July 26, 2023 • 50 mins
Experience the thrill of startup life right from the heart of UC Davis, as we engage with the dynamic trio of Henry Yu, Dillon Hill, and Akshaj Aravind Raghavi, the creators of an innovative academic planning app - SchedGo! This episode celebrates their victorious journey in the Big Bang Business Competition and takes us right into the nerve center of their operations as they discuss the conception, execution, and aspirations of SchedGo. A unique blend of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the app aims to guide students towards successful graduation and career paths.
Shifting gears from SchedGo, our next stop in this episode is the biomedical field. We sit down with Harjn Bains, Sophie Boyd, and Deesha Patel, the team behind Square Solutions. These UC Davis students are seamlessly balancing their educational pursuits and the development of a groundbreaking portable cell incubator. Their vision is clear - bridging the gap between lab production and patient delivery, aiming to drastically reduce cell loss during transport and potentially saving lives. Through their eyes, we relive the exhilarating and daunting experience of pitching to investors, building a startup from scratch, and the dream of turning their project into a profitable business. The energy and optimism that Harjn, Sophie, and Deesha radiate about the potential of the biomedical engineering and health therapy industries is contagious. Tune in for an episode rife with inspiration, innovation, and insight!
https://innovate.ucdavis.edu/bigbang
https://schedgo.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/square-solutions-ca/
(0:00:00) - Interview With Big Bang Competition Winners
(0:08:39) - Building a Company and Overcoming Challenges
(0:16:57) - Balance Short-Term Financial Needs With Education
(0:26:57) - Start-Up Team Discusses Roles and Goals
(0:36:42) - Excitement for Biomedical Engineering and Innovation
________________________________________________________________
If this episode inspires you to be part of the movement, and you believe, like me, that entrepreneurs are the answer to our future, message me so we can join forces to support building truly great companies in our region.
-
Subscribe to my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCom_...
-
Mark Haney is a serial entrepreneur that has experience growing companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He is currently the CEO and founder of HaneyBiz
-
Instagram: http://instagram.com/themarkhaney
Facebook: www.facebook.com/themarkhaney
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markehaney
Website: http://haneybiz.com
Audio Boom: https://audioboom.com/channels/5005273
Twitter: http://twitter.com/themarkhaney
-
This video includes personal knowledge, experiences, and opinions about Angel Investing by seasoned angel investors. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Nothing in this video constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement.
#thebackyardadvantage #themarkhaneyshow #entrepreneur
#PowerOfWith #SacramentoEntrepreneur #Sacramento
#SacramentoSmallBusiness #SmallBusiness #GrowthFactory #Investor
#Podcast #Haneyville
Shifting gears from SchedGo, our next stop in this episode is the biomedical field. We sit down with Harjn Bains, Sophie Boyd, and Deesha Patel, the team behind Square Solutions. These UC Davis students are seamlessly balancing their educational pursuits and the development of a groundbreaking portable cell incubator. Their vision is clear - bridging the gap between lab production and patient delivery, aiming to drastically reduce cell loss during transport and potentially saving lives. Through their eyes, we relive the exhilarating and daunting experience of pitching to investors, building a startup from scratch, and the dream of turning their project into a profitable business. The energy and optimism that Harjn, Sophie, and Deesha radiate about the potential of the biomedical engineering and health therapy industries is contagious. Tune in for an episode rife with inspiration, innovation, and insight!
https://innovate.ucdavis.edu/bigbang
https://schedgo.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/square-solutions-ca/
(0:00:00) - Interview With Big Bang Competition Winners
(0:08:39) - Building a Company and Overcoming Challenges
(0:16:57) - Balance Short-Term Financial Needs With Education
(0:26:57) - Start-Up Team Discusses Roles and Goals
(0:36:42) - Excitement for Biomedical Engineering and Innovation
________________________________________________________________
If this episode inspires you to be part of the movement, and you believe, like me, that entrepreneurs are the answer to our future, message me so we can join forces to support building truly great companies in our region.
-
Subscribe to my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCom_...
-
Mark Haney is a serial entrepreneur that has experience growing companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He is currently the CEO and founder of HaneyBiz
-
Instagram: http://instagram.com/themarkhaney
Facebook: www.facebook.com/themarkhaney
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markehaney
Website: http://haneybiz.com
Audio Boom: https://audioboom.com/channels/5005273
Twitter: http://twitter.com/themarkhaney
-
This video includes personal knowledge, experiences, and opinions about Angel Investing by seasoned angel investors. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Nothing in this video constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement.
#thebackyardadvantage #themarkhaneyshow #entrepreneur
#PowerOfWith #SacramentoEntrepreneur #Sacramento
#SacramentoSmallBusiness #SmallBusiness #GrowthFactory #Investor
#Podcast #Haneyville
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know I'm fired up today to be doing a show with the winners of the Big Bang.
I was gonna say Big Bang Theory, Big Bang Competition at UC Davis.
Uc Davis has this competition that they do every year for entrepreneurs and build entrepreneurs that are actually building companies and so this year they said, hey, Mark, you want to have them on our, on your show.
(00:22):
And I said, yeah, let's do this.
So I have two teams here today.
We're going to start off with the Big Bang Competition winners from Shedgo.
Okay, so I have three of you on this show.
Maybe I'll have you each go around and introduce yourselves and who does what on the team you want to start over here?
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm Mark Schatz.
I'm pursuing my MBA at UC Davis.
I'm a co-founder at Skedgo.
I mostly handle finances, so you can say I'm the CFO.
Okay, and I let Dylan and Henry do that.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, Dylan.
Yeah, I'm classmates with Oxshodge and the MBA program and I'm the head of growth, so I'm looking at basically just general strategy of where we're headed and making sure that we get the users or the buyers to make sure that strategy works out.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Okay and Henry, what's your job, Hi?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I'm Henry.
I'm the founder and I head the product.
I'm a computer science undergrad graduating this week.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All right.
What's the emotion?
Are you excited to be graduating?
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That's great.
Okay, so you're the product guy when we start with you, henry.
So what is this Shedgo?
What is it?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, so Skedgo is.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
It's called Skedgo.
I'm saying it wrong.
I'm sorry.
It's okay.
It's good feedback though.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
So Skedgo is an academic planning app.
It's a web and mobile app that helps guide students towards their graduation and a successful career.
So we have mainly two products One is class scheduler, another is a degree planner and we use we try to leverage AI and machine learning to help each student build their customized schedules that can fit their personal needs and preferences.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Why did you start this company?
Is there a big problem that you saw, and how did you arrive at this solution?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Yeah.
So when I was in my first year, the first time when I registered for classes, I realized that there are so many options I can choose from.
Each course has so many different sections.
I need to resolve time conflicts between my classes and choose the professors I want and also try to satisfy as much requirements as I need.
(02:42):
So there are a lot of factors.
And also there are things like waitlist, because when I was first year I got very low priority in registering the classes.
So when I plan my schedule and when I actually register schedule, the course is filled up and I have to be on the waitlist and usually I don't get in when I was first year.
(03:03):
So at that time I start to build a little tool that can automate this process.
So I just need to consider what course I want to take and the tool will figure out which section I should register.
That can get me the best chance of getting there with my preferred time and professors.
And later, when I actually came here, started taking classes, I realized all my classmates have the exact same problem and most of them are doing these optimizations manually.
(03:36):
And so that's when I started founding a team and I started making this like little project with no UI into a website that others can use.
And later, when I like share this app with more and more students, I realized that there are some bigger problems I can solve, which is degree planning.
(03:57):
So, before I solve the problem of registering classes for a specific quarter, and later I realized that it's also a very like frustrating experience to plan the entire four year like degree plan, like what classes I need to take for each quarter in order to satisfy like general education requirements, major requirements and which minors is like most suitable for me based on my interest and the course I've taken.
(04:27):
So now we are trying to like add an AI powered degree planner that will be a virtual, personalized academic advisor that can not just help you like build class schedules for each quarter, but build your entire four year plan that is best catered to individual needs and their long term plan.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
All right.
So, dylan, do you guys have customers yet?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
We have a lot of users.
We have about 2000 from four different universities.
Wow yeah, buyers is something that we're working on.
It's very difficult to convince a university to take on a new vendor, so that's kind of the main challenge that we're trying to acquire a user.
A lot of different ways.
Word of mouth has been really big.
Like Henry said, every single university student has this problem since the dawn of time.
(05:14):
So when they solve it with schedule, they tell their friends, they tell their friends, etc.
Beyond that, we just look for where students are already solving academic related problems.
So like Reddit, social media, right, they're confused about their degree, their career.
They're going certain places to find advice.
That's really the best place to get in touch with them and is there a way to monetize this?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
What do you anticipate in terms of customers?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, so actually I just only have some great numbers on that, but the general strategy is we call it the critical mass.
So we understand through our advisors that selling to universities very challenging.
There's a lot of data requirements, a lot of bureaucracy surrounding the process and to make that a little bit easier, our strategy is to have 20% of the student body at a select university, first UC Davis, using schedule as free users on a base plan.
(06:06):
And then we're saying, hey, you know, university of California Davis, it director, we have 6000 students using this right now.
If we can sign a contract, we can expand the feature base of this to really change their lives.
We have a bunch of data that can support you, we can help inspire your register process and that's the basic idea.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So sort of a B2B sales negotiation Okay, our CFO, let's go over to you.
How do you, how do you finance this If you don't have any customers?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Right.
So big bang is a really big blessing for us right now because it kind of gives us a small runway.
We won about $30,000 through the big bang $30,000.
So it's going to go into incorporation and, you know, getting the legal stuff right and a little bit runway to accelerate the degree planner right.
(06:52):
So we will be rolling out the degree planner by the end of this year like a public beta version which people can actually use.
Skeitgo is up right now.
It is live, but by it's the scheduling aspect of it and not the degree planning aspect of it that's live right now.
We're also in talks with a couple of incubators, accelerators and having the early venture discussions, because I personally work in private equity, so I kind of see a direction where we want to take this company and how we want to monetize it.
(07:26):
But again, the timeline is by end of this December.
That's when we want to start off in a really big way.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So you are recently here from India and when you say you work in private equity, do you work in private equity here in the United States?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I do, oh, who do you work for?
Have you heard of Upvelling Capital?
What is it, upvelling Capital?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
No, I haven't.
Okay, are they in the Bay?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Area.
No, they're based out of Davis and New York.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I don't know.
Maybe you would have heard of the Founder, though.
Have you heard of John Colomark?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I don't know if I have or not.
I should have, huh.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
That's awkward, All right yeah some of our listeners know that I do dabble a little bit in venture capital too, so in Sacramento, is that that big a place?
I probably should know them.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Okay, so how long have you been working in private equity?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I've been with Upvelling since November, so it's been quite some time now, yeah.
But we've also been having a lot of discussions with other venture firms which do early stage investing, just to figure out if what we are building is aligned with what they're looking for, so that when we want to start off by the end of this year, we're meeting the right people.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
What kind of feedback are you getting from those investors?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Well, first thing is, pretty much everybody we talk to can relate to the problem we're solving, which is everybody's had an issue while pursuing their undergrad degree.
That's common to all three of us too, because I'm an industrial engineer myself, but I never worked in that space.
I don't like, at this point I don't even know why.
I did industrial engineering.
So I did industrial engineering.
(09:03):
I started my own packaging firm and then that got acquired and then I moved to the US.
Now I'm in private equity and now I'm doing schedule.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
You built a company and sold it already.
Yeah, oh, my goodness, congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So all of us connect to the problem in some sort of ways, and so do the people we have conversations with.
But the more conversations we have, the more we realize that the what we say TAM, total Addressable Market is way bigger than what we think it is.
Because a lot of people who are giving us feedback say I think you're just focusing on one small part of the problem.
(09:39):
There's a bigger market to address with your product.
Just go for it.
So we've been strategizing based on all of these discussions we've been having.
So it's been a really fun process, especially building a company, something which I personally I'm passionate about.
So it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Okay, so question here so have you?
You haven't incorporated yet now.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We should be by the end of this month.
We'll be having those discussions.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
The intention is to make it a company and take it to the next level.
Okay, maybe I'll go back to you, Henry.
What's been the biggest challenge so far?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Yeah, the biggest challenge is currently, like the schools, they are very reluctant to open up their APIs for us to get data from them easily, although we currently do not.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
The data that you need to get is what the curriculum is and the class scheduling and that kind of thing.
Is that the kind of data you need?
Speaker 4 (10:36):
That's like the first step and for our like, next, the next big feature, like the degree planner, we also need to access the student records, like what classes they have taken so far and their performance, so we can make more personalized recommendations.
And that's kind of the biggest challenge because, like a lot of users, they are requesting this feature.
(10:58):
Like, also features like where you build your schedule on our platform.
You can just like click one button on our website to register for it, and these features require, like, official collaboration with the universities.
So that also is that is also why, like, we try to pursue the B2B model instead of the B2C, because only, like, cooperating with universities, integrate with their existing system, can enable more features that students really wants and make a bigger impact.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Are they reluctant because of privacy issues?
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Like for the first part, like if we are just getting like the course data, there's no privacy issues.
Those course information are publicly available online on their website already.
It's more kind of bureaucracy, like when I talked to one like developing the IT department.
(11:53):
He actually love our product and he brought it up with the like Edmine who are in charge of the current like schedule builder, and he just told me that hey, it's gonna make their Edmine look like they are not doing a good job, so they are not going to collaborate with us.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Okay, yeah, so Well, thinking about this.
The B2B sales force have you had, dylan, have you had experience in a B2B sales environment?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, not as a sales, but on the marketing side Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Have you built?
This guy's built and sold a company.
What's your big win, Brian?
The current is, I would say my big win.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I'm curious if you recognize this story.
I was attending UC Davis as an undergrad when a childhood best friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I left.
I dropped out to create a foundation.
We ended up on the Washington Post, good Morning America, nbc Nightly News telling our story.
I left to create a foundation to help him pursue his bucket list.
(12:49):
We put together some viral campaigns.
Ultimately, we broke a world record for the most bone marrow donor signups, and it was 13,000 people did this and helped us.
And then one of those people, a complete stranger.
He's giving me chills.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, oh wait, the story's not over, it's even better.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
One of those people, a complete stranger, still don't know who it is.
They were the 0.006% chance genetic match that my friend needed, so, like the foundation that we created together, literally saved his life, and he's been in remission since 2019.
Wow yeah, it was an adventure.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
That happened in 2019.
How old were you when you did that?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I was.
That was five years ago.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Okay, so you were in college.
Yeah, okay, you were in college at that point Okay.
That was for your best friend.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Wow, I guess you guys are really tight now.
I'm like oh my God.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, it's a new form of bonding.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, that's amazing.
I've also worked in marketing, which is a little bit more I know I'm jumping off story here, but this is I'm blown away by that.
Thank you, thank you, oh my gosh.
Okay, so he's built and sold the company.
You've saved your best friend's life, and about make me cry here.
Okay, dr Yee, what have you?
Speaker 4 (14:02):
done Henry.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Are you just the founder, the original founder?
What have you done prior to this?
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah, so like because I started this as a personal project in my first year of college and later I founded a team, I went to the Plasma Accelerator and finally, like the Big Bang, and during these four years I've also like done two internships at Amazon and I also like worked for some like student startups before.
(14:30):
Like it's more like related to AI, machine learning.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So maybe I'll ask each of you this and I don't know how well you're well, how well you're aligned on this what's?
If you could just tell me the vision of what this will look like and maybe what the longer term strategy would be?
You wanna start?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah, so like our short term strategy is to have our AI machine learning power degree planners that can help undergrad students build their entire four year degree plan.
And we are also looking for like other things like professional education, continuing education and, yeah, like expand to the like other part of the attack market as well.
(15:19):
Yeah, because there are a lot of legacy system the school is using that is like not user friendly.
And when we like, when we grasp our go-to market, we are going to expand to like all other related areas with our AI and machine learning based technology.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So how do you guys make decisions?
So you get three of it.
Looks like there's three people on this team.
Is there other people on the team?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's among the three of us.
All the decisions are made among the three of us.
We do have a few people in the team who mostly work on the product side and some on the growth side to implement the strategies that we come up with.
Right, but it's mostly the three of us.
Where strategy growth and how do we finance it and who do we reach out to?
(16:07):
These decisions are taken by Dylan and I.
Henry takes most of the decisions on the product side and we have these conversations.
We come up to Henry.
We say, hey, I think this is the direction we wanna explore and Henry gets working on the product itself because he's amazing in building products.
Right, he's really good with code and the kind of feedback we're getting from users who are using SCAT Go to.
(16:30):
They really like how intuitive the platform is, how it looks, the whole user experience, ui, what we say right, and all of that is good to Henry because he's really good with what he does.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, interesting to see this team.
I love how you guys have broken it up with the three leaders one's product, one's finance, one's growth.
I think that's a really good way to go.
It feels like you got all your bases covered.
What's your biggest concern in terms of reaching this vision?
What's the big worry?
If there is one?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I think the short-term worry is the chicken and the egg problem.
Right, Like, what we're building is technically complex and so it requires financing To be able to really nail the landing.
We need a runway right To be able to do that, but of course, to be able to get there we need money.
So it's like what comes first.
Right, we know that tomorrow, in a different universe, we could turn on ads and that would solve a lot of problems, but then we're missing the like philosophical goal we have, which is making education easier.
(17:33):
So I think it's just balancing what we can do now and what we wanna do in the future and making sure for lack of a better way to put it we're not selling ourselves out for like a short-term game.
Right, we really wanna make education easier, but that's a big, big ask yeah, well, I like that.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
That's easy for me to understand.
Make education easier, because my daughter went to UC Davis as well and she was on a diving scholarship so she got a little bit of.
I guess getting into classes was slightly easier for her and then she ended up getting some of the degrees were really tough to get into these classes.
So she ended up getting a communications degree and she got out in like three and a half years but she sorta just wanted to go get through it a little bit.
(18:16):
But I can see with these advanced degrees it being just almost very, very hectic and it takes forever just to get your degree if you don't have the right planning strategy.
So congratulations on what you're building.
It's exciting to hear each of your stories individually and we have somebody else coming up on the show.
(18:37):
We have the I guess it's the second place team is gonna come on Square Solutions.
So thank you guys for coming on.
We'll bring up Square Solutions now.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Thank you for having us Thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
That was awesome guys.
Jeez, you guys blow me away.
College students, that's cool.
So you guys can relax over there if you want to and we'll see.
All right, excuse me.
(19:11):
All right, so, sophie and how?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
do you say your first name, harjan?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Harjan, harjan and you're okay.
Okay, all right, so now I have I guess it's the second place when winners of the Big Bang and it's square solutions, and there's three of you here again today to.
So maybe we'll go around and just have you do a quick intro, like we did with the last team.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Yeah, for sure, I'm Disha.
I'm a third year biomedical engineering student and we all met at Um quarter at Aggie square, so I'll pass it on to Sophie.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I'm Sophie might need to pull the mic up a little closer, sorry, yeah.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
I'm Sophie.
I'm also a third year undergraduate in biomedical engineering.
I kind of help when the strategy and kind of Development of product.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (20:08):
I am Harjan.
I'm also a third year biomedical engineering student at UC Davis and I also hope in like the product development side of things.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, you and I hit it off originally because you went to Oakmont High School, so I knew you were a stud right then.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
The other.
You two women, did you grow up around here?
Where are you guys originally from?
Speaker 5 (20:29):
I'm actually from Central Valley.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Central Valley.
Like what's that?
Like Fresno around.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Fresno area.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, okay, and then where are you from originally, sophie?
I'm from the South Bay.
I'm from San Jose, south Bay.
Okay, so let's talk about your business and then we'll.
And then we'll talk about the competition a little bit.
Maybe just tell us a little bit about the business.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Yeah, so our product I'll describe it in three words, it's a sell, a portable cell incubator.
So basically, the goal that we're trying to solve with our product is to get to solve this problem of a transportation gap between getting cell therapies To from like product development, like research side to people in the hospitals.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Okay, so the transportation, like getting.
What are these?
Like little test tubes, or there must be very small Packages so they're usually cell therapies.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
They're in flasks.
Okay and so what we're trying to do is we're trying to so transport these, because right now what's happening is they're just kind of put into ice, like a box of ice, and Transported, and that can really kill off the cells.
I think it's about 15% of cells die within the transportation process.
So they're not getting all of them are not getting there to the patient who needs these cells.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Okay, so could they just make?
Get more cells, and then that way you could deal with the 15%.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
That's not necessarily how it works.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I don't even know what cell therapy is.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
I know that's completely fine, it's, it's still a growing market.
A lot of new research is being done in cell therapy development area.
But yeah, you can't just make cells out of nowhere.
You have to really like, you have to do cell culturing techniques and you have to make sure like it's a it's a big time process.
Okay goes into.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Making so and so, and so you're saving a lot of money by having that happen.
Is that right?
Are you saving lives?
Are you saving money?
What?
What are you Actually?
What's actually happening?
Speaker 6 (22:34):
Yeah, so by solving this like cell, like efficacy issue, the idea is that we'd be saving more people, people's lives.
Okay that they're getting all the cells that they need and not like minus 15% of what they need.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, so you transfer them from where to where to what it starts off where and then it goes through the hospital.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Right.
So a lot of these cells are cultured in labs and we have to get these cells from the labs to the hospitals where the patients need them the most.
So the idea with this incubator is that instead of freezing down the cells and thawing them again which affects 15% and 15% die we would keep them at 37 degrees Celsius, like body temperature.
(23:12):
We'd keep them at body temperature and they just aren't freezed and they won't die and then what's the?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
What about time?
Can they?
Does it need to be from point a to point b in a short window of time?
I mean if you keep it at 37 degrees Celsius, will it?
Will those cells last for a long period?
Speaker 6 (23:32):
of time?
Yeah, I think in 30s.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
So the way cell culturing kind of works is you have these cells and you basically they are living things.
You treat them like living things, you give them the, the food they need, and Our product is essentially scaling down the standard right now for growing cells and like maintaining cells and that's.
You go into any research lab that Makes cells.
(23:55):
They're gonna have these big incubators.
They keep them at 37 degrees Celsius, they have co2.
They have sterility and when you give the ideal conditions, that's when they can thrive.
And so we want to shrink this normal incubator down, make it portable and Do it so we can deliver these cells essentially as they would be in the lab, directly to the hospitals, just directly to the OR room.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Would you say that this is mostly like a packaging type item is because you're not dealing with the actual Transportation.
You're just dealing with the way, the way that it's packaged when it gets transported.
Speaker 7 (24:28):
It's a little bit of both.
Our current venture is creating the product.
Our long-term venture is being involved in the transportation of it as well.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Okay.
So how did the team come together?
You're all in doing bio med at UC Davis and Did you hear about the Big Bang, and then you decided to start the company, or what prompted you to like, start this?
Speaker 7 (24:51):
So our story starts with Aggie Square, which is essentially an issue, an initiative through UC Davis to bring together students, industry in the community, and we specifically, were part of a part, a cohort of people who were addressing the gap between physicians and Engineers in healthcare.
(25:14):
So we were in a program where we were exposed to so many different problems in healthcare.
We spent a lot of time in the OR room, we got to talk to a lot of researchers and doctors and Through that we recognized well, first off, there are so many problems in healthcare and there are so many things that need to be addressed.
But one of our professors, dr Eidgen Wang, is currently in the clinical trials for stem cell therapy for spina bifida, and when talking about his research and his clinical trials, he was explaining how difficult it is to get his cell therapy to the hospital for the surgery that they're being used for.
(25:52):
He showed us this photo kind of like it was really funny we're basically the PI of his lab was pushing the cell incubator the full-size cell incubator down the street from his lab at the medical facility to the hospital, and that's kind of where our idea formed were like this is crazy, like this can't be, what the standard?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
so that what it was, what it is now, it looks like a cart that he be pushed down the from one building to a next.
It's like this huge box.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
It's like on wheels and like pushing it.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Like how do you get it through the elevator, up the stairs to the what you're pushing is this small, like it's very small a thing, flask, okay and it's.
It's a big ordeal and you, you're pushing it in a cart.
So some places I'm sure you would want to transfer, transfer, transport it farther than that, right like right, it's like some labs like specialized in certain cell therapies and making specific cells.
Speaker 6 (26:45):
So if your patient is in LA, you know how are you gonna get this huge cart to LA, so you would need like put on a plane, and so the idea with this portable incubators it's just easier to transport even far distances, rural distances for rural patients and stuff.
Okay, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So what stage is the company?
And now I I'm a little bit familiar with Aggie Square and I know they're building a big facility, but you're part of the program, like one of these original programs, where you're sort of finding a problem, almost as a like a class project type of thing kind of is how, how is this different than a class project turning into a business?
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Well, it was never a class project.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Not a class With.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
I think actually it was after Aggie Square, we all sat down and we talked with each other or like this is like a problem that we, we all got to know each other, like the team got to know each other through Aggie Square.
So we were able to find our weaknesses and strengths through that and we talked about these problems and this was the one we really nailed down and we were like this is something that would be great if we can just like help solve.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Have you decided to actually make it a business now?
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Yes, we, we were hoping to make it a business as of right now.
We're still.
Now that we have the Big Bang money we got 10,000 from the Big Bang prize money we're hoping to develop a prototype so that we can actually get it out there and do testing on it.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay, so, in terms of developing a prototype, who does what on the team?
How did you divide up the I guess rules and responsibilities?
We heard our last group they've I don't know if they're further along sounds like they might be slightly further along what are your, what's your plan for dividing up roles and responsibilities?
Speaker 6 (28:24):
I think I think we kind of all have our like specialties amongst a group and so then based on that specialty, so we kind of created like some categories like me and Sophia, like on the product side, deesha has her like amazing leadership skills as well, so she kind of like helps organize meetings and also overarching like looks at things.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
We also have a really big team.
There's about 10 of us.
I saw that picture on my screen over there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, it looks like about 10.
Yeah, okay, what does everybody do?
How do you keep 10 people busy?
I mean, I can't.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
you know, that's a lot of so I think a lot of it is just like a lot of the.
It is product development and that's like mainly what we're focused on right now.
We like started just a little bit before the Big Bang and we have a lot of great advisors giving us, you know, all the ins and outs of what we could do, what we shouldn't do.
Young hang he's.
He was our TA in Aggie Square but he's been helping us make a lot, do a lot of the decision making and also the research aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So if you make this into a real company, it's going to be worth a lot of money and you've got 10, 10 teammates.
Is everybody sort of an equal shareholder?
How do you, how do you make those kind of?
Speaker 7 (29:33):
decisions.
That's kind of where we're standing at right now.
Yeah, we're at a point where now we have this money.
It's like this is going from like you said, it wasn't a class project, but a class project to like a thing, like an actual thing, a company.
So we're just working on like any company.
There's roles.
We're kind of working through roles and like what people are going to take on and with that will kind of rise who has taken what company in the company?
(29:58):
But it's it's.
We're still very early on in our venture.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So there's no, there's no, there's no arm wrestling or positioning right now, for you know leadership roles or more equity, or I'm working harder than you, or any of that.
Speaker 7 (30:13):
Not at the moment.
Hopefully it stays that way.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Yeah, no, I'm like, oh no, I would say our team is really good at communicating with each other and if we do have a problem that arises, we make sure to address it together as a group, rather than just someone talks to someone on the side and kind of gets it over with.
I mean, ethan, he's one of.
All of us are co founders, but me and Ethan are primarily taking on the role of like just delegating and also like organize everything, as Harjan said, and I think so far it's been working.
(30:45):
But if anywhere were to come up to me and be like I want to try out the role, I don't think there would be a problem necessarily in us kind of working together on that Interesting dilemma is you know to see something like this because you have 10 people all trying to work together.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
You've been described as the leader, which might mean you have to make, find a way to make those decisions or get those decisions made, because you can't have too many cooks in the kitchen, and then when they came on, they've got, you know, one person in charge of product, one person in charge of growth and the other person in charge of finance, kind of.
I don't know if it's textbook, but it seems to make sense.
(31:23):
That's what I see a lot of companies do.
Do you envision needing to move towards something closer to that?
Speaker 5 (31:30):
I think as we develop the product and as we go forward, we definitely will develop something that's.
That's like that.
I think as I was listening to them talk, I was like, wow, that's they have it.
They have it down to the nail.
But I think right now we're still very, very early on our product development.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, Okay, so in terms of the competition, what would it feel like to compete against people like these guys?
Right, obviously kick butt in a big way, but you guys are no slouch, you guys are highly technical and you're solving sounds like a real problem.
Tell me about that competition Anybody want to describe.
Is it like feel super competitive, were you?
Speaker 6 (32:06):
nervous.
So we were all part of pitching to these investors and I know when I walked in I see them all sitting like that.
I felt like Shark Tank almost.
I got kind of nervous, kind of scared.
But as you start talking about your product and pitch, you become more and more confident as you go.
I didn't really look at the other competition as much because I knew if I looked at it I'd second guess myself and whatever, and so I just went in there, just not knowing who the competition is, and I think that confidence in me kind of like kind of got brought out as we were presented.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Well, 10 people pitching.
How did you guys divide up?
Did everybody say something on the pitch?
Speaker 6 (32:44):
No, that's a lot of mouths, only a few people were talking.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Sophie, were you talking?
Were you one of the people presenting?
Speaker 7 (32:53):
The way it was done was it was an eight minute presentation, 12 minute Q&A.
I played a big role in the Q&A because of, like we said, we were really involved in the research and design aspect of it.
So then I was kind of able to jump in and add in those like the information that we can't give in like an eight minute pitch.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Do you intend to be a part of this going forward if it becomes a company?
Yes, what part of this are you most excited about in terms of that?
Speaker 7 (33:20):
I'm very excited about just we have so much opportunity to grow.
We're putting ourselves into an industry that well, a very fast growing industry.
Cell therapy is super fast growing and so kind of seeing where our product can go I really believe in our product and I think it could really change cell therapy and so just kind of seeing that through it's really cool, kind of being an undergrad and having an idea I care about.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Well, uc Davis is world renowned for this area of study, and so how much of an advantage is it to be at UC Davis solving this kind of problem?
We talked to the last group.
They're solving a problem that every university deals with basically, or every student deals with.
(34:08):
Yours is like, perfectly suited for UC Davis specifically, is that?
Do you find that that's an advantage?
Speaker 7 (34:16):
It's very exciting.
As I mentioned, we have our one advisor and he's carrying out the first clinical trial for spina vifera in fetal surgery, and so it's cool that, like they are supporting us in this, because it's just exciting that's the only way to put it.
It's very exciting because we have a very close look into it and, like through the program, we were able to talk to these doctors and they're all very excited and willing to help us, because they also recognize the value of it.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
And also at UC Davis, there's many professors, many researchers that are, you know, dabble in cell therapy, in the sort of field.
So if we have any questions, if we have, if we need something, we can, we have a wide range of people that we can go to as well.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Besides the person that you guys have described so far, who's been the most help out of UC Davis in terms of the professors, I would say Dr Wang right.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
Well, that's the list goes on.
Honestly, we've had Dr Wang alongside Dr Diana Farmer, who's been very helpful.
She's a physician, so we get to see her perspective.
We've had a lot of people in the business aspect of it.
We have, like Pat and lawyers who work along Davis and are very involved in that to help us with, like, the business aspect and kind of what we wanna do longterm with our design.
(35:33):
Just a lot of professors are very excited to hear that their students are working on something and are very excited to let us pick their brain for information.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
That's exciting.
Okay, so, in terms of moving forward, what are you most excited about?
Let me go to you, too.
What are you most excited about?
Speaker 5 (35:48):
I would say the thing that I'm most excited about is seeing our product come to life.
I think that's a little bit short term as of right now, but being able to see, like, all of the aspects that we want in this portable incubator and seeing that it actually works and it actually is helping cells live, if you will, I think that's really that's very exciting to see when do you go to get something like this prototyped?
(36:13):
Well, we have a lot of resources at UC Davis, I think in general.
We have the engineering student design center where we can go to get this stuff designed and actually built, and then also Dr Wang's laboratory is there if we want to do research to make sure like we're getting the right amount of CO2 into the cells.
(36:39):
So we have quite a bit of room to play with.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
What are you most excited about?
Harjun?
Speaker 6 (36:43):
I'm excited for because, as Sophie was saying, that the biomedical engineering industry itself is growing rapidly, and so is this health therapy industry, and so I'm just excited to be a part of that growth and contributing to that growth.
And I'm excited just to see again Deshosa saying that our product is coming to life, like something that we've worked so hard on is coming together.
(37:04):
I think I'm really excited about that Well.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I am excited that these kind of innovative ideas are coming out of UC Davis.
You know a guy coming out of my high school that's doing it.
It's changing the world.
So it really brings me a lot of appreciation for you and, really, I guess, hope for America, for the world, with people like you really at the helm.
(37:30):
You're the next generation, so I'm really, really excited for what you guys are doing.
So thank you very much for joining me on the show and really great to have you right here in my backyard.
It's really fun to see.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having us.
We'll see you back.
You know I'm fired up today to be doing a show with the winners of the Big Bang.
I was gonna say Big Bang Theory, Big Bang Competition at UC Davis.
Uc Davis has this competition that they do every year for entrepreneurs and build entrepreneurs that are actually building companies and so this year they said, hey, Mark, you want to have them on our, on your show.
(00:22):
And I said, yeah, let's do this.
So I have two teams here today.
We're going to start off with the Big Bang Competition winners from Shedgo.
Okay, so I have three of you on this show.
Maybe I'll have you each go around and introduce yourselves and who does what on the team you want to start over here?
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm Mark Schatz.
I'm pursuing my MBA at UC Davis.
I'm a co-founder at Skedgo.
I mostly handle finances, so you can say I'm the CFO.
Okay, and I let Dylan and Henry do that.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, Dylan.
Yeah, I'm classmates with Oxshodge and the MBA program and I'm the head of growth, so I'm looking at basically just general strategy of where we're headed and making sure that we get the users or the buyers to make sure that strategy works out.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Okay and Henry, what's your job, Hi?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I'm Henry.
I'm the founder and I head the product.
I'm a computer science undergrad graduating this week.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All right.
What's the emotion?
Are you excited to be graduating?
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That's great.
Okay, so you're the product guy when we start with you, henry.
So what is this Shedgo?
What is it?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, so Skedgo is.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
It's called Skedgo.
I'm saying it wrong.
I'm sorry.
It's okay.
It's good feedback though.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
So Skedgo is an academic planning app.
It's a web and mobile app that helps guide students towards their graduation and a successful career.
So we have mainly two products One is class scheduler, another is a degree planner and we use we try to leverage AI and machine learning to help each student build their customized schedules that can fit their personal needs and preferences.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Why did you start this company?
Is there a big problem that you saw, and how did you arrive at this solution?
Speaker 4 (02:17):
Yeah.
So when I was in my first year, the first time when I registered for classes, I realized that there are so many options I can choose from.
Each course has so many different sections.
I need to resolve time conflicts between my classes and choose the professors I want and also try to satisfy as much requirements as I need.
(02:42):
So there are a lot of factors.
And also there are things like waitlist, because when I was first year I got very low priority in registering the classes.
So when I plan my schedule and when I actually register schedule, the course is filled up and I have to be on the waitlist and usually I don't get in when I was first year.
(03:03):
So at that time I start to build a little tool that can automate this process.
So I just need to consider what course I want to take and the tool will figure out which section I should register.
That can get me the best chance of getting there with my preferred time and professors.
And later, when I actually came here, started taking classes, I realized all my classmates have the exact same problem and most of them are doing these optimizations manually.
(03:36):
And so that's when I started founding a team and I started making this like little project with no UI into a website that others can use.
And later, when I like share this app with more and more students, I realized that there are some bigger problems I can solve, which is degree planning.
(03:57):
So, before I solve the problem of registering classes for a specific quarter, and later I realized that it's also a very like frustrating experience to plan the entire four year like degree plan, like what classes I need to take for each quarter in order to satisfy like general education requirements, major requirements and which minors is like most suitable for me based on my interest and the course I've taken.
(04:27):
So now we are trying to like add an AI powered degree planner that will be a virtual, personalized academic advisor that can not just help you like build class schedules for each quarter, but build your entire four year plan that is best catered to individual needs and their long term plan.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
All right.
So, dylan, do you guys have customers yet?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
We have a lot of users.
We have about 2000 from four different universities.
Wow yeah, buyers is something that we're working on.
It's very difficult to convince a university to take on a new vendor, so that's kind of the main challenge that we're trying to acquire a user.
A lot of different ways.
Word of mouth has been really big.
Like Henry said, every single university student has this problem since the dawn of time.
(05:14):
So when they solve it with schedule, they tell their friends, they tell their friends, etc.
Beyond that, we just look for where students are already solving academic related problems.
So like Reddit, social media, right, they're confused about their degree, their career.
They're going certain places to find advice.
That's really the best place to get in touch with them and is there a way to monetize this?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
What do you anticipate in terms of customers?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, so actually I just only have some great numbers on that, but the general strategy is we call it the critical mass.
So we understand through our advisors that selling to universities very challenging.
There's a lot of data requirements, a lot of bureaucracy surrounding the process and to make that a little bit easier, our strategy is to have 20% of the student body at a select university, first UC Davis, using schedule as free users on a base plan.
(06:06):
And then we're saying, hey, you know, university of California Davis, it director, we have 6000 students using this right now.
If we can sign a contract, we can expand the feature base of this to really change their lives.
We have a bunch of data that can support you, we can help inspire your register process and that's the basic idea.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So sort of a B2B sales negotiation Okay, our CFO, let's go over to you.
How do you, how do you finance this If you don't have any customers?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Right.
So big bang is a really big blessing for us right now because it kind of gives us a small runway.
We won about $30,000 through the big bang $30,000.
So it's going to go into incorporation and, you know, getting the legal stuff right and a little bit runway to accelerate the degree planner right.
(06:52):
So we will be rolling out the degree planner by the end of this year like a public beta version which people can actually use.
Skeitgo is up right now.
It is live, but by it's the scheduling aspect of it and not the degree planning aspect of it that's live right now.
We're also in talks with a couple of incubators, accelerators and having the early venture discussions, because I personally work in private equity, so I kind of see a direction where we want to take this company and how we want to monetize it.
(07:26):
But again, the timeline is by end of this December.
That's when we want to start off in a really big way.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So you are recently here from India and when you say you work in private equity, do you work in private equity here in the United States?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I do, oh, who do you work for?
Have you heard of Upvelling Capital?
What is it, upvelling Capital?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
No, I haven't.
Okay, are they in the Bay?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Area.
No, they're based out of Davis and New York.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I don't know.
Maybe you would have heard of the Founder, though.
Have you heard of John Colomark?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I don't know if I have or not.
I should have, huh.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
That's awkward, All right yeah some of our listeners know that I do dabble a little bit in venture capital too, so in Sacramento, is that that big a place?
I probably should know them.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Okay, so how long have you been working in private equity?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I've been with Upvelling since November, so it's been quite some time now, yeah.
But we've also been having a lot of discussions with other venture firms which do early stage investing, just to figure out if what we are building is aligned with what they're looking for, so that when we want to start off by the end of this year, we're meeting the right people.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
What kind of feedback are you getting from those investors?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Well, first thing is, pretty much everybody we talk to can relate to the problem we're solving, which is everybody's had an issue while pursuing their undergrad degree.
That's common to all three of us too, because I'm an industrial engineer myself, but I never worked in that space.
I don't like, at this point I don't even know why.
I did industrial engineering.
So I did industrial engineering.
(09:03):
I started my own packaging firm and then that got acquired and then I moved to the US.
Now I'm in private equity and now I'm doing schedule.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
You built a company and sold it already.
Yeah, oh, my goodness, congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So all of us connect to the problem in some sort of ways, and so do the people we have conversations with.
But the more conversations we have, the more we realize that the what we say TAM, total Addressable Market is way bigger than what we think it is.
Because a lot of people who are giving us feedback say I think you're just focusing on one small part of the problem.
(09:39):
There's a bigger market to address with your product.
Just go for it.
So we've been strategizing based on all of these discussions we've been having.
So it's been a really fun process, especially building a company, something which I personally I'm passionate about.
So it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Okay, so question here so have you?
You haven't incorporated yet now.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We should be by the end of this month.
We'll be having those discussions.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
The intention is to make it a company and take it to the next level.
Okay, maybe I'll go back to you, Henry.
What's been the biggest challenge so far?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Yeah, the biggest challenge is currently, like the schools, they are very reluctant to open up their APIs for us to get data from them easily, although we currently do not.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
The data that you need to get is what the curriculum is and the class scheduling and that kind of thing.
Is that the kind of data you need?
Speaker 4 (10:36):
That's like the first step and for our like, next, the next big feature, like the degree planner, we also need to access the student records, like what classes they have taken so far and their performance, so we can make more personalized recommendations.
And that's kind of the biggest challenge because, like a lot of users, they are requesting this feature.
(10:58):
Like, also features like where you build your schedule on our platform.
You can just like click one button on our website to register for it, and these features require, like, official collaboration with the universities.
So that also is that is also why, like, we try to pursue the B2B model instead of the B2C, because only, like, cooperating with universities, integrate with their existing system, can enable more features that students really wants and make a bigger impact.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Are they reluctant because of privacy issues?
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Like for the first part, like if we are just getting like the course data, there's no privacy issues.
Those course information are publicly available online on their website already.
It's more kind of bureaucracy, like when I talked to one like developing the IT department.
(11:53):
He actually love our product and he brought it up with the like Edmine who are in charge of the current like schedule builder, and he just told me that hey, it's gonna make their Edmine look like they are not doing a good job, so they are not going to collaborate with us.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Okay, yeah, so Well, thinking about this.
The B2B sales force have you had, dylan, have you had experience in a B2B sales environment?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, not as a sales, but on the marketing side Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Have you built?
This guy's built and sold a company.
What's your big win, Brian?
The current is, I would say my big win.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I'm curious if you recognize this story.
I was attending UC Davis as an undergrad when a childhood best friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I left.
I dropped out to create a foundation.
We ended up on the Washington Post, good Morning America, nbc Nightly News telling our story.
I left to create a foundation to help him pursue his bucket list.
(12:49):
We put together some viral campaigns.
Ultimately, we broke a world record for the most bone marrow donor signups, and it was 13,000 people did this and helped us.
And then one of those people, a complete stranger.
He's giving me chills.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, oh wait, the story's not over, it's even better.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
One of those people, a complete stranger, still don't know who it is.
They were the 0.006% chance genetic match that my friend needed, so, like the foundation that we created together, literally saved his life, and he's been in remission since 2019.
Wow yeah, it was an adventure.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
That happened in 2019.
How old were you when you did that?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I was.
That was five years ago.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Okay, so you were in college.
Yeah, okay, you were in college at that point Okay.
That was for your best friend.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Wow, I guess you guys are really tight now.
I'm like oh my God.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, it's a new form of bonding.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, that's amazing.
I've also worked in marketing, which is a little bit more I know I'm jumping off story here, but this is I'm blown away by that.
Thank you, thank you, oh my gosh.
Okay, so he's built and sold the company.
You've saved your best friend's life, and about make me cry here.
Okay, dr Yee, what have you?
Speaker 4 (14:02):
done Henry.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Are you just the founder, the original founder?
What have you done prior to this?
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah, so like because I started this as a personal project in my first year of college and later I founded a team, I went to the Plasma Accelerator and finally, like the Big Bang, and during these four years I've also like done two internships at Amazon and I also like worked for some like student startups before.
(14:30):
Like it's more like related to AI, machine learning.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So maybe I'll ask each of you this and I don't know how well you're well, how well you're aligned on this what's?
If you could just tell me the vision of what this will look like and maybe what the longer term strategy would be?
You wanna start?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah, so like our short term strategy is to have our AI machine learning power degree planners that can help undergrad students build their entire four year degree plan.
And we are also looking for like other things like professional education, continuing education and, yeah, like expand to the like other part of the attack market as well.
(15:19):
Yeah, because there are a lot of legacy system the school is using that is like not user friendly.
And when we like, when we grasp our go-to market, we are going to expand to like all other related areas with our AI and machine learning based technology.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So how do you guys make decisions?
So you get three of it.
Looks like there's three people on this team.
Is there other people on the team?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's among the three of us.
All the decisions are made among the three of us.
We do have a few people in the team who mostly work on the product side and some on the growth side to implement the strategies that we come up with.
Right, but it's mostly the three of us.
Where strategy growth and how do we finance it and who do we reach out to?
(16:07):
These decisions are taken by Dylan and I.
Henry takes most of the decisions on the product side and we have these conversations.
We come up to Henry.
We say, hey, I think this is the direction we wanna explore and Henry gets working on the product itself because he's amazing in building products.
Right, he's really good with code and the kind of feedback we're getting from users who are using SCAT Go to.
(16:30):
They really like how intuitive the platform is, how it looks, the whole user experience, ui, what we say right, and all of that is good to Henry because he's really good with what he does.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, interesting to see this team.
I love how you guys have broken it up with the three leaders one's product, one's finance, one's growth.
I think that's a really good way to go.
It feels like you got all your bases covered.
What's your biggest concern in terms of reaching this vision?
What's the big worry?
If there is one?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I think the short-term worry is the chicken and the egg problem.
Right, Like, what we're building is technically complex and so it requires financing To be able to really nail the landing.
We need a runway right To be able to do that, but of course, to be able to get there we need money.
So it's like what comes first.
Right, we know that tomorrow, in a different universe, we could turn on ads and that would solve a lot of problems, but then we're missing the like philosophical goal we have, which is making education easier.
(17:33):
So I think it's just balancing what we can do now and what we wanna do in the future and making sure for lack of a better way to put it we're not selling ourselves out for like a short-term game.
Right, we really wanna make education easier, but that's a big, big ask yeah, well, I like that.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
That's easy for me to understand.
Make education easier, because my daughter went to UC Davis as well and she was on a diving scholarship so she got a little bit of.
I guess getting into classes was slightly easier for her and then she ended up getting some of the degrees were really tough to get into these classes.
So she ended up getting a communications degree and she got out in like three and a half years but she sorta just wanted to go get through it a little bit.
(18:16):
But I can see with these advanced degrees it being just almost very, very hectic and it takes forever just to get your degree if you don't have the right planning strategy.
So congratulations on what you're building.
It's exciting to hear each of your stories individually and we have somebody else coming up on the show.
(18:37):
We have the I guess it's the second place team is gonna come on Square Solutions.
So thank you guys for coming on.
We'll bring up Square Solutions now.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Thank you for having us Thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
That was awesome guys.
Jeez, you guys blow me away.
College students, that's cool.
So you guys can relax over there if you want to and we'll see.
All right, excuse me.
(19:11):
All right, so, sophie and how?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
do you say your first name, harjan?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Harjan, harjan and you're okay.
Okay, all right, so now I have I guess it's the second place when winners of the Big Bang and it's square solutions, and there's three of you here again today to.
So maybe we'll go around and just have you do a quick intro, like we did with the last team.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Yeah, for sure, I'm Disha.
I'm a third year biomedical engineering student and we all met at Um quarter at Aggie square, so I'll pass it on to Sophie.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I'm Sophie might need to pull the mic up a little closer, sorry, yeah.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
I'm Sophie.
I'm also a third year undergraduate in biomedical engineering.
I kind of help when the strategy and kind of Development of product.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (20:08):
I am Harjan.
I'm also a third year biomedical engineering student at UC Davis and I also hope in like the product development side of things.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, you and I hit it off originally because you went to Oakmont High School, so I knew you were a stud right then.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
The other.
You two women, did you grow up around here?
Where are you guys originally from?
Speaker 5 (20:29):
I'm actually from Central Valley.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Central Valley.
Like what's that?
Like Fresno around.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Fresno area.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, okay, and then where are you from originally, sophie?
I'm from the South Bay.
I'm from San Jose, south Bay.
Okay, so let's talk about your business and then we'll.
And then we'll talk about the competition a little bit.
Maybe just tell us a little bit about the business.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
Yeah, so our product I'll describe it in three words, it's a sell, a portable cell incubator.
So basically, the goal that we're trying to solve with our product is to get to solve this problem of a transportation gap between getting cell therapies To from like product development, like research side to people in the hospitals.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Okay, so the transportation, like getting.
What are these?
Like little test tubes, or there must be very small Packages so they're usually cell therapies.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
They're in flasks.
Okay and so what we're trying to do is we're trying to so transport these, because right now what's happening is they're just kind of put into ice, like a box of ice, and Transported, and that can really kill off the cells.
I think it's about 15% of cells die within the transportation process.
So they're not getting all of them are not getting there to the patient who needs these cells.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Okay, so could they just make?
Get more cells, and then that way you could deal with the 15%.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
That's not necessarily how it works.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I don't even know what cell therapy is.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
I know that's completely fine, it's, it's still a growing market.
A lot of new research is being done in cell therapy development area.
But yeah, you can't just make cells out of nowhere.
You have to really like, you have to do cell culturing techniques and you have to make sure like it's a it's a big time process.
Okay goes into.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Making so and so, and so you're saving a lot of money by having that happen.
Is that right?
Are you saving lives?
Are you saving money?
What?
What are you Actually?
What's actually happening?
Speaker 6 (22:34):
Yeah, so by solving this like cell, like efficacy issue, the idea is that we'd be saving more people, people's lives.
Okay that they're getting all the cells that they need and not like minus 15% of what they need.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, so you transfer them from where to where to what it starts off where and then it goes through the hospital.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Right.
So a lot of these cells are cultured in labs and we have to get these cells from the labs to the hospitals where the patients need them the most.
So the idea with this incubator is that instead of freezing down the cells and thawing them again which affects 15% and 15% die we would keep them at 37 degrees Celsius, like body temperature.
(23:12):
We'd keep them at body temperature and they just aren't freezed and they won't die and then what's the?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
What about time?
Can they?
Does it need to be from point a to point b in a short window of time?
I mean if you keep it at 37 degrees Celsius, will it?
Will those cells last for a long period?
Speaker 6 (23:32):
of time?
Yeah, I think in 30s.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
So the way cell culturing kind of works is you have these cells and you basically they are living things.
You treat them like living things, you give them the, the food they need, and Our product is essentially scaling down the standard right now for growing cells and like maintaining cells and that's.
You go into any research lab that Makes cells.
(23:55):
They're gonna have these big incubators.
They keep them at 37 degrees Celsius, they have co2.
They have sterility and when you give the ideal conditions, that's when they can thrive.
And so we want to shrink this normal incubator down, make it portable and Do it so we can deliver these cells essentially as they would be in the lab, directly to the hospitals, just directly to the OR room.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Would you say that this is mostly like a packaging type item is because you're not dealing with the actual Transportation.
You're just dealing with the way, the way that it's packaged when it gets transported.
Speaker 7 (24:28):
It's a little bit of both.
Our current venture is creating the product.
Our long-term venture is being involved in the transportation of it as well.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Okay.
So how did the team come together?
You're all in doing bio med at UC Davis and Did you hear about the Big Bang, and then you decided to start the company, or what prompted you to like, start this?
Speaker 7 (24:51):
So our story starts with Aggie Square, which is essentially an issue, an initiative through UC Davis to bring together students, industry in the community, and we specifically, were part of a part, a cohort of people who were addressing the gap between physicians and Engineers in healthcare.
(25:14):
So we were in a program where we were exposed to so many different problems in healthcare.
We spent a lot of time in the OR room, we got to talk to a lot of researchers and doctors and Through that we recognized well, first off, there are so many problems in healthcare and there are so many things that need to be addressed.
But one of our professors, dr Eidgen Wang, is currently in the clinical trials for stem cell therapy for spina bifida, and when talking about his research and his clinical trials, he was explaining how difficult it is to get his cell therapy to the hospital for the surgery that they're being used for.
(25:52):
He showed us this photo kind of like it was really funny we're basically the PI of his lab was pushing the cell incubator the full-size cell incubator down the street from his lab at the medical facility to the hospital, and that's kind of where our idea formed were like this is crazy, like this can't be, what the standard?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
so that what it was, what it is now, it looks like a cart that he be pushed down the from one building to a next.
It's like this huge box.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
It's like on wheels and like pushing it.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Like how do you get it through the elevator, up the stairs to the what you're pushing is this small, like it's very small a thing, flask, okay and it's.
It's a big ordeal and you, you're pushing it in a cart.
So some places I'm sure you would want to transfer, transfer, transport it farther than that, right like right, it's like some labs like specialized in certain cell therapies and making specific cells.
Speaker 6 (26:45):
So if your patient is in LA, you know how are you gonna get this huge cart to LA, so you would need like put on a plane, and so the idea with this portable incubators it's just easier to transport even far distances, rural distances for rural patients and stuff.
Okay, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So what stage is the company?
And now I I'm a little bit familiar with Aggie Square and I know they're building a big facility, but you're part of the program, like one of these original programs, where you're sort of finding a problem, almost as a like a class project type of thing kind of is how, how is this different than a class project turning into a business?
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Well, it was never a class project.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Not a class With.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
I think actually it was after Aggie Square, we all sat down and we talked with each other or like this is like a problem that we, we all got to know each other, like the team got to know each other through Aggie Square.
So we were able to find our weaknesses and strengths through that and we talked about these problems and this was the one we really nailed down and we were like this is something that would be great if we can just like help solve.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Have you decided to actually make it a business now?
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Yes, we, we were hoping to make it a business as of right now.
We're still.
Now that we have the Big Bang money we got 10,000 from the Big Bang prize money we're hoping to develop a prototype so that we can actually get it out there and do testing on it.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay, so, in terms of developing a prototype, who does what on the team?
How did you divide up the I guess rules and responsibilities?
We heard our last group they've I don't know if they're further along sounds like they might be slightly further along what are your, what's your plan for dividing up roles and responsibilities?
Speaker 6 (28:24):
I think I think we kind of all have our like specialties amongst a group and so then based on that specialty, so we kind of created like some categories like me and Sophia, like on the product side, deesha has her like amazing leadership skills as well, so she kind of like helps organize meetings and also overarching like looks at things.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
We also have a really big team.
There's about 10 of us.
I saw that picture on my screen over there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, it looks like about 10.
Yeah, okay, what does everybody do?
How do you keep 10 people busy?
I mean, I can't.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
you know, that's a lot of so I think a lot of it is just like a lot of the.
It is product development and that's like mainly what we're focused on right now.
We like started just a little bit before the Big Bang and we have a lot of great advisors giving us, you know, all the ins and outs of what we could do, what we shouldn't do.
Young hang he's.
He was our TA in Aggie Square but he's been helping us make a lot, do a lot of the decision making and also the research aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So if you make this into a real company, it's going to be worth a lot of money and you've got 10, 10 teammates.
Is everybody sort of an equal shareholder?
How do you, how do you make those kind of?
Speaker 7 (29:33):
decisions.
That's kind of where we're standing at right now.
Yeah, we're at a point where now we have this money.
It's like this is going from like you said, it wasn't a class project, but a class project to like a thing, like an actual thing, a company.
So we're just working on like any company.
There's roles.
We're kind of working through roles and like what people are going to take on and with that will kind of rise who has taken what company in the company?
(29:58):
But it's it's.
We're still very early on in our venture.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So there's no, there's no, there's no arm wrestling or positioning right now, for you know leadership roles or more equity, or I'm working harder than you, or any of that.
Speaker 7 (30:13):
Not at the moment.
Hopefully it stays that way.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Yeah, no, I'm like, oh no, I would say our team is really good at communicating with each other and if we do have a problem that arises, we make sure to address it together as a group, rather than just someone talks to someone on the side and kind of gets it over with.
I mean, ethan, he's one of.
All of us are co founders, but me and Ethan are primarily taking on the role of like just delegating and also like organize everything, as Harjan said, and I think so far it's been working.
(30:45):
But if anywhere were to come up to me and be like I want to try out the role, I don't think there would be a problem necessarily in us kind of working together on that Interesting dilemma is you know to see something like this because you have 10 people all trying to work together.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
You've been described as the leader, which might mean you have to make, find a way to make those decisions or get those decisions made, because you can't have too many cooks in the kitchen, and then when they came on, they've got, you know, one person in charge of product, one person in charge of growth and the other person in charge of finance, kind of.
I don't know if it's textbook, but it seems to make sense.
(31:23):
That's what I see a lot of companies do.
Do you envision needing to move towards something closer to that?
Speaker 5 (31:30):
I think as we develop the product and as we go forward, we definitely will develop something that's.
That's like that.
I think as I was listening to them talk, I was like, wow, that's they have it.
They have it down to the nail.
But I think right now we're still very, very early on our product development.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, Okay, so in terms of the competition, what would it feel like to compete against people like these guys?
Right, obviously kick butt in a big way, but you guys are no slouch, you guys are highly technical and you're solving sounds like a real problem.
Tell me about that competition Anybody want to describe.
Is it like feel super competitive, were you?
Speaker 6 (32:06):
nervous.
So we were all part of pitching to these investors and I know when I walked in I see them all sitting like that.
I felt like Shark Tank almost.
I got kind of nervous, kind of scared.
But as you start talking about your product and pitch, you become more and more confident as you go.
I didn't really look at the other competition as much because I knew if I looked at it I'd second guess myself and whatever, and so I just went in there, just not knowing who the competition is, and I think that confidence in me kind of like kind of got brought out as we were presented.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Well, 10 people pitching.
How did you guys divide up?
Did everybody say something on the pitch?
Speaker 6 (32:44):
No, that's a lot of mouths, only a few people were talking.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Sophie, were you talking?
Were you one of the people presenting?
Speaker 7 (32:53):
The way it was done was it was an eight minute presentation, 12 minute Q&A.
I played a big role in the Q&A because of, like we said, we were really involved in the research and design aspect of it.
So then I was kind of able to jump in and add in those like the information that we can't give in like an eight minute pitch.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Do you intend to be a part of this going forward if it becomes a company?
Yes, what part of this are you most excited about in terms of that?
Speaker 7 (33:20):
I'm very excited about just we have so much opportunity to grow.
We're putting ourselves into an industry that well, a very fast growing industry.
Cell therapy is super fast growing and so kind of seeing where our product can go I really believe in our product and I think it could really change cell therapy and so just kind of seeing that through it's really cool, kind of being an undergrad and having an idea I care about.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Well, uc Davis is world renowned for this area of study, and so how much of an advantage is it to be at UC Davis solving this kind of problem?
We talked to the last group.
They're solving a problem that every university deals with basically, or every student deals with.
(34:08):
Yours is like, perfectly suited for UC Davis specifically, is that?
Do you find that that's an advantage?
Speaker 7 (34:16):
It's very exciting.
As I mentioned, we have our one advisor and he's carrying out the first clinical trial for spina vifera in fetal surgery, and so it's cool that, like they are supporting us in this, because it's just exciting that's the only way to put it.
It's very exciting because we have a very close look into it and, like through the program, we were able to talk to these doctors and they're all very excited and willing to help us, because they also recognize the value of it.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
And also at UC Davis, there's many professors, many researchers that are, you know, dabble in cell therapy, in the sort of field.
So if we have any questions, if we have, if we need something, we can, we have a wide range of people that we can go to as well.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Besides the person that you guys have described so far, who's been the most help out of UC Davis in terms of the professors, I would say Dr Wang right.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
Well, that's the list goes on.
Honestly, we've had Dr Wang alongside Dr Diana Farmer, who's been very helpful.
She's a physician, so we get to see her perspective.
We've had a lot of people in the business aspect of it.
We have, like Pat and lawyers who work along Davis and are very involved in that to help us with, like, the business aspect and kind of what we wanna do longterm with our design.
(35:33):
Just a lot of professors are very excited to hear that their students are working on something and are very excited to let us pick their brain for information.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
That's exciting.
Okay, so, in terms of moving forward, what are you most excited about?
Let me go to you, too.
What are you most excited about?
Speaker 5 (35:48):
I would say the thing that I'm most excited about is seeing our product come to life.
I think that's a little bit short term as of right now, but being able to see, like, all of the aspects that we want in this portable incubator and seeing that it actually works and it actually is helping cells live, if you will, I think that's really that's very exciting to see when do you go to get something like this prototyped?
(36:13):
Well, we have a lot of resources at UC Davis, I think in general.
We have the engineering student design center where we can go to get this stuff designed and actually built, and then also Dr Wang's laboratory is there if we want to do research to make sure like we're getting the right amount of CO2 into the cells.
(36:39):
So we have quite a bit of room to play with.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
What are you most excited about?
Harjun?
Speaker 6 (36:43):
I'm excited for because, as Sophie was saying, that the biomedical engineering industry itself is growing rapidly, and so is this health therapy industry, and so I'm just excited to be a part of that growth and contributing to that growth.
And I'm excited just to see again Deshosa saying that our product is coming to life, like something that we've worked so hard on is coming together.
(37:04):
I think I'm really excited about that Well.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I am excited that these kind of innovative ideas are coming out of UC Davis.
You know a guy coming out of my high school that's doing it.
It's changing the world.
So it really brings me a lot of appreciation for you and, really, I guess, hope for America, for the world, with people like you really at the helm.
(37:30):
You're the next generation, so I'm really, really excited for what you guys are doing.
So thank you very much for joining me on the show and really great to have you right here in my backyard.
It's really fun to see.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having us.
We'll see you back.
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