The Next Web NYC - Scale Pitch Finale

and only one can emerge as the best. So we had over a thousand startups sign up for this. And The Next Web went through all of these thousand and chose the ones that they thought were the really best. And 60 came out of that, and all of these 60 are represented here today. But not all of the 60 were actually in the competition. So 30 of those got chosen by our lovely jury members and by the public, and they've actually had to go up on stage, four different rounds, and pitch for two minutes, and then answer really hard questions for three minutes after that. And we'll see what the effects of that are in a bit. So we have some really amazing jury members. They've done the really hardest part of the whole conference, which is choose from the excellence who's going to be the very, very best. Um... So these are the people who did the first two rounds. And the second two rounds will be on the slide in a second. Yeah. I would like us all to give a round of applause to the jury members and to the startups that competed in this, because it's a really, really tough, tough job. OK, so each of these startups have heard this very familiar sound at the end of their two minutes. And that was it. They get silenced. That's the last thing they'll say. And then the jury members ask them questions, and they actually say something again. But we'll hear that again right now, because the last three are going to be pitching. And... And if they go over that two minutes, they're silenced and epic fail, really. But if they hit it in just the last couple seconds, then they do a really good job in my book. So the last three finalists we have over here. And let's start off with the first one. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm, warm applause for Apple Foods. Chug, chug. Chug. Chug, chug. Chug, chug. Chug, chug. There we go. I don't know exactly know why I expected me to just work without any microphone, but I'm Connor Young, and I'm the founder of Apple Foods. Now, we all want to feel and perform our best every day, and that starts with our food. And yet, for the people who are the most health conscious, having an optimal diet can seem like a full-time job. or research or are shopping and doing everything else, but who's got time for that? Of course, packaged foods like meal replacements and other snack bars have always existed. But it's not just about convenience. It's also about quality. So whether it's the misguided macronutrients, the added sugar, or just the shitty ingredients, to be honest, they just don't work. So I started Ample because I believe that there needs to be a food company completely dedicated to achieving perfect nutrition. So that starts with a formula based on real science using whole food ingredients, and that continues through constant iteration and also through ongoing research. Now, Ample's a complete meal in a bottle, and it's made with over 25 grams of protein, just 4 grams of sugar, fiber, and probiotics to keep you healthy and also for satiety. And also healthy fats from coconut, macadamia, chia seed, to provide fuel, but also give Ample a really nice creamy, nutty flavor. Now, in June, we actually got done with 500 startups. We graduated from there, and then we were on Indiegogo. We were the number one food Indiegogo campaign of all time. And in fact, 40 people who we didn't know and who hadn't even tried the product ended up investing over $5,000 for lifetime supplies of Ample. Now, some of our customers, some of our customers include biohackers, CrossFit athletes, endurance athletes, doctors, Navy SEAL trainers, and a broad array of health-conscious individuals. And so these guys were looking for something optimal. Now, we're currently in production, and we ship in December. Thank you. Well done, well done. Take it with you. On the dot, this is what I like to see. Ladies and gentlemen, please raise the roof for Clean Capital. Thank you. I love you. Good afternoon. My name is John Powers. I'm a co-founder of Clean Capital. I'm going to introduce you to our financial technology platform that's revolutionizing the way clean energy is financed. By 2030, 40% of our energy will come from clean energy. Just last month, Hank Paulson put out a report that it will take $90 trillion in the next 15 years to move into this space. And from my experience at the White House and my partner's experience in the private sector, we know the movement of that capital is incredibly inefficient. If you're an institutional investor, the due diligence on these type of projects are significantly old school. If you're an individual investor, you have $10,000, $100,000, even a million dollars. You have limited access to these fantastic assets. If you're a developer, and you're building a project, to put together the capital stack is significantly inefficient. And we're seeing in other financial technology verticals, technology can drive efficiency. So we've developed a marketplace that brings opportunity to investors and access to capital for developers through a platform that identifies, screens, and manages clean energy projects on behalf of investors. We closed our first deal this summer. It was $21 million. It was 15 different projects in seven states, all solar. We had John Hancock, the life insurance company, provide a significant investment, along with 30 individuals with an average investment around $87,000. And they're seeing 11 to 13% equity returns. 11 to 13% equity returns. So over the last year, we launched with a million dollar seed round. We launched our platform, closed our first deal, and now we have $100 million in pipeline we're going to be rolling out here in the next few quarters. You can go to cleancapital.com. You can pull your cell phone out today. Go to cleancapital.com. You can sign up to learn more about, or you can invest directly through your cell phone into these fantastic assets. So thank you so much, and we look forward to working with you to accelerate clean energy. Thanks. Well done. Well done. So now we're down to the last one. I'm excited. Let's see what's going to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, SendPulse. Hi. My name is Konstantin. I'm CEO and founder of SendPulse. SendPulse is a marketing automation platform that allows to send blast emails, web pushes, mobile pushes, text messages, transactional emails. Our main goal is to maximize email open rates automatically. At the moment, we allow to increase email open rates up to 70%. How do we do that? We have built an artificial intelligence system that predicts user behavior. It determines the best time and the best channel to contact to each subscriber. So how technology works? We gather a lot of information about subscribers' behavior, like time of email opening, gap between sending and opening email, time zone, and so on. After that, we analyze this data and make our predictions. Here is a simple example of our efficiency. An average email open rate is about 15%. Using SendPulse, you can get more than 25% of email open rates. For the least size of 10,000 subscribers, it's more than 1,000 additional email opens. SendPulse was established less than two years ago. And at the moment, we have more than 320K of registered users, more than 700 registrations per day, 9,000 of paying customers, and an annual revenue of $1.3 million. With 20% month-to-month growth. Also, we have a web push service that is one of the most popular in the world. More than 10,000 sites are at the moment using our system. And we are sending more than 150 million web pushes a month. So the main thing, how we're going to scale our project. The more data we have, the better predictions we make. The better predictions we make, the higher ROI. Our ROI, happy our clients, they stay with us for a long time. And bring their friends. Thank you very much for your attention. Well done. Well done. So those were our three finalists. Of course, there's only one that can win this awesome prize. The next web is actually giving away $25,000 in advertising budget. And they're going to get this great, great prize on their mantle. Ladies and gentlemen. It's Clean Capital! Let's get a picture right here. Congrats, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. Send us a picture. I'm sure they'll be on the web. No, I'm kidding. The Instagram, what's it called? Snapchat? No stories thing? I'm sure we'll be on there. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're off to our last speaker. Thank you. Congratulate these guys. Grab a beer in a bit. They did an excellent job. So, like many people, including a lot of my best friends, we start the day and end the day with Reddit. And so at the next web, we shall do the same. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the second winner.