Spare Change, Pies, Drones, and New Builders at Devland

TRANSCRIBED AND EDITED FROM VIDEO WITH MELISSA, MILES AND DEVON

May 14th, 2021: The Building Blocks 

This past week we started to share some opportunities to interface with the Devland Angels community. We are growing with about 22 angels (mostly legacy Devland investors) and several new members recently added. Angels are the “believers” that help companies through the most important stages of early growth. There are two companies from our portfolio that we put in front of our angels this past week. 

Here is a recap:

Moneta is the bridge to the mobile money future. They're leveraging technology to enable merchants to receive cash of any denomination and return change back digitally. As you many of you may know, we're in a coin shortage right now and it's shown more intensity in certain areas of the US. Their solution is helping to drive versatility for merchants and bridging transactions back to e-wallets. They have secured a pilot with a mid-sized south Florida retailer with visibility to large players like Costco. In terms of enabling merchants to be transactional, regardless of the cash denominations, and change the nominations they hold. That company was spawned from Miles’ own Alma mater, the University of Miami and the team has grown by one recently as they recently brought on a software engineer. So we're looking to engage angles on that.

Next up is Pietisserie, a California-based food company that has expanded from brick and mortar to Whole Foods in an 18 month growth period, now with over 80 retail accounts. The aesthetic is beautiful and bright, a cult brand moniker similar to SUPREME, graced with an incredible product design quality. The flavors were designed by Jaynelle St. Jean as a inspired discovery of the food and artisan space. Having no background in culinary when she started she has authored over 50 recipes, product design IP and new production techniques. She is a creative that found food as a canvas to express her ideas with a strong entrepreneurial hustle to craft novel popups and product placement with notable appearances on TV. The window of opportunity has really expanded, this next year the business is on path to national distribution through Tony's and UNFI.

New Builder Programs

Devon and Miles are in the process of formalizing our investor offering for new LPs to power pipelines in Tulsa, Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles. If you are connected to LPs and Funders who have a desire to deploy into alternative funding models please connect with us. Miles has served as lead to committee within the GSSN community charged with articulating a path of standardization for Startup Studio Legal Structures for the benefit of all new studio builders and studio investors. We are proud of the work they have produced to date that will be initially available for utility by GSSN Studio organizations.

We are incredibly excited to have committed to such a rewarding path and are witnessing incredible growth with new stakeholders. The catalyst for this was definitely the work done in 2018-2020, stealth but incremental. So, as Devon and Miles say “stay in the car, what you're looking to accomplish is just on the other side of what you're working at.”

We're currently here in Tulsa working on the Atento Capital EIR program which is powered by our internal studio program model and expanding into an annual program entry path for 5 new entrepreneurs. We've taken stewardship over this program as a partner to a venture capital firm based in Tulsa, Oklahoma demonstrating the portability of our internal programs. Devland's core program curriculum and mentors represent important components in activation of a high quality startup builder pipeline of emerging entrepreneurs that will impact the Tulsa startup ecosystem. The investor ecosystem is bullish, engaged and excited to produce new success.

In August, we will be launching a partnership program with a non-profit organization based in Bentonville, AR. This new program is targeted at improving black business health with 10-weeks of project based learning and workshops in the consumer goods category. Members of this cohort series will be presenting their final projects at this years Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit.

As a startup studio our evolution is highlighted by our core program finding path through licensing and literature, with our program structure as bones for other organizations (including VCs) to leverage as they move rapidly in support of emerging startup entrepreneurs.

Frontier Technology Programs

Quick update on our frontier technology arm with Rain Research. Project 1 was funded by strategic investors in January 2021 and is building and growing quickly. The team has made the pace in development of a next-gen detection/response system for wildfire suppression and are preparing for a commercial pilot opportunity. They're in the process of hiring an aerospace engineer, a mechatronics engineer, and also a software engineer that deals with perception technology/computer vision. To learn more about these roles view more here.

We're excited to share more updates over the coming weeks. If you are connected to any driven, motivated idea-stage entrepreneurs, people who do not have stakeholders yet, literally busting at the seams to work on something new — send them our way. Our community is vital to us, if you feel that they have the persistence to pursue startup life, we are very interested in being introduced to individuals like this. Send a note over to Miles at hello@devland.us to setup introduction.

We will talk to you soon. Stay focused and build better. Thanks so much!