#131 Flock AI: Model Generated Models

Pitch 4 [clap]

The year is 2024 and everyone is trying to incorporate AI into… everything! Imagine a future where you don’t have to write your own emails, buy your own groceries, or watch your own dog… maybe AI could just replace you entirely.

Today’s founder, Vita, is taking us one step closer to that future. Her company Flock creates AI models. As in, fashion and beauty models, not computer models. So that when you’re online shopping, you can actually see how things would look on someone like you. These lifelike models have your skin tone, your height, your body shape… 

Sounds equal parts useful and creepy. But Vita can’t be the only one bringing AI to e-commerce. So how will the investors evaluate whether this AI startup is the one to walk the runway with?

I’m Josh Muccio, welcome to The Pitch. Where real founders pitch real investors for real money.

Let’s meet the investors.

Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund

Elizabeth: Do you love the problem you're working on?

Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures

Charles: I wish that had been your open. That was so good.

Pascal Unger with Focal VC

Pascal: That’s I think how you have a chance, outside of just raising a boatload of money

Beck Bamberger with Bad Ideas Group

Beck: [slaps table] I gotta start my muffin business.

And Mac Conwell with Rare Breed Ventures

Mac: As a unicorn hunter, I want to see every unicorn. 

Real quick, if you’re not following the show already, hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. The pitch for Flock AI is coming up after this!

[break]

Beck: Hello!

[hellos]

Charles: How are you?

Vita: Good. Good. How are you?

Charles: Good. 

Vita: So, hi everyone. I'm Vita. I am the cofounder and CEO of Flock AI. My cofounder and I have never been represented when shopping online. We've never been able to just go to the product page, look at the model imagery, and say, yeah, this is going to work for my skin tone or my height or my body shape. And this lack of representation in ecommerce drives down conversion rate, leads to a higher return rate, and is a problem for both consumers and brands. I've seen it first hand on the brand side too, having worked in years at Walmart, Bloomingdales, Jet.com. We spent millions and millions each year on photo shoots, but were never able to visually represent every single shopper, and always struggled with content. This is where Flock comes in. We're a B2B SAAS AI offering that completely takes over beauty and fashion brands' visual content needs. We finally make it possible for them to merchandise their products on diverse models at scale, hyper-personalize the imagery that each user sees, and optimize their conversion by tracking their visual insights and reacting in real time. In just six months, we've launched our MVP, which was built by my cofounder and CTO Malavika. We've also launched with three pilot partners, and they've seen up to 10x cost savings compared to a photo shoot, and they've also seen over a 30% increase in conversion rate with our diverse model imagery. In just the last few weeks alone, we've signed LOIs of over 50k and have built a pipeline of over a million with no paid marketing spend. We’ve both dropped out of Wharton Business School and we're building our startup full time, and we're now raising a million and a half to accelerate our technology and to grow our team. We're excited for you to join us in a future where online experiences are just as diverse as the human population.

Mac: Hi Vita.

Vita: Hello.

Mac: Pleasure to meet you. Thank you for that. So the product basically takes product photos and creates I'm assuming AI-generated images of diverse individuals wearing these products. So whether it be color, gender, size, as well? Okay.

Vita: Yes. And I have a few samples, if you would like to see.

[yes!]

Beck: Cos you said diverse model imagery and I'm -

Vita: Yes.

Beck: Is that AI-generated?

Vita: It's fully AI-generated.

Beck: Got it.

Vita: We made it really simple for the brands to work with us. This is a big learning from my time in retail where we can't have them having to do complex things like 3D model their clothing or digitize the product on their own. So we entirely take them over for them, create all the model imagery, fully made with AI. 

Elizabeth: Hmm 

Josh: Charles, can you describe what you're seeing?

Charles: Yeah. It's really - it's pretty cool. It looks like your normal beauty site with like up close - I'm looking at lips - a lip product here. So it's got some up close pictures of lips in lipstick with different skin tones, different nose shapes. Pretty wide variety. 

Vita: Yep. And there's another tab for Minori Beauty. She's a smaller brand. She didn't have any personalization tools. So we did a full beauty quiz for her. Based on your skin tone, your age, how you like to wear your make up, we change out the model imagery that you see first.

Charles: Is that animated one, is that AI-generated too?

Vita: So, we don't do videos yet.

Charles: Okay. I was gonna say, that would be cool.

Elizabeth: That would be so cool

Vita: It's in the product timeline. 

Elizabeth: Are all of your warmest leads like skin products? Or other things too?

Vita: Yeah, so I have deeper connections in the beauty space, which is why we started there. I'd say right now the mix is about 60% beauty, 40% fashion. 

Pascal: We'd love to hear you talk about this. The industry is moving incredibly fast. Things get commoditized almost on a weekly basis. I read the other day that a bunch of famous athletes got caught DMing an AI model on Instagram that doesn't really exist and they didn't notice it. Where do you guys fit in in a space that's moving this fast. 

Vita: Yeah. So what's really cool about the tech is we are building in-house models. This is not just a wrapper off of like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion. There's three parts to the tech. One, is the actual model creation. The basis is Stable Diffusion, but we have our own algos on top of it for lighting aesthetics, demographics, posing. The second part is the actual digitization of the product information. This is not something that anybody has solved. And what's really cool is the visual analytics part of it, it's something really unique to us. So now you can finally understand and test what model demographics are doing well, what types of posing, what types of merchandising. Can I show a different model wearing a coat to somebody shopping from, you know, a cold state versus somebody with heels with that dress for a warm state. Finally possible to test all of this out and to change in a matter of just minutes and hours, rather than weeks and months.

Elizabeth: Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. I like that. I think the flipside that I want to know more about is how do you land these brands in the first place, especially since a lot of the bigger ones are notoriously slow.

Vita: Yeah. So the type of brands that we've spoken to for these LOIs, they're doing less than 5 million in sales, but they're willing to spend 10, 12k contract values with us. So when you look at these larger brands, brands that are spending, you know, 200 million in revenue, they're spending about 3, 4 million on photoshoots. And that's where these annual contract values come in of 300, 400k, where we're providing them significant um cost savings. Once one of your competitors uses it too. The only way to stay competitive is to utilize the tech.

Elizabeth: Can you talk more about your customers and these LOIs? Like, like what kind of pricing are you talking about with them?

Vita: They're average like 10 to 12k contract values for about a thousand to 1,500 images. This is our lowest tier that we're looking at starting with. And it would pretty much take over the smaller brands, you know, probably 80 to 90% of their photoshoot needs for the year. 

Beck: I'm curious just from - this is more of an existential question - of right now, it could be trendy or it could be the thing to have like all these AI-generated models that are diverse which the fashion industry has a tremendous problem with casting even real people that are diverse, so there's a lot of backlash on that.

Vita: Yes.

Beck: What's the - five years from now, is there a swing back to like, oh, we actually need to use real people because we're all now tired of looking at perfect but clearly AI people. 

Vita: Yeah. So when I was at Walmart, we actually acquired a tool internally called Z Kit*. This was a couple years ago. You do not have to reveal that they are AI models. And I saw how much the company struggled with to actually onboard the tool, digitize the product, put the personalization out for each customer. And I was like, Walmart can do this because we have these millions of dollars, tech teams. 

Beck: Sure.

Vita: But other brands need this tech and they can't do it. But they've been using this tech for years. They started with about 50 models per SKU, they've now gone to over 200 models a SKU because more people are trying to find more models that look like them, see it on them before they purchase. And there's already proven case studies of how this has longevity and they're actually I think going into like male models and stuff now too.

Beck: Yeah, yeah 

Pascal: The - I'd imagine the hesitancy of brands to use AI models has come down meaningfully -

Vita: Yes.

Pascal: - over the last 12 to 24 months, given everything that's happening. What's the biggest kind of pushback or hesitation folks have to overcome when you talk to them for the first time?

Vita: Yeah. So I think in terms of AI models, brands will never be able to show a average customer working with modeling agencies. They have certain height and weight restrictions, so 5'9", size 0, or like 5'9" and taller in size 12. To be able to show your 5'2" size 6, size 8 customer will never happen through a modeling agency. So that's like one key learning for brands. The other thing is, in terms of like utilizing AI models itself, Walmart has done it. And it's something that has worked really well for them. And I really believe that this is the only way that you can actually scale up to show all of these diverse model images. There's just no other way to be able to do it in a scalable solution without using AI. 

Beck: Hm, It's an existential question for modeling agencies. Because besides walking down a runway, what are you doing?

Elizabeth: Yeah, modeling might go away.

Of all the industries AI was supposed to disrupt this year, modeling was not on my radar. Can Vita convince the VCs that AI models are in vogue? That’s coming up after this

[break]

Welcome back to the pitch for Flock AI. The investors are intrigued by Vita’s AI model generated models. But they want to know about her business model too. Here’s Pascal.

Pascal: So you're raising 1.5. Can you just give us how much has been raised, what are you looking to raise that at? 

Vita: So really letting the lead set the round - terms. We have received funding from MBA Fund and Dorm Room Fund in the last actually four weeks. So and we have soft committed about 250k, but the lead opportunity is still open for the round. 

Mac: In an ideal world, what would you like the terms to be? 

Vita: In this market, like, I think it just makes sense to really let the lead set the terms. But some of the things that we've seen is -

Mac: What if I told you I wanted to be the lead. What kind of terms do you want?

Vita: Oh. Okay. No, I'd be really excited about that.

Mac: But what kind of terms do you want?

Vita: So we're not -

[laughter]

Mac: This is a serious question -

Vita: Yeah, yeah. So we're not - we're looking to keep it around 7 and a half, 8 million post money, basically. 

Mac: Gotcha. Okay. 

Beck: Why are you calling it Flock? 

Vita: So a little bit of background. We originally started a B2C app that was still focused on the problem of how do you help customers understand if products will work for you, on your skin tone, or your body shape, or your body height. And you could go there, take a beauty quiz, I could match with another, you know, Indian American mid-20s with my skin tone, see the like product she used, how it looked on her and shop. And we called it Flock because it's like, you know, birds of a feather flock together. Find your flock on the flock app and be able to shop that way. So we kept that name, but open to changing it. 

Elizabeth: So here are my thoughts. I think - I mean, so one actually I really like how you can synthesize information pretty quickly and make changes, such as a pivot. I think that's always very commendable. Many people can not execute on that for a whole variety of reasons. It's hard, right? And so I like this angle. I like where you're going with it. I like, you know, how the moat can be built. I feel like the valuation for where you are is a little bit pricey. Like, you're kind of at that cusp -

Mac: She says she would let the lead figure it out. I just asked her for her ideal -

[laughter]

Elizabeth: No, no, no. But I - hold on! I'd be open to investing 50k at 6 post on a safe, and we are fast. And that can be ahead of the round, as a small tranche, you know, before that. Because I think it would be very valuable to you to really have like a concrete, what I call a complete loop of - we have a customer who is paying and this is how we go and rinse and repeat this. To get you to that next level. 

Vita: That is something that honestly we're very open to chatting about. Would love to bring my cofounder into the talks too, if that works for you.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 

Vita: Perfect. 

Beck: I'm out. Retail tech - we've worked with. Not the space I love. But I'd like to see more in traction, so keep me posted.

Vita: Absolutely. Thank you.

Mac: So, I'm out, but mainly because I'm too close to this.

Vita: Okay.

Mac: Right. So I - I worked in the consumer retail space, I had a startup in this space, and what I've seen over the last decade is even for the ones that do well, for products like this one, we haven't seen the exit values for these type of companies, right. They're not getting - not enough of them are getting to that billion dollar level. Right? So do I think this could be a really successful company? I really do. I'm really impressed by you. I'm really impressed by your team and what you've been able to do with little. I plan to follow Flock, or whatever the ultimate name is, but today, I'm out. Mainly because I think you'll do well, but I don't know if your exit value gets to be as high as you would like.

Vita: Thank you.

Charles: Go ahead. Please.

Pascal: So definitely second being impressed by you. Also, congratulations on leaving your MBA. I do think you learn so much more in the real world -

[laughter]

Beck: Yessss. Yes.

Pascal: So that's awesome. If I could go back to my 18 year old self, I'd probably tell it not to do university but just go and do stuff.

Beck: Also that.

Pascal: And so, I am out for two reasons. One, retail tech and specifically what you're doing is quite a crowded space. Like, I've seen a bunch of pitches that have tried different angles of what you're trying to solve, And the other one, Elizabeth mentioned moat. I am worried about the commoditization of everything in around image generation, because the space is moving so fast. And So those are the reasons why I'm out.

Vita: Got it. Thank you. Yeah.

Charles: We're in a slightly different place. We have someone who was an EIR at our firm who was doing something similar but for product imagery. 

Vita: Is it Booth?

Charles: No. It's called Imagine Create, which also probably won't be the final name. But same thing. And I've learned two things. One, I still have some reservations about the deflationary impact. I mean, this is so much cheaper than live, which is the attraction. My current thesis is it's going to be very deflationary and the customers are going to want to recoup and claw back a big chunk of that savings. And now the question is does that cut the price in half? Does it cut the price by 90% So I'm still trying to figure out like what, where does that sort of tug of war between customer value and vendor value land? And for me, a lot of the AI investments I make, it's really like value capture for the service provider and like how much of that savings can you keep for yourself versus will get negotiated away by the customer. 

Charles: But for today, I'm a pass.

Vita: Yep. Just a quick add on to that, so one of the companies, 200 million in sales, they're about to spend 3 to 4 million on photoshoots.

Charles: Yeah. 

Pascal: The thing is, you anchor it on last year's price. Right if you spend 3 to 4 million on it this year, and the next year you spend 100k, then eventually 100k becomes expensive and then if you can get it for 10k - so that's I think what he's referring to.

[agreement noises]

Beck: That’s the deflationary bit.

Vita: I think that's -

Elizabeth: Go ahead. Please.

Vita: What's really cool is the rest of the tech. Cos we're not just an image creator; we are their visual commerce partner. So no other tech will you be able to see, okay, can I test out merchandising this dress in ten different ways, understand what's actually going to resonate with my customer and start creating more diverse models merchandised in that way. Or when I was at, you know, Bloomingdale's, I always wanted to see, okay, for my emails, could I put in two models or could I put in a different model or a model smiling versus serious. Like, none of that was possible, cos they'd say, give me four months to go reshoot, and give you content. So I think that is where we get that upward pricing opportunity, because we're a SAAS offering, not just a cost cutting opportunity for these brands.

Pascal: Yeah, and that -

Elizabeth: And that's what I love. Because the wedge is cost cutting, but the upsell is analytics. It’s basically, if you had walked Optimizely ten years forward in an ideal world, that's this. 

Beck: Thank you.

[thank yous] 

[applause]

Beck: How we doing? Ah! Applause. I like the applause. 

Mac: She's smart. Smart tech. Smart company. There's a bunch of people trying to play in that space, doing similar things. 

Josh: You hate competitive markets.

Mac: I don't hate competitive markets, but if you're gonna be in a competitive market, you have to be significantly better than your competitors. And even -

Pascal: The bar is just much higher -

Mac: Yeah, but even then could I see one of the big ecommerce platforms buying this up, or even the large marketing firms like, hey, we're going to embed this in? Or Walmart's making a huge push in tech Could I see that? Sure. But do I see any of them buying this at a billion? Billion plus? That - that's the biggest struggle for me.

Josh: What do you think, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth: It's so funny because I think Mac is thinking about it definitely in terms of image generation, and I almost don't see it as image generation at all. I love sort of interesting analytics plays, because retention is pretty high in that you are not judged based on performance. Unlike - ah - marketing tech or sales tech or any of that, like, you're tied to performance, except for analytics. Right? Nobody gets rid of Google Analytics, Optimizely or whatever, because it showed you bad results.

Josh: Right.

Elizabeth: They always need you, actually, even when you have bad results. So I love those kinds of plays, and I very much see this as an analytics play where, all right, the wedge is, we'll help you generate these images. But Like, this is very much a SAAS tool. This is not an image generation play, unlike many of the things I tend to see come through my desk. 

Mac: I will say, when she mentioned the analytics, that was the one time I was like - that's interesting.

Pascal: I'm a bit skeptical on the image generation space as a whole. I do worry about that there's just way too much happening and that it gets commoditized too quickly for them to get off the ground in a meaningful way.

Beck: And when do we get to the next point which is like, forget AI generated models. No, I just want to see me in my most fabulous form, with the thing on my skin and - so everywhere I walk and every billboard I see is like`, ooh, there's me with that thing on.

Elizabeth: There's me.

[laughter]

Beck: Oh, that looks, oh okay -

Mac: And there are companies working on that.

Beck: Tap. Tap. Boom. And now we're done with AI generated modeling. Forget the modeling agencies. It's just me in a perfected form with all the things. 

Josh: Every website you go on is just you on the website.

[crosstalk]

Elizabeth: Actually there is data showing that people don't like that. They would much rather see somebody more beautiful.

Josh: That would freak me out.

Beck: Aspirational.

Elizabeth: Yeah. It's aspirational. No, I'm serious.

Josh: No, that checks out.

Beck: - pitched me the AI company that's like we're gonna just make you the aspiration. You want to be two inches taller, you want longer hair, you want it color -

Josh: But then that would just remind me of how inferior I am.

[laughter]

Beck: That’s okay! Images - perception is reality. So if you then can - I don't know. I just - the speed at which this generation - 

Josh: Okay, so then I need the mirror, every mirror I look into, also give me this view of myself.

Pascal: That's what all the filters are for, right.

Beck: That's what all the filters for. 

Josh: I don't like this world. 

Beck: And is it a Gen Z consumer who's like, no, no, no, I want the real thing. So like, I just want to see me in the real clothes -

Mac: I think we got like 10 or 15 years before people start the backlash.

Beck: Okay. But that's what I'm thinking about though is where is that next thing. Because the piece that really bothers me on this is just the fickleness of the consumer. That's why I touched a little bit about the -

Mac: Existential -

Beck: The concern, yeah, just looking at images and feeling like everything -

Josh: Yeah, but if Walmart's been doing this for years -

Beck: I know. I know. But that bugs me.

Josh: - and the user doesn't even know.

Elizabeth: The user don't - will not know

Beck: I don't. But I don't even like that I don't know, so how do I know.

Elizabeth: I mean, how do you know that what you're looking at today is real?

Mac: You don't!

Beck: I don't!

Mac: How do you any of this is real? We're in the Matrix.

[crosstalk]

Josh: Oh shoot.

Pascal: The difference is I think Walmart invested a lot of money at a time when very few people were doing it, but now the technology's gotten so commoditized to a degree that a lot of people can do it. And so eventually, similar with every content creation tool, eventually we're gonna - there's gonna be too much of it out there and things are going to change. 

Josh: There's gonna be too much model generation so there'll be a backlash and we'll stop using it?

Pascal: To a certain degree. Or that's where potentially you want to see yourself -

Josh: But if you can't tell it's there, even if you know it -

Elizabeth: I don't think that's - like, if I had to pick out issues, that would not be in my top ten.

Pascal: I don't know, like. 

Beck: Let's see what happens.

Josh: I would not bet on the consumer stopping buying anything.

Pascal: Yeah, no, that - definitely not. 

Elizabeth: And I would not bet on people wanting uglier people in their ads.

Pascal: Meaning looking at yourself, right

[laughter] 

Pascal: Fantastic one. Thank you.

Josh: You guys have been so good, you get to eat now. We'll feed you now.

Pascal: Was that a question?

No investors were starved in the making of this podcast. 

So Vita walked out of the pitch room with a 50k commitment from Elizabeth Yin. And she was ready to move fast. But then Vita’s round started to move even faster. Maybe too fast…

Elizabeth: She's got so many people hovering over her, like, I'm not even counting that one yet. Cause she hasn't signed, it's not a done deal, everyone's offering her money now 

When we come back, Vita gets a term sheet from a lead, and the fight for allocation begins. That’s coming UP

[break]

Welcome back! 

In the weeks following Vita’s pitch, all the AI investors came out to play, and Vita got a term sheet. So we had a lot to catch up on… but first -

Josh: I'm curious, like, what do you remember about? Your pitch on the show.

Vita: It was a blur. [laughs]

Josh: Really?

Vita: Yeah. Yeah. It was a blur. I totally like mixed up the timings and ran to the studio and was like, just, sweating and panting and took five minutes to compose myself. You guys were so kind to give me a few extra minutes But I, as were talking about the details, that's what I love. That's like the product that I'm building. So then I got a lot more comfortable Um, and then I love the feedback that everyone gave. 

Josh: Vita on the show, Elizabeth wanted to be the first check in your round. And it sounded like she was ready to move quickly. You had your first call with her, I think, two weeks after your pitch. What do you remember from that call? 

Vita: Yeah Elizabeth’s super efficient. we went through the demo a bit more, um, so she could get an idea of what the experience would look like for brands that were onboarding, pretty straightforward by the end of it. we committed to the same terms that we had during the pitch and then we, we were ready to go 

Josh: Uh huh after that call, you got another email from Elizabeth that said she wanted to increase her investment from 50,000 to 150,000. Do you know why she tripled her investment? 

Vita: So what happened is we had a basically a 10, 15 minute call set up where you have to confirm your wiring info. And during it, she basically was like, Oh, any other updates? Like, how's it going? and I told her about the term sheet. so an investor that we have been speaking to for a couple months uhh … 

Josh: And you can't say who? 

Vita: I - we're in final diligence now. So if we can like round out - 

Josh: Oh, you don't, it's not signed yet.

Vita: Yes. Yes. It's, the term sheet is signed, but we haven't signed the safe, money hasn't been wired yet. 

Josh: You just don't want to jinx it. 

Vita: Yeah. Just like waiting for everything to flow out

Josh: Ok

Vita: But they came in with a 900k investment. 

Josh: Oh, wow. At the same six mil post. 

Vita: Yes, that's correct. 

Josh: Okay. 

Vita: Yeah, we're going after one and a half. So there was, you know, about 400k left in the round after they've come in. So that's kind of where, Elizabeth's check is coming in And she basically said like, you know, happy to put in another a hundred K if that's something that makes sense for your round. So we're figuring out round dynamics to see if we want to take that full 150k or kinda move forward with the 50k that was initially proposed. But, that's, that's how it led to that. 

Josh: Okay, got it. Yeah, 900,000 for your lead investor on a six mil post, that's really high. Like that doesn't leave much room for others.

Vita: Yes, that's correct. Yes. Elizabeth almost like pretty much set the valuation like two weeks before right? And I think she's made a big impact just being able to say like, look at who's backing us, who believes in us. it's just. This lead has taken up so much of the round and we really want to have strategic fits that are consumer investors, have these brands that we're going after in their portfolio. So we're just figuring out some of the round dynamics, um, with some additional investments that have been committed to. So even there, people are getting squeezed out just because the lead came in with such a, um, like big chunk of the round 

Josh: Yeah so, I mean, Elizabeth’s 150K may be on the line is what you're saying. 

Vita: We definitely want her 50K for sure. That is like A OK. We're just figuring out the rest of the round dynamics for the additional 100K. 

Josh: So you got 900 K from your lead 

Vita: Mhm 

Josh: 50k from Elizabeth

Vita: Yes

Josh: maybe 150k. 

Vita: mhm

Josh: Anybody else involved that you're excited about? 

Vita: umm we also got David from F4 Fund who I met at the pitch, event

Josh: Really?

Vita: Uh, yeah, yeah. 

Josh: David Kaye? 

Vita: Yes. Yeah. We met there, kept in touch and, um, he also wants to be a part of the round 

Josh: So David's one of the VIPs that we invited, uh, to join us in Miami. 

Vita: Ah, I love that

Josh: That's really, really cool. How much is his fund investing? 

Vita: So again, flexing, the same thing as Hustle Fund, where we're looking at how 

Josh: Nuh uh, he wants to invest more?

Vita: Yeah. I'm like, this is great. I guess we're oversubscribed. Um, but yeah, he, he was looking at a hundred to maybe 250 So are we grateful, yes, that the round is finished. Absolutely. But I know that, you know, we're going to be back in it in a couple of years again. So that's also something in the back of our minds, right? As we move forward. So we get to build for a bit, but also this is something that's going to be a constant part of our experience of being founders. 

Josh: You know that song by John Mayer, never going to stop this train. 

Vita: Yes. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Josh: one of the VCs we had on our show years ago, Daniel Gulati, he, he likes to say raising money from VCs is a lot like that, like once you raise that money, you're on the fundraising train and you just get, you can't get off it till you sell.

Vita: Oh yes. Oh yes. I feel that deeply. But you know, with what we're building, what we wanted to do, this was the route that we needed to go down. So super excited about all the investors that have believed in us so far.

After that interview we found out, that indeed Elizabeth Yin was limited to investing only 50k, due to the aforementioned “round dynamics.”

Elizabeth’s early commitment caused a bit of a VC feeding frenzy. Suddenly everyone wanted a spot in Vita’s round.

And managing all that FOMO can get tricky. You have to keep everyone on the line without reeling them in until the very end. So who gets priority? The first people who believed in you, or the biggest check? 

Calling all angel investors and VCs! We will be in San Francisco this June. So If you want to be the first check in to season 12’s startups, you can! We have a small number of VIP spots available at the taping. And founders, if you want to build FOMO for your round, you can apply to pitch. Everything everyone needs to know is at thepitchevent.com

Also! The Pitch will be at Camp Hustle May 13th through 15th along with some of your favorite pitch investors like Cyan Banister, Charles Hudson, and Elizabeth Yin. Get tickets at CampHustle.co, no M, and be sure to join the breakout session led by our very own Lisa Muccio and casting director Peter Liu! 

Next week on The Pitch. We’re breaking form and introducing a new segment on our show, called The Exit.

Josh: You had your first exit at 18 years old, your second at 24, and then six months later you start another company. This one's called Shipt. 

And the company just exploded overnight.

Josh: And then you realize, all right, we need more money. So you went out to Sandhill Road? 

Bill: I'm not a West Coast type.

Bill: I didn't have a feel for the game, but I figured it out really fast. 

Josh: What did you think when he threw out the number? 

Bill: It is very easy to get distracted and excited and thinking about what you're going to do with your millions. 

Bill: I ran the company out of money 

Bill :I know my CFO and everybody was thinking, this is nuts. 

Josh: Oh, shipt.

Bill: [laughs] 

Josh: Do you have any regrets about Shipt? 

How Bill Smith, a high school dropout from Birmingham, Alabama started, scaled and sold his startup for $550M dollars in three years. That’s next week!

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This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, Enoch Kim, Jackie Papanier and Alma Langshaw. With casting help from Peter Liu and John Alvarez.

Music in this episode is by Strange Knight, Geocities, David Swenson, The Muse Maker, Wilson Trouve, and Breakmaster Cylinder

If you like hearing all the nitty gritty details of pitch, and you’d like to listen to all ten pitches from this season without any editing whatsoever? Well you’re in luck! Because we started a Patreon to give our biggest fans full access, from start to finish. Check it out at patreon.com/thepitch. 

The Pitch is made in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.