#1 Babyscripts

I’m Josh Muccio -- welcome to The Pitch -- from Gimlet Media. On this show, we capture real entrepreneurs pitching real investors -- for real money.

[sounds of studio]

Late last year, we invited entrepreneurs to a studio in San Francisco. Each founder came for one reason, to try to raise money for their startup. 

Josh Muccio: Hey how we doin’? George? I’m Josh. 

We followed the founders into the room, where they pitched to a panel of shrewd investors. 

These are real companies, real investors making actual decisions to invest their money on the spot. And, we caught it all on tape.

On each episode we’re gonna follow the story of a founder’s pitch to investors -- right up to the moment when everything’s on the line... and the investors decide their fate. This week:

Juan-Pablo Segura: Really, my goal is to build a billion-dollar company.

Jillian Manus: How many women did you study?

Juan-Pablo: So it was 50 on Babyscripts, with the optimized visit schedule being remote monitored.

Jillian: Okay, it's only 50 women.

In this episode, co-founder Juan-Pablo Segura pitches Babyscripts. It’s a startup that hopes to revolutionize the way expectant mothers receive prenatal care… by connecting them directly with their doctor through an app on their phone. Juan-Pablo wants to harness the power of big data, by letting technology take the place of doctors visits.

Now it’s one thing to use an app to order some chicken pad thai, but when it comes to pregnancy, is more technology really the answer?

We leave it up to our panel of savvy investors to decide.

Phil Nadel: I’m Phil Nadel, with Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners

Phil co-founded one of the largest syndicates on AngelList called Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners

Phil: If for some reason, members don’t bite, then the thing falls apart. 

Phil is a straight shooter looking for companies without a lot of question marks.

Jillian: This is Jillian Manus, my fund is Structure Capital. 

Jillian is something of a legend in the world of Venture Capital. In her early twenties, she survived domestic abuse that left her living in shelters in New York City. She was able to pick herself up, start several companies and is now a multi-millionaire. 

Jillian: You can have the most incredible product, but if you don’t know how to talk about it, you’re going to have a problem accelerating it. 

Jillian tends to take center stage and really drive the conversation.

Jake Chapman: My name’s Jake Chapman with Gelt Venture Capital. 

Jake founded the venture arm of Gelt Inc., an investment firm with over a billion dollars in assets under management.

Jake: They're going to shut you down on that name. It's definitely trademark infringement. 

As a former attorney, Jake brings a lawyerly mindset into a pitch — if a founder can hold up under cross examination, he might just invest. 

Howie Diamond: Hey I’m Howie Diamond, and I’m with Ranch Ventures.

Rounding out our panel of investors is Howie, who founded the VC firm Ranch Ventures.

Howie: There needs to be a moral and ethical code that's aligned.

Howie is looking for altruistic companies: he’ll only go in on a startup that’s making the world a better place.

Ok, on with the pitch.

Phil: All right Juan, you're on.

Jake: Rock our socks.

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, exactly. Socks off. Alright cool. Um, so, hello everyone, my name is Juan-Pablo Segura, I'm one of the founders of Babyscripts. Growing up in a family of six, my mother being pregnant was a very familiar and beautiful concept with my siblings and I growing up. But it was also a scary time. My mother actually suffered from three miscarriages. The reasons why were beyond any person or doctor's understanding. No one knows why problems still to this day occur in pregnancy.

It is estimated that 15 to 20 percent of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage -- and often there is little warning about when and why these miscarriages occur. 

Juan-Pablo: And so we said, you know what? Technology and big data can start answering some of these questions.

So Juan-Pablo and his co-founder Aneesh set out to create Babyscripts — a company that takes already-existing technology — and puts it to work for expectant mothers. 

Juan-Pablo: There is no company that has been able to really take connected medical devices and make them the standard of care. And everyone's talking about taking costs out of the hospital which is really expensive and into the home. You can't do that without connected medical devices.

Connected medical devices: that’s just a fancy way of saying medical instruments that are connected to the internet. In Babyscripts’s case, they are two things probably everyone is familiar with:

Juan-Pablo: There's a blood pressure cuff and a weight scale that are both connected to the internet... 

Basically, every week of their pregnancy, Babyscripts users take their blood pressure and weight in the comfort of their own home. 

That information is uploaded automatically to the app, and it sends that right to their doctor. And if there’s a problem... 

Juan-Pablo: So blood pressure is too high, too much weight gain or weight loss in a week, and if anything is wrong we tell the patient's doctor in real time so that the doctor can intervene. 

For patients with a low-risk pregnancy, Babyscripts is meant to replicate a routine appointment, and reduce the time patients spend with their doctor.

Kicking off the questions is our straight shooter Phil Nadel.

Phil: So this is what to expect when you're expecting put onto an app?

Juan-Pablo: Pretty much. We've essentially been able to automate a lot of prenatal care using our devices and our app. Instead of patients going in 14 times to see their doctor, through Babyscripts, patients only go in 8 times.

Jillian: Do patients mind not having as many doctor's appointments? Because, I mean, there's, I know, I've been pregnant four times. The thought is, is that, you worry every time, right? 

Phil: That peace of mind when you go to the doctor.

Jillian: Yeah. You actually look forward to going to the doctor, and yes.

Juan: Yeah so, we knew that that question would come up. When we talked to doctors, obviously patient satisfaction is very important. Like for example we've published two studies really showing the efficacy of the product.

This is actually really unusual: most entrepreneurs just release their product into the wild, and then see what happens. 

But here, rather than going straight to market with Babyscripts, Juan-Pablo and Aneesh first did this scientific study to gauge patient satisfaction with Babyscripts. Essentially, they wanted to see if moms would trust the app as much as their doctor. 

And according to Juan-Pablo, they did. But Jillian, the only actual mom in the room, isn’t convinced. 

Jillian: I would think personally, if a doctor were to say to me, “listen, I’m going to give you this kit, now I'm not going to, I'm only going to see you half of the time, this will take care of the rest of it,” I would have a problem with that, actually.

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, so that's really where the controlled study was very important for us. And the way that we position the product. So #1, I mean we've proven that patients are more satisfied.

Jillian: How many women did you study?

Juan-Pablo: So it was 50 on Babyscripts, with the optimized visit schedule being remote monitored.

Jillian: Okay, it's only 50 women.

Juan-Pablo: But it actually it was powered clinically enough to be able to make a claim on it. Like, we took a very educated and scientific approach to it. So it was a powered study focused on satisfaction.

It feels like Juan-Pablo might be missing Jillian’s point, which is, sure you’ve done this empirical study with mom’s — but I am a mom and I’m not sure I would be comfortable replacing my doctors visits with an app that just says, “don’t worry, you’re fine.”

Juan-Pablo can tell he’s losing his audience. So he doubles down on the argument he feels most comfortable with: big data.

Juan-Pablo: You know, we’re generating 30 times the amount of data and touchpoints, um.

Jillian: But how can you generate that much data just from a scale and a cuff? Isn't that just the weight and the blood pressure?

Juan-Pablo: Well, the reason why prenatal care exists as a category is actually to manage blood pressure. Everything else is an extension. So if you look at every visit that occurs in the pregnancy experience, you're always checking weight, always checking blood pressure, and answering questions. There are some visits where you're doing more, right. Ultrasounds, genetic tests. And we're not eliminating or optimizing those appointments. We're really focused on the routine appointments that occur early in the pregnancy, and a few a little later on in the pregnancy.

Phil: But you would think that the patient — in order to have that peace of mind that they would get going to the doctor's office, where the doctor looks at them, checks the blood pressure, checks the weight, and says “you're looking good,” thumbs up — you would think that they would want that kind of reassurance each time that the doctor gets the measurements in order to have that increased peace of mind.

Jillian: And listens to the baby, you listen to the baby's heart. 

Juan-Pablo: Yeah sure.

Jillian: I mean, there's a lot of things. You know, I'm a little concerned that it's not just the blood pressure, and it's not just the weight.

Phil: Does that mean when the doctor's getting this data from the kit, are they communicating at all with the patient and saying, “Hey you're looking, the numbers are good.” Or are they just saying, by exception, they'll communicate if the numbers don't look good?

Juan-Pablo: Typically, I mean, the way we've set it up, is that we alert them if there's an issue. For example, blood pressure's too high. Could be symptomatic of something called preeclampsia. This is very dangerous, right? So we'll obviously communicate concerns in that area. But if things are okay, and there are no triggers, most providers — because they're very busy — most doctors don't want to be bothered with a lot of data. 

Identifying an emergency like preeclampsia early on in the pregnancy is exactly why Juan-Pablo thinks Babyscripts is the future of prenatal care.

Juan Pablo: The goal here, and as we continue to align the product, it's really focused on being able to show that remote monitoring can start to move the needle in outcomes. Right? And that's, for example, the fact that we've had two interventions through our program, where we've saved someone's, two pregnancies we detected preeclampsia, and we were able to triage that to the doctor. So…

Phil: That’s great.

Jillian: But just so you know, that would have been, I mean a doctor's visit would have found that out as well.

Juan-Pablo: Well, the problem is that there are gaps, right, in between the doctor's offices. So they're waiting sometimes two, three, four weeks in between appointments.

Jillian: Right.

Juan-Pablo: We're capturing, on average, about 1.5 data points a week. So we're three times as likely, right, to detect a problem like that.

You can tell Jillian is still not entirely bought in. But for every objection she raises, Juan-Pablo does have an answer.

Jillian: Why can't the woman just have a cuff and step on the scale and put it into the app? I mean, and just communicate it with the doctor that way? This is my, have a little piece, a little calendar in the app, and every day she just goes in, tells what her weight is, tells what her blood pressure is once a week, and you're good to go.

Phil: If I could just interject.

Juan-Pablo: Sure.

Phil: On his behalf, I think the difference is, they're harmonizing the data and looking for irrelevant data points before the doctor even sees it. If the patient has to look at the data...

Jillian: Well there's no data. You take your weight, you take your blood pressure, done.

Juan-Pablo: Oh yeah. But that data is automatically sent to the cloud. What if there's a missed input, data point, where — what ends up happening is, if you’re not controlling the flow, and delivering, for example, devices that actually are accurate.

Jillian: Okay.

Juan-Pablo: So there's all that process we're taking care of, and that’s what’s driving...

It sounds like Juan-Pablo is slowly talking investors into his vision. In fact, he actually had Phil making his points to Jillian for him. And when you’re a founder pitching your startup, one of the best things that can happen is for an investor to start giving your pitch.

At this point investors Jake Chapman and Howie Diamond start chiming in.

Jake: How many births are there in the U.S. a year?

Juan-Pablo: So, four million births.

Jake: Okay, and about 60% are low risk?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah. 60% are low risk. Yep.

Howie: What was the compliancy from your study?

Juan-Pablo: The compliance?

Howie: Yeah.

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, so we published, and it's actually a lot higher now, but we captured 75% of women every week were taking their weight, their blood pressure and using our app. Now, amongst our customer base, we're at around 90% compliant. 

So 90% of people who get Babyscripts use it every week. That’s huge. It’s hard enough for tech entrepreneurs to convince people to download their app, let alone use the thing. 

You can almost hear the wheels starting to turn in Jake and Howie’s minds. 90% compliance, and with 4 million births a year, 60 percent of which are low risk — that equals 2.4 million potential users.

And at $300 a pop -- the investors may be starting to take Babyscripts seriously. 

The question is: … who’s actually using the product? 

Juan-Pablo: But now we're in more than ten health systems around the country.

Jillian: So what does that represent in terms of patients?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah so, right now we have a thousand patients under management. 

Phil: So the doctors are your customers?

Juan-Pablo: Yep.

Okay. This is an interesting wrinkle. Rather than selling Babyscripts directly to patients, Juan-Pablo and Aneesh chose to market their product to doctors. This means, that if a hospital decides to buy it — they then have to turn around and convince their patients to use it.

Juan-Pablo: In order for anything in digital healthcare to work, you have to work with the most trusted channel and partner in the healthcare experience. And that's the doctor. I could have gone consumer. And I think, sure, maybe I would have generated a million dollars, maybe, extra in sales. But really my goal is to build a billion-dollar company.

Phil: The doctor is paying you for access to the data about their patients?

Juan-Pablo: For the entire experience. So essentially, we’ll go to them and say, “we have an incredible 21st-century experience that you can offer to your patients and so you should purchase from us, and we'll also help you make more money for every pregnancy that you deliver.”

Phil: How do they make more money?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah so this is, it's very specific to how doctors get paid. Doctors in this country get paid something called a Global Fee for managing the entire pregnancy. So essentially, it's like a lump sum payment for managing the pre-natal care, the time spent delivering the child, then one post-partum visit. So it doesn't matter if a patient goes in 40 times or five times, the doctor gets paid the exact same amount of money. 

This lump sum thing that Juan-Pablo is talking about is also known as a bundled payment. And is exactly how it sounds: prenatal doctors make the same amount of money whether they see you two times or 20. And you can imagine how this could become a problem. 

So if doctors are making a flat rate, then they could have less of an incentive to see patients as often. And have more of an incentive to see as many patients as they can. Which could could compromise care. 

But Babyscripts embraces this problem.

Juan-Pablo: So we essentially help the doctors make more money because we allow them to still make the same amount of money, but they see pregnant patients about 40% less often in the office. And so they have 40% more time that they can use on another procedure, seeing more patients. And typically, a practice will make about $600 more per pregnancy, and the cost of Babyscripts is $300. So they make about 100% return on investment when they work with us.

And according to Juan-Pablo, Babyscripts fills in the gaps between appointments. Thus creating a safer pregnancy and delivery.

Juan-Pablo: And again, how do you mitigate the risk of a C-section? How are you able to intervene if a patient is gaining too much weight in between visits? Well you need a system that can capture incredible amounts of data in between appointments and essentially intervene behaviorally if there are issues. And Babyscripts, we've created the piping to be able to do that.

Bottom line: Babyscripts addresses a problem created by the current bundled payment model. But could future changes in healthcare threaten this?

Phil: What do you make of the existential risk of the insurance companies changing their compensation plans and methods so that now they're not getting paid one lump sum for the whole pregnancy. And they're getting paid per appointment, that kind of thing.

Juan-Pablo: I don't see that happening. I see it actually going the other way, which is it's going to be more and more focused on finding more things to include in that lump sum so that they don't have to pay as much for more services or problems that occur in the pregnancy. 

Juan-Pablo sounds pretty confident that lump sum payments will remain the model for how doctors get paid. But he kind of has to be — after all, he’s wagered his entire company on this premise. Because if he’s wrong — if doctors start charging per appointment instead — Babyscripts’s whole business model falls apart. And with healthcare in flux the way it is, this is a pretty big gamble.

Phil: How much revenue have you generated to date?

Juan-Pablo: I mean, it's around $400,000.

Jillian: In the last...? Because you've launched over the last year.

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, so it's basically been, this year is like our first-year revenue. 

Jillian: Okay.

Juan-Pablo: So this is like the first year for us. And so, yeah, I mean, we've booked already $400,000. I believe I can get to around $700,000 by the end of this year with all of the deals we have in our pipeline. I mean, if you really think about what we're doing — 

Jillian: Right.

Juan-Pablo: — and this is where I think it really gets interesting — the model we've delivered is actually triple aim healthcare. Because we're reducing the cost of care, we're improving access to care — so we reduce the cost of care by 40%, we improve access to care because you can get care wherever you are through the app and the devices — and we're actually improving outcomes. So that literally, we've had interventions where we've saved lives. Babyscripts has done that.

Jillian: So what are you raising? And what are the terms? 

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, we're raising 3.5 million to really expand our sales reach and onboard 20 more customers, health system customers. 

Jillian: You're raising $3.5 million and the valuation is what?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah. So it's a $10 million pre-money.

Phil: How much of the $3.5 million do you have committed so far?

Juan-Pablo: So about $2.5 million.

Babyscripts needs to raise another million dollars to complete this round of funding. Has Juan-Pablo convinced investors to take a chance on his startup?

Phil, our straight shooter, weighs in first.

Phil: Well, I really like what you're doing. Making great progress. I feel like you've attacked this problem in a smart way by starting with the studies to prove the efficacy, to prove what you're doing, because you know that that's what they're going to require, your customers are going to require. So I think you've approached it in a smart way. I'd like to participate.

Juan-Pablo: That's awesome.

Phil: So I'm in for $250,000.

Juan-Pablo: Oh wow. Okay. That's awesome. Thank you.

So Phil is in. Here’s Jillian.

Jillian: I, um, I love this. For so many reasons. I'm personally and professionally connected to this. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to do $500,000. 

Juan-Pablo: Oh geez. Okay.

Jillian: And what I'd like to do with that is — and just to be clear, I have a venture fund which is Structure Capital, and I have my own. So I would like to bring this to them to either do all of the $500,000, or to break this out so that I do a piece of this, they do a piece of this, and then our LPs, who get to directly invest, have the opportunity to do this. But I'd like you to carve out $500,000 for us.

Juan-Pablo: Oh wow. Okay. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you.

Jillian: You’re welcome

Juan-Pablo has just scored $750,000 in funding for Babyscripts.

Now can he hook Jake, the skeptical attorney, and Howie, our altruistic investor?

Here’s Jake.

Jake: I love you. I think you know this business amazingly well. Answered all the questions immaculately. I think you have the prescription for success.

Phil: Oh nice.

Jake: That a good one? … I too really want to invest in this company. I think your round is all of a sudden over-subscribed. So I'm feeling a little like I've got to be scrappy here. We're a small fund. I'd like to do $50,000. But I think what you're working on is amazing. I think you're making a difference in the world, a positive difference. And I think you're going to make a boatload of money. And when I can combine those two things, it really gets me excited.

Juan-Pablo: Thank you.

Phil: So Howie, can we make it quadruplets?

Howie: Let's do it. I mean, look, it's a no-brainer to me. This exactly fits my thesis for my fund. I'm even smaller than Jake's, so I write $25 to $50 K checks. But I think those are the types of projects that I like to put myself into, that I like to participate in. Not only as an investor, but also as a partner, to sort of help, because that's what gets me up in the morning. So this directly fits the type of deal that I really get excited about, and I'd like to be in for $30,000.

Juan-Pablo: That's awesome. This is so cool. Yeah I, okay... this… like, I don't know what to say, except I take cash, wire, and you know anything that has a dollar bill in front of it. So that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Phil: Congratulations. Your round is now almost full. 

All 4 investors have gone in on funding Babyscripts. Juan-Pablo leaves the room with more than $800,000 in funding — and, he’s not the only one who’s excited.

Jillian: I got to tell you something, guys, I could do so much with this.

Howie: It's amazing.

Jillian: I will make sure that your investment is very, very good. I would put a million in if I could, to tell you the truth. In my head, I keep thinking…

Juan-Pablo crushed his pitch to investors. But what happened after the pitch may surprise you. When we come back, a lesson on what to do when a deal goes south — and all you can do, is reflect, on what went wrong.

[Break]

Welcome back. Recently Juan-Pablo and I sat down to catch up on what happened after his pitch, otherwise known as the due diligence period, where investors finalize their deals.

Josh: Welcome back to The Pitch. It's been...nine months? Is that about right? 

Juan-Pablo: Yeah. Nine very very long months. So yeah, uh huh.

Josh: Have they been pretty rough? 

Juan-Pablo: Well you know it's been an interesting process because I think you have to look at any entrepreneur obviously has to manage. You know, you can have one person just focused on growing the business and then one person just fundraising. But the unfortunate reality of being an entrepreneur is that you have to do both at the same time. And that means that you are undateable. That means that you're a bad family member because you miss a lot of anniversaries. But it's a calling and a vocation. So, you know, this is just what you have to do in order to be great. And you can't be ashamed about it. Obviously you have to just keep pushing ahead. 

Josh: Let's talk about the pitch to the four investors on our show. From what I understand some things turned out a little bit differently after the fact. 

Juan-Pablo: Yep.

Josh: So yeah give me your side of what happened after the pitch after you walked out of the room. 

Juan-Pablo: Yeah. So what ended up happening was Phil kind of led the charge and he was very thorough. So he looked at our due diligence room and then would come back with like 30 questions and then I’d have to go back and answer all of his questions.

Josh: You're not exaggerating with 30 are you? 

Juan-Pablo: No no. It was a lot of questions. We had projected that we were going to close this year with about $700,000 of revenue. You know as we were, obviously as they were doing diligence, the year was finishing and people kept asking, okay, what was revenue this month? What was revenue this month?

Josh: Yeah, are you going to make that $700K? Because the whole valuation, what they're investing at was all contingent on that dollar amount.

Juan-Pablo: Yeah. Well I mean it's not all contingent, but — 

Josh: It is a big indicator. 

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, it is a very big indicator. So I agree. So unfortunately, you know, we weren't able to make our 2016 numbers. And so we generated about $400,000 of revenue instead of $700,000. And that really, that created kind of this whole whirlwind of questions and concerns and so that actually rubbed Phil the wrong way. And so Phil ended up not investing. But Jake, you know, obviously kind of understood. He did a good amount of diligence as well. 

Josh: And came back around

Juan-Pablo: Yeah and he saw the opportunity of our business and so he said you know, you know even though you guys obviously missed this year, I'll still invest.

Quick note: so Phil backed out of the deal, and I later found out that, for similar reasons, so did Howie. And Jake stayed in. 

But I was super curious about the deal that Jillian had made: if you recall, she was the investor who committed the most money. 

Juan-Pablo: And actually Jillian was the first one to commit to invest and — 

Josh: For $500K?

Juan-Pablo: Well, so, actually it was interesting. So she had caveated. I don't know if you remember, she has like her fund structure, and so structure decided not to participate in the round just because I think kind of the space was not necessarily their sweet spot. 

Josh: Okay so how much did she end up putting in? 

Juan-Pablo: So she committed $100,000 and she said I'm in for $100,000, send me the investor documents. We had that term sheet, we were ready to take money and Jillian had said okay I'm ready. I'm going to write a $100,000 check. On our end, we decided to not take her money because we were talking to two other investors that had been signaling that they would give us better terms. 

Josh: Jillian didn't invest?

Juan-Pablo: Well, no she did not. And this is where it gets interesting. So, you know, we told, I told Jillian, okay, give us like a month because we want to talk to, two other funds are saying hey we'll give you a higher than a $10 million valuation. So basically, you know, I kind of put Jillian on the backburner to, you know, allow the other lead investor to kind of get his act together and give us a term sheet. And so, they actually — those new investors — they actually fell through. But when I came back to Jillian in January, she had already invested everything that she was planning to invest for like the next year. And so we actually missed out on her funding because we didn't take the money back in November. And so she just invested it somewhere else. 

Josh: Wait what?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, so never leave money on the table because it goes away and you unfortunately miss out on working with people. And that happened to us and it will never happen again. I'll tell you that much. But again, you know, you learn and a lot of people call it, it's funny, they call it the stupid tax. 

Josh: The stupid tax? Is that what you said? 

Juan-Pablo: Yeah yeah. You have to pay your stupid tax. 

Josh: [laughter] I like that.

Juan-Pablo: And you learn. So I paid $100,000 stupid tax. It kind of sucks. But you know, it's reality. 

Josh: Is it an investment, or is it a tax? Now that you paid it once, does it, does it reap benefits in the future you think? 

Juan-Pablo: Interesting. I think so. You know what, I like your glass half full approach. So thanks for that, you know, optimism. 

Josh: So what would you do differently, if you could do it over? 

Juan-Pablo: You know I think I would definitely be more conservative with our projections 100%. So, you know, for example, one of the lead investors in this round, I sent them, it was kind of funny — so in February, March, kind of finishing the diligence they asked for kind of an updated set of financials and I sent them the financial statements and they actually sent them back and said can you be more aggressive with your financial statements.

Josh: Really?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, and so I was dinged two months ago for being too aggressive and now I'm not being aggressive enough. It's like my dating life, like what am I doing wrong? You know so, so there you go. 

Josh: So I take it you're still single?

Juan-Pablo: Yeah, in that category, I've decided to call myself emotionally unavailable, Josh.

Josh: You're embracing —

Juan-Pablo: Yeah you gotta. You know? I have one love and that love is Babyscripts. I was going to say pregnant women but then that would make me sound really creepy.

Josh: Yeah don't say that. [laughter]

Juan-Pablo: So you know it's just Babyscripts. 

Josh: How does it feel going from like over $800,000 invested on the show to $50,000 was all that ended up coming through in the end?

Juan-Pablo: It's a little disappointing. I would have loved to have had every person in the room fully come through. But you know I think it was also good to go through the process with them and to learn a little bit more about how they're looking at our company because we've taken those lessons and we've applied them. So, you know at the end of the day you know there is there's no bad experience as an entrepreneur. I mean, I don't regret anything and I'm very happy that I got to meet you and everyone else there. The funny thing about this whole world is that it's a very small world. So I guarantee you I will run into Phil Nadel again. And into Jilian Manus. I run into Jake a lot because he actually invested, and Howie Diamond. And I look forward to that. 

My thoughts? If anything, I’d say Juan-Pablo was a little too perfect in his pitch. No matter how good your pitch is, the proof truly is in the pudding. Can you actually follow through on what you’ve promised?

And maybe Juan-Pablo got a little too confident, turning down Jillian’s money in favor of a better deal. A move that ultimately backfired on him. But, regardless of the mistakes he’s made, Juan-Pablo sounds like he’s taken those lessons to heart. 

In fact, he just told me he’s about to finish this round of funding, where they ended up raising a total of 5 million dollars for Babyscripts.

If you have any feedback for the show, we’d love to hear it. Send us an email at thepitch@gimletmedia.com with your thoughts. And if you’re enjoying the show, please consider writing us a quick review on Apple Podcasts. It’s a small thing you can do that makes a huge difference for our show. Thanks!

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Thank you so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more, our website is thepitch.show, you can find us on Twitter and Facebook @thepitchshow. And we’ve got a brand new newsletter you can sign up for at thepitch.show/email.

To hear scenes from next week’s episode, stay tuned til after the credits.

Our show was produced by me, Josh Muccio, and Asthaa Chathurvedi. We were edited by Devon Taylor with help from Pat Walters, Caitlin Kenney and Annie-Rose Strasser.

Our Theme Music is by Breakmaster Cylinder, with original music composed by The Muse Maker, Haley Shaw, Bobby Lord, John Kimbrough and Louis Weeks. We were mixed by Enoch Kim and Matt Boll.

Special thanks to Lisa Muccio for planning the Season 2 recording event last fall. 

And a special thanks to Eric Mennel, and to Julie Rovner who helped me wrap my head around the whole bundled payments concept.

And a quick disclaimer: no offer to invest is being made to, or solicited from, the listening audience on our show.

Finally, I want to say a quick thank you to the original sponsor of Season 2, the It’s Worth Doing Right Family for taking a leap of faith on us, when we were just a tiny little independent podcast.

All right. You’ve been listening to The Pitch from Gimlet Media. I’m Josh Muccio. See you next week.

Next week on the pitch: We hear from a founder looking to reinvent the hotel experience — by changing the way we look in the mirror.

Pieter Boekhoff: And I immediately thought, this can change the way customer service is done in hotel rooms.

Phil: You could do gambling in a hotel room in Vegas?

Howie: That’s not convincing to me.

Jillian: Can I talk? First of all shame on you.

New episodes of The Pitch come out on Wednesdays, 12pm EST. 

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