Wearing my ‘serial founder exploring starting a company’ hat, I advanced my passion project KIP3.
KIP is a seven-year long passion project to tackle the disinformation problem on social media that makes us poor information citizens and polarized neighbors who cannot take collective action in the face of threats like the climate crisis.
It’s a Wikipedia + Wordle for Current Affairs to make better citizens and voters…A comprehensive project that aims to promote trust and transparency in democracy while combating disinformation and corruption.The deliverables can be used individually or collectively to empower citizens with the knowledge and tools needed to critically evaluate information and build a network of trustworthy sources.Wearing my ‘serial founder exploring starting a company’ hat, I advanced my passion project KIP3.
KIP is a seven-year long passion project to tackle the disinformation problem on social media that makes us poor information citizens and polarized neighbors who cannot take collective action in the face of threats like the climate crisis.
“And the winner is...hard to describe in front of a bunch of people I just met.”
Had a fun morning meeting all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed brilliant students, program coordinators like Justin Wong and Simran Kaur and Anika R. and other venture judges and Silicon Valley investors like Alexander Walterspeil (head trader at Indaba Capital Management), Brandon Drew (General Partner at SaaS Growth Ventures), and Bob Upham of Tess Ventures to hear the pitches for Gigi Wang’s Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Final Presentations.
I’ve been mentoring and judging Bootcamps at Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology for about five years since I met Gigi at the European Innovation Academy in France. Every Bootcamp is different but they’re all a whirlwind of inspiration and learning, and a shot in the arm of what my fellow startup mentor Pamela Day calls “Vitamin S”, for Students.
This year in my track we heard four startup ideas developed during the week’s Bootcamp accelerated process. I was joined by two venture capitalists: Bill Reichert, Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures; and Shuonan Chen, general partner at Innovation Overflow Venture Capital.
“We chose two pitches, it was a tie! ”
“One winning team, described as 50% ‘hipster’, proposed a second-hand furniture service for student communities.”
The tie was between a second-hand furniture service from a team that self-described as 50% hipster and delivered an all-bases covered pitch including customer validation and operating expenses on their financial projections; and a company that I found intriguing, but not easily mentionable during my one-day appearance at Bootcamp.
Most years when I can, I enjoy mentoring the teams during the week leading up to the final, giving me a chance to get to know the entrepreneurs and advise their team formation and development of their venture pitch.
I didn’t have that chance this year, otherwise I certainly would have had more time to construct how I might present Anvio as winners, live on the Zoom to all participants. Somehow I still did that within minutes of hearing of them (waiting for the video of the event to recall exactly what I said without using the term the team suggested: “sex toy”, this is FAR MORE than a toy). And now I’m struggling to describe it here, on the Internet where nothing ever dies.
I’m not sure I want to rank for these terms in perpetuity….
“I don’t want to rank for these terms yet I see the need for this intimate smart device and subscription service …there’s definitely something there with this sexual wellness training tool. ”
…there’s definitely something there with this sexual wellness training tool.
There’s something there in its not-often-enough-spoken-of problem, its ‘non-gendered’ solution, a knowledge and support community, a data-driven wellness option, an intriguing new smart device, a relationship aid, a subscription service for a monthly box of related products, and still there is so much left unsaid.
You’ll have to look for it in the slides above!
As Shuo Chen suggested during the judging, the Anvio team can always start with a MVP (minimum viable product) of a box subscription and discussion community as they continue to research and develop the intimate electronic device itself, and design and build the mobile app that supports it.
This particular problem space may be hard-to-talk-about (sort of, Teen Vogue famously covered it in 2017, and incited a backlash for erasing women — calling them “non-prostate owners”) yet the problem is a known source of trauma for millions of newcomer practitioners.
“Ok, ok. Enough prevarication.
You might call the Berkeley Bootcamp winner I championed...
’A SMART BUTT PLUG’.
Yep, went there! 😱”
Phew, I said it and I’m still alive. (Now to watch my website ranking skew over time…)
Let’s put it this way. This winning formula is…
Anvio = a not-often-spoken-about problem + a non-gendered solution + a knowledge/support community + a data-driven wellness option + an intriguing new smart device + a relationship aid + a mobile app supporting a subscription service for data + a box subscription service for related products.
Congrats again to all the hard-working BMOE teams for a great Final Presentations Day. I look forward to what you do next!
So many of us have envisioned this day, or at least where things are now surely headed for MGM's legendary library!
Once worked in Studio Business Affairs at MGM in the 90s, you may recall.
Then prepandemic had the pleasure of pitching 10 Block, my social and mobile streaming platform solution to MGM, Madhu and the studio's distribution leadership, and together envisioning the impact of connecting today's global audiences -- where and when and how they are watching -- with MGM's vaulted riches.
Still itching to see actual forward-looking viewing conventions applied to older content. Personally, want annotations, episodes, interactivity.
Can you imagine, for instance, viewing MGM’s library of Old Hollywood classics and Bond blockbusters broken down into short modern length episodes you can chat with your friends about, and discovering what to watch through reviews and what your network is liking? That looks like this?
A woman can dream!
Have you heard of venture studios?
They're like movie studios, but instead of producing and releasing movies they create startups ready to scale. A venture studio focuses on just a few ventures and puts more funding into them than you'd see with an accelerator which places many small bets. They also recruit top executives once the existential question of "is this solution commercially viable?" can be answered with "yes".
The sweet spot of Revitalize Venture Studio, from longtime SaaS entrepreneur Clarence Wooten, is knowing how to get a high-potential startup founded by diverse black and brown founders to product-market fit.
Often these are the very founders that lack access to early seed capital (up to $750K, far beyond most Family & Friends raises) needed to extend the life of their startup to get to product-market fit, which is a necessary stage to attract VC funding for Series A.
I just had the pleasure of meeting Clarence and learning more about his venture studio and want you to take a look at this pragmatic opportunity to support more POC in the Silicon Valley universe.
It's been wonderful for the past year and a half having Craig Kornblau advise our entertainment tech startup 10 BLOCK — and Google Ventures’ GV — on the intersection of the entertainment industry and the tech world. "The reason I decided to work with early-stage and growth companies is, having lived in big corporate America and big entertainment companies, it's really hard to find massive innovation in large companies. I think real innovation is going to come from small companies," he says in this interview about the future of film in a streaming world.
I'm excited to serve as a Pitch Coach later this month for the Startup Grind Global Program 2018 Pitch Bootcamp hosted/mc'd by TD Lowe and her team at 42Phi Ventures. The event at Fox Forum in Redwood City is sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank.
TD Lowe is the founder and CEO of EnovationNation and 42Phi Partners are a diverse set of individuals devoted to fixing Venture's opportunity pipeline, inclusivity, and mentorship deficit.
The day precedes the launch of Startup Grind's Global Conference, where TD is the team member in charge of StartupGrind startup program which filters the best performing startups coming to the conference for the investor community.
