#126 Handle: The Uncut Pitch

Lisa: Pitch 4, day 3

Sup pitches. This is our season 10 finale. And we’re running an experiment … on you.

You all know we do some light editing on this show. But many of you have asked over the years to hear a pitch in full, with no editing whatsoever. The time has finally come to satisfy that request.

I never thought this day would come. We’ve recorded well over a hundred pitches, and never before have I thought… yeah, let’s just roll the tape.

But yeah. Let’s just roll the tape.

I’m Josh Muccio, and you’re listening to the uncut pitch. A real founder, pitching real investors, for real money, in all its glory

Paige: Hi I’m Paige Finn Doherty, founding partner Behind Genius Ventures

Neal: Hey, I’m Neal Bloom, managing partner at Interlock Capital

Elizabeth: Hi, I’m Elizabeth Yin, general partner at Hustle Fund

Mark: I’m Mark Phillips, founder of 11 Tribes Ventures

Charles: Hi I’m Charles Hudson, managing partner, Precursor Ventures

The pitch for Handle is coming up after this. And if you want to watch the video of this pitch, go to pitch.show/youtube. Episodes premiere on Wednesdays at 7pm eastern.

Neal: His own entrance music.

[humming]

Mark: That's a song. All right.

Chase: Hi everyone.

Mark: Hey there

Charles: Howdy

Chase: Chase Robbins.

Charles: Charles, nice to meet you

Paige: Paige

Chase: Chase

Mark: Hey Chase I’m Mark

Chase: Nice to meet you man

Mark: You too

Elizabeth: Hi Chase, Elizabeth

Neal: Hey, Neal

Chase: Neal. Nice to meet you. Thanks for your time today.

[thank yous]

Chase: Of course. Of course. If you've used a delivery service recently, you probably know this. Delivery fees continue to go up, delivery times continue to go up. This is the reality for the 20 million college students that are using delivery services for convenience products. Delivery services simply can't execute on the speed, the price and the selection that consumers expect for daily use consumables. On the other hand, conventional retail convenience stores typically are not so convenient. They often don't have the selection that consumers want, and in many cases, they're becoming pricey as well. This is why I built Handle. Handle builds vertically integrated dark stores adjacent to college campuses. We deliver a curated set of 700 SKUs to students on and off campus in an average of 12 minutes and we deliver them profitably. Our average ticket is $17 and we net $4 in contribution margin per order. We launched this service at USC in September of 2021. We've since expanded to University of Oregon, University of Alabama, and UC Davis. We're here because we're raising a $3 million seed round. This is a large market. There's 10,000 universities in the - sorry, there's 500 universities in the United States with over 10,000 students. And there's another 500 internationally, with over 10,000 students. Our stores generate more revenue and a higher margin than a typical 7-Eleven, and so we see the future as very bright for our business. So if this is interesting, I'd like to answer your questions.

Paige: I have a question. Well, thank you for - welcome. And thank you for -

[laughter]

Paige: I guess one of my questions is if you're profitable like from the jump, why do you want to raise venture?

Chase: Mainly because we're profitable on a unit economics basis.

Paige: Okay.

Chase: Our stores, we've actually brought our first two locations to cashflow positivity. So our flagship market, USC, is producing $10,000 per month in profit. Our other stores are on track to do the same. Our store at University of Oregon is also operating at break even right now. Our store at USC got to that 10k per month figure after only 12 months of being open, and our Oregon store got to break even after seven months. So we're here raising venture, mainly to accelerate our rate of expansion. We're raising this 3 million, half of the funds will be used to launch eleven additional markets, bringing us up to 15. And the rest will be used to build out a corporate team and invest in engineering.

Charles: Can you - I'm just - I invested in a business that was somewhat similar, it pivoted in something else. I'm just curious, like, I think about Gopuff, and Fridge No More and Gorillas and like that was a story of kind of lighting money on fire -

Chase: 100%.

Charles: - with customer acquisition. Can you talk a little bit about - not to steal Elizabeth's normal question, but can we talk a little bit about the unit economics of how the deliveries work and -

Chase: I'd love to. I'd love to. So a little context on myself. When I was a freshman at USC, I actually sold my first software business for 300k. I used those - my own money to open our first location. And so from day one, we had the spirit of profitability in mind, because obviously I didn't have the luxury of just burning VC money. With that spirit, we've done over 60,000 deliveries, and we've focused on refining these unit economics over time. So the keys for us, in compared to a GoPuff or a Gorillas, is that we know exactly who our customer is and we know exactly where they are, and we know exactly how to target them. So our customer acquisition cost is actually under a dollar. If you compare that to a Gorillas -

Charles: 100 X.

Chase: - for example, they're spending $50 plus to convert a customer that's gonna churn after one order, for example. And so our customers in contrast have over eight orders, on average. And we've only been open for 18 months. So with time, I see that expanding a lot.

Charles: And what's the SKU? Is it all non-perishables? Like, what's the -

Chase: That's correct. Less than 1% is perishable. We do carry certain products like sliced fruit or protein packs. But the vast majority is zero spoilage, over a year of shelf life. Because we plan for also the seasonality of the business. When summer comes, when winter break comes, we drop to about 47% of our general revenue, and so we wanna make sure that we're not carrying product that's gonna end up causing losses down the road.

Mark: So talk about your supplier base. So as you think about the perishables and the non-perishables, how many suppliers are you sourcing from, and will that change based on the locale of the schools?

Chase: 100%. It does change depending on the geography. We're sourcing from over 20 suppliers, and we're using the exact same suppliers for the most part that traditional conventional retail stores are using, like Core-Mark, KeHE, I don't know if you're familiar with the industry -

Mark: Yeah.

Chase: - but it's the same ones that - McLean - you know, these are the ones that ah 7-Eleven for example are using. 

Mark: Absolutely. I live ten minutes away from KeHE's headquarters. And so you do - you mark up on the products themselves and then you charge for delivery. Is that correct?

Chase: That's correct. We charge a flat $1.99 delivery fee.

Mark: Okay.

Chase: And we never surge that. Most often, we actually use that as a growth lever to incentive purchasing, incentivize purchasing.

Neal: One dark store per university?

Chase: That's correct.

Elizabeth: And so how much revenue are you doing right now?

Chase: So we're at a $1.2 million run rate. We expect, with our current locations, we're projecting that at maturity, which is about three to four years after opening, stores can do 2 million in topline and 500k in profit per year.

Elizabeth: And if I understand the timeline, so in 2021 you launched this when you were a student.

Chase: Correct.

Elizabeth: Are you still a student?

Chase: I'm on leave.

Elizabeth: Okay. And then you said now it's not profitable, but - have you raised money already? Or are you funding it still?

Chase: We've raised - so in 2022, early 2022, we raised a $1 million pre-seed round, mainly from angels. That was a safe note at a $7.5 million post money cap. And so we used that money to essentially launch a couple more campuses, and we still have a significant amount of cash remaining.

Paige: Can you tell us a bit more about the team or like what your burn rate is today?

Chase: Sure. So our burn rate is generally less than $10,000 a month. So, you know, I have tried to position our business in a way that, you know, if the venture funnel got, you know, cut off, we could survive indefinitely.

Paige: Yeah. Sorry, I have a - I have a quick question. Is that net or gross?

Chase: That would be net.

Paige: Okay.

Chase: Um, and so regarding the team, we have four employees including myself that are working full time on the project - or on the company, rather. 

[laughter]

Chase: And we have - at each store, we have a store manager, we have a growth manager, and then we have a fleet of W2 delivery couriers.

Elizabeth: Are they mostly students?

Chase: It's all students on the delivery courier side, and then for the management of the stores, we target recent graduates, because they understand the market.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Have you heard of a company called Envoy Now?

Chase: Yeah. They actually came out of USC.

Elizabeth: I know. That's why I bring them up. Did you ever talk with Anthony about that business?

Chase: I have actually tried to get into contact with Anthony, but haven't been able to make the connection.

Elizabeth: That's a company that I backed.

Chase: Oh nice.

Elizabeth: So - and I have backed Anthony in his new company.

Chase: Vinovest?

Elizabeth: Vinovest. Yes.

Chase: That's awesome.

Paige: Oh, I didn't know that was -

Elizabeth: But Envoy Now is actually a pretty phenomenal company. Like I think we before we backed Envoy Now, I was very averse to this space for the Go Puff reasons, and all that. But the funny thing about college campuses is it's very enclosed as a community. And I think that's an insight I didn't have years ago. But it makes the unit economics easier. Because everything is happening in this dense area, right.

Chase: That's exactly correct. And we talk to some investors, and they have this reaction of like, oh, you're on college campuses, you must just be using that as an early market and in a year you're gonna be in cities. And for us, maybe long term we go into cities, but really the bread and butter of our business, and where we make the bulk of our money, is on the college campus. And it's a massive market in and of itself.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. So actually, that would be my next question. Like, my hope would be that you stick to college campuses. But what is your - where do you think this goes? Like, how do you think about expansion?

Chase: So expansion, I think that we focus on our core competency, which is delivering to college students. One of the beautiful things about our business and one of the key enablers of our unit economics is that our customer acquisition cost is so low. And so you ask yourself, why is it so low? And what are we doing differently? In my opinion, the beautiful thing about the business is that we are actually leveraging the atomic networks of our existing employees. So our delivery couriers, we intentionally overstaff, because they turn into brand ambassadors. And then they go in and bring their own community inside the school on to the platform. And we've seen the data and the direct correlation between hiring new employees and new customer signups.

Elizabeth: Mhm.

Mark: You talk about the size of the market. If - so if you did stay hyper focused on college campuses, and let's start with just domestic, can you unpack what that would look like from a total addressable market perspective?

Chase: Definitely. So there are 500 universities in the US where - that we've identified are viable markets for this. And if you just do the napkin math, our average store at maturity is going to be doing 2 million a year, so it's a billion in revenue. And then it's about 25% of that, it's about a - a half a million in profit per year per store.

Paige: So that's like the total addressable market. Can you talk -

Chase: In the United States.

Paige: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about like competitors that you - seems like Envoy Now. I'm not as familiar with their story, but I'd be curious to understand, like, one billion in revenue is capturing 100% of the market. Who are the other competitors in like the early stage?

Chase: So there are a number of companies that are attacking the college market at different ways. Even incumbents like Doordash are doing different initiatives to try to access the college market. But there are pretty much no other competitors that are delivering the product that we're delivering. You know, personally, I think that Doordash is serving a different need for college students, because the need that we service is an impulse purchase. Customers are not buying groceries from us. They're buying items that they're consuming as soon as they receive them.

Paige: Yeah.

Chase: And we're also not serving hot food. We're not serving meals. So, you know, there's adjacent players, but they're not competing one to one with what we're doing.

Paige: Yeah, makes sense. I mean, I've got like - I was in college a couple years ago and it was like the nearest CVS was like a 10-minute drive and I didn't have a car so I was like, am I gonna Uber to CVS to buy something for like $3? Probably not. So, yeah, and then I'd just would go without, kinda.

Mark: You could've used a Handle. I mean -

Paige: Yeah.

Chase: Exactly.

Charles: Can I ask you, what are like the top five or ten things that people -

Paige: Yeah, I was gonna ask that.

Chase: So we actually sell a lot of bottled water, funny enough. So bottled water is one, an assortment of snacks, popcorn, chips, candy. And then we also in certain markets carry tobacco and alcohol, depending on the licensure and what we're able to acquire. So that's one of the factors we look at when we're expanding. Currently we have alcohol and tobacco at University of Oregon, we have tobacco at USC, we have alcohol and tobacco at University of Alabama, as well; we just got approved. And we're about six months out from alcohol at USC.

Mark: Nice. 500 universities you said?

Chase: In the US. With over 10,000.

Mark: Okay. At doing $2 million a year?

Chase: Correct.

Mark: So it's not a billion, right? That's 100 million. Am I doing my math wrong?

Charles: No, it's a billion. It's a billion.

Chase: 500 times 2 million.

Charles: It's a billion.

Mark: Okay.

Charles: Yeah. yeah.

Mark: Got it. Sorry. Yes. All right. Thank you. All right.

Chase: No worries.

Mark: Trying to do math after a long day.

Paige: We're missing our calculators.

Mark: I know. Exactly.

Chase: I know. You guys have been for a while.

Mark: Chase, I'm curious. So you - you're taking leave from USC, it sounds like.

Chase: That's correct.

Mark: So talk to us a little bit about the motivation here for you. You - you're a one time successful founder already. This is your second go at it. Why take another bite of the apple? Why continue to do this thing instead of going through college?

Chase: I love the process of building a company. I find it incredibly fulfilling to be able to employ other people, particularly students, because it's a demographic that I have a lot of empathy for. I also just love the experience of building a brand, particularly a brand that my peers admire. And the product development, I actually spent time at Apple working in product design as well as an intern. So I have a passion for product, I have a passion for ops. This has been - it's kind of like an incredible puzzle that you have to put together, because we have a warehouse where we have also built, you know, inhouse inventory management software. We have a customer, we have couriers, they have a courier app. So it's kind of this orchestration of all these different pieces that I find incredibly fulfilling to build. I also just love capitalism and -

[laughter]

Chase: - I love - I just love competing. You know. I - I've been an athlete my whole life and now I feel like I can be an intellectual athlete as well.

Mark: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yep.

Neal: Is this an app -

Paige: That was a good quote.

Neal: - that students are downloading?

Chase: That's correct. Off the app store.

Neal: So you're managing this app and a courier app?

Chase: That's correct.

Neal: Okay.

Chase: And we have internal administrative dashboards. I actually built all of our tech, so I'm kind of a software engineer by trade. But yeah, so we have application for our couriers, we have an application for our customers, and then we have internal kind of administrative dashboards, order management software, etc.

Elizabeth: So if you… Go ahead. Learnings from Envoy Now, just from being afar. I think, one, market was really great, market pull was really great, and unit economics were really great. Things that are the flipside of that, I think managing students is hard. Everyone is kind of young, no one has ever really worked, and then as you expand into different campuses, you need a really strong GM at each of the campuses. Tell me about your hiring. What do you look for? How do you test and train your GMs? Are they also students? A little bit about that.

Chase: Yeah, so regarding hiring for our GMs, it's a mix of students and recent graduates. But that's also been a key area of learning for us throughout the process of, you know, going through GMs that have not succeeded and going back with the team and really analyzing that, what are the factors that we could have identified in an interview process to prevent this from happening again. So that's a lot of learning that we're doing right now. But currently, our interview process is multi-stage interview, everyone on the corporate team does blind interviews for final candidates. We also do personality testing to make sure that they're gonna be compatible for this type of role. You know, we're managing these teams from afar, because we have distributed warehouses, we're in California, and so ensuring that we get candidates who are self-starters, self-motivated, that are in it for the right reasons, has been critical. And I think we're getting really good at identifying those characteristics.

Elizabeth: So what kind of people become your GMs of your other locations where you're not, and how are they incentivized?

Chase: So we have - really, we're only at four locations. So there's not one, you know, defining characteristic that's emerged. But it's a mix of people who have started as delivery couriers and have just shown incredible grit and drive, and we've promoted them up. One lesson I've learned as a founder is just like promoting good people really quickly and firing bad people really quickly as well.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Chase: We also have people who have approached us and said, hey, I really want to bring this to my campus. I'm not at a campus where you're currently at. And so we take them in and we say, okay, are you sure? This is not an easy, you know, endeavor. We bring them out to LA where our flagship store is, we train them in the store, and so then it just goes from there as well. And your question about incentive, so we have recently rolled out a new comp structure where they're actually being held accountable to the store level PNLs. So they're able to kind of define their earnings by what the net income of - is - what the net income of their store is, based on the percentage of revenue. So for example, if you're doing 10% net income per month, you can get a $3000 bonus for that month.

Charles: That's a lot for - that's a lot.

Chase: It is. It's a lot -

Charles: For your - I'd imagine, for your employees, that's a big bonus.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Chase: It's a huge bonus. But for us, you know, if we're doing 10% net income, we can definitely afford to incentivize them that way.

Charles: Mhm.

Neal: And these warehouses are all off campus? Or are any on?

Chase: They're all off campus. They're campus adjacent. So we're actually an average of 2000 feet from our customer. So we've kind of done the geospatial analysis on that. We've gotten really good at identifying low cost real estate that's proximate to student housing, as well as you know third party student housing that's really just apartment buildings off campus.

Mark: Do you have to do any registration with the schools or deal with the schools at all?

Chase: We don't have to deal with the schools at all. And one thing that a lot of investors don't realize implicitly is that in the evenings, because of Covid, schools have gotten incredibly tight around who's allowed on campus. So if I'm a USC student, after 10 pm, I actually can't get a Doordash delivery, even to the building I'm in, much less my door. Because we're using students, they have student IDs, they can get in at any time and we're able to deliver the best customer experience compared to anyone else.

Paige: That's super interesting.

Mark: If you didn't raise any venture funding, if - let's say it all dried up and wasn't there to be had, how would you grow this business over the next 12 to 24 months? What would that look like?

Chase: It would really look like probably slimming down our ambitions from an engineering and a corporate standpoint. And just focusing on getting our stores as profitable as possible. You know, right now, because of how the market has been, we're doing this balancing act of growth but also profitability. We would go all in on profitability, obviously, and say, okay, maybe the customer doesn't need the order in 15 minutes, maybe they need it in 20, and we can use the lever of our staffing cost to increase the profitability of the stores. So there's a lot of different levers we can pull. But, you know, I will say as well that we have two funds that are interested in leading the round. So I'm optimistic that we'll close the round at this point.

Charles: And how much - just going to that point about speed, how much of it is - to Paige's point, it's just convenient - it's - it's as convenient at 30 minutes as it is at 15 versus the timeliness.

Chase: Yeah. So we've done some testing, and we've done analysis around, you know, delivery times and return rates for customers. And right now, we see that if we get above 20 into the 25, 30 minute range, we do see reduction in returning customers. But I have a hypothesis that this may just be due to customer communication. If we set the expectation with the customer that it'll be there in 15 minutes and it takes 25, they're gonna say, this is not a consistent service. But if at some point we need to say, hey, this is a 25 minute delivery service, we may not see that same, you know, churn.

Paige: So is your messaging on campus like 15 minute delivery then?

Chase: That's correct.

Paige: So that’s like, that becomes in - in the model where you search for profitability and you're seeing longer lead times for delivery, then you'll have to change - is that like your core messaging over all as a company now?

Chase: It is. But I will just say that at USC, our average is 12 minutes and we're profiting $10,000 a month. So I don't see it as a necessary step, but I was just kind of playing out a catastrophic scenario.

Paige: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was just curious about like is that a core aspect of your messaging? And if so, like, how difficult would it be to change that if you were - you know, would that be breaking like the core promise that you made to your customers?

Chase: I would say that my intuition tells me that it's not hyper critical.

Paige: Okay.

Chase: Obviously, I can't say without running tests. You know, I'm a very - I try to be very data driven in my answers. But you know, there's still significant value that we provide to the customer, in that the experience is really friendly. You know, we get feedback from our female customers, especially, that, hey, you know, it's 11 pm and I'm trying to order snacks, I don't feel comfortable walking to the CVS. I also don't feel comfortable with some 1099 coming into my apartment, or coming up to my apartment. They take a lot of comfort in the fact that, hey this is someone that I probably have class with, and this is a service that all of my peers are using. So I think there's a lot of value that we deliver beyond just the speed.

Paige: Yeah. And the trust aspect.

Chase: Exactly.

Paige: Cool.

Neal: I missed - I missed the answer, Charles asked, about how many SKUs. How many do you have currently per campus?

Chase: Per campus, on average, about 750.

Neal: Has that grown over time based on people requesting items that aren't there? Or what's that like?

Chase: It has grown. We've done experiments around, you know, going to a thousand, 1100 SKUs or 300 SKUs. We have found that 750 is kind of a sweet spot. But it's actually an interesting customer behavior. We've run the tests on where the add-to-cart events come from in our app and, you know, it's similar to many other like grocery delivery apps where you have like a breakdown of categories. 50% of our add-to-carts come from the first five products in any given category. So I do think that over time, as we collect more data on what the customers are demanding, we could slim down inventory.

Paige: It feels like you're very like data driven approach to running a company. I'd be curious to understand like what are the current tests that you're running. And like - yeah, what are the current tests that you're running.

Chase: Yeah. So I can give an example of one test that we've been working on recently is - we call it like the VIP customer experience, which is that when a customer signs up, if we - right now, our customers, we have about a 50% conversion from signing up for the app and placing their first order. And so we came to this question of like how can we increase this? So what we've done over the past 2 weeks is every time a customer signs up, we have - we break them into two different cohorts. One of them gets a text message from an automatic - automatic system that says, hey, my name is XYZ, I'm the manager for this location. I'm also a poli-sci major. You know, we try to humanize that interaction. And then say, if you have any questions. Let me know. You have X amount of dollar store credit in your account. The other cohort, we actually have our managers manually send them a text on their phone because the blue bubble, we have a hypothesis, makes a difference. You know, if it's green, customers pick up on, like, hey, this is ah - this is obviously automated. And so you know, jury's still out on that. We're collecting the data. But that's the type of experimentation we're doing.

Paige: That's pretty interesting.

Elizabeth: That is funny.

Neal: Have you looked into using the little bots for delivery instead of people, humans?

Chase: Yeah. We have. We actually - we're very close to launching a trial with one of the businesses that operates these, but ultimately, the technology, in my opinion, is just not there yet. I don't know - where are you from, by chance?

Neal: Here. In San Diego.

Chase: You're from San Diego. Okay. So if you've been around USC, if you're familiar with the area, it's not a - most safe area for delivery robots. 

[laughter]

Chase: So just given that, we decided, hey, it's not worth it. And we've also looked at the cost per delivery for these robots. Generally, it's around three to four, and for us, we're already spending only about $3.70 to deliver with our existing work force. And, you know, with scale, that cost comes down. And so if we rely on these delivery robots, we're locked in to that, and we want to use that as a profitability lever.

Neal: What about -

Paige: I was gonna say, if you are interested in talking to someone who's built a delivery robot, a business - we invested in a company called Prof Jim run by Deepak Sekar who sold Chowbotics to Doordash, and I'm sure he'd have some learnings in that space, because I think they focus pretty heavily on like college campuses.

Chase: Yeah, I actually see the future for kind of robotic delivery for us is most likely drones. When that catches up. Mainly because they're gonna be able to circumvent a lot of the foot traffic and like you know car traffic that is what's slowing down most of these robots today. But obviously, FAA and all that is in the way.

Neal: So I have an investment in a company that's doing this at airports called At Your Gate.

Chase: I'm familiar.

Neal: Yeah. And so they started adding a human plus bot that would follow, because they started batching deliveries. And they just felt it was too much to walk back and forth to the one spot. They're doing like restaurants, so they're running all over, not yours. But how about - is batch ordering a thing? Like how much is that kind of taking up the time of your delivery people?

Chase: So when you say batch ordering, can you -

Neal: I guess, yeah, like can your delivery people actually do batch deliveries? Or they have to do one at a time?

Chase: No. So every time they leave the warehouse, they're generally taking six to seven orders. That's where we really - because we pay them hourly, we're not paying them per delivery, that's where we get the cost efficiencies from, is that, hey I'm leaving the warehouse for six people. And ideally, they're in three buildings that are right next to each other. You know, that's our ideal scenario. And as we scale, the geography gets more saturated with orders, and then that incremental cost goes down over time.

Elizabeth: Have ziplines across the dorms.

Chase: Exactly. Exactly. A bucket with a rope.

Elizabeth: I - I mean, so going back to the Envoy Now thing, I think I - my takeaway from that experience is actually I really like this business. I think the questions that I still have in my mind are actually all around personnel. Because the other question I was gonna ask you is around attrition. Like, you know, students graduate. And so even if you have someone really good, then they leave. And then the other thing, also, is eventually you will "age out" of this demographic, right. If this goes really well. So how do you - like does - how do you end up managing sort of the overall operations and - I mean, I have to say, there is a real advantage in being a student or being in this peer demographic in starting this kind of business. And that was what Anthony found, unfortunately for him, the reason why Envoy Now no longer exists is, you know, he had some personal health issues. And by the time he sort of got over that, he's no longer in this demographic. So kind of curious for your thoughts on that and the personnel and that sort of thing.

Chase: 100%. So our sample size isn't big, obviously, at this point. But I can speak to like our manager at University of Oregon is a really great example. He came to us when he was a student and loved the business so much. You know, we gave him a little bit of equity compensation and then we put this new compensational structure in place. And he passed up, you know, big four consulting jobs to stay and run this location at Handle. And so I think that's a testament to the kind of type of character that we're building. But I also think that as we scale, you know, let's say in ten years for example I'm completely - you know, I'm an old person and -

[laughter]

Elizabeth: You won't be that old!

Chase: I'm 22 now so - no offense!

Elizabeth: Compared to some of us here -

Chase: Let's say in ten years, I have kind of lost my empathy with the customer, right. I think that a core competency that we're gonna develop over that ten years is identifying talent really early and being able to develop them. Mainly because that's gonna be a skill we have to - have to master if we're gonna scale this business. And so I think it's gonna be a continuation of that. Finding the talent, that's fresh out of college, highly capable, highly driven, and like I said in the beginning of the pitch, promoting good people quickly and making sure that we still have, you know, our ear to the ground, so to speak, on that demographic.

Elizabeth: So your GMs right now, are they all not students? Like either they've dropped out or have graduated? Or are some of them like doing -

Chase: It's a mix. Some of them are doing both. So the hourly expectation that we set with our GMs is 30 hours a week. So, you know, it's - it's not quite full time. It's definitely a lot for someone to be a student and do it at the same time. But that is - it's kind of a filter in and of itself -

Elizabeth: Sure.

Chase: - because the people who are gonna be willing to take that on are the exact type of people that we want running the stores. 

Paige: Is there significance, like 30 hours a week specifically, versus like 40?

Chase: We are actually taking steps to minimize the hourly requirement on the manager, mainly because I think that it opens us up to have talent that is incredibly committed to school and may say, hey, I can't take 30 hours away, but I could take 20. We wanna make sure that we are a potential employer for that type of person. And so the ways we're doing that is all around using technology to systemize the operations of the store. For example, scheduling was a huge burden for our GMs in the beginning. We built a scheduling algorithm, and we don't worry about it any more. Inventory management in the beginning was a big burden for them. We built tooling around that so that the handlers - that's what we call our delivery people - can essentially do the whole inventory management system through an app, and the GM doesn't really have to worry about it. So that's kind of the philosophy we take.

Mark: So the GM in Oregon, however, turned down consulting jobs.

Chase: That's correct.

Mark: So that person's only working 30 hours though.

Chase: So he's a bit of an edge case because we also -

Mark: Right.

Chase: - have moved him into kind of a hybrid corporate and management role, because we really did wanna lose him, but we also can't justify paying him the same salary without him taking up other parts of the company.

Mark: Understandably. So at scale, more than not are going to be students, probably, working those 30 hours?

Chase: Students or recent graduates. I mean -

Mark: Yeah. Who are maybe looking for that first fulltime job.

Chase: Exactly.

Mark: Sure.

Chase: I think for the driven recent graduate, it represents a really great first step because you can imagine like, hey, I managed a team of 60 delivery people and I managed a $2 million a year P&L. Coming straight out of college, that opens up your job opportunities significantly where you go from there.

Mark: And then how do you - what's the - where do you move up from GMs? Like region? Help open new schools?

Chase: So it's something that we will explore as we get bigger. You know, we haven't had to face that yet. But I definitely see that - the retail playbook has already been written in many ways. You know, like, we have locations, locations exist in regions, we should have a regional manager. So we're not trying to reinvent the wheel in those ways. So most likely that. We have had - our manager at USC actually now leads all of our expansion. So, you know, like I said, I'm a big fan of starting people off small and you know promoting them as they succeed.

Paige: You mentioned equity comp for the GM. Can we talk a little bit about the equity composition of the cap table as it stands today.

Chase: Sure. So like I said, we raised $1.1 million in safe notes. Those were at a $7.5 million cap. So you know, those technically haven't converted yet. We haven't sold any priced shares. I currently own roughly 80% of the company. We have a 15% employee stock pool, and then we have some advisors and various other places it's gone.

Paige: Cool. And then what terms are you looking to raise the 3 million on? Sorry if I missed that earlier.

Chase: Yeah. No, no worries. So that is going to be a $15 million pre cap.

Paige: Okay.

Neal: On a 1.2 million run rate?

Chase: Correct.

Neal: Okay.

Elizabeth: That's GMV?

Chase: Correct.

Paige: Do you have flexibility on that?

Chase: Um. It would be difficult because we do already have kind of like verbal conversations with two funds that are willing to lead at that price. So - I kind of have no incentive to go below it, to be honest.

Paige: Yeah, yeah. No. It makes sense. Well, I was just asking if it was flexible or not.

Chase: Yeah. I mean, maybe in other terms, if there were some other terms that you were interested in. But probably on the price, no.

Paige: What other terms?

Chase: Yeah. Now that I think about it probably nothing -

[laughter]

Chase: I mean, if you want to write a $2 million check and you want a board seat, then we can talk about that. But -

Mark: There you go.

Chase: Probably -

Elizabeth: They haven't issued you a term sheet yet, though.

Chase: We're expecting a term sheet in the next couple days.

Elizabeth: Oh, okay.

Neal: Can you say from who?

Chase: I can't. I can't. Sorry.

Elizabeth: What do you think -

Chase: I can give you some demographic info. So one of them is a pretty large institutional fund from San Francisco. Another one is based on the east coast, it's a syndicate of kind of ultra high net worth people.

Elizabeth: What do you think your burn rate goes up to?

Chase: It's tough to say. We can lever it however we want. It really depends on how many locations we want to launch, how fast. Right now, our plan is to launch 11 locations over the next 18 months. To give you an idea of opening a location, it's roughly $60k in upfront investment to get the licenses, build out the store, purchase the inventory. And then it's roughly $60k burn over the first kind of six to seven months to bring that store to break even. 

Mark: Back to something Elizabeth said, so it's a $1.2 million GMV run rate?

Chase: So that would be GMV plus delivery fees.

Mark: Okay.

Chase: So -

Mark: And on the GMV, what's the take home for Handle? You know, what's the actual revenue?

Chase: Um, so, in terms of net income or - or I guess gross margin would be appropriate, we're doing roughly 30 to 40% right now per month. Yeah.

Mark: Okay. 

Neal: And that's just on a portion of the $1.2? Because there's delivery fees included in that as well?

Chase: Correct. Correct. That's including - so we - we typically don't use GMV because it's like more useful for marketplaces. For us, we typically just talk about topline revenue and kind of our take. And so that includes kind of delivery fees. We also have a subscription product where customers can subscribe for $5 a month and be able to waive their delivery fees. So it does kind of mix things up. But um -

Paige: Wait, can -

Elizabeth: But I guess what we're saying is -

Paige: - a breakdown of like the subscription and then like what the revenue is?

Mark: Yes.

Chase: Yeah, so the subscription -

Paige: Like a clear answer on that would be helpful.

Chase: - is a really new product, so it makes up like less than 1% of our revenue.

Paige: Okay. Wait, can you say it in like dollar amounts versus percentages?

Chase: For sure. For sure. So -

Paige: Thanks.

Chase: Yeah. No worries. So we've done, to date, we've done $1.2 million in topline sales.

Paige: Nice.

Chase: On that, we've spent roughly $600,000 on inventory sold. That's like our COGs. And then when you add in the pick, pack, delivery labor, that's about 20%, and the rest is take for us. So, you know, roughly 30%. But then you add in couple other fees, you know, you may - we have credit card processing fees and things like that, it takes us closer to 25%.

Mark: Yeah.

Neal: So 25% of $600k?

Chase: 25% of $1.2.

Neal: 75?

Charles: $1.2.

Chase: Yeah. 25% of $1.2 is total gross margin to date.

Neal: But $600k...

Paige: Okay, so three - roughly $300k.

Chase: Roughly, yeah.

Paige: Okay. Cool.

Elizabeth: So um -

Paige: It - sorry, just to clarify. I just wanna -

Chase: Please.

Paige: - make sure it's clear. Okay. So is this $300k per month? Or is this to date?

Chase: That's to date. That's to date.

Paige: Okay. Okay. Cool.

Elizabeth: Um - so I really love this business, especially since I've had a seat in the arena before on this. And I think you have an amazing background. You've already gotten a lot of lessons learned from your first business and have done well, so I think you're thinking about everything in the right way. I think you're very crisp and knowledgeable about the levers of the business, and what you need to do, and I like how you think through optionality around the burn versus venture, etc. I think you sound like a fantastic entrepreneur. I think for me the valuation is really pricey. We're pre-seed investors, and I realize you're - you've actually made a lot of progress and are probably not what I would call in pre-seed. So from the perspective of the fund, we'll be out. But I think, you know, given where you are with your fundraise, if you end up, you know, raising a price round or whatever this is with those funds, I would love to see if I might be able to write a very, very small personal check.

Chase: Okay. That's great to hear. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Charles: I'm basically in the same boat as Elizabeth. It's a little out of spec just for our fund model, which has more to do with like the constraints of our model than what's fair to you. You've got people interested. I think it's hard to argue with legitimate interest, so good for you on managing dilution. Really impressive articulation of the business and I think you're doing everything you can to maximize the hyperlocal nature of the business, and I think it's gonna be super successful.

Chase: Thank you so much.

Paige: Yeah. I'm in pretty - pretty much the exact same boat. But I think it's really incredible what you've built so far and the learnings. I think some of the things that really stood out to me was how data driven you are and like how quickly you've been able to iterate and like you know a lot of the deep statistics on like usage and I think like the tests that you're running are really interesting. I think similarly for me, the valuation is a bit too pricey. But like you said, you have interest at that, so it makes sense to stick with that valuation. But similarly, I'd be interested in putting in a very small personal check. So, happy to chat as the round comes together.

Chase: Thank you.

Paige: Yeah.

Neal: I was just kind of thinking about - your questions were really poignant on the personnel piece, because I'm thinking back to At Your Gate, who really struggle about utilizing their delivery people, who they've hired full time on staff are kind of sitting around waiting for orders to happen. Little bit of a waste of utilization. Has that come up at all -

Chase: Yeah. I'd love to speak to that. So one of the great things about our model is that because we're employing students to do the deliveries, they're not expecting any amount of hours. So what we actually do is we demand forecasting over time, and then we scale up our labor up and down in three-hour increments. So a certain three-hour chunk may have four delivery people working, and then the next three-hour chunk may have one person working. And that's just to optimize - like you said, delivery person utilization, that's like our key metric.

Neal: Interesting. Is it - how varying is it per campus?

Chase: It depends on the maturity of the campus. But I would say the ratios stay the same. It's more of a timing throughout the day thing. So when we launch a market originally, we're only open from about 4 pm til 12 am. And then as the store develops and we generate that demand, we end up at 10 am til 1 am. And so you can imagine, in the morning, we have low staffing, because that's - not a ton of demand exists here. And then as the day ramps up, we peak at about 11 pm when we may have five or six delivery people working. And then it kind of ramps down a little bit over time.

Neal: Interesting.

Elizabeth: I'll give you some unsolicited advice on the personnel thing, because I actually think that's the part that's the hardest about this business. It's, I think, harder than other - hiring people of course is always hard. But I think it's especially hard in this business, because you have people coming and going, you know, some people devoted to school, other people not so devoted to school. Students have never worked before. You have all these variables. And then you're doing this all remotely across campuses. After you raise this round, I would really recommend that, you know, if you're not already doing this, you as the CEO like fly to every location and really spend time, and even potentially like hire somebody to do sort of a 360 with the existing teams, just to make sure you have all of those down pat and operating like machines. And as you expand, like, to these 11 other locations, obviously everyone always wants to step on the gas pedal, but I - I would be a little bit cautious in how you step on the gas pedal, because it's really easy to - to mess up.

Chase: Overextend. For sure. Thank you. So just one thing I'll speak to on the Envoy Now piece, because I think that you're absolutely right to be kind of pulling from those learnings and pattern matching. One significant advantage that I see is that we're actually using W2 labor. Even though it's part time, I - I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Envoy Now was kind of using impromptu 1099 student labor, like, hey, I got a notification, oh, this person wants me to bring a granola bar from this place on campus to the other place. That's very different from how we operate. You know, we're staffing and scheduling people weeks in advance. And so we do eliminate a little bit of that friction, but I think you're spot on in your feedback. Thank you.

Mark: I'm gonna have to be a pass as well, which makes me sad, because you came in here with just incredible passion and control of your business, and it deserves to grow, and it will, inevitably, right. It doesn't have anything to do with our opinions or decisions. So I'm a pass as well. I just wanna encourage you to think through, as you bring on investors, I mean, the business strikes me as one that - capital infusion is great, but it will - you have got something here, right. And it will grow with or without that capital infusion, and I think the hyperlocal nature of it, and not growing too fast, is actually what's going to make it most dynamic. Right. So even as you consider what those term sheets look like, just hold on to that perspective that you had in growing it over the last couple years, because I think that's what makes it unique.

Chase: Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Mark: Yeah. Thanks for being here.

Chase: Yeah. Of course.

Neal: Yeah, I'm unfortunately gonna have to pass too. Super impressed but I just keep getting hung up on the valuation, which is unfortunate. Because also I have this feeling, it's like, you know, what does it really come in at? Let's see what those terms sheets come at. And let's talk if it's different. But that - everything else is like, this is super interesting. It's just that blaring number out there that says - these numbers just don't match. But obviously, I've looked at business in other places like this, so if I can be helpful in connecting you to other founders who are doing this to share notes. What's the one that's happening at UC Santa Barbara? There's a version of this there. 

Chase: Um. I think - Starship?

Neal: Yeah. Starship. I looked at them.

Chase: Yeah. They're using the delivery robots. Yeah.

Neal: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, congrats. Sorry that I have to pass here but -

Chase: No. No worries.

Neal: - if terms change when actual sheets actually come in, you know, I think I'd be interested to look if they're lower.

Chase: Okay. Great. Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it.

[thank yous]

Paige: That darn valuation.

Neal: I know. It's just high. Especially for a GMV - 

Mark: How do you think about valuations as a function of GMV versus actual take home?

Paige: Well, I feel like I look at the businesses that I've done at that valuation in the past, and they've had much higher revenue.

Mark: Yes. For sure. 

Paige: That was at least how I think about it.

Josh: Why were you not investing?

Mark: It just operates - yeah, I realize I didn't get to it. So I mean, it's just off - it's off thesis for us in terms of what we're looking to put our money into. So a - food delivery and that space isn't something that we're focused on participating in.

Josh: Got it.

Mark: Sorry. I didn't articulate that. I realized.

Josh: No. It's fine.

Mark: Okay.

Josh: Cool. Elizabeth, I know you have to run, but any other last - just literally price for everyone except for Mark who doesn't like food delivery?

Elizabeth: It's really high.

Charles: I think he also needs people that will buy into what Mark said, which is this like patience. Like, I think he needs the right people with the right orientation.

Mark: I agree with that strongly. I don't think he needs to raise capital. Like I think it’s a good business.

Paige: I feel like there's a world in which he like takes cash on like a higher valuation and then gets pushed in the direction of like grow as fast as possible -

Mark: 100 %.

Paige: - and then that becomes -

Mark: That's why I'm like - and I don't know who these people are that he's raising - I mean, so - I'm sure they're great.

Elizabeth: Yeah. He's better off optimizing the campuses he has and really, you know, making them very cash efficient, huge revenue generators, before moving on to the next campus. But I feel like so many investors are fixated on, let's expand all these campuses.

Paige: As fast as possible.

Elizabeth: But that is not a way to necessarily grow the business. And I think people are worried about market share or whatever. It’s been how many years since Envoy Now has started. I think there's plenty of time.

Charles: Yeah.

Josh: So you think like the 10k a month in cash profit that he's spinning out from each of his locations, like, that's not efficient enough?

Elizabeth: Yeah. I think he can probably improve SKUs.

Paige: Yeah, that's now. And they’ve done $300k to date.

Elizabeth: He can grow more business on each campus. He can really make sure he has the right people in place, add more process and tech to make the - just improve the unit economics on each of the campuses he currently has.

Josh: So you don't think speed as defensibility is super important in this business?

Elizabeth: Not - 

Mark: I don't -

Paige: I feel like it's a different kind of speed. It's like optimization speed for making the best product possible at the four campuses and then scaling up.

Mark: Well, but, Elizabeth's points around personnel are huge. I don't think speed leads to quality personnel, either. You have to establish yourself on the campus and find the best individuals to work with. So.

Josh: All right.

Mark: Super impressive guy. Again, great control of the business.

Charles: Thank you sir. 

Mark: So. Well done -

Elizabeth: Yeah, you guys picked a lot of great companies.

Paige: You guys pick great companies.

[applause]

Josh: Thank you.

Mark: What were we today? Three for six? Four for six?

Josh: Yeah. Just depends on what happens with Bevz.

Charles: We'll see.

Josh: And we got I guess angel checks in this one, potentially.

Charles: We'll see.

Elizabeth: Potentially.

Josh: Cool.

[byes and thanks]

Charles: Thanks for having us.

Mark: It's a wrap. That's what they say in the business.

Josh: Thank you for spending the time with us.

And thanks to Rich Smith for providing the tequila shots that the investors took moments before that pitch. 

Chase walked out of the pitch room with angel commitments from Elizabeth and Paige. But before either of them could write the check, Chase sent an email that made the whole deal fly off the handle.

That’s coming up after this.

BREAK 

Welcome back to the longest episode of The Pitch ever. Right after we recorded, we got an email from Chase saying he was pausing his fundraise because of, quote, “existential risks to the business.”

After looking up the word “existential,” I thought to myself, “this doesn’t sound good at all!”

A few months later, we caught up with Chase to see what exactly went down.

Josh: Chase, what's going on? I hear some stuff has happened. 

Chase: Yes, it's been a interesting time. Essentially right after we recorded, literally in the days following, there's a big regulatory change that happens in our industry. And overnight our insurance cost 10x’s 

Josh: Oh no Does it have to do with serving alcohol to minors in college? 

Chase: No, no, it actually has to do with labor classification in the context of all of the litigation happening relative to Uber, Lyft. Instacart

Josh: Ohhhhh yes

Chase: These big gig economy companies, we are kind of the, the small afterthought that was also impacted by these changes. 

Josh: Yeah 

Chase: Logistically speaking this meant, we need to have coverage for things like, hey what if one of our drivers hits somebody’s car? What if a car hits one of our drivers? So we have to get different policies for all of these different risk factors and getting all of those policies set up, given that we’re doing something that the insurance companies are like, we’ve never seen this before, just took a very long time. And their gut reaction is, hey we’ve never seen this before, so we’re just going to charge you an insane amount

Josh: yes yes yes of course 

Chase: um This poses this huge threat to our model. And obviously I'm not going to accept funds into the company if I think that there's risk here. So I reach out to all the investors we were raising, because we were going to raise a, large round at the time, and we actually had term sheets coming in 

Chase: and I said, Hey guys, let's pause while we figure out what the future looks like in regards to this developing situation. 

Josh: uh huh 

Chase: we have literally just come to resolution on these issues in the past 2 and a half weeks. 

Josh: Okay, so in the end, your insurance costs are not 10X what they were.

Chase: No, no, they're not prohibitive to the model in any way. 

Josh: Well, that's good. I mean, in the email you sent me, I have to admit, I was like, Oh, man, it sounds like literally someone decided that college students can't deliver to other college students or something. Like, it was, it sounded devastating. 

Chase: It did feel like -

Josh: In the way you describe it now, it sounds like I don't know. A day at the office. 

Chase: I think being a founder a day at the office is cataclysmic in many, in many ways.

Josh: Fair. 

Chase: This looked really scary the first two weeks.

Chase: And In the middle of all of this tumultuous period we get an acquisition offer as well -

Josh: What?!

Chase: from a big company in the industry. It was mostly a talent deal. So they wanted my team's experience to come in and help them build a similar product internally. 

Josh: Did you have any conversations with existing investors about this acquisition? 

Chase: Oh yeah. 

Josh: Did they want you to go through with it? 

Chase: No 

Chase: I think we all kind of felt that it wasn’t the best outcome. But if I was 1% leaning towards it, they were certainly less excited than I was. Ultimately we decided like, Hey, there's not that much incentive for us to do this. And we have enough confidence in ourselves that we can continue to run this on our own. 

Josh: Right

Josh: If you would have taken this offer, what would that have meant for you and your founding team?

Chase: There's a funny analogy that I've heard used in founder circles, which is, is it car changing money? Is it house changing money or is it life changing money? I like that. This was definitely in the first category. It wouldn't have been a huge financial outcome for anyone involved. 

Josh: So then did you go back out and restart the fundraise? 

Chase: So a couple of days ago we sent out an email to a number of angels that were interested in the company over different points in the life cycle and said, Hey, We're going to open up a quick $350,000 extension. And if you're interested, it's a hundred K minimum. Just let us know. Within three days, the whole thing was filled. 

Chase: And then sometime in the next six to eight months, we're going to open up and do a 2 million round. 

Josh: Ok! 

Chase: Really the next six months for us are dialing in the economics as much as possible so that when we go to do that 2 million round, we have great terms, all of our investors feel super confident going into it because I personally don't enjoy the fundraising process. I think the better your company looks, the quicker you can close the round and the faster you can go back to building. 

Josh: Yeah. would you describe like fundraising as a necessary evil? 

Chase: I would never describe fundraising as necessary in the context of just building a business in general. I actually think most people probably shouldn't fundraise. I think most businesses that are fundraising probably shouldn't fundraise. but if you want to be a high growth startup, then fundraising is just part of the game. 

Josh: Right.

Chase: But you got to show love to the small business owners that are just making it work without any VC money.

Josh: Yes. This conversation is sponsored by Amex business cards. Sorry. This is like literally the thing you just said right there is their talking points for their ads. 

Chase: There you go. I'll, I'll give you something. What's really been empowering for us building the company is how much Amex has been able to support our growth. We've been able to work - just do an ad read for you. 

Josh: Oh Chase, you're making this so fun. Have you thought about reaching back out to Elizabeth and Paige and including them in this round? 

Chase: The objective of this round was just to get capital quickly from friendly faces, essentially. So people that we wouldn't have to go through full due-diligence and, you know, go do 12 pitch meetings with them.

Josh: Okay. I have to stop you. Lisa's like freaking out. She's like, what the heck? I'm a friendly face. Why didn't you call us? 

Chase: Lisa is a friendly face. That's, you know, this is my mistake. So if you guys want allocation, I would be happy to give it to you. I love the pitch show and you guys have been with me through some tumultuous times. So you earned some street cred there. 

Josh: Five months. Five months.

Chase: Five difficult months, I will add. So we could definitely have a conversation about that, but I would be obviously happy to have the pitch show involved.

Josh: That would be, that would be super cool. I would like to also go to bat for my friends, Paige and Elizabeth. Because I like investing alongside them. 

Chase: Paige and Elizabeth will 100 percent have allocation when we raise this next round in the next like six months. But like I said, the objective over the last week was, Hey, let's get capital in quickly. So we can focus on just building the business for a little bit.

Josh: Okay. So you left USC to build this company. Any plans to go back and finish school? 

Chase: Yeah, I will graduate. I just do my classes part time online. It's a very laid back situation. I'm actually going to graduate in uh July. 

Josh: Oh!

Chase: But the school is like 5 percent of my time.

Josh: How many credit hours are you taking right now? 

Chase: [laughs] 20 right now. 

Josh: What? How is 20 credit hours 5 percent of your time? 

Chase: I, I do school very quickly. It's kind of, uh, one of my hidden talents is I just get my schoolwork done really quickly. I also don't. Okay, sorry to my mom because I know she's going to listen to this episode. I don't care about my grades at all. I just optimize for passing classes, getting credits to move my degree forward. So when you're generally good at school and you also generally don't care about the grade, you can really optimize your time. Uh. With the confluence of those two factors. 

Josh: Sorry, mom. Oh my goodness Are you having fun though? Or are you just fun when, whenever we talk? 

Chase: Mmmm I'm always having fun. It's a blessing to be able to do this. I mean, the fact that we're having conversations about hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, and I'm 22 years old, is frankly ludicrous to anyone outside of the startup environment. 

Josh: mhm

Chase: And we all get so numb to it because we just throw millions of dollars around. But, it could disappear tomorrow through no fault of our own. So just being grateful for the experience is really important Obviously, I'm not happy all the time, but I think joyful is a better word to describe it. Like, I'm joyful for the fact that I'm doing what I'm doing. 

Josh: That you even get to play this game. 

Chase: Of course, yeah. So many people can't. So many people will never have the opportunity to, despite the fact that they really want to. And could probably do a great job. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Chase: So, company fail or company succeed. You have to be grateful for the fact that you got to try.

Gratitude… before I learned I learned to be grateful for what I have in life, my life was in shambles. That’s why I created The Pitch gratitude journal. Available only at pitch.vibes/thankful 

Chase: You have like 100 subdomains. Go to pitch.show/text

Josh: [laughs voraciously]

Chase: Go to pitch.fund. Go to pitch.app. 

Josh: Ok I’m hanging up right now

[sigh] I just love getting roasted on my own podcast. I think when Chase is done with Handle he’s coming for my job.

If you liked hearing the full unedited pitch and want to hear more just like that, let me know, I’m at josh@thepitch.show.

Season 10 is a wrap but we will be back. February 2024.

But to all the angel investors and VCs listening, you can join us at the LIVE recording of The Pitch season 11. This January in Miami! You’ll get to meet our next batch of founders months before they appear on the show. We have a few VIP spots still remaining.

Just go to one of our many subdomains to learn more. thepitchevent.com

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This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Kerrianne Thomas, Anna Ladd, and Enoch Kim with casting help from Peter Liu

Music in today’s show is from Our Many Stars, Onders, Snack Attack, Serene Sloth, Breakmaster Cylinder, and The Muse Maker.

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The Pitch, Inc. and their respective employees and affiliates do not provide investment advice or make investment recommendations. The information provided on this show should not be used as the basis for making investment decisions. Listeners should conduct their own research and consult with their own investment advisors before making any investment decisions.