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1:16

All right, everybody. Welcome back to this week in startups today.

1:18

We're going to hear from three startups. I'm going to decide

1:21

if I want to invest in them with me is Prash

1:23

Dinesh Kumar. He's been with me since he was

1:25

18 or 19 years old and he dropped out

1:27

of school to come work for me. Is it true

1:29

story? Yeah, Prash. This is true. I turned 20. But

1:31

yeah, you turn 20 and then

1:33

you broke your mom's heart and dropped out of school.

1:36

Tell us tell the story. Yeah. OK,

1:39

listen to the pod this week in startups. Thought

1:41

you were smart, didn't like school, wanted

1:44

to work for someone doing interesting things.

1:46

And the first thing I did was,

1:49

yeah, find interesting people on Twitter and

1:51

different podcasts and so, yeah, reached out to you.

1:53

And long story short, you let

1:55

me help out at An event

1:58

called Launch Scale. The.

2:01

Volunteer. With age. He. Does that? Come

2:03

on? I just tried out. So. You basically yourself

2:05

out there is at have some free works if

2:07

I can process guy. For a. Bit

2:10

of a lesson there isn't there, Yeah. Just like. Trying.

2:13

To stand out like resume and stuff

2:15

and anything. to. Me a

2:17

Beat The be the noise is how I

2:19

got our thoughts and you know what you

2:21

did. You documented your trip on social media

2:23

was short videos. And I said

2:26

anybody who's this awful and energetic. I'd

2:28

probably want to mighty. So. Just for folks

2:30

out there. If you're sending a

2:32

resume and through the front door, that's okay.

2:35

As like as six out of ten. If

2:38

you have got a great if you can't good social media

2:40

presence or linked it is tied your year or so. For

2:42

me this or tied of they get to seven. But.

2:44

When you start doing things actively.

2:47

He are you at my ten points services. You are

2:49

from six or seven. You know if you just. Listen.

2:52

To what guidance Councilors As. If

2:54

you start making videos, writing blog post,

2:56

doing social media about a topic you

2:58

care deeply about or around the subjects

3:00

and people you want to associate yourself

3:02

with. Who. You, They are

3:04

dope, intelligent, driven, smart. Whatever criteria

3:07

gone for could be artistic, could

3:09

be in a musical. Talent.

3:12

Could be filmmakers can be actors, whatever

3:14

comedians. I wanted to some like

3:16

that you go from like six or seven. To

3:19

like a sixteen Or seventeen. And a ten.

3:22

In. Other words: you're too. Good.

3:24

To ignore. And of

3:26

pressure in that category softly. Today we have

3:29

three start ups that are too good to

3:31

ignore. ignore. The. Come out of

3:33

our family University program funded.university is the

3:35

you around. I believe the still

3:37

time to accept some people, but I

3:39

think we've accepted most people. In.

3:41

This program we call it a pre accelerator. This

3:44

is what comes before text hours before Y Combinator

3:46

or perform lots accelerator. You don't need to be

3:48

incorporated, you don't need have your product finish. You

3:50

know he'd have customers. You. Just need

3:52

to be two or three cofounders. one

3:54

of us. Highly technical, at least. i'm

3:57

and you have a great idea

4:00

and you've been building and tinkering it's

4:02

a free accelerator in other words we don't invest

4:04

on you in the way on the way in

4:06

typically we might do that once in a while.

4:10

We tend to invest in the company during the twelve

4:12

week program to twelve week program you pay five hundred

4:14

bucks. If you complete all twelve

4:16

weeks by putting in a monthly i'm sorry a

4:18

weekly report on monday's we give

4:21

you the five hundred dollars back so literally we hold

4:23

your five hundred bucks to make sure you don't blow it off

4:25

and then boom. We give it back

4:28

where i just finished our seventh cohort

4:30

if you want to starting pressure and

4:32

tell you on the program it is one of

4:34

the great joys of my life to get to

4:36

meet people in your zero. I

4:39

personally made it my mission to be the

4:41

first investor. On

4:43

maybe a hundred startups cap tables

4:47

in this fourth fund we're doing with flying

4:49

just over fifty million i think in our

4:51

fourth one we're just closing up now. I'm

4:54

really excited to be the first investor

4:57

in a lot of the tables always.

5:00

Supresh why don't you tell us

5:02

about these three startups just give me one sentence

5:04

in plain english don't even tell me the name

5:07

of the company just describe the first one. What

5:09

they do in plain english the second one in plain

5:12

english and third one in plain english and why you

5:14

brought me these three. Sure thing so

5:16

first one is a tool

5:18

to analyze your l l

5:20

m usage or a i.

5:23

Got it is a piece of

5:26

software for businesses. That

5:30

helps manage their spend on

5:33

large language models so that's what it

5:35

is. I'm gonna ask

5:37

you the second question why is that important

5:39

to you to you crush why

5:42

do you think that is important yeah so.

5:45

Obviously i companies that

5:48

will be like the next wave of companies all

5:50

using a and language large language model sorry and

5:53

so. Their expensive

5:56

and founders startups

5:58

but also you know big corporations. The. Morning

6:00

he retired eye on them

6:02

as your company skill great.

6:04

So the reason why it's

6:06

important is because these services

6:08

are expensive. You can start

6:10

spending wildly. Your developers could be in a

6:13

fishing you could forget he started up a

6:15

job or something and. Money's.

6:17

Important when a great summer school. Guess

6:19

let's keep going. Number to. Tell

6:22

me in. Plain English know

6:24

buzzwords? You put up. a buzzword, would

6:27

sasson. There's a gimmick, even Fleener English

6:29

brush. Important for investors be able

6:31

to talk to each other in plain English. As

6:33

a second one is a marketplace. For.

6:36

Tabletop demers to buy and sell their

6:38

the pieces. Yeah. Got. So

6:40

this is for tabletop games. sounds of

6:43

Qatar and. Magic. The

6:45

Gathering: There's a bunch of

6:47

these nerds, dorks, geeks, And.

6:49

Really cool people who are

6:52

closeted geeks and dorks. A

6:54

who love playing these games. They

6:56

spend thousands of dollars a year

6:58

is collectible. You'll. Find it on E

7:00

Bay you'll find in different places. Of but

7:02

yeah there are a bunch of them so the reason this

7:05

is important I'll do this is burnt. His

7:07

I'm. It was having a dedicated

7:09

marketplace for them. Ah, Means a

7:11

hundred percent of the screen real estate community

7:14

experience is tailored to their passion. And.

7:18

It's a high margin high velocity business people

7:20

are buying trading these things you know, very

7:22

frugally I would say. Probably

7:24

monthly or quarterly. Or maybe even some people

7:26

do it. We. Can look at. Who's.

7:29

Or third one and then I'll say winding support know

7:31

like that been on back and forth era doing you.

7:34

Look at the buffer of. Our core. So

7:36

third one. This. Is a. Suffer.

7:39

Products. We. Caught a business in

7:41

a box and so it. Is

7:43

a suite of tools. That

7:46

entrepreneurs freelancers can use to operate

7:48

the business. I'm. Like

7:50

operating system for Butters isn't a

7:52

box. So kind of. by the raise,

7:54

a business in a box is buzzworthy. When you

7:57

sat it's a collection of tools. to

7:59

help people manage their business, I

8:02

understood that pretty well. The

8:04

only way to make that even better is it's a collection of

8:06

tools for freelancers

8:09

and small business owners to manage

8:11

their business, including, I don't know

8:13

if it has this, accounting, marketing,

8:16

and timesheets. I don't know. I just made three

8:19

things up. That would make it even tighter. The reason

8:21

that's important is a lot of

8:23

these businesses are very unorganized

8:25

and chaotic, and the

8:27

software that you would sell to a small

8:30

business is probably to industrial strength.

8:32

If you're going to use some

8:35

giant accounting software, giant

8:39

HR software, whatever it is, it's

8:41

probably got 99 of the 100 features or 97 of the

8:43

100 features are not going to be

8:45

used. A simpler way and a

8:47

broad collection of them means I don't have to buy

8:49

17 different solutions. I

8:52

like that a lot. I think that's one of

8:54

the trends. We're going to meet them right

8:56

now, and then at the end, I'll pick one of them to

8:58

invest in. There's a lot of

9:00

stake here, folks. Let's have the first person

9:02

present for about two minutes. Yes, Brush? That's

9:05

right, two minutes. Then, I'll ask them

9:07

two or three questions, and then we will zip,

9:09

zip, zip through them because the audience

9:11

is busy. Really

9:13

it's important for us to understand how good they are at

9:16

pitching their idea. Are

9:18

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10:12

getepo.com/twist. That's

10:15

g-e-t-e-p-p-o.com/twist. Let's

10:18

invite our first founder up. I'm really excited

10:20

to meet these three companies. All right. Peter

10:23

from Props AI. Hey, Brush. Hey, Jason.

10:26

How are you doing? Good. How

10:28

are you? I'm well. Let's get to it. Three,

10:31

two, go. Hi, I'm Peter. I'm

10:34

the founder of Props, a platform

10:37

to help monitor and monetize your

10:39

LLM applications. Let me introduce

10:41

you to one of our customers, Riley, who's got

10:43

an AI startup that's going viral. But

10:45

today they get their bill from OpenAI and it's

10:48

thousands of dollars, giving them no actionable insight into

10:50

how that cost is broken down. They

10:52

don't know what their unit level economics are. They don't

10:54

know how to price their product effectively. And

10:56

to set up a more complex billing model like usage-based billing,

10:59

you see a lot of work. They

11:01

may assume that their cost is split evenly

11:03

between all of their users, but this is

11:05

rarely the case. Often,

11:08

users will churn within the first time

11:10

of using the product and the users

11:12

that are actually paying them may be

11:14

costing them more than they charge. The

11:17

solution to this is the AI

11:19

proxy, real-time cost and usage tracking,

11:22

enabling effortless usage-based billing. We

11:24

give per user cost tracking in

11:26

our dashboards. We integrate into Stripe

11:28

to enable usage-based billing and we

11:30

provide observability across errors and latency.

11:32

It's all available and only takes

11:34

two lines of code to implement.

11:37

We provide a free self-hosted version, which

11:40

is from our open source product, and

11:43

we provide a cloud SaaS offering for $47

11:45

a month and then 50 cents per billable

11:47

user on the Stripe integration. So

11:50

far, we've processed 80 million tokens, done 3,700 in

11:52

revenue, and we've just crossed 100

11:56

users in for seven weeks since we launched from

11:58

product to product. We started before

12:00

building the product by building our acquisition

12:02

strategy, the AI job board, which is

12:04

now the second largest AI

12:06

specific job board in the US, generating 15,000

12:09

unique users a month, and Prox takes the native

12:11

ad slot on that platform. We

12:13

built the proxy dashboard and continue to build our

12:16

metrics, and we've just launched usage based billing into

12:18

beta. My background

12:20

is as a software engineer working companies

12:22

like IBM and Amazon, and taking leadership

12:24

positions over engineering teams for the past

12:26

five years. That's

12:29

Prox AI, and we help monitor and

12:31

monetize LLM applications. All

12:33

right, Peter, Kirk, you did a

12:35

fantastic job presenting. Let me ask

12:37

you a series of questions. Is

12:39

this your first startup? This

12:43

is my first startup that I've got to the stage of

12:45

incorporating. I've had a few different

12:47

businesses in the past with Shopify stores. Okay,

12:50

so you have projects in the past? Yes,

12:52

projects. This would be the first startup. Fantastic.

12:57

Number two, are you technical? Do

13:00

you write code? Are you writing the code

13:02

for this startup? Yes. I've

13:05

written all of the code so far. We actually

13:07

just brought on off first additional software engineer this

13:09

week as well. Fantastic. Nice,

13:11

tight answers. I like it. How many

13:14

co-founders are there in the startup? Defined

13:17

at only over 10%. You're

13:19

a solo founder. Who

13:22

designed your deck, your

13:24

website? Who did the design, the

13:26

UX, the design? I'm

13:28

very fortunate. My wife is a senior

13:30

product designer. Fantastic.

13:33

I want to make some notes here, Prash. You

13:35

as my associate in the firm, you're an

13:37

associate, you got to make investment decisions. You got to say

13:39

which ones we should invest in. I want

13:42

to point out some of the very

13:44

strong things about this. The design is

13:46

exceptional. This is world-class design. I

13:49

think, or it's getting close to world-class design.

13:51

What I mean by that is, shout

13:54

out to your wife. This

13:56

really does make a big difference at the

13:58

early stages. At later

14:00

stages, anybody can pay. A.

14:03

Decent designer. You

14:05

know, I. Would say for

14:07

the design you have right now low thousands of

14:09

dollars and get the soccer. Three.

14:11

Four Five thousand dollars with the designer. Two three

14:14

revisions. You're gonna get to this. Most startup founders

14:16

don't do it. They. Just pushed design down

14:18

the road. Is. Designed as. Say.

14:20

Something about you. Just like you know,

14:23

your hair, cut, your brass. Ah,

14:26

Dandruff body odor. Something

14:29

in your teeth? Ah, I'm

14:31

being overweight like I was for a

14:33

long time. And only tell it's

14:35

you straight. As I always knew people judge books by

14:37

the cover. I. Hate to break the

14:39

news to the audience brush. But

14:41

they don't judge a book by it's

14:43

cover. Is. A

14:46

classic saying because people do judge a

14:48

book by. Their cover far

14:50

too often. But. When you judge

14:52

a start up and judging by as you

14:54

exit design as a real rationale to at

14:56

National Press is what. Why? Is

14:59

really crisp, clean design. Especially

15:01

for a piece of business or for like

15:03

this. Why? Is that important

15:05

in the marketplace? Not with investors?

15:08

Yeah so is gonna come down to

15:10

your customer. And how they

15:13

interact with products. I got a good good

15:15

design cars Rothys a product. On.

15:18

The. And you know that's beneficial. Pressure.

15:21

You've learned so much working with me over the stairs.

15:24

And. Start ups you know is your

15:26

customer see something that's really tight and beautiful. They

15:28

can trust you. That's. Why? Banking

15:30

software all looks very similar

15:32

in clean. And perfect. That's

15:35

why Fubar in Air B N

15:37

B feel similar and clean and

15:39

solid and from worthy. Com

15:42

is. Goober and Robin

15:44

Hood and Air Bnb and

15:46

Mercury Bank or Wealth Front

15:49

didn't seal as tight. As.

15:51

They do. People wouldn't trust them as much. Okay,

15:54

Also, your technical founder love that

15:57

you're a solo found. Don't love

15:59

that. I'm and it's

16:01

your first startup but you

16:03

have some projects so that kind of put you in between.

16:06

You know having scar tissue and just having a

16:08

little bit of experience in the product so overall

16:12

this is absolutely fantastic well done.

16:15

I don't have any questions for you

16:17

accept. If i put

16:19

a gun to your head and

16:22

said you must pick one business

16:24

props and monitoring of

16:26

l l m usage or the

16:28

job board. I'll give

16:30

you hundred thousand dollars to pursue it when

16:33

you pick. Okay

16:35

great awesome because i did see that job

16:37

board and i want to make sure that you're not

16:39

hedging your back to your thinking. I'm not

16:42

trying to do this that hey that primary

16:44

business i'm putting all my time into isn't working

16:46

you're doing that strictly as a

16:48

cheap quick way. To provide a

16:51

free service people come for that free service and

16:53

they stay for the tool and most people say

16:55

you come for the tool you stay for the

16:57

marketplace here you're coming for a tool and getting

17:00

free advertising for your tool. So absolutely fabulous

17:02

job press you have any questions no question

17:04

i like it okay well done peter that's

17:06

a really good presentation we're up to a

17:08

strong start here and press can only how

17:10

big in this business get. There's

17:12

other tools like this out there. No

17:15

we don't have to worry ourselves too much

17:17

with that at this stage i see stage

17:19

investors but we need to find a great

17:21

founder. Usually a great team with

17:24

product traction with clients that's demonstrated

17:26

they can build something understand the

17:28

customer base. I'm fine

17:31

good teams and back then so it

17:33

does feel like we found something here now. I

17:36

don't know how big this can get but we do

17:38

have a corollary there are companies

17:41

that we've seen that do this kind of

17:43

monitoring for your other web hosting. So

17:46

those are the competitors but this is solely for lms

17:48

and i think this is unique enough that it

17:51

could give you other options. And

17:54

say hey you're using chat chief before

17:56

you might want to downgrade to three point five this is what you

17:58

would spend for you could have used. You're.

18:00

An open source products with hosting for this price

18:03

so just being able to compare and contrast what

18:05

you're spending and give you the other options and

18:07

then have this other options. Have

18:09

are either across for click or an affiliate

18:11

program attached to them. So if you do

18:13

choose to use. Claude. You.

18:16

Know Ah, Gemini. Or.

18:19

You know some open source once you get

18:21

a vague and benefit also had you if

18:23

this this list of people who are using

18:25

this men are so many ways to have

18:27

some so. I think we can figure that

18:29

out later. We know this can become. Low

18:31

millions of dollars pretty quickly and

18:33

we know we could become. You

18:36

know, ten million dollars and in a

18:38

when we invest at the seed stage

18:40

or from low single digits you know

18:42

upwards to. Eat. Million dollars

18:44

to possess a seed rounds are. Be

18:48

feel pretty comfortable. Taking a little bit

18:50

of of that and. They'll

18:52

figure it out later. Necrosis.

18:55

remember that sort of pressure know I

18:57

also think is like. Makes. Sense

18:59

as a third party to to be doing this

19:01

because you'll get like open a I or to

19:03

for model. Have like, let's say

19:06

their own analytics. But they're.

19:08

Going to prioritize your usage of their products,

19:10

right? And. They may push into a more

19:12

expensive one month. Yeah, Yeah, so I

19:14

think it's interesting. As a separate party

19:16

at their Optimizing for you. Newspaper that

19:18

for objectively scratch and sniff at it. You can

19:21

bet out the software you know you could

19:23

have like for Vip coins a big you know

19:25

people spending a million dollars a month. You.

19:27

Just have some costs years there. Who

19:29

says hey, we bid adieu? We bid

19:31

your work out. We can

19:33

say be fifteen percent. If we do that, we want

19:36

to take five points of the fifteen you'll save. ten.

19:38

Are you interested in a service? Click here and click

19:40

there and you sign an agreement and then they go

19:42

shop fewer. Jobs so to speak,

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on started. An object. Or. Number

21:18

Two with.allen from secondhand. A

21:22

Sir. Hello sir, how are you.

21:25

Are there were military guy call me sir there

21:27

are my just as I am are I am

21:29

a mustang. Used. To jump out a perfectly

21:31

good airplanes and command and one thanks in a desert

21:34

sun. Or. Once of which branch is

21:36

that if a man. Army. Or

21:38

it will thank you for your services. Thank.

21:40

You for your support! We enjoy all of our

21:42

sister services that I'll post. Syntactic,

21:45

I usually towards their eagerness

21:47

in the action. Ah, Desert

21:49

Storm. So oh. Yes, Zoc

21:51

with the Great Job Kuwait

21:53

specifically actually. Ah, Okay

21:55

ago with that was good

21:58

work, less. and a

22:01

decisive victory by our

22:03

amazing personnel and

22:05

capabilities. So absolutely fantastic job

22:07

on that one. Again,

22:10

thank you for your service. We love military vets

22:12

because they have the

22:14

discipline to do really good. Now,

22:17

they might not be rule breakers and rebels, so

22:19

there is that. Sometimes we- I'm

22:21

a scalpel tune leader, so I do break quite a few

22:23

rules. Well, I mean, sometimes you got a freestyle

22:25

out there in the field. When

22:27

I did my two imaginary tours in

22:30

the CIA, people

22:32

always ask me if I'm in the CIA. That's

22:34

ridiculous. So let's

22:36

get to it. Show

22:40

us your product. You got two minutes on the clock.

22:42

Here we go. Three,

22:45

two, go. Welcome to Secondhand

22:47

Geek, the first place to go to buy, sell,

22:50

and trade your tabletop games. Millions

22:52

of tabletop gamers worldwide waste hours searching

22:54

through dozens of websites, forums, and trade

22:56

groups to find products and services to

22:58

enjoy their hobby. Meet Henry.

23:00

He wants a new 40K army for his next tournament

23:03

and wants to sell his old army and get a

23:05

new army and get it all painted. At

23:07

Secondhand Geek, he can sell his old army, buy

23:09

a new army, and then find a painter before

23:12

the next tournament, all on one site. Our

23:14

marketplace charges a 5% fee for all

23:17

products and services sold. Over

23:19

the last 90 days, we have converted 194

23:21

people to our marketplace

23:23

who have listed over $8,000 inventory

23:26

and items. We

23:28

are using our dedicated Facebook groups,

23:31

gaming stores, and Maniverse podcasts to go

23:33

to market. Over the

23:35

past 10 years, our dedicated Facebook groups

23:38

have grown to over 16,000 members who

23:40

have traded over $5 million annually with over 200,000 listings. The

23:46

average gaming store purchase is about $40. And

23:49

eBay does about 312 million transactions a year. So

23:52

our TAM is about $12 billion. Turn

23:55

$10 million. We are going to use our over

23:57

50 years of experience in the industry. relationship

24:00

and knowledge of gaming stores and running

24:02

local, regional and national events along with

24:04

our Maniverse Podcast. For

24:07

$100 million, we are going to consolidate

24:09

the tabletop gamers and companies from eBays

24:12

and the Etsy's with better margins and

24:14

targeted marketing results utilizing things like YouTube,

24:16

TikTok and Twitch and our Facebook trade

24:19

group. Our leadership team

24:21

has been there since the beginning of the tabletop

24:23

gaming industry. We have owned stores,

24:25

run events, hosted gaming conventions and promoted

24:27

the industry. It started with Dungeons

24:29

and Dragons and now with Trading Card Games and Miniatures,

24:31

it has grown into a $25 billion a year industry.

24:36

We are the perfect team to make this change. Thank

24:38

you for seeing Secondhand Geek. All right, well done.

24:42

So when did this product launch, this marketplace,

24:44

when did you launch it? I know you

24:46

have the Facebook group and the podcast going

24:48

for a while. November last year. Okay, great.

24:51

So it's very nice and you got six months of

24:53

data. Tell me honestly, what have you learned about

24:55

running a marketplace? What are the top lessons, two

24:57

or three lessons you've learned so far getting this

24:59

product into the market? You have

25:02

to have a balance between both sides

25:04

of the marketplace, both the products and

25:06

services provided and the customers to consume

25:08

the product that you have. Got

25:11

it. And there seem to be stores

25:13

that do this. Yeah, there's still a

25:15

lot of stores out there. There are roughly

25:18

45,000 stores in the

25:20

US that have a brick and mortar location.

25:23

Yeah, and these are typically comic book

25:25

stores that have this section. No,

25:29

actually, there are five things in

25:31

the industry. There's miniatures, trading

25:33

card games, role playing games and board

25:35

games. Sometimes a lot

25:37

of the comic book shops are just standalone

25:39

comic book shops. Got it. Okay.

25:43

And so what are the lessons have you learned here in

25:46

running the marketplace? That

25:48

the having a lot

25:50

of pictures and a lot of descriptions

25:54

will push somebody to do a sale

25:56

online versus going into a store to

25:58

pick something up. Okay, she

26:00

learned. supply and demand matter. Both sides

26:02

matter. Yeah, buyers and sellers. Crack

26:05

in the you learned here is that

26:07

the descriptions and landing page really matter.

26:11

Okay, how many listings have been are added

26:13

to the system to dayton or six months

26:16

you been operating. On today we

26:18

have twelve thousand and nine hundred

26:20

dollars worth of was. Guess.

26:22

You give me the dollars which I

26:24

always three hundred and sixty one. I'd

26:26

skip. Some great. What

26:29

happens The Sanders and you know

26:31

you are using their Jedi mind

26:33

trick. Doesn't work on

26:35

Sith Lords of. The

26:39

federal were hundred euro. Fell. In So when

26:41

you give me that number, the value of it.

26:43

I. Am a list of is somebody put a ten thousand are they

26:46

going there at the numbers and below hundreds and I was right. So

26:48

on. This seems to be your biggest

26:51

challenge. What is your solution? if I

26:53

eschew right now. To. Come up with

26:55

on the spot. How you get ten

26:57

thousand. Items. In this

26:59

market place. In the next

27:01

thirty days. How You Do! We

27:03

have created and upload system with

27:05

Share Tribe that allows gaming stores

27:07

top loader entire inventory that they

27:09

have in their store instead of

27:12

going to Amazon or Ebay. And.

27:14

So on our platform and only give

27:16

up five percent instead of sixteen percent

27:18

of them? So

27:20

number one: you're not going to win them

27:23

by the margin. necessarily the margin, is it?

27:25

When matters, finding a great bar at the

27:27

right price is what matters when you talk

27:29

to your customers. That. Are they really

27:31

care about most? Is that getting the best price? They're

27:34

happy to pay ten, fifteen, five, even twenty probably

27:36

if you get them a buyer. Quickly

27:39

and so. I

27:41

think what you need to think about

27:43

here is finding a way. To.

27:46

Have. Either. Offshore individuals will

27:48

get paid a dollar or two dollars an

27:50

hour. Or software. Or

27:53

or both. To. Make

27:56

this. Marketplace.

27:58

have and from man number

28:00

of listings, which will do extraordinary things for

28:02

your SEO because you have a long tail

28:04

here. There's some

28:07

character in some card game

28:10

that somebody looks for, that 10 people look

28:12

for, and there's not that many pages of

28:14

it. On

28:16

a software basis, there's a very simple tool you could

28:18

build, which is export your eBay listing and post it

28:20

here. A bulk editor

28:23

to export, that could be a toolbar,

28:25

whatever. You could probably build

28:27

that very simply, where the toolbar goes

28:29

in and moves it over, or you

28:32

do something even a little more sneaky. This

28:34

is where- We're like sneaky. Well, it's a

28:37

little bit gray hat, a little bit freestyle. When you and I were

28:39

in the field, you know what I'm

28:41

saying? Yeah. You were on

28:43

the front line, I was behind the

28:45

scenes, CIA stuff. Sometimes we got freestyle. Sometimes

28:48

there's people who can do things for us,

28:50

and we can grease

28:52

the wheels, so to speak. You know what I'm saying.

28:54

We don't talk about the stuff in public. This

28:57

is the job. Imagine

29:00

there was a third-party company in

29:02

Manila that you could pay, and you

29:04

could say, hey, this

29:07

person is the best seller on eBay.

29:09

I want you to go to their

29:12

eBay bank and take their

29:14

20 listings and move them over to ours.

29:17

Then you, as the founder say, saw

29:19

your great things, we're building the startup,

29:22

and hey, we really love what you're doing.

29:25

Took the liberty of showing you how much better

29:27

our landing pages are by moving

29:30

your inventory over here. If it's

29:32

okay with you, I'd like to give you

29:34

zero commission for your first 10 sales. We

29:38

have a team that will automatically move your inventory over

29:40

here, and you don't have to

29:42

lift a finger. We'll just camp out

29:44

on your Google cognizance, how we do this,

29:47

but put it in the code

29:49

of a bird, watch it. It's like freshness is

29:52

stuff that's like, don't ask questions, just enjoy the

29:54

peace and prosperity that you get to live in

29:56

the free world. This is

29:58

stuff Alan and I do. I'm sorry, Alan does

30:00

it, I'm not involved. Anyway, now

30:03

you just took the 10 best sellers

30:06

and you took their 20 best items and you did

30:08

them a solid. You

30:11

did something really gracious for them. And

30:13

you're a founder, they're a founder. You say, hey, I wanna get you the best

30:15

price. We're really trying to own this

30:17

specific category. I'll make it super

30:20

easy for you. If you just give me your email address

30:22

and phone number, stripe account, whatever, I'll

30:24

put it into the account. But now you just hire somebody

30:26

in Manoa for

30:28

a dollar an hour, $2 an hour. And

30:31

they do it overnight. And you just tell them, move

30:33

these into here and then

30:35

find the seller. And then you,

30:38

as buyer, could then go buy something

30:40

from them, put it into

30:42

your house inventory. So now you're selling it.

30:44

So now that you're a buyer, you have their contact

30:46

info. So this is like

30:49

a really interesting thing. I

30:52

had a friend who was trying to figure out how to sell

30:55

a piece of, they

30:58

were struggling. They were trying to sell a

31:00

button that you could put on a table. It

31:02

was very popular in Asia. You press a button

31:04

and the server comes to you and you press the button in

31:06

the back room. This was 25

31:08

years ago. In the back room, it

31:11

puts a number there. Now, if you go to any Chinese restaurant

31:13

or you go to China, Hong Kong, every

31:15

table has a bell on it. You ever

31:17

been to Asia and seen these bells? No. Okay.

31:20

So if you want your waiter, just press the button.

31:22

And then 17 happens. The person races

31:25

to your table. This is before smartphones and ordering

31:27

through, ordering services and

31:29

QR codes. And they couldn't figure

31:31

out a cell. I said, it's very simple. You go to the bar,

31:33

you talk to the manager, you

31:35

order a drink, chat up the

31:37

bartender, give him a nice tip. So

31:40

can I ask you a question? Who's the manager here? To

31:44

want to leave my card and this little bell for them.

31:46

And it would be real solid for me if you

31:49

could do that. This is

31:51

a crazy idea, but it really increases tips

31:54

because people get better service. And hey, you're the bartender, you

31:56

understand how important that is. If they can't find you, if

31:58

they can't find the waiter, find the weight or

32:00

something. You've already made the drinks and the ice is

32:02

melting. So I just gave him that script. He went

32:04

out and did it. But it worked. Now,

32:07

why did it work? Because you bought a tranqy,

32:09

you gave a tip. So for 30 or 40 bucks, he

32:11

would go into a restaurant bar, whatever, have

32:13

a little snack, he had to eat anyway. And

32:16

he had done reciprocity. He had done

32:18

something nice for them, which then meant

32:20

they wanted to reciprocate. It's a very powerful device.

32:22

So anyway, you got to start thinking about acquisition.

32:24

You got to start thinking about really building up

32:27

the inventory. I gave you a couple of strategies

32:29

here. But you can't

32:31

go to market without this being 10,000, 20,000.

32:34

You got to come up with a really great system. So it could

32:36

be done with software, could be

32:38

done with humans

32:42

that are just going to be faster, to

32:44

be totally honest, than getting the software out there and trying

32:46

to explain to people how to use it. And

32:49

pick a beachhead where you think

32:52

it's under service. You mentioned

32:54

so many of these things. Which one do you think

32:56

you can crush eBay and

32:58

other places on that's under service, that's

33:00

high velocity, high margin, whatever? Is it the

33:03

figurines? Is it the card game? Warhammer Games

33:05

Workshop, they are the number one seller at

33:07

$312 million a year. I have a Facebook group

33:12

over the last 10 years that has

33:14

a lot of margin there. So critically important,

33:16

you own that category, every item possible is

33:18

in there, the top sellers are in there.

33:21

And then you go find the buyers, which

33:23

you seem to have done because of your

33:25

Facebook groups, which is also a brilliant strategy.

33:27

People are also hanging out on Discord. But

33:30

the two other growth hacks are like having

33:32

a podcast, having a Discord slash Facebook groups,

33:34

and Facebook groups are brilliant at this. So

33:37

I just love everything about what you're doing.

33:39

Great job. I'm really interested in your

33:41

business. So great job. Good

33:44

start. Oh, by the way, let me ask a

33:46

couple questions. You have a developer on staff or

33:48

how are you doing it? You have a full time developer? You got

33:51

a contract? We

33:53

have four altogether. Perfect. So four

33:55

people own over 10% of the business each. Correct.

33:58

Something in that range. Okay, great. 20%

34:00

we keep 20% for an equity pool

34:03

for employees. Oh, okay, so it's chopped up five ways.

34:05

Got it. I love it. That's

34:07

perfect. So we love having multiple co-founders.

34:09

As you know, yeah, spent a little time

34:12

in the field. I'm many hands me

34:14

for. Gotta have my squad. You

34:16

know, you're only as good as the weakest link

34:18

in the chain and you know, you got to

34:20

trust. They got your six, right? Yup. And

34:23

I'm talking about. Yeah. You don't, you translate

34:25

this later, Prash, but you guys, the guy, whoever's got

34:27

your six, this is an important thing. He's

34:31

a great guy. Yup. Exactly.

34:34

And you have his six by the way. Absolutely.

34:36

All the time. So, you

34:38

know, you get, if something happens, you know, they

34:40

got to protect your back, you got to protect there.

34:42

So that's great. We love having multiple co-founders.

34:45

You have deep expertise and passion for the space. This

34:48

is like normally as a business, you'd be like,

34:50

why would you do this? What I love

34:53

about your business is you understand

34:56

how much money is at stake. You understand the

34:58

customer base really well. And

35:00

now you just got to understand how marketplaces work.

35:03

We've invested in a couple. We

35:05

have one that matched drivers

35:08

of cars, passengers of

35:10

cars that did well. We had one

35:13

that did service providers with homeowners, thumbtack.

35:15

We have one meow towel. Meow towel matches

35:19

people who own cats and cat

35:21

sitters. We have another

35:23

one called gigster. It matches spaces where

35:25

you could go rent a pool, a

35:27

tennis court or a location

35:29

shoot by the hour

35:32

for a photo shoot or a movie. They're

35:34

crushing it with people who want to rent a

35:37

pickle book or who want to, you know, make

35:39

a movie or a television commercial or social media

35:41

influence stuff. We've got another

35:43

one that takes diamonds from

35:45

all different sources, puts

35:47

them into a marketplace called Stone Alabel. We

35:50

love a good marketplace. We've got

35:52

the playbook. We're your partners.

35:55

One of the things we try to do is introduce

35:59

you to people maybe who. who are one, two,

36:01

three, four, five years ahead of you in

36:03

deploying these marketplace strategies and who are non-competitive,

36:06

and let's face it, it's

36:08

not like there's gonna be 20 of these startups coming to our

36:11

accelerator next year. This is true. All

36:13

right, good luck with it. Thank you, sir. Being

36:16

a founder can be overwhelming. I know it,

36:19

you know, I get those phone calls on

36:21

the weekend. Sometimes people are a little overwhelmed,

36:23

they need to talk to JCal, they got

36:26

my phone number. I know the reason why.

36:28

There's 100 different things you're responsible for. You

36:30

gotta take care of your office space or

36:32

remote workers, HR, software, raising money, products, customers,

36:35

it never ends. And I know you just

36:37

wanna focus on your product and your customers.

36:39

Well, fortunately, Mercury is here to help simplify

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37:18

Let's have our next founder.

37:21

Man, two shrunk companies, Prash, you can make my life hard if I only

37:23

pick one of them. All right, next up,

37:26

Alex from Zweely. Let's keep this train moving.

37:28

Hi, Jason, how are you? I'm

37:30

well. Three, two, go.

37:33

Hi, I'm Alex Hanna, founder and CEO of

37:35

Zweely. We help you run an awesome business

37:37

by giving you all the tools you need

37:39

in one place. Meet

37:41

Emily. Emily's two-person consulting firm

37:43

is bogged down by overpriced,

37:46

complicated software with scattered data.

37:49

Running a business takes many tools. Emily

37:51

starts with one and the cost just adds up.

37:54

Connecting them together also costs more.

38:00

It's really across integrates tools like

38:02

tasks, emails, presentations,

38:06

CRM, and much more. We

38:10

launched March 2024 and have six customers

38:12

with over 4,000 in AR

38:15

and five products and more on the way.

38:21

We offer bundling with savings for three or

38:23

more subscriptions. Products range from $15

38:25

to $100 a month and without fees for seats. So

38:30

these customers end up saving an

38:32

average of 50 to 80% based

38:34

on competitor posted pricing. We

38:39

target freelancers, small business owners, and

38:41

startup founders using LinkedIn and Word

38:43

of mouth for growth. To

38:46

hit $10 million in AR, we need 4,167 SMBs at 200

38:48

MR. I'm

38:54

a two-time technical founder with John, a

38:56

marketing expert, and Hashi, a business consultant

38:58

on my founding team. We

39:01

are Sweely and we help you run an awesome business

39:03

by giving you all the tools you need in one

39:05

place. Great. Well done.

39:07

Have you raised venture capital before? On

39:10

my last one, yes, private equity, not VC. Oh,

39:13

private equity, got it. Have you had a

39:15

successful exit defined as selling a

39:18

company to another company and returning capital

39:21

to the investors or equity in the next company?

39:23

No, not the last one. How

39:26

many co-founders do you have? This

39:28

one, two other ones. Two

39:31

other ones? How many of the

39:33

three are technical and writing code for

39:35

this product or otherwise doing the UX

39:37

design? I'm the only one. What are

39:40

the two other people's expertise in the

39:43

world? Are

39:46

they exceptional ones? One

39:48

of them is business development

39:51

and sales. The other one

39:53

is marketing, social media marketing.

39:55

Got it. Perfect. Great.

39:58

Okay. sales person, a

40:00

tech person. Nice trio. Which

40:03

customer? Just tell me a description of the

40:05

customer who's getting the most value, who's the

40:07

most addicted, who's giving you the most great

40:09

feedback out of these five or six

40:11

customers you got to describe them. Yeah,

40:15

we have a, I had a

40:17

customer about two weeks ago who just

40:19

sent a referral video like a

40:21

recommendation and he was like, he

40:23

loves the customer support from me. It's like,

40:25

that's what number one. Okay, that's what he

40:27

loves. What does he love about the

40:29

product and what is his business? Describe

40:32

who does for a business. True. So

40:34

he's a sales director for a company

40:37

called Becoming Institute. They offer therapy

40:40

to universities, colleges,

40:43

and using CRM, he was using Isell

40:45

spreadsheet and he's using CRM to keep

40:47

track of all his leads. Got

40:50

it. So you think your beachhead market

40:52

is people who have service businesses, perhaps

40:54

who have customers who have to be

40:56

managed and then everything that's downstream of

40:58

that. And the current

41:00

collection of CRM, like Salesforce is awesome.

41:02

Everybody loves Salesforce. There's a bunch of

41:05

other contemporaries in that space. Of

41:07

course, there's HubSpot and other tools.

41:10

But you think you think carbon-ish because you

41:12

will be cheaper and better. Am I

41:15

correct? Yeah. Yes. It's not

41:17

necessarily cheaper, but all these other

41:19

companies don't have that center-led

41:22

support, but also they're

41:24

very bloated. That's what we're hearing. People

41:27

just don't want all the bells and whistles. Got

41:30

it. So you want to build a

41:32

tighter collection of software modules that

41:34

are easier to use. Exactly. So

41:37

simplicity is really important here. Zendesk was one

41:39

of those companies that tried to simplify. All

41:42

right. Well done, Alex. Thank you. Thank you. All

41:44

my questions for you. We saw three great companies here. All

41:48

three of them have their product in market. All three

41:50

of them have a couple of customers. Kind of our

41:52

sweet spot, if I'm being honest. Rank

41:55

these three in order

41:58

of how much money And

42:02

the likelihood of, the likelihood

42:05

they could be 100x. So

42:07

we're investing in them in our

42:09

accelerator, whatever, making

42:12

some small bets and then bigger bets. Let's

42:14

assume we invest in them. Which one has the most

42:16

likely chance to return 100 times our money,

42:18

which is what our LPs are entrusting us to

42:21

do, is to find in every 25 or

42:23

50 companies, a company that will return 100x? That's

42:26

the math of what we do. I think I'll

42:28

pick Propz.ai to

42:31

return. Okay, great. And

42:33

then who's second? Oh,

42:35

second, I'll go with Zweely

42:38

and third, SecondhandGeek. Got

42:41

it. Okay. And I can only pick

42:43

one of these companies to invest in.

42:45

That's the hard part here for me. And

42:49

all three of them are worthy of investing.

42:52

Oh, wait a second. I can do whatever

42:54

I want. I

42:56

can invest in all three if I want to. All

42:59

right, Propz, you know what? Get these guys

43:01

the paperwork. I'll invest in all three.

43:04

That's my decision. I feel like

43:06

all three of these companies are worthy of

43:08

investment. So let's get going. Let's figure out where

43:11

in our program they want to go to.

43:13

Let's get the diligence done. We've got to do diligence. All

43:16

this is pending due diligence. I'd like to place a bet

43:18

on each one, small bet. Grow up

43:20

because they're very early stage. And let's see

43:22

if they can hit a series of milestones. Let's bring

43:24

our three founders back for a second here. And I

43:26

will let them ask me one tight

43:29

question each. One tight question each about startups

43:32

and being a founder. So take a moment to

43:34

think it through. Raise your hand when you've got

43:36

your question locked and loaded. Okay,

43:38

Alex, your question. Keep it concise. Yeah.

43:42

You've had other companies before. So

43:44

how do you navigate the GSA

43:46

strategy while staying true to your

43:48

vision, considering all the constant changes

43:50

that may occur daily? Okay.

43:53

Mission, strategy, tactics.

43:56

Okay. The

43:58

mission for your future. firm is

44:01

to help small businesses operate more

44:03

efficiently, whatever it is, to

44:06

help your businesses

44:08

become profitable. You have to figure out what that

44:10

North Star mission is. Let's

44:12

just say we want to help small

44:14

businesses grow faster and profitably.

44:18

Well, that leaves any piece of software

44:20

you can build or service you can

44:22

create on the table. That

44:25

gives you permission with the mission with your team to

44:27

say, hey, we're here to help

44:29

people hit profitability and to help them

44:32

run a more efficient business that

44:34

grows fast. We're going to help you

44:36

run your business more efficiently, grow faster,

44:38

and grow profit specifically. If

44:41

you set that mission, well, then

44:43

strategy becomes pretty easy because you just make a

44:45

list of here are all the different products people

44:47

told us they want. We did

44:50

customer interviews with a dozen people. This is what those

44:52

dozen people told us was important to them. Then

44:55

we did second meetings with those 12 people.

44:58

It doesn't have to be a ton of customer interviews who used

45:00

our product. Man, four of

45:02

them said CRM was

45:04

really important, but sequencing tools and

45:08

prospecting and finding the next lead were

45:10

like they're really acute problems. We built

45:12

a software and human

45:15

service that allowed us to help

45:17

them get more leads and tell them these are the 10 people they

45:19

should go after next, whatever it is. Then

45:23

you can just move things up and down the strategy

45:25

pole and just watch engagement and do that. Now, tactics,

45:27

they're going to change frequently. Mission

45:29

doesn't change. If you change the

45:31

mission, it's like, well, are we shutting the

45:34

company down? Are we getting permission from our

45:36

investors to pivot hard here?

45:38

That's a hard pivot to change the entire mission of the

45:40

company. Second piece,

45:42

strategy, well, that's just something that would

45:44

change quarterly, maybe every

45:46

couple of quarters. Tactics

45:48

could change weekly. Hey, we're

45:50

going to try this week knocking

45:54

on doors and physically going to storefronts.

45:57

Next week, we're going to try inviting

45:59

people to a webinar. The week after we're going

46:01

to try cold calling, the week after we're going to do

46:03

email sequences. So you say, okay, this month we're going to

46:05

try four different sales strategies. We're going to

46:07

push as hard as we can on each and then we'll

46:09

figure out which one works. Then that moves into a strategy.

46:11

You try different tactics, you move into a strategy. So

46:13

just keep that framework that I talk about often. MST,

46:18

mission strategy tactics. Your

46:21

team can change the tactics anytime they want.

46:23

You can empower them just to say, hey, listen, you can

46:26

try all kinds of different tactics you want, just don't

46:28

do anything unethical, moral, et cetera.

46:31

Leave that to guys, and CIA, doing stuff.

46:36

We have some gray areas we can work, operate in

46:38

that you can't. And

46:40

then strategy, well, we have to have a thought out

46:42

meeting about that because that's a quarterly, making a big

46:45

plan. And mission, you're not touching that,

46:47

obviously. Rank and file aren't touching the mission. Okay,

46:49

great job. Thank you. Peter, you got a

46:51

question? You don't have to. Yeah. Keep

46:54

it tight. Keep it tight. At

46:57

the early stage of a company, when

46:59

we're talking to customers every day and

47:01

building real relationships, at

47:04

our stage, we're onboarding everyone personally

47:06

at the moment and having regular conversations

47:08

with them. When

47:11

you also mentioned pivots, how

47:13

do you balance supporting

47:16

those early adopters and those initial customers

47:18

that you build really deep relationships with,

47:20

with new opportunities that arise

47:23

to serve a wider audience of

47:25

customers? Yeah,

47:27

you're going to have to figure out who your ideal customer

47:29

profile is. Great question. You'll figure

47:31

that out over time. Typically, customers will

47:33

fall into buckets, right? And

47:36

so we did that with startups. There are startups at the

47:38

early stage like yours that come to Founder University, and they're

47:40

trying to figure out if there's a business here and how

47:42

to get customers. They may or may not be incorporated. We

47:44

have the accelerator. You all are kind

47:47

of accelerator. Moving into the accelerator phase, hey,

47:49

I got five, I got 10, I got 10. 3K

47:53

a month, 10K a month in revenue. I need to accelerate

47:55

this. I need to get a proper seed round of a

47:57

million to $3 million done. but

48:00

then there's like growth after that. So bucketing your

48:02

customers and then understanding those personas. And this

48:04

is stuff that's been going on in sales

48:06

for a long time. And then figuring

48:08

out what, why

48:11

they use your product and what the sales pitch is to

48:13

them. So for you guys

48:16

in founder university, you

48:18

wanna get to know our team, you might want

48:20

help on growth, you might want

48:22

help with strategy, figuring out how the businesses

48:25

work, asking hard questions, getting some knowledge. When

48:28

you move into the next phase, in your

48:30

like a seed stage company from this pre-seed

48:32

stage to seed stage, you might be asking

48:34

us, hey, how do I double my revenue

48:36

every month? And how do I find a

48:39

great sales manager or first

48:41

sales person? You got a different set

48:43

of needs that are more operational. And then you might have

48:45

scaling needs from us. And you might have

48:47

fundraising needs from us. So we can craft

48:49

products, founder university launch accelerator

48:52

or direct investing or our syndicate for

48:54

each of those early stage moments. So you'll

48:56

do the same. There might be somebody who's

48:58

a startup with two people using

49:00

your product and you're gonna grow

49:02

with them. They're not gonna be

49:05

hard to service. They're gonna only

49:07

have like a small number of jobs running,

49:09

who knows? And it might be series

49:11

A people who are already been spending a million, spending

49:13

a million dollars a year for the last two years.

49:16

They might take longer to make a decision, but they

49:18

might make a bigger decision. They might

49:20

want more white glove service. And then there's

49:23

giant companies that might be a three to

49:25

six month sale cycle. So you have

49:27

to pick and learn about each of those different customer

49:29

segments, right? And then decide which one you're gonna focus

49:31

on and which order. Perfect example, Uber

49:33

went after Lincoln town cars, the highest

49:35

and highest margin elite service,

49:38

VC CEO showing up at the

49:40

airport with the person at baggage claim

49:42

with their name. And they walk up and they

49:45

get out of business class and they hand the

49:47

person their bag and they get back on their

49:49

phone and pound out some messages, got

49:51

the earpiece in and they're not

49:54

going after like the family on a

49:56

budget spirit airlines and coach looking

49:59

to get them. minivan and save money and you know,

50:01

that kind of thing, right? And they want to

50:04

add three extra people even though it can only

50:06

fit five. It was critically

50:08

important for Uber to do that because those

50:10

customers were profitable from day one, massively

50:13

profitable. UberX customers, modestly

50:15

profitable. UberPool or Lifline and those

50:18

kind of things, not profitable. So

50:20

you have to make that decision who you're going to go after

50:22

first. The big customers might take a long time and you don't

50:24

have the time to do that. The small customers

50:27

might not ring the register enough. And so maybe

50:29

it's, you know, what was the

50:31

par just too hot,

50:35

too cold, just right? Goldilocks.

50:39

Goldilocks. You got to find your Goldilocks

50:41

customers. Boom. Okay. Last question,

50:44

Alan. With

50:46

all the experience that you guys have

50:48

with marketplaces, what do you think

50:50

is either the best piece of

50:52

software or partnership to

50:54

have in trying to create a

50:56

scalable marketplace? I

50:59

think you got to really, you know, and there's a

51:01

group of people who say you got to have the

51:03

customers and then the supply, you know, the demand, the

51:05

supply side takes care of itself. The

51:07

truth is in talking to Travis long times about

51:09

this, you got to have a certain amount of supply.

51:11

And in your case is a

51:14

long tail of supply. So I'd really work

51:16

on supply. Once you get some supply cranking,

51:18

you can fake demand. How do you fake

51:20

demand? You got 20 important customers

51:22

putting stuff on there. You create 20

51:24

accounts with your friends, your team, whatever,

51:26

and you buy one item or two

51:28

items from them, you know, each

51:31

month. Now they're like, Oh, wow, people are buying our stuff. And

51:33

you take it, you resell it on your own platform, whatever, you

51:35

know, and you just get them used to,

51:37

Oh my God, they got a booking, they got a sale,

51:39

right? And the way Uber did

51:41

this famously was they went to some mid-sized cab companies

51:43

when they opened in LA, my understanding, and they said,

51:46

Hey, we'll pay you for 10 drivers

51:48

on the road, 24 hours a

51:50

day, this amount of money, all you

51:52

gotta do is put these phones in your cabs. Can

51:55

we buy that from you now? We'll pay you upfront. And

51:58

the guest comes like, yeah, dummy. We'll

52:01

take a guaranteed payment and they just bought

52:03

out the 10 cars, boom. They had venture money to do that,

52:05

so it was no big deal. There's equivalence here for you, where

52:08

I explained it earlier. I think

52:10

it's really about getting the great

52:12

supply. Then you could

52:14

always buy ads. You could

52:17

buy Google ads. You could make YouTube

52:19

videos of what's for sale and then

52:21

amplify those. You

52:24

could do content marketing and say, hey, here

52:26

are the five coolest items in the marketplace

52:28

this week. These ones are really

52:30

good value and have a great price. We think these

52:32

ones, maybe you want to put an offer in

52:34

for 10% less. You

52:37

can juice the marketplace, but it all starts

52:39

with, in your case, a decent amount of

52:41

supply that people can peruse,

52:43

right? Does that make sense? Yep, nope, perfect sense.

52:45

I'm happy to be on the adventure with you

52:47

and put you in touch with some of these

52:49

great marketplace founders who might be able

52:51

to give you some tips. I

52:54

really think when you got to

52:56

set an unrealistic, I

52:59

want 10,000 items in this marketplace by May

53:01

1st, and then you get to May 1st or I'm sorry, June

53:03

1st. Then on June 1st, you say to

53:05

your team, hey, listen, we got to 7,000. We

53:07

didn't get to 10, we got to 7. Now I want to get

53:09

to 25 based on our lessons here. This

53:12

is just unrealistic sometimes when you were in

53:14

the s*** and put that out in Kuwait.

53:17

Sometimes somebody gave you an order

53:20

that two guys in the square were like, that's

53:22

not possible. Your job is a leader to say,

53:24

yeah, okay, on the surface, perhaps not.

53:27

Let's get creative, right? Give

53:29

me some ideas here, folks. No

53:31

is not an option. We got to take a shot

53:33

at this. The odds are long. There's

53:36

a certain amount of risk involved here. Let's

53:38

get creative. Let's figure out if we can figure it

53:40

out, right? I always like to set

53:43

those unrealistic goals. I told my team I want 100

53:45

meetings, introductory meetings per week. I

53:50

got so much pushback. Did I get pressure? A

53:54

lot, yeah. How many did we do last

53:56

week? 60,

53:59

yeah. Yeah, 60. Okay, so we're almost

54:01

there. We have 60. When I tell LPs

54:03

we did, we're doing, we're on pace to do 3000 meetings

54:05

a year, and

54:08

put them in our database, people are like, Whoa,

54:10

that's a lot of meetings. And I say, Yeah,

54:12

and you know, the denominator is 20,000 applications. And

54:15

so I keep pushing and pushing, and we're going

54:17

to hit 100 meetings. In the

54:19

next couple of weeks, I think we have a we

54:21

have three more researchers coming on board. So if

54:24

two of them click and do a good job, we'll hit my

54:26

goal of 100. Now that I set that goal

54:29

a year ago, but here we are, and

54:31

mission accomplished. And so it's going to

54:33

be great to be in business with all of you. I hope we can work

54:35

all these details out. If you

54:38

are a founder, and you're listening, we

54:40

are passionate about helping founders like Peter,

54:42

like Alex, like Alan, we're passionate about

54:44

rolling up our sleeves at launch at

54:47

founder dot university at the launch accelerator.

54:49

And this week in startups, of course,

54:51

we want to help you succeed. Most

54:54

startups fail. We know this going in,

54:56

we don't mind. We're

54:58

okay with failure. We just want to

55:00

work really hard alongside driven people who

55:03

are accountable and set really great

55:05

goals. If that's you apply,

55:08

if you want a bunch of money, you want

55:10

to hand out you don't have any skill, please

55:13

go to apply that y combinator calm

55:15

apply somewhere else apply go to

55:17

techstars.com/apply. If you're hardcore, like pressure

55:19

and IR and the founders are today

55:21

and you really want to win and you want to work

55:23

hard and you're willing to work 6070 hours a week if

55:26

checking your email and pushing code on the weekends and

55:28

at 1am you're waking up getting

55:30

out of bed to write that extra email and

55:33

hire that extra person and you want to win

55:35

if you're part of the 1% of founders that

55:38

really pushes hard and we invest in one

55:40

at 200. So it's really 50 bps. One

55:43

in 200 we invest in, you can apply

55:45

at launch.co/apply launch.co/apply that is

55:48

our global application, correct? crush.

55:50

That's the one place we

55:52

to Yep. You

55:54

can go to founder dot university to learn

55:57

more about the program. You

55:59

can go to launch.co to learn more about our

56:01

firm. We also have a syndicate the syndicate.com 11,000

56:03

members over 4000 of them have

56:06

made an investment in a startup so far. On

56:09

average, they invest these high net worth individuals $7,000

56:11

each. On average,

56:14

they put in 500 to 750k into startups. So we offer our startups,

56:18

if they're hitting certain goals, and it's a quality

56:20

company to syndicate

56:23

to the syndicate after our fund has

56:25

made their investment decision to separate entities.

56:27

So we really work hard for our

56:29

founders. And you'll see them many

56:31

times on this week in startups. We

56:34

love what we do. We're looking for passionate,

56:36

hardworking people with skills that you,

56:39

you know what to do. We'll see you all

56:41

next time on this week starts. Bye

56:43

bye. Okay, everybody, I want to tell

56:45

you about founder Fridays. What are founder

56:47

Fridays, this is an opportunity for you

56:49

if you're a founder to get together

56:51

with a half dozen a dozen other

56:53

founders on a Friday, the first Friday

56:55

of every month. Why is this important?

56:57

Well, if you meet with other founders,

56:59

you can talk about the things that

57:01

are working at your startup and the things you're

57:04

struggling with everything else in between. And then

57:06

you can trade notes, and you can make

57:08

friends. It's really hard to be a founder,

57:10

isn't it? You're alone all the time. You've

57:13

got to solve all these problems. And other

57:15

founders are having the same experience you're having.

57:17

It's isolating, it can be scary. It can

57:20

be thrilling. And people don't understand what you're

57:22

going through. If you go to a dinner

57:24

party, and there's one founder and seven other

57:26

people, you feel like a mutant, you

57:28

feel like somebody who doesn't belong there. Nobody understands

57:31

why you're doing your startup, why you're

57:33

taking this risk, the problems you're

57:35

facing, right? They're NPCs. This is

57:37

a non NPC event. Every

57:39

first Friday of the month, we do founder

57:41

Fridays, we're doing them now in 71 different

57:43

cities. And if this sounds appealing to you,

57:45

well, you're a founder and you want to

57:47

hang out with maybe seven other founders around

57:49

a roundtable, you can have breakfast, you can

57:51

have lunch, you can have dinner, you can

57:53

have coffee, you can co work, dinner, however

57:55

you want to do it. And it's free.

57:57

We've been doing this for a couple of

58:00

We've had 71 meetups around the world and 929

58:02

founders have joined. I

58:06

want you to join and I want you to come to the

58:08

next one. It's Friday, May 3rd. Now if

58:10

your city is not on the list, what

58:12

are you going to do? You're going to

58:14

apply to run your city with two or

58:16

three other founders. Again, for founders by founders.

58:19

From the number one podcast

58:21

for founders, this weekend startups,

58:23

comes founderfridays.tech. Go

58:25

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58:27

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58:30

give like a little prompt. And

58:32

this founder Friday taking place on May 3rd,

58:34

we want you to bring two things with

58:36

you. Your most significant

58:38

challenge and one thing you wish you'd

58:40

learned earlier. We're going to go around

58:42

the table and each person is going

58:44

to do that. And then you'll get

58:46

feedback from your peers. It's incredible. It's

58:48

magical. And we don't want this to

58:50

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58:52

small. So if you plan on going

58:54

and you're interested and it sounds appealing

58:57

to you, just go to founderfridays.tech.

59:01

Great domain name. Founderfridays.tech. And

59:03

please take pictures and then share those

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59:10

You could be in San Francisco, New

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York, Chicago, LA, Paris, Tokyo, Dubai. These

59:14

things are happening all over the world.

59:17

Again, 71 cities. Let's get it to

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100 cities. We've got over

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59:26

you'll be in touch with my team and we'll see

59:28

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59:30

founderfridays.tech.