#144 Bridgefy

I’m Josh Muccio, this is The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. The pitch for Bridgefy is coming up right after this.

[clapper]

So here’s how the process normally goes behind the scenes. We have three rounds of interviews with founders before the show.

One with our scouting team, Peter and John, one with Lisa, my general partner and partner partner, and one final interview with me at the end.

But in casting for season 12, Lisa went rogue. And invited a founder on the show before I even had a chance to speak with him. 

Today we meet that special founder, Jorge Rios. He’s solving a critical problem. What happens when disaster strikes and the internet goes down? 

Today Jorge is pitching Cyan Banister

Cyan: Hi, Cyan. 

Josh: Hello. 

Charles Hudson

Charles: Hey, I'm Charles. Nice to meet you. 

Jorge: Josh.

Me, I’m back.

Josh: Hello, Jorge.

And Jesse Middleton

Jesse: Hey, Jesse. 

Jorge: How's everybody doing? 

Charles: Good. 

Jesse: Doing great. How are you? 

Jorge: Because you're not on the - at this end of the table.

[laughter] 

Jorge: Hello, everyone. My name is Jorge and I am founder of BridgeFy. Now, just a quick show of hands; who of you here have experience using the internet? Alright, everybody? Cool. Me too. I'm pretty good at it. I feel like we've gotten used to doing absolutely everything using the internet, right? Making payments, staying in touch with loved ones, playing games, getting educated. But what happens when we lose access to the internet? Our phones basically become really, really expensive paperweights. Whenever there's a situation like a natural disaster, or a very large event, or if it's a developing region, an underprivileged school, these are all situations in which we find ourselves without access to the internet. And 45 percent of smartphone owners worldwide do not have access to a data plan. That's billions of people. And so we build technology that makes any mobile app work without the internet. It's basically AirDrop for mobile apps. Our technology makes devices connect directly to each other using Bluetooth and wifi direct antennas, which are found on every single smart device nowadays. You don't need to install anything. You don't need any extra hardware. You don't need to jail break anything. The way that we get it on to millions of devices is that we license it to companies, organizations, governments, and they simply take our code, put it into their apps code, push an update. We all update, let's say WhatsApp. And now we can all use WhatsApp without needing an internet connection at all. Basically, if you send the message from this device to this one, your message can hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, and just cover humongous distances and an unlimited amount of devices. Our record is 180,000 devices using our technology at the same place at the same time. Without a single one needing access to the Internet. Without a single one. No exception, no small print. And so this is really useful for companies because it drives engagement by opening up these black holes in the market, right? So we license it to these companies and we bring these markets to life. We launched last January and so far we've gotten to 300k in revenue. We have a contract with one of the 15 largest cities in the world for $6,000,000 for the next four years. We have a paid pilot with Ford, paid pilot with the United Nations, and 22 smaller startup customers that have signed up since mid-February. Basically you're looking at the entirety of the BridgeFy sales team right now, and the demand is pretty high. And so we are fundraising so that we can accelerate and scale our growth and meet this demand and probably get to $10 million in revenue by this time next year. 

Josh: How much are you raising? 

Jorge: We're raising three million dollars. 

Cyan: What's your fundraising history to date? 

Jorge: Between pre seed and seed we raised four million. It's like a seed extension or seed plus.

Cyan: Okay.

Jesse: What was your background? What, what brought you to this problem? 

Jorge: I used to be a high school teacher in Mexico. I taught at a very underprivileged school in the mornings and then at a very privileged school in the afternoons. And I just could tell the difference that technology made because in the underprivileged school, you did not have any access to the Internet. They barely had two computers at the library, very old. So most of these students had to go to the library and get their information from books, which is oftentimes outdated. Whereas in the afternoon, the other school, everybody had a tablet or a phone and they could very easily look up anything that you asked them. The difference that this made, this very simple difference, just stuck with me. And two years later, I decided to build something that could work for all of those people that don't have access to a connection. 

Cyan: So does one person have to have access to a connection or none? 

Jorge: No, no, none. I can show you a demo now. Everybody grab one of these. I’m going to slide them.

Charles: Okay. We got a whole bunch of phones on the table. 

Cyan: Yep. 

Jesse: A lot of phones. I want this one. 

Jorge: Here you go, Cyan. 

Jorge: Don't touch anything. Don't break my demo.

[laughter] 

Cyan: Yeah, you take that one. 

Charles: Alright, I'll take this one.

Jesse: There you go. 

Jorge: All these phones are on airplane mode on purpose. And the only thing that's turned on is Bluetooth. So now I'm going to send you an image through this iPad. Imagine that there's a hurricane. You're in Miami and you just received this information that you wouldn't have received otherwise from your local neighborhood or there was an earthquake, now you're getting all this information from the Red Cross - 

Jesse: We're receiving images from Jorge on multiple devices that are all airplane mode, only Bluetooth, and they're coming in like real time.

Charles: Yeah. We're getting them right way. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Jorge: Now I'm going to send text. And if you're receiving texts, you can also receive a game move, a payment. These are all strings of text. You're not actually sending a huge file. However, we can send huge files as of like three days ago and don't get scared, but here we go.

[loud noise]

Charles: Whoa, he sent like a broadcast alert. 

Jorge: We can do voice notes. We can do images. We can do anything that's not livestream. We can do payments. We can do games. something that is turn based, for example, like poker, chess, Pokémon Go. So basically BridgeFy is Twilio or like a Stripe that any company, any organization or government can use us to their benefit. 

Cyan: What are the transfer speeds? 

Jorge: So the larger the file is going to take a couple of seconds. But for example, a 10 second voice note takes like five seconds, six seconds to transfer. And so we know that this technology is not perfect yet, but it's better to have this than to not have it in situations where you're actually going to really, really need to use a mobile app. 

Cyan: Okay.

Josh: Talk to me about security. 

Jorge: We are the only company in the world that has managed to make the signal protocol work offline. The signal protocol is the top encryption for mobile. It's allegedly quantum computer proof and we made it work offline. Everything is encrypted end to end. 

Charles: You mentioned a couple of different customers: app developer, cities. Can you talk more about how you work with all these different entities? 

Jorge: Yeah. So for example, the pilot with the United Nations. We're going to start in Haiti, Afghanistan, and Palestine. And they're going to build an app with our technology that is going to let the staff work on the ground and be able to communicate. Right now, what they use is satellite internet, which is oftentimes not available, it's incredibly expensive. And radios, which are not scalable. You can't get it onto thousands of hands. So we're building this app for them. They're going to be able to do logistics, provide continued support to the people that they help. We're going to start with three countries, then we're moving on to five countries in two months. And by the end of the year, we're going to launch it globally. 

[00:13:09] Josh: With the UN?

Jorge: Yeah

Jesse: And so that is a - you're going to basically build a version of what you were just doing with us for them, for their people to use.

Jorge: Yes, with way more features. It's going to let them do logistics, updating, syncing databases is really helpful for them, locating people. And communications.

Charles: How about for cities? You mentioned a big city pilot, too.

Jorge: Yeah. We are in talks with the city of Bogota in Colombia. Because they have a lot of interest in becoming like a smart city. And so BridgeFy also works on IOT devices. And so you wouldn't need to have an Internet connection in order to access information about the city. if there's a natural disaster, you name it. And I think Charles you meant the $6 million contract that I mentioned.

Charles: Yeah.

Jorge: So that's with the city of Istanbul in Turkey and they're going to build an earthquakes alerts app. This is a $1.5 million contract per year for the next four years. And it's basically going to allow the people, but also the rescue corps and the government, communicate after earthquakes, which are very frequent in Turkey, and be able to locate where people are, go help them, but also, be able to tag yourself as, I'm not safe, I need help. And these are all things that people have already done. We used to be B2C and then we pivoted. And so when we were B2C, we got 10 million downloads, and people used it in earthquakes, after hurricanes, and, I don't know if you remember, but they asked Elon Musk to open up Starlink in Ukraine and he refused. And just the first 48 hours that the Ukraine war was declared, we got 1.5 million downloads in Ukraine only. And so BridgeFy, it's basically just a decentralized, accessible technology to any app maker, any organization, and doesn't need to depend on the whims of a few. 

Cyan: And are you agnostic to regions? Is there any place you wouldn't sell into? Are you just into free speech?

Jorge: I am into free speech. Absolutely. We are a tool that basically promotes free speech. It has been used in multiple protests, like in Hong Kong, in Myanmar, Black Lives Matter here in the United States, by millions of people. And so we do not take sides, but obviously we promote everybody getting along and free speech and whatnot. Are there any countries where I wouldn't sell? We can't sell, technically and legally, in OFAC countries, for example. uh So like Syria, we can't sell there, but nah, I don't, I don't think - 

Cyan: Well, I'd like to put in 50k. Because of that answer. 

Whoa! Let freedom ring. The pitch for Bridgefy will be right back.

Cyan: Well, I'd like to put in 50k. Because of that answer. 

Jorge: All right. 

Cyan: Yeah. And then I would like to evaluate it more from my fund. I think this is incredibly important, because I'm a huge, huge advocate of free speech. And I think that everyone deserves the right to communicate, no matter what side you're on. And so, I would like to support you. 

Jorge: Thank you. 

Cyan: I think it's a good investment too. 

Jorge: I think so too. 

Cyan: But I also think it's a great cause.

Jorge: Thank you. 

Jesse: I guess I'd be curious, - the examples that you gave are products that you're going to develop in partnership with others via your consultative agreements, they're going to pay you a licensing fee in Istanbul, you're talking about -

Jorge: We're not going to build it ourselves.

Jesse: Okay.

Jorge: We have a development partner that is going to build the apps for them.

Jesse: Got it. Okay.

Jorge: We're not in the business of building apps. 

Jesse: Okay. Great. So the revenue that you're talking about is an annualized license fee for the app, not they're going to pay somebody else to develop the app? 

Jorge: Yes. So we're going to charge them every year for use of the SDK. 

Jesse: Got it. That's super helpful. You mentioned you have, I think it was 20 applications.

Jorge: 22.

Jesse: 22.

Jorge: Yeah. 

Jesse: This seems like a magical opportunity for many developers. You know, why - Why 22? Why not 222? I mean, I'm just curious about sort of what would be the reason they wouldn't build using the SDK? Do they do some work they don't want to do? Do they have, they don't know it exists? Is that the simple fact? 

Jorge: They probably don't know it exists. That's the reality of it. We've never done any outbound sales or anything. And so why don't we have more? Because we haven't gotten out to do more. The app that we built is the number one driver for traffic for the company. We get around 40, 45,000 people visit our website every month. Granted, most of them are looking for the app, but a few of them trickle down and turn into B2B customers. 

Jesse: Yeah. 

Jesse: What are some of the, out of the 22, what are examples - you don't have to name the apps if you don't want, but what are those apps doing? 

Jorge: One of them is a payments app in Nigeria. And then the other one is like, it's like PayPal in Columbia. 

Jesse: Okay. 

Jorge: We also have a company, an events company in LA. They're allegedly going to get a partnership with Live Nation, so that could be big. 

Jesse: They're using it for like communications at the event?

Jorge: Yeah. 

Jesse: Okay. Got it.

Jorge: Then we have another company in Germany that wants to do payments. And so they're trying to make their app work on iPads and just be able to go and make payments inside uh music events. 

Jesse: Got it. Super cool. We happen to be a fund that invests a lot in developer platforms. We previously backed companies like Crashlytics and Firebase. We're the seed investors of MongoDB. So, like, we get that stuff. I see lots of potential in this. And so I would just say as like a fast follow up is like, I want to bring in one of my partners to start to dig in with you. 

Jorge: Sounds good. Thank you. 

Josh: Is this something that the platforms can use, like Apple or Google with Android as a fallback to, Oh, okay, rich text format or RCS. Or iMessage on Apple. Hey, that's not working. Okay. We'll try SMS. Oh, cell tower is not working either, but if they had licensed your SDK, it could send that message. 

Jorge: Yeah, absolutely. Right now we're working on the app level and we license the technology to apps, individual apps. But our end game or our vision is to partner up with either Android or Apple so that you literally get an iPhone out of the box and instantaneously are able to use it without depending on anybody on anything. Instead of having to go to the Ubers and the Metas and the Tinders of the world, we simply are going to partner up with one of the large operating systems. And so any app that you already have, any app that you download, it's just, it just works. 

Josh: I am curious. You've raised 4 million before this. What have been some of your challenges? You mentioned raising a pre seed, now a seed, now it's a seed extension. I'm kind of curious what the feedback has been and some things you've learned along the way.

Jorge: Where do I start? We should have focused on B2B earlier, but we - the technology wouldn't have allowed us to be successful. So, being able to package it and make it safe, make it battery efficient, make it able to work between Android and iOS, it wouldn't have been possible six years ago, seven years ago. And so we didn't know that. We didn't know that we were going to pivot. And so we were just focused on the app and people started downloading and downloading and downloading it so much. And we thought, Oh man, this is super cool. And then we added ads and everybody hated it. Of course. 

Jesse: That's the whole reason they go offline.

[laughter]

Jorge: Really. Yes. I mean, the ads don't work if you're offline anyway. 

[00:30:09] Jesse: That's right. 

Jorge: And so we just started talking, my cofounder and I, and just thought, Oh man, the opportunity is just so much bigger if we go B2B. Like instead of fighting WhatsApp over a user, we can just partner up with WhatsApp. It's humongous. It's just so much bigger, so much - I don't want to say easier, but to us selling BridgeFy B2B has been so pleasant. BridgeFy is pretty easy to sell. 

Charles: How much of the 3 million have you secured? 

Jorge: We just started fundraising a couple of weeks ago. Only 150. From Biz Stone, one of the Twitter founders and one of our internal investors.

Cyan: Can you say what the terms were of the last round? 

Jorge: Yes. 18. Yeah. 

Josh: What are you thinking, Charles? 

Charles: I don't know. I mean, it reminds me a lot of GoTenna when I first met them. 

Jesse: Yes. I was thinking the same. 

Charles: Yeah. Which turned out to be pretty good business in the end.

Jorge: And they were doing hardware.

Charles: Yeah, and they were doing hardware. Yeah. Different use case. um. 

The decision from Charles Hudson, after this

Charles: It reminds me a lot of GoTenna when I first met them. 

Jesse: Yes. I was thinking the same. 

Charles: Yeah. Which turned out to be pretty good business in the end.

Jorge: And they were doing hardware.

Charles: Yeah, and they were doing hardware. Yeah. Different use case. um. I don't think I'm going to get there on this round, but I do have someone who I want to introduce you to, who I am quite sure will have a strong interest in what you're building. 

Josh: Why the hesitation on this round?

Charles: Uh, I… this is clearly like in the category of things I would say, like, internet utility that like should exist, will promote free speech, will enable a lot of people I just think I do better when there's like a single vector business model. I think this is super useful and like, this needs to exist. I'm just like, I like to have, even if it's wrong, some picture of this is what I think the playing field for the company looks like in two years. And like, is it more Istanbuls? Is it something different? That's what I'm trying to get to clarity on. 

Jorge: Thank you. 

Jesse: What are you thinking? 

Josh: I'm thinking, I don't understand why you guys aren't investing. 

Jorge: Me neither.

Jesse: So my, my point, I wrote fast follow up. For me, my point would be, this could so squarely be in our zone. I want to look at it as a lead check out of our fund. And frankly, my partner Chip is like, he's the one who's on the board of Mongo still. So like if Chip looks at it and says, I've seen companies like this like, this is how the playbook goes, you seem like you're the right team. Like, I want to look at it very quickly as a lead investment. So that for me, that's where I'm at. 

Josh: Jorge, you know we're big fans of you. Lisa -

Jorge: How big Josh?

Josh: Yeah, I mean, it feels like a foundational technology in a way, and it's - it sounds so basic because we've heard of mesh networks, like that's been a thing forever, and I'm just surprised that this doesn't exist now. We should have a fallback network that works on our phones that already have all this technology packed in them. So, yeah, if we're, if we were to invest, I think it'd be - it'd be 100k out of our fund. 

Jorge: If you were to invest, you said. 

Josh: [laughs] I mean, I'm - we're very interested in investing, - but I think we'll, if we can learn from you during this process, that'd be amazing. 

Jesse: Yeah, I can share our diligence on it and get to a position pretty quickly. 

Jorge: Excellent. Sounds good. 

Cyan: And you also mentioned Pokémon Go. I'm an investor in that. I would like to introduce you to them. 

Jorge: Oh, cool. As you know, whenever there's a Pokémon Go gathering, they - it's on the papers because they, because nobody can play it.

Cyan: Because sometimes the cell networks can't keep up with all of the players. They have these community days and they have issues. And so I know that the founder would love this. So I want to put you in touch with him. 

Jorge: Fantastic. Yeah, that'd be great. That's a, that's a great example of a really good customer for us. It's like a first world example, right? It's a Pokémon Go. I can't play my game on my iPhone. Like, yes, it's an inconvenience and we see it as an inconvenience. But to billions of people, this can be the difference between being able to participate in your local economy the difference between life or death after natural disaster, The difference between staying educated or not. And so to us, it's an inconvenience, but we honestly feel that if and when we get our technology into the regions that most need it, which we predict is going to be Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, then we will not only like improve their lives, but like boost local economies and just create new jobs and create new markets that right now are in the dark. 

Josh: Sweet. Thanks, Jorge. 

[thank yous]

Jorge: You may keep the iphones? 

Cyan: I have so many companies I want to introduce him to. 

Jesse: Yeah. I'd be very curious - My whole thing is, I totally buy the pitch as to why you would want this and what it does. I'd be very curious when you introduce them, like take Niantic, and you're like, you're like, here's the pitch. And they will probably say that sounds amazing. But to actually implement this, there's a data store of your user account, your Pokémon and all the stuff that exists. The internet downloads, it caches, but then you're going to trade them. And it requires authorization keys. And that's also built in the internet. So like what actually has to change? 

Cyan: The Apple approval program, that you have to get your app updated. 

Jesse: Then your app has to be updated. And like, just, I think all of that makes it more complicated for many apps to implement. That doesn't mean it's a bad business. It's just, if I were him, I'd probably really lean into the next three or four cities and get to five to $10 million a year in revenue But like, the developer one seems harder than it would appear on the surface. That would be my takeaway on it. That's why I wasn't like an immediate yes. Cause I don't think it's as simple of a developer platform as like dropping the SDK and go. 

Josh: Yeah. Do you think this is a true pain point or just a nice to have? 

Cyan: It's definitely a true pain point. um When your company has a huge down event is when you're going to be interested in buying this.

Jesse: Yep.

Cyan: Because when you have lost revenue and then your CEO is yelling at you that's when it's going to matter.

Jesse: Citizen might be the most perfect -

Cyan: I think Citizen is the number one - Like if he gets a couple of these, like Citizen, Pokémon Go, maybe like United Airlines, cause I think the airlines would be really great cause they encourage you to literally download the app before the flight takes off in case like, you need to access messaging or whatever but I'm excited about it. And I do want to evaluate it as well for a larger check, but I think it just also just fits with my freedom of speech work that I do.

Jesse: Yeah. 

Josh: Well. That's a wrap. 

Cyan: Yeah. 

Charles: Another one in the books. 

Cyan: Woo! 

[wooing]

Josh: Let's go! 

Charles: Nice. 

Cyan: I can eat my chips. 

Jesse: Wow, you had a lot of self control.

Josh: Have you been holding this the whole time? 

Jesse: She had a chip right as we started.

Cyan: I was trying not to make crunching sounds. Like no crunching sounds.

Jorge walked out of the pitch room with a 50k commitment from Cyan, 100k from The Pitch Fund, and some interest from Jesse in leading the round.

After the pitch, things got busy at Bridgefy. Their enterprise customers began asking for more features, contracts got bigger, and Jorge had to stop onboarding new customers! He was pretty hyped.

But when Jorge tried to connect with the VCs on our show, one investor had gone missing, and things got complicated with the other.

Cyan: There's some uncertainty around the competitive landscape because you mentioned earlier to me that you're the only one doing this.

Jorge: So regarding FireChat, they stopped existing years ago. They only had one-to-one communication. That's it. And so I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that FireChat is not a competitor of ours anymore. 

Cyan: Well, let me also see if my husband will get on the phone with you. He seems like his, all of his information is out of date. 

Jorge: I'm just worried that, that, uh, your fund might have made a decision also based on, on information that it's a little bit -

Cyan: That's another thing is maybe, well, once you get Scott, if you can convince him, you can convince the fund.

Will Jorge be able to talk Cyan’s husband into investing? And where the hell is Jesse? Love you Jesse, but please respond in time for the season finale on December 11th.

And you, listener, can be a part of our finale by joining the watch party at 7pm that night. We’ll catch up with Jorge and all the other season 12 founders to hear what happens over the next few months. Register now at pitch.show/party

No offer to invest in Bridgefy is being made to the listening audience on today’s show, but LPs in The Pitch Fund do have access. You can learn more and invest in our debut fund at thepitch.fund

Fund I closes to the general public on December 15th.

Next week on The Pitch ...

Chad: Our award winning game development team builds realistic learning video games focused on history with 20 minute episodes that immerse you in historical worlds and expose you to varied perspectives. 

Mac: that was a very impressive looking game. is this supposed to be tied to the curriculum or tied to actual fact?

Chad: history textbooks show one version of history. And that's not how history is. 

Elizabeth: You said it took one and a half months to make one episode. And you expect in the next two years to be able to cover all of world and US history? Like that's a, that's a lot of history. 

Cyan: I really do not like the education system And I really would love for it to be destroyed. 

That’s next week! Subscribe to The Pitch right now, and turn on notifications so you don’t miss it. See you on Wednesday.

Applications are now open for season 13 of The Pitch, so if you’re a founder building the future of anything. You should definitely apply. at pitch.show/apply. Our scouting team Peter and John eagerly await your application.

This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, Enoch Kim, and Jackie Papanier. With deal sourcing by Peter Liu and John Alvarez.

Thanks to friend of the show Pascal Unger of Focal VC for introducing us to Jorge.

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Breakmaster Cylinder, FYRSTYX, Joya, Eves Blue, and Onders.

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