Launch Pad

Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for July is YouVisit.

YouVisit is making virtual reality a reality for brands and corporations by building out a proprietary technology platform as well as providing an award-winning production studio. Users can take immersive 360 degree tours of a university campus or glamorous hotel—via their computer, mobile device, or, best of all, using a VR headset.

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YouVisit is making virtual reality a reality for brands and corporations by building out a proprietary technology platform as well as providing an award-winning production studio. Users can take immersive 360 degree tours of a university campus or glamorous hotel—via their computer, mobile device, or, best of all, using a VR headset.

By bringing together the tech platform and the production studio, YouVisit founder Abi Mandelbaum, WG’10 explains that “it has allowed us to innovate much faster because we constantly have the production folks talking to the technology folks.” It’s also allowed them to entirely bootstrap the company, because they’ve been focused on revenue since day one.

Karl Ulrich isn’t 100% convinced that this model will work in the long run—he suspects that “at some point you may have to pick what it is that you are uniquely great at, what is your unfair advantage, and bring some focus to that.” Listen to Abi and Karl talk through this fascinating question, and discuss how truly new technologies gain a foothold in the market—and why YouVisit chose to do this without taking outside funding.

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The #1 fear of older adults is falling and breaking their hips. The #2 fear is dying, in case you were wondering. Which is what happens, all too often, after a bad fall. So Drew Lakatos, founder of ActiveProtective, tells Karl Ulrich in this thoughtful interview.

ActiveProtective, Drew explains, is “a smart belt that can determine human falls really accurately. And we are deploying air bags around the hips so older adults don't break their hips.” The idea for ActiveProtective came from co-founder Dr. Robert Buckman, a highly respected trauma surgeon who shared his idea for the belt with serial entrepreneur Drew back in 2005.

However, it took seven years for the technology—motion sensors, cold gas inflator air bags, and more—to catch up and make the idea practical. Then in late 2012, Drew quit his job, and went all in on ActiveProtective. Since then, they’ve raise nearly $6 million, and are about to begin pilots at “one of the largest providers of skilled nursing in the United States.” Listen to Drew and Karl talk about the long process of validating this idea, the intense research, both medical and business, that went into it, and how Drew went about raising the necessary funds to turn ActiveProtective into a reality.

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Karl Ulrich describes Dan Goldin as “thinking in galactic terms,” and that’s exactly what makes their conversation so deeply fascinating.

Dan ran NASA for 10 years. He's worked on innovative and disruptive projects so big picture that we now take them totally for granted, like direct broadcast TV. You want to know what an innovator sounds like? Listen to this interview, for an intriguing glimpse inside the mind of a person who has literally spent a lifetime pushing the boundaries of the possible. And to hear about what he thinks is possible now: highly scalable neural computing.

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Karl Ulrich calls FixList the “Kayak of abandoned properties.”

That’s because FixList helps “developers, investors, and nonprofits in major urban markets across the country” to “find properties that are ripe for redevelopment,” in the words of Stacey Mosley, CEO and cofounder of FixList. Stacey and her cofounder, CTO Mjumbe Poe, have a fascinating conversation with Karl about how they’re marrying data analysis with the Open Data movement, where government entities publish their administrative records online, to create new access to information about properties.

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Just imagine: dog food made out of “real, actual ingredients just like you’d find in a grocery store,” delivered conveniently to your door. That’s what The Farmer’s Dog does.

Lots of so-called premium pet foods claim to be healthy, natural, or fresh. But as founder Jonathan Regev says, “When you actually open the product or experience the product it's not really differentiated at all. And so all we've done is produce the product in a way that it actually is real and fresh and natural and people can see that. It has tangible benefits to their dog as well.”

Sure, there are other companies in various cities producing phenomenally expensive dog foods of a similar quality—what The Farmer’s Dog does that’s so compelling is provide a subscription service tailored to your dog’s consumption, and delivery it directly to you, at a lower price point than those other guys. In doing so, they created a scalable business—a very different player in the marketplace than these boutique solutions.

Listen to Karl Ulrich and Jonathan discuss the challenges in making this venture scalable, from finding a human grade food manufacturer who was willing to make food for dogs, to working out the kinks in the subscription service so that dogs never miss a meal (and you never waste food), to figuring out how long to bootstrap, and when to raise funds.

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