- Duration: 92 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JBM3R31FNSMKP49DADC872EG (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JBM3R31FNSMKP49DADC872EG)
Transcript
[Max Palmer]: It’s wrong. First, so there’s another Max Palmer running the race and for some reason my name is it showing up so mine is under Maxwell Palmer and on the app it’s not showing up so. [Michael Houck]: Well, I guess you’re screwed then man. Yeah. Well, good luck tomorrow. Sunday. [Max Palmer]: Oh Sunday. OK. [Michael Houck]: Actually, that’s good to know. Know I be able to get out of my apartment or anything. Ben, you there? He was, okay. Dang, there’s so many in here. I can’t believe you guys are 120. Yeah. I think the easiest way to do this is probably just calling them out one by one and then being like, does anyone want to advocate for this one or not? [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, there are a ton. Yeah, that’s one way. [Max Palmer]: So I made a list of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine companies. I think are promising. I don’t know if that’s- How many do you got? Not many. I have 18. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: So minimum 18, maximum 27. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: So you’d rather go through those specifically to starting from the top? We can do either. It doesn’t matter. Yeah. I don’t feel strongly about it. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. I feel like either way would work. [Ben Ornstein]: Cause I feel like there’s going to be a bunch of them that were instantly going to be like, yeah, no. And then just go to the next one. I’d be interested to see where the crossover is too. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, there’ll definitely be some crossover. [Michael Houck]: For sure. Yeah. I think the, like the ones that we’re just not interested at all in that are like obviously bad, I do wanna call them out because I wanna move them into the past. Like I wanna tag them as like, we’re not gonna deal with them. So maybe let’s go through them one by one. And if there’s any not sure or like, you know, maybe we’ll come back to that maybe at the at the very end. But if it’s a clear no or clear, let’s talk about it, then we can do that. Cool. Okay, let me share my screen. So go through it. Yeah, that’ll be better. Okay. First one is 3d for I’m I already imagined this one was gonna be a no, based on the name. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Is that right? Yeah, this was a no for me. Yeah, okay. [Michael Houck]: Arrowgram? It was a no for me. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, that was a no for me as well. [Michael Houck]: Was it like a firm, like clear no? Like, I don’t know about this one. [Max Palmer]: So I only picked out ones that I liked. Yeah. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: I didn’t kind of flag any of the ones where I was like a maybe, well, I kind of did. I, yeah. Most of them, it was either like, yes, I like this one for this reason, or I just passed. [Michael Houck]: Okay, the founder doesn’t look like he has any great experience or anything. Okay, I guess let’s go through the ones you guys liked first, and then we’ll come back and do the other ones with the rest of the time at the end, depending on how much time we have. Maybe let’s do it that way. So let’s go, I guess, Max, since you have less, let’s start with you. [Max Palmer]: Do you want me to just send my list? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, sure. Send it in Slack. Right. Okay. Um. [Michael Houck]: So what do you like about Bamboo? [Max Palmer]: Big market. We’ve already raised half a million. Let me go back to. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a big market. It’s an interesting application for AI. And they already have a few investors, although I don’t recognize any of those? [Michael Houck]: He was an EIR at light speed back in 2017. So he does know folks who are like, would be able to fund the company further along, which is good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Um, let’s see. [Max Palmer]: Website looks a little funky, but it’s yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Check out the deck. [Michael Houck]: Um, actually I realize I’m only sharing the one Let me share my whole screen instead. [Max Palmer]: Oh, you got a request access for the deck. Yeah, their deck is interesting. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Whoa, okay. [Ben Ornstein]: Only four slides too. [Michael Houck]: I didn’t flag this one. [Ben Ornstein]: This was one of the ones where I was like, iffy. Like, eh, I might, I was on the edge with this company. The deck was what kind of, I mean, the deck doesn’t mean everything, but I just wasn’t impressed by it. And I don’t know. [Max Palmer]: I have a, I don’t know how I feel about- Way too much writing on this deck. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, this, no one is going to read this. This is crazy. Ben, did you have concerns about the, like the company itself or was it just like, hey, they don’t know how to make a deck? [Ben Ornstein]: No, I think the team was interesting. Like if you look at the team details, Yeah, actually the president CTO is more impressive than the CEO. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’m confused why this guy is listed first. That was the other thing I was confused. [Ben Ornstein]: I was like, why is it, shouldn’t it be backwards? [Michael Houck]: Well, not backwards, but CEO should be listed first, no? That’s interesting. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so, so far we have that we like that it’s a big market. [Max Palmer]: What else do we like about it? Some notable investors, I mean, this applied AI guy at OpenAI, former Google machine learning researcher, They need some decent traction. He says they’ve already raised a million. And they’re live in a dozen practices. [Ben Ornstein]: I don’t know what that means in the relevance of the larger market and scale. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I guess we don’t really see anything about traction though, right? There’s no revenue numbers, or I guess, okay, a dozen practices that is traction. [Ben Ornstein]: Well, yeah, the ones that didn’t have any revenue numbers, I was like, that’s what I think threw me over the edge, the deck and the lack of actual revenue that they listed. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’m on the fence about this one. I agree it’s a big market. It’s a hard market. And it’s also one that I do feel like a lot of people, I feel like I’ve seen, maybe just because my old co-founder really was obsessed with this market, but I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people trying to go after this in one way or another. But they do have some traction, they’ve already raised some money. I think let’s move them to approve for now, and then maybe we revisit depending on how big the final list is. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, comparing all these to each other, so. [Michael Houck]: Right. Okay. [Max Palmer]: What do you have next, Max? It’s Behumane. [Michael Houck]: I know Behumane very well. She was a Launch House member. Oh, really? [Max Palmer]: What do you like about it? Already have a little bit, a tiny bit of revenue. They’ve raised almost 500K. Again, a big market, which I think might be the most important thing. Actually, same market, basically. Very similar market. Wait, why did she list me as an investor? I’m not an investor. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That’s so weird. [Michael Houck]: What the heck? Oh, I didn’t even see that. That’s interesting. Is that a red flag? I mean, I don’t know. Internally to us. [Ben Ornstein]: If that’s like listed live on her deck and stuff, that would be a bit of a problem. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No, no. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. I think it’s aspirational. I see what you’re going for there. Yeah. Also, I think this is something that parents are really dealing with. Yeah. I agree. [Michael Houck]: I think it’s a good market and I do think, you know, she is deep into it. She was a social worker actually before she was a founder, or at least went to school for work or something. It’s a good founder market fit there. She’s very well-networked with the academic people in this space too, which is, I guess, helpful. I think my issue with it is something that you guys probably would have no way of… Or actually, let me ask Ben. What do you think? Was this on your list or no? [Ben Ornstein]: It was not on my list. I remember not immediately saying no to this one, though. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to like about it, but okay, so the issue that I have is something, again, that you guys wouldn’t have any visibility into. She’s the type of person who’s like playing founder, I feel like, Always posting on Instagram about traveling all these places and like, I don’t know. [Max Palmer]: She just seemed to know from me. Yeah, based on that, I don’t like that. [Ben Ornstein]: Was somewhat like that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, like, I would want to support the the company, I think, and some parts of her founder background, but just I just I know her too well to know that it would be a bad decision. Then it’s a no, it’s easy. It’s a no. Okay, what do we have? Have next? Beyond Pulse. Okay, cool. Um, what do you like about this one? [Max Palmer]: Um, they have revenue like 600 K in revenue last year, a million this year with 80% renewals. Like that’s a really good sign. That is a good sign. Um, says they’ve raised 200 K. Um, they’ve been working on it for six years, which could be a bad sign or a good sign. Um, yeah, I mean, It was mainly the revenue that got me here. [Michael Houck]: The revenue is exciting, especially the growth and the retention. Both of those are really good. I mean, the growth is okay, I guess, but the retention is really good. So you can kind of excuse the slower growth with the industry that they’re in, I guess. Yeah. Cause there’s like logistical bottlenecks that can pop up, but yeah, I’m confused about the six years. That’s the thing that threw me off with this one. [Ben Ornstein]: That’s the only reason I didn’t put this one up. On my list, the six years. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. So that’s why I said it’s like kind of a red flag, but also like they’re still grinding. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: When I, when I see somebody who’s has like a, like a long timeline like this, I just look for like, who is this person, right? Like, are they someone who I feel like, you know, is a capable operator who therefore the six years are explained by the heavy R and D and they’re like, okay, you actually need to invest this much time versus are they not a capable operator in which case then it’s like, well, maybe you’re just kind of fucking around or figuring things out for a few years. [Ben Ornstein]: I really liked his company though. [Michael Houck]: One interesting thing is that he says that he’s been the CEO for two years, right? So that tells me that this guy is not the founder, maybe, or maybe he just said six years here for some reason, but probably not. Because company has been around for six years. [Max Palmer]: So, that implies to me that he’s not the founder, which is weird. So, one other thing about just the idea, like the business idea itself, that came to mind when I saw this was, you know that saying, like, whatever the rich are doing now is what everybody else will be able to do years from now, right? Yep. That’s, it’s kind of this, like what professional athletes have been doing now is now what, you know, amateur, you know, youth athletes will be able to do in the future. I don’t know if that’s thinking a little too far into it, but that was just one thought that came to mind. I totally agree with that. [Michael Houck]: I think in general, I agree with that, like as a framework and I agree with it also in this particular case. [Max Palmer]: But I don’t know how big of a role that should play in our decision. I mean, it should play some role. [Michael Houck]: Like if there’s natural if there’s natural tailwinds, you know, that’s right. That makes things a lot easier. And I do think that especially as youth sports get more competitive, because youth sports will get more competitive because college sports now people can make money. And so that opens up the pool of investing in your child’s sports considerably. Parents already put so much money into their kid’s sports, it’s crazy. Right, and that’s only going to increase when they know they can get a return if the kid gets into the right college, you know? So a lot of reasons to like it. I’m just, I don’t love the non-founder CEO thing. Yeah. I don’t know how much equity this guy has. I don’t know why Mike goal soup is not the CEO. I don’t know. He’s like research lead is like an extremely vague title. It makes me think he’s not actually that involved. Um, so there’s, there’s founding team concern there. I do like the, the product in the market though. So I’m on the fence about this one too. Um, what do you think, Ben? [Ben Ornstein]: There was another company doing something very similar. Yeah, it was. And I felt the same way about that one. And I don’t remember which one it was. And I don’t remember if I added that one to my list. I didn’t add this one to my list because of the six months, but I love the six years, but I love the problem and I love the company. I didn’t even notice the CEO thing. Where is the other company? [Max Palmer]: We’ll find it. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: But there was another one that I was like, that’s funny. Two of the 121 were solving, Yeah, there were a few sports-related companies in here. [Max Palmer]: Soccer ones specifically. [Michael Houck]: I saw like three or four of those. Xeno Labs. Perplexity for sports. That’s interesting. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s interesting. Um, okay. So for beyond pulse, honestly, I think the non-founder CEO gets it for me. And like if it was non-founder CEO and the revenue was growing by like two, three, four X a year, I’d be like, okay, fine. They, they have something working. Yeah. I feel bad about the 80% annual renewals. Like that’s, that’s a good number. Um, but the growth just, I feel like isn’t quite strong enough, um, for having a non-founder CEO. To overcome that. [Max Palmer]: Okay, and my next one is Camlan. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, this is on my list. Camlan is good. [Michael Houck]: I know Slava. We’ve done a case study with him. Yeah, that’s the other reason I was a little biased. Yeah, let’s approve this one. He’s good. Cool. [Ben Ornstein]: I’ll take the ones off my list that we have talked about. [Max Palmer]: It’s listed A16Z, aren’t they? [Ben Ornstein]: They are. A16Z back, right? [Michael Houck]: It’s like a, it’s like a, it’s not like a traditional A16Z thing. It’s like a, they went through their like, I think gaming accelerator or something like that. [Max Palmer]: So it was like, you know, but yeah. Okay. My next one was CopySight AI. Okay. Why do you like CopySight? It says Antler is involved, is an investor. Um, they’ve raised 600 or they have 600,000 committed. It’s a big market. [Michael Houck]: Um, one, one thing to keep in mind, uh, with antler in particular, uh, for this, like already committed number 500 of this is just, it’s from antlers like accelerator probably. Uh, so I would really think about this, like they have 110 K additional committed. Gotcha. But it looks like that’s close to what they would just need for the round anyway, because they just need. Another 100K basically, so not that far away. What’s the product? [Max Palmer]: It is. Oh, it’s all about AI generated content copyright. Which kind of could be big. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, this one was interesting because the problem is so real that all these big companies are just avoiding completely because they don’t want to get fined for copyright infringement. [Michael Houck]: How do they do it? How do they unlock that? [Max Palmer]: Because I agree, it’s going to be a big problem. [Ben Ornstein]: I don’t know. They’re reporting. Directly to the… [Michael Houck]: It seems like something that should be on chain. Yeah, it does actually. [Ben Ornstein]: Actually, this is one of the use cases, absolutely. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, their website honestly isn’t that great. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, that’s fine. [Michael Houck]: Websites, whatever. [Max Palmer]: I mean, it says they’ve scheduled demos with Red Bull, Fox, Paramount Plus, white dance, which who knows how. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it shows at least they can get demos with legit people, which is good, right? [Ben Ornstein]: They have a proprietary scoring system that assesses similarity to known works, offering critical information and peace of mind for enterprise companies. Okay. [Michael Houck]: So basically they want to be, I think, okay. So the challenge here is that they want to be, it sounds like a platform to create the content. Am I, am I reading that right? Rather than just like you can plug in your, I don’t know, whatever Adobe product or something else you’re using to create video or images. Um, and like they can assess it there. [Max Palmer]: No, I don’t think they do the creation. It’s all about like I T I P detection for large enterprises. Right. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: No, I, I see that. But then like they say, copy site, copyright platform. So I don’t know what that enables companies to generate AI content with unique legal framework. I think that’s where they’re heading. Right. But that, I mean, that’s less, that’s less, that’s less appealing. Cause it’s like, you have to build the best like content creators or video creators or whatever are going to use the best video creation platform and a company that is focused on copyright detection and scoring is not, is inherently not going to have the resources to build the best platform for creating the content. So the companies that are, are going to be better positioned to own that market. [Ben Ornstein]: It’s interesting that they’re going the marketplace route rather than trying to partner with like the marketplaces that already have traction and like integrating this Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. [Michael Houck]: Don’t try to change people’s workflow. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That’s my concern here. [Max Palmer]: Their founding team’s interesting, too. Their head of AI IP was the head of IP at Snap. [Michael Houck]: Oh, yeah, they don’t have a LinkedIn here. They have a slide maybe further. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, here we go. One of the ones not on my list, but very close to being. [Michael Houck]: Exited founder and previously at Meta and Snap. I mean, that’s really, I mean, really good. The founder signals really strong. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: And that other guy who was head of IP at Snap. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. [Ben Ornstein]: Why not list the CEO first? I still don’t get that part. It doesn’t make sense. [Michael Houck]: It’s not smart. Like this guy shouldn’t even be on the slide. This guy arguably on the slide, although I think in this case it is good to have them there. But like this guy, irrelevant. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: If I had the time to take a second look, I think I would have added this to my list. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Let’s see. [Ben Ornstein]: But the platform angle is very strange. I don’t like how they’re heading there to like the marketplace. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so for 99% $39. The price of a limited time stock image, you get okay, so they're going after market that already exists, which is good, which is people who are already paying for licensed stock images, like the Getty images, people, you get full ownership of a custom image. And you can limitlessly modify it license out or sell. Okay. Yeah, I think when you frame it that way, it's actually not as bad because like people, certain companies need to use licensed images for some specific thing. There's like a legal requirement for them to do that. And so if they're going after that market, then they're not really competing against the like image creation tools because it's a different use case. So they're not competing in class there. So I actually like it, let's do it. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a good founding team, potentially huge problem, growing market. [Michael Houck]: And designs with demos and Antler, yeah. Right, yeah, a lot of things are like, [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, what's next? Mosaic. [Michael Houck]: Okay, what's Mosaic? [Max Palmer]: So they are, they've already raised a million. It's in a growing niche. Okay, yeah, this is the cannabis one. They're basically, they're SAS for, they SAS for cannabis. Dispensaries, I think they are. Yeah. It seems like it's Shopify for cannabis dispensaries. Why do cannabis dispensaries need their own Shopify? [Michael Houck]: I mean, they need, you know, online everything. [Max Palmer]: Right, but I mean, why can't they use Shopify? [Michael Houck]: Is it like a gray area, like we don't do cannabis? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I don't know. [Ben Ornstein]: It's interesting that they compared to the Starbucks app as like one that they're going after. They compared themselves to the loyalty, the payments, and the e-wallet that the Starbucks app has. I don't know. I thought that was an interesting comparison considering it's not even close to the market that they're going after. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No. [Ben Ornstein]: I don't like this one because I didn't really see the differentiation of other platforms. I didn't even think of Shopify, to be honest. I just figured there's so much competition. But I do like that they're one market first and then expanding. [Max Palmer]: Founders been on a lot of boards. Yeah, I saw that. I don't know if that's a good sign. [Michael Houck]: I mean, they say that he like in the what is it in the note? They're like, yeah, he what did he do? He previously built a tech startup to 300 million in annual revenue. I don't know that means he was the founder of the startup that went to $300 million. [Max Palmer]: It probably doesn’t mean that. [Michael Houck]: All right. I mean, I don’t know. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Okay. So. [Michael Houck]: I think it’s a pretty big market. Okay. It’s interesting. Okay. [Max Palmer]: I signed 60 locations. Like that’s a good sign. [Michael Houck]: How big, how big is the market for these dispensaries? Like, is this a venture scale market? [Max Palmer]: I’m guessing it is. I don’t know the exact details. [Michael Houck]: It probably, it probably is. It probably is. Um, and it sounds like no matter who wins the election, cannabis might get legalized federally. So yeah, as it should. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Okay. I, okay. The loyalty thing does make sense because they want people to come back to their, okay. They create the apps for them. Do you feel like people have like an affinity to a particular retail store in this way? Like they would with Starbucks? Potentially. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I don’t know. [Max Palmer]: I don’t smoke weed anymore. [Michael Houck]: That’s what my high school friends do, and they seem to go to the same locations. [Ben Ornstein]: There we go. Maybe. I don’t know. The all-in-one platforms always concern me. Those ones always turn me off. Cause I’m like everything. [Michael Houck]: All in one is good for small businesses because small businesses don’t the bandwidth to set up a bunch of integrations. And that’s why they’re good for like startups too. If you want to quickly get off the ground with something. That seems like a lot for small business. [Max Palmer]: I don’t know how much revenue these retail brands do. Interesting. Team distribution, six full-time employees in Boston and 20 in Sri Lanka. [Michael Houck]: They got a lot of VAs. Yeah. Or they’re just outsourced engineers. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh yeah, it could be two. Could be that too. [Michael Houck]: Look, I think it’s interesting. I think this is one we can pass along and see if people, you know, want to dig it. [Ben Ornstein]: We’re passing this to Ryan and his team to review. Is that kind of like the, so there’s, there’s two things going on here. [Michael Houck]: One is that, um, I’m going to send these on a one-on-one basis to Ryan. Um, and he’ll take a look. And then the other thing is we’re going to be, we’re going to have enough to do a fundraising support blast. To like the, I don’t know, I think it’s like 1,100 investors in our network. So I’ll probably do that either over the weekend or early next week too. So yeah, I think this one’s fair. Cool, what’s next? [Ben Ornstein]: Overplay? Also on my list. [Michael Houck]: Cool, okay. Well, what do you both like about it then? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I mean, they’ve raised a lot. Raised 6 million, you know, they’re on Shark Tank, Mark Cuban invested. Um, those global, yeah, village global. So, you know, really good signs. Um, 2.2 committed already for the seed. [Michael Houck]: That’s a good sign. Cap is a little high for a seat 30 in, you know, maybe not in 2021, but, um, in 2024 30 is a bit high. Cause like ownership targets, people won’t be able to own quite as much. I don’t really know the market much, like know anything about the market, but let’s look at the, let’s look at the founder first, see who they are. Okay. So she also founded something else. Let’s see what that was. Ending flower waste. [Ben Ornstein]: And it’s still present too, which that’s always interesting. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that is interesting. That either means the business has been relatively shut down, that’s just on autopilot, or this is outdated. She just didn’t update it. Yeah, that’s possible too. Overplay is a patented platform where anyone can turn their videos into games with no code. Turn their videos into games? That’s interesting. [Ben Ornstein]: It’s an interesting use case. [Michael Houck]: like the video and I’m like, ah. Where’s the video? Is it in the deck? [Ben Ornstein]: It’s in the deck, yeah. Okay, let’s take a look. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I don’t really understand it either. I didn’t fully understand it. I was just so impressed with the investors. [Michael Houck]: It reads a little bit like an ad. I guess they’re trying to show the product here. Okay, let’s see the video. [Michael Houck]: Okay, I get it. [Ben Ornstein]: I couldn’t think of like a use case where this would just rake. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, look, I mean, it’s one of those things that I feel like has the like, breakout potential, where like, everyone could be doing this, if they stumble on a good format, that’s interesting, and people put interesting videos on there. I think there are a lot of challenges, though. Not necessarily disqualifying challenges, but a lot of challenges, like, for example, How do they get creators, right? We need to look at the deck, I guess, to figure that out. How do they get creators? Two, like how varied are the games you can play? Like my concern would be that they just have a couple game mechanisms and those are like novel and fun, but then they lose their luster. I guess those are my two immediate, already in the deck. My two immediate concerns. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What do you guys think? [Max Palmer]: Yeah. I, again, I’m not sure about the idea. I was more so in on the revenue or no, how much they raised the investors. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. Here’s here. Okay. [Michael Houck]: This is what their plan is. It’s for, Brands can create playable game ads. Hmm. [Ben Ornstein]: There’s another company here that’s doing that as well. Uh, that, that in this list. Um, and I like that because I know myself when I’ve played games, they have ads where like, it’s like, I have to watch a certain ad, might as well interact with it and like do something. [Michael Houck]: But wait, but how are the, how are the ads playable unless you’re on their app? Like if you put them on their app, on Instagram, for example, would it be playable there too? [Ben Ornstein]: They may be that I’m not sure about. I know there are ads within games. That’s the use case I’m familiar with. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hmm. [Michael Houck]: I see what you’re saying. Yeah. I’ve played those like little phone games where they have like ads pop up in the game. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right. [Ben Ornstein]: Ads within like Instagram. I have no idea if that would function the same. [Michael Houck]: I guess it would. Yeah, I don’t think you could do it. They have so many videos. There’s not a lot about how they’re going to build, like, how they’re going to get people to use the app in the deck. [Ben Ornstein]: There was a slide in this deck that almost completely turned me off. It was slide 16. [Michael Houck]: We’re almost there. I hated this slide. [Ben Ornstein]: They talked about the LPs of one of their investors. I hate that. [Michael Houck]: Oh, a lot of people do that with Village Global in particular because Eric Thornburg, like he literally has like a crazy network of LPs. And so like he encourages, or actually he’s no longer with the firm, but the firm encourages was people to talk about their LP. So it might be an investor thing. Yeah, that’s quite the list. [Ben Ornstein]: I mean, impressive list, no doubt. But like, I just I don’t think that’s worth a slide in a deck. I mean, I agree. [Michael Houck]: But again, it could have been like his investor was like, you should just do this. Maybe that’s fair. That’s fair. Or she was like, whatever. Um, yeah, I guess I just don’t, are they, are they going for, are they trying to be acquired by Snapchat? Um, I guess I’m just, I’m confused how they’re going to get people to, Like where these ads are going to be and also are they trying to get people to an app and if so, how they’re going to bring [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: people to that app. [Ben Ornstein]: It looks like they are, they have an app that they’re making. How do you feel about when people list patents? Like is that really exciting? Is that, does, is it almost as little as like an LOI? Does it depend really? Sorry, when people list what? When they say they have patents. They have two patents secured. 99% of the time couldn’t care less. [Michael Houck]: Okay. That’s what I kind of figured. It’s actually a negative signal most of the time because it says it shows that people willing to spend a lot of time getting a patent rather than just proving something out in the market. So you question like every now and then there’s a good reason to do it, but most of the time it’s people playing founder again. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. Okay. That’s kind of what I figured. [Michael Houck]: It’s a different story if this guy had patents from like before starting the company, you know, or something like that. Yeah, I guess I’m just confused on like the strategy. It seems like they’re trying to build an app. And then the idea is that people are going to go to this app and creators are going to create videos for the app rather than like on TikTok. Why would someone… What’s the benefit to the creator? And is the mechanism as interesting enough for viewers where they’re going to jump into it? I don’t know. I’m on the fence about it. We could table it. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, let’s table it for now. [Michael Houck]: I’ll pass it, but we’ll come back to it. What’s next? Parrot Finance. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, sure. [Michael Houck]: I know Nikki. Oh, do you? I like I like parrot. I think they’re competing with autopilot. Yeah, it’s just gonna say that. [Max Palmer]: You’ve heard of autopilot. They’re cool. My buddy works for them. [Michael Houck]: Oh, autopilot was a launch house company, actually. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Really? [Michael Houck]: No. Wow, they have light speed. Really? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, they have light speed. [Ben Ornstein]: You Oh, I missed that. I also like Harlem Capital. [Michael Houck]: I’m a fan of those guys. And Hustle Fund and Techstars, the investor list is surprising. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay, I missed this one because based on all that, I’m trying to figure out why it was on my list. [Max Palmer]: They launched, you know, six months ago, whatever, and they already have 10 million assets under management. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, this is definitely past. Nikki’s good too. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, I know. I know why I did. I’ve seen so many companies that are doing I can’t list them, but like out on the top of my head, I’ve seen a lot of companies going after this. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard because Autopilot is like so far ahead. They’ve been doing this for a while now and they have like a massive, a couple massive social media accounts to get distribution out. But it’s a big market. I don’t think it’s a winner take all market. So I think it’s fair to take a shot here and see. [Ben Ornstein]: I think that was the only reason, because if I looked at that again, I’m impressed. [Max Palmer]: Cool. What’s next? Trellis. Also on my list. [Michael Houck]: Trellis. That’s my last one. Okay. What’s trellis? [Max Palmer]: It seems like they have good traction. Raised 3.8 or 3.8 committed already. Great Oaks is good. Yeah, I haven’t heard of - so is Great Oaks a good firm? Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: I think they invested in my buddy Keith’s company. I think so. Oh, bust rate? I believe so. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Max Palmer]: I mean, 525 merchant partners, 135,000 deliveries and revenue of 1.5 million a day. 60K MRR. I wonder how fast that MRR is, um, is growing. [Michael Houck]: Also a few of these companies that have looked interesting, like they’ve been being worked on for a while, which is like, that’s like an inherent, I think concern, but the numbers tell a different story for this one. So. [Ben Ornstein]: The way I framed this investment opportunity was just riding a wave that’s already working. Like you’re not going to be early in this round. This is just something that seems to already be working. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Did you have this on your list too? [Michael Houck]: This was on my list. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: That was like the specific thing that I mentioned that this would just be like riding a wave. [Michael Houck]: Round size 5 million on a cap of 14. They’re selling over 33% of the company in this round. That’s really high for a company with three co-founders. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, that’s interesting. [Max Palmer]: This is like a good gifting platform too. Um, it kind of reminded me of, uh, what’s that food company that sends gold belly gold belly. It like kind of reminded me of gold. Bit. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so yeah, this is I guess, it’s sort of similar to the weed one, except that it’s, it’s, I guess, more of a marketplace than like a specific app, but it’s like, it’s serving that same customer, just not weed [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: specific. [Ben Ornstein]: Do you like when investor when founders in the deck say like, we’re built, it says there’s a It’s live 15 built to sell, or it’s like, they’re already talking about the exit now. I don’t know. Is that, is that a, is that good? [Michael Houck]: Is that bad? No, I mean, that’s, it’s a light negative signal. Um, yeah. Especially if it’s not like an IPO, if they’re talking about path IPO, that’s like, okay. Like, yeah, you’re bullshitting me, but at least you have the right idea. If you’re. Talking about path to acquisition, unless it’s like, you know, multi-billion dollar acquisition. And in that case, there’s only so many buyers. And so it actually does make a little bit more sense to map out a path to that, but it’s not smart to make that your goal from, from day one. So there’s like, there’s positives and negatives to it. So I think it ends up being a bit of a net negative. [Ben Ornstein]: I’ve, I’ve heard that it’s a negative. That was, that was thing. One thing that caught my eye on this one. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Some people will feel more strongly, than I do. I wish they had charts like this for like how the revenue has grown so far, not how much they think it will grow in the future. Because it looks like it’s grown, but not that much. [Ben Ornstein]: 1.5 million revenue to date. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you hate seeing that to date. That’s like, never good. Honestly, 60k MRR and growing. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, but like, you want to know, like, how fast is it growing? [Michael Houck]: Right? And it looks like it’s, it looks like they’ve, they’re like, almost doubling this year, which is, again, not great. Like, if they’ve, if they’ve almost doubled two years in a row, why are they going to next year. My take on this one is that it’s a good business. I like it. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it’s resonating enough to hit venture scale on a timeline that is going to be appealing to investors. Okay, then hit no. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think it’s a no, unfortunately. I do like it as a business. Okay. Max, you said those were all of yours? Yep. [Ben Ornstein]: All right, Ben, what do you got? I’ll have mine in here. [Michael Houck]: So I started with Sandbox Wealth. [Ben Ornstein]: Sandbox. Christopher is a case study guy. Love his founder market fit because he’s been in the industry for a really long So he has like all the connections he needs at his prospective customers. Massive market if he can achieve the, if he can get the big financial institutions. And he’s got, he did an accelerator program where that was like partnered or under Northwestern Mutual. So he’s got Northwestern Mutual as an investor. My only concern is he hasn’t been a founder. So he’s a first-time founder after being in the industry for a very long time. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think there’s two red flags here that I’m seeing. I mean, not red flags, but I guess yellow flags. One is that he’s going after enterprise clients right away, like really big deal sizes. That makes it tough because things can fall apart for things outside his control. And the second is this line on his LinkedIn. This just kills me. You don’t take a slight detour to becoming a founder. You gotta be all in. It just reads so much like some old school banking guy who wants to be a founder. So that’s throwing me. But let’s look at the deck. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Max, what do you think about this one? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I didn’t think much of it. I guess that is kind of funny, taking a slight detour to Silicon Valley. [Ben Ornstein]: I attribute founder market fit to being quite important, personally. I didn’t think about the other red flags though. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, going after these big ones, it’s like, okay, we are waiting on final decisions from two prospective leads. [Michael Houck]: Is that lead investors? [Ben Ornstein]: I believe it’s lead investors because when we had our conversation, he was with them. [Michael Houck]: Gotcha. And then, OK, I’m still I’m still a little confused. [Ben Ornstein]: Who is the target customer for this? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Massive financial institutions. [Michael Houck]: So you think his first customer would be Bank of America, which he just spent Well, it’s, it sounds like what, I mean, maybe I’m, maybe I’m misunderstanding the product, but it sounds like he’s trying to create like, you know, how companies create like branded credit cards. Yeah. And that we actually, we invested in a company that was, I think they’re still, they’re still doing pretty well. Um, create branded credit cards for employees only with companies. Um, it sounds like what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to create, Like banks for Non banks. [Ben Ornstein]: Am I reading that right? [Michael Houck]: I don’t fully understand the solution So, I’m not sure Enables investment advisors insurance carriers and accounting firms to deploy banking solutions to their clients. Okay. So he’s going after people who have like financial relationships with consumers, but don’t have a banking option to offer those consumers. So I’ve imagined most of the like end clients or high net worth people who The idea is that they would want to consolidate all of their financial stuff with their advisor or their accounting firm, I guess, rather than like have a separate bank that they have to go to, which is interesting. I don’t know enough about the market. [Ben Ornstein]: I have a problem with a lot of the ones that I recommended, which is unfortunate. [Michael Houck]: But how fast is he operating? Like, let’s go back to the, um, okay. So he raised from Northwestern mutual and they are, they’re, they’re a customer too, right? [Ben Ornstein]: Uh, I don’t remember if they’re a customer or they’re in the pipeline. I don’t think they’re a customer yet. [Michael Houck]: Okay. It says existing investors, Northwestern Mutual. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, he listed Northwestern Mutual, but it’s technically, I believe they’re Accelerator that invested. [Michael Houck]: Okay. I think so. I don’t hate it. I like it more than I thought I would. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t mind it. The fact that he’s pre revenue is concerning because you can’t really prove anything out. But maybe we throw this to not Ryan, but to some fintech folks and see what they think about it. Yeah, that’s probably good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Max Palmer]: As one of the major milestones, their SS C I don’t like that. [Ben Ornstein]: I saw that as a negative signal, but in a regulated industry, that is important. Yeah, it is. [Michael Houck]: I didn’t like that either. It’s another data point behind the slight detour to Silicon Valley pieces. It’s kind of hilarious. [Ben Ornstein]: James Evans literally talked about that in the podcast. I laughed when I saw that. Okay. [Michael Houck]: I’m not going to pass this ahead to Ryan, but I will talk to a couple of people in FinTech and see like, Hey, yeah, this guy’s maybe new at being a founder, but is this a good idea in the [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: first place or not? [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. That’s a good idea. Okay. What do you have next? Scale drive AI. Now I am nowhere near as to understand if this is a good idea or not. [Michael Houck]: But the team is insane. Let’s look at the team. [Max Palmer]: Wait, I might have missed this one. The team was nuts. Body AI for autonomous robots. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so this guy was at BMW and then he’s done some other stuff. What are his co-founders? [Ben Ornstein]: What do they do? [Michael Houck]: I got to go back to the deck. It’s definitely in the deck. Unpopular Ventures is pretty good. [Ben Ornstein]: So that’s cool Yeah, there’s a guy PhD large models Stanford and deep mind autonomous driving at BMW The other guy was like computer vision, robotics. Um, and then they said repeat founder in the autonomous driving field. Yeah. I think the, the CEO has had a past company. [Michael Houck]: Um, I saw his LinkedIn. [Ben Ornstein]: I think that’s also the case for their first employee, which I don’t know. That one was interesting. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so they’re building for robots. [Ben Ornstein]: I have no… I looked through this and I have no idea if this is good or… [Michael Houck]: I literally couldn’t understand it. This is one of the biggest markets that’s ever going to exist. Not them specifically, but broader robotics for like humanoids and others. Um, let’s see if it by the premise, potential customers are ports. Yeah. I think the ports thing is, that’s a tough one because as we just saw, and as we are going to see again in January, people who work at ports are so deeply against any form of automation that, um, That’s going to be a tough market, I think, at least in the US, outside the US. Because they’re all part of unions, right? Yep. But there are other markets where this could make sense, like factories and things like that. I honestly think that unions are going to be the biggest challenge to adoption for this kind of stuff. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I mean, it makes sense. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, look, I mean, everything they’re saying here is true. Um, and they do have experience, so they understand how to build this stuff. Um, I’m confused why they’re going after ports first. I think that’s a hard market. Although maybe we, you know, maybe with the looming shutdown in January, um, we see like a more, aggressive push to get these unions out of there after the impact is felt by consumers. It’s interesting that they’re, yeah, this is where they’re That’s interesting. The deck is really long. Yeah, not a well-designed deck. [Ben Ornstein]: I didn’t like how the backgrounds were not clear for most of the slides. What is Dortmund? Is that in the UK? [Michael Houck]: These are both in Germany. Oh, Dortmund’s in Germany. Right, right. Of course, Dortmund. [Max Palmer]: Yeah Where is time in I thought that was UK. [Michael Houck]: I don’t know where that is. It sounds German to me No, yeah, it’s UK, okay, I Don’t like that they put that they were in the top 10% of the Berkeley skydeck hackathon on everywhere, like on his LinkedIn and in the deck. It’s a little cringe. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. It’s a weird signal. [Michael Houck]: I don’t like that. Yeah. Okay. This, this is a, this is a better market, like not, um, ports necessarily. Um, It’s a low amount of capital for a year and a half in this space. You can tell these guys are engineers. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, you can tell they’re engineers. [Ben Ornstein]: That’s a good point. [Michael Houck]: Which is a good thing. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s a negative signal. I just definitely just note. [Michael Houck]: through that lens. Yeah, I like it. Well, actually, okay, let me ask, to play devil’s advocate. Max, you didn’t have this on your list. Why was that? [Max Palmer]: To be honest, I think I skipped over it. Oh, okay. I don’t remember looking at that one for some reason. [Michael Houck]: I think it’s worth passing along. The port thing throws me, but it sounds considering some other stuff so let’s let’s do that what’s next the desync AI desync okay I believe this was the I think they’re like a crunch based competitor I think and I [Ben Ornstein]: liked it because I’ve seen this problem myself where they’re doing research and you They were selling to VCS because those are the guys have capital that I like the customer that they were going after Why do you why do you like the customer? Because I think VCS, you know, they’ve got capital to spend they it’s not like a customer. [Michael Houck]: That’s That doesn’t have the money to spend on they do have like budgets I Would push back on that a little bit bigger funds. Yes but smaller funds generally run pretty lean. Uh, for example, we raised a, it ended up being like a seven and a half million dollar fund. Um, and so that means that we get 150 K a year to operate the business. And so that’s paying people salaries, um, if there were any for it, as well as like tooling, um, and travel to see founders and go to conferences and stuff like that. So most smaller funds actually don’t have big budgets. For SAS, but it’s more than a zero budget. Some people use like Affinity, some people use other data sources like Tegas. I do like the thought of this being a bot swarm that just grabs all information rather than having it be sort of whatever one platform traditionally can get. [Ben Ornstein]: myself in terms of trying to find details on companies quickly, easily. So that caught my attention. Yeah, these founders are definitely young. I made a note, if you see, I say, the traction and team are eh. Yeah, that’s OK. I don’t mind these young founders. [Max Palmer]: One of them’s a competitive red teamer, which I don’t know what that means, but I know it means he’s a super nerd, which is a good sign. [Michael Houck]: That’s what a red teamer is. That doesn’t turn me off. He’s a pen tester. That’s cool. [Max Palmer]: A pen tester? [Michael Houck]: Penetration testing. Tries to fuck up software and gets paid for it. Right. That’s a great sign. Especially for something like this, which is trying to get data that probably isn’t easily available in some cases. [Ben Ornstein]: Their deck is interesting. They showed like how they did it too. I like the Figma deck too. [Max Palmer]: I’m a big fan of Figma. I will say PitchBook is shitty. [Ben Ornstein]: And CrunchBase is only great if you actually have access to it. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. So I think there is some disruption to be had here. I guess when I’m like researching companies, I usually just like go on Twitter and just like, just like read the founders tweets and like, but I know VC firms go a lot deeper than that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So. [Ben Ornstein]: And that’s, that’s, that was exactly my thinking. Cause I’m like the, the analysts at VC firms, they go much deeper. That’s their job. [Max Palmer]: Okay. So your application. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So the interesting thing here, saving 30 minutes to one hour per company is a big deal. That’s a lot. $30 per month does mean that smaller funds can afford it too, which is good. And if it actually saves them that much time, that is something like that's a price point they'll easily pay for. The question is $30 per month per analyst. Is not like a volume industry. There’s not like millions of VCs who can afford to pay for this. So let’s see what their kind of vision is to get bigger. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, because PitchBook and CrunchBase are used by a lot of people. [Max Palmer]: Okay, I’m sorry. This is so funny. [Michael Houck]: His number one thing in his bio is that he helps scale a community to 12K MRR. That’s funny. I liked the dropped out to go full-time on this. [Ben Ornstein]: I like that. But yeah, I was not impressed by the team. [Michael Houck]: Well, the pen testing thing is is legitimate. That’s great. Good. Okay, 50,000 VC analysts in the USA. 30 plus 30 for more features. What does this mean? I don’t know what that means. Beachhead 36 million AR. Okay, that’s not very big. Like that’s not even, you know, usually you say 100 million ARR is your path to a unicorn. So they’re literally projecting that in their initial market, which is B2C, they cannot reach venture scale. But they acknowledge that. [Ben Ornstein]: My other note was large TAM if they hit B2B, because this is massive. [Michael Houck]: Why would a PE firm or a bank pay $1,000 per seat if get to pay $30 per seat? [Ben Ornstein]: That’s a good question. Maybe because they can’t afford it and they just won’t care. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, no, that’s an interesting question. [Michael Houck]: If they’re getting the same functionality, there’s no like non sketch reason to charge them so much more. Look, my take on this is that I think there’s a lot more that they can do with this tech and with the data that they’ll accumulate from it. I think it’s a case where they don’t really know what their market is going to be in the long run. Yeah. Um, which, you know, obviously is concerning for them as founders, but they’re young. So you sort of give them some thought that maybe they’ll figure it out if they’re smart, capable people. Um, I think this is one where it might a flyer and pass it along. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What do you think? Either of you. [Ben Ornstein]: I’m still, I’m still bullish. Oh, they have this Antland Ventures. [Max Palmer]: I didn’t read this. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, just a note, Hawk. You’re at 6% battery. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I know. My computer is gonna start getting slow. I gotta plug it in. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I think it’s worth passing on. [Michael Houck]: I mean, yeah. Okay, cool. Give that one. What’s next? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Open vest. [Michael Houck]: Open vest. Okay. What’s open vest? [Ben Ornstein]: Um, Also in like the alt investment space, what did they do again? I really liked the investors, relevant investors. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What did I say? [Ben Ornstein]: Founder market fit again with this one. The things I listed were no traction though. So like they’re very early. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: How are they differentiated? [Ben Ornstein]: I mean, yeah, we have to go back through that There are so many companies going after this space. That’s the other concern with this one. [Michael Houck]: This is like a wealth front competitor or like a pilot competitor or what is it? Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Merit of asset opportunities. Got it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. I didn’t pick this one. It’s such a crowded market. They didn’t seem to have much traction. It says they have 100 customers. Express willingness to pay. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, that means they haven’t gotten them to pay it. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, they wrote very large market, which is true. Two trademarks, two patents, like, okay, I don’t care about your trademarks or patents. [Ben Ornstein]: Large market and genre market fit were the things that that pushed me over the edge, though. [Michael Houck]: They’re late to the market. That’s true, too. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. Yeah. And they don’t look differentiated at all. I based on looking on their website. [Michael Houck]: Why would someone pay a $3 subscription? I don't understand that. They don't really make the case. [Ben Ornstein]: They said lower cost, which I don't like because if you're playing a cost game, that's... Yeah, it's a value game. Yeah, maybe this is definitely a no-go. This was what I really liked. I liked the founder market fit. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, let's pass on this one. Yeah, that's fine. [Ben Ornstein]: I'm less bullish. What's the next one? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Tripkicks. [Ben Ornstein]: Unreal traction with enterprise clients. Nike, MX, Bloomberg. Really impressed with that. I wrote a note, though, that something felt very off. You don't see anything about their customers anywhere, like on their websites. [Michael Houck]: Here we go. It says, we are currently at the tail end of these sales cycles with larger companies. [Max Palmer]: That's what it was. Let me tell you about sales. There's three guarantees in life, death, taxes, and deals falling through. [Ben Ornstein]: That means they haven't closed these guys yet? Is that what that means? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, that means they want to list these people because it makes them look good, but they had to say tail end. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay, okay. That's why you can see I said something seems very off here. Also, seven years. I noticed that as well, yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: What is the product? [Ben Ornstein]: They solely help with business travel. Like I wasn't a huge fan of the, yeah. [Max Palmer]: It's probably a big problem, but Trip Actions was just rebranded. I forget their name. [Michael Houck]: And what does she change her name to? I always lose track of people when they get married and change the last name. Oh, Carol. [Ben Ornstein]: They listed Naven as a competitor somewhere. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That's TripActions. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it's TripActions. What did they say the difference was between them and TripActions? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good question. [Max Palmer]: TripActions just has an overwhelming lead. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And their product is good too. And yeah, it's built by a lot of Uber people. This is a tough one, especially because they've been at it for seven years and trip actions or Nathan has been like growing during that time it's not like they were already there it tells me that they and the fact they almost have these I feel like they've lost the lost the battle and they're trying to trying to write the ship that's my that's my read yeah okay now I see why something felt very off yeah trust your gut man okay what's market price. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I love these NIL plays. [Ben Ornstein]: I think like this, these are only going to grow. I just think that opens up a ton of opportunities. They have Nike, which I always am impressed with. [Michael Houck]: 5 million. That's that doesn't makes sense because this is what a like a 1.5 ish million ARR and they're raising at like 3x at the what's this I guess it's a bridge round okay yellow flag bridge round why are they raising a bridge round there's really there's two reasons to raise a bridge One is because you have a big thing coming up that you're launching and you wanna get some capital in first to accelerate that before you do a real round. And then the second is because you don't have enough capital to hit your goals and you need help. So let's see who this guy is. [Ben Ornstein]: I also wrote, team is only okay. I wasn't that, yeah, I never liked seeing that. [Max Palmer]: I don't know what was a bad sign, more than a good sign. [Michael Houck]: Also, the Yelp AE team is a bad sign, too. Everyone I know who worked at Yelp as an AE is a total scumbag. Hilarious. [Ben Ornstein]: Actually, the one person I know that held that role. Not my favorite dude. [Michael Houck]: My wife, who's an AE, just walked by and did the no, no, no. [Max Palmer]: Another thing I was thinking when I saw this company is I actually don't think this market is that big. Like it's a new market and it's a growing market. I agree with those. But college athletes, there's not that many of them. There's like tens of thousands of them. And only 0.1% of those college athletes are actually like real profitable figures. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think I think we're going to see the same thing happen here, which has happened in the creator economy, which is that the point that everything's going to go to the top folks. It's really hard for these other smaller folks to sustain themselves. Of course, the irony is that we just earlier in the conversation talked about how this will cause people to invest in their kids sports stuff more, which is true, but at least for like 10, 15, 20 years or so until they see the return isn't there for the smaller folks. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, and everybody thinks their kid is the next fucking Tom Brady when they're not. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that's true. Okay, what's next? Suddenly Spaces. I feel like I know this one. Why do I feel like I know this one? Oh, yeah, she's applied before, I think. Let me see if we've used her before. Oh, wait. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we included her back in May, I think. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like much has changed since then. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Interesting. [Michael Houck]: She's raised an additional 300k on the same round and brought the valuation down. Honestly, I think for that reason alone, we have to pass it. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't. [Ben Ornstein]: I obviously didn't know that. Yeah, of course. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, I liked it, but it doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like a lot of other people did. Okay, what's next? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Creative Intel. Okay, what's this? [Michael Houck]: It was another like... [Ben Ornstein]: I think this was also a creative... What the heck? [Michael Houck]: Bad Bunny and Post Malone. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That's so random. [Ben Ornstein]: Well, so I think it was relevant because this is like media, like IP. I wrote down relevant impressive investors. Yeah, I mean back-end capital is good. [Max Palmer]: That's Dave Fontenot and Lucy Yeah, I just didn't see like real, I mean they're pre-launched so there's really just no traction yet. [Ben Ornstein]: I wrote no traction yet and a couple patents and I don't remember if I said a couple patents as a good thing or not. I just wrote that down. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean make the case Ben, like what's the, yeah, make the case for it. [Ben Ornstein]: I liked, I really like the founder market fit here. I've been in the industry for a while. I think the the other team as the other parts of the team as well. And they're all that impressive investors. Those are the two things I don't know enough about the market to know if their solution is going to be groundbreaking or not. But [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I think I like, I mean, they're not, they're not direct competitors, but I think I like the, um, was it copy site? I think I like copy site better. [Ben Ornstein]: Uh, that was the other one that I recognized this as a competitor too. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, they're not exactly competitors, but they're sort of playing at the same dollar share. They say that their solution reduces time and costs for contract life cycles. That's the main value prop. I wonder how much, right? We don't have data points about how much it reduces. Not that that's disqualifying, but there's just not a lot to go on here. The founders, you know, they definitely have relevant experience. It seems like they're somewhat connected. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: That's what kind of pushed me over the edge here. Again, Founder Market Fit plays for me a big role. [Michael Houck]: I don't know. What do you think, Max? I wasn't, like, convinced by it, really. [Max Palmer]: There wasn't enough to, like, no real traction. How long have they been working on it? [Michael Houck]: Did they say? Yeah. Again, I don't understand, like, They're just, I don't know if this is real or if he just like had the idea five years ago, you know, cause it's, it sounds like maybe they pivoted a couple of times and now this is what they're doing. I don't know. Maybe, which is fine. You know, that's, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Maybe you hit on the right idea the second or third time around. [Max Palmer]: And I don't know how big this is just for the music industry either. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think it's a pass. It's close, but I think it's a pass. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Understood. [Michael Houck]: What's next? I went with Yoinks. [Ben Ornstein]: Yoinks? Yeah, it's called Yoinks. The only reason this would work is if they somehow get some growth, like be real. That's the only way this works. It's one of those weird consumer apps that, if it works, could rake. But most of the time, they don't. Out. I don't know. It's very interesting. Yeah, this needs to be on chain. Another on chain thing. Yes, I agree. [Michael Houck]: Is this the guy? He doesn't have it on his LinkedIn, but he also didn't link his LinkedIn here. Earn money from photos and videos. Okay. [Ben Ornstein]: This is one of those apps that's either It crushes it, like be real, or it's just one of the stupidest apps you've ever seen. [Michael Houck]: It's one of those. [Ben Ornstein]: Access, oh, that's like every good consumer app. Right, exactly. And I don't know the things that consumer does well enough to, yeah. [Michael Houck]: See you with one yoink. [Ben Ornstein]: So you have to buy the yoinks. [Michael Houck]: Access to content not seen within 24 hours. [Max Palmer]: I mean, this is 100% like the promise of by social. Yes, 100%. But the fact that they're not, it didn't seem like they're on chain at all. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I don't know. [Michael Houck]: I don't, I don't understand. Like, why would I, if people are posting new content every 24 hours, why would I go pay to see content from before that? Yeah, I don't know. [Max Palmer]: And in their, in their deck, they compare themselves. To Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Read.AI, and they just should not be comparing themselves to those. [Michael Houck]: It's like every major social media. Okay, this is a funny slide. [Michael Houck]: I don't know what that means. I wish there was more detail there. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: So if you see it within 24 hours, you can access it for free forever. Okay. I see. I see. I thought it was like, you get to see it for 24 hours and then you pay for it afterwards. [Max Palmer]: But so if you don't see the content, the online and 24 hours goes by and you get back on the app and you see the, and you want to see the photo, then you have to pay to see the [Michael Houck]: photo. Right. Like, let's, let's use, I mean, just let's use Twitter as an example. Let's say Elon tweets something absolutely crazy that drives conversation for, or okay. The best example, Trump posts his mugshot on Twitter. Everything blows up. It's his first tweet in like three years or whatever. If you don't make it within 24 hours to see that it's obviously still going to be generating sort of conversations and virality. But you'll have to pay to see it. It's interesting. Um, I don't think, yeah, I'm, I'm, I, they're going to face the same challenge on any social map and they haven't talked about how they're going to get people to the app in the first place to build density and to build network effects. So it's a, it's a schtick. It's a funny schtick and maybe an interesting schtick, but I don't think they talk enough about, actually growing the app. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [Michael Houck]: Okay. What else? What's next? Jackalope. Jackalope. Gig economy play. I think these trends are going to continue. [Ben Ornstein]: I think gig economy is only going to get bigger. I like their branding. That caught my eye. I don't know. Oh, I saw this one, yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And a ton of users. What's the product? [Ben Ornstein]: I think it, you go to the app to find gig work. Like you put in your preferences, you put in your, and I noticed the founder had actually pretty good following. But I think you go to the app and putting your preferences for work and then it sources gig work for you, I think that was the premise. Okay, yeah. [Michael Houck]: I think there's a very, very cool background, which is that he started as a Postmates delivery guy. And then he worked in Lyft's like, contractor operations team. And then he worked as an actual FTE at DoorDash. And then he managed a market at one of these scooter startups. Been. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's just like a very interesting. He's been in the gig economy for 10 years, which is cool. [Ben Ornstein]: Didn't even fully notice that to be perfectly honest with you. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, so this is just so it's like a curation of jobs for gig employees. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yep. [Michael Houck]: I like it. I really like it. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I'm actually not totally opposed. [Michael Houck]: Why would people trust their curation? Why would they go there? Is it AI? Or how does it work? [Ben Ornstein]: You put in details. I think it shows it on the deck. You put in details for preferences for work. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I forget how they did that. [Ben Ornstein]: But yeah, intelligent gig I don't exactly know what that means, but then it also has all the other things that a gig worker needs, like payment and... It's an all-in-one and it's an aggregator, basically. Yeah, yeah. Which is funny, because irony, I was talking about how I didn't like all-in-ones, but for this use case, I actually do. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, for this use case, it does make sense. [Ben Ornstein]: So you like schedule shifts? The scheduling piece, I think this is a stupid piece of the app, actually. [Michael Houck]: I mean, these people do plan ahead, like they do. I guess that makes sense. Maybe I'm just not familiar with, because I'm not a gig worker, but Personal AI concierge income optimization tips powered by ML, Okay, like they tell you which ones to do at which day and time, okay. That's interesting. Yeah, look, I mean, they're very late to the game. I think they need to do more with AI, but I do like it. Let's see what the space 2 is. In-app payments are missing. Wow Yeah, this was the users. I was like, holy shit. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I Think this is a pass if they really have 250,000 users Yeah users. I mean, I wonder how active they are if they're monthly active users. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And that's really impressive. [Michael Houck]: $20 average revenue per user is not bad for where they’re at. Yeah, look, I think it’s I think it’s interesting. The only reason I would be skeptical of this right now is like, again, they’re really late to this space. And so the question is, Have people try this before, why did it fail? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Anything like that. [Michael Houck]: Okay, do we have more? I’m gonna pass this one. I’m gonna approve this one. Do we have more? I have five others. Let’s do those async, because I have to hop to another call. But let’s see how many we have so far. [Michael Houck]: We have 10, okay. So we will do an email, I guess, either this weekend or probably more likely Monday or Tuesday. So I’ll loop you guys into that. Max, it’s the same thing that we did before, but we already went through the companies this time. So yeah, I guess we’ll go through the final companies. Ben, if you wanna like make the case for them in Slack and then we can debate and discuss there. [Ben Ornstein]: Yep. Have my reasoning next to them. I just bolded the last five that we didn’t go through. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Okay. [Michael Houck]: Well, let’s discuss there. But this was good. Thanks, guys, for going through all these. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: you