#179 Minimis: Declaring War on Garmin

Josh: Welcome to The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I’m Josh Muccio.

Lisa: And I’m Lisa Muccio. And on the show today we have co-founders Jo and Paul with Minimis. They’re raising 2 million dollars.

Josh: These guys are crazy. I can't believe they're trying to build the thing they're building. 

Lisa: It's like Google Glass, but it's for runners and cyclists so that you can see what your stats are in front of you instead of looking down at your watch while you're running. 

Josh: Not only are these guys crazy for getting into this market, they're not who you'd expect to do this.

Lisa: I definitely think of Jo and Paul as a bit of an odd couple, but it made for really good social media content. 

Josh: Yeah. On their post about them coming to the pitch event. Jo put on the customs form that Paul, his co-founder, was his stepdad. 

Jo: Stepdad's Qantas Gold status gave us access to the Admirals Lounge, by far the best lounge I've been to. Food here was amazing…

Lisa: It was definitely fun to watch their stuff. 

Josh: Yeah, he's not the stepdad, he's the co-founder who stepped up

but you know, maybe they're the right kind of crazy combo to bring this to market.

Lisa: Maybe. 

Josh: The pitch for Minimis is coming up after this. And if you wanna join us for the live taping of season 16, we are gonna be in Tampa this April. Learn more about our upcoming show at Pitch.Show/Tampa. 

Lisa: And if you're a founder, apply to Pitch at Pitch.show/apply.

Welcome back to the pitch for Minimis. Let’s meet the investors.

Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures
Sometimes a business is what it is, not what you want it to be.

Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund

Can I ask you a very direct question?

Jesse Middleton with Flybridge

I am so sick of people that are building stuff for building stuff's sake.

And Dawn Dobras with Capital F

Do not grow one more inch until you improve this brand

Emily: Okay. Do it again. 

[clap] 

Jesse: There you go. 

Cain: There you go. 

Jesse: You're as good as Josh at this already. 

Dawn: I've never done that. That’s actually feels really fun. 

[hellos] 

Paul: Hello, I’m Paul. Nice to meet you all. 

Dawn: Dawn. Nice to meet you. 

Charles: Charles. Nice to meet you. 

Paul: Charles, great to meet you. 

Jo: Oh, I’ll go the other way.

Elizabeth: Nice to meet you. Elizabeth. Nice to meet you

Jo: Charles, Nice to meet you. 

Dawn: Joseph? Hi. Nice to meet you. 

Jesse: Alright

Jo: Alright, so we've flown here all the way from Sydney. And we're here to show you.

Elizabeth: Oh, wow. 

Jo: We're here to show you our glasses. So the story goes, I'm riding downhill at 30 miles an hour, without a thought in my mind, I'm looking at my phone for directions on the next turn. Lo and behold, a car pulls out of the driveway 

Charles: Oohhh

Elizabeth: Oof

Jo: And I narrowly swerve and miss them by a mere three inches. 

Charles: Whew. 

Jo: When the adrenaline dies down, the thought occurs to me. For how many people out there is this experience, actually not a near miss, but an actual crash. And for how many of them is it actually fatal? So I've since spoken to a lot of people about this problem, including VCs like yourselves, and many tell me they've actually experienced crashes because they're looking down either at their stats or their navigation on the move. So we're building the Minimis Flow AR. These are fully standalone smart sunglasses that allow you to see everything you need to see without looking down and without carrying anything else. So your heart rate is measured within the glasses, so is your speed, your stats, your distance, everything you need is there.

Jesse: So these are not smartphone connected? 

Jo: No. 

Jesse: Got it

Jo: No. They’re fully standalone. 

Charles: Whoa. 

Dawn: Hm

Paul: And I've spent, uh, around 30 years developing wearables, medical devices, tech products, and it's 2024. Seen an advert on LinkedIn. There's really not much in the advert. It's just, looking for a co-founder. It's hardware, it's consumer tech, and it's got an aggressive commercialization schedule. So I thought, well, that's interesting enough. I do hardware, I do software as well. so I teed up a meeting with Jo. We met for a coffee. And we just hit it off straight away, he tells me his vision. I'm blown away by it. Because I'm a runner, I'm a mountain biker. I'm an early adopter, so I've spent years with every wearable you can think of on my body, tracking. 'cause it, it's all about, for me, it's about improving my performance. It's, it's getting my stats in real time. and the Flow AR, our product allows us to do this. So it's all the stats I'm used to running with heart rate, Cadence, navigation. And, but I can actually get it in my field of view. So I'm not running looking at my arm, looking at my watch. So, uh, I thought, love the vision. Sign me up. I’m joining 

Jo: So we've pre-sold a hundred thousand dollars worth of these glasses. We've also got distribution expressions of interest from retailers worldwide. We also have bootstrapped a separate software product, a minimal phone app that's sold $500,000 in the last 18 months. some of the film crew here are using it actually. 

Charles: Wow. 

Dawn: Wow. 

Elizabeth: Woah 

Jo: And yeah, we're here to seek $2 million to get into production and get some celebrity athletes on board. Can we show you the future of fitness? 

Elizabeth: Yes

Dawn: Yes, definitely. 

Elizabeth: We'd love to see this

Charles: Could’ve used it this morning when I went running

Jo: I see you've got a, is that a-

Charles: It’s a Whoop and an Oura. I have friends who work at both, so 

Jesse: Thank God you don't have more friends.

Charles: I know. 

Dawn: I'm like, I'm with you. I'm like, so geeked out on all this. 

Charles: I ran with an Apple Watch this morning so I was constantly, like you said, I was constantly like, wait, where am I?

Paul: Okay, so this is a prototype. if you'd like to try this, I can drive the display. 

Dawn: Sure. Definitely 

Jo: Dawn, do you run, do you cycle? 

Dawn: I'm actually a competitive athlete. I'm a rower

Jo: Oh, amazing

Dawn: So yeah, I know the use case. 

Paul: So you might have to adjust the position up or down, maybe down your nose until 

Dawn: Oh, I see it. Yeah. 

Paul: If you can see the main menu, so we can run Strava, All Trails. 

Dawn: I feel like my head's a little small. I think you might have to do it. 

Charles: Alright. I saw a little green square a second ago. 

Paul: Can I just check that?

Charles: Yeah. Go ahead. 

Paul: Okay. Very sorry. I'll give that back to you, Dawn. I, I'm not plugged in. 

Charles: Oh! I see it now. 

Dawn: Okay. I was like, it must just be my head 

Charles: I see my time. I see my distance. Cadence, pace. 

Elizabeth: Are you running fast, Charles? 

Charles: Not fast enough. I can actually see my Spotify music too. Is that a visual for heart rate on the far right? 

Paul: It is. That's heart rate zone, my favorite.

Charles. Yep. Oh, nice. Yeah. Wow. Current pace. This is cool. 

Paul: You can actually-

Charles: and you can still also see out, so it's kind of like the heads up display

Jesse: it’s like hovering on you. 

Charles: It's a a hovering, I'm looking at Jesse. But I can see all my steps. 

Jesse: And I am not running

Charles: And I can see Jesse. That's cool. 

Paul: Thank you. 

Dawn: oh yeah, now I can see it now. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Dawn: I can see the stats. it is a little distracting, so like. I'm trying to think of like, could I actually run wearing this? I love the idea of more data, but I'm also like am I gonna actually be able to do this? 

Paul: Right. it is very configurable, so you can make it smaller, you can make it monochrome

Dawn: So you can kind of customize it. So it's.. That's interesting. 

Charles: That's cool. 

Elizabeth: So I am really excited about augmented reality glasses. I think sort of the elephant in the room is, do you guys ever worry about whatever the supposed rumored Apple glasses that may or may not come out in the coming year or two?

Jo: Short answer is no, because the form factor, we've tested it with our audience actually, we were like, we can actually merge the inside display and the outside display together into glasses that look like your normal Ray Bans. 

Charles: Oh wow.

Jo: And it's actually gonna be lighter and probably cheaper for us to produce it. Would you want that form factor? And literally everyone except one of our customers said, no, they don't want it. This form factor The Oakley look, the sport look, is very important to them. They just don't want to wear flat sunglasses for running and cycling, but also, they're not designed specifically for sport, I have no doubt though, eventually that's gonna be the case because everything becomes a commodity at some point. At which point I think branding and user experience and building with community is gonna be really important. You have that loyalty, you have that athlete focus. But to answer shortly, there's a reason why I guess Oakleys exist as well as Ray Bans.

Elizabeth: Mm. 

Jo: And. Yeah. Owned by the same company, so, 

Elizabeth: Okay. So you guys are focused on athletics, correct? 

Jo: Yes.

Dawn: So, talk to me about the use case, your go to market, your customer. Like, talk to me about your wedge. 

Jo: Yeah, so, use case, we’re, right now we're targeting runners and cyclists, there's 150 million people, who use Strava running and cycling. We want to be the wearable of choice for that 150 million athletes worldwide. We would also want to, target the golf market as well. Yard, windage, distance, as well as later on down the line, snow sports, as well as eventually standalone swim goggles 

Jesse: And, and is the standalone, it's interesting you're focused on the standalone comment. I find that to be intriguing. is it that most people would prefer to not run with any, I'm not a runner, so, um, is it that most people would prefer to run or cycle without bringing a phone with them at all? that seems to be a big part of this pitch. 

Paul: Yeah, I think the feedback we've had is certainly for runners. They'd probably keep their watch on. If you, if you've got a smart watch. 

Charles: Yeah. If you've got a Garmin

Dawn: Yeah 

Paul: But they'd probably leave their phone at home. 

Jesse: Got it. 

Paul: Um, when it comes to cyclists, maybe not the case. They, you know, if you're going on a long ride

Jesse: You have the space

Paul: you're gonna have a coffee afterwards, you'd probably have your phone, but you wouldn't be using your phone and you wouldn't be having it on the handlebars in a non aero fashion. 

Jesse: Yeah. 

Jo: We actually asked users this question because if we weren't standalone, it'd be a lot easier to make this work. And so we're like, okay, we've gotta commit to it if we're sure that users want it. And a lot of the feedback we got verbatim was that I'm just tired of carrying my phone. It makes a difference over long distances. 

Dawn: It does. 

Jo: it'd be nice to have the option of not bringing it along and still being able to call in situations. For a lot of people, having that heads up display is just not necessarily worth the cost of, if it's not replacing any of those other devices. So that's the huge value proposition, I think is the fact that it merges multiple devices and it saves consumers money.

Dawn: I have so many questions. Um alright

Charles: Talk about the cost profile. Just like the COGS

Dawn: Yeah that’s where I was going.

Charles: And then also, like what the retail price, business model, things like that. Where do you think you'll land? 

Paul: Okay, so the retail price is $699. 

Charles: Okay. 

Paul: The COGS at 3000 units is $350. We can get down in volume to $200 and it will reduce over time in, in quantity. Yeah. 

Dawn: How far away is this from what you're going to market with, what you've just put on us? Like-

Paul: Looks wise, uh, quite a long way. We've made this robust, obviously, just so we can fit it on people. 

Dawn: Yeah, yeah, yeah 

Paul: So it will be getting smaller and slimmer. I've got a background in wearables and the, I'm an electronic engineer as well. The electronics is never the hard part in a wearable. it's getting the fit right across a population. and getting the aesthetics just right. So we are raising because we realize that iterations of what you see, is where we need to spend time. 

Elizabeth: What is the battery life on this? 

Paul: It's between four and eight hours. It just depends how much data you have on the screen 

Jo: and whether or not you run it constantly as well. So Paul put it as like a, all in sort of Maximalist view. I would run it a lot smaller and also intermittently, maybe every 10 seconds it would pop up and then say-

Jesse: And then give you a mile markers or something. Just, yeah. 

Jo: Correct. And when you do that, the battery life extends massively as well. 

Charles: Hm. What's the profile of the athlete that you think, you wanna target given the price point and given the functionality? 

Jo: Runners and cyclists and triathlete. We say triathletes would be the strongest market. Because triathletes also tend to be the most gadget friendly and also the most willing to spend, followed by cyclists. 

Charles: And they train a lot. 

Jo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Followed by cyclists and then followed by runners in that order. Cyclists are, uh, also a very, happy to spend market. You know, bikes, $20,000. And runners less so as well. they spend less, but there's a whole lot more runners. So, those three are our core markets at the moment. but we wanted zero in on, America, Europe and Australia and Canada. Those four regions. 

Dawn: Can we go one level deeper? Talk about go to market, And do either of you guys, or is there someone on your team that's ever gone to market 

Jo: Yes. So, for the separate software product we had, we've trialed a lot of the go to market strategies that we want to experiment with. there will be, two broad channels. One is D2C, which we're very good at. We're very good at digital advertising, bringing people in. Our go-to-market strategy broadly is to partner with, celebrity athletes and get them using the glasses, getting them to give honest feedback about it and then publicize that journey about what's it like to wear these glasses on the move? As well as we have a duathlon club as well, so, community driven approach. Duathlon means both biking and running. Like more of a niche sport that coincidentally you can use these glasses for both those sports very seamlessly. and in terms of B2B, I mentioned before, we've got expressions of interest. We've got one from Australia's third largest eyewear retail chain. they have more than a hundred stores Australia wide. I got a signed expression of interest from Sports Basement Presidio. 

Charles: Oh yeah. 

Elizabeth: Nice congrats. 

Jo: Yeah. And 

Dawn: You can expense the trip now! 

Jo: Whenever I show people these glasses in shops. It's been very easy at least, it kind of speaks for itself. They see the vision. Some of them say, oh, I think you're onto something. I've been looking for something like this. I think some of them have been, let's just say squeezed a little by the giants. I won't name names, um, where their retail margins are quite slim. So I think we stand an opportunity there to provide slightly thicker margins and then incentivize the mom and dad shops all the way to the big chains to really push those out as well.

Elizabeth: What is your plan for launch on this? I think you had mentioned you wanna work on the form factor more. What do you think the timeline kind of looks like? 

Paul: Between nine and 12 months. The electronics is already at, um, EVT, so we're already, testing hopefully, the final electronics. But we also have to get carrier testing certification. And that takes a bit of time. So nine to 12 months. 

Dawn: Um, I'll just start. I, first of all, I'm super geeky about wearables. I love this kind of stuff. At the highest level, I'm just gonna validate a hundred percent. There's a market here and people are scratching at it. For me, I'm just gonna say this, they're clunky and I wouldn't use them. Right now that's not a product that as a female athlete I would use. I don't love it yet. 

Paul: Hmm. 

Dawn: I love the idea more than I love how it felt on my head. 

Can the investors get past the early prototype and see the Oakley vision? That’s coming up

Dawn: For me, I'm just gonna say this, they're clunky and I wouldn't use them. Right now that's not a product that as a female athlete I would use. I don't love it yet. 

Paul: Hmm. 

Dawn: I love the idea more than I love how it felt on my head. and I don't know you well enough yet to know that you're gonna have that vision that I think is gonna be a blockbuster design product. but yeah, I'd love to try 'em when they're ready. 'cause it's missing in the market. 

Jo: Thank you 

Charles: I'm just curious, to Dawn's point, like what is the target spec? Is it like, looks like, feels like the Oakley running glasses, but better. from a fit form function? Like what's the bullseye you're trying to hit? 

Jo: Exactly the point that you mentioned. 

Charles: Yeah. 

Jo: Looks like, feels like Oakleys, but better. 

Charles: Because I, we have another investment in an optical company and I've spent a bunch of time trying like, the Meta Ray Bans and other things. 

Jesse: Yeah. I have a pair in my bag.

Charles: And I can't wear, like, to Dawn's point, like, I'm acutely aware of weight when it's on my face that's designed, to be worn for a long period of time. You really do start to feel it. But I will say I did a tempo run today, and I'm just like checking my wrist every 10 seconds. I would really like to not have to do that. So I totally get where you're going. And we, we do hardware investment, but I, I, how much more work needs to be done to get to the place you all wanna be? 

Paul: It's a few months and it's really about cutting down, these, these are actually much chunkier than the ones we'll go to market with. 

Charles: Yeah ok

Jo: So our progress of iteration right now has rapidly increased. So it took us like two and a half years almost to get to this point where the electronics are fully standalone. We had a gen one in August, 2023. This is a gen two, came out a few months ago. And then this, we've since switched to Australian biscuit names. So we call this Tim Tam. 

Dawn: Oh, I love Tim Tams. 

Jo: We literally freshly baked it outta the oven and then bought it here. Uh, within, within a month or two, we should have our next generation called Anzac. And then beyond Anzac, the final consumer one we're calling Lamington. The progress of iteration is much faster once the electronics are done. but after that, the ergonomics and the aesthetics, a lot of prototype iteration and, just to get your points there, it's about the fit, it’s about the feel, it's about the weight. And we're confident we can get there because fundamentally we're building for ourselves. So we wouldn't release something to market we're not happy with 

Charles: because at that price point you're competing with either a very nice running wristwatch, like a very high-end Garmin watch.

Jo: Yeah. 

Charles: Okay. 

Jo: Mmm

Elizabeth: I think just as sort of a piece of feedback, like it's a little bit hard to wrap my head around what it will look like in the final form factor. And I fully understand that you also probably don't know, but even if you had like a 3D printed version of what you want it to look like. In an ideal world of, hey, if we could slim this down, cut the weight, it would end up looking like this. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Elizabeth: Like that would be very helpful for me because I think right now I'm just, where my mind is, is like, oohh, I

Paul: Sure 

Elizabeth: I wouldn't be able to wear this, for me, like. I think that actually, augmented reality glasses are going to be the future. and I also fully get now your vision around making this for athletics. And that makes total sense for me. But I think then you have to be very cognizant of weight and also if you're sweating, like this thing is gonna slip down your nose and like all this other stuff. And that feels like, actually, as much as I get the electronics problem is hard. I feel like this is just as hard to get right. And so I think for me, unfortunately, I'm gonna be out. Thank you. 

Paul: Thank you. 

Jesse: I'm not as bullish on everybody wearing augmented reality glasses. I think for those who wear glasses, that's great. But like if you want to go running and it's not that bright out, you're gonna swap out your lens. There's a bunch of questions I have. We're not commonly like consumer hardware investors, so to be frank, as you talk through it. So the steps to go from here to commercialization, like they're not native to me. And so for that, and just sort of not being in this category, As a user, like I, I'm gonna pass here as well. I I wish you the best of luck, but it's not a fit for me. 

Paul: Okay. Thank you. 

Charles: Yeah. We've done a lot of consumer hardware, both at my previous fund and my current fund. I think if this was a $300 product and I was saying, the choices are dumb sunglasses at like 200, 250 or smart sunglasses at 300. I might say, oh, well, like for an incrementally small amount of money, I get a similar product with enhancements. I just worry that, like, to deliver on my customer expectations at the price point you mentioned, as someone who runs a lot but is not a competitive athlete, like Dawn, I don't compete in things like that. I wonder if, if that's really an audience you can address with this version of the product at this price point or if it really has to- we have a company that makes cycling helmets. And like I've talked to 'em a lot about like what a professional competitive cyclist cares about in a helmet and is willing to pay for is different than the weekend warrior. So I just wonder if maybe there's a segmentation curve you can go down with the first version, but for me, this one isn't gonna be a fit now, but as someone who runs a lot, I really hope I can get a pair at some point. 

Jo: Thank you

Charles: Thank you guys.

Elizabeth: Thank you guys

Charles: Thank you so much. 

Jesse: Thank you. 

Charles: Thanks for making the trip 

[clapping]

Charles: I want a studio audience for my office

Jesse: Yeah. Right. 

Charles: Like, I wanna come out of a meeting or come out of a zoom.

Dawn: Me too

Jesse: That’s a hardware device we should produce

Charles: That’s right

Dawn: Just more positive reinforcement

Charles: Please clap

Josh: Clapping as a service?

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Jesse: Clapping as a service would be hilarious. 

Elizabeth: And it would be called ClasS. 

Josh: Oh boy. 

Charles: Wow. 

Josh: Man 

Josh: I just can't believe that they're trying to, that this like small team is trying to tackle this big problem. when we spoke to them I was like, you guys are crazy. To take on Apple and Google and everyone who's trying to tackle this. 

Charles: It's so funny, like we've invested in a lot of consumer hardware. The gap, the imaginative leap you had to take from seeing the first version to the final version. It was like a gigantic leap. And like all of the teams that we did invest in, that were successful. When you look back at the original version, you're like, I don't know why we actually invested in that iteration of the product, 'cause it came so far, but it took a lot of time and money. The other thing I'll say is, I know a decent amount about what it takes to build the augmented reality glasses. Everyone else who's doing this is building glasses that need to do a ton of things, take pictures, upload those pictures to the internet, identify people, read my, like, the electronics of those devices and battery and comms is very, very expensive. The thing I like about theirs is like, it's a single purpose device. You can get rid of a bunch of the expensive stuff. 

Jesse: Yeah. I just I'm not sold on the form factor of like glasses being the AR solution for everyone. Maybe for runners that'll be true. Although, if it's really dark out and they’re sunglasses and you're like, I don’t want to wear these now? Like this is a real problem. Meta had this problem in their first version. It was like they made sunglasses. RayBan is like, cool. You can make phone calls, listen to your music, as long as you're sitting by a sunny pool. Not if you're sitting in your house because you're not gonna walk around with your sunglasses on.

Elizabeth: At 9PM 

Jesse: So, so now you need a second set. But beyond that, it's a, it's a hard problem to solve. 

Elizabeth: You gotta move out here, Jesse, and then you'll wear sunglasses more. 

Jesse and Charles: All the time.

Dawn: See, I think for me, I actually believe in the market. I actually think that there's enough people that are looking at data and are interested in it. But if it's not something I passionately love, I'm not gonna use it. a visual would've helped me go a long way on that. 

Josh: I was really, hoping they were gonna speak up and say, oh, actually here's what we have

Dawn: Yeah, pull it out of your pocket. 

Josh: Ah, there’s nothing

Dawn: But like, but it matters so much.

Elizabeth: Yes. 

Dawn: Like what I run in, the Lycra I use, the training supplements, my hydration, my electrolytes, like I'm really specific about it, so I'm not just gonna add something random to that tech stack. And so that's where it fell short for me was the design, is like, it's way too clunky for me to use and I don't see them getting there in three months. 

Elizabeth: And if we're gonna geek out a bit on the tech in there as well, I was actually quite surprised to learn from their own market research that people definitely wanted a standalone. I think it's one of those things where if you gave me a choice, like, yeah, of course I want a standalone, but I think in reality, I'm not a diehard runner where I can just run without listening to my music, without my, listening to my podcast or whatever. I'm gonna need my phone anyway when I think about it. And so maybe that can cut down on some of the complexity around, now they need to support cell service. And all the other stuff when you have your phone on you. And that would affect some of the other things around the form factor and where they can pack in the electronics.

Josh: And if the audience is just people either running or biking and you just launched the one app that they need while they're running or biking. 

Elizabeth: Yep. 

Josh: Well, and I assume most people still have a watch. Like the watch isn't that cumbersome? 

Charles: No

Josh: Like does it really need to replace everything? 

Elizabeth: I don't think so. But that was their takeaway.

Josh: That was their point. 

Jesse: Yeah. 

Josh: Huh. if this was at the 300 price point, would you have invested, Charles?

Charles: Probably not. I would've been more interested though. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Charles: Like there aren't that many things that people buy at that price point. 

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm. 

Charles: If you're a serious cyclist, like with a $20,000 bike, and I know those people, $700 for a pair of glasses isn't crazy given your commitment to the sport. 

Dawn: My assumption is they would just come down market. Like that would be their primary, a secondary. 'cause you're not gonna win the market at 700. 

Elizabteh: But it comes back to, what are you packing in there? 

Dawn: Exactly.

Elizabeth: Because like, I don't know, you know, the difference between an elite runner and myself is huge and what we would want is actually kind of different things. Like, I, I don't need to be standalone 'cause I'm gonna still listen to my podcast. Right. I need to listen to The Pitch while I'm running. 

Josh: You do

Jesse: That's right. 

Josh: You need to catch up on yourself. 

Elizabeth: Yeah

Jesse: The Pitch. The pitch for The Pitch.

Josh: Lemme see what Elizabeth said six months ago

Elizabeth: But I, I think I read somewhere that the really dedicated runners, they just power through. They don't listen to anything. 

Dawn: Yeah, I don’t listen to people, anything.

Elizabeth: She's a world class athlete. 

Dawn: No I’m not, only in one sport

Elizabeth: That's, that's why she's winning these rowing races. Yeah. 

Josh: All right. That's a pitch. 

Jesse: Great. You want these? …

Paul and Jo walked out of the pitch room with an armful of prototypes and feedback. After the pitch, Jo and his stepdad take an extended stay in San Francisco before heading back to the land down under. What happened in SF, after this

Break

Welcome back. 6 months after their pitch, we caught up with Jo and Paul

Josh: Good morning to you both. 

Jo: Good afternoon to you. 

Josh: Let's go back in time. So it seemed like the investors on our show were pretty bought into the market you're building for, but oddly enough, it seemed like your pitch actually broke down because they couldn't imagine what the final form factor would be.Dawn thought the prototype was too heavy. I mean, you told her these are gonna be like Oakleys in the end, but that wasn't satisfying to them. They wanted to see a 3D mockup of what your Oakley style AR glasses would look like. Is that what you guys came away with from your pitch?

Jo: Yep. 

Josh: Nailed it. 

Jo: Yeah, nailed it. Nailed it. And in hindsight, the prototype that we brought to the show, we started to call it the Frankenstein prototype because, we put together what we can and we've sort of kept it as a trophy item, be like, this was our first like really actually functional standalone prototype, but God, it's ugly. Right And it kind of just reminded me of recently, I saw the first, whoop and I saw the first Oura.

Lisa: ohhh

Joseph: And then I was like, oh my God, these things are so ugly. Like nobody's going to wear them. I saw the first Garmin watch for running and it was like huge and bulky. And I was like, who's going to run with this? So it kind of reminded me that like, oh shit, we should really keep our first Frankenstein prototype just to show our evolution of things. But we’ve progressed a lot since then Paul, if you wanted to talk about it more 

Paul: I'll just hold this up to the camera. 

Lisa: Oh, wow. 

Paul: it's obviously very, very different.

Josh: Oh, yeah. 

Paul: to what we had in Napa. I'll just briefly put it on. 

Lisa: Oh, wow. 

Paul: A lot smaller. It fits very well to your head. It's got an adjustable nose piece. It's completely self-contained. It's about less than half the weight, so it's a completely different beast. 

Lisa: It has like the wraparound sides, but then also it looks like there's a black bar that goes all the way across the top.

Paul: There is, yeah, yeah

Lisa: Okay. And then the lenses drop down from that? 

Josh: It does look like Oakley's from the front. kind of edgier form factor, actually, Like there's more of a slant to it, it seems. And then 

Paul: yeah, 

Josh: like the, what do you call the ear pieces? What are those called? 

Paul: I'm, I'm not sure. We just call them arms. 

Josh: The arms, okay. 

Paul: The whole thing’s an arm

Josh: Okay. The arms are a little thicker, obviously, to hold the battery, but otherwise from the front it looks. Like, a Pair of Oakleys. 

Paul: This design we have here is, is very close to the final. we're gonna be doing some intensive user testing coming up in the next two months. It doesn't matter how far ahead you think you are, once you've got it on 10, 20 people Different head sizes.

Lisa: Yeah. 

Paul: Different use cases. You, you find out you've got nips and tucks little adjustments. So of course that's what we're about to go through. 

Josh: So there's definitely a market for what you guys are building. 'cause a few weeks after your pitch, the Meta Strava Oakleys were released. What was that day like when they announced that or when, you know, news dropped that those were released? I'm guessing like a thousand people sent you that press release. 

Jo: Yeah, yeah. We got sent it a lot. And, people were saying, Hey, is it game over for you guys? And I was like, no, it is actually great news for us. So we've been anticipating their release for a long time. it validated that this market is worth building for. And you'll see that in the comments for all of the advertising people saying, this looks great. I see the future in this, but can you add a display? Or like, can it be standalone? And so engineering wise, what we've taken on is a lot more than what Meta's done, and it'll still take meta several years to do what we do if they have the will to do. It makes us a attractive acquisition target because we've done the hard technology behind what they're doing. But all in all, it's really good news for us because. For example, I was able to bike into a bike shop, never met the guy. Within three minutes he's like, sign me up for 25 units, because people have been asking me about this. 

Josh: Huh 

Jo: So every dollar Meta spends on advertising is a huge boost for us because it's passive education of the market that we don't have to do. 

Lisa: Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So even though no one invested in the room, it sounds like you really made the most of your trip to SF. It felt like you were there for months. Is that true? What happened? Tell us about that. 

Jo: Yeah, so we stacked up a whole bunch of meetings, existing, new investors, and then before we were going to leave, we got invited into Founders Inc. And soon after we got invited in, we got included in a formal program called Blueprint, and there's just 50 of the most cracked hardware builders from across the world in one huge warehouse. And we were just building hardware 24/7. 

Lisa: Oh my gosh

Jo: literally 24/7. There was people there who don't sleep and people who come at odd hours, and I think courtesy and huge shout out to that team as well. They created an environment where Paul and I were able to make monumental strides for both the prototype, 'cause they had the hardware space, but also the commercialization side of things. So while Paul was spending long hours in the lab, in front of his desk, designing and working on the feedback that Dawn and Elizabeth gave us. I was out on a bike cycling all the way to Fairfax, the mountain biking capital. And then just dropping along different shops along the way. I've probably pitched about 50 different bike shops. Of which I think about 11 of them have signed on. 

Lisa: What?

Josh: Wow. 

Jo: Pretty, pretty happy with like the conversion rate. And, and shout out to Mark as well who mentored us at the pitch show

Josh: Mark Dannenberg

Paul: Oh yeah 

Josh: Pitch coach

Jo: Yes Mark Dannenberg

Paul: Oh yeah.

Jo: because he taught us to start with the story first. Like I almost crashed when I was looking down at my bike computer. Right. And then people instantly just light up when they hear it. They're like, oh shit man. I'm sorry. Same here, right? 

Josh: Have you guys raised any funding since the show? 

Jo: I think we're onto 18 angel investors now, and all of the momentum we got from being in the Bay Area then attracted our first VC investment from Entrepreneur Ventures, which is the venture arm of entrepreneur Media Group. And the deal also includes coverage to their millions of readers worldwide. So we're pretty happy about that. It's the start of the venture capital hamster wheel, as they say.

Lisa: How much did you end up raising? 

Jo: Yeah, we're about onto 270,000 so far. 

Lisa: Okay. Back in August, you guys were targeting a launch of nine to 12 months out. Is that still the plan? 

Jo: Yes. 

Paul: We are close to that. What we do have to do is to raise more obviously to get to market. There's tooling, there's manufacturing set up. As far as the project's gone, we're actually on track. We have to close this funding round, and then it will be a a few months from that. 

Josh: How much more capital do you need to raise for this product to go live? 

Jo: We're flexible, I guess as Australians. As Australians, we make do with what we have. So we're not gonna go out there and say, we must do it with a million dollars. We're aiming for a million. But if we don't get the money, we'll still do what we can. It's not gonna stop us. 

Josh: Yeah, I have no doubt you will. 

Lisa: Do you feel like the trip was worth it even though the VCs were like stuck on the Frankenstein glasses? 

Jo: Yes. Absolutely. And I wanted to say thank you guys so much for inviting us. If it wasn't for the invite, we wouldn't have gone. And if it, if we didn't go, we wouldn't have. Gotten all the momentum we got and we probably wouldn't have landed our first VC check. A lot. Large part of our angels also hopped on because of all the traction that we were generating while we're there. And, and the truth is like Australia is a great place to build, but it's not a great place to like build momentum around the business side of things. So it was a huge boost for me to be there for three months and for Paul as well, to be surrounded by all these builders in San Francisco. We wouldn't have done that without The Pitch Show inviting us. 

Lisa: Aw, that's awesome.

Josh: Congratulations on all the progress you've made. I’m um, I'm impressed.

Jo: Thank you. still early days, just the beginning. So watch this story.

Josh: We will. Thank you guys. Well, enjoy the rest of your day. I'm gonna go to sleep.

Jo: Goodnight

Lisa: Bye guys

Jo: I like Jo and Paul. Those are some cool dudes. 

Lisa: Yeah. I got to spend a lot of time actually with Paul at the event, and he was very lovely. 

Josh: They were so grateful about the whole experience. 

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: I was like, aren't you guys disappointed that you flew all this way? They're like, no, this was the best ever. And then they turned it into the best ever. 

Lisa: Yeah. I mean, the fact that they got. Into Founders Inc. And stayed longer and were so active in the community, got more investors. I think that's definitely a byproduct of their attitude and how they approach life. 

Josh: it is interesting though, like all of the VCs except for Jesse, were like pretty bullish on ar vr, and particularly like this application for sports. Like they were not concerned about it being hardware, but it really came down to the form factor. And Charles's point about the price.

Lisa: I mean, I wouldn't wanna pay $700, but I run occasionally. 

Josh: Right

Lisa: So it doesn't make sense for me. 

Josh: Not a competitive triathlete. 

Lisa: Not at all.

Josh: Or rower over here? 

Lisa: No. No.

Josh: But I want these guys to win.

Lisa: I really like them. And this is always the case with these kind of like hardware things where you are going up against big tech, it's David versus Goliath, and you wanna root for the little guy. And I am. I'm rooting for them. I want them to win. But it feels like such a long shot when you're at this early stage.

Josh: Yes

Lisa: But I think they can do it. It's just a marathon, not a sprint 

Josh: Or a triathlon 

Lisa: or duathlon. 

Josh: I didn't even know that was a thing. 

If you're listening and you're a runner or cyclist and want these sunglasses to exist, Jo and Paul have launched a We Funder and are taking checks as low as a hundred dollars.

But no offer to invest in Minimis directly is being made to the listening audience on today's show, you can, though, invest with us by becoming an LP in the Pitch Fund. We're raising Fund II right now. To learn more, go to the Pitch.fund.

Next week on The Pitch… 

Elizabeth: Can I ask you an A-hole-ish question?

Iñaki: Absolutely, please. 

Elizabeth: So 

Elizabeth: It's been almost two years. 

Iñaki: Yes. 

Elizabeth: And you are now just shy of a 100K per year in revenue.

Iñaki: Yes. 

Elizabeth: Why do you think the revenue is relatively low given the time period?

That’s next week! Subscribe to The Pitch on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss future episodes. You can watch full length versions of every pitch over on our Patreon at The Pitch Uncut.

And if you’re a founder raising a pre-seed or seed round you can apply to pitch on season 16! We’ll be taping in Tampa, Florida this April. Send us your deck at pitch.show/apply.

We’ll see you next Wednesday, in the PITCH ROOM.

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

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Breakmaster Cylinder, The Firmware Rebels, Marlon Gibbons, Joey Kantor, Boxwood Orchestra, New Body Electric, and Peter Jean & The Runaway Queen.

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