Startup Pitch Competition: Three founders compete for $25K | E1999

0:00You seem like a winner to me. Are you a winner or a loser? I'm a winner, Jason Okay Winners Know their value Say it I know my value Say it Again I know my value Right If anybody wants it For free What are you going to tell them? F*** off Yeah Tell them F*** off Try one more time Yeah F*** off I know my value Hey, I want it for free I want it for free I want it for free F*** off, Jason I know my value You're going to pay I love you now Now I'm in love with you. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Fidelity Private Shares. Fidelity Private Shares. Manage your cap table and data room. Get faster, more accurate 409A valuation and fully automate your next financing round.

0:48Visit fidelityprivateshares.com. Mention our podcast and receive 20 % off your first year paid subscription. Google Cloud. Accelerate your startup journey with the Google for Startups Cloud program. Get up to 200k in Google Cloud credits or up to 350k for AI startups, plus training and guidance. Apply at startups.google.com slash twist. And Runway. Looking to level up your financial planning? Runway is the modern and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. sign up at runway.com slash twist to get your first two months free all right everybody welcome back to this week in startups i'm your host jason calacanis with me is kelly schricker she is a principal here at the launch fund that's my venture fund we got 20 people at the company and one of our um passions is helping founders figure out if they want to start a company and we meet them in year zero at a little format we call founder university you can visit founder dot university.

1:53And this 12 week program has a bunch of modules about how to start a company, we accept 250 startups to each cohort. And then every week, they check in with us and Kelly and the team. And just tell us how they're doing. We wind up investing in about five to 10 % of the graduates of the program. Sometimes we do it during the program. Sometimes we do it when people apply to the program, we get super impressed with the company. Sometimes we do it after they graduate we give them two offers hey do you want us to be your first check for but 25k so that you can incorporate and sometimes we'll give them the 125k check that's standard in silicon valley like techstars ycombinator and accelerator do and kelly brings me the best companies we feature them here on this week in startup so you can see what companies we're investing in because the greatest proxy kelly of where the technology industry is going and where entrepreneurs are going is where the capital allocators place their bets.

2:49So what you'll see here today is three of the top companies that Kelly selected for me to meet and we'll find out if I want to invest in them. Kelly, did I miss anything with the program? Maybe you could tell us when the next one is. Absolutely. Our next cohort is going to be cohort nine, which kicks off on October 25. So we've got plenty of time founders, but don't wait, go ahead and apply at founder.university and hopefully you'll get to come and join us for 12 weeks. Okay, to have their best chance of getting accepted, what are the top two or three things you hear me say over and over again lead to success with a startup?

3:22What are the factors we look for in founder university companies? Absolutely. A few of the things we look for are definitely builder founders. So developers, designer UI, UX folks, growth hackers, really people that can bring the product to market and get it out there without having to spend a whole bunch of money. Outside of that, we really love product velocity, even if you're very early and you maybe don't even have those customers on the platform yet. Just seeing that you're out there getting the work done week over week, moving forward, not just changing your logo every week or so, which we do see from time to time.

3:55But we really want folks that are in it to win it and are willing to put in the work. And being a developer, designer, UI, growth hacker is a good start there. And then just working really hard. Okay. Okay, so we love product founder builders. We like multiple teams. If you're two or three developers, man, chances of us funding you are very high. If you're one developer, one designer, one growth hacker, it's pretty good. If you're three idea people, a salesperson, man, you can't build the product and you got to ship a bunch of money to some development agency, we're not going to fund you. So there you have it, folks.

4:27We're unlikely. So let's get to work. Who's our first company? We got two minutes on the clock for them to present, yeah? Yes, we do. All right, first up, we're going to have Eric at the public board. All right, Eric, welcome to the program. You have two minutes on the clock. And remember, most people are listening. So if you're listening right now, and you want to see this deck and see the product, go to YouTube, do a search, or listen to us on Spotify, where we have video incorporated into this week in startups. Three, two, go. Thank you. Hi, I'm Eric, CEO and co founder of the public board.

4:57We're decentralizing access to digital billboards everywhere. Our product aims to make it as easy as sending a tweet to every digital billboard in the country and beyond. This is the construction company I used to own and when I had it I wanted to display content on digital billboards but I never did because I found the process was just too slow and painful. So after I sold that company I thought what an interesting pain point I could resolve for other people. The easiest way to test assumptions and get feedback was to bring digital billboards to major events and our model was to give one free display spot to everyone and then upsell from there.

5:30We did that for six days we had over 2700 pieces of content uploaded by about 2 ,200 free account creations, about 250 of which paid for upgrades in our automated sales funnel, generating us about$31 ,000 in revenue. And our customers loved it. They love the photos. They love sharing them all over social media. And that created an incoming supply of new leads for our sales funnel. And that's exactly what our competition doesn't do. They're living in the past. They're thinking too small. We're opening up a new market. And when we're successful, people will no longer refer to billboard advertising.

6:02They'll refer to public messaging. We're a marketplace for billboard owners. Our beachhead customer is the consumer market. It's the highest margin and the maximum virality, and it opens us up to move into SMBs and enterprise in the future. We have a variable take rate based on performance. The more revenue we generate for a board owner, the more take rate we end up getting. In a summarized, simplistic sense, if we look at a sample city of about 2 million people, based on our take rate, we think we can generate about$5 million of revenue in that type of a city, which means we need about 20 cities in order to hit our 100 mil ARR in the United States.

6:35And that's before we go international. My co-founder and I are repeat founders. We're a technical team. We're really grateful to be here on the Twist podcast. Thank you, Jason, for your time. My name is Eric, CEO and co-founder of The Public Board. Okay. This is a great presentation. Public board, uh they're bored or it's a board for the public to use um i like your vibes uh and and i like the energy i like the making it really easy for people it's a marketplace it's software you know we like all those kind of things uh how many co-founders are there in the company myself and my co-founder bargaff just two great where did you each work anywhere notable did you work somewhere notable before this each of you uh before this we were founders um you know we exited our past ventures we met through LinkedIn and I was looking for a co-founder.

7:22We got along really well a few years ago. So doing this together was a no brainer. So your startup founders, you had a previous company, each different companies. How did those companies do? Did you sell for a profit? Did you sell for break even? Did you have an aqua hire? Did you shut them down? Tell me. Yeah. My last company, the one that I sold, I brought it to about 6 mil ARR. I built it from zero people up to 60, exited on a cash sale. It was in construction. So a little lower margin, more like an EBITDA calculation, not tech valuations. Yeah, I was. And my co-founder, Bargav, same thing.

7:51Grews to 20 million users on the tech side in the fitness world and exited to battery ventures. So both of you are technical and you're writing the code or what are the skills here? How do you break things up as co-founders? Bargav is definitely the co-founder that does all the code writing. I get really involved in the UI, the UX, understanding the customer, working directly with them. That's my passion and kind of my forte in the relationship. uh we're kind of like you know two peas in a pod here love it love it um now you're not going to own the billboards you're going to find billboard owners and then convince them to give you some of their inventory all of their inventory how's that going to work do you think yeah we start with some build that trust grow it up and when they can see that we generate more revenue for them than they would on their own you know we end up with the whole thing okay so this is a great idea uh what about um you know these uh digital signs i'll see you know when i'm at a urinal or something or in a cafe um you know i notice people are kind of putting up these things in alternative places um and i've been pitched on dozens of startups over the last 15 years that do these kind of things what do you think of those uh i'll call them micro billboards yeah to me it's you know the way of the future is to have digital billboards kind of everywhere so there's no stopping that evolution.

9:09It's definitely not our beachhead customer. However, I would imagine in the future, it's kind of inevitable that we would probably end up touching any digital billboard in an elevator or on an Uber car or wherever it happens to be. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your vision. It's very clever. And I think it could work really well for events, by the way. You know, your little pop-up there got me excited. If I put one of these billboards up at the all-in summit, let's say, in the lobby, or I put 10 of them up all around the event at the parties, etc. etc. And then we told the sponsor, because we do this for our sponsors at our events, we'll have their logos in rotation.

9:42Now, if we had the logos in rotation, and we told anybody at the event, you know, put something up on the board for, you know, 10 minutes for 100 bucks, or whatever it is, or 500 bucks, that could be kind of powerful. You know, I mean, I mean, I might not do it, but I could see Coachella doing it, I could see, you know, any number of events doing in a volleyball tournament at the beach, putting up a couple of these or, you know, whatever it happens to be. So I find it kind of compelling to put these up in different places. I know there are mobile billboards that people are using a whole bunch, you know, like trucks that deliver like one case of Topo Chica, but you know, while they're on the way to deliver them, they drive through really popular neighborhoods.

10:20So very cool vision. Thank you so much. Okay, founders, are you overwhelmed by cap table management? And are you up to your neck in all of this due diligence you have to do? Well, shouldn't managing your investors be easy? That's where Fidelity Private Shares can help. Because dealing with equity is confusing and fundraising shouldn't have to be your full time job. And you got to have a solution provider that you trust. With Fidelity Private Shares, you're going to easily be able to manage your cap table in your data room, you're going to get faster and more accurate 409A valuations. You're going to be able to do sophisticated scenario modeling, which I'm telling you, a lot of founders don't focus on, and they should.

11:02You want to know what that pro forma cap table looks like, and, you know, do some scenarios. Hey, if we get bought for 100 million, a billion, what happens? And you're going to want to automate your next funding round. You want it to go smoothly, and you want to come across as professional, all on one collaborative platform with awesome support. Fidelity even has an amazing startup community for access to exclusive events for founders and VCs. So experience the difference that Fidelity can make by visiting fidelityprivatechairs.com. Mention our podcast and you will receive 20 % off your first year paid subscription.

11:38All right, wonderful. Next up we have Matt at Speed AI. All right, Matty Boy with an AI. Here we go. I wonder if you have speedai.tech, maybe go to.tech domain. My favorite. All right, here we go. Three, two, go. Hi, my name is Matt, and we are Speed AI, an app that creates adaptive training plans and coaching for runners. From the day you decide to register for a marathon to the moment you cross the finish line, we hold your hand every step of the way. Meet Tim. He's a new runner registered for the New York City Marathon, but doesn't know where to start training. Tim downloads the app and answers this dynamic questionnaire about his fitness history.

12:12He connects his wearables like Apple Watch or Whoop, and Speed's algorithms incorporate all of this data to create a tailored training plan for the New York City Marathon. As Tim trains, his WHOOP detects he didn't get much sleep. Speed's assistant AI detects and suggests an adjustment to the upcoming workout for the day. Soon after starting his plan, Tim then receives his monthly nutrition box filled with energy gels and hydration products. Speed's unique nutrition training tells Tim exactly when to use the energy gels to maximize their effectiveness. Our closed beta users like Tim are telling us that our training approach incorporating nutrition is helping them set new personal records.

12:52With Speed, we're offering three product tiers. At$18.99 a month, a training plan. For$29.99 a month, training and coaching. And for$59.99 a month, training, coaching, and a monthly subscription box. We have a closed beta with a small group of users. We're releasing our open beta in two weeks' time for September 1st. In the meantime, we've released the nutrition box to our waitlist and had a surprising amount of engagement from interested athletes, influencers, and even some brands asking if they can include products. At speed, we have a love of endurance sports, having competed at events like the Ironman World Championships and numerous marathons.

13:26My brother, sister, and I are a family team of software engineers with experience working for startups, government, and large tech companies like Twitter and Datadog. Thank you. Okay, we've done a lot of coaching apps. Most of them have not worked out so well. But I do think AI brings something new to it. How do you make sure that the AI is actually giving good advice and not hallucinating? I was a marathon runner for many years, for a decade, 11 New York City marathons. I would have loved to have a coach, I would have loved to have an app, I was writing everything down in a journal, basically to keep track of my training, and then maybe a spreadsheet.

13:58So, you know, I do understand that marathon runners have a unique need. but isn't the ai like going to be bad and and how do you make sure that it gives good advice yeah so the biggest thing for us that we've seen in our testing is really making sure that the context that the ai has um is accurate and has a good background uh one of the things that we've definitely seen is um for the users who are using the app the guardrails are definitely something that we're working on for sure awesome but it's something to improve and then with these bars what's the point of getting the bars from you when i can buy them on amazon i'm curious what the if that's like a major part of the vision or it's a distraction tell me your thinking so yeah so one of the things that when we've talked and talking to users is the nutrition and how to actually take those energy bars and gels during training is one of the things that's left out of most training protocols and so that's one of the things that's key to the training plans themselves so if you're training for and you're going on your long run doing a race simulation we say you know 15 minutes in you need to be taking the gel that we've supplied to you and then 30 minutes and then you can you your body actually is able to acclimate to these gels okay tell me about the founding team so we're a brother sister team the three of us we're all siblings uh three of three siblings okay yeah wow enroll uh software engineers so uh okay we're done three software engineers siblings love it you've worked together before on projects i take it from building sandcastles to startups good enough for me uh okay kelly let's keep the trains moving here give me my third company i'm really excited i want to invest in one of these i'm feeling frisky i want to make a bet and i love the first two uh the third one is good i'm gonna have a big problem here let's go next up is joe at pod engine hello all right i love pods go perfect i'm joe ceo co-founder at pod engine the podcast audio intelligence platform meet sarah sarah's head of marketing at a growth stage fintech she needs to grow revenue and knows that podcasting as a channel is a no-brainer to explore but she doesn't know where to start she's found it impossible to do herself existing tools and agencies are time-consuming manual or really expensive then she found Podengine.

16:17She creates an account and Podengine AI enriches her profile and creates a podcast strategy for her, just like a real agency. Because Podengine transcribes and analyses thousands of episodes every single day, she starts receiving opportunities immediately into her inbox. Relevant podcasts are guests on or sponsor, and alerts for her brand and her competitors. After just two weeks, she's really impressed. She's booked interviews of four industry-leading podcasts, as well as uncovered which competitors are sponsoring podcasts, and she's received alerts when her brand has been compared to other competitors.

16:50This industry has really surprised us. It's built on manual and labor-intensive work, and it's perfect to streamline with AI. As well as our initial platform, we're now iterating super quickly. We've got a guest booking workflow, media monitoring solution, and we think the world's most powerful search engine for podcasts. Our roadmap is equally as exciting, bolstered by customer demand and inbound interest. It's a huge opportunity. is over half a million active podcasts, a rapidly grown industry. Majority of podcasts take guests or seek sponsorships. However, podcasting as a growth medium is yet untapped by most businesses.

17:24We're the team to do this. We're serial builder, founder, friend, entrepreneurs with multiple exits under our belts. And despite being so early, we have great traction. We've got five paying media monitoring customers. We're working closely with 10 pilot agencies and API customers. And we have over 400 freemium users. i'm joe tannerella see you at podengine.ai okay well done you did a great job joe um i know this need so uh having two podcasts uh one of them is like uh really really big and the other ones this podcast we're on right now is niche but makes a lot of money has been sold out for i don't know 12 or 13 years since we've had advertising the first year we weren't even trying um and so i did research manually i think i had hired magic assistants and then i was using athenawow.com assistants to go through the top business podcasts and add new sponsors to our google sheet to give to the partnership team and i just said hey go to the top 50 podcasts look at the notes show notes it was very manual but you know if we put somebody on it manually who costs you know 10 bucks an hour 20 bucks an hour and they can find i don't know but five new sponsors a day an hour and they do it for 10 hours and we have 50 new leads oh my lord you know each of those leads is worth to me 10 bucks so you know it's easy peasy lemon squeezy but you have something else here which is people want to be guests i get bombarded there's these podcast agencies now that literally all they do is book people on podcasts authors business people etc yeah influencers and i hate these companies with all my heart and i i block their domains using superhuman i hit the shift exclamation key and i literally not only block that person i block at pod you know bookers or something like and then i have a little thing where they try to get around me and hit me with the gmail i reply to them and say we do not take guest suggestions and they're like okay well i just have these three suggestions so how do i get them to you and i'm like hey dummy we don't take suggestions however i do know that other podcasts do the one concern i have is you're boiling the ocean 500 000 pockets way too many what you really want to do is tell this two constituents these are the top podcasts these are their advertisers these are the new advertisers so hey here's the this week in startups we just started having oracle as an example which has a really great cloud offering and they're on the pod so my competitors would want to know hey oracle started doing this week in startups are they doing any other podcasts right so there's like a very kind of interesting nuance here the long tail i don't think actually matters that much so i'd rather see you focus not on the 500 000 podcasts do the 5 000 that are notable because 90 of the revenue is in the top 500 podcasts probably is my guess and i saw some some notes about that so um i love the idea what does it cost what are you charging right now so at the moment uh to be completely honest we're still figuring out pricing just like we're figuring out product market fit and what that looks like tell me what you think so between 50 and 300 a month depending on kind of size i'm gonna give you a very important piece of advice right now the cheapest price is 500 a month anybody who can't afford that is a mid loser you don't want to talk to them yeah you want to talk to the people who are serious if you're hiring a pr firm that's between two and twenty five thousand dollars a month if you're looking for advertisers the typical ad buys probably between ten and a hundred thousand dollars on average for an average podcast that means five hundred dollars a month six thousand dollars a year i would make people pay for the year up front i would make them sign a two-year commitment maybe and then you could fall back to monthly if they want to try it i would give no free zero free in order to use it you have to have a credit card please trust me on this do not be a loser okay yeah you seem like a winner to me are you a winner or a loser i'm a winner jason okay winners know their value say it i know my value say it again i know my value right if anybody wants it for free what are you going to tell them I'm gonna tell them They're gonna pay Yeah Tell them If Try one more time Yeah Hey uh I want it for free I want it for free I want it for free Fuck off Jason I know my value You're gonna pay I love you now Now I'm in love with you Because I have so many founders Who say they have The greatest product ever But They don't want the charge Are you a chicken?

22:02Not a chicken Are you a man? A man You're a human okay you're a man charge for the goddamn product okay and charge a lot yeah charge a lot i would make it a thousand dollars actually and then just have people beg you for a discount say you know there's no reason to discount that if you're serious you get one booking for your client it's worth ten thousand dollars so you need to get one a year to break even your second one you're profitable you get one advertiser jacal you're profitable if you tell me that i'm all in great so this is a great idea you can crush it most people are not going to like this idea most investors are not going to like it savvy ones know that data systems data subscriptions are a great business you can look at a lot of different databases that charge whether it's crunch base or there's a bunch of advertising database people love paying for the but they will not respect you if it's less than ten thousand dollars a year so i would say it's ten thousand dollars a year if you don't want to pay$10 ,000 a year, it's$2 ,500 a month for one month.

23:06You can try it for one month for$2 ,500 or you can pay$10 ,000 for the year. It's a yearly contract. You got to give a, you know, and that's it. But be hardcore. Great idea. Got it. And tell me about your team. How many co-founders? Two co-founders, both technical. You write code? I'm writing code. Luke, my co-founder, he's computer science. He started and sold a consulting business in software. So he's the hardcore one. I'm contributing to the website. All right. Well done. Well done. Okay. Thank you. Great job. All right, everybody. You know, being at a startup is a team sport. You're not going to get there alone, man.

23:39You got your founders. You got the early team members, of course, investors. Most importantly, that first couple of customers, right? And you all work together to get your company off the ground. And I have great news for you and your team. Google for Startups Cloud Program is now a partner here at this week in startups. And listen, you all just want to know the number. Here's the number, 200 ,000, 350 ,000. These are the two numbers. What are these two numbers? You're going to get$200 ,000 in Google Cloud credits. And if you're an AI startup, you can get up to$350 ,000. Google is serious. Google for Startups Cloud program is here on This Week in Startups.

24:20Just letting you know, they are serious about helping your startup. The number is the number, okay? And there's two great numbers here. 90 % of generative AI unicorns choose Google Cloud. We all know that. They do a great job. So here's your call to action. You need to get these credits. You need to start building. You're going to find out everything about this amazing program, Google Startup Cloud Program at startups.google.com slash twist. Okay, very simple. Hit the rewind key, bookmark this, write it down. I want you to sign up right now. Pause the podcast because these are big numbers, folks.

24:55They really want to support you. I don't know how long they're going to do this for. So startups.google.com slash twist. All right, let's get back to this amazing program. Kelly, let's have a conversation. Give me your ranking of these three companies based on your, you've been how many years in working for me as a venture capitalist? Three years. Three years. Okay. Based on your three years, rank one, two, and three in terms of if we all, if we invested in each of them at the same valuation, you know, and wound up owning a whatever small percentage of the company for supporting them and giving them cash, which one's going to give us the biggest return?

25:27second best return, third best return in your estimation and tell me why. Absolutely. So I'll start with who I think will have the hardest time getting there, which is speed AI. Running is a really big space. Consumer can be a little bit hard. I think really talking to your customers is going to help you figure out exactly what is needed in a crowded market and then just go as hard as you can on that. With PodEngine, love a SaaS business, podcasting is huge. I think it will only get bigger. And so if they listen to that good advice about pricing, I think that they have a good chance of returning our fund and then even more if we were to invest.

26:02Okay. And just to be clear, it's not SaaS because that software as a service, this is a data play, right? It's a data subscription. So it is a subscription, but let's just make sure we're clear. It's not SaaS, it's data. Keep going. And you're number one and what? Cool. My number one is public board, disrupting, frankly, a really boring business and removing a lot of friction just opens up a whole new world of customers, which is really interesting in the VC world. The other thing I think is really interesting is not just that it would be the, you know, out of home advertising, but as you said, there's event applications here, you know, on the B2C side, you can celebrate life milestones and graduations, promposals, right?

26:35People are willing to really do that thing for the wow moment and the experience. And so I can see how, you know, especially with the idea that you can test it for cheap or free, and then you get really addicted to it. All of a sudden it's gamified. Your friends are pulling pranks on each other. Who knows what it looks like, right? Okay. Your order is almost perfect. The correct order is Pod Engine, then the billboards, then the marathon app. The reason is Pod Engine has the easiest chance of returning a large amount of money. Those data businesses get bought for a lot. The marketplace is going to be a little bit harder, but again, it could get very big, but it's going to have less odds in the third one.

27:11Obviously, consumer, finicky, low odds. If it does hit, it's a niche market, but not that small of a niche. But all three are great, and all three have great teams. I'm joking with you. Nobody knows, but we'll have this on record. And hopefully, you can pull this out in seven years when your order was right and mine was wrong or whatever. We'll see. That's why in our company, I force everybody to make hard decisions. And this is an easy decision for me. I'd like you to invest in all three companies. Can you do that for me, Kelly? Of course I can. All right, listen, let's bring everybody on for a second here.

27:44It's not the Oscars, you don't have to give an acceptance speech. But would it be okay with you all if I just gave you a little bit of cheddar to kind of get things moving here and invest in it. And you all going to work hard? Yeah. All in. You're all in. I like it. Okay. Great job, everybody. Everybody splashy cashy gets a little bit of an investment. And, you know, let's work hard here. Startups aren't complicated, folks. You got to obsess about your customers, build a product or service they love with good product velocity. And the way you have good product velocity, and you know what your customers have is by having a kick ass aggressive team that comes to work every day.

28:18and puts in the time the way to win as a founder is effort and time and having that product velocity and obsessing about your customers if you obsess about your customers and you you know really have good product velocity you know you're not afraid to charge a good a good enough price uh things can go well for you nothing's guaranteed but you all have my respect these are great businesses and you all came to founding university and had a good time yeah absolutely it was great yeah okay so i just want you each as we close here to tell me what was the most valuable part of founder university for you specifically you personally not your co-founder not your team just you personally what would you say you got the most out of it uh just so kelly and i can hear and the other people can hear because they might want to go after they see this to founder.university and apply with two or three of their friends to build a great great startup that focuses on team product and customer uh let's go we'll start with you matt matt what did you personally matt get out of from speed ii what did you get out uh the program number one for me uh having an engineering background learning all of the business side of the of things so related to the accounting how to structure how to set up a company the uh setting up the cap table all of that that uh was extremely valuable so blocking and tackling a lot of the chores you have to do as a founder suck and then having somebody who's invested in 400 companies has seen it all help you with little modules and some bullet points and some points in the right direction, it's going to save you a lot of time.

29:49So that's great to hear that we did our job. Okay, Joe from PodEngine, you're up next. What did Joe from PodEngine get out of the Founder University? The thing I like most about Founder University, I think was the community. It's just so helpful to be around like-minded founders. I jump into Discovery Call them and likewise with me. And some of them I think are going to become customers in the future as well. great okay and eric your turn eric what did you get out of founder university the biggest value that i got out of founder university was to really analyze and deep dive into my tam my total addressable market i remember before founder university i was doing random chat gpt searches on what is our market and coming up with a wild array of answers but then when i was watching and listened to kelly do her her bottom-up tam approach i really got to understand who is my beachhead customer who's my initial my ideal customer profile how does that relate to our go-to-market strategy and how does that relate into our long-term uh planning as well and i'd never really dove that deep into it ever before or had anyone questioned me on it no one questioned it but kelly did and i learned that from founder university i get to take that away forever and that's a great value awesome so kelly did her job and uh kelly it's good to hear you did an adequate job uh and And, you know, for you too, Kelly, you can always work a little harder, but you're doing a great job.

31:08I mean, I'm starting to sound like Trump in my old years. Tremendous. Found university. Great job. Founders. Love it. Okay. No, it's great to hear. And, you know, what I love about these answers, Kelly, is that when we go around the horn like this, everybody gets something different out of it. You know, some people already understand market size, total addressable market. They were some wonky McKenzie person, you know, and they just grind it out and they got it done. Other folks, you know, hey, they don't know the blocking and tackling. and you know, like Matt, maybe I don't have never set up a cap table.

31:36How do I do that? And you can make a lot of mistakes with your cap table. And if you avoid those mistakes, man, that could save a company and you know, just just great job, everybody. Are you looking to level up your financial planning? Well, there's an amazing company called Runway. And they've completely changed the way businesses handle their finances. I recently did a tour of the product with one of our founders and with the company and it is mind-blowing. Finances are hard. We all know that, right? But Runway makes it simple and even fun. How do they do this? Well, they use plain English formulas that you can understand that integrate into more than 650 tools, pulling in all your accounting data, your HR data, even your CRM.

32:20And that gives you a complete picture of how everything in your business fits together. Runway also makes headcount planning and scenario analysis super easy. You can just drag timelines to adjust your plans and all of your metrics will automatically update. This is stuff that startups need to be doing. You really need to get finance dialed in in order to scale your company and Runway is the way for you to do that. You can add real-time charts, text, even video to investor reports and Runway will help you make better decisions by making the impact on your business crystal clear to everyone. And if you want a personalized demo, head over to runway.com slash twist and sign up to get your first two months free and there are a ton of companies using runway a number of them are in my portfolio like two of my favorite companies super few and that i use all day long and eight sleep which i use every night to get that sleep score up so once again go to runway.com slash twist it's an amazing product i got time for one question any any question for kelly or i uh from the three of you just you know now that you're funded and you're going forward any question that you might have raise your hand and go ahead and ask it sure yeah okay good thank you imagine six months from now we're talking again i'm really curious in your mind what would be the number one thing you would want to see like there's so many versions of traction there's so many things to look at what would be your number one we get together boom is that there or not you know if you understand your customers really well um and those customers are over the moon we don't need a lot of them we just need to know that these five customers think that this is the greatest solution ever and then when our team does due diligence and they say hey if this cost if this product didn't exist how would you solve the problem and they panic what it's going away are they going out of business because i this is critical for my business and you know paul graham refers to that as like hair on fire problem like my hair is on fire i need a bucket of water um so you know i think we would really the nature of that relationship with your customers i'd rather see five people who you are essential for than 50 people who are dabbling right then i will also say that a lighthouse customer somebody notable uh you know so in your case if you know i'm gonna pick a brand that is you know there's like somehow you got you know starbucks you know to to promote the app and their new lemonade summer beverages that my daughters love on their things and they thought it was killer you know okay wow how did he get starbucks like whoa you know or for pod engine you know if you got i don't know uh joe rogan or tim ferris to pay you and you were like hey yeah joe rogan's using it tim ferris is using it their ad teams are using it look boom so yeah we love that thank you thank you that's a great answer I appreciate it.