00:31:46 · Leon Li, Krish Bajaj
[00:31:46] S0: Right. [00:31:46] S2: Hence, it made a lot of sense for us or makes a lot of sense for us to focus b to b, whether that be through universities, but also through study abroad counselors and stakeholders in the home country, people who they trust and know are going to guide them to the right services. And by laying Roam on top of these people or these entities, it helps us establish a very strong base and a degree of trust which then we could leverage tomorrow to go D to C. So b to b at first and eventually move that to D to C. [00:32:26] S0: Interesting. Well, Coeus Collective have been in contact with you for over a year now. You guys started developing in America, in American University specifically. How has the growth into Australia, like you mentioned, and internationally, how is it different than those businesses and partnerships working with universities here in The States?
00:32:26 · Leon Li, Krish Bajaj
[00:32:26] S0: Interesting. Well, Coeus Collective have been in contact with you for over a year now. You guys started developing in America, in American University specifically. How has the growth into Australia, like you mentioned, and internationally, how is it different than those businesses and partnerships working with universities here in The States? [00:32:44] S2: That is my favorite question to answer. Reason being, in Australia for example, everything is extremely regulated. There's a very small group of universities, only 40 in the whole country. There are no more than three to five providers in every vertical, of which only a few are approved by universities. For us to build the chain of the student journey, going to Australia becomes extremely easy because we have fewer people to work with. And unlike The US where every school has different insurance requirements, in Australia it's all standardized. So one provider can offer services through us to virtually every student going to the country without any fear of non acceptance by the institute they're attending for whatever service it may be. [00:33:44] S0: And another pain point you said you're raising to address is you're trying to figure out a way to churn... Develop churn in terms of your customers and develop a lifetime LTV for your customers. How do you... Once you do raise or if and when you do raise, what are some methods for you to address that concern?
00:33:44 · Leon Li, Krish Bajaj
[00:33:44] S0: And another pain point you said you're raising to address is you're trying to figure out a way to churn... Develop churn in terms of your customers and develop a lifetime LTV for your customers. How do you... Once you do raise or if and when you do raise, what are some methods for you to address that concern? [00:34:05] S2: A shortfall that we have currently that I've noticed every other business, whether service or product based has, is a sales team that excels at nurturing leads and taking all the inbound traffic and value flowing through their ecosystem and converting it to revenue. While we have an exceedingly strong tech and business development team, we are falling short on a sales bit. Now we know there's enough demand for each of these services across the entire student life cycle because we see the clicks going to these partners of ours. But there is no follow-up or nurturing of that lead. And hence, we lose out on the potential revenue from the interested party who's taken the effort to find us and click on that. So a sales team would be a very, very big boost. Along with that, of course, automated processes to prevent any leakage in this pipeline of people who display interest.
00:34:05 · Krish Bajaj, Leon Li
[00:34:05] S2: A shortfall that we have currently that I've noticed every other business, whether service or product based has, is a sales team that excels at nurturing leads and taking all the inbound traffic and value flowing through their ecosystem and converting it to revenue. While we have an exceedingly strong tech and business development team, we are falling short on a sales bit. Now we know there's enough demand for each of these services across the entire student life cycle because we see the clicks going to these partners of ours. But there is no follow-up or nurturing of that lead. And hence, we lose out on the potential revenue from the interested party who's taken the effort to find us and click on that. So a sales team would be a very, very big boost. Along with that, of course, automated processes to prevent any leakage in this pipeline of people who display interest. [00:35:16] S0: Speaking of pipeline, I'm curious about the demographic Roam is trying to target. When you first talked about... With you guys about a year ago, you guys were targeting mid tier schools that are targeting maybe less so affluent clients and students. But now the judges bring up a point where if you go direct to consumer, you are able to hit that affluent demographic where you can charge $50 a month to provide all the services packaged to them. What angle are you trying to tackle and if you have any thoughts?
00:35:16 · Leon Li, Krish Bajaj, Vansh Langer
[00:35:16] S0: Speaking of pipeline, I'm curious about the demographic Roam is trying to target. When you first talked about... With you guys about a year ago, you guys were targeting mid tier schools that are targeting maybe less so affluent clients and students. But now the judges bring up a point where if you go direct to consumer, you are able to hit that affluent demographic where you can charge $50 a month to provide all the services packaged to them. What angle are you trying to tackle and if you have any thoughts? [00:35:45] S2: There has been a recent development we've experienced as well. There is definitely a market pull that we didn't see initially from people who would be considered affluent because initially we built Roam with the idea of helping students save thousands of dollars, making it more of a necessity than a convenience. Of late, we have seen people value the time being saved as something they'd be willing to pay [00:36:16] S5: for. Right. [00:36:18] S2: In that light, we are experimenting with what we could do to create a D2C recurring revenue stream. Perhaps make some sort of subscription based service where students or parents could gain access to some sort of resources that they would benefit from. [00:36:42] S0: Krish, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Before we go into the studio, is there anyone you would like to plug, anybody you would like to reference for your journey to building Roam?
00:36:42 · Leon Li, Krish Bajaj, Michelle Kwok, Michael Nogen
[00:36:42] S0: Krish, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Before we go into the studio, is there anyone you would like to plug, anybody you would like to reference for your journey to building Roam? [00:36:52] S2: Shout out to Adler. Adler is my CTO. Adler is our CTO and my cofounder who's built all the awesome tech and the platform that has been seen by tens of hundreds of thousands of students and has helped plenty of them save thousands of dollars, loads of stress, and tons of time as they start their lives abroad. [00:37:19] S0: Well, Krish, it's been amazing to follow your journey. Can't wait to see what the judges have to say. This has been the On Call Room. My name is Leon. Now back to the studio. [00:37:29] S3: Hi. Welcome back. [00:37:30] S2: Thank you for taking the time to hear me pitch today. We are currently raising a $4,000,000 seed round to capitalize on the value moving through our ecosystem and continue selling our services to universities. [00:37:42] S4: So first of all, great presentation. Really enjoyed hearing more about your own, you know, personal background and and dealing with this, you know, huge problem. And and I think we we talked about before, this is a a massive problem. I guess my first question is you just said you're raising 4,000,000. What's... What are you using the money for?