They go between 5 and 12% of the fund You know this is just at five we would Have bought more if we could have the Wouldn't give us anymore so you know I'm Hoping after this podcast he decides to Sell us some more shares that this round Was super over subscribed and so we were Scratching and cling everything we get We've offered to do some operations Helpa which I think why we were get the Allocation we got but we were super Impressed with these guys and with what They've done and you'll you know you Hear about the customers the logos the The growth I mean I think you'll feel The same way and this is a strategy that Some Savvy managers are pursuing now Just if you have that win trying to get As much into it as possible because of The power law I see Brian singerman Doing it I saw one time sequ do with WhatsApp but I also we invented it you Invented yeah and we've even taken a Page out of that book with you know R Fund instruction so yeah have great Artists Copy what is it uh immature artist copy Mature artist Steal this week in startups is brought To you by command bar seamlessly Integrate an AI powered guide into your Software making navigation intuitive and Interactive visit commandbar Docomomo te domains don't miss our jam
With Jal contest to apply and get more Details go to jamith jc. te brought to You byte domains and lemon. hire prev Vetted remote developers get 15% off Your first four weeks of developer time At Lemon. twist all right everybody welcome Back to this week in startups I'm your Host Jason galanis and I'm really Excited today because a friend of the Pod Antonio graas is here he is a Tremendous investor one of the greatest Of this generation from Valor Capital You know some of the amazing Investments He's made over the years from SpaceX Tesla and now actually an investor in uh Athena an investment we just did Together and you know we saw along the Newswire press release uh about this new Investment you're doing in WEA and so I Thought gosh this seems like a very Important company and so I asked you and CEO Antonio to join us lauron zuo is the CEO of WCA it's pronounced WCA and There's uh some background to the name Yeah for people to remember luron Welcome to the program thanks for having Me so wak is pronounced as any Greek Unit so you probably know how to Pronounce Mega Terra XA So you you're Just doing your w w is 10 to the^ of 30 And if x is a th Peta which is probably The biggest number people really can Intera with W is a trillion exit so it's
A huge huge huge number and you know Bill Gates at once said we'd never end Up getting more than 640 kiloby in a Computer why would anyone need that I'm Not going to predict whether we will or Will not need a worker but hopefully We're all going to leave to the point That someone's going to need it and so As we start here uh Antony we're always Interested when a capital allocator who Likes to tackle hard problems comes into To a company and writes a big check so Maybe you could tell us a little bit About what you discovered here with WCA And what the investment thesis is thanks Jason and thank you for having us we're Really grateful to be here um it's Always enjoyable to see you and talk About our companies so you know I think First and foremost we we spending a lot Of time in artifici intelligence as you Know we invested in Deep Mind back in 2010 and I was on the board of Tesla During the being the ey Vision systems There so we thought about a lot and we Have dozens of Investments on AR Intelligence they're focused in two Areas one is infrastructure the other is We call verticalized applications these Are applications that have very good Crary data and then reinforcement is Very tight WCA is in the first category Infrastructure and what they're doing is Making the data center much more
Productive so the average GPU is Utilized about 30% of the time this is Like a close to Ard SEC but that's That's what we think W makes that a lot Better and they do it in a in a very Very interesting way I'm going to let Lauron tell you about the product but I Will tell you when I a funny story about Lauron when I um when I first met him And we actually a second second time met Him we went through the product I asked Him to kind of explain the math to me How this thing works kind of amazing how It moves makes the back end of the GPU Remember behind much more productive he Went into the math and he started diving Into the math deeply on a whiteboard Like a like a you know kind of what Professor kind of thing and I'm watching This I'm asking some questions and I Realized that I actually remembered my Math I knew what he was talking about so I was I was very impressed but he's a Deep product expert so that that's the The first thing is a product's amazing It fits inside of our investment thesis For infrastructure in the data center The second is that um you know our Strategy as you know is to write kind of A smaller check you know compan bigger Check bigger bigger check we were a Small check into W um followed them they Beat every number they ever gave us and Then and exceeded substantially product
Market fit was incredible and then I got To know luron because you know get no Companies and I was impressed with with Lon's team and how well they execute I Mean they are really product Market Experts they're product experts and they Built something before the market knew It needed it and then the market came to Them and the company just exploded That's why we did it and this uh Strategy the Fielder bet get to know the Company and then place a second or third Bet it's worked before yeah yeah it's It's worked very well I mean you know we Um our portfolios typically our biggest Winners our largest Investments very Different than like many many managers That kind of spray out lots of positions We like very concentrate positions we'll Write you know lots of small checks but Our our big checks and this is $100 Million investment in our fund that's a Large position for us they are typically Are biggest winners and those tend to be 10% of the fund 5% of the fund size 15 When you make a gigantic you know they Go between five and five and 12% of the Fund you know this is just at five and We we would have bought more if we could Have LeBron wouldn't give us anymore so You know I'm hoping after this podcast He decides that sell us some more shares The this round was super over subscribed And so we were you were you scratching
And cling everything we get and you know We've offered to do some operations help For for wo which I think why we were Able the allocation we got but we were Super impressed with these guys and with What they've done and you'll you know You hear about the customers the logos The the growth I mean I think you'll Feel the same way and this is a strategy That some Savvy managers are pursuing Now um just if you if you have that Winner trying to get as much into it as Possible uh because of the power law so Uh but I will say we invented it you Invented yeah well I see Brian singerman Doing it and uh I saw one time Sequoya Do with WhatsApp so I think collectively People are starting to become aware of This uh Antonio and you I do give you Some credit there for pioneering in a DE Too and we have even taken a page out of That book with you know R fund Construction so yeah great artists Copy what is it great artist copy Something steel something like that uh Immature artist copy mature artist steel Is I think the strategy here for us and For maybe some of our contemporaries all Right so let's get into the product Companies existed for a decade uh I know You've been moving large data sets Around so explain to us lauron what Happened in the history of the company Where you realized hey managing data
Sets moving them around and then all of A sudden these h100s and AI sort of hit A Tipping Point I think we'd all agree About two years ago maybe you could tell Us a little bit about the strategy of The company here and getting that extra 70% out of every h100 for people who Don't know people call it a chip it's More like a platform uh made by Nvidia And Zuckerberg just announced they did Their latest llm on 16,000 of them so to Get an extra 70% from those 16,000 is They're not cheap right $30 $40,000 each I believe or on average so yeah tell us About the product and how you got here We've been doing data management we've Been doing storage for a long long long Time workers our second company the Previous one called XB storage and IBM Acquired so anyone you know that's been Buying high-end IBM storage in the last 15 or so years previous company we've Learned a lot about the Enterprise about Big customers and about white people buy Storage while being at IBM we left IBM At 11: at that point we basically took An oath and said hey never again this Market just doesn't make any sense and It didn't make sense for two main Reasons one the delivery mechanism for This product is flawed While most of the Engineers are software engineers and When I'm saying most is like 99% not 51% The delivery mostly comes in some
Proprietary box uh it makes it hard on Premises it makes it impossible to run The product well on the public Cloud the Second problem is that the market is Fragmented like crazy so it's a $150 Billion Market but there are hundreds of Products that actually sell and when You're looking it from the large Enterprises the big corporations they're Using anything between 10 products if They're really lucky to maybe 40 to 50 Products across hundreds and thousands Of silos so it's hard for the customers It's incredibly difficult for the Vendors the that's the reason we said we Want it out then back in 2013 when we Started three huge huge huge changes in What's possible happen containers Happened and they led to completely Different thinking about software Microservices that let you take a big Monolithic system chop it down to tiny Little pieces and run them on on many Many many machines so microservices Chang how you can think about Infrastructure and V me happened which Allowed you to take flash connect it Directly to the CPU and control it very Effectively in tiny little fragments and Then the Third change which was the most Important one is Network finally caught Up to the speed of the servers so Throughout history the network may have Been 100 times lowers if you're looking
At the 80s and '90s maybe 10 times Lowers if you look at the early 2 Cas in 2013 network is caught up and by the way By now the network is twice as fast as The servers can create frames at 100 Gig But the network switches them at 800 gig So this is incredible Founders I know a Lot of you listening to this podcast you Build software for a living right we Love doing it but we all know it's hard You know the pain of trying to onboard New users and get them up to speed Quickly worse most chat Bots and guides Built for the task are annoying as heck Users tune them out because we all hate Random popups thankfully there's one Company that uses generative AI to help Users on board without annoying them and It's called command bar it has a chatbot That gives personalized responses to User questions instead of a basic Q&A And it shows users around your product Like a live guide cursor included even More command bar can detect when a user Needs a nudge giving them a product hint Or special offer to close that important Sale command bar is used by unicorn you Know hashy Corp Gusto six cents angelist And others so here's a simple call to Action you got to check out this product Integrate an AI power guide into your Software so your customers can navigate Your product intuitively and quickly Visit commandbar
Docomomo demo all of our competitors the Reason there are so many products out There they are basically compensating For slow Network by optimiz in for Locality they're creating a storage Array I'm sure you've heard about the Storage arrays before at a storage array You have a bunch of controllers each Controller owns a portion of the Namespace and you're picking whatever Storage you want to buy but how the Application basically spreads their data Across the day across whatever and you Want to break into controllers in Uniform way the problem is once you've Picked that your solution now becomes a Victim to the clients because if all the Clients would approach a single Controller it's the bottleneck so you May have 100 controller system you're Getting 1% on the cloud it's even worse Let's say a 1% no sits on an instance That has noisy neighbors you're not even Getting your 1% what we have done Between Microservices nvme and fast networking We started as a clean slay and we have Created a system it took us years by the Way about 8 years to to get it to really To really run well and then few more we To to mature it where what we're doing We're looking at what the server send The client send every Split Second and We run the perfect load balancing of IO
Throughout all the envme devices and Metadata throughout all of the CPUs and We're showing that even on cloud with Nois in Neighbors we're getting perfect Linear scalability so if you give us a Twice the big worker you're getting Twice the results and that's the reason Since what we're controlling is latency What's keeping the GPU servers stared For data is high latency since we're Controlling the one thing that actually Matters we the only product that Optimizes for the one thing that Actually matters we can get to the point That it doesn't matter how many gpus you Have what is their access pattern we can Get them filled up to the 90th per so This becomes an acute problem when You're trying to solve major problems in The world um maybe self-driving or uh You know running a language model people Really didn't face this problem all that Often previously yeah no they have not So now comes the the big question of a Product Market fat and how do you take It to Market so we predicted customers Would need bigger scale would need Bigger performance we started this thing Through Simplicity saying hey you don't Need to buy these 50 different products To run all of your workloads cuz we're Just going to run them well uh had we Have to go through that phase it would Have been a a much longer Journey what
Are the biggest workloads today if you Were looking at like categories I Mentioned self-driving I mentioned Language models those seem like super Obvious ones am I correct that those are In the top three or four for sure so We're now seeing the explosion Of gpus You' mentioned the H 100s previously There was the A's and the P's and the V's and the B the B's are coming in uh In the next and they're used a lot in AI We are showing that we can get AI Projects running on if you're looking at The cloud we have stability AI running Us when they have switched to us on the AWS cloud were able to get their storage Bill down from 5 million to 1 million so Five times cheaper and as Antonio said Before they switched to us their gpus Are running at 30% the biggest problem Was that they needed to get more job Done out of the existing gpus that they Had they couldn't get any more because There is a supply chain crunch after the Switch to worker we got their Utilization up to the high 90 so over Three times more output with five times Cheaper so 15 times better so for AI We're bringing big big help we have big Car makers that they're using us Exclusively for many years and we got There time to EPO from couple of weeks To 4 hours explain time to Epoch uh for People who haven't heard that term
Before so time to Epoch basically means Hey we're going through another round of Training and you need to go through hey I'm ingesting the new data or it's Already there you're running a bunch of ETL ETL is not sexy enough you cannot Charge for it so now it's called mlops Or llm Ops but the ETL portion of it Basically takes your tons of tiny files And prepping them for the next job so You're reading and rewriting them in the Good format now you're retraining one Form of of your data so you're picking a Subset of the data you're sending it to Tons of gpus to retrain so you need to Copy the data into the gpus these these Operation takes a long long time and It's a really it's really great that now You can paralize these on so many gpus While you're doing that you actually Need to save to save uh checkpoints so You're writing a lot cuz if it fails you Actually want to go back and you don't Want to miss so much time and at that Point at some point you're done with the Next retrain you have now optimized for Another portion and you would want to go And run regression test and see hey I've Optimized the model to to slightly Better if it's a car let's say Junctions With always stop when it's raining and There is a crowd that uh casts a shadow Over over the SES and now we want to see Hey with this crows casting Shadows did
We get anything else worse so you now You're running a huge amount of Regression you basically would drive Your cars through all of the rest of Your data so you want to see that this Has worked well and finally this is one One one Circle and and now you have a Slightly better model and you start all Over because it's crazy Antonio to think Like we actually went full circle in the History of computing from there's way Too much compute way too much storage Tons of bandwidth and there's no Application for it and now it's just YouTube is chugging along Facebook is Chugging along massive amounts of data Your ioto going to 4K storing it all Sorting it all and just nobody seemed to Have a use for us and now here we are Antonio with uh a moment in time when we Have supply chain you can't get enough Uh GPU CPU power you can't get enough Storage you can't get enough bandwidth To move it around and we're doing Technology runs like its perau systems In the 70s or something where you're Time sharing have to wait to release Your product then run another job and Right coming out with versions of it I Mean is this going to last or do you Think all of this incredible effort to Make better chips better storage better Operating systems and processes will Result in US kind of catching up to the
Jobs as it were it's funny when I was 12 Years old I went to computer camp at Michigan State University and I had a Hand in Punch Cards that's how old I am And come back come back overnight after The run if you made a mistake on it it Just didn't run right you go back and Like line exactly you write the code up By hand and then use the binary Bunch C Thing this is like air traffic uh or Actually traffic control systems for the For the gpus right so filling up the CPUs are always fully utiliz gpus and I Think the answer to your question is I Think this is always going be a problem Because the technology is moving um in The software side the llm side that the Model technology is moving faster than The compute so absent a large Breakthrough like a quantum computer or Something which you know it's always Like it's always one year away or two Years away right Perpetual it's almost ready right as Long as you're on Silicon I think you're Always going to have this problem Because the the model seem to be moving Faster than the ability to create Compute now it doesn't mean you won't go Through some booming bus Cycles you know You and I were both r on the internet Right so yeah I was building Infrastructure back then the connector Business right so built over capacity
Got built blew up then we short capacity Went back up again and you you'll Continue to have these kinds of Cycles But artif intelligence I think it's it's Kind of a super super cycle in the sense That it is much bigger than the internet And the the need for train data is is Huge it's Global and it's not going to Stop we're just at the very beginning of This so I think it's a you know it's a Long-term Trend that will have a it's a Sine wave with a with a very steep Upward slope yeah if we were to compare It to say building out bandwidth that Was a 20year story and yeah it we had a Boom bus cycle as in Worldcom and all These places where they overbuilt the Fiber and Google bought it for pennies On the dollar people don't remember this It was the early 2000s yeah they went For it l so much fiber and that actually Became I think in some ways the Precursor for things like Netflix and YouTube and your photo library not Caring yeah about bandwidth anymore I Mean it used to be putting any viral Video on the internet would result in a $10,000 or $100,000 bandwidth upch Charge from your provider and then Bandwidth suddenly became free and Unlimited and the storage that that was Another 20 30 year story so if we were To parallel to those this could be a de Or two decade Chase to get more GP yeah
I at least and with with the added Difference that the in that case the end Use which is sort of like you know Moving packets on the Internet is kind Of a fixed use and it didn't change very Much in this case the end use is Changing a lot so the applications of Art intelligence are going exploding Right so right now we're at a very early Stages like it's it's an app on your Phone it's Gro and xai right it's not um A robot yet with it's washing your Dishes so imagine the amount of data Required just the things just things we Can imagine foret things we can't Imagine what are going to happen but Going from um you know the the gro app On your phone to the robot washing your Dishes is going to take a lot of compute We don't have it today it doesn't exist And it's building it is an enormous um Lift and anything that makes the dentist More productive is going to be very Valuable Founders these jam sessions With jcal we've been doing our huge Success so far we've seen so many great Submissions we picked two winners so far Bar and we interviewed them on the show And we're still looking for three more Amazing Founders here's all you need if You want to come on this program this Week in startups and jam with Jake Al Where you pitch me your company and I Give you a bunch of feedback just two
Qualifiers we want you to have less than $2 million in funding so we want it to Be a new startup you know one that needs Help and we want you to have an awesome Te domain name so head to jam with jy. Te Jam J with jc. te it's so much fun The winners come on the podcast I have To tell you this is the greatest Editorial segment on the pod for me I Love doing it because you pitch me what You're working on I give you some Unfiltered feedback we do it in real Time we ping pong back and forth we Pickle ball I ask you a question you Give me a response you ask me another Question and you know what we both get Smarter and we understand your vision For your startup and hey it never hurts To get your company on the number one Startup podcast in the world and we're Working with our friends atte domains Because it's super cool to have a te Rabbit. te aurora. 1x. everybody's using Them heck I use it for founder fridays. Te so here's your call to action tell me About your awesome. te domain and Startup and apply for the jam session With jcal contest today at jam with jcal Te we're picking those last three Winners soon and so take us through uh Some of the logos lauron that are doing The most interesting things when you Look at your Lighthouse customers people Who are doing the biggest most ambitious
Things that you can talk about maybe you Can give us a little highlight either Your big Lighthouse customers or the Type of customer the type of job if you Want to abstract it a bit Yeah so I Already mentioned some huge AI project Between deep learning machine learning The generative AI we I mentioned Stability we have M journey and and a Bunch of the other very very exciting uh Forefront of AI but you know gpus are Really useful for other means as well so If you've been to Las Vegas you've seen The sphere and you went to to the YouTube concert no YouTu basically were The first show on the sphere when they Got the residency it was June they had To start showing up and performing in September their initial plan was to use Their own infrastructure that owned tons Of gpus but no previous way of thinking About all flesh arays they started Rendering their think it would have Taken them six month at that rate Obviously they didn't have the six month From June to September they've switch to Us switch switch to wer from the moment They got it on the floor to the end of The first render it took them under four Weeks so six times faster but then what They've realized hey if you're taking a HD Square thing that makes sense in the Stadium you're porting it to the sphere Which This Magnificent screen it just
Doesn't look good so the fact that we Were six times faster the fact fact that They got the first render and they still Had two more months actually allowed Their artists to come in and reiterate And change and reiterate until this Magnificent experience happened I don't Know if you've been there but I haven't Been to it but yeah I've had some Friends who went to see the dead and the And the YouTu stuff yeah yeah so the Dead already dead and call also use us And and they have this experience where Like the whole thing closes on you like A box or you're out there on the desert And now now that experience is like Magnificent it's so I've been there Several times all inspiring it's like Being a a medieval European and walking To a cathedral right that's how it feels But I want to say this it wouldn't exist Without W it wouldn't work and um it was So important that Lon got invited to the Opening night of you because he his Technology enabled it to work it Wouldn't worked otherwise and you know The Duan F made a bunch of bets here of Of technology that didn't exist before They built the sphere and one of them Was this backend GP problem that that W Solved yeah I if you think about it a 4K Movie is probably 50 gbit if you were to Download it and I don't know if those Are AK or 4K I'm assuming 4K is enough
But how many screens are there like if You were to actually make it into a Television screen like is it 100,000 Screens 10,000 screens it's some large Number yeah I think they said like 150,000 screens and okay yeah every Second of the show it's over 400 Gabes uh and they did some really really Impressive stuff if you go there you Look the YouTube videos you can see Bono And the edge sinking inside of Bubbles And if you're watching it there is no Lag so there's not even a single frame Of lag so it all going through the Through the wack being GPU processed Through the wacka projected all in 120 Frames Where no not as SP like yeah I was about To say if you're doing I was going to Say 30 or 60 frames but if you're doing 120 frames it's obably four times as as Much as that now you're talking about Just an impossible task and they're Doing some things in real time like they Saying they're stitching in the the Images of people which is just Unbelievable and if you think about Pixar which now has like I think maybe Half of the all-time uh highest grossing Films their biggest problem when Steve Jobs was starting that company people Don't know this was just waiting for the Render of Toy Story and it would you Know they would make story changes and
They'd have to wait 10 days to have it Output and that was you know according To catm their their biggest challenge Was actually the rendering of it I mean What is it what would it take a Pixar Film to render today a full length film Do you think using your platform and Everything we're seeing a lot of these Things go through and it's unlikely that You're watching something enticing late At night that that didn't go at some Some stage through a wer so a lot of the Big ones are isus but just just Benchmarking it to like make these films Now to actually render a film what do You think it takes now to to render so You know a James camera what was James Cameron one that he did that was they Have many many dozens of thousands of CPUs they're now switching to gpus they Have huge networks so when you're Looking at this impressive AI Infrastructure no AI is all the rage it Doesn't matter if you're running AI if You're creating uh a new movie that the Data center basically runs of the Triangle of compute Network and data and Now that everything looks so good Because Compu is 45 orders a magnet Faster the network is 4 five orders of Magnet faster and all of these folk that Were when they're taking computer Network to the extremes they also need To do it with the data and this is where
W comes in going back to what Anton said Earlier hey Quantum Computing or neural Networks I I went to school in the 90s Back the newer networks and Quantum Computing both failed to far up what has Happened with GPU is basically we won Over more slow so we couldn't create a Single chip that has twice the Transistors every 18 month but with Advances in networking we can now create Bigger and bigger and bigger computers That that are disaggregated and and Scale and it it took us another 15 years But this is what we're doing so the W Stop scaling up we're scaling out which Requires that bandwidth and storage and The and the and the sharing of the jobs You're basically chunking all that data And then managing it and then in between Those gpus I mean we're going to be Seeing Optics between them soon yeah in Some cases it's already out there and so That's how large self-driving car data Sets or you know protein folding is Getting moved around Let's uh end on This uh Antonio when you're looking at And and just sort of zooming back okay You got to manage the data loads you got Vertical applications here there's Another big piece um people are starting To talk about energy and data centers These data centers uh need to be at a Different scale Antonio than what we Traditionally thought of and they need a
Different energy footprint maybe you Could speak to what your team and you Are looking at there in terms of Opportunity for capital investment Opportunity for you know Capital Allocation and just generally what these Footprints will look like because it's Different yeah yeah look we're going to Um you know 100 megawatt and gwatt scale Plants and as you know around the world Every think about this problem you Across to the Middle East talking about This and our our friends in the UA and Abu Dhabi built a a 4 gwatt nuclear Power plant to power data centers here In the US you know we are um we have a Couple of companies and I won't name Them all that are working on um Renewable energy solutions for the data Centers and I think this is very Interesting you know we have a power Problem in the US we were not going to Have power to make this work uh in America and so we have to work both on Generation creating more power and Actually getting it to getting the grid Stable so we can both have power where The power to use and have it where we Need it when we need it now WEA part in This is that the if the data center gets A lot more productive you need less data Centers right right so like three times More productive means two3 less Hardware Exactly so it basically the return on
Capital we you know investment models About roic right so the return on Capital data C goes up a lot if you are Using um your GPU more and very simply Put so if you if you invest in things Like WCA that make the DAT data center More productive you're also making the Energy footprint much lower you just Need less ders how are people solving The problem today because you know Creating energy and nuclear power plants Even in China you're talking about 5 six Seven years maybe they could do it in Three or four but you know it's seems Like it's 5 six seven years so we're not Going to have nuclear power in time so What's going to happen if you have to Put your you know take out the crystal Ball here are we going to have you know D centers being moved to where nuclear Reactors are putting them next to the Existing ones and and upgrading them how Is this going to get solved I think There's two kinds of there's two kinds Of companies in the world there are Those that go slowly and um kind of do Things straight by the rules in book and They will take a long time to find power And get it right and they those that Move fast and figure it out and we have A couple of companies in our portfolio That move fast and figure it out um one Of them is um is is doing in a very I'd Say creative and unique way the other
Has been strategy for some time of using Stranded energy to build data centers so We have a company called Caruso that's Building a data center now um next to a Trapped wind farm in Texas that was Built because of subsidies can't all the Power can't get used and they're putting Their data center kind of right next to Use that power and then using battery Backup as well and they have backup Behind that for for Coen so but there's I think then I think this we're Underestimating in America how much Energy we have around in Hydro in wind That actually isn't being properly Utilized it's feeding old industrial Assets can be repurposed which we're Seeing in the smartest players and this Is I think one of the great things about This country is you you have such a Fluid Capital allocation strategy Sometimes people feel overbilt we talked About fiber earlier so somebody gets a Subsidy overbuild solar wind whatever Hydro and then that energy is going to Find a customer eventually and it's Actually worth it to ship the gpus to The energy as opposed to building the Energy where the G gpus or where you Want the gpus correct yeah yes correct Because the you can get network built I Think this is a period where R Entrepreneurs will win because they'll Figure this problem out right this is a
Serious problem and you're going to see A ShakeOut where the best smartest Scrappiest you know most commercial People figure how to make it work and The other kind of slower moving um Behemoth maybe don't yeah all right Listen this has been an amazing uh dive Into an awesome investment Congratulations Antonio on the team at Valor for finding uh another breakout Company and uh luron thanks for the hard Work uh this infrastructure is obviously Going to solve some great problems from Humanity Beyond being entertained at the Sphere at a dead show you know this is The kind of stuff that solves Self-driving uh maybe drug Discovery Solves cancer or maybe even tells us How The Universe was created so in advance Of those amazing questions uh being Answered I thank you all for coming on The program you're hiring uh lauron I Know uh with all this money you raised You're adding 100 people people or so I Read how can people find out more and What top two or three positions do you Need to fill acutely because we got a Big audience here people looking to work At Great companies so you can go to our Jobs on on The Wack website so we Publish all of them some of them also go On on our Linkin we are hiring tons and Tons positions in engineering we have Engineering in the Bay Area we have
Engineering in Tel avib with Engineering In Bangalore any anything from Infrastructure and Engineers to even Kernel developers to to front end to to Cloud so if you're a good software Engineers where we're looking for you And the flip side we're also hiring tons Of very hungry goto Market people all Around sales sales engineering marketing Uh the field folks so basically Throughout the whole company okay so if You uh can make it or you can sell it W's got a a seat for you you know I Always tell people if you got a chance To get on a rocket ship take the seat And figure it out later we'll see you All next time on this weekend startups Bye-bye right now startups have to do More with less we all know that and Founders have to be smart with how they Deploy Capital investors are very tuned In to being Capital efficient so if you Need Great Tech talent but you don't Have the time to interview dozens and Dozens and dozens of candidates you need To check out lemon. they have thousands Of ond demand developers to choose from And these devs are vetted and they're Experience and most of all they're Results oriented they're going to get You the result you're looking for They're not going to leave you hanging And guess what they charge competitive Rates great developers can be incredibly
Hard to find we all know that and when You do find them it can be hard to Integrate them into your team but lemon. Will handle all of that for you startups Choose lemon. because they only offer Handpicked developers with three or more Years of experience and strong Portfolios in fact only only 1% of Candidates who apply get in and if Something ever goes wrong lemon. will Get you a replacement ASAP a couple of Launch Founders have worked with lemon. And they've had great experiences so Here's your call to action go to lemon. Twist to find your perfect developer or Tech Team in 48 hours or less and twist Listeners get 15% off their first four Weeks stop burning money hire developer Smarter visit lemon. twist all right Everybody it's time for another jam Session with jcal this is a very simple Project that I came up with this is my Invention no it's not actually you know Whose invention it is Travis from Uber Used to do something called the jam sesh And it was just like a couple of Founders getting together hang out you Know pop up a couple cold ones and talk About business and jam out on ideas man It was some of the best times they ever Had and we're bringing it back to this Week in startups and we have got a Partner on the this program the partner Iste domain names uh and they came up
With a simple idea Hey listen if you got Under 2 million in funding and you got a Dote domain name which is a really cool Domain name to have uh you get to come On the program if you've got a great Idea and a great company and so today We're going to hear from Ramsey schaer And he is the CEO and co-founder of Uptrends AI and they are uptrends d. te Ramsey welcome to the show thanks for Having me JC excited to jam okay Let's Jam out why don't you start just telling Us for you know 2 minutes about your Company run us through it show us the Product whatever you want to do and then Uh tell me what's the what's the most Challenging part of your business three Two go sweet okay I've got some slides Love to just get your raw feedback on Them and then I've got some questions That we feedback on the deck I get that A lot feedback on the deck you going to Use this deck to raise money or you just Want to explain the product um to raise Money yeah intro call got it okay good So the audience for this is seed funds Assume you're a SE stage startup so Great three two go all right I'm Ramsey I'm the founder of uptrends we help Financial advisers stay ahead of the News so this is Zach he's an independent Financial adviser and a few times each Day he'll get an email from a client Asking him something like you know John
Deere is up 5% today why or I saw Nike Fell 20% last week what's going on so He'll go to Google he'll go to Twitter He'll go to Morning Star for some Headlines but more often than not he's Left SC rambling to get back with a Solid answer now imagine multiply this By dozens of clients hundreds of stocks Thousands of daily news events and you Can see how this becomes you know a huge Timec consuming part of Zach's week and Frankly it's holding him back from being A better adviser with more clients so We're introducing uptrends the AI Assistant automating the new cycle for Investment advisors uptrends monitors Thousands of new sites filings and Financial data sources to detect Summarize and alert sack about the Trends and events of affecting the Stocks that matter to him and his Clients with uptrends he can easily see Which stocks are trending in online Chatter he can click into those stocks And get an AI summary of recent Market Moving events which he can then directly Send to his clients things like John Deere's up 5% today because they got an Analyst upgrade from you know UBS most Importantly he can set instant highly Customizable alerts to be notified about The next big event just choose the Stocks he cares about pick the types of Alerts he wants to receive from price
Changes to insider trading set the Frequency he wants to be notified and We'll send him an AI summary via email About the chatter when it matters so Ultimately what we what used to take him Hours now takes him minutes uptrends Makes it 10 times easier to stay ahead Of Market moving events and find the Answers he needs right away without any Doom scrolling or fomo required uptrends Operates as a premium monthly Subscription anyone can get started for Free and then we have premium plans for More customizable higher volume alerts We have a $15 Essentials package for DIY Portfolio managers and a $50 pro package Catered towards investment advisers like Zack now there are 300,000 investment Advisers in the US today along with Millions of DIY portfolio managers and Retail investors so for us to get from Here to 10 million in ARR we need to get To something like 16,000 advisors on our Pro Plan and to get to 100 million in AR We need to get to 166,000 Advisers last but not least our team Consist of myself as CEO and my Co-founder Sam as CTO let me say that Again last but not least our team Consists of myself as CEO and my Co-founder Sam as CTO Sam and I have 10 Years experience as stock market Investors together we've written Peer-reviewed research on the
Relationship between new sentiment and Stock market outcomes I've previously Been a financial analyst and Sam was Employee number one of a 10 million ARR Startup we're rounded out by our PhD Machine learning lead Joe and our Front-end developer hamsa so that is Uptrends AI we're on a mission to save Investment advisers from the news to Help them build better relationships With more clients by staying ahead of The chatter when it matters thank you Okay so uh there are great job by the Way uh overall uh the pitch is tight in That it explains to me what you do who Your customer is and what the product is So when you do these pitches especially In a condensed format 2 to 3 minutes you Really have a very small number of box Boxes you need to check this is not a 30 Minute presentation this is a three Minute or less presentation which is you Know to be honest all investor needs to Start a conversation okay the customer Of this product is a financial advisor And there are registered investment Advisers there are wealth managers there Are financial advisers there's a lot of Different categories here but it's for Somebody who manages another person's Portfolio and it's a B2B C type product There's B2B there's B Toc you're Enabling a business to talk to a Customer in the same way Shopify is you
Would say Shopify allows somebody Selling stuff on the internet to then Reach customers fantastic these Businesses tend to be great because You're enabling of an existing business To do more business to do business more Efficiently uh or to save money one of Those things and so here you've Identified a problem do I think you've Identified a big Problem I'm not sure yet your advisers Will tell you but we know that these Advisers get paid a lot of money right What does the average wealth manager Make in the United States what does the Median wealth manager make what is their Compensation per year I know each client For them is an average of $10,000 in the Door okay every year yep okay so if they Have but uh if they have a hundred uh Clients That's a million dollars a year and you Know what I see these guys and gals who Are and they come at me all the time Silicon Valley guy I'm a wh uh for them But you know they're going after also my Mom and my dad uh you know there's Somebody who helps them and so you know People have a retirement account they Got some you know 401k and they got some Equities you know they saveing money you Know and the these guys make 1% of it 1% Of a million dollar $10,000 got it okay So and there's lots of millionaires
That's growing because equities are Growing and America has a large number Of millionaires UAE has the most Imported millionaires right now the in Terms of where millionaires are flowing So I do think this sounds crazy um if You want to raise money one of the Easiest places for you to raise money is To move to Abu Dhabi or Dubai and put Your company there because that's like Kind of the new Hong Kong or New York And you can get a golden visa and you Can uh get them to invest 250 500k out Of the gate boom they do that for like Almost any American or european or Somebody from Singapore Australian that Uh Indian that comes and puts their Company there so I'm just going to put That as a little cavey out there because Money is moving to Abu Dhabi Specifically and then also Dubai two Amazing cities let's put that on the Side here um I think the product looks Okay I think it needs a bit of a design Refresh it's a little bit too techy and Not Finance so I want to just talk to You about design for a second I actually Have a question around that yeah okay Tell me your question sure So speaking Of design I'm thinking a lot about our Team right now we're a team of four Getting ready to fund raise yeah and You've talked a lot in the past about The importance of your founding team but
Thinking about what's what's next my Question is like those two to three next Specific job functions for hires where Should we be focusing well let's talk About the four you got I'm hoping two of Them are writing code four of them are Writing code God I'm in love with your Company already you got four people Writing code how many of them are Founders how many of them are employees With two Founders two employees with Stock perfect that's great so you got Some redundancy there um you can Basically there's going to be two more Positions you have to add at some point One is going to be um somebody to do Sales uh and that person right now Should be one of the founders why should You do founder Le sales because you need To know you need to have customer zero Customer 1 2 3 and you got to be able to Listen to them so let's pause for a Second here tell me about how many Paying customers you have and how much Do you charge Ballpark and how do you Charge yeah so right now we have a few Hundred paying customers two two paid Plans a $15 a month and a $50 a month I Will say originally we were more focused On the B2B retail investor and after Feedback we've learned a lot About you made the Of all startups learn you tried to run Two different businesses concurrently a
B Toc and a B2B but you figured out that B2B is the one great and then you've Made the next cardinal sin which is uh You are charging far too little we just Established that one customer equals $10,000 do you believe you will keep you Will get your clients these Wealth Advisors do you believe you can get them One extra customer a year I think so Yeah okay do you think you could save Them from churning a customer every year Easy yeah okay what is the value of Getting a new customer and not losing a Customer to them yeah I mean that's my Pitch right there what is the value Though I'm asking you a specific Question a dollar amount well if it's $10,000 1% commission yep whatever that Is $10,000 and they would have lost one That cost them 10 and they would have Gained one that's 10 so you've created $20,000 in value which means the uh LTV Do you know what that stands for LTV Lifetime value perfect okay I'm just Benchmarking where you're at in your Startup Journey your LTV is people will Stick with this product for seven years I'm going to guess maybe five on average Let's pick five and be conservative that Means each customer you acquire is worth $100,000 to you that means your CAC what Does CAC stand for customer acquisition Cost perfect your CAC could be $1,000 And you would make it back very quickly
Um so the value you're providing if we Blowball it you gain one you don't lose One you know 20,000 a year you're Providing in 5 years 100,000 of value That means you really should be charging 10% of that number which is $10,000 Which is $2,000 a year you're charging $50 a month $50 a month you know is but $600 a year so you probably for this Product should be charging 500 a month 400 a month because you can really Justify it that first customer you save You should get 100% of it in my mind Okay you should get 100% of it so that Would be a thousand or 800 a month so I Would just get rid of all this pricing And be taken seriously by your customers A wealth manager is spending on lunch With their client $600 or dinner they're Taking them to a ncks game or a Mavs Game and they're sitting in the first Four rows for $10,000 that's how they Think and you're coming to them asking For 600 bucks you it's like they pay More for you know the the they're that's What they're paying for their Gmail Account come on sure yeah it's let's Raise the price on this right signaling Yes so signaling is way off now what This will also do for you is it's going To have you capture the highend first And then go Downstream you want to Capture the highend because the high-end Is going to have the best advice for you
So not only by raising your price do you Increase perceived value you have more Money to hire people and you have the Ability to get the best chef's kiss best Advice so I want you laser focus not on The number of customers I want you to Get I would rather you have the 10 10 of These uh wealth advisers who make $5 Million a year or $2 million a year than For you to have 200 of them that make 400,000 a year you want to go for the Really high end here and they're going To give you great advice so I think you Got to redesign the product get the ux a Little better and I think there's some Virality here that you haven't thought Of and this what a jam session's about You identified like there's a problem oh They send the customer customer says oh My God I own Tesla stock Uber stock uh Oh my God Uber's up like four bucks Right now I just noticed before I got on Air because uh the robo taxi is being Delayed in some way who knows what's Going on and now you got this like Existential thing I mean this is like Panic inducing for Tesla shareholders Lift shareholders Uber shareholders if I Had exposure to that I do I would be Like oh my God I'm not but anyway putting on all side Be really interesting if when you shared The dashboard of the stocks with a Customer if the wealth manager got a
Ping Jason just opened the website Jason Just like a docu sign so look at the Docu sign hey the customer opened the Contract the customer went to page two Where you send your deck to somebody and Like whatever the slide deck thing that Watches oh they stayed on they went back To slide five you know they spent two Minutes on Slide Five and they just zip Zipped past 67 and 8 why oh 678 are Irrelevant to them but they really cared About the team slide but they didn't Care about the go-to market or vice Versa so you got so much you could do Here in Intelligence and people will pay for That big time if I know that my Customers are typing in the ticker Symbol Uber and then if they could write A question on that portal where they Said uh you know let's say you know I'm The C I'm the I'm the I'm the wealthy Individual you the the wealth adviser Ramsey and I'm on the website and I just Say like what what is this about why is Uber up and Tesla down if Tesla is going To kill Uber according to this story and Then you wrote back okay here's the Goldman Sachs report that's a Business Insider story Business Insider is Sensational they want to get you to Click Goldman saxs has an analyst who's Been covering Uber this is the analyst Name and I direct you to that story now
The interface has the entire history of Us going back and forth and then Additionally this all has to be mobile At some point so getting a mobile and a Designer is critical and then I think The next piece would be to have what's Called an SDR or Business Development Rep would be very good for you to have Somebody trying to figure out who wealth Managers are and a viral way to get them On the phone with you those would be my Next two or three hires if you could get The money in here uh you're doing a Great job you got a great idea Um and I understand you told me uh you Were talking to some of your customers In a group chat somewhere like a Discord Or a signal or a WhatsApp yeah just IMessage I message so you got like a do You have one to one discussions or do You have like a product Council yet We've got a Discord for like large group And then I have like a small group of Three or four advisers that I text Weekly okay awesome that's really what You want to do Ramsey I wish you massive Success with this idea it's supposed to Be just 10 minutes but your business is So right you're at 60 minutes with me uh You jammed with jcal rate your jam with Jcal how would you rate this in terms of Helpful huh give me an honest number Between one and 10 that was great I Would say 10 yeah for sure okay there we
Go I I I don't want to bias it in anyway Uh but you you know what you should meet Our team so you might be a good Candidate to come to our accelerator um Because I think there's something here And when I jam with somebody I got to Tell you you're good to jam with because You're quick you give really good Answers you don't fill a buster and That's what people love when they're Jamming so that's a really good note for Everybody listening to this week in Startups when you're interacting with an Investor who's a knowall investor who's Seen it all who's invested in hundreds Of companies you got to be able to go Back and forth quickly right and you got To be able to have that real Intellectual discussion and and you did Good with that right it's like kind of Playing pickle ball or pingpong or Tennis you want to have a good volley in Just 15 minutes together we had a great Volley I I like you I like the way you Answer questions I like the way you Think you you kind of did your thing you Made yourself likable I understand your Business you're thoughtful you seem like You're uh you got a chip on your Shoulder and you want to be successful I Think lean into that a little bit like a Little bit of the drive don't be too Mellow uh and congratulations Ramsey and We'll see you all next time on jam with
Jcal thank you to our sponsor. te
