Microscopy Wearables, Edu-Fintech, D2C Delivery & more startup ideas

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It's another episode of Unfiltered! Rachel Sheppard (FI Global Marketing Manager), Mike Suprovici (FI Head of Portfolio Success), and Dustin Betz (FI Content Manager) review startup ideas and pull no punches. Together, they bring decades of startup experience advising hundreds of early-stage companies. In this Unfiltered series, the FI HQ team’s experience come through as raw and #unfiltered feedback on YOUR startup ideas at all stages of development.

Here is an overview of this #Unfiltered episode’s startup ideas:

• Boze (Los Angeles): My company Micro Eyewear Inc. is developing eyewear enabled with microscopic vision, to help scientific professionals see at Micro and Nano scale 24/7, as needed on demand. We’re reinventing the microscope into a wearable technology.
• Joe (Dayton): My software startup, Flourish, uses machine learning to analyze videos for aspiring Youtube personalities and offers suggestions to improve their watchability. This includes comparing audio patterns, physical movements, cuts, etc, versus a database of successful Youtubers.
• John (Curitiba): My company, Swium, is developing a marketplace to help podcasters to monetize their content. By submitting their media kit, the podcasters will be connected with advertisers. These advertisers can buy ad spots, which is currently a tricky and time-consuming process, and often requires technical proficiency from the advertiser’s end.
• Oliver (Berlin): My company is developing a platform to help VC analysts search for more dealflow with an algorithm that searches through news sources and public incorporation documents. Through this, we can determine each company’s sector, location, and other vital information for analysts.
• Ashlyn (Seattle): My startup is building an equity crowdfunding platform for university students, solving the issue of abusive student loans by enabling working professionals to crowdfund student loans. Crowdfunders will be able to conduct due diligence by viewing students’ high school application information.
• Claudio (San Francisco): My company (Fastell.io) is a food delivery service (think Uber Eats) to help intermittent fasters break their fast in a healthy way, by delivering stomach-friendly meals like juices, fruits, and bone broth. 
• Kenneth (Gothenburg): CabiBUS is developing a vehicle and modular system for sustainable mobility and parcel delivery with autonomous electric vehicles on-demand, a door to door service to help societies reach the goals for fossil free traffic. Our competitive advantage is a patent for a vehicle with separate passenger cabins, which can be repurposed for parcel deliveries.
• Brian (Pittsburgh): Martian Technologies designs intelligent control systems for missiles and rockets. We have struggled to secure contracts with the DoD and NASA, and we are considering shifting our business model strictly toward the development of a patent portfolio for intelligence, defense, and space technologies.

The following includes a full transcript from this Founder Insights podcast episode – these transcripts are produced by a third-party natural language processing algorithm, and are not checked word-for-word by humans for complete accuracy—so, there may be some errors or typos!  

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Rachel Sheppard  0:01 

Alright, welcome to our eighth episode of unfiltered. I'm Rachel Shepard, Director of Global Marketing here at Founder Institute. And I'm joined in the studio today by Mike super Vici and Dustin Betz. You guys wanna introduce yourselves?

 

Mike Suprovici  0:13 

Hi, everyone. My name is Mike super Vici. I'm the managing director of portfolio success here at the founder Institute. And our role is to help our alumni companies scale. And we try to do that at any way that we can. Sometimes we do that via one on one type of hand to hand combat help in any way. that's necessary. Other times we do it through various structure programs and things like that. So, you know, we manage a portfolio over 4000 company, so it's very likely that I've seen ideas or companies in pretty adjacent space, and I'm happy to share my thoughts on that.

 

Dustin Betz  0:48 

Yeah. And I'm Dustin Betz. I am the editor of the founder insights blog and newsletter and so I am really trying to help our early stage companies get exposure leverage, you know, some media that we gave them to Our blog with early traction in milestones and leverage that into earned media. Yep.

 

Rachel Sheppard  1:05 

Awesome. So together, we're going to run through some of the startup ideas we've received in the ideas at fit co inbox. Thank you to each of you who have said, sending your ideas in advance, we really appreciate that. And we're going to deliver some honest feedback. So an upfront morning, as always, the feedback will be blunt, direct, and unfiltered. Let's get started. So Boz from Los Angeles is the name of the company. No. Yeah. Yes. The person.

 

Dustin Betz  1:31 

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so,

 

Rachel Sheppard  1:34 

both from Los Angeles as my company micro eyewear Inc. is developing eyewear enabled with a microscopic vision to help scientific professionals see at micro and nano scale 24 seven as needed on demand. We're reinventing the microscope into a wearable technology.

 

Mike Suprovici  1:50 

Yeah, so it sounds pretty cool on the on on the surface, what the challenge with with products like this and I can tell you this, just from personal experience, you know, being early is the same as being wrong. Right? And so if whether it's in a pitch or whether it's just for you, yourself and and everybody on the team, you probably will need to have some sort of like a why now, type of, you know, whether it's in your pitch or whether it's just in general understanding. Because, you know, if, if the pathway to commercialization for a product like this takes five to 10 years does just not, you know, there's going to be other competitors, they're going to jump in. So if you've created some sort of technology that enables you to do this, great. But if you look at other companies in your space, particularly all the companies in your space that have failed, such as Google Glass and things like that, part of the reason for that it was just they were a little too early with us like the technology is very revolutionary. They try to go into you know, you know, healthcare applications and things like that. There was actually a company in the space that did exactly that. But you know, the form factor, the user behavior is just very, very difficult, right? So I'm not telling you not to do it, I think I hope that you can actually make this work. But just make sure that you have a very powerful like, Why now? Like, why are consumers or in your case, customers ready to adopt something like this? as well as obviously gives us even viable? Can you actually do this now.

 

Rachel Sheppard  3:23 

So the next step for him would be to to go back to his customers and start talking about if they're ready for something like this. So certainly,

 

Mike Suprovici  3:29 

you should talk to customers. And I also certainly think that, you know, you need to ensure that the development timeline of a product like this, as you know, is reasonable, you know, because you might just run out of time. In other words, you might run out of money. So, you know, can you actually pull this off quick enough to for the market to adopt it?

 

Dustin Betz  3:47 

Yeah. In addition to the Yeah, having that customer use case, I think making your IP defensible in some way, shape or form given the longer product lifecycle development will be really important for you to bring to market something like this is going to need to be done. festival.

 

Rachel Sheppard  4:01 

Fantastic, awesome. Alright next up Joe from Dayton says my software startup flourish uses machine learning to analyze videos for aspiring YouTube personalities and offer suggestions to improve their watch ability. This includes comparing audio patterns, physical movements, cuts, etc versus a database of successful YouTubers.

 

Mike Suprovici  4:22 

Yeah, so, so again, sounds like a really interesting concept. I think that in your case, what I would do is I would go very deep on kind of like the actual customer archetype for a solution like this. It's very likely that just given the limited information that I know about your pitch that it's it's very, you know, high end hardcore high end like YouTube influencers that have very, very large followings that would want to spend money on something like this. And if that's the case, then the way you price it the way you get this in front of them, that's gonna be fun. Mentally different than the way you would get it in front of say, like a hobbyist or a person that's just kind of trying to get started, and things like that. So they can improve, right? So if are you I would really, really try to hone in on who you're going after with this. You know, are you going after like the, you know, the high end like YouTube influencers that are trying to consistently add more and more people to their, you know, channel or are you going after folks that are just kind of starting out? I think that'll be a first up person.

 

Dustin Betz  5:28 

Yeah, I think, honing in on what their follower count is, yeah, what their real pain point needs are for somebody who's Yeah, if it's not that because selling to a really big YouTube influencer, somebody already has a huge audience I could imagine might be more like a b2b process, actually. Whereas if you go and you're really looking at the more user generated creative type content that's more organic, maybe on YouTube. Yeah, I think that their needs are going to be very, very different.

 

Mike Suprovici  5:55 

A lot of times with with, you know, with companies like this, it's it's it's more of a Like, the personality, right, like the personality of the influencers and things like that, and I'm just not sure that machine learning can fix that. Right. And so, you know, if they're, if you can be a little bit more specific, certainly within your pitch, but you know, just for your team and yourself like, what are some of the like, give me an example, right? Like the average YouTube, you know, follower does, or influencer has, you know, three commercial breaks and they introduced a sponsor this way, and they do this, this and that, and that has been proven to increase conversion by XYZ. This is a pattern that machine learning could actually like help with, you know, and so in that helps them drive traffic somehow if you can kind of connect that back. That'd be really helpful.

 

Rachel Sheppard  6:48 

Interesting. Alright, sounds good. JOHN from from kurta Chiba says my company swim is developing a marketplace to help podcasters to monetize their content. That's us by submitting their media kit, the pie casters will be connected with advertisers, these advertisers can buy ad spots, which is currently a tricky and time consuming process and often requires technical proficiency from the advertisers end.

 

Mike Suprovici  7:11 

Yeah, so this this is this is true. You know, it's still kind of like blue ocean right now with regards to podcasts in particular, like monetization and how you find sponsors. Usually, it's a pretty kind of like manual process, you need like an actual direct sales team in general, particularly the big podcasters where that that makes sense. And so, you know, I think you you might, you certainly might be onto something with that, you know, the, the key success to like a marketplace is is is match matching. Right? And so, what I would do in your pitch is two things. Number one, I would try not to use the word marketplace at all I would try to say, Hey, you know, we are developing a website that enables podcasters to solicit bids from advertisers. And I would even maybe even go more specific as a type of podcaster. But that would be a good good place to start. Because you know, marketplace can mean a lot of different things. And just you want to kind of make sure you let the person kind of understand what that is. And then you go in and try to actually say what the solve the problem is, right? It's like the average podcaster spends two hours a day on this and they have to spend as much money to hire a salesperson, right and so what we solve it by basically providing a website that allows people to solicit the type of advertisers that they need and insert them directly into the podcast. So you know, I will do that for you for your pitch I but that being said, I do think this is this, this is definitely a pretty viable and what I would do is, you know, really try to understand the entire ecosystem to understand how this would work with all the other podcast players. Like, you know, is it? Is there some special types of regulations that they work differently? Because all these people, unfortunately, all these people have different formats, you know, and different, like type of podcasts, right? So, you know, like, pitching, getting someone like, you know, our podcast to us it is very different process for you then to get like Tim Ferriss to use it who might not need it, right, because he's, you know, very popular podcast. So, something to think about as far as your go to market strategy, because that's going to affect the product that you develop, right? Like, you know, if your go to market strategy is going after like, you know, small podcasts are just kind of getting started, the way you acquire them is going to be very different than you're going after big ones. So just just a thought.

 

Dustin Betz  9:43 

Yeah, I don't really have too much to add. I also think that there's definitely opportunities in the space but yeah, be specific about Yeah, exactly. The audience size of the podcast here who, who hear this marketplace is going to facilitate ads for directly.

 

Mike Suprovici  9:58 

Yeah, it's kind of similar to this. That YouTube idea in that sense, right? Like you have to find out exactly what type of customer within that larger space is going to pay for your product and or need it to begin with. So I mean, I think you mentioned that it was the the the gentleman was from from Brazil, right. And so you know, podcasting and Portuguese versus podcasting and Spanish versus podcasting and English, you should in order to get the marketplaces are great if you can get them to scale, where most marketplaces fail is getting to scale. So it's really hard to like kind of seed, seed the seed these marketplaces and make them work. So in your case, the cool thing about a marketplace though, is that you don't really need a product, it's something that you can just do. So you can literally just start connecting people ideally, encourage cheeba where you're from just connecting like a very like top podcasts are great deebo with like you know, an advertiser and see what's going on how it works, right? And then, you know, do that until you can no longer do it. When you can no longer facilitate these transactions manually, then at that point, you know, maybe hire an intern, right and then have the intern help you. And then when the intern breaks and can't do it anymore, then at that point, maybe you can try adding like a some sort of like a tech solution to kind of help you and your intern be more efficient, right? And then when that breaks, then start building a little bit more tech and so something like that. And, you know, one thing you may want to do is listen to the masters of scale podcast with Brian chesky from Airbnb where they really talk about the kind of like the early days which was like super manual like this. Highly recommended for any entrepreneur listening to this that's considering building a marketplace.

 

Rachel Sheppard  11:46 

Fantastic. Alright, next up, Oliver from Berlin says my company's developing a platform to help VC analysts search for more deal flow with an algorithm that searches through new sources and public incorporation documents. Through this, we can determine each Company sector and location and other vital information for analysts.

 

Mike Suprovici  12:04 

Yeah, this is a, this is a pretty tough market, you know, for for a variety of for a variety of reasons. So it's really hard to find, like signal. Okay. So like the earlier the company is, the less information that's reliable that you can find. And by the time the companies get to a point where the information is good online, let's just say let's just use that for just the sake of this conversation. It's too late, because people have already got in, right. And so I guess, you what you're trying to solve the flawless that kind of summarizes How can you help VCs get in early into deals that are going to be good, essentially, and it's kind of like that the product that you're trying to build here, and it's a really challenging thing to do. You know, Just with based on data, right, just based on, on on things that you can crawl on the web, right? What I would do if I were you, at least in your pitch to make this a little bit more convincing is, give me an example of some signals that you have seen that correlate to potential company's success. Like, oh, we saw that this company, we crawled crunchbase. And we saw this company added a VP of operation from XYZ company. And we believe that that's something that should be surfaced and that surfaces to like the analyst and, and does that good. On the other hand of this, like, be careful, we're talking about VC analysts, right, because, you know, a lot of founders generally try not to chat with VC analysts, right. They try, they always try to talk to the partner because the partner has check writing abilities. And so I do think that while it's true that the VC analysts would be the number one user of this tool, it's probably like the managing director of the fund or the general partner, the GP That will benefit the most from this tool and who you will have to actually make the sale to so just just kind of kind of think about it like that but look you know you're onto something for sure like the big funds are already building this stuff internally so I think what you need to think about is okay, since the big funds are have already built this or are building something like this internally, you know, who are the next generation type of fund managers that make sense is there like a you know, a new fund manager with a $10 million fund for example that doesn't want to spend so much of their you know, fees on like, you know, on products like on building this out so I can just give them a tool so just kind of think about that when you when you go and build this out. So

 

Rachel Sheppard  14:46 

yeah, so like if they're state specific to like is a pre see your sorry, seed VC funds

 

Mike Suprovici  14:52 

are actually a really good point that you brought up because at each stage you have like different signal and the earlier you are, the worse the signal like honestly, I don't know that you can have actually do this at the pre seed stage, I mean, you might be able to, but there's just so little information because you're essentially pre traction with something like this, that it might be just challenging for you to kind of surface information and the type of info that you have is just so noisy, essentially, of like just so much information about like stuff that might not be relevant, that you might not be able to build like a, you know, you might not be able to find like, patterns essentially, right. But then at the seed and, and, you know, later seed stages, as more information becomes available, then you might be able to get this information, you might be able to be more accurate, but then the issue there is is like the competition, right? So, you know, you just got to be early enough. So the way I'll think about this for you, I would say how early Can you be before everybody jumps in right? Can you be like a month early, or maybe like a two months early before everybody jumps into this deal to know that is hot, and that could be the difference between winning or losing and then maybe it's worth it.

 

Rachel Sheppard  15:59 

That's it. Good point. So that basically puts a success metric on whether or not somebody needs your platform or not. Right? Because if they're if you're only like a week early, then is that worth anyone paying? You know?

 

Mike Suprovici  16:09 

Yeah, it might be I don't know, that's something that they would have to kind of look through.

 

Rachel Sheppard  16:13 

Awesome. All right, next up is Ashlyn from Seattle, my startup is building an equity crowdfunding platform for university students solving the issue of abuse of student loans by enabling working professionals to crowd fund student loans. crowdfunders will be able to conduct due diligence by viewing students High School application information.

 

Mike Suprovici  16:31 

So I guess the the part about this that's, that's a little confusing, is the equity component of this, you know, he talked about we're building an equity crowdfunding platform for like student debt now, you know, be in a pitch like this, you really got to be specific as if you're going to introduce that then you got to kind of have to talk about is like, Well, you know, here's what we do. We, we take a piece of the principal or something on this loan, and that is what enables the model to work. Otherwise, you're kind of in the, you know, like the GoFundMe kind of sector, right? Like, I'm just, I'm trying to crowdfund something for like a good cause. Right. And so like this, this is more like a model, like kind of like a model type of pitch. And I think it's kind of important for you to just at least give us a little bit information on that, that way we can give you like, like better feedback on this. I agree with you that this is this is a big problem. I worry that it's just a very difficult way for you to solve it. Because in order for you to solve something like this, right, you need to have an incredible amount of scale. So you need to have a lot of people that want to do this, right. It's this is hard enough to do for companies, by the way, like equity. crowdfunding is a very difficult like task. It works for certain companies, and sometimes it works really well but it's still very difficult. Like you need a very big pool of investors that want to do this right. And so now, what you're saying is I want to do this for like something that People are just not used to investing in like, at least with startups and companies, people are kind of used to investing in them because they maybe have invested in the stock market. Or maybe they've invested in some sort of like an ETF that holds a bunch of companies. So investing in companies investing in real estate, is something that people know about investing in loans, is a very challenging thing for people that are kind of wrap their heads around is like this is worth it, right? And so then there may be an investor for this type of security, let's call it that. But then that's a very different type of security, the type of investor it's most likely a very sophisticated investor that really understands how to finance debt, finance, you know, things like food, like obscure things, right. And so, you know, that's a, that's something to kind of think about, you know, as you as you kind of position this, you know, because those folks, maybe they don't need to have, maybe they don't need it, or maybe they don't want other people have access to this, right. So it's kind of it's a little confusing. So I think part of the reason you're getting this feedback that was mostly because you just didn't Explain the model well enough for us to really dive in on it.

 

Dustin Betz  19:02 

Yeah, I think the category that you want to explore more is like this income share agreement. Like there are a lot of people who are really interested in disrupting the financing of higher education and who see this as a really big, big problem in at least the American economy. So yeah, it's a big, big space. But I think like Mike was saying, I mean, honing in on maybe how this is going to be repaid back, basically, you know, how does this financial tool actually work? It's huge. But tapping in maybe to, like there is energy definitely, if you look into is a is into this income, share agreement type financing, and yeah, there's got to be communities out there. But I think you're going to have to tap into other people who are really interested in this, like Mike was saying, because there it's just a fundamentally like, it's pretty crowded. It's really complicated, but other people are interested. So you're going to need a lot of momentum. If there's going to be a bunch of investors, you know, getting pieces financing little pieces of your college education.

 

Rachel Sheppard  19:55 

Yeah, the first thing that came to my mind was the Kiva model. So Kiva, you know how like you usually you can Take like $50 that would just be sitting in your savings account and you put it towards a micro loan for somebody who's going to use it to make, you know, a, you know, a bunch of jackets and sell them in their local market in in like, you know, like Afghanistan or something like that like that's a model where you could sort of replicate that in this way and say like, you know, is it small loans? You know, are these people making small loans as professionals like if I have $100 I'm sitting on Can I give that to a student who could then pay me back later, but what is the payout rate look like and stuff like that. So I think we're all on the same page. We'd like to hear a little bit more about the how and the specificities of what this model looks like. Awesome. Claudio from San Francisco says my company fast stell festival i o is a food delivery service think Uber Eats to help intermittent fasters break their fast in a healthy way by delivering stomach friendly meals like juices, fruits and bone broth.

 

Mike Suprovici  20:58 

So the challenge with the business Like this, and just food delivery in general, but in particular for your business is that is this challenge of frequency. So in order for somebody to use Uber Eats on a regular basis, which is essentially what you would need for this business to have a shot at being sustainable, and if you actually look at the people in this business, it seems like it's not sustainable, like many of the big players that are kind of trying to do this independently right now are actually struggling. And because the cost of customer acquisition typically is much higher than the lifetime value of the customer. So in order for you to build a business that works like this, though, you basically need repeat usage, right? You need like people to constantly be using, like the app to go and deliver two to three times a week this way it becomes a habit. It's really difficult for you to build a habit or have to create a habit forming product unless the product is being used on a regular basis just becomes part of your life. And the challenge that you have with this is that intermittent fasting, you know, may happen, like, you know, usually most people will do these type of intermittent fasting things, maybe one, like, for a small part of their life, maybe it's like for, you know, a month, maybe it's for three months, sometimes sometimes is less, depending on how you The, the, I guess the, the program that you're following, right? And so this is kind of something to think about, you know, it's like, you know, is that is that, like, are you able to generate enough frequency for something like this? And are people going to want to use this type of product to basically break their fast on a on a regular basis? Or can they just use like a smoothie or something, you know, right away and just bring that with them, like the people that that that I know that do it, for example, they'll just have something with them to basically break that fast at like 5pm or whatever that that time is. So I think frequency is kind of a challenge here. And again, so you've got like a double whammy, right? You've got like a new going into a market that's very difficult to work. So you have to essentially charge more. And so you have to kind of figure out, could people that are intermittent fasting will indeed be charging a lot more I'm talking like two x more if not three x more than what, like Uber Eats a charge. Right. And, you know, then you adding this whole entire, you know, thing on it, right. So, you know, in startups, you know, one of the things we say here at the founder Institute is that you only get like one miracle, like, when you have multiple miracles and your startup, the startup will fail. So in other words, like, you know, maybe the miracle is, is that the market is big enough, but then there's another miracle where the revenue model needs to work and and maybe there's another miracle that I don't know like that the you know, technology can support this, right? There's too many miracles right? Like you just need one miracle. And then if you can fix that it can work. So just think about that. When you think through this idea.

 

Dustin Betz  23:56 

On the plus side, I think that the the niche kind of user case makes this interesting that it is specifically for intimate and fasters that, you know, in the word intermittent, there's some time period of whatever is in between. I don't know that much about intermittent fasting, but I like how specific the use cases and I can sort of imagine building a direct to consumer brand where, you know, maybe it's a ghost kitchen or whatever, where, like, you're actually producing this stuff, too. And maybe that makes the unit economics somehow work. So

 

Mike Suprovici  24:24 

yeah, I mean, I like the nice idea to but then you're trying to get people to actually also, you know, at the you're trying to get people to like, like order of this food, and you know, when it's coming and all this and like the timing aspect of it, and it's like, I want to break my fast like 5pm and then the Uber Eats gets there like a 430 or 445 and have to sit there and like watch it was like, it's like you've got so many like things that are like difficult about this, you know, that creates like a very difficult business opportunity

 

Rachel Sheppard  24:56 

or worse, what if it's delayed right? You're supposed to break your fast an hour earlier. But yeah, it sounds like a risky assessment tests might be next. Right? So

 

Mike Suprovici  25:08 

yeah, in a very specific audience to for example, like, you know, maybe you can target people that are going through like Ramadan. Right. And that is kind of forced upon folks and then you can like really go after that audience.

 

Rachel Sheppard  25:24 

Fantastic. All right. KENNETH from Gothenburg said cabbie bus is developing a vehicle and modular system for sustainable mobility and personal delivery with autonomous electric vehicles on demand a door to door service to help societies reach the goals for fossil free traffic. Our competitive advantage is a patent for a vehicle with separate passenger cabins, which can be repurposed for personal deliveries.

 

Mike Suprovici  25:49 

So I love kind of like what you're trying to, like do here. I think it's like important. I think you're trying to do too much stuff. And when you trying to do too much stuff. It's just really difficult for you to execute. You know, one of the biggest advantages that you have as a startup is that you can do one thing and you do that extremely well. All of your competitors are so big that they're like, already kind of unfocused, they're working on other things. And, but even so, I mean, we just got done talking about like, Uber Eats, right? Like, if you look at like, what percentage of Uber is businesses, Uber Eats, I think it's like in the single digits or something like that percentage. I don't, I haven't looked at their s ones lately. But like, it's just it's, it's a it's a very small subset of the business, right? So they're basically it's still the one thing that's going to work. So it's either going to be like the passenger thing or like the delivery thing that's ultimately going to be the thing that's going to work for you. Even though like the idea can scale to this right. So narrowing this down would be would be really, really helpful. Another thing is that you're not really solving a problem for a market. You actually can't like like I want to solve global warming. I mean, one person, one company can solve global warming and even if they wanted to, right? You solve a problem for a customer archetype, right? So this is like a person that or an entity that will give you money for your vehicle, right? And so as you build your, your, your, your, your pitch and like all of your tests and things like that, you want to kind of start with the customer in mind. So who's a customer? Is that like the school district? Is it like, you know, is it Amazon? Right? That may need something like this, and then go into like, Is it your cities? Yeah, yeah, it's like a city, right? And then that affects everything that you do, right. Like, you know, Rachel just talked about the Smart City. Example, right, the sale cycle on a smart city. It's like 12 to 24 months to close one, right? So can you sustain that long, right? I've not, you don't have a business, right. But if you do that, maybe that's good. Because then you have luck. And you're in that city for like the rest of your business's life essentially, right? Because you're, they're not going to rip it out. So just something to think about as you kind of build this out.

 

Rachel Sheppard  28:01 

Awesome. Okay, we've got one more. Brian from Pittsburgh says Martian technologies designs, intelligent control systems for missiles and rockets. We have struggled to secure contracts with the God and NASA and we are considering shifting our business models strictly towards the development of a patent portfolio for intelligence, defense and space technologies.

 

Mike Suprovici  28:21 

Um, well, I think that just because you struggle with NASA, that doesn't mean that there aren't other customers out there. I mean, I think if you were to look at it, like holistically, space is arguably the biggest market in the world, because it's space, you know,

 

Dustin Betz  28:38 

literally, virtually,

 

Mike Suprovici  28:41 

and you're going to start seeing a lot more launches a lot more things like that coming out, right. And so, if you are developing a system to help smart missiles, right, there's conceivably going to be very many like launches and things like that they're going to happen and maybe there's private operators that that can make sense. In addition You know, a lot of these folks that are trying to win contracts with NASA and things like that usually need a much more like complete end to end solution. And it's very rare that like the satellite provider also has like the launch component or the launch component has like the satellite provider, but you kind of need all of them to basically win this like proposal for NASA. So maybe your customer potential customer could be like, you know, someone that's that's trying to win on one of these bids, and actually has a realistic shot at winning it. And what you can do with your thing is help them make that better, like and how do you do that? Well, I don't know. Because I don't you haven't gone into specifics, but let's say you're able to help them test out certain things faster so they can get the space faster, or, you know, you're able to like reduce their costs because you're able to kind of pick like a very specific flight pattern that reduces fuel consumption by XYZ or something like that. And I helped them went to bed, right and so and then right then all of a sudden, instead of using going directly to NASA or whoever or the God or whatever, maybe you go into, like the 20 companies that are competing for the bid and you try to get them to work with you, right? And then now you just expanded kind of like your customer base. And I don't even know if it's 20 companies, maybe it's six, but it's still it's a potentially bigger pool as instead of like to, right, and so just just something, just something to think about, you know, the pen portfolio thing is a tough is is kind of a tough business, right? Because you're kind of like now no longer and the product business, which seems to be like a core competency, otherwise, you probably wouldn't have gone down this path. You're kind of gonna have to shift your core competency from doing that into basically being like a really good lawyer that just litigates the hell out of people. When somebody quote unquote violates your patent in other words, you basically become a patent troll right? And that's, that's a tough like business to be in all those you know, it can be it can be very lucrative. And so like, you know, That's more like something that you want to ask yourself. And this is really just general advice now for like everybody that's like listening to this not, you know, not just you in particular, but it as a founder, you know, you want to make sure that you can work on this business for the next five to 10 years of your life. And part of that is who you're working with, who are your customers? Who do you want to what do you want to wake up every day and and and deal with right and so if you don't liking like working with a very specific customer archetype You know, that's, that's not that's kind of suboptimal for you because like the worst thing that can happen for all of you on this call, or on this podcast is the to actually have a somewhat successful business. And you're four years in you've raised money, you have employees, and you're like, I don't want to do this. I don't like working with this customer. I hate this customer. I hate waking up every single day and trying to close this like deal with this annoying customer that a deal is but you can't get out. Right? You can't get out because you've got investors You've got customers, you've got people that, you know, rely on you. And so you need to kind of have these like, kind of like, you know, conversations, you know, like soul searching, whatever you want to call it in this kind of like formation stage. And also when you're trying to consider a pivot like this person is, is trying to do right now. Right? This isn't worth me doing that. Well, part of the this pivot This isn't like, this isn't a technical question. This isn't a technical advice from my end is I can't tell you like what you should do, or you shouldn't do based on like this data. And all this is this is like more like a personal question like, do you do you want to do this for the next 10 years of your life? Do you want to get like, involved in doing a ton of like lawsuits and litigating stuff and it trying to sell patents to people and access to patents and stuff like that and enforcing that? Do you want to get into the patent enforcement business or do you want to continue down the product development, trying to get people MySpace and stuff like that, right. So this is more just something for you to think about.

 

Rachel Sheppard  33:00 

Fantastic. Okay, well thank you to everyone who submitted their ideas. We'll see you guys next time. All right,

 

Dustin Betz  33:06 

bye bye

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