Demo Day Founder Institute ANZ Australia NZ: 19-May-2026 Startup Showcase The new portfolio startups

追加: 2026-05-23

[00:00:03]I'm thrilled to be welcoming you to the Founder Institute demo day for Australia and New Zealand for the first half of 2026. What a year it's been. We started our cohort just in February this year and over the last 14 weeks there have been lots of ups, a couple of challenges along the way and tonight is a celebration of all of that. It's a demo day, an opportunity for us to share what has come from the amazing work that our founders have been involved in, supported by a crew of wonderful mentors. And as a reminder, we have our next cohort that'll be running in August to November. A little bit about Founder Institute, which is the world's largest global network of startup accelerators, investors, and advisers. FI portfolio startups are around the world, and you can see a couple that have emanated from our part of the world. Now, one of the interesting things that we wanted to share today is that peer support is one of the important types of benefits of being part of an accelerator as found by one of the startup master reports. You can see that many startups over the years have benefited from being in an accelerator or an incubator. It's gone from 25% to 39%. the local team in Australia, New Zealand. Paul and I, Paul has a storyried background in the world of product management, having worked for some very large companies as well as being a startup founder. So he's been through the whole cycle, knows what it's like to work from the beginning in town, but also what it takes to be a scrappy entrepreneur to ensure that you've got product that can ship and that services customers. I've been fortunate to have a tech background and to also since the '9s work in the startup world, having started my first.com business as a as an e-commerce platform back in the '90s.

[00:02:17]These days I invest in technology companies across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in software deep technology and connected devices. At the Founder Institute, we're supported by Addison's who are an Australian commercial law firm. One of our longstanding partners has been Rebecca Douly, who provides a lot of advice to founders who take part in our program and Addison's have gone on to look after the commercial affairs of many startups in our region. As mentioned before, we've been supported by a bunch of esteem mentors who have been there and done that. They're either folks who have started businesses, been the on the inside of startups or who have been investors. We're very grateful for their support. Now, some of you may be wondering where does Founder Institute fit within the broader startup world.

[00:03:13]Well, we are what's called a preede accelerator. You might go to a half-day event or an evening cocktail, a lunch and learn or you might even go to a weekend type of event. And then on the other side of us, there are these full-time accelerators which require uh folks to not work in any other business except their startup. And then there's capital. We sit as founder institute in the middle where people are able to work either full-time or part-time to get this initial traction and to prepare for preede funding. We've been recognized and you can see here as a as a premier idea stage accelerator and these are some of the companies that have come through is recognized by the invest New South Wales government arm and then beyond founder institute one of the really exciting things that those that you'll be seeing here tonight some of the seven that you'll see here tonight will be joining advanced accelerators accelerators to get funding faster. Our founders here tonight have been through the process of ideiation, validating their product, have been clearer around what is the product that they're going to build and getting much closer to driving revenue. At Founder Institute, we believe in the startup rule of one.

[00:04:31]It's best to have one problem that you're solving for one type of customer.

[00:04:38]Instead of having 20 products to solve that problem, let's start with the pointiest product to solve that problem, which is supported by a killer feature and one revenue stream. So over the 14 weeks, here's a snapshot of what our founders have done from looking out for this one problem, the one customer, the product, the feature, and their revenue.

[00:04:58]Our founders have received constant feedback. They've probably got the wise words of Paul and our mentors ringing in their ears. Maybe it's that little conscience that's sitting on their right shoulder because we do think that to make progress quickly, we want to give as clear and direct feedback as possible. There've been office hours and thank you to our mentors for opening their diaries for those office hours.

[00:05:26]The peer support is really, really important. We've got people who are experts in marketing. People who have got a background in finance, the finance and the marketing as well as technology can be brought to bear on the various businesses, the various startups that have been germinating through the program and the feedback. There's been the dashboards, there's been multiple review sessions, and then some of the sprints. And we thank all the founders for your good humor, particularly with Paul and I with those sprints. So for those who are joining us today and are thinking this founder journey sounds interesting, if you want to learn about what founder style you might be, there is a founder DNA test that you can do.

[00:06:15]It takes about half an hour 45 minutes and then after that you get this report and all of the founders who have taken part in founder institute have gotten their DNA. I think what would be very interesting is as the program has unfolded particularly when there's been some stresses when there has been feedback that's a bit different have some of the traits that were identified in this report turned out to to be true?

[00:06:41]I wanted to share. We're running a couple of events in the leadup to August. If you're interested in learning about Founder Institute, the opportunity to meet all the night, ask us anything because we're starting our next program in August and it will be running through to November 2026. But today is a day of celebration. It's a day of congratulations. We're thrilled to have Cheryl and David with us.

[00:07:06]>> Thank you very much for having me. I don't have all the answers, but what I can share is what I've learned from my time at Telstra in the Budy Labs team.

[00:07:14]Mudi is Telstra's product and tech incubation hub. We used to be a startup accelerator. Now we're looking at more follow on investments for existing portfolio. We have been around for some time. Our focus now is on new products and tech that you can take to the market. I spend a lot of my time working with customers and partners. And so the kinds of things that we do is we stress test innovations and products that Telster might want to sell to our customers in the real world. So we often look at early things that are not yet on the market. So a lot of our work is building prototypes very quickly and testing them with customers. And thank you for having me here. It's very curious about what the founders have to present today.

[00:07:55]>> Hello everyone. I'm honored to be here and uh it is kind of a nice full circle because I was one of the early days one of the founder institute mentors and co-directors and really just holds a special place in my heart and it's great to see it's still going strong and lots of amazing founders still going through.

[00:08:12]So my name is Cheryl Mack. I am the founder and CEO of Aussie Angels. We run a platform that supports investors to run their own syndicates and funds. And I will explain why that's cool and relevant in a moment. But I'll just take you back a few years first. I started out very similar to you. 5 years ago, I was starting out with an idea, a concept, something that I thought, you know, was a need in the market, but I wasn't quite sure who needed it, what they needed, where I was going to go with it. And I took a leap of faith. I actually started Aussie Angels as a not for profofit first because I underestimated the market. And I went out to the market and asked them, "Is this something that you guys want?" And luckily it was, but there was definitely lots of iterations of it and it was not a smooth journey that first year of trying to figure out how to build something that the customer wanted, how to take it to market, how to message what we had built and then also how to scale. Like I said, I first created Aussie Angels as a not for-p profofit because I just I was like, how how many people could really want to, you know, start a syndicate or a fund and use that infrastructure that I had built? And I thought like maybe two or three other people. And it turned, you know, when we launched, we had six, which quickly turned into 12, which quickly turned into 20. So we ended up flipping it to a for-profit. And that was partly because I was like, well, we need money to run this thing. If we're not for profofit, I need to get like charity. Like I need to get donations. I don't know how to do that, but I do know how to raise because I've I've helped a lot of founders raise over my time, including some of the founders here from Founder Institute. So we flipped it to a forprofit and raised 1.4 4 mil in 2022 and we just closed our second round a couple months ago, a little under two million. We've done two rounds so far. Let me touch a little bit more on on Aussie Angels. There have been so many ups and downs. It is like a roller coaster. So, I hope you're all prepared for that. Basically, the reason that what we've done is really interesting is because we are the infrastructure platform, the backend back office for other fund managers and angel syndicates. We see a lot of deals, not just like a few, but like actually a lot. To give you a sense of that, we have over 300 companies in our portfolio. And when I say portfolio, I mean that is across all of the syndicates that run their fund or syndicate on our platform. So, we've got about 35 or 40 of them. And all of them run their own deals. They find their own investors. They find companies that they want to invest in. Some of them have a particular thesis. So, like there's a few there's two or three of them that are climate focused. There's one that is fintech focused. There's one that is just for female founders and everything else in between. That gives us a really good view of the market and we've been doing this for close to five years now.

[00:10:40]Not only have we done 300 deals, we've now seen a number of revaluations. We started in 2021 and it's now 2026. So that was basically the end of the Zer era and it was kind of a crazy period cuz everybody was like freaking out about, you know, money disappearing. But we were still growing, but we also saw a slowdown in 2022, 2023. we've seen all of the things the like crazy volatility things um that have happened since then and what I can say is that valuations they came down they're trending back up it is still a matter of like good companies get funded and speed is one of is still the most important thing and the other thing that I think we have seen endure is the power law so when we talk to investors about how they need to invest power law is still it's it's still enduring and I think it will continue to be which just means that investors need to create a portfolio and you can be part of that portfolio. We are seeing a a huge increase in obviously everyone knows AI hype um at the moment. I think the AI hype last year was very much like we need to invest in AI but we're not really sure.

[00:11:44]We're a little bit scared of it like we know it's a thing. Now it feels at least in my VC world it feels a lot more like we have a direction like people are starting to nail down like all right we really want to invest in AI but there are certain aspects of AI that we really feel are are more promising than others.

[00:12:00]Whereas last year it was like everybody freak out, go find AI or don't invest in AI mostly go find AI and invest in it.

[00:12:06]Now it is very much we're a little bit more focused AI for infrastructure vertical AI is really hot uh AI and health tech which has brought a renewed interest in health and medtech in general. And then there's a few categories that have taken a hit and have really decreased since this you know since AI has come become a thing.

[00:12:25]So for example, edtech, HR techch are two categories that are really struggling at the moment. Now if you're in one of those categories, actually either way, if you're in one of the categories that is medtech or health tech or infrastructure and you're seeing that boost, that's a good thing. But it also can go the other way. Um, but I would take advantage of that while you have the chance and absolutely like use that to your advantage. So, make sure investors know that you are in that space, that it is a huge market, that it's growing, that it's right for this, but you have a unique advantage. If you're in one of those other buckets like edtech or or HR tech that is really struggling with this, it's good to know that because you're going to get push back from investors and you may not know why you're getting push back more than your peers, but it is most likely because your category is just not hot right now. There are a couple things that you can do there. You can pivot, but you can also use that to your advantage to say like this is a category that is going to get upended.

[00:13:18]Absolutely. And we know that and this is how we're going to tackle that. Doesn't mean that you're going to get VCs fighting over you, but it might mean the difference between not getting funded and getting funded. Money is slow. Money is really slow at the moment. So on our platform, like we we probably process 3 to 500 transactions a month. We always see when there is volatility in the market, when there is fear or uncertainty. So for example, budget, it just comes out and everybody freaks out about CDT. Investors tend to hold on hold on to their money longer. In our case, that looks like they don't transfer their money when we ask them to and it takes three or four following up to actually get them to transfer their money. Why is that relevant for you? If you are raising money at the moment, know that it will take longer not just to get that commitment as in get the yes, but also to get them to actually transfer their funds. So you should plan for that and have enough runway before going out to have enough runway when you go out to raise because you don't want to be in a situation where you are literally cannot make payroll the next day if you don't get that investment cuz we are seeing like even us we're professionals right like it's us it's on the angels when we ask for money people take that seriously but also still not it has never I love the saying that like it has never been more normal than it was yesterday and the reality is that it's just going to keep getting crazier but good companies are getting funded And in this market, speed matters most.

[00:14:37]If you can get to revenue quickly, if you can get to progress quickly, those are the things that investors are paying attention to. So, whatever you are doing, focus on speed and speed for your round, speed for traction, speed in general.

[00:14:52]>> With the advent of generative AI being so readily available, there are many founders who are making use of AI to help generate decks. Given your perspective, what would you say? What advice would you give to to founders when it comes to presenting their business in a compelling fashion?

[00:15:13]>> I don't think anyone in my circles of VCs is complaining about founders using AI to augment their work in terms of whether it's a sales pitch to a new customer, a pitch deck to investors, writing the email that goes out to, you know, investors, or any email at all.

[00:15:30]Like, none of us care. But I shouldn't it shouldn't be blatant. If your email contains a lot of em dashes, then I'm going to know it's AI. If your pitch deck contains spelling mistakes or blatantly like graphics that don't make sense, like we're going to know. That just tells us that you are not putting in the effort to review. Like AI is a fantastic tool and there's a level of like as an investor, I expect that you are going to be using AI to increase your productivity. So, in that sense, like I'm not going to be upset they're using AI, but I still expect there to be a level of attention to detail. And so, if you are using it, make sure you are reviewing its work before it gets sent to me. So, that I shouldn't I should question like it should be like a hm I wonder if they used AI. If they did, like this is really good. You know, if they didn't, you know, maybe they should to be more productive, but like it it should be more of a question rather than, oh, they just like loweffort this.

[00:16:22]I like I think it's totally fine. Just don't let me know. Don't make it so that I know.

[00:16:26]>> So in this age of generative AI obviously it does help startups move faster but it does remove a lot of the modes particularly for you know software as a service. What are you seeing in that space? What would you recommend for companies that are you know software first in um in what we're building >> SAS apocalypse?

[00:16:41]>> Yeah pretty much.

[00:16:42]>> Yeah. Honestly I think it's terrifying for investors who have invested in this space. Like if you could just rebuild zero in a minute like what is the moat?

[00:16:49]Personally, I'm taking the approach and and I have to tell you like this is this is the topic of conversation in in our circles of VCs when we sit around and you know discuss things and everyone would love to be on the fly on the wall but this is absolutely a huge topic.

[00:17:03]Nobody has the answer. It's not like we're all we all have the answer. We're all kind of trying to figure it out. But generally my approach is like what is defensible? The reality is that in my mind being able to recreate something has always been a thing. It just it used to be a little bit harder, but like reality is somebody could have rebuilt zero anyway. It might have taken them longer than it did today, but like they could have. What matters is distribution and go to market. And so those are the things that I think fundamentally are still the important pieces. And like if you have something a unique way of getting something to market and maintaining that distribution mode, I still think that's going to endure.

[00:17:37]>> I could just share my experiences cuz our team we're building the Telster the the next product. So from a tech perspective when we build we go well if we can use you know claude or chat GPT and we can build something in a day then what is our own developer team going to be doing and what what's their unique strength so like if we can go and build that quickly could you just go and do that yourself or like what's the value so for our team for example we're looking at the reference of what what's Telra's mode as an example our mode is connectivity so we try to build around that and establish that advantage. But I think with AI it's a matter of going well how do you what's your unique strength and how do you how do you develop something that is not a one day job and that's not something I can answer necessarily it's probably something the founders would need to reflect on but really yeah like we we've we've encountered that same question like how do we build a mode so Telster connectivity for each of you you will have that mode you probably already know what that is the AI probably won't be that but like how do you build around that?

[00:18:44]>> Absolutely. Data I would say how deeply embedded a system is within a other organization's workflow. If you're very deeply embedded with their workflow is harder to to displace. But I would also suggest that a couple of years ago I remember conversations with people saying ah software can do lots of things that hardware can't do. You can get to speed faster etc. But I would suggest that having some element of hardware, especially if it's hardware that adds value that in itself can provide some kind of moat because good luck going and replacing lots of XY Zs in many locations around the world.

[00:19:21]>> So with my angel hat on, I will always say come talk to us as early as possible because obviously we want to see we want to see the the deals before they go to the broader market. So like it it can never hurt to talk to angels. We generally like and VCs as well like they all say you know it's never too early to come talk to us and that's just simply because they want to see all the deals.

[00:19:42]The reality is though that like that question of like should you bootstrap or should you raise money is going to be an individual choice. The rule of thumb around this I don't think has changed and I've always said that it is like when if you need money to get to the next milestone that changes the valuation of your company then go and raise the amount of money that you need to get to the next milestone that changes the valuation of your company.

[00:20:03]Things that change the valuation of your company are things like getting revenue, growing your customers, a certain number of customers. It's not hiring people.

[00:20:11]It's not launching a product. It's not building something. It is growth and revenue. So, if you need money to get there, then yeah, you got to go raise.

[00:20:19]If you don't need money to get to that first, you know, five customers, then no, I wouldn't recommend raising because why would you give away equity for something that you could do for free?

[00:20:28]>> My name is Steven from Trace Supply Chain Intelligence. You may or may not be aware that over 6,000 companies in Australia are required to report their ESG obligations. On face value, you'd probably think, well, that's not quite a lot. In reality, the four major ESG reporting frameworks have a crossover of approximately 2/3 of the evidence that they need to gather. Across the 138 reporting requirements, approximately 87 of these are unique. Companies are repeatedly doing the jobs that they don't need to be doing and that's costing many man hours and it's costing ESG and auditing fatigue. What trace supply chain intelligence is here to do is we're providing you the ESG solution that automates that process, eliminates that duplication and therefore makes auditing simpler, faster and more effective. Supply chain intelligence even early. My pledge and the things that I've learned second time around as Paul kindly offered for us to come back is that I'm not going to build this on my own. I've spent 20 years traveling around the world across uh developing supply chains and most of that created uh on my own. So this time around I'm looking for two co-founders. I'm looking for a tech co-founder and a ESG compliance specialist co-founders. And what they're not going to get from me is I know what's going on. You're going to get honesty from what I know and you're going to get honesty about what my expectations are from you as well. and to my family. Well, hopefully this time it's going to be all worthwhile and just another 10 minutes and another Saturday and another Sunday and uh what time did you come to bed? What 2 hours ago? Why are you getting up again? Hopefully, this is going to be the changing of the guard for that. Fingers crossed. Even early trace supply chain intelligence, reach out to me on LinkedIn or on um a number or email. Again, >> fantastic. Hi everyone. Uh my name's Chris. um from Ezra um Environmental Solar Recycling Australia. Uh imagine you are a solar installer. You are one of 4,000 solar installers in Australia.

[00:22:48]Then imagine at the end of the day you have 20 solar panels you've just swapped over from a roof. Those 20 panels you're taking to the tip. What a pain. Times that by 2030, which is only a few years away. And from that panel that is 5 million today is now 50 million panels.

[00:23:09]And if 50 million panels are going to landfill, that's what we're going to stop. So logistics itself has sunk a lot of recyclers in the solar space. But we worked out that if you don't have panels, you cannot recycle anything.

[00:23:24]Currently 4.8% of panels are being recycled. And our answer is to is creating a platform that makes it easy for installers to book in collections, get reporting, get certification, live tracking and reporting. Um, from there we can collect, we can take that painoint away from the installer. we can join up with the um the the recycling uh stewardship that is imminent in New South Wales and broader Australia. And from there we will be able to recycle the panels and taking that whole process full circle. We're asking 400k safe for 12 months runway and a full collection roll out traction and achievements. We currently have five installers, a whole bunch of universities, we've got locations to be set up, and we can currently recycle without a machine with a partnership in with a Victorian recycler who doesn't want to collect. So that's us. If you want to contact me, you can get me on LinkedIn or with my email address, my pledge. I've worked on this for 18 months and I'm poor. Like I've put so much into this. We have three little kids, five, four, and three, and they will not stop eating. So, I need this to happen. There's no plan B, and I will I will run this until I die, whether it works or not. So, that's that's my that's my pledge, and that's that's me. Thank you.

[00:25:09]>> My name is Sam Kio. Um, and I'm founding site quantify and our aim is to put a dollar value on every cyber risk. Every function in the business reports in dollars, but cyber still reports in colors. As a result, boards can't answer how cyber security risk ties to business objectives. Engineers can't justify the controls they're asking for, and sos want to know exactly which asset is the weakest link. It's 2026 and the industry can do better than crayons. Our solution is to take the messy reality of your system, vulnerabilities, threat intelligence, and other system uh indicators which scanners can't pick up.

[00:25:46]We combine these using our human experts machine learning to create insights into your risk along with risk chaining so you can see unique insights. And we produce one number, an annual loss expectancy in dollars with a confidence interval that's tied back to your board and business objectives. Our product uh is live now and we're currently seeking members for our advisory board as well as businesses who are keen to understand math over vibes. That QR code will take you to our website and we're keen to reach out. My pledge is the same as the motto for quantify math over vibes. What it means is in practice is integrity comes first. I will give boards a metric that they can budget against and size is a case they can win. I'll build a company that's still defensible when someone orders it 10 years from now. And this really matters because cyber is one of the last big industries still running on gut feel. And the people relying on it deserve better. I want quantified it to be the proof that you can build a serious business on rigor, calibration, and honest evidence. The family version of the pledge is I want to come home president and not performative.

[00:26:52]This company is really important to me, but I don't want to miss out on what is also really important to me, which is my family. For those of you thinking of joining the founder institute, I I'll reflect now on a bit of my journey.

[00:27:01]Before founders institute, I was a solo founder, self-funded, head down the code. I had a product, my two patents, and a story I believed in. I was full of conviction that the work I was doing was really important. But what found gave me was a way to fall in love with the problem instead of the pitch. It gave me permission to listen harder than I talk.

[00:27:21]The mentor reviews, while sometimes brutal, were very generous, very sharp, and the most useful feedback I've had in my two years of building this product.

[00:27:30]What's equally important is the cohort of founders who have helped us along the way. And I'm sure that these relationships will help us as we continue to develop our startups.

[00:27:39]Finishing the founder institute, I have the same product and patents, but really great insights into the wedge, my brand, and an evidence bar I'm proud of. And finally, a real belief that the company I want to build is the company I'm now building.

[00:27:52]>> Hello everyone, I'm Lydia Fander Hall.

[00:27:54]I'm from Resolute Ready, onetop, one call, one life. Resolute Ready is building an online directory to connect military personnel, veterans, first responders, and their families to early um early intervention, mental health support services so that we can prevent suicide to stop the intergenerational cycle of service trauma through partnerships and getting to subscriptions and donations and funding opportunities and also looking at philanthropical investments. Founder Institute experience transformed my way of thinking from vision into structured execution. It strengthened my understanding of commercialization, scalability, fundraising readiness, accountability, governance and a sustainable revenue growth. But most importantly, it reinforced the mission or that mission and sustainability must work together. Looking ahead of of where our focus is sustainable growth, a scalable digital infrastructure, strong government governance, a strategic national and global partnerships. We'll continue to sense strengthen sorry subscriptions for service providers to develop federal funding pathways and expand the Resolute Ready virtual hub to better support those who serve us. Now, this journey also taught me that leadership is a choice, not a position, but learning never stops. And I'd love to just share with you a bit of a reflection. When I entered Founder Institute, I believed it would simply be professional development, an opportunity to strengthen my skills and better understand how to build an organization.

[00:29:27]What I did not expect was how deeply it would shape me as a leader. Throughout the program, I was challenged to think differently about sustainability, execution, and commercialization. One of the most confronting moments was pitching to an investor outside of the Funders Institute program, hearing the words, "I'm an investor and I do not invest in charities." But I persevered.

[00:29:49]I became more resilient. And that time, it forced me to reflect deeply on how I was positioning Resolute Ready, and whether I could truly build something sustainable. There were moments when I questioned whether I would survive the program. I fell behind at times because I lacked commercial understanding and startup experience. But the mentors Paul and Ben and all of you, thank you so much, my fellow founders and investors, you challenged me, you encouraged me, and you kept me focused. The late night lounge pictures, I'd get up at 3:00 a.m.

[00:30:25]just so that I to learn more. The more you know, the more you realize you don't know. and I had honest conversations and became some of the most valuable parts of the journey. They pushed me to simplify the the model, focus on execution and understand that impact alone is not enough. Sustainability must sit beside purpose. At Resolute Ready, we've got lived experience, professionals on board, all volunteers who built a team, created the tools.

[00:30:52]We've got early traction. And through this experience, Resolute Ready evolved from a broad vision into a more structured and commercially grounded organization. We developed a subscription model for service providers and we've strengthened the marketplace strategy and it's built a clearer pathway towards sustainability and growth. Today, Resolute Ready is solutionbased. It's no longer just an idea. It is focused a focused organization with a clearer pathway toward a long-term impact, sustainability, scalable support for those who serve. Why? Because we value life. Why? Because we're here to save lives and everyone deserves to live a well-lived life. And we're so lucky that we were we are actually endorsed by the Australian Bravery um Association who the patron is the Governor General of Australia. We've been endorsed by defense and the Department of Veteran Affairs. I will continue until my last breath because the spirit of the human um the human spirit is definitely worth saving. I've seen the fragility fragility of life in front of me and I just want everyone to live a well-lived life. Um so I'm also on LinkedIn. You can catch me on LinkedIn and you've got my email address. And I really love to have um some real good solid strategic um partnerships come on board and a co-founder that can scale us up and help us get to the next level.

[00:32:20]>> Hi everyone, I'm Vah. I'm presenting to you Benchmark AI which is our platform as part of ST digital publishing. A lot of times digital publishers, uh, news editorial magazines, uh, content creators, they're choosing tech vendors that cost them from $20,000 to seven figures. And a lot of times when they're making that decision, on top of that, they get surprised. They get with surprised migration cost, add-on fees, and and different licensing agreements that it was unexpected, which sort of adds the cost even further to start at the minimum of six figures.

[00:32:57]Instead of the public uh benchmark AI is here to help remove the guesswork from these vendors instead of recommendations and gut feel it's coming with data not guess work and so how we do that is we do that with um a combination of human edited reviews of of all the platforms plus using AI to ingest data of social media sentiment and feedback plus our own methodology in terms of scoring to enable publishers based on their size of their business and journey to choose the right uh platform um and and avoid those unnecessary costs. We've been we have traction already. It's it's been a business that's been around for quite a while and I've pivoted towards be making it a discovery platform. We've reviewed over 294 solutions already have 38 paying vendors progressed you know almost to 50k year to date. Um and we're looking to grow to 50k MR in 18 months.

[00:33:53]um so that we can then sort of further provide publishers choice to evaluate technology. What our ask is for today is to be introduced to more pub digital media publishers that can help us to increase the flywheel by understanding their pain points and also further pain points and and expand to more categories cuz we haven't tested other categories like AI um we've we've tested things like newsletter platforms analytics platforms that is more on the day-to-day solutions to my pledge before basically it was a very manual process of everything that I've done I I was very much focused on the vision of helping Bible publishers develop sustainable business models. We had a a defined audience, but everything was manual and you know there wasn't it was becoming an increasingly non-defendable solution that I had to pivot year on year. After FI I've been able to reposition our team, bring on an advisor, have the pleasure opportunity to connect and work with everyone in the group and also working towards the next uh program for for fundraising. My pledge personally is to make sure that I don't slip back into being the bottleneck and making sure that I don't just rely on consulting or or just being a publisher. I'm going to make this, you know, because of because of AI as well to make this a genuine discovery platform that's defensible built built on our history to be able to transfer my knowledge to our team and continue to hire ahead and document everything to make sure that I'm not the bottleneck to give back more time to my family as well and make that balance because I have made a sacrifice to make this happen. Um and then and then there's a win-win so that we can build on a legacy and ultimately you know continue to speak with publishers develop that data flywheel that can make this recommendation engine as accurate as possible over time.

[00:35:32]>> Agent is building an AI employee for Australian bookkeeping and accounting firms that help them to get work done in minutes instead of hours with a secure and trusted Australian AI sovereignty that learns their process and get better every day. Bookkeepers do a lots of and accounting do lots of manual work and there's hard for them to get hired with the right right trained persons and also going offshore also is not the uh the solution for them and we believe this AI that we build is going to help them and the answer is from our attraction today we have seven paying customer and by end of the month 10 paying customer that doing that and we almost have 35 people in their pipeline and actually currently 10 15 people in waiting for me to give them a demo. We built all this on Z equity and we soon we with with a one founder two full-time contractor and four agentive AI employee. We have a aentive mother that actually today take care of 28 servers in AI. What we are asking is around 500,000 post many safe rays. We believe with the current pace we're doing we will reaching around 100 firms in 18 months and I will burn out and with the raise with this raise we believe with in this competitive market we could reach to the 150 firms out of 10,000 accounting and bookkeeping firm in Australia with $1 million AIR in just 12 months. I'm really asking for warm welcome to the early adopter AI bookkeeping firms. They will pray and thank you when they see that the things that they do for one day or two days will get done in 4 minutes. Introduce them and of course Ellie Angel feel free to contact me. I'm Ash from agentive that's my email. I want I written a pledge all and everyone to read from the script but I saying that maybe I shouldn't do that. I'm going to from my heart. um walking more than 17 I'm not sure 18 hours sometimes for days and thanks to my family my wife that actually take care of those and don't see me for a while and maybe 1 hour or 30 minutes per day uh today I've demoed to three people 9:00 a.m. in the cars uh lunchtime afternoon before and converted one existing customers the person that actually is doing AI doing AI company converted and and I'm sure I can bring this one to 100 to 150 customers I hope that I get the strength I should say thanks to everyone in fun institutes give give us a give us a pass I was one of those founder that hide behind the codes and not talking and not selling and today I'm just talking to the people all the day and work on the codes from 900 pm to 2 am so that's that's something I learned from the founder institutes and a lots of mentor I couldn't reach out to these mentors these many mentors from different experience and get things right down so that is definitely worth it a lot for me and I'm sure and I'm sure that you guys will hear agent WS which trademark it and registers one day as a unicorn startup and I wish and I pledge for myself to reach to that point sit in front of all of you May next year 150 customer accounting and bookkeeping firms in Australia and soon in a few years you hear the agent award and hopefully we all of you and all of me proud that we started all of us from here from fun institute >> for one safety deposit a box that we have close to 82 families that are waiting in Australia and the problem that is imagine everything that your family has built the gold the world you know the the heirlooms the documents and the memories that you can't replace now imagine that it's gone in a breakin and the crime rate is growing at the rate of 14% and year on year and banks are walking away and that's the gap that kvach is filling kav is building an Australian tech Australian techdriven and uh suburban vault infrastructure. We are building a suburban suburban vault infrastructure just 10 minutes to where people are living not at 60 minutes drive to the CBD and the class A WS which is grade 10 WS with a fully automatic autonomous system integrated with biometric band grade infrastructure security and we are going to leverage AI for continuous monitoring and threat detections and uh automations for our robot maintenance. every access is logged and being very transparent. We're going to have a mobile app integrations and we are building a further purpose of to protect the hair looms and the jewels that uh the farmers cannot replace. This is coverage. Our ask is about $3 million to launch our first flagship uh facility in Sydney. We are promising the return on investment under four years with an epeta close to 45% with a 70% of utilization and we already have close to 196 earlier registrations and we're growing at the rate of 35% year on month just purely from our digital marketing.

[00:40:55]We haven't done any anything yet on the uh on the ground but purely from digital marketing that's a significant number before the founder institute it was just a methodology that I had that I'm vision I have started developing the vision board started working with a lot of mentors it helped me to build and measure uh what we are doing pitched into the lot of uh the founders and cohorts as well one of the greatest outcome is now that I have co co-founders and we are targeting a first facility in the Q1 of 2020 27 that's that's a significant achievement during this found instead and my pledge I started uh Kavage because the wealth has moved to the suburbs but the security hasn't and I promised to every suburban families that their repraiseable positions to protect them the wedding ring the goal the goal from their mother the documents that uh that you have deserves a better uh storage facility and I'm going to build it for you And because at coverage we protect what matters most. Last but not least to my wife and to my daughter Nina. I'm sure as soon as the first facilities opened up in Cuban I'll take them to a long holiday to myself. Keep going forward one step at a time. I can do it.

[00:42:13]>> Yeah. I think your pledges and your pitches spoke for themselves. I think reflecting on that a lot of you are working a lot. So take care of yourself.

[00:42:22]That's really important. That's what I would say. It doesn't sound easy and I can really see that your hard work is going to pay off. Each of you had a unique pledge and if you're looking for a uh co-founder, be very clear about what you're looking for and speak to Paul and go on LinkedIn and try to find that person. If you're looking for funding, keep pitching. It sounds like you already are. I think my advice to you would be to just keep going and take care of yourself and build your own moat really. Um, and if there's a way that I can help you by having a chat about the the product or the tech, um, and my opinions, I'm more than happy to to talk to you. You know, we we all have networks, so uh, so Paul and Ben have very good networks, and it could be that there's someone that I know that I could connect you in with.

[00:43:09]>> Thank you for those kind words, Dave.

[00:43:11]Very, very generous of you. I would say that one of the bits of research that we do at the founder institute which is headquartered in Silicon Valley is measure the progress of founders as they have graduated as they've completed the program and what we can say is that there is a very strong correlation between speed out of the gate and then being able to be successful. There's a lot of talk about, oh, so and so's raised money. And I would suggest that raising money in and of itself is not really the the the main game. The main game is building a sustainable business and being able to go and get to market quickly, whether it's with MVP 1, MVP 2, so that you can look after the customer quickly, so that one customer turns to 10. And I love the ambition that we heard tonight with some folks launching new sites, launching the plans to go from five customers today to 150 in the future. Keeping up that momentum while staying alive is critical. So I wish you all the very best. I look forward to staying in touch. Paul and I do run additional meetups for the graduates of Founder Institute and uh hoping that you are fast out of the gate and purposeful in the steps that you make.