Entrepreneurs: How to Get Into Top Accelerators and Actually Get Funding with Caroline Winnett + Others

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following is a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast.
Constitute's neither an endorsement of the products offered or the
ideas expressed.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
You are trying to get people to commit to your cost.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
All these amazing prospects were basically back channeling your tool.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
I've always rooted for the underdog my team. Here's me
say this all the time.

Speaker 5 (00:20):
I'm Richard Gearhart and I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. You just heard
some snippets from our show. It was a great one.
Stay tuned to hear tips about how you can start
your business.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given
it hard, now get it in gear.

Speaker 6 (00:37):
It's Passage to.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 7 (00:42):
I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service
intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.

Speaker 5 (00:49):
And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. I help Gearhart Law with their
marketing and I run a podcast in content creation studio
and provide podcast consulting.

Speaker 7 (00:57):
Welcome to Passage to Profit, the Road to Ppreneurship, where
we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and
their business ventures. What does it take to be an entrepreneur?
Joining us is Caroline Wynnette, the Powerhouse, executive director of
Berkeley Skydeck. You see, Berkeley's world renowned startup accelerator that's

(01:17):
helping entrepreneurs launch their moonshots and take innovation to new heights.

Speaker 5 (01:22):
And then we have two amazing entrepreneurs. This is going
to be such a great show today. Brandon Young with
Slash Experts is doing something for B to B businesses
I have never seen before. This is brand new, stay tuned.
I'm not even going to try to explain it because
it's so cool. I'm just going to let him do
the whole thing. And then we have Clint Lots track

(01:43):
Star AI revolutionizing the lending world. He's using AI for
both lenders and for consumers to help them get data insights,
among other things and very cool stuff. I mean, who
doesn't care about their money?

Speaker 7 (01:58):
I care about mine for sure. But before we get
to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new Business Journey.
Two in five Americans our business owners or thinking about
starting a business. And so today we're going to ask
our panel what's the one rule of business you had
to break to succeed? So Caroline, Welcome to the show.

(02:19):
What was the one rule of business that you had
to break to succeed?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well, Hello, and I'm really delighted to be here, and
I would love to answer that question for my two
big adventures in life, my startup and then my program
Berkeley Skydick at UC Berkeley. So I'll give a quick
summary for both. So my startup, Neurofocus, I wouldn't say
so much that we broke a rule.

Speaker 5 (02:41):
It's that we.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Did something that was incredibly hard to do that many
have tried and failed, especially in the industry we were in.
So in Neurofocus, we use medical grade eeg. We put
a cap on your head major brain waves and use
those insights to guide large brands how are people thinking
and feeling and reacting to their products and messaging. And

(03:06):
to do that right required hardcore science, lab testing using
gold standard scientific protocols. It is really hard to bring
that to a market, especially where you're talking about, essentially,
at the end of the day, how consumers are reacting
to consumer products. That was a long bridge to gap

(03:27):
and several had tried to do that in this industry
that we basically created, called consumer neuroscience.

Speaker 5 (03:35):
But we did it.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
We did it with Berkeley scientists, and we did it
because we absolutely refused to compromise our scientific standards and that,
at the end of the day is what made a
great product. So that's what we did. Did break a rule.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
I would say, it broke a barrier.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
It sounds like science fiction. That's exactly what customers would say.
And then we would dig into the science and bring
our chief science advisor who was a professor at Berkeley,
and eventually they would go, Okay, this is real.

Speaker 5 (04:01):
This is real.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
But it took some doing, and it took a lot
of scientific credibility, so that was lots of fun. I went.
Now would say for Berkeley Skydick we are uc Berkeley's
startup accelerator.

Speaker 7 (04:12):
We are the.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Flagship program on campus. And here's what we've done that
broke again, really a big custom Usually at universities there
are wonderful incubators where startups from the university come and
develop their their learnings. Perhaps they might have a maybe
a consumer product, but mostly they're trying to spin out
from the university. And those are wonderful programs and we

(04:35):
have those at Berkeley. But what we did at Skydick
is We brought really the full culture, operations, and mindset
of what is typically a private company. A private company
raising money from investors, investing in the startups, accelerating them
really fast, demo day, all of that. We've done that
being completely one hundred percent a Berkeley program. And we've

(04:59):
done that by partnering with a venture fund to fund
our startups. Because brief story about the origins of Skydeck.
When I started ten years ago, there was no accelerator
and no fund, so we decided to start an accelerator.
You need money to accelerate, right, can't move fast with
that money at that time. This is going to change
over time, but at that time, Berkeley said, we just

(05:22):
can't do that. We're a public university. It's just not
something we can do. So I said, okay, I'll go
out and find a fund manager, and we did. That
fund is the Berkeley Skydek Fund. It's like any other
private venture capital fund with a general partner, limited partners.

Speaker 6 (05:38):
All of that.

Speaker 5 (05:39):
But here's what's unique.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
That fund has a legal agreement with UC Berkeley, signed
by lawyers that says the fund general partner will donate
half of the carry and that just means half of
the fund.

Speaker 5 (05:52):
Profits back to Berkeley.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
That single piece of paper means that a private venture
capital fund and then a public university overlap and we're
working towards the same goal, which is to find great
startups at Berkeley or outside of Berkeley, accelerate them, and
make all those investors happy in the fund, and also
bring funding for education.

Speaker 5 (06:17):
You certainly broke a rule there.

Speaker 7 (06:18):
So that's great. I mean that's how innovation happens, right,
sometimes breaking rules, challenging assumptions, the status quo, what's happened before?
And I think that's a great example because it ultimately
resulted in moving the entrepreneurial environment forward. So thank you
very much for that. Brighton Young, tell us about a
rule that you broke to make your business succeed.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I think I'll start from the beginning, and the big
one for me is I went to State school. How
did Chico? So I tried to get into Berkeley. They
didn't let me go there, but I tried hard, and
then I graduated went into sales. So I've always been
from the sales, go to market side of the house,
and so is my co founder. And we never had
a technical founder, so we've never had somebody who knew

(07:04):
the engineering.

Speaker 6 (07:05):
Side knew the product side.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
We've always done that abroad, and that is very different
for the Bay Area where I am. Typically it's like, hey,
you have someone who comes in works engineering and then
you have someone who helps with like marketing product.

Speaker 6 (07:20):
The thing that got.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Us there was because we were both going to market
and the first company Sindoso, we had a lot of
sales very quickly and had product market fit really quickly,
so that allowed us to have really high revenue to
then go and raise money, which was probably why we
were able to break that rule. For the new company,
Slash Experts, which we help customers and prospects talk as

(07:45):
were the first steps in the sales cycle. The big
rule there is it's not the way sales has been
done the last twenty years, so it's a different way
to approach it. And so I think the whole company,
the whole hypothesis we have has been a rule breaks.

Speaker 7 (08:00):
Break from the beginning. That's great, And what you said
about starting with sort of a marketing sales bent as
opposed to having a technical founder rings true because lots
of times the companies evolve from technical innovations and the
marketing piece is almost secondary. Right. Yeah, many have this
philosophy of build it and they will come well, it's

(08:22):
not that easy, and so I do see how that's innovative.
Thanks a lot so, Clinton Lotts, founder of Tracks. There a. Hi,
tell us about the rule you broke.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
Well, there's several, but I'll start with one that I
initially was told you really shouldn't do, which is taking
a problem and kind of turning it on its head.
When folks go and apply for something using their credit
and they're declined, it's usually at that point they become reactionary, right,
and they try and figure out what went wrong? What

(08:51):
can I do? How do I make this better? And
I just thought that was so backwards. And that's how
Brady can probably speak to this as sales and marketing
has gone on forever. It's a referral process and you
here's my client. I can't do anything with them.

Speaker 8 (09:04):
Maybe you can. I thought that was silly.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
I thought I should take this and turn it completely
on its head, and take this solution and bring it
directly into banks and lenders and put it directly in
front of the consumers at the time that they need it,
which is before they apply for credit before they ding
our credit, before they go through this entire process and
end up getting a letter in the mail that helps
them with nothing right. And I spoke to many investors

(09:30):
over the years and getting started, and they look at
me as a startup. Then they didn't follow the mission.
They didn't understand what it is I was trying to do.
And when they hear my story and they understand it
a little better now, it's really taken off. And when
you give this power to the people and you empower
lenders to provide this information to their clients in a holistic,

(09:54):
free manner, it really changes the game.

Speaker 7 (09:57):
That's great. Thank you so much for sharing, Elizabeth. You're
a regular rule breaker, aren't you.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
So we kind of had a lot of people telling
us that we were crazy and in saying first starting
a radio show with our marketing dollars for your heart
law and I think that was a little bit back
in twenty eighteen, before podcasts were so popular. It was
a bit of a rule breaker. Like law firms just
don't try to go on media all the time, and
they don't certainly don't have a show on the radio.

(10:25):
It's just not how law firms behave.

Speaker 7 (10:27):
So we're misbehaving.

Speaker 5 (10:28):
We're misbehaving. We had so many people like, why are
you guys doing this?

Speaker 7 (10:32):
Yeah, but she was not exactly a vote of confidence
by the way that it's been a.

Speaker 5 (10:36):
Lot of fun. But yeah, that was definitely unusual for
law firm.

Speaker 7 (10:41):
Yeah it was. But we're glad we're here. So it
worked out pretty well. I think I would say for
gar Heart Law, I kind of go back to this
story a lot of times in our discussions here, so
regular listeners will be familiar with this. But your Heart
Law started in two thousand and six, and in fact
years ago, and at the time, I was told that

(11:02):
law firms didn't get business from digital marketing, which back
in twenty twenty six is really the Internet. I was
told that it would take seven years of constant networking
to build a good legal practice. And we put up
a website and we targeted entrepreneurs in startups, and it
turned out that there was a real unmet need for

(11:23):
providing service to those clients, and within weeks the phone
was ringing off the hook, and based on that, we
moved forward. I didn't have to look for another job,
and the rest, as they say, is history. So we're
just glad it worked out and somehow, some way we
captured the digital wave before other firms did, and we're

(11:45):
in a good spot because of it. So now it's
time for our interview with Caroline Wennette. She runs one
of the most powerful startup accelerators on the planet, Berkeley Skydeck,
where world changing ideas either take off or crash under
the weight of reality. She's helping entrepreneurs chase moonshots with
you see Berkeley's full firepower, and she's not afraid to

(12:06):
challenge the Silicon Valley status quo. If you think innovation
only happens in the valley, Caroline's here to prove you wrong. Caroline,
what does make for a good entrepreneur?

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I love that question because I can answer it both
for myself as an entrepreneur and the at this point
thousands of founders that I've seen. If you don't have
a burning, I mean on flame, burning desire will.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
To build your business, it's just too hard.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
You know, you won't break those barriers, you won't break
those rules, you won't essentially do what a founder needs
to do. A founder is like, I mean, we've got
some sales solutions here. A founder is in a way
a one hundred percent of the time a salesperson, and
you are trying to get people to commit to your cause,
and those people are either your early employees. Come join

(12:57):
my mission. It's really important. I'm really committed. It's going
to be great. Your investors, please invest in my mission.
You'll get your money back and more so, and then
your customers use my product. It's amazing, it's fantastic. Give
up this product that you've been using for thirty years
and is completely embedded in your giant organization and you
can't change. So that's basically what a founder does all day. Right,

(13:20):
So of course you have to build something people want,
you have to have the technical skills. All of that
is true, but I think it's important to realize that
founders are essentially out there convincing the world to join
their cause and then build something legitimate.

Speaker 7 (13:35):
Of course, you know, well, that's really interesting that you
would say that, because a lot of people talk about passion,
and you brought that up. But for a founder, the
passion has to be manifested in their ability to persuade
people that what they're doing is worthwhile. So you don't
often hear that extra element tossed in there. You may

(13:55):
be passionate about your project, but if you can't communicate
that the right way to the right eye, d to
the right people, that's going to be a tough road
to go. Do you think that a founder can if
that's not a strength. Do you think that a founder
can sort of find somebody who does that well and
then rely on them or do you think it has

(14:15):
to come from the founder at.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
The early stage. It has to come from the founder,
and they don't have to be you know, Martin Luther
King of public speaking, but they have to be able
to communicate well enough to those three audiences that you know,
come join my cause. I will say I've seen lots
of founders and this is something you know. We admit
founders at a very early stage at Skydich and sometimes

(14:37):
they come and they really aren't very articulate. But there's
a bit of an art to knowing is there something
really there are the elements, there is the talent and
determination there, and we just have to help that founder
better articulate their vision.

Speaker 5 (14:51):
And we do a lot of that. I personally do
a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
When we get towards investor pitching and dema day pitching
to help them craft something that people really get excited
about in terms of a narrative and a story that
is so important.

Speaker 5 (15:05):
I think they need to be on media too eventually, right, Yeah,
of course it sounds to me like you're really looking
for visionaries.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yes, a great founder is a visionary in that they
see something that doesn't exist and they're absolutely determined to
bring it into reality, and we often help them make
that vision even bigger.

Speaker 5 (15:24):
That's awesome. I just had a question for you about
your fund and your accelerator. What types of projects do
you take? Do you take consumer products in tech and
life sciences, the whole ball of wax or do you
focus one gigantic follow axe every startup in every industry.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
And we can do that because we have the resources
and the expertise of UC Berkeley backing us.

Speaker 5 (15:46):
So whatever the product is, whatever the.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Expertise that the founder may need, it's at Berkeley. Maybe
one a Nobel prize. We just got one in physics
a couple of days ago, and today we've got in chemistry,
So we can support any industry.

Speaker 5 (16:02):
That's unusual too, I think these days, because I think
a lot of accelerators are focused a lot of them
on tech. Are you seeing a change in funding depending
on the types of project, like it's more of the
funding going to AI projects now or is it still
across the board.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Certainly, the AI firm at Sea is underway, no question
about it. Does that mean money flows easily, absolutely not.
But is there funding for agents for companies building interesting models,
for companies who have some unique insight that they can
build something for. Yes, and a lot of our portfolio
is AI is agentic AI in particular, and that will continue.

Speaker 5 (16:41):
For a while for sure.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
But we have seen really good funding results for our
really deep tech companies. So we have a nice portfolio
of companies building chips, semiconductors, sensors. They're doing very very well.
We have a number of life science companies in our portfolio,
and we have quantum. I would say we take any industry,

(17:04):
but we really can support in a unique way because
of Berkeley, very deep tech companies who need extremely specialized
expertise in everything from quantum to robots, to hardware to chips,
et cetera.

Speaker 7 (17:19):
So we're here with Caroline Wynnette, the Powerhouse, executive director
of the Berkeley Skydeck. Can you tell us a story
about one of your favorite startups.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, well I just mentioned one. We're just talking about quantum.
So we take startups who are both from Berkeley, from
our labs, and from around the world. And one of
the ways that we serve society is what Berkeley does
in general. Right, the university attracts great talent from around
the world. They come to Berkeley, they join our network,

(17:49):
they go and they do wonderful things. We do that
with founders. We had a founder come from Japan, graduates
of the University of Tokyo plus faculty from the University
of Tokyo that are working on a quantum solution to
break the code for lost bitcoin wallets.

Speaker 5 (18:06):
Oh my gosh, wow. Could you explain a little bit
what quantum is.

Speaker 6 (18:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
So, quantum is just basically the next phase of computing
that hasn't really been proven out yet. There's a lot
of work around it, especially at Berkeley. We just launched
a Quantum Center. The governor came and signed some legislation.
We're all very excited about it, and it will enable
a power level of computing that's unmanageable. Right now, I

(18:32):
want to explain I want to explain the technology I'll
just get to the application, which is if you want
to unlock a lost bitcoin wallet right now, with current
computing resources, it will take hundreds of years. But if
we can develop the quantum resources, all of a sudden,
that timeframe becomes human timeframe. And then something like one

(18:54):
hundred billion dollars of bitcoin stuck because people wrote down
their keys.

Speaker 7 (19:00):
I was good, they didn't put it in their password files.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's Ryer.

Speaker 5 (19:04):
Some guy like he was like one of the first
ones we heard about a few years ago, like five
or six years ago. He had something like half a
million dollars and he forgot his password.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Remember that case.

Speaker 7 (19:15):
Yeah, I just used the same password for everything so
I wouldn't lose mine. But anyway, now that is an
amazing innovation, and I hope they use it for more
than finding lost passwords, right, I mean, this technology has
other applications too.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
One hundred percent. And at Berkeley, what is our charter
at UC Berkeley teaching, research, right and public service. So
at Skydeck, we're looking for solutions to come to Skydeck,
benefit from the resources at Berkeley, and then bring these
great solutions to change the world. And we have lots
of solutions that have come from campus. I'll tell you one.

(19:52):
They haven't been through our program because they're just blasting out.
But because today there was a Nobel Prize announced for
a Berkeley faculty professor of chemistry named Omer Yagi. Very
nice guy, great researcher, great personal story of coming to
this country by himself for high school and working.

Speaker 5 (20:11):
His way up to be a top researcher.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Anyway, he's developed a new form of chemistry and they
are pursuing that as a solution. And let me tell
you what you can find somewhere if you google it
on the internet. Omar and his team in Death Valley
pulling water out of the air.

Speaker 7 (20:29):
In Death Valley, they'll have to rename it to No
Death Valley.

Speaker 5 (20:34):
I love that because, yeah, I mean that could do
all sorts of different things. You could pull toxic chemicals
out of the air, right, I mean, the sky's a
limit with that kind of research.

Speaker 7 (20:43):
Absolutely, So we have to take a commercial break. We'll
be back with Caroline Winnette Passage to Profit with Richard
and Elizabeth Kerhart. Don't forget to experience more Passage to
Profit by subscribing to us on Facebook, Instagram, x and
YouTube or subscribe to our podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.
Just look for the Passage to Profit show on any

(21:05):
of these platforms, and coming up we have Intellectual Property
News and the ever popular Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind
will be back right after this.

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Speaker 7 (23:14):
Now back to Passage to Profit once again.

Speaker 9 (23:17):
Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 5 (23:19):
And our special guest Caroline win it. She is the
Powerhouse executive director of Berkeley Skydeck. They're the ones investing
in all the futuristic programs that are science fiction today
and real life tomorrow.

Speaker 7 (23:31):
Yeah. I really love all of the exciting technologies that
Carolyn has been talking about. I mean, this is like
merely super high level stuff at the tip of the
spear when it comes to innovation.

Speaker 5 (23:44):
Yes, the forefront of innovation. I do want to ask Caroline.
We're recording this in October twenty twenty five. I do
want to ask her, where do you see investment going
in twenty twenty six, innovation going in twenty twenty six?
What's kind of your overall look at the landscape? So
we think about that all the time.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
We're a university, but we partner with a fund and
of course we want our startups to be funded. That's
how they become moonshots. So I'll say, in one sense,
it's kind of gotten.

Speaker 5 (24:12):
Back to normal.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
So we had the giant froth before the pandemic, then
we had the pandemic, then everybody kind of freaked out,
and now we're back to kind of the normal. It's
really hard to fundraise that bad and also there's a
macro environment where fund managers are really worried about their
dry powder, their capital, right, So they're being very cautious

(24:35):
because they're not sure what's.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
Going to go on globally.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
And a number of funds that thought they could raise
a fund one or a fund two can't. So the
funders themselves have their own challenges of pitching their own
funds to investors. And you've probably all heard there's so much.
If you look at the absolute numbers of venture capital,
they're pretty high. But it's because you got a hundred

(24:59):
billion here, you got open Ai, You've got the gigantic
startups sucking up a lot of that capital. So what
does that mean sort of for everybody else? It's all
It's been true that at the growth stage, investors want
to see traction. That's what they want to see. I'm
not interested in just your great vision. I need to
see some customers. I say, that's trickling down to lower

(25:21):
stages at this point, so investors are starting to ask
more about traction than they did at the early stage.
They're asking for more traction at the Series A. So
that's a change. And then I would say there is
as we talked about earlier. Definitely lots of opportunity.

Speaker 11 (25:39):
If you've got a real crackerjack team of sharp builders
who can code and build really really fast, and they've
got an interesting insight to use LLLMS for some industry problem,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Those are interesting. Those listing two investors, they're getting funded.
And now we love hardtag at Skydeck, so we see
some nice I would say, it's just starting investment around robots,
which is nice. We're hoping to see more of that.
We've had several robots in our portfolio. Life science is
still tough. It's been a really difficult time in the

(26:12):
past few years for life science investments. Getting those products
to market has been particularly hard. But overall it's tough.
But there's opportunity. But the general cloud of the global
economic situation, the situation that we all are familiar with,
is making the LPs, the people who invest in funds
more nervous.

Speaker 7 (26:32):
So what do we say to maybe companies that have
more modest technologies and maybe more modest aspirations, are funds
available for them, even if it's not like going to
have the big billion dollar payout. What can somebody who's
in that position who wants to raise money do if

(26:54):
maybe they're not so focused on AI but maybe a
simpler product.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
It depends on this stage of the fund. So the
big funds, the big, fat, gigantic, multi billion dollar funds,
are only interested in the massive unicorn depicorn exits. The
smaller funds will take a three x four x exit.
In other words, you don't have to go and you know,
blow up and be the next sales force. So it
depends on the fund size, I would say, and depends

(27:23):
a lot on the industry, so medical devices, life science
versus enterprise software will impact that. I would say that
no matter what stage you're at, if you can't show
an interesting target market, and by interesting I mean at
least a few hundred million as your initial target market

(27:44):
generally across the board at a little bit different for
the hardcore life science et cetera, and maybe some of
the semiconductors, but if you can't show an interesting market,
it's going to be tough.

Speaker 7 (27:53):
Yeah, that makes sense. So for those entrepreneurs who are
out there beating the bushes for funding, what do you
have for.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
There's a benefit and disadvantage of kind of the climate
right now, there's so much information there's so many resources
you can You can start and incorporate an interesting company
in about five seconds, right. Using online tools, you can
jump into all of the various models and do market research,
and there's lots of founder meetups to meet your co founders. Obviously,

(28:24):
where you are makes a big difference. So if you're
in Silicon Valley, and by the way, Silicon Valley has
kind of spread, right, it's not just really around that
south based circle anymore. Berkeley is considered to be in
Silicon Valley now and Skydeck Berkeley, you know, we're right
in Berkeley of course, is now on the Silicon Valley tour.

(28:45):
We get requests all the time.

Speaker 7 (28:47):
That's the ultimate test, by the way, that's awesome.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
So there are a lot of funds out there, right,
Could an entrepreneur type in, to say, one of the llms,
whichever one they prefer. I like Perplexity the best myself.
But could they type in this is everything I have.
Is there a fund that I should apply to that
could possibly be a good match to me and have
it go look for a fund for them? Would that work?

(29:11):
Is there enough about the funds online that Perplexity would
have something to draw from?

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, oh yeah, there's all the fun. Websites have some information,
they've got the portfolio, something about their investment thesis.

Speaker 7 (29:22):
One of the things that comes up every once in
a while is introductions the funds. Warm introductions meaning that
somebody knows somebody versus just kind of sending them an
email introducing yourself. Here's my non confidential deck, any sense
about I guess that the warm introduction is always going
to be a little bit better, But that doesn't mean
that you can't just approach them directly.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
You can, and every investor with a giant portfolio will
give you the story about the founder who sent them
a cold email and they end up investing in you know,
when public and all that stuff. But obviously the warm
introductions are the best. Would investors really pay intention in
terms of a warm introduction is from one of their
portfolio company founders? So if they get a warm introduction

(30:07):
from someone they've invested in, hey you should talk to
this person.

Speaker 5 (30:10):
I know them.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
That is the warmest introduction that a founder can get.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
That kind of sounds like what Brighton's doing a little bit,
but we'll get to that pretty soon.

Speaker 7 (30:20):
So we're with Caroline Wynnette, the Powerhouse, executive director of
the Berkeley Skydeck an amazing discussion. How can people find
you if they want to.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Reach out skydeck dot Berkeley dot edu. We're a Berkeley program,
so of course we have that beautiful dot edu website.
That's how you can find us. If you just type
in Berkeley Skydeck, you'll find us. If you type in Skydeck,
you'll find us too. We're part of a public university.
We love sharing our learnings, especially with other universities and applications.

(30:50):
Open for our batches twice a year in February and
in August, and we welcome founders of anywhere, doesn't matter
where they went to school, doesn't matter what industry. Just
if you have a burning desire to build something, please apply.

Speaker 5 (31:04):
To our program.

Speaker 7 (31:05):
And I would encourage our listeners who are looking for
that kind of support to check into Skydeck. It's really
a phenomenal organization, not just in terms of funding, but
in terms of advice and support. And if you can
make it there, you can make it anywhere. I guess.
So now it's time for AI in Business.

Speaker 5 (31:24):
Yes, AI in Business. The purpose of this segment is
to spread the word and give people ideas about how
you can use AI in your business. I am going
to start with you, Caroline. I know you have a
million different use cases, but I just want what may
may be your favorite one. What is one way you're
using AI in your business.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
We're talking about the business of Berkeley Skydeck, which is
of course a university to program, but we're using it
for diligence for our companies, as all good investors are.

Speaker 5 (31:52):
So we get about.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Three thousand, eight hundred applications for twenty spots. We're more
and more looking at using AI to help us better
understand that deal flow, to help us understand that and
to help us once they are selected for an interview.
So we've got a fantastic team at the Berkeley Skytegg Fund.
They've got a fantastic team of Berkeley nbas. These are

(32:14):
very short people, I must say, who are helping us
with this initiative. Ask me in six months and we'll
probably have more and even different insights and comments about it.
But I'd say we're really just getting started. But at
the end of the day, to pick a startup to
invest in, it's humans talking to humans.

Speaker 5 (32:31):
You cannot help into that.

Speaker 7 (32:33):
Wait until quantum computing comes along.

Speaker 5 (32:35):
I just want to point out to entrepreneurs here are
people interested in getting seen. AI looks at everything about
you on the internet, every podcast, everything, and if somebody
puts the transcript of the podcast on there, it reads
the transcript. It looks at your LinkedIn, it looks at
your face, it looks everywhere. So the more you can
have a consistent message and talk about what you're doing,

(32:56):
the better chances you are of getting a good profile
on the A. I'm going to talk about that a
little bit more later anyway, Thank you very much. That
was really a new way I hadn't heard before of
using it. So now I'm going to go to Braiden
Young Braiden, what is one way you're using AI for
your business?

Speaker 7 (33:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (33:13):
This So this is my third startup because I like
the pain of zero tenth.

Speaker 6 (33:18):
The very first two we scale one.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
We scale up to help folks sale and we scet
up to seven hundred people and the employees and this
one we a new metric we follow is like revenue
per employee, which we did not track the first time around.
And the reason that we track that is because can
we do we need to make this hire?

Speaker 6 (33:36):
Is it necessary?

Speaker 3 (33:37):
And so if we can find an AI that can
do or an agent that can do that person's job
that we know we need to hire, for example, entry
level sales, Like do we need to hire someone to
come and do that or can we find a tool
that can do that for us? And if we can't,
then okay, then like then we know we'll go and
hire somebody. So that's a mantra we use internally a

(33:57):
lot to make sure we can. It's like we're hiring
when it's necessary and then like will this impacts the
metric of our revenue per employee? Yes, if you got
and hire for sure.

Speaker 5 (34:06):
Yeah, that's a great way to use it.

Speaker 7 (34:08):
So quick question, how do you come up with that
number revenue per employee?

Speaker 3 (34:12):
I mean it's one of those where like it's what
your arr is and like divided by the amount employees
that you have, and like it was one that we
didn't typically track in the past and that it's our
board asks for it now. I think it was one
of those where like AI companies, like very pure AI companies,
they love that metric. Like there's a lot of LinkedIn
comments like we're a team of five and we do

(34:34):
one hundred million in revenue and so there's all those
you know, talking heads on LinkedIn, but it's one that
we also report on excellent.

Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yes, okay, Clinton lots track store AI. I know you're
using AI, but what.

Speaker 7 (34:47):
Was your first clue the term AI in the company name?

Speaker 5 (34:50):
What is one way that you're using AI in your
own company?

Speaker 4 (34:53):
Within our own company, Probably the most beneficial use case
for us is data crunching, right.

Speaker 8 (35:00):
It's data analysis.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
As we've grown and we've really pivoted to large enterprise clients,
we have even larger data sets that we ingest on
a daily basis, and when our models are out there running,
we crunch all the data that we receive. Not only
just you know, how accurate is it, how it's what's performing,
but we're also ingesting all the signals from the consumers

(35:23):
and how they're being impacted by this type of solution.
In addition to what KPIs we're driving for our clients
our lenders, right, And we really use it to build
that kind of holistic story. And I think the AI
is really good at that. It's summarizing massive data sets.
Is it can within minutes tell me exactly what I'm

(35:43):
doing for my client and how I'm affecting all their
consumers in general, right, and that is really what helps
us tell the story for prospects and for investors as
well too.

Speaker 7 (35:56):
That's great. So what is your level of confidence then
in this out.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
Well, let me first start off by saying the AI
is only as good as data it's trained on, and
it really depends on where you start. And the beautiful
thing about AI and the adoption over the last say,
you know, four or five years, is it's really matured
and it's created this ability for people to build their
own type of you know, small llms or you know

(36:21):
on prem lllms. Right, you can get very specific, you
can fine tune to a granular level of what it
is that's important to your outcome versus what's just noise, right,
signal versus noise is what they call it. And with
that type of ability to really kind of comb through
on a macular level, you can actually understand what's going

(36:42):
on and predict what's going to happen in the future
based on those trends. So when you have that type
of understanding and deep rooted elements of the AI under
your control, that's what brings us the most confidence.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
I've heard a lot of companies now are developing their
own llms for in house use, feeding at their own days,
having it be searchable, having new employees come in and
the first thing they have to do is look at
some of the data that's in there and learn the
company about you.

Speaker 7 (37:09):
Richard Gearhart, Well, my most recent use of AI was
to review a vendor contract, not a client contract. I
wouldn't put that into the AI data set because it's
confidential information, but a vendor contract and provide a redline
version of it, and I would say that it came
up with about seventy percent of the changes I felt

(37:32):
were good ones. I had to refine it, but it
saved me a lot of time. It picked out a
few things that I'm not sure I would have picked
out without it, and so it was a great aid
and a great time saver.

Speaker 5 (37:45):
I'm helping people start podcasts during my own podcast too,
and I view fought podcasts as a digital marketing tool.
You know, it's really hard to be the next like Star, right,
but if you use it to direct people to your business,
it can be very powerful. And there's a lot of reasons,
and so I'm not going to get into them, but
I put marketing in from day one, because that's what
you have to do these days, especially if you're using

(38:06):
a podcast for business. So I use Chat, GPT, and
I use Perplexity. I sometimes use Google Gemini, although it's
not very responsive sometimes, but I use it to figure
out the SEO value of the content I'm creating, especially
starting with the title. You know, what's the catchy title?
What's the SEO of this title? I use the different ones.
I don't know if you guys have seen this, but

(38:26):
I used to get kind of different answers from Perplexity
in Chat, and now it seems like the answers are
getting closer and closer together, like they're drawing from the
same data sets more and more. So that is kind
of interesting that. Yeah, So I use it for sel
That's one of the main reasons I use it.

Speaker 7 (38:42):
Great. So where we have to take a commercial break,
we'll be back shortly with Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind
and intellectual property use coming up. Stay tuned.

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Passage to Profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.

Speaker 7 (40:55):
Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard
in thirty eight marcus across the US. We'd like to
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(41:19):
top ten entrepreneur interview podcast. So subscribe to the Passage
to Profit show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and on the
iHeart app. And now it's time for intellectual property news,
all about intellectual property searching. And those familiar with the
patent process appreciate that an intellectual property search done before

(41:42):
you file your patent application is an important part of
the process because you want to determine whether your invention
is patentable, and you also want to make sure that
somebody else doesn't have a patent that can block you.
Once the application is examined at the patent office, the
examiner there also does a patent search and they use

(42:03):
that information along with the information that you submit, as
a basis to examine the application. So the USPTO, not
wanting to miss out on the AI revolution, has decided
to start a pilot program where they use AI for
patent searching. And it's kind of an unusual program and

(42:23):
an unusual approach. They will do a search of your invention,
hopefully confidentially, and that is they're not going to be
putting your invention into the AI search engine. Hopefully they
have some safeguards for that. But then they're also going
to provide the applicant and their representative with patents that
they find during this process. And unusually, the examiners won't

(42:47):
be using this as part of their search and their examination.
This search is being provided for information only. Part of
the application process involves the applicants submitting all of the
prior art, which is all the prior patents and journal
articles and product information that they're aware of that could
be related to the patent and the invention. We have

(43:09):
a duty to provide this information. So if we get
the search, I guess then we have to provide it
back to the examiner if we think it's relevant. It's
a little confusing. I think they're working it out. But
the important piece here is that the Patent Office is
beginning to incorporate AI into the patent examination process, and

(43:30):
one can foresee in the future that they would probably
try to automate the examination process to a high degree.

Speaker 5 (43:36):
Yeah, it's seventy percent accuracy right now, that's going to
work out and your hard you guys, look at every
patent that's closed at least the first page, right.

Speaker 7 (43:46):
Oh yeah, I mean that's part of our responsibility is
to help the applicant determined patent ability, and we also
want to keep our inventors free of third party threats.
So AI is creeping into the patent examination process. This
is really the first public statement that the USPTO has
made about using AI in the patent process, and I'm

(44:08):
sure there'll be more developments down the line.

Speaker 5 (44:11):
Well, thank you, Richard Gerhart. Very interesting. So now it's
very exciting. We're going to go on to our next presenter,
Brandon Young with slash Experts dot com. Welcome, Brayden. Tell
us all about what you're doing. It's very cool.

Speaker 6 (44:24):
Thanks.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah, so yeah, this was This was a problem we
had at my last startup, which was called Sindoso, which
we were a B to B company and we had
a lot of website traffic. But like any B to
B site, when you want to convert that web traffic,
it's take a demo. I say like click, you know, come,
you know, talk to sales. And we saw a lot
of folks wouldn't do it, Like they would pop into

(44:46):
a community and they'd ask questions like say does anyone
like this software is? Like how you solving X problem?
So all these amazing prospects were basically backchanneling your tool
and the space that you live in, and they're looking
for answers and the only place they had to go
were review sites which were great, but like they this
didn't answer the question they needed and you were hoping

(45:07):
they would come back if they got the answers they
are looking for and then take a demo.

Speaker 6 (45:11):
So our thought was like, let's actually just make it easier.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Let's if a prospect comes to my website and they're
not ready for a demo yet, let's serve up an expert.
It's a customer, so we call our customers experts. And
so your very first step in the process as your
pair your match using AI with a similar customer in
a similar space, and you book a time with them instantly.
So your very first conversation can be with a customer

(45:36):
versus talking to sales someone who's like minded, someone who
is probably solving or trying to solve a SMAT problem.
Is you I supposed to use a lot for top
of funnel, it's also used a lot for mid funnel.
If maybe you've taken a demo, maybe you've had that conversation,
but you're like, I don't know this is the right
tool for me, Like, rather than a reference being at
the very end of the sales cycle, put it in
the middle, or put it towards the beginning, and so

(45:59):
we see it converting incredibly fast. We're seeing deals close
about three x faster because you're essentially just putting this
up towards the start, which is kind of cool. So
as a million tools are built every day with AI
making it easier, we're trying to build communities and try
to help pear to peer sales, be it every B
to B startup.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
So innovative. I have to ask, though, are your current
clients getting compensated at all for their time for this?

Speaker 6 (46:25):
They? Oh, yeah, there's the question, right, yes.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
So if a customer takes a phone call, there's two
things we do. One, they are compensated as a thank you,
and the company determines what that might be. Could be
a charity donation in their name, could be an e gift,
it could be cash.

Speaker 6 (46:42):
So I built that like that but that was helpful.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
But the bigger item was that customer also controls their calendar,
so they sink their calendar with the tool, and they
determined when they might take these phone calls. So what
we saw I was like most B to B companies,
people take reference calls, like sometimes they take a discount
on a software.

Speaker 6 (47:00):
Sometimes they're like, hey, I.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Love this too welll be a reference for you, and
it's really hard for that person to control their calendar,
and they're like, i'll do one call a month or
one call. I don't want a bunch of reference calls.
And so they're able to control when they take these
phone calls. And that was the bigger unlock for us,
where they're like, hey, i'll do one call a month
and like that'll satisfy my contract where I took a discount,
and also like i'll be a you know, an advocate

(47:23):
for you also, So it's been kind of cool to
see like both those help with signing.

Speaker 7 (47:26):
Up more customers. So you've launched this product.

Speaker 6 (47:29):
Five months in. Yeah, you're five months in.

Speaker 7 (47:31):
And how was it working good?

Speaker 3 (47:33):
I mean, like there's us about forty customers, which is
good in five months. I'm selling a very similar profile
as I sold Sindoso too, So it's marketing at sales leaders.
It's B to B technology to start, so I had
a pretty good network there. So the first forty were
probably easier than they should have been, but it's been
a lot of learnings.

Speaker 6 (47:52):
We have two camps. We have Camp one.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
Folks are like our customers love us. Let's put them
out there, Let's put them on the top of the funnel.
They can help us with deals. The ones having success.
There's a Camp two where people are a little afraid
of their customer base. They're like, I don't want to
poke the bear, like they like me that pay me.
I don't know if I want to put them front
the center. Yeah, maybe they'll do case studies. And like
the Camp two is coming around to like, hey, like
my demo button's not getting as clicked as much as

(48:16):
it used to. I got to figure out another way
to build pipeline and I'm going to use my customers
to do it. So it's uh, it's been good learnings.
I think, like my biggest, our biggest learning has been
when you go to our one of like the expert pages,
Like there's all these folks that are on there, their
faces are there, and the time of each of them is.
Someone was like, hey, if I have an angry customer,
if they have an open ticket, or if they have

(48:36):
a low MPs score.

Speaker 6 (48:37):
Can you pull them the stakes automatically?

Speaker 3 (48:40):
And we were like yeah, So we built the integration
that lives in Salesforce and have Spot and they can
get pulled until that ticket's closed, which has been cool.

Speaker 6 (48:47):
Little little tweaks to the.

Speaker 5 (48:48):
System is so powerful. You know, I don't really trust
online reviews that much anymore because I've been burned so
many times. Yeah, I remember I bought this toaster. It's like, yeah,
this is the best toaster. It toasts really fast, it's great. Well,
the cord was about a foot long. I can't even
I can't bue.

Speaker 7 (49:07):
We have an extension cord for a toaster. Wow.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Yeah, we've not applied this to more consumer goods. We
think it works there well, because like people still need
reviews there. It's like if there's a button that's like, hey,
talk to real users of this. There is someone who
bought this. We think that's appical that like down the
road as like how we might want to do that,
Like right now we're living it around a couple thousand
dollars plus, but I think there's me When you go

(49:30):
and buy a car, you're always asking your friends like, hey,
like do you like this?

Speaker 6 (49:34):
Like do you like the car that you bought?

Speaker 3 (49:35):
And so I think it lived eventually will figure that
space out. I think it does have some use there
for sure.

Speaker 7 (49:41):
So I have to put my lawyer hat on here
and ask, well, what if somebody makes a recommendation and
the person relies on that recommendation and it doesn't work
out for the purchaser, and if they get upset and
they want to blame the recommendation for their trouble because
they said one thing and it didn't really work out.

(50:01):
Do you have a plan for that?

Speaker 6 (50:02):
We do.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
I think like most folks who are going through the
process that are the customers are already part of a
case study on most of these websites, so they've already
talked about their use case of like this system, and
then after an expert call usually takes place, that individual
is sent to sales. So sales is still involved in
the process of like, hey, we want to make sure
this is someone who can actually use our tool properly.

(50:25):
So there's still some vetting there to make sure like, hey,
this is only a recommendation by this person. This was
their use case, their problem, this is how they solved it.
Your problems could be different. There's also a lot of
you know, legal language in there too, to be like, hey,
is this something that maybe it'll help you, maybe it won't,
but I think that you can only rely on you know, someone, Hey,

(50:46):
this is how this was my experience, Yours could be different.

Speaker 7 (50:48):
Caroline, Do you have any questions?

Speaker 2 (50:51):
This sounds like a really interesting business and I like
two things. I like that you're a former founder, so
it's not necessarily going to mean that you're going to succeed,
but you got a better chance, and we've seen that
over and over again, so that's excellent. And I like
that you're looking at a way solve what is a
big problem. We've seen several startups tackle this problem, which
is for enterprise software, it's a gigantic mess out there.

(51:14):
The review sites are in most cases pre unreliable, and
people go through this process of trying to pick things
and then they end up just picking the big logo.

Speaker 7 (51:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, So I like what you're doing because it will
help startups.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
There's a there's like the enterprise software, Like you bring
up a good point, we're seeing companies build expert pages
just for their big enterprise deals. So like, I'll take
a land and expand type method. We're like, hey, we
got into salesforce, isn't that great? But like you could
spend all day there trying to sell their departments. So
build a page with just your salesforce users on there,

(51:48):
and use it internally to sell, because the first question
you always get is like, who's using you at this company?
And like that's been kind of cool to see like
that motion build just make it easier to folks get
the information look at form.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Inertia is one of the world's most powerful forces, and
so that often is just the simple reason large enterprises
wi't try a startup is just that there's too much inertia.

Speaker 7 (52:11):
We recently, well it's not recently anymore, but we invested
in an ERP system to help us with our accounting
and invoicing and project management, and I'm not sure it
was really the best fit for us. It was recommended
to us by consultant. And if I had had the opportunity,
I think to talk with other users, I would have

(52:34):
gotten a different perspective on it, probably and potentially would
have made a different choice. A friend of mine says
that software is always over sold, and I kind of
fell into that trap. And you know, this provides an
easy way to do more diligence and hopefully make better decisions. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Absolutely, And I think that the thing we all need
to remember in software too, is you don't want everything
going out the backdoor in terms of like churn, right,
So you want to bring on the right customers at
the beginning because you might churn at the end of
your contract and that's not good for the software tool
at all.

Speaker 6 (53:10):
So you want to make sure.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
I mean, that's why betting, that's why disco is so
important before you close any deal, and your customer is
helping you do that. So you're scaling your team with
your customers, which has been cool to see grow.

Speaker 5 (53:23):
So what industries are using your software now?

Speaker 3 (53:26):
A lot of marketing and sales tech I are like the
two primary ones we're living right now. We're experimenting because
we're five months in, we're experimenting with a couple other tools.

Speaker 6 (53:36):
Finance is one that.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
We're playing around with, like a financial advisor, because that's
a big commitment. You're trying to figure out, Hey, is
this someone I want to talk to? So we're trying
with a few of those, working with a few banks too,
that same financial idea. So it's a lot of like
mid market and SMB. We just barely scratched the surface
of enterprise type deals of companies who have five or

(53:58):
six different products and so they would need a bunch
of different expert pages from that. So we're just starting
to get into that world, which has been pretty cool
to see grow.

Speaker 5 (54:07):
It seems like it'd be pretty hard to convince them
to use a new tool. How are you getting them
on board?

Speaker 3 (54:13):
It's a lot of like some most marketers and tales
people like sales leaders, right now, their biggest concern is pipeline.
It's like, we don't have the pipeline that we used
to have, and I still need to hit these projections.
So if I come to them with like, hey, you
have an entire pipeline you're not even reporting on because
you people that are doing research on you, Your people
that are reading reviews. Maybe they're coming to your site,

(54:34):
but you don't really count them until they press take
a demo. So my thought is, hey, like, let's look
at these folks who are doing research on you, who
are looking for information, and make it easier for them
to find the data they're looking for so they can
become pipe So that's typically the model, and most folks
are like, yes, like I need pipeline, so.

Speaker 6 (54:54):
I'm going to go ahead and try this.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
And so that's one the other way is the reference
is it very messy process. It's like usually the very
last step in the sales cycle and someone's like, I
need a reference before I can sign, and you're like, oh, okay,
who should I send you? It's always the same two
people that you send to that deal. And so by
cleaning that up and putting that towards the beginning, deals
are going faster and we're able to prove that now.

(55:17):
And so if I can go to our sales leaders
say hey, I'm gonna give you more pipeline that you're
not seeing, and two, your deals are going to go
four times faster, it's very like, Okay, i'll try this.

Speaker 6 (55:27):
I'll experiment with it.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
We have done a lot of pilots because it is
a new kind of process. So that has been a
lot of our growth because we plug into folks that
their CRMs are able to see deals that come in
from an expert and close, which is always great. It's
always very helpful as a founder too, because we're doing qbrs.
You're like, hey, the theory you're paying for us, you're
having success there. So I think we've seen a good

(55:50):
amount of deals come in via experts and those deals close.
My first company or my previous company sendoso like a
lot of the reps there using it, and it's great
to see them having deals come in where they've already
talked to a customer than those deals close. Those are
the best ones for us because we can easily help
them scale. They're having successes in the tool.

Speaker 5 (56:11):
Well, this is excellent. This is definitely something new, and
it sounds like people jumping on board now are going
to be way ahead of the game in a year
from now, right.

Speaker 6 (56:19):
We hope. So the goal is to just make it
easy for people to get the information they're looking for.

Speaker 5 (56:24):
So how do people find you?

Speaker 3 (56:26):
I am the only braid and Young which is b
r A Y D A N. My parents got creative
with my name spelling, so I'm only braid and Young
on LinkedIn, So coec.

Speaker 6 (56:35):
Can you there?

Speaker 5 (56:36):
And then it's slash experts.

Speaker 6 (56:38):
And slash Experts dot com is a company too.

Speaker 7 (56:41):
Passage to profit with Richard analyst with pure heart.

Speaker 5 (56:43):
So now we have another innovation which is really great
finding hidden data? What love that? What lots? Can you
tell us all about what you're doing?

Speaker 7 (56:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (56:53):
Absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
You know I was a kid I grew up below
the poverty line and credit was just one of those
things that other people had. It didn't really click to
me until I was in college and working for Community
Bank in their mortgage software that I realized that we
weren't the only ones.

Speaker 8 (57:10):
You know, there were a lot of.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
People out there that didn't fully understand how credit worked
and how to use it to their advantage and most importantly,
how to care for it right and hell could really
impact their lives going forward. And so that's really what's
been driving me pretty much my entire careers working in
and around credit. And I've kind of been an underdog.

(57:31):
My team hears me say this all the time. I've
always rooted for the underdog, and that's where I get
my passion to really drive myself into this organization. What
we really do is we took a SaaS platform and
collected credit remediation data from all across America, tens of
millions of dispute outcome records.

Speaker 7 (57:50):
What is credit remediation?

Speaker 4 (57:52):
Think of anytime there's a error on your credit report?
What in five consumers? Twenty percent of Americans have a
material error on at least one of their credit reports.
Most of those are fifty to seventy five point. I
call it discounts right where they shouldn't be kindaized for
something like that. Most folks don't even realize that they

(58:13):
can challenge errors that are on their credit report. Most
of them just think they're there right and they're going
to be there for five, seven, ten years. But because
of this, there's its entire cottage industry that developed over
the years.

Speaker 8 (58:27):
And that's what our SaaS platform powered for.

Speaker 4 (58:29):
A long time, which was, you know, mortgage and real
estate professionals. They have clients, you know, that need credit services,
need help improving it. They'd white label our platform so
that they could be prepared for that major purchase they
were trying to do. So we took all of that
data nearly twenty years at this point, and through AI
can develop this really interesting model that we call Revelar.

Speaker 8 (58:53):
And what Revolar.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Does is it reveals errors and credit reports in real time.
So now instead of saying you're declined, how can I stay?
We can't do business with you, you're now saying this
is something you should pay attention.

Speaker 8 (59:08):
To before you even apply.

Speaker 4 (59:10):
And that's where we put this information directly in front
of the consumer.

Speaker 7 (59:14):
I love that because there have been circumstances where there
were errors on my credit report and they only came
up in the middle of a transaction, and then trying
to get it fixed the credit agencies might take a
month or two, which didn't square with the timing for
the transaction, right, and so we ended up having to
pay a higher interest rate. And if I had paid

(59:36):
more attention, if I had known about these issues, could
have been addressed much sooner and rectified. So aren't there
credit reporting agencies now that are sort of doing this?
I think I signed up for some agency that's supposed
to be monitoring my credit. What's the difference between that
and what you're doing?

Speaker 4 (59:54):
The credit monitoring is as an industry standard, tracking changes, right,
changes in your score when you apply for something, their
new inquiries or new new lines of credit added. What
they don't do is unveil any type of these errors.
And that's where we come in, and that's where our
data searches through. It can identify these errors based upon

(01:00:16):
historical data, based upon those thirty million dispute records that
we use to power our solution, and so some of
the credit monitoring platforms that we work with today are
now taking our solution, implementing it and sending that email out.
Now use Braden as an example here, right, you get
an email it says, braided, we just implemented this new
AI and it found something suspicious on your credit report.

(01:00:37):
You're going to open that email. You're going to go
check out and see what it has to say. And
our KPIs prove that we have seventy percent open rates,
thirty to forty percent click through rates. I mean, this
is something people really respond to. And what we're doing
is we're putting that information to the forefront of the conversation.
Like you just said, you usually don't find out until
you're in the middle of the transaction, which is the

(01:00:57):
wrong time you want to try and address this issue.

Speaker 7 (01:01:00):
But in this case, the individual you're reporting to doesn't
have to be a member or have an account with
your company. You're finding these and then just reaching out
to people.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Our clients are the lenders, the credit monitoring platforms, the
fintech lenders, we even work with you know, some others.
Anywhere there's credit right involved in any type of transaction
or monitoring service, those are our clients strictly. We're more
primarily B to B and it's their consumer clients that
are really really being the benefits of all of this
because they're now empowering them to go take action forever.

(01:01:32):
Like you're just talking about right now, credit monitoring has
always been read only, right, It's just been kind of
a static type situation that you're paying for in a
monthly basis that checking email once a month and says congratulations,
your score increase three points. Right, But you're paying for
this service a lot of times. Now we're taking it
and we're making it actionable. We're surfacing these errors that

(01:01:54):
are in people's credit reports. And mind you, sixty nine
percent of these reported errors are coming from loader moderating communities.
They're coming from minority communities. And so if you're a
lender and you're trying to expand your portfolio and you
what you're lending to into these communities, we're the perfect
fit because we're not introducing any additional risk. We're simply

(01:02:15):
highlighting or surfacing these errors and then providing those free
tools the consumer to address those.

Speaker 7 (01:02:20):
Caroline, do you have any questions or comments?

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
So it sounds like the value proposition for your customer,
because your customers is the lending business, right, or the
credit business, is that they have a higher success rate
when they're reaching out to their customers, right, so they
spend a lot less time evaluating applications that fail.

Speaker 5 (01:02:40):
Is that correct?

Speaker 8 (01:02:41):
That's one piece of it, right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
And we were talking about you know, AI and marketing,
and we're in this new zero click marketing space. Nobody
goes to page two on Google anymore. They read the
AI summary at the top of the screen and that's it.
That's as far as they go. And so you have marketers,
a lot of lenders, fintech lenders in particular, who are
spending fortunes on Google AdWords.

Speaker 8 (01:03:00):
I'm trying to drive traffic.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
And we recently did a proof of value with a
fintech lender nationwide, lender that funded you know, several billion
dollars in twenty twenty three and twenty four and they
had twenty million records in their database of people that
applied with them.

Speaker 8 (01:03:16):
Over the years.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
In our proof of value, we found about three and
a half million consumers with errors sitting in their database,
whether they actually did business with or not. They're giving
them this information and providing free tools so that they
can address these issues. Because you know, bad credit just
doesn't fix itself overnight. You know, this isn't something that
just resolves it. So there's a whole host of consumers

(01:03:39):
that are in their database. They're not even doing business with,
but they incurred all those costs, including marketing costs, pulling credit,
going through the whole process that lenders are required to do.
This gives them an opportunity to start lowering that cost
without going and spending additional dollars on marketing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
You have an agent that works with the person whose
credit has a error to help them fix it.

Speaker 5 (01:04:02):
How does that interface work with the customer? With the
end customer, but the consumer.

Speaker 4 (01:04:06):
We're going to be embedded in our partner's platform, and
so we're pretty much quite labeled, right your credit monitoring platform.
We're going to be the ones that show up and
trigger that type. This is our AI found this to
be an error, right, and then we provide them the
steps and the tools to follow through, mostly through free channels, right,
So the consumer isn't incurring any cost to go resolve

(01:04:27):
this error, and we walk them through that process step
by step and track their progress to make sure they
get the resolution that they're seeking.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Yeah, that looks like an opportunity to build something really sticky.
There's a ton of AI being thrown certainly at this industry.
Nothing's really rising to the top yet. But that if
you make that customer experience, if not joyful, but at
least not so painful, I think that will be great.

Speaker 5 (01:04:52):
So great product. I hope you really scale.

Speaker 4 (01:04:54):
Thank you very much, and we have seen that a
lot lately. You know, the customer lifetime value increases. The stickiness,
as you mentioned, is extremely important. We do surveys and
we as consumers have gone through the process. You know,
did you did you file a dispute with the bureau? Yes,
we did. How often are you check in that dispute?
And they're consistently around some version of never, And we

(01:05:16):
follow up like why aren't you checking with the bureau?
The responses are really pretty similar to say, well, they
have an error, they've been a mistake, or I always
knew that was wrong, you know. And what we find
through the tracking of the marketing or the tracking of
the usage of our solution is that engagement goes through
the roof for consumers because they'll go file the dispute,

(01:05:37):
they'll come back to your platform your moniting platform, your
financial health platform, and refresh on a daily basis and
just wait for that three digit number to change. And
the minute that it changes, you literally have a customer
for life, because now not only are they able to
qualify for more, but you could offer them more products
and services and then from there it becomes your net

(01:05:59):
from a score, how many times can you tell other
people about this solution that nobody else has ever offered
to them before.

Speaker 5 (01:06:06):
Are you working with banks? Are they your customers as
well as other financial institutions.

Speaker 4 (01:06:11):
Yes, banks, lenders, FinTechs and monitoring platforms, consumer platforms. We're
actually in discussions right now and setting up a proof
of value with a fully digital AI based credit card company,
and they use all types of alternative data.

Speaker 8 (01:06:26):
Points to approve consumers.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
They obviously have a sponsor bank that actually does all
the underwriting, but for their application process, it's one hundred
percent automated. And we're now seeing this since AI is
matured more, we're seeing that we talked about AGENTICAI, the
running agents inside right inside their their VPC, the virtual
private cloud, their secure environment, so no data leaves any
of these organizations, It stays right there. What our solution

(01:06:51):
does is it works inside of an agent and it'll
scan the credit and let's say they fit all the
boxes for criteria right, income, employment, so forth, but the
credit score doesn't meet a certain threshold. Whe they're not
what they fit into what they call a scorecard. Right,
so maybe they're six forty as an example, and the
cutoff maybe six 't eighty. Well, if our solution says

(01:07:14):
this particular collection is most likely an error doesn't belong here.
Are they really a six forty? Are they performing more
like a seven to twenty? Now that's a question most
likely for an underwriter. If you're in a banking situation,
but with a fully digital credit card company. If our
solution says that there's something on there that doesn't belong there,

(01:07:34):
they're going to use that to rescore internally and say, okay, yeah,
they are meeting their credits here, let's move forward. They
shouldn't be penalized for this error that's been identified by
our solution, and so now they're approving even more folks.

Speaker 5 (01:07:47):
That is wonderful. Yeah, absolutely, I mean not just moving forward,
but you might get a lower interest.

Speaker 7 (01:07:52):
Rate or absolutely, Yeah, it's good for the consumer.

Speaker 4 (01:07:56):
Yeah, I mean that that's kind of what I touched
on earlier. Is one of our very first pilots that
we did. We ran it across that database of twenty
million consumers. They built that campaign around to start it
out do the outreach. Again, when you put this in
front of people, the market response one hundred and sixty
percent increase in engagement just in six months. And this

(01:08:16):
is a financial health platform that they give away for free.
It's kind of a funnel if you will, right, because
they know fifty percent of the people that sign up
will apply for a.

Speaker 8 (01:08:25):
Product within six months.

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
So when you have this type of outreach for the lender,
it unlocked a nine figure lending opportunity that was sitting
in their database and that's why they put so many
resources around it. And today we're about a year into
the process and I can comfortably say that we've added
over seven figures up to their bottom line without them
having to spend one additional dollar in marketing.

Speaker 7 (01:08:49):
That's great. So, Clint, where can people find you to
learn more about your company?

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
Well, we are the only company that does this. We're
the only company that uses our solution and the lens
latest in technology to go and identify errors, and you
can find us at truckstar dot AI. Of course, my
name Clint lots Lodz. I'm the only one as well
on LinkedIn. We're happy to connect and have a conversation
to see if this is something that could really help

(01:09:15):
improve your business great.

Speaker 5 (01:09:17):
Is there a way to find out which banks are
using this? Like if I was looking for a new
bank and I wanted a bank that would use this,
is there any way to find that out or do
I just have to ask them?

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
You can ask, of course, but we also have a
short list of those that we can share publicly. We
have a lot that are still in that pilot phase
coming from community banking. Banks are very conservative as they
should be right, and they always interested in new technology,
but it has to be proven. So your normal sales cycle,
obviously for lenders as much longer. Even if you sign

(01:09:47):
the agreement. They still want three six nine months to
really test this out before they feel comfortable shouting from
the rooftops. But we're getting to the point now that
when we're sure enough and AI is mature enough, that
that cycle is short because they're starting to see us
grow in the marketplace and their competitions starting to get
ahead of them by using a solution.

Speaker 5 (01:10:07):
Like cars excellent. Thank you listeners who are listening to
the Passage to Profit Show with Richard, Elizabeth Gearhart and
our special guest Caroline Winnette. We'll be right back.

Speaker 15 (01:10:16):
I am a non attorney spokesperson representing a team of
lawyers who help people that have been injured or wronged.
If you've been involved in a serious car, truck, or
motorcycle accident or injured at work, you have rights and
you may be entitled to money for your suffering. Don't
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you talk to a lawyer. And we represent some of

(01:10:39):
the best personal injury lawyers. You can find, tough lawyers
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good they stake their reputation on it by only getting
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serious car, truck, or motorcycle accident, or hurt on the job,
find out today for free what kind of compensation you
may be entitled to.

Speaker 13 (01:10:59):
Call the legal helpline right now.

Speaker 10 (01:11:01):
Eight hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight
hundred four nine two seven oh one four eight hundred
four nine two seven oh one four. That's eight hundred
four nine two seventy fourteen.

Speaker 6 (01:11:16):
It's Passage to Profit.

Speaker 7 (01:11:18):
Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage to Profit
and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll
to the bottom of the Passage profitshow dot com website
and check out her album.

Speaker 5 (01:11:32):
And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial mind,
and we are going to start with Caroline Winnette. What
is the secret you can share with our listeners.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
I don't know if this is a secret, but most
entrepreneurs who are successful just a little bit what's the
word unusual?

Speaker 5 (01:11:49):
Oh? Nice, great to put.

Speaker 7 (01:11:50):
It, so strive to be weird.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
That said, I know plenty of successful or entrepreneurs who
would be classified as normal, fully normal people. Myself, I
think I'm I think I'm normal mostly, but there's a
level of determination that you just have to have. I'll
use myself as an example. I like to do things
pretty intensely, so I learned to play the violin. My

(01:12:12):
first career was professional violinist. I took up rock climbing,
I climbed El Capitan, I took up triathlons, I did
an iron Man, And when I look at the backgrounds
of my founders at Skydeck, so many of them come
to Skydick they're coders or you know, they're they're inventing
some technology, or they're building a robot. But then you
ask them about their personal life, like, yeah, I became

(01:12:34):
fluent in Japanese at the age of twelve. I was
on a competitive sports team. I volunteered at a food
bank and I ended up running it. I was in
the military, right. That takes incredible dedication and discipline. There's
almost always something in there that shows that when they
do something, they do it. So I would say, when

(01:12:55):
you're talking to your founders or you're assessing a founder,
ask them about their personal history, not just what they're building,
because you might find some interesting things. You might find
some obstacles they've overcome. I mean, it's very interesting to
hear Clint's story. Clint had to overcome a lot of obstacles.

Speaker 5 (01:13:12):
To get to where he is today. So we have
a question on our forum.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
Please describe some obstacles you overcame. And it's pretty extraordinary
what we see in there.

Speaker 5 (01:13:22):
Wow, that's a great secret. Thank you. Okay, now we'll
move to Braydon Young, what's the secret you can share?

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
And Carolins are right there trying to think of like
things that I get into, like hobbies.

Speaker 6 (01:13:33):
I'm like, why why am I buying the best of possible?

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
And I anyways sor right, I'll give two so I
think are the best. So the first one is most
entrepreneurs for me, like I love the early stage and
I love talking to other entrepreneurs. So reaching out to
like I see you're building or you're thinking about building
something in an industry, find like who the winner is
in that space, and message every founder CEO and be like, hey, like,

(01:14:00):
I'm thinking about building X. I saw you've done it.
Are you willing to give me fifteen minutes so I
can ask you questions and people get back to you.
I think like that's one of the biggest things, is like,
if you're thinking about doing whatever it is, like have
lots lots of conversations with folks who've gone down that path.
Reach out on LinkedIn. I'm willing to have that conversation.
I think that's I love that, Like, I think that's

(01:14:21):
like the fun part of my most entrepreneurs is thinking
about new ideas. So that's one the other one and
I did this. We did this a long time ago.
I have a my my wife who's in Tech.

Speaker 7 (01:14:31):
Two.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
We have a certain like mantra of like I'm having
a bad day. We'll go for a walk and I'm like, man,
I'm having a bad day and there's two She's like, great,
what speech do you want? You want like the you know,
suck it up, make it happen sort of speech, or
do you want the man? You're right, like it's a
really hard day, and so like you have to pick
which one you want on the walk if you want
like the hey, like it's time to like get down,

(01:14:53):
like like you wanted this, go build it?

Speaker 7 (01:14:55):
Or do you want that?

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
I feel so bad for you, and so you gotta
pick which one you want and like then like that's
like the pep talk you're given and that helps. So
I usually picked like the hay like suck it up
speech gives this is what I respond to. So I
have that like with your partner, your other half, like
have some sort of because like they're in it with
you too. I think it's important to remember is like
your family is going along this journey with you. If

(01:15:18):
you're going to be an entrepreneur, So make sure they're
ready for it. Make sure you have like a At
least with me, it was helpful to have a speech
or a motivational speech.

Speaker 5 (01:15:26):
I love that absolutely. Okay, clip lots, what's your secret?

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
I would agree with Brandon. Having a support system around
you is really important. But I also understand where Caroline
is coming from. You know, to be an entrepreneur can
be very isolating. You can feel very very alone a
lot of times. And there's one phrase that we always
hear a lot of time, which is money never sleeps.

Speaker 8 (01:15:49):
But I do.

Speaker 4 (01:15:50):
I get my full eight hours. I do everything I
possibly can, from pink lighting in the evenings to reading.

Speaker 8 (01:15:59):
As much as I possibly can.

Speaker 4 (01:16:01):
I have to disconnect and if I don't get my
eight hours, I've learned to power and ap because sleep
is my superpower and if I'm going to maintain the
energy level that's required for me to continue to have
the tenacity and the craziness to go through this founder
journey for the rest of my life. Is basically the
way I look at it. I have to be able

(01:16:21):
to have the energy to do so. And you have
to make time for yourself, whether it's just you know,
walks with your partner, or fifteen minutes break that you're
taking for meditation, whatever it may be. Find or make
time to make sure that you're taking care of yourself.

Speaker 5 (01:16:38):
I love that. Yes, absolutely so Richard Gearhart, what is
your secret this week?

Speaker 7 (01:16:43):
I think I'm going to say, be strategic in your networking.
So networking takes a lot of time and there's a
lot of benefits to it, but you want to make
sure that you're spending your time in the right places
with the right people. So, for example, we like to
network with innovator groups because we're in the business of
supporting and fostering innovation. The local chamber of commerce may

(01:17:07):
not be such a great place for me to network,
and so if you're going to invest in networking, which
is obviously a marketing opportunity, you want to make sure
that you're spending your time with the right groups of people.
So it's very basic, but I think too that some
beginning business people need to make sure that they take

(01:17:27):
that into consideration, and sometimes it takes a little bit
of time to find the right groups that you want
to participate with, So be patient, but be targeted.

Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
We've been talking to a lot of people about AI
and different things, and one thing that's come up is
train your AI to speak in your own voice. You
can do that so when you're sending out emails to people,
you know, you don't want it to look like somebody
else wrote it, right, And you can really tell somebody
to say chat GPT because there's emojis all over the place, right,

(01:18:00):
text me crazy. But really, there are ways that you
can train it to know you and to send out
an email that sounds just like you. And you guys
probably already all know this that are on this call,
but I don't think a lot of people have thought
that far yet. So that's my secret, right.

Speaker 7 (01:18:16):
Well, that's it for us this week. Passage to Profit
is a nationally syndicated radio show, pairing in thirty eight
markets across the US and one international market. We recently
had a station in Guam join US as an affiliate.
In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected
by feed Spot Podcasters database as a top ten Entrepreneur

(01:18:38):
interview podcast. Thank you to the P to P team,
our producer Noah Fleischman and our program coordinator Alicia Morrissey,
our studio assistant rusicap Busari and our social media powerhouse,
Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get
your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top three
percent globally. You can also find us on face, this book,

(01:19:00):
Instagram x, and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while
the information on this program is believed to be correct,
never take a legal step without checking with your legal
professional first. Gearheart Law is here for your patent, trademark
and copyright needs. You can find us at gearheartlaw dot
com and contact us for free consultation. Take care everybody,

(01:19:20):
Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.