Sam and Shaan host a college Shark Tank with six student founders — three from University of Michigan and three from UIUC — organized by Power Hour, an underground entrepreneurship society started by a previous MFM guest. The pitches cover ed-tech, AI dubbing, microbiome skincare, sprouted nuts, AI apartment leasing, and AI email clients. Sam and Shaan both pick Brother Nuts as their favorite investment, while the audience votes for Metapo.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Tommy (MC, University of Michigan / Power Hour), Austin (MC, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Jonah (COO, Meet Your Class — Michigan), Shara (CEO, Metapo — UIUC), Nathan (founder, Milu — Michigan), Austin Majors (co-founder, Brother Nuts — UIUC), Tour co-founders (Michigan), Advait (CEO, Pathet — UIUC)
Intro: Power Hour and the Underground Entrepreneur Society [00:00:00]
Tommy: So just to preface — I’m Tommy, Tommy Potter, student at Michigan. Really excited to be bringing these startups today. Just to illustrate the community: we’re Power Hour, which is the CIA for college entrepreneurship. What I mean by that is you don’t know who we are, you don’t know where we meet — we are this underground society of handpicked killer founders.
Shaan: Wow. Hold on, hold on. We’ve got Tommy — Tommy Potter, like Harry Potter — and there’s no meeting place, no information, no way in and no way out of this club. Do I have that right?
Tommy: It’s a tap on the shoulder. Just like the CIA, we let you know individually where we’re going to be meeting.
Sam: Dude, they’re speaking your language already. This is some real Skull and Bones stuff.
Tommy: And I want to preface — this is a live audience. Sam and Shaan, if you don’t know, I’ll pan the room. We’ve got like 65 people here ready for you.
Austin: The ecosystem is out here today. I know the same is going on down at UIUC — they’ve got a massive room. How many you got in that room, Austin? Here, I’ll pan the camera real quick. Oh wow. So yeah, everything Tommy said — I basically hope to get all the amazing founders, entrepreneurs, content creators, everybody doing awesome stuff in the same room down here at UIC.
Sam: UI — is that Illinois Urbana-Champaign? The big I?
Austin: That’s who we are.
Sam: So we’ve got Tommy, we’ve got Austin. The club is called — happy hour? Is that what you said?
Tommy: No, we’re Power Hour.
Sam: Power Hour. Got it. An hour full of power. And it’s all student-run? No faculty, nobody — who’s making this happen? Has this been around for ten years, or did you just invent this on Thursday?
Tommy: You remember Bobby? Bobby Fitzhughes — he was on this podcast about two years ago.
Shaan: I may never forget Bobby.
Tommy: Bobby started all of this. Bobby started this, and it’s kind of been planting seeds around. UIUC has their community — we’re very deep in our partnership there as well.
Shaan: So to give the listener background: two years ago we had this guy Bobby — Bobby, I think, was in Michigan — who gathered like a group of maybe 15 entrepreneurs, and four of them pitched us, and they were awesome. And apparently Bobby has Fight Club’d this thing and gone from university to university, convincing people to join. Today I think six of you — three each — are going to pitch us. Is that right?
Tommy: Totally correct. There’s a lot of school pride on the line in terms of which school is going to come out on top. We’re giving you our best. We can’t wait.
Shaan: So this is college Shark Tank style — two schools pitching — and we’re gonna have a winner. I invested in one of these last time, Sam. Out of Michigan. And that company already failed.
Sam: So we’re not going to hold that against y’all. You win some, you lose some — and we lost that one pretty hard, pretty quick. But that’s all right. Let’s see if you guys can beat Michigan.
Tommy: The first one we’re going to hear from is Meet Your Class, from University of Michigan.
Shaan: All right, let’s just step aside and let this kid MC. He’s a natural host. Let him cook.
Tommy: The first one is from Michigan.
Pitch 1: Meet Your Class — Solving College Enrollment Summer Melt [00:04:30]
Jonah: Hello. My name is Jonah and I’m the COO of Meet Your Class. Two years ago, my co-founders and I created a platform for prospective college students to meet each other before coming to campus. Meet Your Class quickly grew in popularity, largely because the communities we built actually extended beyond our own platform and integrated with the social media apps that nearly every high schooler uses on a daily basis. Within two years, this system has scaled to over 400,000 account creations and generated over $600,000 in revenue through a premium business model.
This was a great success, but an even larger opportunity emerged when we were approached by a university called the Christ College, which was struggling with enrollment — basically having issues filling seats. This is a really big issue. Recent polls have found that over two-thirds of university CFOs are deeply concerned about declining enrollment. A really big factor in this is a phenomenon known as summer melt — when a prospect gets all the way to the tail end of the enrollment funnel and then at the last second reneges on their deposit, reneges on their commitment, and decides they no longer want to go to college. At the Christ College, believe it or not, this was happening with one in three students, eventually leading to a 33% vacancy rate.
The Christ College believed that Meet Your Class could help decrease the summer melt, because our platform had gained a reputation for building up excitement for prospective students and giving them a support network. We also found that our data was very valuable for universities in helping them allocate limited time and resources toward students who needed extra attention. And we’re very excited to say that this worked. Students who used Meet Your Class last year experienced a 61% reduction in summer melt, which is expected to add $1.7 million back to their top line. At a minimum, this summer melt issue costs the higher education system over $11 billion per year.
We now have scaled to eight partners for the upcoming admission cycle. And amazingly, that same B2C business that I described at the start is helping us create an industry-leading product loved by both students and administrators. It also got us admitted to Techstars and has allowed us to bootstrap our way into a much larger, much more qualified team ready to take the higher-ed market by storm.
Sam: Wow. That was great. Are you raising money?
Jonah: Not right now. We’re planning to potentially open a seed round when we graduate in the spring.
Shaan: Great. So Jonah — a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. A lot of listeners have a full-time job and want to start something on the side.
Of the $600,000 in revenue, how many people are working there? Do you have any profit?
Jonah: Yeah, so as initial co-founders we have not paid ourselves a dime. We reinvest every single penny back into the team. I don’t know the exact profitability off the top of my head — we try to keep the bank account enough to stay alive, but we reinvest every penny back into growing the team and getting more university partnerships. We’re trying to get 50 by the end of this upcoming admission cycle.
Shaan: Of the $600,000 — how much is in your business account right now?
Jonah: Around $300,000. We got $120,000 from Techstars and have also won some pitch competitions.
Sam: Okay, cool. And Blake — your name is Blake, right?
Jonah: My name is Jonah. Blake is my amazing co-founder.
Sam: Great. So Jonah — great pitch, really cool business. At first when you were talking about it I thought, well, you kind of created Facebook twenty years too late — you’re trying to help college kids connect. But then the story got really interesting when you started talking about how colleges are struggling to fill enrollment and they have vacancies. Just like a hotel has vacancies, a college has vacancies. And maybe your tools could help them decrease that, and then they’d be your customer — you’d be charging them. Did you charge that first college? And what are you charging those other eight colleges?
Jonah: Yeah, so our initial partners are heavily discounted relative to market rate, because we’re trying to get more logos and case studies. Currently those partners are at under $10,000, but there’s a very clear path to scaling that once we have more credibility.
Sam: You said “market rate” — who else is doing something like this?
Jonah: We do have a handful of competitors. This initial thing we’re describing is called mid-funnel conversion — basically getting people who are later in the enrollment funnel and trying to convert them. There are a few competitors, but where we really stand out is our integrations with social media, because we’re able to get a large organic user base at the earliest and latest stages of the enrollment funnel. A lot of our competitors are third-party apps where the university basically emails all their students and says “download this” and kind of forces them to use it. Social media standalone doesn’t do this for them because it’s not a tailored higher-ed tool. So we’re basically retrofitting these social media platforms and bringing all the data that they pay for.
Sam: Jonah, if you were charging them what you think you can charge — have you had any conversations about how much they’d be willing to pay? Either as a percentage of saved students or a flat fee? What’s your sense?
Jonah: Just for this mid-funnel conversion tool, we believe it should be pretty reasonable. Colleges vary in size, but we’ve seen these at lowest around $20,000 for smaller schools, and we’ve seen them scale past $200,000. That’s really just one small part of the enrollment funnel — there are many more issues we believe we’re primed to solve.
Sam: Is this the biggest problem or is there a bigger problem?
Jonah: This is one of the biggest problems. As I mentioned, for the Christ College one in three students were melting. It’s kind of the lowest-hanging fruit to go after initially, because these are kids who arguably should be going to college — they got all the way to the tail end of the enrollment funnel, and then we converted more of them. But universities obviously want to get more butts in seats throughout the entire process.
Sam: Jonah, how’s this — I always ask how the story ends. Is there a vision for where you’re going in ten years?
Jonah: We’re still figuring that out. We’re very motivated by genuinely improving the student experience and making college worthwhile. In the long run, we want to put power back in students’ hands. A lot of students don’t know they have negotiation power on tuition price, and a lot of them end up at places that are suboptimal. We kind of want to become the go-to place where students figure out where they’re going to be most successful.
Sam: Did you just say that you could negotiate tuition price? Because I had no idea that was possible.
Jonah: It is possible. I personally didn’t do it — some members of my team could speak to it more — but students have a lot more power than they realize. Universities need students in order to stay in business. The majority of schools — not the University of Michigan, but the majority — are tuition-dependent for revenue. Colleges need to act like a business otherwise they’re going to go under.
Sam: I was just Googling some of these companies, Shaan. Have you heard of uni — did you Google any of those community apps? I had no idea this stuff existed. Some of them are actually quite large. Unito raised $30 million.
Shaan: They raised it during COVID, so TBD if it’s legit. But it seems like a business doing many tens of millions in revenue.
Shaan: Jonah, my quick take: I think you actually have a real business here. One of the biggest investments I missed was the very first guy who ever pitched me as an angel investor. He had an idea for something called ApplyBoard — helping international students get into small colleges that didn’t know their name. He was charging universities $2,000 to $3,000 per student that actually got admitted and enrolled. That company really took off.
I think you have a real business here. The only thing I’d say is: I don’t think you should ever raise money for this. I think you should bootstrap it, and if you actually stick with this idea and bootstrap it, in four or five years you’d be sitting on probably $20 million — which would be a phenomenal place to exit. The biggest risk isn’t a business risk — it’s that you raise money because investors want to hear this could take over the world, and suddenly we’re asking how you’re going to be a billion-dollar company. The reality is this might be a phenomenal $50 million company, but no chance at a billion. My advice: don’t raise. Great pitch overall.
Sam: I completely agree. Jonah, thank you. Big round of applause.
Pitch 2: Metapo — AI Dubbing for Education [00:20:00]
Austin: All right, we’ve got our guy out in San Francisco. Shara — what’s going on?
Shara: Nice to meet you all.
Sam: I love it — you dropped out? You’re not even in college? What’s going on?
Shara: Actually I’m on a gap semester. I’m in Founders Inc. — I know you know the Safian background. I just met him yesterday. Me and a couple of my buddies — I’m just visiting San Francisco, seeing if this is the right place for us.
Sam: Gap semester. I like the sound of that already.
Shara: About a year ago, me and my co-founder were watching the Spanish TV show Money Heist on Netflix. Unfortunately, neither of us speaks Spanish very well, so we had to watch it English-dubbed. Anyone who’s ever watched a dubbed movie knows the issues — the lips are not synchronized with the audio, the voice actors sound nothing like the actual actors, there’s one scene where two voice actors sounded like the same actor, making everything extremely confusing.
We looked into this issue a bit further and found that it is extremely technically complex, expensive at $100 to $1,500 per minute, time-consuming, and low quality to dub a video nowadays. Dubbing is a $60 billion market in 2022, and there’s been no clear solution.
We started by translating content for creators like Mr. Beast and Mr. Nightmare, and found that the essential use case is actually within education. Imagine the millions of people trying to get an education in their second language where the content wasn’t made for them. So we created Metapo — an automated, authentic, and scalable translation solution for educators. All the user has to do is input a video, press input and output language, hit submit, and within minutes get a lip-synced, voice-cloned, and on-screen-text-translated video.
Just like this one we translated for our client UI, using this lecture clip: “Geese and Cors — Utilitarianism suggests that an ethical choice will lead to the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”
As you can see, the professor’s voice is perfectly cloned from English to Spanish to French. His lips are synchronized. Our key differentiator is that any text on screen is translated with the same font, text, and color.
For Enterprise clients we have a human-in-the-loop process where we translate videos with industry-specific terminology — no Google Translate issues. We also have the most languages and the cheapest product on the market. We’re at $6,000 in monthly recurring revenue, translating videos for the University of Illinois and corporations like Velcro Corporation. We’re actually in talks with Coursera for a potential integration in Q1 of 2025.
One potential deal: after our paid pilot with UI, just one degree program looks like 30,000 minutes across five languages, generating $1.35 million in revenue for our company. This would save the university 91% of its current cost for curating the course. Our team combines business and technology — myself on a gap year to focus on this, and our machine learning team of five engineers with 37 years of combined experience in computer vision.
My name is Shara Kala, and my purpose is to break language barriers. Thank you.
Sam: All right, that’s awesome. Great pitch. The demo was great. You said it translates the voice and makes the lips match — I’ve never seen anyone do that. Did you see Dana White do that for the Mexican Independence Day UFC, Shaan?
Shaan: No, I didn’t see that.
Sam: So what are you doing to make the lips match? Is it superimposed on top of their lips?
Shara: Essentially, we take a YC model — one of my buddy’s models — and we’re allowed to synchronize lips based on the input video and audio in our backend. Then we curate that.
Sam: You’re gonna say you took one of your buddy’s lips and he’s a model — so there’s an off-the-shelf library that does this already, and you guys are just integrating it?
Shara: Correct. That’s true.
Sam: Okay. And you said something like, if they did just one course for one university, that’s a million in revenue for you. Are they currently dubbing it, or are you convincing them they should? Do they already spend money on this?
Shara: Right now they’re translating videos automatically — they’re translating courses like quizzes, tests, and reading papers — but they’re not translating the videos. So a Spanish user has to take the course in Spanish but still watch an English video with subtitles. We’re basically providing the solution that standardizes the actual viewing experience for the end user.
Sam: You said dubbing was a $60-something billion dollar market. What is that number? That’s ridiculous.
Shara: Just looking at traditional dubbing — film, education, marketing, general translation — it’s a huge market. We translated for content creators like Mr. Beast and Mr. Nightmare but found that the niche was in education. Think about the life-changing opportunities that are stripped from people who can’t take a course in their preferred language. That’s where we got that number.
Sam: But the key distinction — you said they’re already doing this, but actually they’re translating tests and quizzes, they’re just not doing the videos. So for them to agree to do this, it would be a new cost of around a million dollars that they’re not currently spending. So day one, it’s going to be extra cost with no extra revenue. Is that correct?
Shara: That is true. However, they are going in the direction of putting courses online, and translation is a thing they’re already doing — this would just be an added cost. But it would potentially be a marketing play to attract international students to the university.
Sam: What are you doing for Velcro? I didn’t even know Velcro was a brand — I thought velcro was a generic term. How did you close those guys? They look like a big old sluggish company.
Shara: We had a personal connection to one of the higher-ups. We do internal communications for them — every month there’s a 90-minute internal town hall where the CEO speaks in English. She’s an Italian woman and felt she lacked emotion when speaking in English, like she couldn’t be herself. We provided a solution where she could give updates in Italian for 90 minutes, and within three hours we created a translated video she could send to all the plants at Velcro Corporation in 10 different languages.
Sam: But it sounds like you’re not doubling down on Enterprise — you want to go for the university education niche. Is that right?
Shara: We want to go into education — universities, educational content creation, corporate trainings. We understand that enterprise sales cycles are extremely long, which is why going through translation agencies for educational content can help us take a more geometric approach to our sales cycle. And the university brand itself creates a trust signal — “University of Illinois uses this, so I trust this company.”
Shaan: I think you have a solid pitch and a really great product. But I think this is a product in search of a market. You’re going to go to these universities and they’re going to say “that’s awesome” — but they won’t have the budget, or it’ll be seen as an extra cost without a clear ROI attached. That’s going to make an already slow sales cycle even harder.
One thing to consider: if there’s already a big market for dubbing and people are doing it manually, this could be a private equity play. You could go buy existing dubbing services that have existing books of business, and then replace the people with AI that does it better, faster, and cheaper. You said it costs like $100 a minute for humans to dub. You could buy companies and rip out the cost structure with AI. That might actually be a better way into this market.
Shara: Understood — and we’re actually trying to do that right now. We’re partnering with a translation agency to understand exactly how they derive their clients and go through these sales cycles. The one thing about universities is that I see this being globalized through learning management systems like Coursera. We actually had a meeting yesterday with Coursera — they’re willing to give us a shot at an integration for a couple of courses if the University of Illinois pilot goes well. That would take us from dubbing around a thousand minutes every two weeks to maybe a thousand hours every two weeks.
Sam: Hey Shaan — I don’t pay attention to this world much, but how impressive was that video we saw?
Shaan: It’s definitely impressive. They’re doing a couple other things specific to it, like changing the text on screen — which makes the whole solution work because the course actually functions. It’s impressive. But there’s got to be ten other companies that could do this today. There’s no scientific breakthrough in what they’re doing. This is really a question of who builds the best business around this new technology — it’s who figures out the right market, the right go-to-market, the right pricing model.
Sam: What do your parents think about you taking the gap year?
Shara: We got into Techstars in June and ended up declining that. My parents are South Indian — they’re driven by prestige and percentages. But I was able to show them that getting into a top accelerator put me in the top 1% of pre-seed companies, so they let me take this gap semester. Now I have to show them some KPIs to keep the time off going. I’m loving it right now.
Shaan: Hey — your kids’ amazing. This is going to turn out more than all right. I think there’s actually a kid at Founders Inc where you’re at right now. His name is Johnny Dallas. He was in eighth grade when he started working with us, and then every day after school, and then in 11th grade it was pretty clear this guy was amazing and should just work full-time. We made him an offer and his mom was freaking out. She said “my son’s going to be a high school dropout — this is crazy.” I said no, no — he’s not dropping out, he’s going pro. The same way LeBron James went pro because he had incredible skills. That reframe — convincing her on a bench in a park that he’s going pro, not dropping out — that might have been some of my best work.
Sam: Congratulations on your success. Thank you for letting us listen. You’re the man.
Pitch 3: Milu — Personalized Skincare for Your Microbiome [00:37:30]
Nathan: I’m Nathan. Co-founder of Milu. We are creating personalized skincare that’s built for your microbiome.
My journey with microbiology began when I was eight, after I had a life-threatening encounter with a flesh-eating bacteria. This experience sparked a fascination with the world of microbes — bacteria and fungi. Since then I’ve been driven to understand how the skin microbiome — the trillions of microbes living on our bodies — affects human health.
Let me paint you a picture. Think of the skin microbiome as a city — a complex community of microbes each with a unique job. In our skin city, some help manage inflammation, others retain moisture, some even fight off viruses. This microbiome is unique to each person, like a fingerprint, and its wellbeing is essential for healthy and beautiful skin.
But here’s the problem: many common skincare products contain preservatives and harsh chemicals that are detrimental to your skin microbiome. Using these is like dropping a nuke on your microbiome city — leading to chaos and any number of skin problems. Acne, dryness, anti-aging concerns — these drive a $150 billion industry. Yet most products rely on an outdated one-size-fits-all approach that overlooks our unique biology. This leads to a frustrating cycle of trial and error.
That’s why Milu is different. We create skincare that works with your unique microbiome. Here’s how we’re changing the game: the Milu Biome Sense System. It’s a comprehensive solution that combines microbiome science, AI, and personalization. It starts with our at-home microbiome collection kit — simply swab your skin, mail it back to us, and complete a short survey about your skin concerns, lifestyle, and habits. In our lab three miles west of here, we analyze your microbiome sample. Our AI-powered algorithm then integrates this data with your survey responses to create personalized skin insights and custom formulations — a serum and a cleanser designed just for you.
As you use our products, Milu adapts through re-tests and reformulations. Milu is offering high-quality personalized skincare for $59.95, which includes the test kit, analysis, and custom products. With a $16.95 monthly subscription you get refills and retests as needed. Please visit our website to learn more.
Sam: Hold on, brother — keep that up. I’m gonna try it. Go for it.
Shaan: When I thought microbiome, what did you immediately think?
Sam: I thought gut. I thought poop. I thought you’re going to give me something to help my skin through my gut. But I didn’t know skin microbiome was a thing. How’s your skincare routine?
Sam: Body wash that goes on my armpits also goes on my face. It’s not very good. But I’m bought into the idea that it is important and I do want to get better. This is interesting to me.
Shaan: Do you have any revenue at all?
Nathan: No revenue. We’re currently in development — we’re doing beta testing.
Shaan: Got it. Really smooth pitch, by the way. You’re a talker. That was very well done. Let’s give some thoughts. Shaan, the deck was great — those cartoons told the story wonderfully.
Sam: Who made all that?
Nathan: The deck — my co-founder Ron and I worked on it. We also got feedback from a bunch of other students in the community.
Shaan: One thing I think would help you: this story would go viral on TikTok. Basically what you told us — if you were like “I used to not care about my skin, and then I got a flesh-eating bacteria.” Show a picture. “Here’s what I did to get rid of this, and why you should never look at skincare products the same way again.” Knock over a bunch of bottles on a table. You’re going to get two million views on TikTok. And you can include in your content strategy “we know how to tell our story and get out there.” The smart brands in DTC are content-first right now. They know how to tell their story on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube — that’s where they’re getting runaway growth compared to everybody else just doing static ads on Facebook.
Nathan: Absolutely. Many of our competitors sunk a ton of their initial revenue into advertising. So we’re looking at a different go-to-market — we want to please 50 people in our beta testing, work very closely with a smaller group to make sure the product and the algorithm are really working before we go mass market. But I like the idea of short-form content because it definitely hits with the younger audience, which is our target market.
Shaan: Who are your competitors?
Nathan: There’s no one doing exactly what we’re doing. There are skincare companies that do microbiome testing, and there are personalized skincare companies. The biggest skin microbiome company currently is Parallel Health — they offer a $200-a-month protocol with full sequencing. Super high-end. There’s also Proven Skincare, which was on Shark Tank — they do personalized skincare based only on a quiz. We have a quiz and microbiome testing, so we’re kind of the baby between those two ideas.
Sam: A lot of times with health stuff there’s always a bunch of people who love something and then an equal or larger amount of haters. What would the haters say about this? Like — “microbiome stuff isn’t actually important, if you just do these three things you’ll get 90% of the result”?
Nathan: The biggest liability is that the skin microbiome field is actually very new. We’re testing a hypothesis. We believe skincare precisely tailored to your microbiome is better than the traditional methods. The biggest objection is probably that societal idea that all bacteria is bad. People really like to feel clean and sanitized. We love germs — we want to harness the power of the germs on your face — and people might say “that’s gross.” But it’s just science. Science is gross.
Sam: I’m an idiot but I pay attention to health stuff. I think the criticism is that your thing moves the needle by 1% whereas if you do other things it mostly gets you there. You know what I mean?
Shaan: Yeah. In health stuff you can listen to Huberman for 92 hours or you can be Brian Johnson taking 42 supplements a day. But 80 to 90% of the gains come from good sleep, drink water, eat clean whole foods. The rest is edge optimization. A smart skeptic would have that thought. But I don’t think that’s what’s going to drive success or failure here.
What I think was missing from your pitch is convincing me that people care about hyper-personalization and that that’s where the puck is going. In a pitch you want to make two cases: one, this is inevitably where the puck is going; and two, we are going to be the ones who score when the puck gets there. For example — in hair care and beauty products, there’s already been this trend. The companies in the last wave that went the personalization route have had great exits. But nobody’s done it for skincare yet. Show that the same thing that just happened in makeup and hair is going to happen in skin. Make it feel inevitable.
Nathan: That’s very good feedback. Thank you.
Sam: I thought you did a great job telling the story. I’m still trying to figure out what this all hinges on — like, do you believe that if it works, it’s going to be visually different? If I showed you two pictures — one person using your thing and one person using off-the-shelf stuff — could you just point at it and say “that’s clearly better”?
Because if it is, all your marketing works. If it’s not, then honestly in the world of supplements and vitamins and creams — let’s be honest, nobody has a clue if any of this stuff actually works. Then it’s all a branding game. It’s who can convince the consumer that if you buy this product you’ll be more beautiful. Why is L’Oreal successful? Not because their product is scientifically better than anybody else’s. Because they’re better marketers.
Nathan: We definitely want to latch onto the trend toward clean and sustainable beauty — that’s why we made a box you can plant in the ground that grows flowers. Before and after pictures are one of the best things we can get. The results of our beta testing are currently looking very promising, but before I start making claims and putting pictures on the website, I want to do really thorough analysis to make sure what we have is solid.
Shaan: All right, brother. We appreciate you. Congratulations. Solid pitch. On to the next one.
Pitch 4: Brother Nuts — Sprouted Nut Snacks from a Family Mission [00:55:00]
Austin Majors: Hey guys, my name’s Austin Majors. I’m the co-founder of Brother Nuts. Our mission is to kick the fake food to the curb and revolutionize healthy snacking with organic, sprouted nut and seed snacks.
My family found that half of the snacks out there weren’t actually healthy, and the other half tasted like garbage. Our business started back in 2010, actually, when my father was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. He was given seven weeks to live. Through changes in diet and lifestyle, he turned that seven weeks into seven years. But one of the biggest issues he and my family had was finding a snack that was as healthy as it was tasty.
So our current CFO — AKA Chief Flavor Officer, AKA Mom — went into work and created what is now known as the Crackled Cheesy Almonds. My family and friends were astonished to see that these were as healthy as they were flavorful, and very crunchy. That’s what makes us different — all of our nuts and seeds are sprouted.
How’s it gone over the last seven years? I started this company at 13 years old when my father passed away, with my older brother who was 15. Over the last seven years we’ve done over a million dollars in sales. We’re currently available in 200 retail locations. We have a clear path forward over the next four years to take this business to $10 million in sales and become a national brand.
How are we going to do that? We’re going to do the hard work that no one else wants to do — and I know no one else wants to do it because I speak to these stores and no one else is doing it. First, expanding and making more money from our current clients — Fresh Thyme, Mom’s Organic Market, The Fresh Market. But also expanding distribution into new stores like Whole Foods, Sprouts, HEB. How are we going to grow within those stores? We’re going to keep shaking hands, telling my story, having people try the product. Last, we’re going to continue innovating. Right now we’re developing a clean chocolate almond and a high-protein variant of our most popular flavors — something that’s never been done in this space.
On a grander scale — there are 62,000 grocery stores. The nut market is selling $10 billion this year. I look at the biggest companies out there and we can absolutely get there. And what’s really cool is we check all the boxes: seed-oil-free, sprouted, gluten-free, gut-friendly. Products labeled “sprouted” grew 34% in velocities last period. We are on the up and up.
But let’s remember why we’re doing this. The reason we’re able to land these retailers and get through these gatekeepers is because every sale and every milestone is contributing to continuing my father’s legacy. We know that by changing what people snack on every single day, we’ll lead them to live longer, better, healthier lives with their families. If you’re ready to join us to kick the fake food to the curb and evolve the way you snack, I’d love to talk to you.
Sam: Dude, that was great, man. I got goosebumps. Good for you. I’m really happy to hear about this. Austin, I just placed a $52 order. I’m gonna try the cheesy ones, the garlic ones, and the spicy basil pumpkin seeds. Let’s see what you’re about.
So you’re in some stores today — just give us the basic rundown. How many stores and is that one chain or multiple?
Austin Majors: Multiple chains. Our very first store that gave us a shot was Fresh Thyme Market — about 70 stores across the Midwest. The story with that is my brother cold-called the CEO, got a call back in the lunchroom of his senior year of high school. We sat down with the team, got three stores, proved ourselves, they gave us 30, we proved ourselves again, they gave us 70. They only expand you if you’re selling well. After that success story we went out and targeted smaller chains — Mom’s Organic Market on the East Coast, The Fresh Market. With that data we’re now going to new stores — we met with Whole Foods and got a yes, then got pushed back, and we’re fighting for a bigger and better yes. We have a huge meeting with Sprouts tomorrow.
Shaan: What’s the revenue so far?
Austin Majors: Since inception over seven years, we’ve sold over a million dollars worth of nuts. This year alone we’ll do $400,000 — last year was $200,000. Next year with some of the launches we’re planning, we’ll probably do closer to two million.
Sam: And what did the retailers tell you? Like, what does Fresh Thyme say about your velocity?
Austin Majors: Our product is incredibly unique — we have very few competitors we can even name. What we have to do is first demonstrate a gap on the shelf: “You don’t have any nut options that are organic, sprouted, and contain no seed oils.” Then we just share the data. Our velocities — if they were bad, Fresh Thyme would not have let us go from 3 to 30 to 70 stores. They came to us. We were just killing it.
Sam: Fair enough. You answered a question that should be answered in numbers with letters, but that’s okay.
Here’s the problem I have with this business. I like your name, I like your story, I really want to try your nuts. But when I go to your TikTok I see 50 followers. When you’re young you have a lot of disadvantages — you’re not going to have the same level of experience, the same funding, the supply chain experience your competitors have. But you do have a story. And what you should be is amazing at social media. You should be telling your story, getting people excited about this brand, and taking that to retailers and saying, “Look — we’re this young, exciting brand that consumers really care about.”
The nut shelf is stale. It’s Blue Diamond and the same old brands doing the same old thing. They’re not seed-oil-free, they’re not on-trend, they’re not a challenger brand. You have that story, but you need the social side to be kick-ass. Social just takes creativity, it doesn’t take money. And you’re part of the generation that should be better at this than the CEO of Blue Diamond. That’s where you’re dropping the ball right now.
Austin Majors: Absolutely.
Sam: Who owns the company? Is it you and your brother, or is your mother involved?
Austin Majors: My brother and I are 50-50 owners. Our mom is our Chief Flavor Officer — she’s in charge of making sure the nuts taste as good as they do. She’s the original person who created these recipes and we just took them and started selling.
Shaan: Dude, this is awesome. Congratulations. I’m bought in with Sam on the story. The story was very good. I saw your about page and was like, “All right, this is definitely going to be something interesting.” I’m now a customer.
Sam, do you remember the name of that nuts brand — the peanut butter brand — kind of popular on Twitter?
Sam: Yeah, they do many eight figures a year in revenue. Tens of millions in revenue.
Shaan: Have you looked at them, Austin?
Austin Majors: Yeah, I’m familiar with them. I think they just got popular on social media. Their stick is different than ours — theirs is like the indulgent side versus what we’re trying to do.
Sam: I’ve invested in a bunch of seed-oil-free companies. TBD if it’s going to be mainstream yet, but it definitely seems like it might be. This is super fascinating — you have a lot of tailwinds.
I think you want to include the big picture in your pitch, too. An investor doesn’t know how big a nuts brand can be. Your numbers, while not bad, are on the small side for an e-commerce company. You’ve got to paint a picture that this can actually be really big. Blue Diamond does about $1.8 billion a year in revenue. You walk down that aisle and it’s all old brands doing the same old thing. There’s not one challenger brand — they’re all lacking XYZ. And then you say: we have fresh packaging, we’re a challenger brand, we have a better story, we’re hot on social media. And you show examples like Nerdy Nuts — others who have come into this category and done very well — and show how you’re next in line.
That’s that sense of inevitability again. When you don’t have the traction that shows your own trajectory is inevitable, you want to show the inevitability of the category. Sprouted products are growing 34% year-over-year in stores — every category now has a sprouted product and the sprouted products are overperforming. Guess what nuts doesn’t have? A sprouted product. We are that sprouted nut.
Good overall. And honestly — of all the businesses we heard today — I think this is probably the one that could be the biggest.
Shaan: Yeah. But I don’t think you’re using your strengths. If you keep going on the same path it won’t be huge. But you’re still young and you have time to change. If you take some of this feedback and do it, I think this could be a lot bigger.
Austin Majors: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Pitch 5: Tour — AI Leasing Agent for Apartment Properties [01:12:00]
Tour Co-Founder 1: Hi Sam, Shaan, MFM. We are Tour — the AI part-time salesperson for property managers. Today, only 4% of apartment prospects who ever land on an apartment website actually end up taking an in-person tour. And it’s no surprise that the in-person tour is the highest-converting part of the apartment sales process — there’s nothing like someone giving you a guided experience of something you’re about to buy. But when 96% of the potential prospects who hit your digital storefront never get the chance to experience your tour, these leads get missed and these apartments are left with hundreds of thousands of dollars of missed opportunities and unfilled vacancies.
That is, until the apartment installs Tour. Tour helps apartments like Arbor Apartments scale Mariana, their digital salesperson. Now Mariana doesn’t have enough time to tour every single prospect in person, much less all the prospects who visit the property online. But what if we could recreate Mariana’s best in-person tour and replicate that on the website — so that Mariana is on the website for all prospects, 24/7?
Our property manager just pastes a link to an apartment website. We scrape the website and generate video scripts that help Mariana record the tour, then combine everything with a knowledge base into a smart virtual leasing agent. Once the tour is ready, the company pastes a little piece of code on the website, and now Mariana is on the website 24/7. When a prospect browses, we’re learning about them through small digital micro-interactions. Mariana can pop out of the right-hand corner of the website at the perfect time and ask them if they’d like to take a tour. Once in the tour, Mariana can teach them about the apartment, offer to show them a specific floor plan or specific amenity deemed appropriate for them, ask qualifying questions, and even offer to schedule a callback — all while driving engagement and increasing appointments booked.
Replicating that in-person tour for these apartments can drive nearly 3x engagement and create more qualified leads. We know this because we’re working with some of the largest property managers in the nation, and in the spirit of the podcast — we’ve delivered our first million tours and helped drive over $30 million worth of leases.
Additionally, those videos of Mariana? They’re now one of the biggest assets for the apartment. Tour automatically repurposes those videos to follow up with leads and automatically run TikTok, Meta, and Google ad campaigns.
Shopify has set the experience for everyday e-commerce — compelling, visual, video-first. But larger purchases like shopping for an apartment online still remain stuck with static photos, manual scheduling, and manual follow-ups. That ends today with Tour. Shopping for an apartment online is nearly 2x larger than all other forms of e-commerce combined — a $2.5 trillion industry. Property managers rely on their tour to close over 80% of sales. We’re a passionate team that has designed experiences at Ramp and Google Shopping. We started on campus to solve our own problem, got into YC, and are just getting started. With Tour — the salesperson for property managers.
Sam: All right, all right, all right! That’s pretty great. So you’ve raised money already?
Tour Co-Founder 1: Yeah, we’ve raised about $350,000 to $400,000 so far, but largely bootstrapped. We’ve been really focused on getting the product experience as good as possible for our customers.
Sam: Can I tell you the three reasons why I think this could fail — and you can tell me how I’m wrong?
First, there was something called Matterport that existed for a long time. I know Airbnb tested it on their website. I used to be an Airbnb owner, and when they had these Matterport 3D virtual tours, they found it decreased conversion. The main thing being — a lot of apartments for rent are not great, and you just need to get someone in the door so you can do some salesmanship. Online, it can look bad in a 3D kind of way.
The second one: right now, do apartments even need to be filled? A lot of these folks are like, “Dude, I’m killing it, my vacancy is quite low — why should I spend money on this?”
And the last one: a lot of apartments that you need to do sales on are kind of rough, and I don’t want someone to see them online. I need them to see them in real life so I can sell them on it. Like — I don’t want a user video of a 1994 Honda Civic. But if I get you here and I can do some salesmanship, then we’re good. Can you refute some of those points?
Tour Co-Founder 1: I think you’re absolutely right that Matterport is one of our comps. They’re still doing $540 million per year — they’re a public comp. But the big thing we do differently is: we are fundamentally an active experience, partnered with the apartment to funnel someone down the whole sales funnel — from the first moment they meet the property, to email follow-ups, to targeted ad retargeting. That allows us to hit a much larger market than Matterport even does today.
And on the nature of these apartments being old and drab — things change. Apartments are becoming one of the largest purchases people make. They’re becoming more amenitized. The experience economy is here. We see this because many of our tours — we’ve delivered over a million — many are from international or out-of-state prospects making important decisions on the edge between different apartments.
And we’re also augmenting the sales force. Frontline sales at most of these businesses have high churn. If we can help augment the sales team, we have much larger staying power with the property than a one-off virtual tour.
Tour Co-Founder 2: And one thing to add — Matterport’s goal is to communicate the physical establishment. We do that too, but we’re also trying to augment the website to better communicate the property and segment leads, so property managers know how to allocate resources toward the highest-intent leads. That’s another area where they save money.
Sam: And the tour that you give — is it just a person talking with photos, or is it a walking tour? Do you go film it?
Tour Co-Founder 1: We go film it. We have a video pro network that can help film it, or we’re building more and more scripts you can film from your phone. iPhone 16 rivals Sony cameras. Then once we have the footage, we take the knowledge base as well as that media and supply it throughout the whole sales process.
Sam: So you guys go film a video when an apartment works with you, and then you have an AI wrapper around it — Q&A, scheduling, appointment follow-up, targeted ads — that’s what you guys do?
Tour Co-Founder 1: Exactly.
Sam: And the $450,000 in ARR — that’s from how many customers?
Tour Co-Founder 1: About 130 property managers, usually around the $300 price point. Some are $250, some are paying more.
Sam: And how’d you get those 130 property managers?
Tour Co-Founder 1: We have a land-and-expand motion. Once we’re inside a property manager, they usually manage many properties. We demonstrate our results and most of the time other regional property managers in the same company start expanding within their portfolio.
Sam: So how will you go from 130 properties today to a thousand or 10,000 in the next year?
Tour Co-Founder 1: One of the big things we’ve been trying is automatically generating tours to demonstrate value to apartments before we even have to go in person — because obviously filming is a large cost. We can scrape the website, pull some images, use Flux to turn images into something of a video, pull information from their website, and generate a tour that can segment leads on the website. They see a tour lead come in — a high-intent lead — and then we follow up. If they’re pleased with the value, we go out and record the actual video, making the tour even better.
Sam: So you’re going to auto-generate prototype tours, then cold-email them and say, “Hey, we can do this for you.” Cold email, referred — all of that?
Tour Co-Founder 1: Yes.
Sam: And do you guys run A/B tests? On any of your apartment websites, do you show what’s different with you installed versus without?
Tour Co-Founder 1: Absolutely. When it comes to the value we generate, we usually drive an additional $300,000 to $500,000 in leases for a property. Specifically — we deliver four times the number of tours, prospects get three times the engagement, and the leads we capture are more qualified, so those leases convert at a higher rate.
Sam: If you told me, “However many tours you’re giving per week, I could 4x that if you add this to your website” — that’s a pretty compelling proposition. Don’t you think?
Shaan: Yes. I still think there are a bunch of other questions related to the things you said, but that is compelling. I’m just scarred from this industry — selling to these companies and how hard it is, how old-school they are. The two customers in this presentation have been universities and apartment buildings. Oh my God, those are both really, really hard. Have you noticed how old-school your customers are, and how much of a pain they can be to work with?
Tour Co-Founder 1: It definitely is an old guard. But competition is pushing them forward. They’re realizing how important it is to be competitively advantaged when they look at how e-commerce is evolving.
Shaan: They’re just slow. They’re really slow.
Tour Co-Founder 1: They are slow.
Shaan: I do think there’s a clear line to draw where this feels inevitable. Fifteen years ago you might have been able to get away without a website as an apartment building — and then that became mandatory. Then you had to have photos. Then videos. Then you had to have an online booking system. Now 98% of apartment sites have a way to book a tour online. Well, guess what’s next? An AI agent that’s answering questions, upselling, putting together a high-quality pitch for the prospect. All websites are going to have an AI agent that helps them sell. When the tech makes it possible, it just becomes too competitive not to have it. You want to make that case in your pitch.
Tour Co-Founder 1: Agreed.
Shaan: And you guys have done great with your matching zip-ups — nicely merchandised. Congratulations. That’s step one to being a startup. You’ve also nailed the revenue thing. The million tours is pretty good. And $30 million in leases from your appointments — that’s okay too. But really, the jackets are fantastic.
Tour Co-Founder 1: Thank you guys. You guys are bad.
Shaan: Well, thank you. I kind of feel like these are unfair to be honest — if you’re already in YC and you’ve already done a million tours, the playing field’s a bit uneven. They put up a team slide and it was like, “experience at Google, Ramp, all these companies.” I thought you were supposed to be 19. What’s going on?
Pitch 6: Pathet — AI Email Assistant [01:30:00]
Advait: Hello, my name is Advait Gota. I’m the CEO and founder of Pathet. Nice to meet you guys today.
Until a month ago, we were working on a no-code engine that helped businesses automate their daily tasks with AI. It was going really well — we were working with extremely large enterprises like the Big Four, and had more than a million dollars in VC money to accelerate our growth. But the more we worked with enterprises, the more we realized that our most valuable automations ended up being email-related. They wanted help managing their cluttered inboxes.
A fun story: our lead investor once told us she went for a week-long break and had 8,000 unread emails. A business owner we were working with told us his employees were spending more time on emails alone than the job they were actually hired to do. These stories are not one-offs. According to McKinsey, the average employee processes more than 600 emails per week, wasting 13 hours and thousands of business dollars.
Despite email being essential, it has become a burden. We find it hard to keep track of even the most important emails. But according to industry research, 86% of business professionals still prefer using email. So clearly we can’t get rid of it — but we can solve it.
We are building a virtual executive assistant that handles your emails for you. Just like a real secretary, it can learn from you and respond to emails on your behalf. It tells you what the most important emails in your inbox are every single morning. And it can automatically respond to emails you don’t care about.
We are launching on the App Store next week — and no, we’re not joking. We have been actively working with a Big Four customer, netting us six figures in annual revenue, and are starting a pilot with the largest children’s enrichment franchise in the world next week. We’ve also been working with five global financial institutions and completed an oversubscribed seven-figure raise. We won first place in one of the Midwest’s largest startup pitch competitions.
My name is Advait. Together with my co-founder Mark, we collectively bring more than a decade of experience in AI and building companies. My entire teenage years have been spent building and scaling numerous online security businesses to millions of users. We’re now working together to change the way you interact with email. Thank you.
Sam: Hold on — the first five or so words of your pitch were pretty funny. You said “until last month we were doing this thing.” And then you have a six-figure enterprise contract and you’ve raised a million dollars. I don’t understand — can you briefly tell me: they had a product, they’re pivoting, they raised money, they had a customer but it was on the old thing, and now they’re pivoting?
Advait: So essentially — it’s the same business. We have the same generative AI engine we started with in February. All the contracts we have are now converting to the email client. We were using our technology to develop email automations for all these businesses, and we raised money on that. We simply changed the user interface from a workflow builder that looked like Zapier to more of an assistant email client interface, which we found works better with enterprise customers.
Sam: Got it. Because your website doesn’t tell that story — but if you click the “New” tab at the top, it says “our email client,” which tells that story a little better.
Can I give a public service announcement about the “our team has decades of experience” thing? A couple of pitches have had that. I don’t think you should do that. What you really want in a pitch is to give the investor the feeling of “wait, I think this is even bigger than what they’re saying.” There’s a subtle art where you’re trying to convince them this is going to be big and awesome, but you cannot appear to be overselling it. You have to feel like you’re underselling it — and then they feel like they’re finding a diamond in the rough.
So how old are you?
Advait: I’m 20.
Sam: Right. So to be like “we have a combined 12 years of experience” — I think that’s a bit of a tell. What you’d be better off saying is: “I started coding when I was eight. By the time I was 12 I had already built this. When I was 14 I hacked into my school and changed my grades. And for the last few years I’ve been obsessed with AI.” That’s a more believable and exciting story. I pattern-match on “this is one of those boy geniuses, a hacker type that started early.” That story works much better. When you tell me you and your co-founder who are 18 have decades of experience — no you don’t. So I have to wonder what else I can’t believe out of this.
Shaan: Having said that — all right, Public Service Announcement over. I do have a question. You’ve done a great job selling into people who are really hard to sell into. How did you get an enterprise contract from a Big Four consulting company worth over $100,000? What’s the short story?
Advait: Short story: I was working as a consultant on campus as part of a university organization. Through that, I was able to connect to a very high-level business executive within a Big Four enterprise through my mentor, who happened to be the director of the consulting organization. Long story short — it was very network-driven. They were looking for a solution to fit certain problems, and what I was building as a personal project happened to solve those exact problems. Once I had that, we made it a company.
Shaan: And what did they say when you pivoted?
Advait: They are partly the reason we pivoted. But it was also when we started engaging with more and more prospects. Our initial generative AI workflow engine — you could take AI and plug it into any legacy system to automate any complex day-to-day task. For example, if you’re a VC and you receive a lot of pitch decks by email, we could create an automation that would automatically process those pitch decks, analyze them against your investment thesis and portfolio companies, and then send out replies — “we love this, we’d like to schedule a call” or “no, for the following reasons.”
Sam: Is what you’re describing similar to Lindy?
Advait: Yes, Lindy.ai was definitely a competitor of ours in that space. But as I was saying — the more we engaged with customers and prospects, we found that our product was explicitly being used for email automations. And a big problem with products like our previous one and Lindy is that the barrier to entry for a lot of non-technical users is quite high. You almost have to be a developer to use even no-code tools. That’s why we decided to change the interface into a much easier virtual assistant or secretary.
Shaan: I think the challenge with this business — because you seem really smart, and whatever you work on will be interesting — I think the challenge is you’re going into the most competitive space. I do believe undoubtedly that email inboxes are going to start having AI in them. The AI is going to help you process, categorize, summarize your emails, and help with responses. But the problem is: do I really believe you are going to get people off of Outlook, off of Gmail, and onto your service? Google is definitely going to be adding AI to Gmail. So is Superhuman. So is Microsoft — they basically own OpenAI. This is going to be an absolute bloodbath category. Even if I like you and agree with the idea, it’s that second inevitability: yes, the puck is going this way, but are you going to be the team that captures that opportunity? It seems unlikely, because people don’t want to switch email clients, and all the existing email clients are already aware of this capability and are highly incentivized to add AI to it.
How much have you raised so far?
Advait: A little more than a million.
Shaan: Are you still in school or are you living in San Francisco?
Advait: Currently we’re on a gap semester. I’m on a gap semester, Mark also — he has one class left, but everyone else is full-time. We have four people.
Sam: I think like that first company — Meet Your Class — the middle-funnel enrollment stuff — that’s the issue. All these smart kids are bailing on university. That’s amazing that you’re all just taking gaps.
So I just told you you’re probably going to fail — tell me why I’m wrong and I should kick rocks.
Advait: Fair. Getting businesses to switch to our email client is definitely a very big hurdle we’re navigating. But what we’ve found is that by verticalizing for businesses with our own kind of information-management secretary, a lot of businesses actually prefer us over their standard email clients. For example, our pilot with the largest children’s enrichment franchise — they entirely run on Gmail, but they’re still willing to switch because some features we provide are things Gmail and Outlook can never do. They have to cater to enormous audiences and cannot fit the specific niches and requirements of individual customers.
Sam: Fair enough. Sam, what else do you have before we wrap up?
Sam: I think it’s so early it’s hard to ask questions. I’m on your website and it looks very much beta — hard for me to fully understand. But Shaan, you were asking about replacing Gmail — according to the website, it’s actually an integration, not a replacement. So you just keep using Gmail and this is overlaid?
Advait: Yes, so you just log in with your Gmail. We get all your emails and then you start using our interface rather than Gmail.com.
Sam: It’s like Superhuman, right? So you keep your email address, but fundamentally you’re not supposed to go to Gmail every day — you’re supposed to go to Pathet and use that for all your emails.
Advait: That is correct.
Shaan: All right — good pitch. Thank you. Best of luck. I do think this is a huge idea. It’s going to be super competitive. If you did it, that would be amazing. This is a multi-billion-dollar win if you can actually do it. That’s the good news.
Advait: Thank you.
The Judges Deliberate: School, Best Pitch, Audience Choice [01:48:00]
Shaan: All right, to wrap up — let’s name the winning school, our favorite pitch, and then do an audience choice. Sound good?
Sam: Let’s do it. Let me recap real quick. Michigan did: Meet Your Class, helping universities with the summer melt mid-funnel; Milu, the personalized skincare microbiome company; and Tour, the AI apartment leasing agent. UIUC did: Metapo, the dubbing company; Brother Nuts, the sprouted nuts company; and Pathet, the AI email client. Sam, what’s your pick?
Sam: Illinois all the way. Michigan is an incredibly impressive school, but I thought it was incredibly impressive that the Metapo guy was at Founders Inc, already taking a gap year and raising money. And Brother Nuts is already doing $400,000 a year in revenue. I just thought it was more impressive that a Midwestern school had people going to the coast and actually doing the thing.
Shaan: I’d disagree — I’d have gone Michigan. Traction-wise, let’s make the case: Tour had the most traction — half a million in ARR, a million tours delivered, they’re YC. I think Tour was doing the best. And Meet Your Class has a real business — half a million people have used the product, and they stumbled into a business model that might actually work. Michigan had the better businesses overall.
Sam: All right. So they each get a vote and it’s a tie.
Now — our favorite business to invest in. Sam, which one?
Sam: The business I don’t want to invest in but I wish I owned, and I think the owners might get the richest the fastest — is Brother Nuts. Austin Majors. I don’t think they should raise money, I don’t want to invest in them, but I would love to own that company. I think it could be a family business that makes hundreds of millions throughout the next handful of decades.
Shaan: My head tells me it’s either Meet Your Class or Tour. But my heart is with Brother Nuts — and I’m going to go with Brother Nuts too. They’re one step away from making this a legit business you’re going to see on the shelves in every grocery store. I would actually invest in this business. Most of the other companies had an AI element, and I applaud that — I think that’s where the puck is going. But it’s hard to stand out. There’s just so much going on. With an almond element, though — doesn’t it seem like it could actually really work?
Sam: It’s a trade-off of less competition but maybe more upside. You said it well — this is definitely what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be a bloodbath. That’s how I feel about a lot of the AI companies.
Shaan: Now, crowd’s choice. I’m going to say the name of each business — crowd reaction decides the winner. Let’s see if this works.
From Michigan: Meet Your Class. From UIUC: Metapo. From Michigan: the skin microbiome company, Milu. From UIUC: Pathet. From Michigan: Tour. From UIUC: Brother Nuts.
Shaan, I think I know who won that.
Sam: I think it was Metapo. They had it.
Shaan: Yeah, we miss you bro. We miss you. All right — wonderful, guys. Great job, everybody. This is really impressive. You’re way ahead of where I was in college. I think Sam probably the same.
Sam: You guys are ahead of the curve. I hope our feedback is helpful — even the people we pushed on. If we ask hard questions or give you a hard time, it’s because we actually think you can win. If we just wanted to be nice and say, “Congratulations, participation ribbon, I’m so happy for you” — that wouldn’t be helpful. And it actually wouldn’t be a sign of respect. We respect all of you for doing this.
Shaan: I would not have become an entrepreneur had I not had a class like this, where a speaker came in and got me hyped about doing a startup. I didn’t know what to do. My first idea was terrible. My execution was absolutely horrendous. But it got me on the path — it seemed like more fun. So if you’re listening to this or you’re at one of these schools right now, and it seems like something you want to do and it seems like the lifestyle — go for it. Don’t let anything hold you back. This could be a tipping point moment for you, just like it was for me. You are currently in the phase of life where it will never be easier to do these things than right now. You have about a four-year window where you have nothing really big to worry about except for this.
Also — Austin and Tommy, you guys are the man. It’s really hard to organize this type of stuff, and getting this energy in one room is contagious.
Sam: You know what I’m thinking?
Shaan: I got two words for you: Nationwide. We’re taking Power Hour nationwide. And the second two words: pizza party — sponsored by MFM. We should give these guys some money so they can host more events. So we’ll connect with you Tommy after this and give you guys some cash.
I like that it’s underground. I like that it’s off the books. I like that this is not the entrepreneurship club of the school — it’s just the people who actually care about building stuff, who want to do cool things and get off the traditional career track. I’m for that.
Sam: Thank you all for doing this. We appreciate you. Have a wonderful Wednesday. And if you’re listening to MFM — go give all these guys a little bit of love on their websites and check out their products. All right, that’s it — that’s the pod.