 For these five entrepreneur teams, it started with a dream to launch a business. After a year of research, presentation, development, and mentorship, their dream may become a reality. Today, they'll have five minutes to pitch their business plan to a panel of experts ready to invest in their futures. From the Fairfield University, Charles F. Dolan School of Business, this is Fairfield Startup. Two summers ago, I started working on trading bots using algorithms to mess around with like financial technology and seeing the technology behind currencies was really interesting to me. So I knew that I eventually down the road wanted to build a blockchain app or just a network in general. So seeing that they had the startup on campus here was sort of my drive to pursue the technology more and see where I could go with it. When I first pitched this idea, it was just a cryptocurrency and nothing else and over winter break when I was doing some website development for a client, they were telling me how they have a cryptocurrency checkout system, but they were losing customers at the checkout cart because it just wasn't a practical form of payment. So going off of that, I pivoted more towards the merchant side of e-commerce websites where they can offer their users an easier way to pay with cryptocurrency. I really love the engineering behind all these projects that I do, but I would love to know more about business and how it can market my ideas. So I have been talking to a few professors on campus with business and technology and seeing where I can merge it. I'm dipping my toes into the business world, which is what I've always wanted. It's gonna be a great experience pitching to investors and getting that feedback that I need from audience members. It's gonna be a good experience. John Cain is dedicated to his field web development. Today, he'll present his financial technology business, STL, to the startup investor panel. Hello, my name is John Cain. I'm a sophomore computer science major and freelance web developer here at Fairfield University. I'm working with my mentor Peter Maragara in investment and operational due diligence expert. I also have several advisors with expertise in economics management and law who have been guiding me on building a foundation for this project before launch. So a little bit of background on my work last winter I gave website advice to an online medical cannabis dispensary here in Massachusetts. Cash businesses such as these are growing with medical marijuana markets worth nearly 74 billion in 2019 alone. While working for them, I learned a lot about the industry, including some pain points that come with running one of these businesses. For starters, these businesses are cash only. The problem with running a cash business, however, is that there are expenses associated with handling large sums of money, such as security and transport. Second, it can be inconvenient for customers to go to ATMs to which are large sums of money to bring into these stores. The same convenience can also become potentially dangerous for cash can be stolen before a customer even enters the store. For other cash business markets or for the dispensaries and states where banks are allowed to handle these transactions, credit cards come with some problems that at times can outweigh their own convenience. For one, they leave a transaction history. For an industry that is still in a legal gray area such as the cannabis industry, this can make or break a sale for some people. Second, some businesses choose not to accept credit cards for the sake of fees. While cryptocurrency has very low fees compared to credit cards and is sometimes referred to as digital cash, there are some pain points associated with it as well. First, cryptocurrency is still very technical and may be confusing to both customers and business owners who want to integrate a payment system that accepts crypto. Second, the volatility of coin prices may lead to a loss of sale for a business owner. The solution to these problems is a cryptocurrency payment and exchange portal for both e-commerce websites and physical cash businesses. As you will tackle the cash problem of cost and safety by allowing users to pay with a credit card at these cash businesses. Rather than buying from the store directly, they will be buying cryptocurrency to be sent to these stores, thus eliminating a transaction history. Finally, as you will tackle the crypto problems by automating the conversion of cryptocurrency back to cash and by offering smart tools to manage against volatility. In terms of our competitive landscape, none offer tools to manage against these holdings. Many of these platforms are too technical for both businesses and customers and many make users take holdings off-page to third-party exchanges to manually convert from crypto to fiat currency. In terms of our technology, SEO use Binance Rest API to both handle exchanges on the platform and run our smart tools. These tools will use technical indicators to watch exchange activity in order to provide service like automated trading, offer selections of coins to accept at a given time, show which coins have been the most volatile in the last week, along with countless others. Similarly, SEO will connect a Plaid API to our returning users or websites to link their credit cards to the platform to make checking out a simple blogging into your bank account. SEO will also act as a wallet storing cryptocurrency for the users who choose not to exchange the fiat. Ultimately, SEO wants to make cash business transactions convenient by allowing users to use a credit card all the while remaining just as private as cash. Second, SEO wants to save businesses money by introducing smart tools to manage funds and allow businesses to carry less cash to the bank. SEO will be approaching our market with two tactics, the first being a face-to-face guerrilla marketing campaign. Through this, we will meet in person with owners of cash businesses and cater to specific needs and pitches. Through this tactic, we have already signed two medical dispensaries and a day trader up for our business pro platform. Second, we will run targeted ads in the background on LinkedIn to attract business owners to sign up for our services. This will cast a wider net while we run our face-to-face campaign after launch. SEO will generate revenue through two separate business models. First, we will collect a fee for all transactions on the network. The second stream of revenue will be generated through a subscription to our smart tools that are included with the business pro dashboard. The decision to split the generation of SEO's revenue into two models came after a series of customer interviews. There are two kinds of business owners signing up for our platform. First, there are those who want to exchange their coins to fee as soon as possible. They are not day traders and only see cryptos abridged to conventional money, so there is no reason to bog them down with trading tools. The second customer is the business owner who uses crypto as an investment, but does not have the second goal know-how of a day trader to take their funds to an exchange. Subscribing to the business pro platform will open up new tools to this business owner and ultimately save them money. Below is a financial projection from the next five years for revenue and profit generated from the transaction fees alone. SEO is targeting small to medium business that's generating roughly 500k in revenue. From this revenue, 5% will be from cryptocurrency and our cost structure is calculated to incorporate the cost of marketing for each customer, along with hosting an API cost. Going forward, the plan is to continue development and integrate with credit card platforms by the end of the summer. The cryptocurrency side of the platform is currently being wrapped up and code for my previous trading bot projects will be integrated to develop these smart tools. In the coming months, advice from expertise in law, online banking, and UI and UX design is more than welcome. My contact information is below and now I'd like to open up the floor for discussion. With the presentation complete, it's time for the startup investor panel discussion. John has the opportunity to promote SDL and secure pledges. John, how are you? Good, how are you doing? Good, thanks for being here today. My name is Michael. You're with Joe and Mary Ann and we're very, very happy to see you. We've watched your presentation. Very good job, by the way. We've watched multiple times and we all have a few questions for you. And I'll just kick it off from there. Is that good for you, Joe Ann? Joe and Mary Ann? Yep, absolutely. Good. So, John, you know, it's interesting. Number one, I was, I'm very impressed with you on this cutting edge of it appears to be crypto and the cannabis space, both the markets that I think are going to be gigantic over the next decade, you know, maybe and in perpetuity, if everyone's correct. I'm a chain link guy myself and I'm actually invested in some some kind of displays out in Colorado. Oh, great. You said I don't have a lot of knowledge compared to you, but what I will share with you, what I got from your presentation was you were looking to meet some value opportunity that you saw with cash and blockchain and privacy and cannabis. My thought is as I step back and I think about long term investments, I believe right now that in this country with the pandemic we're going through that these ideas of legalization of marijuana recreationally and medically will most likely be, in my opinion, accelerated nationally on a state-by-state basis because of the need for increased tax revenue. So I think that's an issue that you might be up against. So my question for you is have you given some thought about that and number two, I had an issue with, oh, not an issue, I wanted to understand a little bit. You talked about one or two medical dispensaries, then you talked about a crypto day trader that signed up for your platform. So it looks like you've got a bifurcated type of business that I'm not sure I and to me, based on my understanding of the cannabis market and I can put you in touch I want to put you in touch with the CEO of a company called 1906. I'm one of the earlier investors out in Colorado. They're inedible. But I do want to talk to you maybe not now but off-site about your crypto trading because the volatility in the crypto space is like the wild west. So those are my initial comments and I just wanted to see if you could talk to some thought about how if marijuana's legalization moves up faster, does your privacy issue kind of disappear? Right, sure thing. So in terms of the legalization of marijuana, with the research that I was doing with the legalization, I guess I sort of thought of three points. First, with the slow legal process, I thought that even if it is accelerated between state legislation and federal legislation, it feels like in the last few decades that the debate has been continued and maybe good luck through bureaucratic processes. And then my other point that I brought up was the high incarceration rate for marijuana and whether or not those people would be dismissed of the crime or not. And because of that, I thought that in the back of people's minds, there might still be this feeling of not wanting marijuana purchases being made public. Even if it is legal at the federal level, there might be that skepticism. If it is legal, but I have this history, what's that going to do for me? So I wonder if even if banks are allowed to adopt payments towards a cannabis company, are people going to be hesitant to pay with a bank card? And are banks going to be hesitant as well just because of how fresh the law is and everything? So in terms of that, that's how I felt about what was happening with the federal legalization. And because of that, I feel like there's still enough time for my platform to get some adoption and get a foothold into the market before banks come in and offer platforms to pay for cannabis. And then for your second question, I'm sorry, what was your second question again? You've actually answered it. I've got what I needed. And again, I'm impressed. I think you're more cutting edge than I am right now. So I do want to talk to you more about this after the fact. But Joe or Mary, do you have any follow-up questions? Yeah, Mike's into cannabis. I'm into art galleries. So can you tell me about the connection to art galleries? Sure thing. So I think you've really nailed the financial aspects of how to demonstrate a software business model. And that's pretty cool for a sophomore. So congratulations. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So with the art gallery, I didn't do too much research into the art galleries as much as the cannabis and other markets, but with the art galleries, from what I learned from some people in that market or area was that people are buying art as a medium of value, you know, just holding onto it as a tangible asset to hold. So with that, I just knew that people were buying art pieces with cryptocurrency and just being able to purchase art as a medium of value just like you do with cryptocurrency is a space where people are looking to buy with cryptocurrency, especially since it is mostly a cash business as well. Yeah. Well, as a collector myself, I think the aspects of privacy might be a niche situation, which is itself to a similar, I think you really explain the cannabis aspects of it, you know, to me much better in this short presentation. So it really rings, you know, rings true. So that might, those same privacy concerns might apply to the art gallery world as well as the auction, you know, the of which art is a part of, but the, you know, precious artifacts and things of that sort. Okay. Yeah, it's definitely a market that I'll do more research into. And within the coming months, I'll definitely reach out to people in that space and get their opinion and see where my technology can be applied there. Thank you. So, John, you're, you've been developing this really intriguing technology and, you know, congratulations. It sounds like you've done an awful lot in a short period of time. So that's pretty tremendous. So in this process, what have you done to protect some of the technology that you have been building? Any IP protection plans there? And then, and then also related to that. And I think part of what Joe was just mentioning, you also talked about second revenue stream that you have from your smart tools. I'm hopeful you could share with us a little bit about that as well. So in terms of an IP, most of the technology that I'm working with is open sourced. So in that regard, I would not be able to do an IP, such as, you know, things of sending Bitcoin or Ethereum over the internet. But I think what the special sauce for this business would be would be the combination of different open source tools. So right now it's a exchange portal. So we're connecting to Binance Exchange to exchange between US dollars and cryptocurrency. But that combination with our trading tools, automated trading and everything isn't something that you're seeing with other exchanges or other platforms that accept cryptocurrency. So in that regard, that is what is unique about our platform. I haven't done as much research into whether or not that would be something I could patent just because it is just a combination of different open source technologies. And then in terms of, I'm sorry, what was your second question again? You had talked about your smart tools and that was a second revenue stream. Could you expand upon that a little bit? Yeah, of course. So the smart tools were something that I had originally included in just the regular platform. My background with cryptocurrency was algorithm trading. So I was messing around with connecting to exchanges and seeing if a computer could handle trading and, you know, just see what it could do with the different cryptocurrency technologies and taking my experience with that. There are platforms out there that are just trading bots that you can buy and they're about, some of them are expensive, $85 a month. So from that, I saw the opportunity where, you know, you have two different kinds of business owners signing up for the platform. One where they don't see cryptocurrency as anything other than just saying, you know, I'm turning it into US dollars. I don't want to touch it. I don't want to save it. And then from that, I realized I should have a second platform where I do have this trading bot platform where they can invest in cryptocurrencies and either grow the value that they earn or just play around with the market and see what they can do with their earnings. Very interesting. Thank you. Thank you very much, John. We're very impressed with what you're doing there. Thank you. Thank you so much. A little bit beyond me. I'll be honest, but I do want to talk to you some more. All right. Yeah, sure thing. Great, John. I want to thank you for being here and we look forward to seeing you in the award round. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, everyone. All right. Thanks. Thanks, John. Fairfield Startup would like to thank our sponsors for continuing to make the annual startup showcase possible. Thank you. Estial is presented and it's on to the final round. Visit fairfield.edu slash startup to watch all of the 2020 Fairfield startup team episodes. Vote for your favorite and tune in next week to see the winner of the CT Next Connecticut Innovations Audience Favorite Award. Thanks for watching Fairfield Startup. This has been a presentation of Fairfield University and the Dolan School of Business.