joined us at Startup Council. It'

1:10:08

be nice to see more of you as well. And thanks for staying up late. Um, okay. So, uh, getting near nearish the end.

1:10:14

Let's go back to the chat room here. That kind of covers everybody that was backstage, I think. U, thanks to all of

1:10:20

you who, uh, like I said, I think this is the first time ever where everybody followed the instructions and actually

1:10:25

sent in their their paperwork, which is amazing. There is progress in the world. Um, so let's go through the chat room

1:10:33

and talk about the rest of them, the rest of the uh questions. Um, and um,

1:10:39

let me point out that next time if any of you want to be on camera, please come join the startup council and then you'll

1:10:45

get the link to come join us, right? And then we can talk directly. That's kind of the what we're trying to set up here.

1:10:50

Okay, so let me run back to the chat room and see. There were a couple questions. Somebody was talking. Let's

1:10:56

see. So, Tai has a question about an ergonomic handle. We'll do that second. But Jags was talking about um

1:11:05

Okay. Uh Jags had a a concept here. There we go. I'm trying to figure out

1:11:11

what to do. You know, I'm caregiver for decades. Don't have much bandwidth, but you came

1:11:17

up with an invention. Designed, tested, eventually my wife, Here we go, used it.

1:11:23

and UCLA and Cedars even approved it for use for her during her hospital stay.

1:11:29

Well, that's interesting. So, they allowed it into the hospital. Okay, that's impressive. Only so much I can share. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Um well,

1:11:37

that's awfully um uh what's the word? Ambitious or accomplished of you. Good

1:11:42

for you. Um okay, there's a little more here. Since it's likely, I need to make sure it's protected. Yes, right

1:11:48

protected. Justify. Yeah, that's right. Okay. And then he or she says, "I'll back off now. Stop taking over the

1:11:55

room." So last thing I'll say is eating me up because I can say familiar with using consist 100% safety. Okay. Thank

1:12:00

you. Talk to you later. Okay. U Okay. Well, J, I I don't know enough to, you know, be real specific here, but I

1:12:07

understand your concern about, you know, not wanting to say too much. So, um,

1:12:12

yeah, I guess, uh, okay. Okay. Well, I'll give you my kind

1:12:18

of standard list of responses. Uh, but let me [snorts] [clears throat] Well, medical stuff is a

1:12:25

whole complicated world, right? So, you you just got to be careful. It's great that they allowed you to do it. Uh, that

1:12:31

doesn't mean it's approved, right? So, if you're going to go and actually turn it into a business, you'd need all kinds

1:12:36

of clearances and so forth. And there are probably people in this uh chat tonight who could help you with some

1:12:42

news about that. Um, but you probably have investigated the clearance path to

1:12:48

become a paid for medical device and it's long and arduous. So, yes, you would need money. Having an idea alone,

1:12:55

unfortunately, is not enough to um do very much, right? I mean, these days

1:13:04

everybody has ideas and and the world is so connected now that there's a thousand ideas. You should see my inbox. I mean,

1:13:10

it's [laughter] insane. So, that's why I do these shows because I can scale and help more people at once than trying. I

1:13:15

can't answer individual emails um like I used to. Um although I actually I guess

1:13:21

I should say I do do some calls. Um let me here there's a page here if this is

1:13:28

useful to you and you'd like to talk more or any of you. Um this is expensive though, right? Because you have to call

1:13:34

me directly. But I do do some of that. I I save time for that for some people uh who've got money to spend, you know, to

1:13:41

actually really work on stuff. So, we could do that. I'm not pitching you, but that's just the fact. So, what I would

1:13:46

be doing if I were you and you don't have much bandwidth, that's that's the other thing. You're just not going to be able to do this if you don't have any

1:13:52

bandwidth. But assuming you did have some time, I would call uh the Small

1:13:58

Business Development Corporation, SBDC, SBDC, Small Business Development Corporation. That's a US government

1:14:04

funded entity. your tax dollars at work. They do free consulting for early stage

1:14:09

entrepreneurial type businesses and they have mentors and advisors

1:14:16

that would talk to you, right? You you just need people to talk to it sounds like. So that's free. It would still

1:14:21

take time. Um there's also the service corps of retired executives score and

1:14:27

that's a similar thing. It's not a government thing I don't think. Maybe it is, but um it's retired executives who

1:14:33

want to volunteer and give back. And again, they might be able to help you with some ideas or point you in the right directions. And then of course,

1:14:39

you can get into the world more like where I work, which like you could call me and we could, you know, book a time if you wanted to pay for it and stuff.

1:14:44

Unfortunately, I can't give away all my time. Um but uh you're going to need

1:14:50

time. Uh so I I'm not sure. I I I I'm

1:14:55

trying to be realistic here, right? If you don't have bandwidth, it may be a great idea, but without somebody to champion, it's probably not going to

1:15:00

happen. I guess if I I was forced I would maybe there's people at Cedars

1:15:06

that were impressed with this thing and they would be interested. You know, maybe there's a young doctor or a young

1:15:12

nurse or orderly or somebody who who sees this and is like, "Wow, that's cool." And then um also if this is

1:15:19

involving because again I don't know very much if it's about a specific condition or syndrome or affliction of

1:15:26

some sort maybe there's an association that would be um helpful you know like

1:15:32

it's multiple sorosis related or it's cardiac care related or cancer you know

1:15:37

like all of those have nonprof nonprofits and maybe there's someone somewhere in one of those organizations

1:15:44

where if you got more specific you could find friends and partners and people that would help you commercialize it.

1:15:50

That's the sort of thing I I would be looking for. So, I hope that's helpful. I I can't give you much more than that

1:15:57

without more details. Uh and even then, it's a tough it's going to be a tough road if you don't have um the time to

1:16:02

pursue it. Um, and oh, by the way, anybody that's in the uh chat room who

1:16:08

have suggestions, this sounds like an exciting idea, and it would be great to help uh help him or her out with this.

1:16:17

Okay, now I was going to go back to was it the ergonomics thing?

1:16:24

Uh, so where was that?

1:16:30

No, not there.

1:16:38

hang on. I'm getting there. Um,

1:16:45

man. Okay. Well, I saw it. I can't find it now. So, whoever had the question about the ergonomics thing, you can put

1:16:51

it in again and I'll try to handle that before we uh run out of time here. Um,

1:16:57

okay. Here's Okay, here's a fairly straightforward one. What's the industry standard for

1:17:03

co-founder equity? This is from quiz time 899. Is it mandatory to grant an ownership stake to everyone designated

1:17:09

as a co-founder? No, it's not mandatory. Nothing is mandatory. It's your company. You can do exactly what you want to do

1:17:17

until you have investors. [laughter] Um so that's the trick. That's one of the thresholds for whether you are going

1:17:25

to um raise money or not is whether you want to give up some control and have a boss,

1:17:31

right? Because once you have investors, even if they're minority shareholders, you have an obligation, at least a moral

1:17:38

obligation, if not a legal financial one, to fill them in and keep them updated and listen to their advice,

1:17:44

right? So, um so and they may have advice about this. So, what's the industry standard for co-founder equity?

1:17:51

Okay, a couple things. So, this is also in my new book. So, I hope that you'll stick around for a few months and the book will come out. It's going to be

1:17:57

great. Um, but uh first of all, uh you don't need a co-founder. Everybody thinks they need a co-founder. A

1:18:03

co-founder is a crutch. A co-founder is because you're lonely and you're scared.

1:18:08

And that's a totally legit way to feel. Totally. But it doesn't mean you need to give up half your company to somebody

1:18:15

else or even 20% of your company, right? probably what you need is somebody who

1:18:20

knows how to code because you don't or somebody who knows how to market because you're a coder or whatever it is, right?

1:18:26

Product design or blah blah blah AI or something, right? So those people can be hired and your challenge is not to give

1:18:34

up half your company for a co-founder. And again, half is not mandatory. It's what you can negotiate. This is an old

1:18:41

school haggle, right? Um, but you want to find somebody that you can employ long enough to get to know them and then

1:18:48

allow them to earn their way into a percentage of the company. That's how this is done. Um,

1:18:53

because they may not want to work only for equity, you might have to give them more equity or ideally some cash as

1:18:58

well, but you can pick whatever numbers you'd like and then negotiate. The key is that you do it over time and that

1:19:05

they earn it because things change. They may be thrilled and excited about it for

1:19:11

this month and next month and even for six more months but eight months from now they get a new job or uh a parent

1:19:17

gets ill or they have a new baby or they whatever something happens right and they leave right so what happens to

1:19:22

their equity right you have to think through all the worst cases and all of this can be arranged um a good book for

1:19:28

this actually let me see if I can find it I've got it right here

1:19:34

yeah here it is try this I'll have an even better version in my book. So,

1:19:39

don't spend all your money on this one, but but this is a really good book, Slicing the Pie. Okay, this is a few

1:19:45

years old. Um, I think they even have an app or a website, but you can get the slicing the pie handbook and it's just

1:19:51

as the picture shows, right? You're slicing the pie between the different founders and how to share appropriately

1:19:56

and how that will get diluted as you bring in outside investors. Okay, but bottom line, it's up to you. Okay. So,

1:20:04

uh, Taylor, um, you had the ergonomics thing yet, but I can't find the question. Can you Oh, there it is.

1:20:10

Sorry, you did put it back in. Um, trying to start an infant. Hold on. Where'd it go?

1:20:17

Uh, hopefully. Yeah, there's some good comments in the chat room as well. Um, answering this question. Quiz time. Um,

1:20:23

here it is. Okay, Taylor says, "Trying to start an infant car seat company based on my ergonomic handling, but

1:20:30

don't know how or who to find." H

1:20:36

uh you got to give me a little more. Um don't know how to start a company based

1:20:42

on this invention or who to find. Um okay, I'm going to try. Well, I guess I

1:20:49

go back to this this SBDC or the score um ideas. I would

1:20:56

um I mean this is a physical product so this isn't my expertise I have to be

1:21:02

honest I'm more of a software guy but basically you'd be looking at some product design issues and uh patenting

1:21:09

um and then trying to build a business around it. So the trick I guess to me would be the distribution.

1:21:17

If you had assume the idea is brilliant. Assume you can patent it. Who's the

1:21:23

customer and how are you going to get it to the customers? Uh that's the hard part. So okay, there's a little

1:21:29

clarification. How who would be the correct people to start such a company? Um

1:21:35

well, I guess you'd need a somebody who knows the car seat market because that would address the distribution that I

1:21:40

was just talking about. who who makes car seats and where are they sold and

1:21:46

how much do they cost to manufacture? So, you need somebody knows how to market this stuff. You need somebody that knows how to manufacture this

1:21:53

stuff. And then that's going to both include some kind of regulatory and licensing oversight because car seats

1:21:59

are are uh it's not quite a medical device, but it's certainly something that is

1:22:05

regulated, right? Because if they don't work, people die, right? So, um, so

1:22:11

you've already spoken with score. Okay, cool. That's interesting. That's good to hear. Um, so I guess

1:22:19

I think the kind of person you want is probably a product designer or an industrial designer. There are a few of

1:22:26

those around um here in Orange County. Are you local? I know you've been here

1:22:31

before, right? Um, I forget where you live, but um, if you look on the Orange

1:22:37

County Startup Council.org website, there's a couple in the

1:22:43

directory, I think, um, that do product design consulting. This one, um, yeah,

1:22:49

startup council OC or OC startups.org. Oh, here it's like that there. OC

1:22:55

startups.org. Um, we have, uh, I think there's some listings like that, but there are, this

1:23:02

is a long way if you're making me think because I don't know this field so well. Um, there are product design

1:23:07

consultancies that specialize in helping people conceptualize and then make prototypes

1:23:14

of physical products. I don't know much about them, but they do exist and they

1:23:20

sometimes even partner with inventors and try to make stuff happen. So, I

1:23:25

would try looking for that. Like talk to um talk to your favorite AI and ask for

1:23:31

names of companies that do product development, prototyping, and engineering and design. And I'll bet you

1:23:37

you could find some. Yeah, I thought so. You're an OC. I thought so. Okay. There's a big one down by the spectrum

1:23:42

whose name I can't remember. Uh but I'm pretty sure there's a couple in our directory as well. So, I would start

1:23:48

there. And also anybody in the chat room, do you know how would you start uh help Kyle start a infant car seat

1:23:55

company? He'd love your advice. Okay, so I hope that's helpful, Kyle. Not uh not

1:24:00

my most brilliant answer ever, but um let's move on to the next one. Uh okay.

1:24:09

Um Ignite Media, thanks for your help with the uh many comments here. Looks like you're giving some good advice. Um,

1:24:16

and Vlad, did Vlad, are you here? Awesome. Hey, man. How are you? It's been a long time. I hope you're doing

1:24:21

well. Are you in America these days or are you back uh Eastern Europe again? I

1:24:26

hope uh hope things are doing well with you. Um, let's see this one.

1:24:33

Yes. So, this valuation question, there's Taylor again. Yeah. 500% 500 for 5%. So, then you take 20 times 5, right?

1:24:40

10 million. Yep. That's right. Um, what it doesn't do is address pre and post

1:24:45

money because if the money comes in uh after or before you might now the

1:24:51

company might now be worth 10,500,000 sort of idea, but that's close enough for for argument sake, right? It's

1:24:58

that's the kind of percentage I was talking about earlier with uh was it Mike? I think um like 7% for 500 grand,

1:25:05

that kind of thing. Um that that's how you do the math. Yep. Okay. Um

1:25:13

All right. And then, okay, Ignite Media says, "Lack of

1:25:18

bandwidth equals provisional patent that if it's not a passion, raise a little capital. You get four to five

1:25:26

before the patent is granted or not, which allows you to run the jewels or you need the granted to royalty." Okay,

1:25:32

that's a that's a very practical advice. This is for um our friend who's got the medical device that was being used at

1:25:38

UCLA and Cedar Sinai which and what uh Egggite Media is saying is uh you can

1:25:43

file a provisional patent that might be that that itself can be a kind of a complicated thing. So don't

1:25:50

underestimate that but if you can you can file that without prosecuting the full patent and getting spending all the

1:25:56

money and kind of stake out the turf for this unique thing. And actually um Taylor this would work for you too. you

1:26:03

can have um you can maybe file a provisional patent around whatever the innovation is and the ergonomics of your

1:26:10

uh child seat and kind of stake out the territory for a while. Um you would need

1:26:16

to probably have the full patent granted and everything in order to really make a business out of it, but that might allow

1:26:22

you enough to get going and um demonstrate it to customers and maybe get some some orders or something and

1:26:28

fund yourself that way. All right. Um,

1:26:34

okay. Come on on down here.

1:26:40

Yeah. Well, this is the question. MacArthur. Yeah. Or sorry, Mr. Akabra,

1:26:46

how are we going to graduate to expert label without doing entry- level jobs? Exactly. That is the that is the

1:26:52

question that that's what Sean and I were talking about. And we and I think we share your concern. [laughter] I wish I had a a better answer. Um,

1:27:01

I don't know. You know, maybe it'll be more like people just get used to them and like, you know, you don't have to learn cursive writing anymore because

1:27:07

kids type and text. You know, they're better with their thumbs than, you know,

1:27:12

than I am with a pen, right? So, maybe we just evolve. I hope so. Okay. Oh,

1:27:18

Taylor, you did have a provisional patent. All right. So, you've already you're a step ahead on that one. Yeah, good idea. Okay. And talk to score. All

1:27:25

right. Well, you're making some progress. Nicely done. Um, yeah. So, Ignite Media here with another

1:27:32

uh good point. First principles, this is what investors want to hear from all

1:27:39

your pitches. Who's affected? Like, who cares, right? And who cares enough to

1:27:45

pay for it? Not vitamins, aspirin, right? They have a headache, you're going to solve it. So, how big is the

1:27:50

market? And then ideally, I don't know what this was in reference to specifically, but software is way easier

1:27:56

to scale than hardware. So, I don't think you can make a softwarebased um

1:28:01

car seat, [laughter] but um uh for example, Mike's uh Q

1:28:07

sports scoring thing like that's taking a physical sport, meaning billiards and pool and so forth, and using software to

1:28:14

get add a lot of value out of to it. I think that's pretty cool. Software investors love software. Katarina says,

1:28:22

"I'd love some founder investor perspective on this. A pre-prototype is expected to have CAD files to pitch

1:28:28

investors or can strong renders, product vision, and validation singles be enough? Um, yeah, Katarina, it depends,

1:28:35

right? Um, I it depends on the investor and what they want to see. Um, I think you kind of know that. But I guess what

1:28:41

I'm helping you clarify hopefully is there no standards. Every deal is different. Every That's one of the

1:28:48

reasons that angels and VCs, that's why we invest in companies. We want to meet the ideas. We want to meet you. We want

1:28:54

to hear the thought process. The more you have, the better, of course, right? But if you don't have the money for CAD

1:29:01

files, then you roll with what you've got, right? I mean, that's the reality. If you've got renders and and uh and

1:29:08

validation signals are the ones that are most interesting to me there. Product vision is cheap, right? That's what that's the problem with our friend with

1:29:14

the medical device at UCLA and and Taylor's car seat. Like the vision isn't

1:29:20

enough, right? But if you have renders, that's a step in the right direction. Presumably, those are somewhat

1:29:25

scientifically generated renders with some engineering expertise. Um, but the validation signals, that's what drives

1:29:32

everything. So, yeah, I would proceed precede that. Um,

1:29:38

okay. Why did I say that cash management forecasting area is hard to get into?

1:29:43

That's not quite what I said. I said that selling to people who have money,

1:29:49

selling cash managed services and forecasting to startups that have recently raised series A money can be

1:29:56

challenging because everybody is trying to sell them similar services. That's what I was trying to say. So, if I

1:30:01

didn't, I apologize, but that was my that was my message. Um and and and frankly, if I'm wrong, awesome, because

1:30:08

that means you have expertise that I don't and you can go kick some ass. So, go do it. That's awesome. Yeah. Um,

1:30:14

yeah, I believe you personally lived the pains. That's that's absolutely that wasn't my point. My point was getting

1:30:20

the attention of your potential customers can be challenging. And if you think I'm wrong, then more power to you.

1:30:26

I hope I am wrong and I hope it's easy for you. Go get them. That's exactly the right spirit. Um, never believe experts,

1:30:32

right? Um, or so-called expert. Okay. Mustafa

1:30:37

Mustafa is back. Do you recommend cold outreach to VCs or angel investors? You always suggest warm intros. Um

1:30:43

the uh yes this is what my new book is about. The whole thing is about the

1:30:48

process of how do you make friends and turn them into investors essentially right? So um cold outreach to VCs is is

1:30:58

it's vanishingly small. It's kind of I would really think about um it's more

1:31:03

like you're writing a script and sending it into Paramount Studios or Warner Brothers and hoping that somebody's

1:31:10

going to turn that into a blockbuster starring uh Tom Cruz and Angelina Jolie, right? I mean, it's it's too it's too

1:31:18

distant an opportunity. Um and if you don't know the people, they're not

1:31:23

likely to take it seriously anyway. Just like studios don't accept unreferred scripts because if they do, everybody

1:31:29

will say, "Hey, that's my movie. You copied my idea." Right? So, cold outreach is a really weak tool. It's

1:31:35

obvious that you have to do it at some level if you don't know a bunch of investors and don't have a bunch of money already. So, I'm I'm not uh poo

1:31:42

pooing it, but it it's just not that effective. Um something like I've been researching this actually for my book.

1:31:48

at least 60% I think the number is significantly higher of deals are um

1:31:54

venture deals are funded from outbound research not inbound or maybe I got that

1:32:01

backwards. Anyway, my point is VCs go out and find deals way more than they

1:32:06

accept random emails and then decide to invest. I mean, it can happen and I I

1:32:12

wish it happened more, but this is a lot of the gatekeeping that I try really hard to fight against. Especially if you're a minority or a woman or a person

1:32:19

of color or you're from some other place in the world or you don't live in San Francisco or all those things. Your

1:32:24

chances of getting the warm introductions to people like me is really hard, right? That's why I do

1:32:30

this. That's why I write these books, right? To try to open the doors a little bit. Um, so a warm intro is far better.

1:32:36

Far far better. The in between is to meet people repeatedly. Go to events, go

1:32:42

join associations, um come to things like this, make friends in the chat room, go on LinkedIn, comment on posts

1:32:49

and click and connect and stuff like make do what you can to create relationships before you have a real one

1:32:56

and eventually it will be a real one, right? Um and that's how you get investor attention. The trick is to

1:33:01

really drill down and find don't just talk to everybody like we were talking about earlier and with our first um

1:33:07

question tonight. Um PK or PG um she I think she's in the wrong room, right?

1:33:14

She has a cool business. She's very qualified. She's talking to the wrong people, right? So make sure you're talking to the right people and then it

1:33:20

will actually be easier to make friends because they're your people, right? Like you're from the same industry. Like oh

1:33:26

you used to work there. I used to work there. Or you know like oh yeah I studied that in school. Oh you did too. You know, it's like that kind of stuff.

1:33:31

That kind of networking is what is far far more uh helpful than than cold

1:33:37

outreach. And and dirty secret, most cold outreach to VC firms, who do you

1:33:43

think reads those emails? I'll give you a hint. It's not the managing partners. It's the summer

1:33:49

interns, right? Or the lowest possible person. So, don't expect you're going

1:33:55

to, you know, hit the lottery by doing cold outreach. Fortunately. All right,

1:34:00

couple more here. I'm gonna have to [clears throat] run out of time. Mr. Achabra is back. I'm building an

1:34:07

insurance brokerage and commercial insurers transaction automation from intake to distribution of insurance policy. We have shortened insurance

1:34:12

issuance time from 5 days to four hours. That sounds cool. Um, is that a question? Are you just looking for help

1:34:19

or something? Put your like to set up a session with Oh, I see you want to Okay, let me put the URL back up there. That

1:34:26

sounds really cool. Um, that's that's a good process improvement for sure. Um,

1:34:33

where is that? Sorry. It's it's scottfox.comworkwithscott,

1:34:41

but there it is. Okay, there's a URL for you if that's helpful. I'll warn you, I

1:34:46

don't invest myself if that's why you want to call. I don't invest myself directly much anymore. Most I do a lot

1:34:52

of investments. I'm in 40 or 50 companies, but I'm also in a bunch of funds. And these days, I mostly just

1:34:57

invest in funds because I don't have the time to do the due diligence individually. But if you want to talk about strategy and how to raise money

1:35:03

and how to present yourself and um where to start with that kind of stuff or how to come to the United States and raise

1:35:10

money in the US capital markets, those are all things that I do a lot of and I do a lot of speaking on all those things. Actually, if any of you are

1:35:16

involved in events and I can be helpful, I speak on this stuff literally all over the world. uh even like for the US State

1:35:22

Department flies me around sometimes and I I speak like in Malaysia, you know, or Australia or India, you know, or Dubai,

1:35:30

you know, stuff like that. So, I'm happy to speak as well if that's helpful. But yeah, if you want to um you want to work

1:35:36

together a little more, that uh that page was the one scottfox.comwithcott.

1:35:44

Yeah, there it is. Okay. All right. Um All right. How can I get to family? Oh, sorry. with Isaiah only many. Now you

1:35:51

guys, all these questions, you come in like an hour and a half later. [laughter] Okay, we'll do a couple more here. Any

1:35:57

thoughts on preferred corporate structures, LLC's or CC Corp. There's no question. If you want to raise VC money,

1:36:03

it absolutely has to be a CC Corp. And it should be based in Delaware. Short answer. That's that's there used

1:36:09

to be a lot more dispute about that. That is the only answer these days. The industry is converged on a Delaware CC

1:36:15

Corp. Isaiah says, "What do you think about live shopping? Have you heard of app?"

1:36:20

Yeah, whatnot. Super cool. Yes, Isaiah. That's uh they're based in Los Angeles near me. I I don't know where you are, but um yeah, I I think it's super cool.

1:36:27

I'm really excited to see that work. Um the uh Chinese have an amazing ecosystem

1:36:35

of live shopping and have for a long time. I've been expecting this to arrive in the United States for at least 10

1:36:40

years and it looks like maybe it's finally coming. So, I think it's cool. I don't know where the money is to be made

1:36:47

in that. I guess you basically you have to be an influencer essentially, right? So is now the time to jump in and be an

1:36:53

influencer. Uh have your own channel. I guess you would need to specialize in, you know, you specialize in office

1:36:59

equipment or high fashion purses or lawn furniture or, you know, whatever your thing is. I guess maybe now would be a

1:37:05

good time to build that. I don't know much about it other than that, but that would be the way I would look at it. Um

1:37:10

if you do that, let me know. I let us know. Come back next month. How can I get back? How can I get to

1:37:16

family offices without having to pay $5,000 to get into events? Yeah, that's a good one. Um, I don't have a good

1:37:22

answer for you there. The the uh family offices are hard to get a hold of. Um,

1:37:30

there are some Yeah, I mean, you've probably seen what I have Taylor online. You know, people

1:37:35

post lists and stuff. I don't know what kind of quality those have. Um, I don't

1:37:40

have a good answer for you there. Uh, I mean, I meet those people because I'm a fellow investor, right? Um, but I don't

1:37:46

I that's not something I can package for you. Um,

1:37:52

yeah, events are a good way. Yeah, that's right. You're right. That's about the only time you find those people

1:37:58

connected. Um, I guess another angle would be networking. Like I was speaking about a couple minutes ago on LinkedIn.

1:38:04

You could find people there and kind of make friends, comment on their posts and stuff. Uh that that that's the modern

1:38:11

way of networking at least as far as I know. I think I would uh check that out. Um we also have this other resource um

1:38:20

let me put it on the screen. Startupinvestors directory.com which we built which does not have a lot

1:38:26

of family offices I'll be honest but it's a um it's a resource that we built

1:38:32

for where is this thing? There it is. um we built for you guys, right? So, this

1:38:39

has about 3,000 early stage investors and it's at this uh this is what the logo looks like. You can go to that um

1:38:47

that website and sign up and it has an investor search engine and you can search for all kinds of things. What it

1:38:53

mostly is good for, like I said, I don't think it has a lot of family offices yet, but you can search very

1:38:59

specifically by industry, stage, location, keywords. You can even search

1:39:04

by um personal characteristics like if you're a veteran or you're black or

1:39:09

you're an immigrant or you know any of those kinds of things. Um if this is

1:39:15

helpful, you can go check that out. Um I built this specifically to help you guys

1:39:20

with things like this um to find those investors, right? Because they're tough to find. Okay.

1:39:28

Okay. So, I think

1:39:33

let me see what else we got here. I think we might be finished at least for this time. All right. Okay.

1:39:44

Oh, here's my friend Vlad. Hey, Vlad. Nice to see you. Um, do I recommend

1:39:50

using online platform to incorporate and get exposure towards VCs? Yeah, I do.

1:39:56

Not because it's going to be any kind of guarantee, but because um

1:40:02

because any exposure is good exposure. The number one problem in my experience that most startup founders have at the

1:40:08

early stage is nobody knows they exist. So, um that's honestly that's what

1:40:13

startup council.org is designed for. That's the platform I would go on because I'm gonna I'm there running it

1:40:20

trying to help all you guys get exposure. So um we do featured members and you can publish your own articles

1:40:27

and do things. You can post your financials to the extent you want to or your whole deck like we have very

1:40:32

customized platform for that. My sense is that um Gust and Signal are both very

1:40:40

cool platforms. I have not seen either of them actually be used that much by

1:40:46

investors. Uh that may just be me. I'm not saying anything. I mean, David Rose who started

1:40:52

Gus is a very impressive guy. I haven't seen that much action from it personally and and I've been on Signal MX for

1:40:59

years. Um, and again, it hasn't really resulted in very much. So, that may be because of just, you know, my thesis and

1:41:06

focus. Maybe it's totally active like in latestage biotech, which I don't do, or

1:41:11

in hardware or uh aerospace or something, you know, in areas that I don't invest. Maybe they're really

1:41:17

active. Um, but I I think that every founder needs more publicity. So, my answer would be, yeah, why not? Uh, low

1:41:25

cost with a potentially high reward and the more you're out there, the better. You never know who's who's watching or

1:41:32

listening. So, um, exposure, I think, is the number one demand that the the need

1:41:37

that you most need to serve. And that goes along with pitches. You know, any place anytime you get a chance to pitch your company, get up and do it. Even if

1:41:44

you do a bad job, you never know who's in the audience, right? Um and being shy is just not the way to [laughter] I

1:41:51

don't think you're shy, Vlad, but uh but uh you know, being shy is not the way to win as a founder for or everybody here

1:41:58

who might be shy. So, thanks, by the way, and congratulations everybody who pitched tonight because that's brave, right? It's not easy to do. All right,

1:42:05

last question. We're going to go here because Ignite has um offered a lot of

1:42:10

helpful uh advice to others. So, thank you for doing that. Thanks for participating. Um,

1:42:17

Scott, most distribution is surface. Do you have an opinion on Rails and why startups should drill down on first

1:42:23

principles on that subject? Um, well, I'm not sure what exactly you mean, but I I guess um

1:42:29

you're talking about building infrastructure as opposed to building um uh say customer demand or customer go to

1:42:37

market strategy, right? I think that's what you're meaning. Um yeah, I mean rails are super important obviously,

1:42:43

right? I mean, everything runs rails. I I think what they mean is is Rails is kind of slang for the behind the scenes

1:42:51

tools that run everything, right? The Rails of a Railroad. Um,

1:42:57

yeah, Rails are super important and and actually I think that at least personally that's where I I see most of

1:43:02

the money being made uh at least in the SAS era and perhaps even more now with

1:43:09

AI is those that can step in and compress as the uh our insurance uh Mr.

1:43:16

Chabra was doing compressing things um

1:43:21

compressing things down to you know four hours instead of four weeks that kind of stuff building that kind of stuff I

1:43:27

think is super important and it's where the opportunity is really right now because there's so much um

1:43:34

there's so many things that could be done better but that were so expensive and so nicheoriented that it was too hard to customize for those unique use

1:43:42

cases but now with AI it seems like you can code stuff that's specifically targeted at specific work processes or

1:43:50

uh infrastructure holes or efficiency opportunities in almost any industry

1:43:55

that I think it would be yeah I think that's that's super interesting. I I

1:44:00

think that um direct to consumer is the most common

1:44:05

uh I guess most people who are not entrepreneurs or VCs they think of

1:44:11

direct to consumer as the entrepreneur like I have a new snack food or a beverage beverage brand or or even

1:44:17

fashion clothing you know like physical goods that they distribute um to consumers and that's obviously major big

1:44:24

companies and big sector of the economy right but the behindthe-scenes stuff that actually makes stuff run I is is

1:44:30

even more opportunity honestly because the customers are companies and they

1:44:35

have budgets uh and they need to turn a profit. And if you can help them do that, they'll pay you in big ways, which

1:44:42

is much less fickle perhaps than the trends that go around clothing or the um

1:44:48

the taste of a food or a drink, you know, what's in, you know, what's in fashion this month in terms of energy

1:44:55

drinks or whatever. So, [gasps] so anyway, okay. Well, I think we're out of

1:45:00

time here. Um, that's been a solid almost two hours. So, I hope you got your money's worth. I know you paid a lot for this, so I hope it was useful to

1:45:07

you. If you had a good time or learned anything, please like and comment. Would you leave some comments? Actually, that

1:45:13

really drives the algorithms. So, especially, I think some reason uh LinkedIn didn't really kick in tonight

1:45:18

for whatever reason, but you can still comment on our posts and like them. We would always appreciate your support for

1:45:24

this kind of work that we do. And um we do this uh there's a good point. Please do more of this. I do about as much as I

1:45:29

can. I do it once a month. Um I'm probably going to expand that, but I need to finish this book first and uh we

1:45:35

have a lot of other things going on, including perhaps, not perhaps, for sure, um building this out so there are

1:45:42

more discounts and deals for you. So, you really should go look at startups.org, all of you. Um, we are

1:45:48

just launching a whole new set of discounts and stuff that will more way more than pay I think it's $49 or

1:45:53

something a year, not a month. Um, there's all kinds of stuff there. Seriously, it's more like it's like

1:46:00

we're having to pay extra for bandwidth because there's so much stuff on the homepage that it costs a lot to load

1:46:06

because I put everything in there I could think of that would be helpful to founders on one page. So, it's a little

1:46:11

wonky, but we'll get there. Uh, and I do a lot of speaking like I said, so I'm traveling a lot and speaking to groups

1:46:17

about these kind of things. But thank you for your interest in doing it more and um I I do enjoy it and I hope it's

1:46:22

helpful to you guys. So please tell your friends, like, comment, blah blah blah. Really appreciate your support. So have

1:46:28

a nice uh evening or morning uh wherever you are in the world. And I hope to see you again next time. I'll be back next

1:46:33

month on uh the fourth Tuesday is what we usually do. And keep your eyes open

1:46:39

on our newsletters. If you're not on our newsletters, actually, let me put that up just real quick before we go. You

1:46:44

really, even if you don't want to uh actually join the startup council, you gota you got to come and join the

1:46:50

newsletters because we have like nine newsletters now. I think this says seven. I think there's nine. Um all

1:46:56

different kinds of stuff that can be helpful to you. And they're all free. Um and the opportunity of course is to join us and then you can get your stuff in

1:47:02

our newsletters too, right? So we're trying to create a publishing megaphone to help you guys get more publicity about what you're building. So, all

1:47:09

right. Nice to see you all. Have a lovely evening or morning and I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching and

1:47:15

don't forget like and comment, share and um subscribe. Thanks and good