Transcript

[00:00] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
For those of you who I have not met yet, my name is Molly Lazarus and I run the US arm of the Remarkable Disability Tech Accelerator. You are here likely because you are interested in applying, which we are very excited about and so we’re going to go through all about the program today and then we’ll save a lot of questions for you to ask us anything. Ideally about the program but we did say anything, so your choice. So why don’t we just jump in. To start the hype a little bit I just wanted to play our most recent Remarkable quick video, so you can kind of get a feel for who we are.

[00:45] Video with audio description, and Voiceover
Various scenes of disabled people in day-to-day activities. Many of the greatest technological advances enabling the world right now. A girl brushes her teeth. Were originally created by. A workshop. And for people with disabilities. A family has a sign language video call. Rapid views of disabled people with disabilities utilizing various technologies enhancing their aptitude. Remarkable exists to amplify those innovators. A man in an electric wheelchair. To help transform their ideas into revolutionary tools whose benefits are felt universally. A high-tech diagram, men in wheelchairs in a gym, a man and woman walk with prosthetic legs, a mechanical hand is activated. Because technology can not only drive inclusion and equity for people with disabilities. People apply technology. It can do it for everyone. Scenes of the disabled empowered by technology, a girl plays a keyboard, a man with a prosthetic leg dives into a swimming pool, a man weight trains, another man joyfully finishes a race, a senior woman looks through virtual reality goggles, a blind man walks down a street, a girl embraces a gymnast, a woman types on a screen, a man in a wheelchair waves to a cheering audience, a little girl tries on glasses. Remarkable Disability Tech. Amplifying every human’s potential. Made possible by Cerebral Palsy Alliance and Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation.

[02:02] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
Alright…we’re gonna go to the next slide and share it again. Okay so for those of you who may have just joined in the last minute again my name is Molly Lazarus this is the Ask Me Anything for the US arm of the Remarkable Accelerator. I’m going to take a quick accessibility pause and talk through what we have on the call and open up the option for anything that may not have been considered that might be needed. So we have two wonderful ASL interpreters on the call today. We have Dalton and we have Jenevieve who will be switching back and forth, so we are going to make sure they are spotlighted but if for any reason they’re not visible to you, and you need them, please make sure to stop us we’re more than happy to make sure that’s available to you. There are also closed captions. I will describe any slides that have pertinent information for those of us who may need descriptions for slides but with that being said if there’s anything that you may need that we haven’t provided please drop it in the chat, stop us, my colleague George is on the call, he’s monitoring everything and so we’re here we want to make sure this is inclusive for everybody. If anybody needs anything, this is a good moment otherwise I’ll continue.

So today we’re going to talk about Remarkable more generally. We’re going to talk about the Accelerator program, the kind of startups that we’re looking for, how to craft a successful application and then we’ll take plenty of time to do FAQs anything that wasn’t really covered that you want to dig into some more. So Remarkable. On the screen is a variety of logos, probably about 50 of them, that have gone through the Remarkable global program. Remarkable is one of the longest running Disability Tech accelerators in the world. We’ve supported over a 100 companies through a variety of programs. As you may have heard in the video Remarkable is made possible by the Cerebral Palsy Alliance which is an Australian organization, and the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation which is a US organization. Globally the US program started about two and a half years ago. This will be our third cohort but we work very closely across the global program and the programs run in tandem, so while you’re at the US AMA we’ll be working on and off with the global teams and will get the whole amazingness of Remarkable.

With that being said we have a variety of programs across Remarkable that I just wanted to highlight very quickly. They go from ideation, validation, commercialization, scaling and follow on funding. At the ideation stage we have our Insights podcast, which is a podcast our colleague Viv runs that talks about the space and we have Designathon which is something that our colleague George on the call runs which is really surfacing ideas and coming up with solutions kind of rapidly to those… those problem statements. Stage 2 is Launcher which some of you may have done, it just wrapped up. That program is really about product testing, you know getting kind of zero to one in your startup. The Accelerator, which I imagine you’re all here for, is really about that commercialization stage. It’s really saying you, you know what your product is. You kind of figured out revenue on some level and let’s really get our, you know, power behind you to bring it to market in a meaningful way. And then we have a newer program we just launched called Scaler and that is follow on funding for people kind of going into the next stage post accelerator and their fundraising. One of our US companies that was in our Accelerator last year Aurie, they just received some follow on funding from Scaler. So it’s a nice kind of next potential step post accelerator. So at Remarkable US we set out to accelerate ground breaking startups that can have life-changing impact on disabled people while also proving that this space has strong economic opportunity. And I think that that’s a really important piece. We’re looking to create really meaningful impact but we’re also looking to create businesses because I think it’s very important that we create a rigor around this space in terms of our ability to create sustainable business models and to prove that this is an investable market. And so we try to hold both intentions, as best that we can. To give you some stats on the companies that have gone through our US programs specifically, which again we’ve now run two cohorts.

So over the last two years 9 startups went through the US program those startups have raised $ 37.9 million, they’ve created 73 jobs, they’re serving 15,000 customers, probably more because we took this data the end of 2023, so probably more at this point. They’ve secured 32 patents, they’ve gone to 8 countries for exports and their population of disabled founders is around 23%, are disabled teams, and that you know mirrors the general population.

On the slide you’re going to see pictures of variety of the startups that we have invested in. You’ll see on the left the woman is holding up a little monitor that’s a spinal neural modulation you can put it on your back, it’s from Spinex and it allows people with CP or limited mobility to actually regain the neural pathways to be able to move muscles that they maybe had previously not been able to. Up top there are two men walking down the street, one with a cane that’s Wear Works they create navigation solutions for people who are blind. There’s a man pushing a wheelchair that’s Participant, they are a company that makes a affordable, really customizable wheelchair for lower and middle- income countries. On the right is Biotium, again these are all startups that have gone through our program, they make a wearable robotic that helps people with foot drop and different gate issues to be able to walk more easily and using less energy. Bottom left is a wristband with a cup and a curly thing that kind of goes around the cup and that is Hominid X, they’ve created a way for you to grip any sized object without having the universal cuff, which for people with limited mobility they often just wear that cuff and so this is a big Improvement. We have Springrose, they make a bra for women with limited mobility or dexterity. Next to Springrose is a picture of a man holding a box that says Aurie on it. Aurie makes a reusable no touch catheter that helps people who maybe need intermittent catheterization to be able to do that in a safer way that prevents UTIs. And on the right, actually don’t know what that picture is from. George do you know? Oh no it’s it’s …enable… it’s Cephable. I pulled it from their website. Cephable was in our program last year as well and they allow you to interact with your technology through anything that you want. You can do voice, hot keys, facial expressions all sorts of things. Rethinking how people use technology. So as you can see based on these and on this page I kind of put a description of all the different companies Aurie, Biotium, Cephable, Hominid X, Participant, Springrose, WearWorks and XR Navigation that, we although though we are a CP organization, we really look across the disability spectrum and we are looking to support companies that have an impact on people with disabilities more generally.

So what makes our accelerator unique? For those of you who I have had the pleasure to talk to the thing that I often say is a lot of accelerators are decelerators. I was a startup founder, I went through Y Combinator I went through a lot of the big accelerators when I was a startup founder and my commitment is that this program brings a lot of rigor and that our commitment to you is that we will actually accelerate you and we will actually only take companies on that we believe we can provide meaningful value to. So commitment number two is we add value. We add value while respecting your time. I know there are two things that a founder has and can utilize, and one is their time and the other is their equity and an accelerator asks for both. And so we don’t take that lightly and we really focus on ensuring that we can add value and that we can accelerate you. We do this by making sure our program is really, really personalized. In the US we’re only taking five companies this year. So we basically build the program around the companies that are in our program. We’re not going to just give you a curriculum, that’s not how startups need support anymore in a world of chat GPT and a million you know Google videos to teach you how to do anything. We are really going to tailor the program to the needs that you have. And the last piece is community. We build in the community, we believe in nothing about us without us. We build alongside people with disabilities and we build alongside your cohort and with your team. We found if you call up any founder from this program, the community that we create and the way that we build community around your startup is really one of our key differentiators. There are not a lot of disability focused accelerators and so the community is really a value add and important part of what we do. Our operating principles. We build programming around each startup’s objectives and evaluate success on our ability to accelerate the object your objectives. So essentially you’ll come in, we’ll workshop kind of what you expect your startup to look like in four months and then we basically build programming so that you can get that support in those areas. We focus on developing a startup’s understanding of accessibility and inclusion and we support leadership and team development through the lines of inclusion. Ideally all of you will be wildly successful and you will go on not to just make products that help disabled people but you will also be employers of disabled people. And so we want to ensure that as you are building your company and your team and your values and your ways of working that you are building them in a way that also supports the future employment of disabled people in a meaningful and inclusive way.

Okay so what happens during the Accelerator? Coaching and Mentoring. There’ll be Community Connections Network Access, 16 weeks of customized bespoke programming that leads up to Demo Day and in the US there will be a $55,000 investment in the form of a safe. Those are often here, they are negotiated based on the terms of your current raise, so if you’ve already raised a lot of money generally will just come in at the terms of what you are currently raising and if you haven’t raised any money we usually come in around five 5% I believe. But again that’s a conversation that you have with us, it’s not a this is what we do and and that’s it. You will have a coach that you will work with every week once or twice a week. For all 16 weeks we have found this to be a really positive part of the program. We have a huge global network of mentors. The US and the Australian program have access to all the same mentors, so if you’re like I want to understand how to use… how to get into the Australian you know system I want to talk to this person like we have those people, we have them in a lot of different places. And guarantee if you need a mentor, you don’t have them in our system we can find them for you. And again with that just in 10 connections you know starting last year companies came in and they’re like we need to have connections at X Y and Z. At the start of the program we didn’t have them, by the end of the program they we had them and the companies had meaningful relationships with them because the Remarkable name really does go a long way in terms of being able to open doors for people. In terms of the community that we have right now, we have two international cohorts that will be running at the same time, the Global and the US program. You have a Remarkable team, wonderful group of humans. You have everybody at the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation, which is the nonprofit that runs the US program it’s based in New York. You’ll have connections through Cerebral Palsy Alliance, which is one of the largest direct service providers people with disabilities in Australia. Coaches, mentors. You’ll have connections to all of the many partners that we have in the US. We work really closely with the Cerebral Palsy Research Network, which is a network of 30 hospitals and those hospitals you know focus on work with doctors any way touches CP so you get a variety of doctors since CP is so diverse. We have a huge group of people in the disability community, which you’ll be meeting with almost weekly. We are connected to most of the startups in the space and we have opportunities for you to do AMAs with Founders who are a little further along than you and in those ways you can really kind of have a intimate conversation about the things that they maybe would not say publicly but there’s a lot to learn there. And we’re part of the +N Network and the Moonshot Network, which is a group of I think 11 Global disability focused accelerators that operate in countries like China, New Zealand, Australia, India and so we have the ability to introduce you to folks who maybe know the localization of those countries a bit better. At the start of the program we will, if you are selected, we will do Deep Dives and that’s basically how we build the program. We’ll kind of spend, you know up to four hours with you, kind of getting to know what is under the hood of your startup and then we go to work to make sure that we’re building the program that will actually accelerate you. That is a 16 week program. It starts June 17th and it ends October 4th. That as I said, we’ll have weekly coaching and then mentoring sessions as needed. We’ll have 2x 75 minute sessions per week. I think those will be on Tuesday and Thursday. There’ll be a menu of things that will happen during that time, I’ll go over that later and then we’re going to have a couple in-person events. I think that’s on the next slide so let me do it, almost next slide.

Okay I know I’m talking fast and I apologize, I just want to make sure we have lots of time for questions at the end. But if I’m talking too fast, tell me and I will slow down.

So just-in-time content. Those are those, two 2 hour blocks every week. That will be filled in basically by what’s being highlighted in coaching sessions for what the cohort needs. And so that might be a workshop on something specific, that might be a Founder Q&A. As I mentioned like we’ve had a last year we had a ton of founders that came in and were just like here’s everything about our startup like dig in and ask me anything because this is a community and like a private space. We have Investor Panels. Almost every week. We’ll do a Remarkable Roundtable, which is kind of our version of speed dating. I guess where you’ll meet at least you know five to eight people who are either disabled or run something within the industry that might be interested in taking your stuff to the next level. And you know these Remarkable Roundtables last year have resulted in people hiring people in our community to be their heads with marketing. It’s resulted in you know big industry connections, it’s resulted in connections to the VA or to Kaiser or to different things. So it’s a, you get used to talking about your startup quickly, but it’s a meaningful way to get to know our community very quickly. And then you know the variety of different things that are could fill in Masterminds, Pitch class pitch practice things like that. For the US we’re going to have three in-person weeks, these are ideally full team weeks. So we’re going to start out actually at the Chicago Abilities Expo. This is something we used to do in the middle of the session but now that the program dates have changed we’re going to throw you right into it. Remarkable gets a booth at the Expo and so we give a space for all of our cohort to share what they’re working on at the Expo. It’s a really great way to connect with, I think the 3,000 or 4,000 disabled people who walk through that event over the weekend. That’s in Schaumburg, Illinois. Which don’t be confused, is near Chicago but is definitely an hour outside of it. Then we’re going to have our Kickstart which will be July 16th to 19th in Vermont and then we’re going to do Finisher and Demo Day in October ideally overlapping with M-Enabling, so that we can bring to together you know folks in the industry to be able to see your Demo Day. This will be the first in-person Demo Day we’ve done least since I’ve worked here, so it should be should be fun to get back in person. And then we’ll do 4 evening overlapping meetings with the international cohort that’s running at the same time. So you’ll be able to meet everybody and to connect with that cohort as well. Okay we’ll meet twice a week, I think already said all this. Two hours of coaching and then bi-weekly we have a really incredible coach who’s going to come in and kind of work on leadership and team coaching. Last year we did it in a small way and everybody asked for it in a bigger way, so that will be happening bi-weekly. So when you’re not in person you can anticipate around six to eight hours committed to the Accelerator but that won’t all be like on a zoom it might be you know working on something that we talked about or might be meeting with a coach or things like that. So accessibility. Just like this call we will meet all the accessibility needs of our program participants. Some programming is designed for in-person and we will make sure to make accommodations as needed. And the program is delivered in English and sign interpretation is available if it is needed. $55,000 is the term it’s in the form of a safe. The one key that I haven’t mentioned is you do need to be registered as a corporation to be able to to issue a safe essentially. That’s okay if you’re not, right now some folks did have to change their status like after they were accepted but to go through the process you need to be willing to do it because we just legally can’t do it for like an LLC or a nonprofit. And you’ll have the safe and the side letter to sign. Again you’ll have you’ll get to see that if you get to that point which would be great but that both of those will need to be signed by the deadline and sure to ensure your program participation.

Okay what startups are we looking for? Ideally Disability Tech so it benefits directly or indirectly people with disabilities so that could be age tech, that could be preventative, that could be something that directly impacts people with disabilities but really Disability Tech, we’ve accepted a variety of of folks across that kind of span of impact. Ideally companies are post-product, post-revenue. You’re a Medtech device, we know revenue is a little longer so Medtech products are encouraged to apply whether they’re post-revenue or not. If you’re kind of on the line and you’re not sure, certainly apply that can’t hurt but it may just mean that… hey you know we reviewed your application, we think you’re awesome but next year might be a better year but then we’ve you’re kind of on our radar already, which is great. Business structure. For profit, for purpose and really we want to bring people in whose tech is ready to scale. So if you’re like, we’re kind of locked into this design and it’s not going to come out for eight months and then we want to sell. It’s probably not the right window for you to be in an accelerator because there’s not a ton we can meaningfully do from like a pre-planning perspective with you but if you’re you got your tech and you’re ready to scale, or you know for Medtech it’s a little different, we have different ways to support, this is a good time to consider the Accelerator. And we say we want the tech to be Remarkable, and basically what we mean by remarkable technology is it is groundbreaking in some way. So as much as we you know love the idea of like a faster horse, we want to make sure that what we’re supporting is actually a meaningfully different option or a totally different option for people disabilities. So in the application. We’re going to ask a few questions. It shouldn’t, if you’ve done an application like this before, I’m guessing it wouldn’t take you more than an hour or so. But we really want to understand that you’ve have a solid problem, that you’re solving for disabled people and that you’ve validated that problem. We want to understand that your solution is scalable and the element of how it’s remarkable. So again like if you’re like we make the same thing that Apple makes but we make it like 20% better. Push into that 20% so we can really understand the difference and the differentiator that kind of brings that remarkable piece into it. We want to understand who your team is, and understand that your team is committed and ready to grow. And we want to take in startups, like I said that we can meaningfully accelerate. So we want to understand your commitment, your engagement and your alignment with both what you want and if we are able to provide support in those areas. How to craft a successful application. These are kind of obvious but you came to this so odds are you don’t need to go too deep into it but read all the FAQs, a lot of the stuff we talk about is there. You can the application questions before diving in and you can even save your application as you’re doing it. Use simple and clear language. Clear language is the most accessible language and I think a lot of times when we are in the heads of our startups it’s easy to be like this is super clear but if you have a kid maybe explain it to them and see if they understand it or your grandma or somebody that can be like that doesn’t make sense because judges are reading a lot of applications and we want to make sure that they understand what you do. Again around language. don’t skip on anything but also long answers don’t necessarily mean better answers. Clear, clean language goes a long way when you’re reading you know 50 applications. And then be honest and authentic. Like we’re really committed to the space and to empowering people in it and we you kind of just want to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and why this matters to you. So if you haven’t started already, like I said it will probably only take an hour you can find the application at remarkable.org/accelerator. You’re going to first set up a personal profile. Then you can add your teammates and they will get emails where they can set up their profiles. Then we’ll set up, you’ll have you set up your startup profile file that’s just kind of about your startup your problem, solution. Should only take about 20 minutes. And then stage 3 is to apply. And it’s just a few questions which you can get in and look at ahead of time but again I’m imagining it will probably take you an hour or so if you’ve done anything vaguely similar to this before. The applications will close Monday the 29th of April. The portal can be optimized for screen readers. You can download the questions on our FAQ page if you want to preview them. There’s no pitch video that is required from the judges. We’re really working to make sure that we have a diverse judging team which means across gender, ethnicity, lived experience with disability experience, ideally in the sector that you’re building for. And we’re really working to decrease bias wherever we can. For those who get through this stage a percentage will be invited to interview. For those who are, you’ll be notified, and you’ll need to have an interview booked the week of I guess it’s the week and half of May 9th to May 16th those will be probably about an hour.

Okay I did it in 30 minutes that was my goal. I may have talked too fast but we are at the point where I can stop talking at you. I see we’ve also been joined by some of our Aussies who have woken up, Pete and Kate are here to also answer questions. It’s very early time, what time is it 6:30? So if you would like to ask a question, feel free to raise your hand and George can unmute you or if you’d prefer to wait it in the chat, that is also fine too.

[30:28] George Miller, Remarkable
That’s one question already in the chat, so we’ll start with that.

[30:31] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
All right [Question] How are mentors matched to the startup, is there for example of matching for needs to startup that are not yet met by the current team? We’ll start there. [Answer] So from a mentor perspective, mentors are different than coaches. Coaches you work with every single week. Mentors there is a huge database of mentors in the Remarkable database that you are able to reach to and they know that you will. So that’s one opportunity. The other opportunity is you know as you talk to your coach they’ll surface to us the types of mentors you might want to be talking to and we we likely know who they are and who you should talk to so we can sometimes work as an air traffic controller to like get you to the right mentor. For benefit, for purpose, a C Corp is essentially what what we’re looking for a corporation of some kind. It could be a B Corp, it could be a C Corp anything that can take you anything that can do equity in kind of issue shares. Some like an LLC if we wouldn’t consider in that.

[Question] What are the success metrics? Do you want to come off mute and share a little bit more what you mean that question JC? George could you unmute? Oh I can yeah.

[32:07] Audience
[Question] When you get when you get to the end, how do you know that you succeeded not to be yeah you should know that is it something like you set up front when you do interview and the discovery and say okay this is how we want to take you through and and this is what you’re going to need from us?

[32:26] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
[Answer] Yes so our success, is really tied to your success right? So there’s a couple ways we tracked that last year. First we set… we set them as OKRs last year. We might do them as goals this year, but we set OKRs with the team at the start of the program. And at the end of the program they scored those, to say like yes we’ve meaningfully met these goals and we feel accelerated. We also took a essentially acceleration NPS for last year’s cohort and so out of 10 we scored like 9.36 or 9.4 or something like that. So we do kind of track that but really if you called any of our alumni and you said did you grow because of Remarkable, I would feel confident with you making a call to any of those people. Because I do think that whether it was the OKRs or the other opportunities that we were able to track that and that they were able to kind of meaningfully say like yes.

[33:28] Audience
Okay that’s very good, so growth… that’s a, that’s a great one right there and I’ve met Julia Franklin who’s from Cephable, reached out to her.

[33:36] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
Okay Julia is the best. We love, we love, we love all our alumni but the Cephable team is lovely. And it sounds like you know an alumni but we try to create opportunities for alumni in a variety of ways so once you’re in the network you’re kind of in the network for good. All alumni are invited to come back to the Chicago Abilities Expo with us every year. So this year at least one of the alumni will be back with us in Chicago. We’re having an event in New York in a couple weeks, where a bunch of the alumni will be at that and I know our alumni are on their own little text thread supporting each other. It really becomes a lovely community. So I can’t say personally what it feels like to be an alumni but I’m sure Julia could could help fill you in too. Okay did… we have should I just go through the chat. I’ll continue to go through the chat.

[Question] The prior accelerator companies you shared are primarily devices, hardware? How do you doing tech enabled devices? [Answer] So they aren’t actually mostly hardware. Interestingly enough I think hardware is perhaps the easiest to put in a picture and that may be why it seemed that way but you know Daisy was just talking about Cephable they’re not a hardware solution they’re a software solution. We had a company last year called XR Navigation, they are a way to essentially preview do kind of like the orientation and mobility ahead of time for a map for somewhere where you’re going. But they’re also looking to say maps are traditionally inaccessible, people who are blind can’t be geography majors, let’s make a more accessible viewer. So we actually ended up have a lot of different kinds and maybe less hardware than you would think. But we certainly have covered both.

Okay [Question] Can you provide more information for Medtech devices? What stage of product dev would be suitable for this program? [Answer] Nordine would you maybe want to come off mute and share kind of where you guys are, and kind of would that be a more helpful way than to speak more generally?

[35:58] Audience
What I was thinking is that, so we are starting user testing. We have an alpha version. Trying to do user testing. Try and then get to Beta, that we can start commercializing. So we are not, we don’t have a product like tomorrow to commercialize but we are already doing user testing right, so we already have a working product.

[36:24] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
And is yours a product that will require like FDA or other approval?

[36:29] Audience
So yes and no. If it’s to be used for digital control, there’s not going to be any FDA approval. Also want to use our system to control power wheelchairs and for that it’s going to be a class one device. So it’s not an FDA approval, it’s just a FDA registration and then you know some testing that is to be done.

[36:53] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
[Answer] Yeah I think if you guys, I think if you are at the stage of, have a product and we need to get it to as many people as possible to to get feedback on it, potentially that could be a an area we could help. It might be a little on the early side for the Accelerator because we’re usually looking more on the like commercialization. So last year we had a company that you know was going through the FDA process but also needed to figure out the path to the VA because often that was faster and so we were able to support there. But I think, think that from a, from a like getting you to be able to connect with the community that you’re trying to serve, without knowing the in-depth of what you’re doing, it certainly but if you’re still like we’re making it and we don’t totally know what our product is then it might be slightly on the early side.

[37:48] Audience
Oh yeah, no no yeah, we know what our product is actually. We’re going to go to the VA in a few weeks, to work with the VA and we have a couple of partners, we have centers. So we know what we want to do. We have testing it before it’s more about accelerating.

[38:03] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
So those are the areas, yeah those are the areas, that I think were most helpful in the medtech devices, is like opening doors to the variety of places like Shirley Ryan AbilityLab or the VA or you know Spaulding Rehab. Those are the areas that we probably most able to be helpful, from the kind of in-between stage of commercialization to like FDA or things like that with medical devices. The other thing that we find really helpful is not everyone but a lot of medical devices are commercialized by like, like researchers who are really like in the thick of the research and so we find helping to translate research to like how do we help general population understand what you’re doing so you can either raise the funds or you know connect with the people who might be users. We’ve also supported companies in those ways.

[38:57] Audience
Perfect yeah, we are, we also two researchers. Though we you know we’re more in the entrepreneurial mindset.

[39:04] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
And I’m sure you guys are the best at it yeah awesome well thank you for sharing. Okay [Question] So are we looking for a specific post-revenue amount, stage or number of clients? [Answer] No, we just want to know that you have thought about it and worked on it and that the if it’s a remarkable technology and we believe it can make a meaningful impact. Whether you have five customers or a thousand customers, like it, it doesn’t matter it’s just, it’s just a way for us to understand that you’ve gotten it to that stage.

[Question] Teddy asked what the application deadline is. [Answer] April 29th.

[Question] MD as. Does a startup need to become a corporation before Demo Day? [Answer] You have to become a corporation before the start of the program. so we need to have all of our forms signed, to enable you to even start the program. Which would be probably by late May. In our experience for folks who needed to shift their program designation took maybe 10 days at most, so if you got to interview stage and you were not there and you it was looking promising we’d probably say hey like let’s if if you’re open to doing that let’s get it moving. If you are not open to switching your company structure, I don’t think that we could accept you. And so I think unfortunately just the way our legals work, if you’re an LLC or a nonprofit and you aren’t willing to shift it just may not be the right program. Happy to answer more if that wasn’t clear but that is, that is the unfortunate answer I have for that question. I think I’ve answered everything in the chat, maybe a little rapid fire but is there anyone else that wants to raise a hand or has questions or if not you know Pete if you wanted to say something you’re welcome I don’t see you anymore but you’re welcome to come off mute and share a little bit that about the program we generally. Do we answer everything?

[Question] As a California benefit Corporation. [Answer] I think that should be fine but if you want to just send me an email Molly@remarkable.org with the company structure I’ll forward it to our executive director who deals with our legals and he can just give me a confirmation that that’s fine but I think that’s fine.

[42:04] Pete Horsley, Remarkable
And Molly maybe just the the another question that JC had in there about…[Question] If we’re not selected, are there other ways to participate in the community and potentially contribute as well? [Answer] 100% like we’re, we’re all driven by mission and and we want to see you know more technology in this space and often times we actually find that connecting with other founders is one of the ways that this ecosystem continues to grow, and it’s one of the things that we love to see is catalyzing connections across the ecosystem as well. So absolutely we’d love to stay connected with you, in fact often times startups that haven’t been successful… we still go on to you know provide catch-ups every now and then with various people that we think could be suitable for you business as well. So we’re just wanting to see this entire sector move forward and connections across the ecosystem are really important part of that.

[43:10] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
100% yeah. Someone has their hand up with. Hello Melissa.

[43:17] Audience
My name is Melissa Smith and I’m with ASL Flurry and I first of all want to say thank you so much for having sign language interpreters because it’s almost like having participated in various aspects of business and being like okay some members of my team are deaf and well we don’t have you know it’s just it’s really nice to see that access is not only possible but it’s just automatic so I want to thank you for that first off. Second of all I wanted if you could tell us a little bit more about the roundtables and the investor part and when you were going through the slide that had like eight different things, could you talk about that a little bit for me?

[43:57] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
[Answer] Sure so those are kind of a menu of the types of things we might do and so they’re really built around kind of what is needed. But what we did last year which I think we’ll certainly do probably weekly this year, is the Remarkable Roundtables. And so last year we would switch off every other week, one week would be people with disabilities who might be users of the different products and so you’d be able to rapidly explain what you’re doing to those folks, they could give you feedback, they could make connections, it’s kind of like a very, very fast speed dating. And then the next week would be organizations that could be like amplifiers of your work, so that could be a medical system, that could be a nonprofit that works in a disability space, that could be a variety of folks. But what we found it was the most efficient way to get our community really jazzed about what the startups were doing and so many incredible connections came from them, but it was very informal. And the first ones everyone all the startups would come out with like their hair everywhere just like how do I talk about my startup that quickly but like by the end like the efficiency to which you can say what you do in a clear and meaningful way is so incredible it’s like such a skill that they were able to learn. So that will happen every week and then ideally every week. We’ve had Founder Q&As before. So last year we had Jamil at Heki, Ray at Biomotum, we had one of the founders of Be My Eyes like early founders of Be My Eyes come in and we create like a really safe space and we say like you can ask them anything. Like they’ve said that they’ll give you the answer if they’re comfortable. And so that’s something that we do, we’ll focus we had a session on the VA last year because we realized a lot of our startups were interested in getting into the VA, so we had somebody come in and really go startup by startup and say here are the three departments that your startup needs to talk to at the VA, like they were wonderful. And so we don’t totally know what it will look like every week but the goal is to build it around the five companies that we have so that you’re really getting value and you’re not just sitting in a session on you know funding when we could have just you know connected you to somebody who’s really good at funding and you had a one-on-one with them. So that’s kind of the the menu idea of those two weekly sessions.

[46:25] Audience
Okay great all right thank you, very much.

[46:27] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
Yeah, yeah yeah excited you’re here. Okay I’m trying to check the chat as well.

[46:39] George Miller, Remarkable
That’s all questions for I think yeah.

[46:43] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
All right well in that case thank you all for being here, for taking the time to learn more about the applications. Thank you to our Aussie friends for getting up at the crack of dawn, to show their faces and you can always reach out to us.

[47:01] George Miller, Remarkable
We’ve had one more question.

[47:02] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
Amazing. [Question] I’m super interested in becoming a mentor is there a deadline for mentor applications? [Answer] There’s not and maybe George can even drop the mentor application in the chat.

[Question] Can mentors also for other programs? [Answer] Yes George do you want to talk to that a little or maybe Kate either one want to talk to the mentor part.

[47:28] George Miller, Remarkable
I’ll let Kate talk about that and I’ll drop the mentor signup link in the chat now.

[47:32] Kate Jenkins, Remarkable
Yeah we’d love we’re always open to more mentors joining our community because as Molly said we’re trying to find the right mentors for the startups that we’re working with. So always expanding our community, so please… yes there’s a there’s a form but you can set up some time to have a chat with me I’d love to have a chat with you about it. Yeah we hope an incredible community of mentors all that are now based all over the world so yeah you could be working with people with this accent or anyone in between yeah absolutely.

[48:12] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
Thanks Kate, we would love to have you as a mentor. Liam did I just boot you Liam I tried to unmute you. Did he go?

[48:30] George Miller, Remarkable
I think you should be able to come off now Liam.

[48:32] Audience
Can you hear me? Yes. [Question] Yeah question along the lines of you talked about earlier about the hardware software yeah my… so my… my company is based around like our website and our process Curating make a product sort of like. We you know leverage tech but it’s like know on a very minimal level and the concentration is on our process like you know developing reviews yeah. So I was just wondering if you have any sense about like if we would be applicable yeah for Remarkable?

[49:44] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
What might be actually more helpful is if you want to send me your site and I can take a look and I can we can even set up a follow-up time to chat about it, just so I can not just guess but I can actually take a look and give you a meaningful answer before you have to go through the full application process.

[50:04] Audience
Thanks so much Molly that be great.

[50:07] Molly Lazarus, Remarkable
That sounds good yeah Molly@remarkable.org but we can put it in the chat too. George is on top of it. Okay well that is my email for folks who maybe were too shy to ask the question live but grateful for all your questions. Grateful for you all being here, we would be thrilled to have you apply but as Pete said earlier we’re really just looking to support the community and the greater network so always happy to have a conversation or to make an intro, whether you are in this year’s program or not. And with that thank you to our interpreters, thank you for being here, thanks to George and Pete and Kate for being here from the Remarkable team and we look forward to staying connected with you all.

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