 Hello and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. This is part of our startup profile series. My name is Dave Vellante and Rachel Nemeth is here. And she's a co-founder and CEO of Opus. Opus is a training platform designed to accelerate the proficiency of frontline workers. Rachel, welcome, good to see you. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Yeah, we're excited to have you and you're very welcome. We love to ask founders and co-founders, take us back, why'd you start the company? What did you see that got you so excited to quit your job and start a company? And take a massive risk. All of this started because I spent my whole life in frontline jobs. And I had seen all of the problems that these businesses today face. So the origin story is very long for beers one day. But the truth of the matter is this started because this was a pain point that I was feeling when I was working in the hospitality industry. I was managing an overseeing 300 cooks and trying to hire 500 people in four weeks. And after achieving that, saw that there was really no technology and no access for these individuals to be able to learn quickly and be successful in their job. So that's really the short quick story is what I witnessed. But there's a lot of underpinnings in there on how we got to where we are today. And it all rests in the first company that I started, which is kind of the sister or the auntie of Opus that we sometimes fondly remember. It was called ESL Works. My first company delivered English language training to employee cell phones. So if you're noticing a trend here on what we're passionate about, I ran that company for many years. And when COVID hit, March 12th of 2020, we got calls from all of our customers who said, hey, listen, world shut down. We're open. And as we all remember, nobody knew how to respond, how to wash their hands, we were quarantining cardboard for COVID-19. And so we immediately got to work with the focus of just helping business owners educate their people as quickly as possible. And we knew that we had the technology to be able to do that. So out of ESL Works sprouted a public initiative called Stop COVID, which delivered free COVID safety training to any business in America that needed it in order to keep their employees and customers safe. We grew from about zero to 20,000 users in a couple of weeks. And that was all the validation I needed in order to continue to kind of build on this massive vision to create a world where every frontline worker has a great job and is successful in that job. So the beginnings were in language. And where we are today is a much bigger company that's still kind of rooted in accessibility and skill building. So Antiopus became Opus? Did I get that right or is that correct? That's right, Antiopus became Opus. Did you fund Antiopus with outside funding or you did? We did, yeah. And in kind of an unusual way. Yeah, tell us about, folks in the audience love these stories because they'll watch the VC advice and they'll put together their pitch and they'll do everything they say and they'll go around to get a hundred nos and kiss all the frogs. And they're always curious as to new ways or novel ways to fund companies. So we'd love to hear your story there. Yeah, it's really important to know that my profile as a founder is quite different than what you see in the headlines often. I have no tech background. I have no banking background. I have no finance background. And so I really had no history with funding. ESLWorks was bootstrapped. I knew how to run a business but I came into Opus knowing we needed to fund it in order to grow but starting from the beginning. So I got our, I raised our first half a million through cold outreach and angels. And it was a very methodical process. For me, I really, you know, high insights 2020 but I didn't really go into it thinking I couldn't do it. I went into it thinking this is how we build this business. I have to raise capital in order to build a tech company. I don't have VC connections. So I'm gonna logic my way into this. So I did the research. I made a list of a hundred investors who I assumed might be familiar with some of the work we were doing. Either they had started their own companies or not but here's the dirty little secret. I didn't reach out to them with an interest in getting money from them. I reached out for advice. Remember, I didn't know how to raise capital. And so for me, I just asked if I could buy them a cup of coffee. My assumption there was if I reached out to a hundred people, most of them were founders at later stage companies. I assumed that 50% would reply and that from there, about 25% would actually take a meeting with me. And all I needed as we all know was one successful meeting and one introduction to a VC. But as it turned out, fate sort of shifted in my direction. The math was right and I had the success rate I wanted but it ended up being our first check from one of those founders. And that's how I ended up raising that first half a million was really through these amazing connections with founders who are still incredible investors of ours today but it started with asking for advice, not money. Wow, so that's an awesome story. So you say 25% of the 50% did I get that math right? Is what you're- 50% and then 25%, yeah. So that was your algorithm. That's actually pretty optimistic, Rachel. And it turns out that you were right and actually pretty successful early on. I think a lot of people that I've talked to said, like you, they go in with no fear but they have said, wow, if I knew then what I know now I probably would have been scared off of going after the VC. Actually, your experience was quite a bit different. Well, and I think some of it comes from really good advice I got early on. There's always this trope around, fundraising is the same as sales. If you're a great salesperson, you're a great fundraiser. Some people say fundraising is an art. Some people say it's a science. Some people say it's an art and a science. So whatever you choose to believe, let that be and run with it. What I, the great advice that I heard and really clung to was that if you can sell shares of your business to an investor, then that's indicative of how great of a salesperson you are and will be. So what I set out to prove was like, I know how to sell rather than I know how to raise money. So it was kind of a mind game I was playing with myself. And the second piece of advice I got was to only spend 50% of my time raising capital. And to this day I follow that because if you're not keeping the business moving and operating at the speed at which you've built it, then you immediately lose momentum in the minute you get that funding. And so it's about discipline and focus. And it's also about getting your North Star out there and then putting your blinders on and running for it. So interesting because that's a couple of things that I want to unpack. First of all, that's situational selling because selling equity is different from selling a product or service. Wouldn't you agree? True, yes. Okay, and now the other thing is 50% I was going to ask you how did you balance raising equity and with running your business and you're saying half your time. I was reading an article, I think it was this morning in the Wall Street Journal and maybe it was yesterday talking about the four day work week. And I'm saying that wouldn't work or maybe it does for you. I don't know, I know it wouldn't work for me, but did you basically double the amount of hours you had to work and then 50% of that was spent running your company and the other half fundraising? Well, do you have a life? Yeah, I mean, well, fundraising is a part of the job of a CEO, right? It's important. And so especially in the tech world, if you choose to go that route, so it shouldn't be considered a side job if you make a commitment to that being the next chapter of your business and meeting the right funders in order to do that. From a time perspective, I think any founder who's listening will know that none of us work a four day work week. So my 50% time was, you know, I probably work a 80 hour week. So it was 40 hours of prep and meetings and follow ups and whatnot. And the other 40 hours was running the business. It's hard and it's grueling and you get lots of no's but you also get, if you're thoughtful about it and you choose to take the feedback that you're getting from investors and turn those learnings into action, then you see a lot more success both for the funding round as well as the business. I've gotten some of the best advice from investors who said no. So you have to see it all as a part of just the work of being a CEO in order to be successful. Any feedback is a gift. Okay, let's mention your North Star. Let's get into the company. What is your North Star? What's your vision? So I had mentioned this earlier and it's really never changed for us. Our mission at Opus is to create a world where every frontline worker has a good job. There's 110 million American workers who don't sit at a desk all day. They make up 70% of the American workforce. Frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce. So this is a massive opportunity. It's also an astronomical problem. So when we talk about training, what we're actually talking about is giving businesses and their employees the tools to be successful. And in our world, that means building skills. It doesn't just mean we're gonna have Dave watch this video and take a quiz and get back to work. We're creating technology that actually helps Dave learn the thing, then do the thing, then apply the thing in an ongoing manner so that he can gain economic opportunity. Because at the end of the day, that's what this is about. It's about opportunity for those businesses, of course, so that they can keep their people and grow them and get more output. But on the heels of that is also an incredible opportunity to give people a chance to have longer careers and to build new learnings and new skills at work, whether they keep them at that job or take them to the next. We have an incredibly underutilized, underskilled American workforce. And it's critical that businesses are training their people. We just see it from a much more mission-driven lens that the win here isn't just for the business, it's also for the human being who's helping lift that business up. Fantastic vision and mission. And some reason, given your exposure to frontline work, I'm thinking undercover boss, but you're not stealth. You've basically taken that experience and brought it to a learning system. Not quite that brutal. Well, how does it all work? Like what types of content, how does the content get created, focus areas, sweet spots where you're getting traction? And I wanna learn more about the roadmap, but please. Yeah, so, well, let's start with the problem we're solving. So we talked a little bit about the American workforce. The key word here is access. So the status quo when it comes to skill building and training in frontline jobs is that you have a massive workforce that has no access to great training. The second thing to remember here is that within that workforce, you not only have frontline employees, so maybe a server or a cook or a picker or a packer or a driver, but you also have the frontline managers who are overseeing those people. And then you also have the individuals at corporate in that support center who are creating the training, who are responsible for ROI and KPIs and all of the acronyms. So what OPUS does is it helps serve all three of those users in the workplace so that there's this constant flow of knowledge between what's happening at corporate, how it gets filtered down to middle management and how middle management is training their people effectively. So from the frontline perspective, what we do is we help deliver all of that training directly to employee mobile funds. So access problem number one is solved. And on their phone, they're only getting the training they need at that moment in their employee life cycle and they can get it in 100 global languages. It's interactive, it's quick and when you're standing on your feet all day, you need to have an interactive component so that you can actually not just read but actually do while you're learning. The second component is the manager piece. This is my favorite part. It's what makes us so special at OPUS. We've designed a mobile experience specifically for frontline managers. They're also standing on their feet all day. If you walk into any business today and you ask those managers how much time they're spending in the office, it's close to zero. But often with traditional systems, whether it's a big paper packet or whether it's a, whether it's a legacy learning management system, they're relegated to an office where they have to train people in a classroom. Well, that's completely impractical when you're teaching someone how to saute onions or how to greet guests. You can't do that in an office. You have to teach someone how to do that. And no video and no app could ever teach you how to do that effectively. So our frontline app for managers helps those managers be better coaches. We have tools that teach them to be better teachers and captures data on the job training that they're doing. That's a really special part of what we're doing. And we'll talk a little bit more about micro learning and blended learning in a moment. And then the last piece around how it works is that we've created an AI powered content creation tool. We lovingly call this the content problem. It's been the same problem for ages. It's just as hard to build in a Google Doc as it is in a legacy learning management system. But we're powering all of that with AI. So we can help you build a course on a limited time offer or for new hires or compliance 500 times faster than you can with legacy solutions. So even those admins at corporate are saving time so that they can spend more time being strategic and driving those KPIs. So that's a little bit about how it works. Lots of more fun things to talk about but the crux here is focusing on experiences for each of those unique users and building a beautiful product for them. Thank you for that. And so, but number three, the AI powered content creation tooling. That says to me there's no limit. Amazon's the everything store. You're like the everything training platform. So you mentioned micro learning. Is that like in the moment learning and what's that and what's blended learning? Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that it's blended learning is such an important ingredient to the sauce here. It's an important part of how you have to be thinking about training for frontline workers. So, anybody who's listening has access to a human in their life who has had a job whether it's at a restaurant or in manufacturing or driving an Uber or what have you. These are incredibly difficult jobs. They also require training that is shoulder to shoulder that's in-person, the best way to learn. So blended learning is this artful combination of on the job training with digital reinforcement. I think the best way to put it is that I'm never gonna make a promise to any of our customers or to any business that we want to eliminate paper training and that we want to make all of their training digital. We actually think that's a bad thing because the good stuff is the human stuff. The good stuff is when a manager is coaching a team member and not only is that team member benefiting from it, but the manager is becoming a better teacher and trainer and can be spotlighted as a potential for promotion. So it's a really simple term blended learning but it's a complex problem to solve. It's how do I make sure that this digital component isn't disruptive to the workforce but at the same time it's capturing the right data on those hands-on skills. And the micro learning is actually a component of that. So it's a small piece of blended learning that's important. I'll be honest, micro learning partly is important because the global attention span is shrinking. So we just have to make sure that we're meeting people where they are when it comes to being tired and having second jobs and kids and commutes. But micro learning is actually a great way to reinforce a lot of that on the job training that's already happening on the job. And the content, thank you again for that. In the content that you develop that presumably uses artifacts from my business, what happens to that? Are you able to, is this all negotiation? You're able to use that for other sort of similar industries or yeah, okay, how's that work? Yeah, there's lots of really great tools and resources that businesses already have. So if you talk to any business owner today that employs frontline workers, they're gonna tell you that they have an employee handbook. They maybe have a dusty PowerPoint slide for on like food safety. They might have a job aid hidden somewhere around a standard operating procedure. Maybe they have a video from the CEO. Those are all things that RAI converter can consume and can turn into an interactive module. So everything can be a feeder or an input in order to generate training that's meaningful for your team. The thing that's not meaningful is just putting that big paper packet in front of your team and asking them to read it. So it's about content conversion on several different use cases that I had just mentioned. But it's also about creating content from scratch and the AI builder can also do that. That we hear from our customers all the time. Sometimes they kind of don't know where to begin. Remember like not everybody's a training expert. And so the, so Opus can help these businesses construct ideas and modules out of a concept that they need to train their team on. Whether it's, you know, HR related or whether it's related to brand or marketing or it could be something that's very specific such as, hey, we have a new point of sale system and we need to teach 5,000 workers how to use it as quickly as possible. So we're seeing the highest level of ROI. Well, all of these software systems are sending you a really beautiful PowerPoint. But do you really expect to get onto 100 Zoom calls to train your team on that? It's impractical. So what if you upload that PowerPoint into Opus and convert it into an interactive training that's translated into 100 global languages? That changes the game for these businesses. And it also changes the game for these software companies that need to increasingly train a frontline workforce on their technology as well. And you've figured out from a technology standpoint you've got a scale model. We got to run, but I have to ask you, so just real quick, it's a SaaS based platform you price by consumption over some subscription period. How's that work? B2B SaaS, no surprises. We charge per user annual plans. We mostly work with larger businesses. So it's as straightforward as that. You can also start small if you want to. So we have a compliance only package. If you just need to train your team on sexual harassment prevention, we can help support businesses with that. If you want the whole kit and Kovoodle, we can also support with an entire strategic initiative around training. And who do you compete with? Who are you disrupting? Why are you different? Interestingly, our biggest competitor is Paper. 70% of our customers are converting from nothing, not something. But in addition to, yeah, it's an interesting statistic. It's also important to note that there's 1200 legacy learning management systems. So it's a highly fragmented market, but those LMS only have 30% market share. So if that tells you something about the lack of access that these legacy systems provide, then you can understand that the opportunity and why we're creating a lot of space here for something entirely different that I won't dare say is the anti-LMS. It's not, and a lot of these players came before us and we respect them a lot, but it's a new concept. No one's really capturing the in-person data and that's what we're doing differently. So yeah, I never thought I'd say competition is paper, but here we are. Sounds like a lot of, as they call green shoots coming up in your garden. So Rachel, congratulations and best of luck. Would love to have you back some day and track your progress. Am I right? You've raised $11 million in your series A, is that correct? That's right. Awesome. All right, well thank you so much for your time and sharing your story. We really appreciate it. Thanks, great to be here. I appreciate you having me. Yeah, you bet. Okay, and thank you for watching theCUBE. We'll see you next time.