#145 immersionED

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

[clap]

There’s nothing like being in a classroom, with a teacher that makes school feel fun, day after day. 

For me, these teachers were the highlight of my education. And the stuff they taught, are the things I actually remember from school.

As memorable as those classes were, they were the exception. But high-school teacher Chad Wilson wants to change that. His goal?

Make history come alive in every classroom in America.

Chad is disrupting history class with video games.

Charles: Helps me think - no , keep it.

Cyan: Are you sure? 

Charles: Yeah. Keep it.

Chad: Hey, I'm Chad. 

Today, Chad is pitching Cyan Banister

Cyan: Hi, Cyan. 

Chad: Great to meet you. 

Cyan: Nice to meet you. 

Charles Hudson

Charles: Hey, Charles. 

Chad: Chad, nice to meet you. 

Elizabeth Yin

Elizabeth: Elizabeth. 

Chad: Great to meet you, Elizabeth. Chad. 

Elizabeth: Nice to meet you. 

Mac Conwell

Mac: Mac.

Chad: Mac? Chad. Nice to meet you. 

And Jesse Middleton

Jesse: I'm Jesse. 

Chad: Jesse. 

Jesse: Nice to meet you. 

Chad: Chad, nice to meet you. Hey folks. Hey. How's it going? Good to meet y'all. So, I'm Chad Wilson, founder and CEO of ImmersionEd, where we build realistic learning video games for skill development. When I was a high school history teacher, the most common thing I heard on day one was, history is boring. This always kind of pissed me off. History is the subject of thousands of movies, video games, television shows. As you can probably already tell, I grew up a total history nerd. I was the kid picking up coffee table books in his free time. I learned through games like Oregon Trail, majored in history in college, studied abroad for it. And through that, I got really hands on with the content in a way that enabled me to develop the skills that I needed in my career. Most people don't get that. Most people get the gym teacher reading straight from the textbook. And so when I was in college, I created a seven year career plan to build the right background to do something to change that dynamic. That plan was to do a couple years investment banking at Morgan Stanley first, build a broad business background. Then I taught for a few years, world history at a high school level, which I'd always wanted to do and enabled me to get hands on with the pain point and come up with solution. Things clicked for me, though. When I was teaching remotely during the pandemic and one of my favorite students, Cairo says, yo, Mr. Wilson, I already know this from playing Assassin's Creed. And so I started doing Twitch streams where I'd play the games, lecturing, asking questions with the 400 kids on an ongoing basis to bring it to life for them. And they ate it up. Literally wanted to do it for fun. I was like, alright, we have something here, but it's not ad hoc Twitch streams. That's not the way you make impact en mass. Thus, ImmersionEd was born. Our award winning game development team builds realistic learning video games for skill development. And we're initially focused on history with 20 minute episodes that immerse you in historical worlds and expose you to varied perspectives. Since launching, we've surveyed thousands of schools and found that 94 percent want to use our games. From that group, we selected 50 for our pilot program this past school year, and participating students showed that they viewed our games as 40 percent more engaging than their traditional coursework. Beyond that, 95 percent of the teachers indicated they want to pay for access this year and have begun the payment process. Best of all though, yesterday we launched to a network of 35,000 schools through our affiliate. So we're raising a $1.5 million pre seed round to reach 4.5 million in annualized recurring revenue by the end of 2025. So help us help teachers, help us shape the future of learning. 

Elizabeth: Thank you. 

Mac: Great. 

Elizabeth: We'd love to see the demo. 

Cyan: Yeah, can we see the demo?

Chad: Yeah. 

Cyan: By the way, you make me excited to learn about history. 

Jesse: I want to know from you, what is your favorite period of history? 

Chad: Oh my gosh, that's always so tough. 

Jesse: Or least favorite.

Chad: I have that too. Favorite's gotta be - so my major was specialized in early modern European history and then I did an entire minor in classical Greek history. And then I hated Byzantine history because you - the art never changed. It was always the same because they weren't really viewing it as art, it was for religious purposes. And I spent a week in museums only looking to that, and so that's become my least favorite. But it's got a special place in my heart. 

Jesse: All right.

[demo plays]

Chad: And yeah, the voice is mine there. 

[demo continues] 

Chad: So essentially it's a whole open world RPG. So everything is immersive. You are walking around colonial Boston accurately historically recreated. You're interacting, and the key here is this: you're always in our games choosing sides and analyzing different perspectives and making decisions. So it's really not just about content. It's about skill development here. So it's always you trying to find evidence to back up what you believe to be true, and parsing out where bias may lie in the perspectives that you're hearing. 

Mac: Full disclosure, I'm an investor in a company called Elite Gaming Live. 

Chad: Yeah.

Mac: They don't do what you do, but they're going after the same dollars. So I wouldn't be able to participate. 

Chad: Totally get it. 

Mac: With that being said, that was a very impressive looking game. Can you talk us a little bit about how that got built? 

Chad: Yeah. So for us, we're really focused on using the most cutting edge and streamlined approaches to make sure that we're really efficient, time wise and capital wise, when we're building these games. So we use Unreal Engine 5. Then we use pre-made digital assets, where available. There are orphaned games out there that we can adopt. And then we look to use generative AI wherever possible for creating assets in the most efficient way. Our whole process is guided by our lead advisor, Alex Seropian. So he's the founder of Bungie, creator of Halo. He's one of the most acclaimed game developers ever. And so that's kind of like the ethos behind how we, we build.

Mac: Okay. My second question is the game shows about the American revolution. 

Chad: Yeah. 

Mac: And so this is supposed to go into school settings. Is it considered historically accurate compared to the textbooks the students are using or to actual history? Because what we know is that a lot of the information we get in some of our textbooks isn't actually accurate. 

Chad: Yeah. 

Mac: So then for a game like that, is this supposed to be tied to the curriculum or tied to actual fact?

Chad: So I'd say it's, it's nice that it can actually do both. Kind of like at a high level, I'd say we align with the AP US and AP world exams when it comes to like the skills you need, particularly perspective analysis is a major aspect. This is not a textbook. And actually there's a reason teachers are moving away from textbooks. 40 percent of history teachers don't use a textbook at all, across all grades. And there's a reason for that. To what you're pointing out there, Mac, is that history textbooks show one version of history. And that's not how history is. There's lots of perspectives and it's constantly evolving over time. And that's what's great about our games, is we don't choose sides in our games. Instead, we show you all the different perspectives, the primary sources. It's up to you to come to your own conclusions. So in this game, for instance, you're exposed to the British soldier perspective, the Bostonian colonist perspective. And you have to sift through these perspectives and feel out, who do I trust? What's the real truth here? That's what real historians do. That's what we're constantly doing as we get to new versions of what is considered the truth about history. 

Charles: What does the content pipeline look like for producing each episode or each new game? Like, can you walk us through that? 

Chad: Absolutely. So right now, it takes around a month and a half to build an episode, currently. And so that translates to around $40,000 per 20 minute episode. And so our break even point is around 15 to 20,000 students. 

Jesse: Can you talk a little bit about the business model and the dollars you're going after. You said, they're not buying textbooks, but I would imagine there's, in some States, there's certain books they can buy, certain books they can't buy. So how do you sort of fit in in those various places, into their budgets?

Chad: Yeah. So there's two spots here. One spot is traditional history curriculum dollars, and two and a half billion dollars per year are spent on history textbooks. Secondarily, beyond that traditional history payment, is this growing skill development space. 50 percent of schools are spending - expecting to spend more next year than they did this school year on skill development. And this has become a focus with 17 states in the last decade, adopting what they're calling portrait of a graduate requirements focused on life skills. And then when we're looking at where the direct decision maker, when we're first making these purchases, comes from - So the nice thing is, right now we have two games, each three episodes, that are 20 minutes long. So three 20 minute episodes. Because we don't have the entire curriculum built out. It enables us actually not to go to the district level for approval. Right now, the money's coming from discretionary budget. It is school building level. And so these processes are much faster than the traditional school sales cycle. They're frequently done within a week. 

Elizabeth: Hmm 

Cyan: What keeps you up at night about this business? 

Chad: Hmm. That's a good question. I mean, for me, I think it's making sure that we do the best job possible with this upcoming broad launch. We've worked with these 50 schools, we're now expecting to work with thousands of schools this fall. And so making sure that we have the right support systems in place to really make sure that is amazing and as incredible of an experience for them as our pilot schools experienced. And so that's kind of what keeps me up at night. 

Jesse: What does this business look like at scale? So fast forward five, 10 years from now, you know, today, it sounds like it's a publisher and you're going out to a very specific audience, very specific set of dollars but you know, at scale, is this thousands of episodes a year. Is it - are you a film studio? You know, it's sort of, What does that look like? And part of the reason I ask is just how should we think about the value of this business over time? 

Chad: No, totally agreed. And that's a great question and one I'd love to answer. So for us -

Jesse: Oh, then I asked the wrong question.

[laughter] 

Chad: So ultimately, for the next 2 years or so, we're going to be focused on history. Covering all the years of world and US history, we'll be able to do that in around two years to the extent that I believe is necessary for schools. And then we're going to have collected all this unique data about granular decision points for students over time, and collecting teacher feedback that we're going to be able to utilize that data to expand into other markets. So, for us, one of the main spots were eyeballing down the line would be workforce development. And having these immersive experiences where - we've now have this secret sauce of we know how to make engaging games that teach you the skills you need when it comes to decision making, problem solving. That's that spot that has not been solved when we look at workforce development. They have these technical skill learning games, these hard skill learning games. But when we actually look at the soft skills, which are actually what employers care more about nowadays. That's a spot that I really want to solve. 

Mac: Can you talk to me a little bit about this broad launch? You talked about through a partner getting access to all these schools. So what does that mean? Are you with a distribution partner that's going to get you access to the schools? Do the schools have to sign up? Like, what is this broad launch? 

Chad: Yeah. So this is happening through the Gilder Lehrman Institute. They're a nonprofit focused on using American history to help individuals develop the skills they need in their life. So they're deeply aligned with us. They work with 30 percent of the schools in the country, 35,000 schools, and they're growing rapidly. And so they're our partner. And one of the things that they do is called an affiliate offer. So every month they give a free or discounted product to their 35,000 plus schools, and they, on average, get 6 or 7000 schools that sign up. And so what we're anticipating here is, conservatively estimating, we're going to say 4000 schools sign up. They will get access to episode one of the American revolution series for free. Episodes two and three, they will need to make a purchase to access. Of course, episode one ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, cuts to black as the Boston massacre is beginning. So if they want to use those for their students, they'll have to make that purchase. And so that's what's going to be going live with those students all in the fall, and the teachers just gained access yesterday to the whole games to try them out. 

Mac: You say you anticipate 4000 signing up to do the free trial, what percentage of those do you expect to turn and become paid? 

Chad: Yeah, so we believe 800 will be paying customers by the end of the fall. So this is $500,000 in revenue. 

Charles: What's a school worth to you on an annual basis? 

Chad: So that'll change over time as we build more episodes. So right now, that's around $1,500. At scale, that's around $15,000. 

Elizabeth: I think of everything you said, like the revenue, et cetera, I'm not concerned about any of that. I think the thing that really caught me was 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. How are you going to do that in two years when it takes one and a half months to make one episode?

That’s the bell! There may or may not be a pop quiz after the break…

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. How are you going to do that in two years when it takes one and a half months to make one episode? 

Chad: Well, so first of all, when we took one and a half months per episode, the team was incredibly lean. And when you're first starting your processes of game development, a lot of those are repeatable. So most of the gameplay aspects, you can literally lift and reuse. The time for development goes down. So we're expecting that for the next game to be around one month per episode. So that'll be a substantial drop already there. And when we're covering world history, what I intend at this point is one episode per week. 

Elizabeth: So definitely understand it takes a while to get infrastructure set up. And you can templatize things and reuse characters. And probably the people, you just need to switch out their hats, and that's probably sufficient. But like, let's play this forward a couple of years. Like let's say you have all of that set up, like at scale, you know, when you're kind of starting to dominate, what do you think with today's knowledge it will take in terms of resourcing to create an episode at that point in time? 

Chad: Yeah, I think it's going to get down to around 20 days for an episode. 

Elizabeth: With how many people? 

Chad: So that would be like people working on that game, around six, in my guess. 

Elizabeth: I think something that I'm also concerned about, is also around the subject matter. I think it's really cool to be able to visualize history. My worry is that when you see sort of these big outcomes in edtech, they do tend to be in math or reading, things that teachers are really incentivized to move the needle on because that's how everyone is incentivized, right? You get math scores up, like there's money. If you get history scores up... that's the part I'm a little bit more nervous about. Can you talk about that? I've literally never heard anyone say, Oh, I want to improve our history scores.

Chad: So, yes, it has been shunned a little bit as the stepchild. And first of all, that's something that we're looking to change. I will note that world history and US history are the most commonly taken AP exams there are in the country. But really, when it comes down to it, in my eyes, it doesn't matter if you know the date that Alexander the Great crossed the Bosphorus. What matters is you know why he did that and what the perspectives were on it. And those are things that schools are allocating more and more budget to and they want to be able to track more granularly. What we're really going to be on the cutting edge of is how do you track skill development? How do you track and measure that? And those are going to be proof points in the future, because those reading and math skills are actually starting to be less favored and focused upon by employers. When they're surveyed, they actually care 50 percent more about these soft skills. And our games are going to continue to evolve and include things like your ability to work with others in these historical settings. And so history is a really natural spot that is already mandated to be taught three times in your high school career. And it's being totally underutilized. And so that's what we're looking to shift and they will be tracking that. 

Elizabeth: I totally am with you on that. Especially, you know, with regard to math, like computers can do math better than anyone, and that just gets better and better every day. I think my worry is just the incentives are still a little bit anachronistic. 

Chad: She pronounced it right, too. 

[laughter]

Elizabeth: You know, people, people are, are incentivized by whatever the incentives are. And that's currently how our system is set up. And so when you say you're gonna change all that, it almost feels like you need to change, like, a whole system as well.

Chad: But I feel like that system's already shifting under our feet, right now. Like, that's where the portrait of a graduate requirements are coming from, is that they're starting to put into place these requirements, literally, to graduate based off of life skills. And so, the fact that more than a third of states have adopted that in the last decade, and 50 percent are spending more on skill development next year shows that this is becoming more and more a focal point that is growing. 40 percent of employers think that graduates are unprepared because of their soft skills, and 90 percent think it's getting worse. So we don't need to start that trend. We are taking advantage of that trend and getting ahead of it. 

Mac: So would you say that the success of this business hinges on you proving that your games improve soft skills? 

Chad: Absolutely. 

Charles: I think - I'm stuck on something different and I think it's going to be something I probably can't get past, which is I keep looking at this $1500 per school number. And I think the only way that works is with a partner. And I've had mixed results with startups that have like a big high profile launch partner. Sometimes it ends up, through no one's fault, performing even worse than expected. And at $1500 today, I don't think you can actually deploy your own salespeople to go after individual schools, because the ACV per school is too low. So the thing that makes me nervous is it's really the sort of first phase is really dependent on the success of this partnership. In the event that it comes in lower than expected, I don't see another way to acquire schools. And I think you're right. I think the best way to acquire districts is to go with a handful of their schools in hand. And we've just had such mixed results with these sort of single vector partnerships. If the, if the ACV was higher and say, there's a way you could say, even if the partnership isn't successful, there's enough sort of meat on the bone that you could go in directly. But I don't see that here. So for that reason, I'm going to pass on this round. But I think you have - the one thing that seems to correlate really well with the ed tech founders we've had - and we've had a better experience. We were in, we've been in Clever, ClassDojo. We've been in a handful of companies that have worked out. All of them had really authentic founders that really cared about the educational mission they were trying to enable, and that's what helped them get through the hard times. And you have that in spades. So I really hope you're successful. I am a big history nerd, so I wish more people were as enthusiastic about history as you are. But for me, this is - that's the one thing I couldn't get past. So I'm going to be out for this round. 

Chad: Totally get it. If I'm allowed to give a slight rebuttal, I'd say that 1500 is literally what we're expecting this fall when they are only purchasing episodes two and three. So, by the time they're actually signing on for next year, the ACV is already 3000 dollars. And so it grows drastically. That is just when they're getting a discounted price on episodes two and three, and they're only purchasing two episodes. So I think it - it grows more rapidly than that, but I understand your perspective. 

Charles: Awesome. 

Cyan: I'm going to pass as well, but mine is more dogmatic. I really do not like the education system in America. And maybe this is terrible of me, but I really would love for it to be destroyed. And I'm more on the side of revolutionizing our education system. It was built for the industrial revolution to churn out factory workers. And, I admire your mission, but I would rather it be for homeschool or for the population of kids who want to augment their education outside of school. Maybe you'll get there eventually. 

Chad: Yeah. Well, it's definitely something we're looking into. 

Cyan: The other concern, is just personal, I'm a book hoarder. I'm storing lots and lots of books. Cause I'm actually concerned about this digital future and who controls the narrative of what history is. And I'm sure you are too. If for example, the United States government comes to you and they say, we want you to remove this from the curriculum, what do you do then?

Mac: Or the State of Florida.

Cyan: And that could happen. And because it's not a book, it just becomes revised history. I'm actually worried about this with AI and all sorts of things, like movies, for example. An artist makes a movie that has a very specific message, but a new regime comes into play and says, eh, this doesn't fit the narrative today so we're just going to change it. Like ET, they took the gun away in ET and it became a walkie talkie, right? But the artist originally wanted it to be a gun. But you can't watch that movie now. And so I'm just concerned about history being digital. 

Elizabeth: Blockchain. 

Cyan: Yeah, that was going to be my next suggestion, which is to start thinking about blockchain technology. I want to plant the seed with you, because I think you're doing important work. It's so important. Make it to where people in the future cannot rewrite history. You know, we can't just erase it. It happened. 

The ads are coming! The ads are coming! We’ll be right back.

Cyan: I want to plant the seed with you, because I think you're doing important work. It's so important. Make it to where people in the future cannot rewrite history. You know, we can't just erase it. It happened. 

Chad: Yeah. 

Cyan: Just make it regime proof. 

Chad: I feel like, the best approach to that is what we're doing, which is show varied historical perspectives. We're not taking a side. 

Cyan: I love that.

Chad: So a regime can't say, Oh, well, you're depicting it in this direction. I'm like, no, no. We're just bringing in primary sources from all the views. You as the user get to choose. 

Cyan: No, I love that. Like for example, I watched this show one time on North Korea and North Korea depicted American soldiers as these disheveled - like, it was really interesting to see their paintings of American soldiers and then our paintings of American soldiers are like apple pie, you know. Just like pearly teeth and clean shaven. And obviously, they have a very different view of history from us. And so I would want kids to see that and see like, oh, well they came into it with this perspective. This is how they viewed us.

Chad: Yeah 

Cyan: And because war and conflict is multifaceted and very, very complicated. So teaching kids that there isn't one side to any story is important. But the leaders of the world -

Chad: May not.

Cyan: - may not. 

Chad: I like the blockchain idea. 

Cyan: So I actually would go that way because every country has unfortunate history that everybody would like to forget.

Jesse: Yeah. And you have, I mean, to the regime point, it's not that you can't make the content, but you will have states that may say, yeah, you can make it. My teachers can't buy it.

Cyan: Exactly. 

Jesse: Episode two and three aren't allowed to be bought here. So now all of a sudden you don't have that. And it gets back to this ACV. I'll tell you, I'm - of all the ed tech stuff that we've invested in, you know, Codeacademy was one of the larger ones and tried selling into education. It was mostly to consumer. But selling into educational systems is just so hard. I mean, for everything that Charles was saying, I - My fear is that it doesn't - the uptake isn't as strong as you hope. And if that happens, I fall in the same bucket where I don't know how you go direct. Pounding pavement with a small team. And so for me, I'm not going to invest now. I would caution you. I think the blockchain concept is a good one to explore. I think as an early stage company, I don't know that I would invest dollars into doing anything with it, but I would invest into an opinion about where it could go in the future. but I certainly wouldn't rebuild your platform to support writing into the blockchain today. You've got enough battles to fight.

Chad: Yeah. 

Jesse: No pun intended.

Elizabeth: For sure. 

Chad: Thank you.

Elizabeth: Chad. I - it's very clear that you're very passionate and I'm very impressed actually by you. It's rare to find a founder who is great at pitching and storytelling and also knows the numbers backwards and forwards and you do. So that's incredible, that combination. It's quite rare. And I also think you have a very differentiated offering. I mean, compared to a lot of the ed tech offerings that are out there, no one is doing anything in history. Your demo was very immersive, seemingly fun. I think a lot of people would love doing that, so I think you will figure out a way to get there. But I think the hangup that I have is, I think even at scale, it still takes too many resources to create this. If you can imagine a world, for a moment, where just - and this may be very extreme and impossible. If the technology gets there such that we can make an Oregon Trail every day, that would be an amazing business, and no one would complain about edtech, right? The issue is not the sales cycle. The issue is the resources required to make something and the resources required to sell something. Those numbers don't work well today. One of the things that a lot of people don't realize about ed tech is, it used to be a lot more lucrative in the 90s. When we think about games like Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit, and all of those, the way sales cycles happened back then was different. They didn't happen at the district level. Teachers had more control over their budgets. It was actually in some sense easier to sell because that was a little bit more D2C like. I think these days that, you know, selling into schools and this whole system is broken kind of to Cyan's point. But I do think for differentiated offerings, and if you can get the cost right, you can find a way to get it into the hands of consumers. Cause this is like a fun game.

Chad: Yeah.

Elizabeth: And fun games have a market. 

Chad: Yeah. I mean, that's always been one of the differentiators is the students when they've - the biggest feedback they've given us is this is an actual video game. I actually like this. It's not a traditional, Oh, you're pretending this is a game and it's really clearly just education. 

Charles: Yep

Elizabeth: I would pay for this for my kids. So, I guess my unsolicited two cents would be, if you can try to figure out a way to think about, are there ways we can structure this to make the process faster Like, your ideal is, could you produce a hit game every day? That's an impossible challenge, but, that is how I would think about this business. 

Chad: Yeah, No, that's, that's, that's definitely fair.

Jesse: Awesome. 

Mac: Thank you. 

Charles: Thank you so much. 

Cyan: Thank you so much. 

Charles: Thank you. 

Chad: Think I get to keep this mug? 

Josh: You do. 

[laughter]

Jesse: Cheers. Thank you. Thank you.

Elizabeth: Great to meet you. 

Jesse: I saw your little signal.

[outside applause] 

Mac: I was watching the clock. I was like, we don't teach -

Jesse: Yeah, I was, yeah. 

Josh: That was very educational for me. 

Cyan: That was very engaging. 

Jesse: Also, no pun intended. 

Josh: My puns are always intended, Jesse. 

Cyan: He's phenomenal. 

Josh: Like, one of the things I'm most excited about at each recording event, you know, some deals are going to happen, some aren't. And I used to stress out a lot about, like, the deals happening. But this season, I've just been most excited to learn from you all. Honestly, I learned so much about the ed tech space. How you all analyzed the nuance -

Jesse: And we may be wildly wrong, just to be clear. 

Josh: Yeah. And you know, not every founder can go as deep, right? But you guys were able to go that deep with this founder, which I think is obviously a testament to who Chad is and what he's building. But I just loved the analysis that you all did. so. We're going to cut from here and wrap just because that one went a little long. Try to target 45 minutes whenever possible on these pitches. 

Cyan: Well, he was super engaging. 

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Josh: For sure.

Sounds like we’ve got a few history nerds on our show. For an episode without a deal, there was a lot of passion in the pitch room.

After the show, Chad decided to pause his fundraise for the summer. But now that school's back in session. Thousands of schools have signed up in just the last few weeks.

Chad: Our system was blowing up. Our marketing guy was like, we have thousands of people on our website right now. I felt like a celebrity. I just had like hundreds of teacher signups just happening. Like every moment there was a new ping and I was just like, this is super exciting. And now guys, we've got a lot of work.

Can Chad build enough momentum this semester to close the round? We’ll find out on our season finale. Join us at 7pm on December 11th for our season finale watch party. You can register now at pitch.show/party

No offer to invest in ImmersionED 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 … 

Dean: We have developed a new way to make beer that's 30 percent more efficient. 

[can noise]

Charles: They're both really good. the left one has a little more creaminess to it, like slightly. 

Elizabeth: I actually think I like yours better. 

Mac: Are you telling me I could essentially set up a brewery with less storage space because I don't have to hold the hops anymore? 

Dean: Yeah and also skip some steps at the end as well. 

Elizabeth: Do you have a science background? 

Dean: I'm an engineer. I've come from a family of entrepreneurial engineers. We built probably like the world's coolest homebrew setup in the garage

Mac: You fit the exact founder profile that I love, and it is killing me right now. 

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

Applications are now open for season 13 of The Pitch. So if you’re raising a pre-seed or seed round for your startup, apply to pitch! We’re recording January 14th-16th in Miami, FL. Learn more at pitch.show/apply

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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.

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, FYRSTYX, BreakMaster Cylinder, In Disguise, Wilson Trouve, Our Many Stars, and Topo Azul

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