- Duration: 24 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JJ7E3DAHDF9NPJVM3DDP7R1F (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JJ7E3DAHDF9NPJVM3DDP7R1F)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Hey Tamron, what’s up man? How you doing good? Good, how are you? Good. So I did the haircut. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Nice man. [Michael Houck]: So I went I went through the deck. I have some thoughts we can kind of go slide by slide if that would be most helpful. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Yeah yeah yeah sure thank you. [Michael Houck]: OK cool, do you want? I can actually just send you the link to the recording of the call later in case it’s helpful so you can take a look back at it later so you don’t have to like write anything down or anything like that. For sure, yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so I’ll just go through it slide by slide. So the first slide, like the title slide, it’s not immediately clear to me what the business is at this point. Like it says build plates fast, but like, you know, I don’t know if that means like dinner plates, you know, that could mean plates for any different type of thing. So it’s just not immediately clear to me sort of what you guys are actually building. Um, and I don’t really know why building plates fast would be necessarily better at this point. Right. Um, so I’d consider changing that, that sentence there, that tagline. Um, and feel free to stop me at any point if you have questions too, or you want to want to chat through anything. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Yeah. Uh, just, question on this, on your feedback on the first slide. You went through the whole slides and you figured out, right, what I mean by build plates? Yeah, of course. [Michael Houck]: I figured it out by, I think, slide three. But, you know, like investors aren’t going to necessarily know that when they see this. And you want to provide that information right away so that they don’t need to be wondering about what sector this or what this business is doing by the time they get to the other stuff, because they’ll have other stuff they want to care about and figure out then. Next slide is the team slide. So again, like you list the experience, it’s concise, that’s good. The one thing though, is that again, since I don’t know what this business is, I don’t know if your experience is relevant to that business or not, right? So by the time I see this slide, I don’t know if you guys have experience that’s relevant to plates, because I don’t even know what the plates are. So I would just consider maybe adding like a one-liner in here underneath where it says co-founder that just makes it clear like what you guys have done. Like on the next slide, you talk about Andre’s experience working in 3D metal printing for seven years. You should note that on the team slide. That should be on the team slide. Uhm? OK, so then we get to the 3rd slide. Now it’s clear that you know what this business is that is in 3D printing, which I didn’t know before what a build plate is like, I sort of understand that to some degree. One thing that’s not clear here is why it again for someone who doesn’t know 3D printing, right? I’m not an expert in the niche. Why build plates? Are not reusable. Why each one requires requires a new plate, why they need to be made for each individual print that someone does, you need to make it clear why that pain point is so important. Obviously, it’s clear that there is a pain because they need to be reused, but I don’t understand why they need to be reused. And so therefore, it’s hard for me to assess how valuable the solution you guys are going to offer is because I don’t know if there are other potential solutions to the problem. You know what I mean? [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: So we have to say why they’re not reusable? Like why there are no services that resurfaces them? Resurfacing is one solution. Maybe there could be other solutions. [Michael Houck]: I don’t know. I don’t know about 3D printing, right? So you have to assume the majority of the investors see this are also not going to necessarily know about 3D printing. So you need to educate them about that. And so what I would say is, you know, frame this in a way where it’s like, you know, 3D metal printing with laser welding has this huge annoyance. It’s the fact that every plate needs to be every, every print needs a new plate. And the reason it needs a new plate is because of X, Y, and Z reasons. Therefore, you know, on the next slide and you talk about, yeah, you see what I’m saying? [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Yes, I understand. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: OK. [Michael Houck]: I understand fully understand. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. [Michael Houck]: OK, so then we go to the next slide, which is the problem slide or like the problem description slide. I guess that that makes it clear like what is happening like the plate has this 3D print thing put on top of it and then it’s taken off one slide. That might be missing here that you can add is a why now slide. Like why is this problem important right now? Why are people going to spend money to solve this problem right now? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Why hasn’t someone solved this before? [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: You know, that kind of stuff. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: OK. [Michael Houck]: Because that’s going to make it clear to the investors like what the urgency is, like why this is an innovative solution. And it’s an important problem right now to solve. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Got it. Can I ask a question about this feedback? Yeah, go for it. So this slide, why now? Could the answer be, you know how they about to put like, I have friends like in China, and sometimes we do get like build plates China, but now they’re going to impose tariffs on China, like import, like 25 percent. And by February, March will be 60 percent. So that’s going to drive the cost even higher. And plus, they will be stimulating manufacturing internally in the U.S. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Those are both really great reasons to highlight both the cost and sort of the wanting to bring manufacturing back to the US, those are both great reasons that these companies would want to use a solution like you guys, 100%. Got it, thank you, got it. Okay, so in the interest of time, moving on to the next one, the solution slide with the diagram there. I think I just need more explanation for like how this works, right? So like I see the diagram, I see, I get it, but I don’t really understand like what your role in this is at this point? Like, do you provide a tool that lets the buyers grind them down? Is it a special kind of build plate that has like a layer you can peel off? Do they need to send it back to you? Do you need to send somebody out? Like, I don’t really understand how the business works at this point. And so that makes it really hard for me to assess how I think your approach is good or bad or whatever. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Got it. I understand. Okay, the why now slide should be before like the problem description diagram or like after? [Michael Houck]: What I would say is that you can put it before or after the diagram, doesn’t really matter too much, but definitely have it after like the problem text slide for sure. Okay, got it. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Okay, so. [Michael Houck]: I got it. Next is the competitor slide. I didn’t really have too much to say here. I think that it looks like there’s not too many competitors, which tells me that it’s a good thing. You know, you can kind of tackle this market. And the axes sort of make sense to me. So again, I don’t because the solution slide is lacking. I don’t really understand everything about the business yet, but in terms of the market opportunity, the competitors is probably fine. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: So in the comparer slide, this people that I put, the United Performance Medal, they’re actually already doing what we’re trying to do. Exactly what we’re trying to do. It’s just for them, they do it for two weeks, we’re trying to do it in one day. That’s the whole difference. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, and I think you can make it clear what the differences is between your approach and what is currently happening in the market in the solution slide, like why your approach is unique, and then show them the competitor’s chart. Got it. Okay, so business model slide. I think there’s maybe some info on here that could make sense to go on the solution slide, like there’s a limited number You do guys do resurfacing that they’re paying monthly fee for. Like in some ways, like I need that information sooner, but I also think that like this slide in general should be just about the economics, right? So subscription based business. Here’s how much we’re going to be charging. Here are pricing tiers if there’s different tiers. And therefore, here’s how many customers we need to hit, you know, a million in a year. Or something like that. Like the examples, like having the examples are, I think, a little less helpful. It’s more so like what are the economics of the business in particular? [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: And when you said, this is how much the price, blah, blah, blah. You said, this is how many clients we need to hit, like a million ARR. Is there like a nice number that would pick interest or that I should be aiming at? Or it doesn’t really matter, I just set whatever? I mean, you just need to set it for what’s accurate for the business, right? [Michael Houck]: Because you can have some businesses that charge a $10 monthly subscription. They need a ton of people to hit a million in ARR, but they're a business that appeals to a ton of different people, so it can make sense. Versus if you guys only need to sell to a few different customers at a higher ticket price, that can also make sense. I don't know how big this market is. I don't know how many, you know, potential customers you guys can even have. So it's, it's more so about just understanding how the business will be structured. And then the investor will follow up and ask you questions about that. Like, Oh, okay, well, you want to charge, you know, $200 a month. Great. Okay. How many, how many customers do you think you can get to? Where are they going to be found? How are you going to get in touch with them? And they can sort of do some of the mental there on there and after they ask those follow-up questions. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Got it, got it. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so the go-to-market slide, I think this is definitely the weakest slide in the deck. I don’t know if you have an agreement with Siemens Energy Additive Group already set up or not. You don’t give me that information. You don’t tell me anything about the plan outside of this one customer. Like, is this a pilot customer? Are they going to introduce you to more customers, what is the strategy? I don’t think you would be doing this, but are you going to be doing paid ads? Are you going to be doing cold email? Are you going to be doing content marketing on social media? What is the channel you’re going to use to scale this business? And in the shorter term, what is your unfair advantage to get in front of some of those companies quickly? [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: it will be stronger if I already did like a reaching out campaign and I already got like two, three agreements from the companies that are like, hey, once you’re operational, we’ll like, we’ll definitely join. Do you think this will make this slide stronger or? [Michael Houck]: I would, I would argue that should be a separate slide, a traction slide where you say like, Here’s our go-to-market strategy on one slide, and then the next slide is traction, and here’s what we’ve accomplished so far, basically. Got it, got it, got it. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: I understand, okay. [Michael Houck]: And then the market size slide, I think I need more numbers on here. Like it’s not clear how big the market is going to be or how quickly it’s growing. You know, the chart looks, it looks nice, right? But I don’t know what, all I see is the one, the 2023 numbers. So I don’t know, it says, you know, 22% Kager, which is good, but like, how big does that get? I don’t want to have to do the mental math. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: So just make it more clear on the slide, how big it’s going to get. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And I was, I was trying to do another, like a different approach, kind of trying to figure out how, like, how many build plates are manufactured per year in U.S. And then just like multiply and follow, this is the market size. Yeah, you should include that too. [Michael Houck]: But I assume that eventually you guys are gonna be able to vertically expand and help people in other parts of the stack as well if the business becomes successful. Like you’re doing the build plates, okay, maybe you can also do parts of the machines or something. Again, I don’t know the market, so I’m not an expert here. But you want to show like, okay, build plate market, overall market, which we have here, which is the 3D printing market. Like how big is 3D printing? And then in the shorter term, how big is build plates in particular? And then I do need to jump, but last slide. I actually think that this whole slide is unnecessary right now. Like just saying the riches are in the niches. I don’t think that adds any value to the investor. What you could do on this slide instead, what I’d recommend is that you add in a couple important pieces of information. So number one, how much money you’re raising. Number two, what you’re gonna spend that money on. And number three, what are the milestones in terms of revenue or users that you wanna hit before you go out and fundraise again. If you give investors three pieces of information, that’s going to let them understand the trajectory of the business, how you’re thinking about growth, and how much money you think you’re going to need to get there. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Got it. I understand, OK. Cool. Well, look, I know that was quick. Sorry for the speed run here. [Michael Houck]: It’s fine to sign my word. Thank you. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: I’ll send this video over just so you have reference to it. [Michael Houck]: And feel free to email me if you have any other questions. Or anything like that, happy to help. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Okay. Do you think, just the last question, you know, one of your newsletters you sent out that one of the investors, he’s like about to launch a book, like about the AI forward. Yeah. I read like the three chapters I joined, like the group and the flag. Sure. And I actually asked these questions on to his like AI chat. Okay. And like the chatbot suggested that I just go and reach out with like emails and to see like do a smoke test to see if anyone will bite. You think it’s a good approach just to see or I should really get everything like cleared out on the deck? [Michael Houck]: I would definitely update the deck before going out to investors and then the best path is going to be to find founders who they’ve invested in before and ask them for intros. You can also reach out directly to the investors, but the response rate will be better if you go through founders that they invest in. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: Oh, no, no, no. He meant like reach out to the companies to like to like advertise kind of service, not to investors. [Michael Houck]: I’m not I’m not sure, I guess it depends on the state of the product and where you guys are at with things. That’s kind of a more of a go to market strategy question. So we need to dig it. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Tamerlan Yeleussizov]: That’s fine. Thank you so much. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay.