00:14:00 · Krish Bajaj, Vansh Langer
[00:14:00] S2: That's a great question, Michelle. We don't offer these services natively. Our whole business model is bringing them together. So we refer you to Migrate Mate, we refer you to x y z person. These, like you said, you've already heard of them or you might have heard of them, we are the platform that you come to to discover who they are. And then the next phase of what we're doing with the marketplace is ratings and reviews. So amongst the eight or 10 job boards that focus on international student sponsored roles, we can tell you which one to go to. If there are special discounts, they come through us. So we have these tie ups with each of these providers like Lighthouse, like Manifest, Alma, MigrateMate, where our students or our audience get exclusive benefits to go ahead and engage with those partners. Effectively, those partners get access to students very early on through our ecosystem. We are simply the enabler, the connector. You can think of us as Amazon with the last stage, integrate, being wherever we see traction or the potential to vertically integrate and do it ourselves, that is when we'll step in and say, we will natively offer this solution specifically. [00:15:06] S5: Have you tried working with the actual universities themselves to be, like, in their welcome packet or whatever?
00:15:06 · Vansh Langer, Krish Bajaj, Michelle Kwok, Michael Nogen
[00:15:06] S5: Have you tried working with the actual universities themselves to be, like, in their welcome packet or whatever? [00:15:12] S2: So we're in process of doing that. And that's where it really links well with the global access solution where universities come to us for enrollment. So in this case, not only when can we give you more access to students, but we also support them after they're enrolled and works both ways, so yes. [00:15:29] S5: That makes perfect sense. When you first started explaining your pitch, that's what I thought you were doing. But I'm curious what the margins might be on SIM cards that you need to do that as well. [00:15:42] S3: Yeah. Yeah. That's where I got confused. [00:15:44] S5: You know, [00:15:45] S2: like it doesn't... No. I see it. [00:15:46] S4: You don't wanna, like, hold inventory. [00:15:48] S5: Yeah. It doesn't seem to make any sense to... You're spreading yourself thin when your core business should be being the company that universities have in their welcome packet for students and making your annual revenue from the university directly. [00:16:03] S2: I appreciate that. No. I think that's the direction we're headed in and it was kind of a quite a long journey to assimilate everything and move in that direction. But I think we're aligned with moving there. So we're currently in the process of doing so. [00:16:18] S4: Just final question. What's the biggest challenge right now? Like, what's the biggest risk? What keeps you up?
00:16:18 · Michael Nogen, Krish Bajaj, Vansh Langer, Vansh Langer
[00:16:18] S4: Just final question. What's the biggest challenge right now? Like, what's the biggest risk? What keeps you up? [00:16:25] S2: That's a great question. The biggest challenge that I'm trying to figure out, our team team's trying to figure out is we have tremendous volume flowing through our platform and we have exceptional business development. We are trying to figure out how to capture this and that could be as simple as having a follow-up sequence with every student or managing a way to nurture these leads more effectively so that they convert to these services. Because we see about a couple 100 organic clicks to a very high ticket service like a Visa where we get paid $3,000 per student that signs up but then there's no follow-up. So we're kinda losing people over there. Just bridging that pipeline would help a lot. [00:17:07] S5: Thank you so much for your time. We'll see you in a few minutes. [00:17:10] S2: Thank you very much. [00:17:13] S1: Alright, judges. Now it is time for the judges debrief component of the show. How are we feeling about the pitch?
00:17:13 · Vansh Langer, Vansh Langer
[00:17:13] S1: Alright, judges. Now it is time for the judges debrief component of the show. How are we feeling about the pitch? [00:17:19] S5: It's certainly an interesting idea because I... It's... Obviously, I'm not an international student, so I've never had to experience any of that. But I can imagine that as an international student, it would be, you know, challenging to get all these things set up. Like, I've certainly imagined that. I think they're spreading themselves kinda thin. There's way too many channels here, and that needs to be tightened up, I would say. That's probably what I what I would say to them was to tighten up their business model. Because it was a very... It's a great pitch, and it sounds like it's, you know, a big circle that everything connects to. But there are so many spokes here that, like, it just... You know, you can't possibly do all of them that well. [00:17:59] S1: It seems like Roam is a service aggregator for a captive audience. To what extent can a business like that be venture scaling?
00:17:59 · Vansh Langer, Michelle Kwok, Vansh Langer
[00:17:59] S1: It seems like Roam is a service aggregator for a captive audience. To what extent can a business like that be venture scaling? [00:18:07] S3: That was my question. That was my question. It was like, is the service... Not only is the service aggregator, but it seems like they're also a services business at the same time. And they felt like they had to be a services business to to top up the revenue streams because they weren't sure which revenue stream was actually gonna be their revenue stream, and there wasn't a lot of clarity around that. And then so they were like, okay. If we don't have a very clear revenue stream, then let's also be a services business. And as an as an international student myself, like, I've totally had this problem, and I do think there needs to be a services aggregator here. But I'm curious why they need venture money, I guess. If they've already aggregated all of these services and you have all these services in a marketplace... I don't know. A lot of the a lot of the businesses that I've I've interfaced with as an international student, they're all just... They're services businesses that are doing really, really well, and they're not venture businesses. [00:19:03] S5: Right. Only thing I could say... Only, like, kind of assessment I could make is that more than the venture funding, you would... They're looking for the the value add of getting... If if they were trying to get to the universities, then there's... VC funding is not the worst way to, like, get more of intros.
00:19:03 · Vansh Langer, Michael Nogen
[00:19:03] S5: Right. Only thing I could say... Only, like, kind of assessment I could make is that more than the venture funding, you would... They're looking for the the value add of getting... If if they were trying to get to the universities, then there's... VC funding is not the worst way to, like, get more of intros. [00:19:22] S4: I think that there's a a huge opportunity. I'm not as familiar with the... His competitive landscape because I don't know who... I know there are different verticals that are taking... Well taken care of, but I don't know. I think to answer your question from a venture, like, how venture backable is this? I think it's gonna... Still gonna require a significant amount of money in terms of marketing and just awareness. You know, I think it's not... I would not assume that this is just coming through, you know, partnership channel and and the college counselor. This is a brand new, you know, new workflow, new platform, new tool. I also would, you know, expect this business to also maybe focus on a certain region first and do it really well and become the player. And that way, then you can replicate the model elsewhere. I don't know the nuances or how diff... How diff... Difficult or different it is, you know, if you're servicing North America market, Canadian versus US versus, you know, Germany versus Australia.