"Standing Desk is OVER" l Pitch.tech EP 01

00:01welcome to pitch. Tech where Innovative startups showcase their technology in the heart of silon Valley we'll pitch their solution to a panel of esteemed investors hi I'm uh tah n I'm co-founder of storm Ventures we've raised seven funds for a total of $1.2 billion we've had 12 unicorns companies such as maretto Vado uh I'm John Willie so I'm now a three-time Founder I also teach at Stanford I teach cs22 24g which is one of the most popular classes in Stanford about building uh applications using large language models pitch.

00:31Tech is dedicated to highlighting startups that use disruptive Technologies to forge Innovations let's meet the innovators shaping the future of tech pitch. tech is where bold startups ontech domains get gamechanging insights from Top VCS Tech domain instantly signals you're all about Cutting Edge Tech and Innovation building a tech startup build it on dote good thank you guys this my journey has been from the UK all the way through San Francisco we're very grateful for the opportunity that that's that's come to us we're buzzed about this hi we're humble works I'm here to tell you about

01:15a problem that is costing the world around a trillion pounds my background is in sustainable design and renewable energy to help with this crisis I pulled together the team that I thought would be best fit to solve this there are 1.3 billion information workers around the globe that are sitting at their laptops hunched over as they're working remotely we're going to focus on 145 million remote employees that are in the UK the EU and the US 88% of managers don't believe their remote work teams are working as productively as they could be here's how we solve this

01:48problem by moving during the course of the workday we can unlock 17% more productivity and drop sick days by 25% how do you move during the workday and stay productive we've built an ecosystem an Adaptive ecosystem fully sustainable sophisticated feels right at home or works at the office that allows you to move from position to position and stay productive it's all well and good as promising managers CEOs the 177% Improvement in productivity can we prove that yes we can 17% Improvement in productivity is captured by and measured using the humble Works app our goal for

02:23move to measure is to then create a report the reports going to be buffered and anonymized so individualized data isn't available but will be presented to a manager who then understands where the information or the work gaps are between him and his Workforce and at some point over the next year all goes to well all goes to plan we plan to create an AI manager to supplement and to possibly replace managers in some cases to have entire teams being managed through an AI dashboard and our Revenue model is to charge £119 per employee in year one employees will get the full humble work Suite full

03:00humble Works Suite includes the standing desk the workstation the Rochester and humble Works app to help you track movement as you progress from one point to the next year two will be the manager report that's now going to show you the granular data that we've gathered gathered in year one and give you live real-time feedback on how you're working and optimize your entire workday by year three we'll have the app the manager dashboard and environment scan used through the existing camera on your on your laptop by year three we're planning to take on the insurance industry it's a

03:38fragmented industry that needs work with our granular data that we've gathered and the root cause of the health issue being sitting down all day leading to all of the other issues will teach us exactly where those Health preventative indicators will come from this is the saving in year one compared to what people usually spend right now per employee right we will save employees employers 1,400 year 1 1,680 year 2 and 2,600 year 3 here's how we'll do that they're currently suspending around £750 per employee in health insurance loss in productivity and loss in sick

04:15days are all the mitigating points that we're going to bring to the market and Save in in all of those costs across the board can we do this can we pull this off with just the standing desk alone we generated a million in sales at the end of 2023 just the standing desk by itself and at that point we pivoted and decided movement was the bigger play at hand thank you for your time really appreciate it if you raise the money you said2 million uh what are you going to achieve and by when so in year one we'd like to build the um AI manager dashboard and the AI manager dashboard

04:48would take the data from year one and build an entire framework for how you should be working and all of that data is then going to be presented back to you as a full breakdown of where where you should be at the end of to we would like to have the environment scan built in well what I'm trying to figure out is if I invest today will next round be like a double or triple the price otherwise there's no reason for me to invest today right let's imagine you invest today in two years from now the data that we would have gathered from movement that nobody else is gathering

05:20from how people are working from home will put us in a position where the following round that we go for will be 5x what we're aiming for now just saying collecting data will be enough to get 5x the price that's to me like feels like a really different business where it's like okay let's spy on the SP spy on the employees like make sure that they're kind of like being productive and working we have uh desks that move up and down they are standing they don't use what you say and yeah and I think that well usually what typically happens is that uh you know we got the ones that

05:46have the the memory and everything like that you can just push a button it immediately go to the next setting pretty much every single person they either keep it up or they keep it down they're not moving it up and down you know all all the time I mean this kind of gets the other part of the problem which is like well like you're trying to change people's behavior yeah right and like it's going to be like oh and then you know how do you do it in another way that it's going to be like that it's going to be accepted by the by the users they going to be like you know is it

06:13like the nag screen that's going to come up and say like hey it's time for you to to to get up and walk around or is it like hey I mean because I think it would be if you just give hey I have the options of like putting my desk up or down I have options of putting it my laptop on know higher or lower uh I mean the the stuff that I've seen is that people I mean often people aren't aren't doing that which is I mean it's part of the root of the problem where it's like okay people have bad posture because they don't even realize like like necessarily they have they have this bad

06:42posture but then also like you don't you don't um you know it's challenging to be like the kind of Nag wear whatever that's going to be like oh well well the camera shows that you're slouching why like why why why don't you set up straight stuff so what what are what are your thoughts there brilliant question and I'm glad you all in fact the um the house we were kind of uh joining and and we're staying with um have a hack house and they have standing desks we have we all have standing desks we don't use them and in fact I'm I'm going to say something that's that's probably going

07:09to sound controversial but standing isn't the answer to go from sitting to just standing it's recently been proven that you'll burn a few more calories but it's not solving the problem which is why we pivoted in 2023 towards movement and towards creating behavioral change by benchmarking using the humble Works app once you understand where you are in context of a leaderboard cuz that that will be part of the next step and how you've performed the metrics that you're now playing with or the switches you're now turning up and down are going to be or the ones that are uh available to you

07:40is mood move and productivity so what our goal is is to show you over a period of time as a baseline here's where you are and after a few weeks it takes 21 days and so what's the time period I mean like in terms of like hey I implement this like at what point am going to see the ROI our goal is to go into a company and to propose a 25% roll out to their work from home stuff right to find the teams that would be reluctant resistant or the teams that would jump on and say yeah I'm I'm up for this the early the early adopters all the way through the ones that can to

08:09be relaxant right and the app is going to set a baseline over three weeks it's going to set a Baseline and the the Baseline for that app would be here's where we are before the humble work suite comes in and allows us to move from position to position here's me sitting down hunched over my laptop like everyone else in those 1.3 billion information workers right and then three weeks later we introduced The Humble work Suite from that point on with within three months our goal is to show productivity Spike whether it's a few perc or goes all the way up to what

08:41we're promising at 17% there's going to be a marked difference in productivity so maybe we could talk about like what the current status is you know how many units are deployed how much data are you getting per month right now all that we've just completed the the the full build so the entire humble works is bootstrapped so built it from scratch and at the end of 2023 I pivoted away from just selling standing desks by themselves we focus on building the tech building the full suite and use the uh so you're right now in the process of getting the data and all that right now

09:15absolutely so right now in the process of Market penetration and and and and adops to encourage movement uh many of our some of the meetings are we just walking meetings we just walk around the block so that that's why I'm not sure this you know app or chair will would make a difference no of course see see imagine this as this point where nobody's done this before up until this point everyone's very easily said I'll spend £3,000 on a an expensive ergonomic chair that'll go up back will go in and that's it and nobody's really embraced this idea of what if we change this the

09:50the entire status quo if we change the dynamic and we we built this homogeneous way of working where all of my employees are now working in the same way if I set up an office I wouldn't allocate and just throw a budget out and say right you can have a sofa if you'd like you can have this sort of chair you more than the office would be fair sterile and look quite homogeneous with a similar setup along the way thank you I appreciate it I think today's Q&A helped me understand the gaps um the linear storytelling and um the presentation of the pitch that can then mitigate the

10:20gaps you would get towards the the Q&A I feel like I answer the Q&A as best as I could uh but possibly having more uh tangible and statistical U evidence at the Q&A would have helped because it's almost like you have your appendix ready and your appendix could then validate the rest of the the questions there and then so possibly having an appendix and helping shape the framing the pitch in in a structured order that would help the dot te is is just this absolute uh logical next step to have um a um an easy way for people to understand it's not a standing Des company anymore it's

11:01now a technology company and this is where we're going and dotech shortcuts that process or I imagine hopefully shortcuts that process are people going oh that's humble Works they do standing desks no they humble works. Tech and they must have a tech site to this what is that tech oh there's an app and now there's a manager report and now there's uh AI bills into it I found that uh uh the quantitative uh benefit to be a little questionable what I mean by that is uh uh um his product is just starting to get deployed right now and as a result he doesn't have a lot of

11:41data back yet and so he can't say because of his product we get these benefits instead what he's saying is is that uh if you do these kind of things like more Mobility you get these benefits and the product can do these things and therefore the product product will be able to provide and so I I see logically what he's trying to do and and if I him I would try to sell too when it comes to presentation I thought humble Works was by far the best presenter right that doesn't sound like an AI recommendation no that I mean like that because they was they called us because

12:18they called me that like your system is crazy customers don't like Dynamic pricing because it's like wait a second oh you got you got a different price than I got when I like when I went you know went went to for this or like it's you know there's a lot of backlash around surge pricing and like these these sorts of things which ultimately ends up getting a brand risk [Music]