How do you hold a seed investor to a handshake deal?

If the future of our world is we're going to put it in the hands of robots, I want those robots to understand the best version of the world. What would be your advice to other female entrepreneurs looking to build the next big tech company and attract outside investment? Being a woman in LA in general is an interesting concept, but being a woman in LA in a startup raising capital now we're adding levels here. I want to press a button and I want to be in our living room and go to Egypt. How can we make this happen? Being a woman entrepreneur, what kind of friction points did you come across that you felt your male counterparts didn't have to go through? It's interesting. We trust in women, mothers to raise everyone in the world, but we don't trust them to raise or put together a company. So, I don't think the everyday person necessarily knows about yet, but it's coming. The robots are coming. The robots are here. Hey everyone, welcome back to Fundraising Demystified. Today I'm excited to have Jess Lauren on the show with us, the founder and CEO of Global Objects based out of LA. We met through our newsletter, Fundraising Demystified, when we did a a special on women's month or what it's like to raise for for women in the US. and I'm excited that she's on the show to share her story. It's hard, Jason. It's hard. Thanks for thanks for reading my email. Well, I am uh yeah, I definitely want to talk about that and the story of what it's like raising capital as a female entrepreneur in today's market. But I think for you know, to kind of kick things off, I I would love for you to kind of tell everyone a little bit about what it's like, you know, being in LA as a woman raising capital. Being a woman in LA in general is an interesting uh concept, but being a woman in LA in a startup raising capital now we're adding levels here, Jason. So, you know, I think is it's we're in the show me, you know, show me show me show me city. So, I think it's just showing up. You know, I go to every networking event that I could possibly think of and I've created a community. So, you know, I operate in the tech space as well as in the entertainment space. So I am a producer by trade first and foremost and then got into tech and entertainment. So I'm in the academy. Yes. So I'm an academy member and then I was like I joined the board. So I was able to to do that and I organize events for the academy. So then I got into more events and then I'm also on the visual effects society and then also was just recently voted into the board. So I'm now on the board and handle events for visual effects society and I'm also part of the producers guild. So I really take a stand in becoming integrated into communities into a sector that I want to flourish in. So having those connections and being able to ask people well need to get to this person or this person. So on the entertainment side I've really done an interesting job of of getting into the the boards and you know offering as much as I can to the community. So I have a large uh studio here in North Hollywood. I open it up quite often for education events and bringing people and it's all about community. On the tech side, you know, taking what I knew in entertainment, created an event called the production summit. So, kind of bringing in the world of tech and entertainment together. Production summit, we've been doing it since this year will be our fourth year and I've worked with Nvidia, Microsoft and AMD on that particular event. So I also wanted to ingrain myself into tech and find who works in media and entertainment on those sector on that side and obviously what's happening in AI in media is a large conversation across the board. So we talk a lot about those topics in production summit every year as well. So community is very important to me and getting on boards and getting involved. When do you have time to build the company? Oh so Jason I'm also a mother of three so that is that is something. So I you know I do have to balance like family time and travel time and the company and then you know my commitments to community and boards. So it's a lot but I think we have agents now right aentic AI and I personally am definitely taking those and using them to the best of my ability and helping with my schedule. You know I have a lovely project manager assistant and an amazing team. So we just make it work. That's impressive. And you know just I'm sure everyone's curious like you know are you building these agentic AI solutions for yourself? Are you having your team build them for you hiring them out? Like how are you creating the the time with that kind of schedule and commitments? I feel that the best agents can only be built by yourself cuz you know yourself the best. I actually had an opportunity to speak with his name is John Weisner and he's a global black belt uh for Microsoft for high performance compute and AI. Um, and he said it best to me the other day. He's like, "Jess, co-pilot is the UI for AI." So, like the simplistic form. And he said he Satia had said that to to him in a crowd. So, it's credit to Satia, but I heard it from John. But I did want to say, you know, it it just really boiled it down for me of like, okay, my user interface, how can I make the best thing for me? Well, only I can do that. So, you know, for mine, I've uploaded five years of emails that I personally wrote prior to, you know, things being able to be written for me. I took as many text messages that I could find that I've written. I've written a book. I uploaded my book. So, anything that I had crafted or created or presentations that I had done, I put into my particular model. And I have to tell you, it is very good. It has down to I'm very bubbly and quirky. It knows my jokes and it's it's done a really great job. So, have I deployed it yet to answer my emails? No. But what it does, it can set up uh a suggested email reply in your inbox and kind of sit in your drafts and you can send it out from there. So there's little things that you can set up now that I don't think the everyday person necessarily knows about yet, but it's coming. The robots are coming. The robots are here. Go ahead. No, it's just it's just like for me it's like how do I find the time to like you know because you know I get caught in the paralysis by analysis of like you know how do I make this like tweak tweak and I'm like okay is this highest and best use of time I have to like stop myself because it's so cool it's so much fun to kind of like go in and try to optimize you create your your digital twin which I've seen so much content on and I'm like okay how do I how do I go about doing this and then yeah next thing I know I'm buried you know trying to crank out things that actually you know keep the lights on but yeah well my entire business is about digital twins So I that's all I eat, sleep, breathe, everything now. So well, let's talk about it for for context for the audience. Uh tell them a little bit about Global Objects. Yeah. So at Global Objects, we're digitizing the world. And I know that sounds like a great big job, right? But if you boil down and going back to like, you know, Noah's Arc, say when you're trying to take two copies of all the animals on the planet, stick them in a boat to make sure you have like preservation, right? So that's what we're trying to do for the digital world is we are scanning real life items like this you know calculator that I have on my desk scanning it we do it with blue laser phototrics photoggramometry liar and then we have a a photorealistic digital twin that digital twin right right now is we use it for media entertainment so we place it into worlds to create digital sets but these twins are also good for manufacturing for training simulation and the future robotics like we're we're talking about here today. So the robot can understand how to grab this not crush it to make it very simple. So why did I come up with this idea is I came from tech got into entertainment melded those worlds for tech and entertainment and I saw the advent of the show the Mandalorian and that was created through a process called virtual production and my husband is one of the the world's best visual effects artists and I said how can we take your knowledge base with mine with entrepreneurship tech and now entertainment how could create a company where I said to him and said, "I want to press a button and I want to be in our living room and go to Egypt. How can we make this happen?" Like, you understand light. You understand everything to do with how the camera reacts for visual effects and all of that. How can we do that? So, we had reached out to many different people. We got an LOI for uh $20 million to open our own virtual production stage. We then found out I got pregnant. So, it just wasn't like the right time for me. And to be honest, the person who gave us the yellow eye wasn't the right group for us. So, it just didn't feel like the best fit. So, I'm a woman. I I base a lot of things on my feelings or my hunches or and it just great. Everyone's like, "Oh my god, we got $20 million." It wasn't the right fit. So, we said no. My husband did not want to say no, let me tell you. But what we learned is, okay, if we had if we had opened this stage, COVID happened. So we would have opened the stage and then the pandemic came in and we would have been sitting there with a beautiful stage with no one to film inside of it at that time that particular time. So but what we said is you know Eric I said to Eric the original story concept is I want to press the button and be in Egypt. Okay I understand that we need the walls for that but who's making that content and where are people going to have that library of content to go to Egypt? So that's how we came up. The idea of global objects is to create environments and to collect and scan the world of environments as well as all of the objects you know that exist in the world in the most photorealistic way possible. So when we raised you know our seed we set out into R&D motive to figure out photoreal. So through our process at blue laser and photoometrics and photoggramometry and what we're doing with lidar and now with splats we've spent quite a bit of time figuring that out and we have delivered on that promise of photoreal with all of our digital twins where we have you know interest from Microsoft and and HP and Nvidia and and all the big names that you want to be associated with. We have that right now. Well, I think what it does to training models and training robots and when you actually have the accuracy in terms of color, depth, weight, you know, versus what would be generated in say like a video game like a real engine that, you know, easy for people to create those assets, but to have the actual real asset could be a lot more material value to a greater, you know, landscape of Exactly. If if the future of our world is we're going to put it in the hands of robots, I want those robots to understand the best version of the world, right? And do we really want them training on data that was supposed to be or created by an artist and maybe there was an artistic expression on that data? You know, we want to make sure that that data is based on the real world that things that actually existed. So that's what we're building our data set set on is the real world. So let's talk about this. You got a $20 million term sheet. You said no. seems like it played out for the best, but then you decided that you know wanted to continue to pursue this and you needed to go raise a seed round which you raised five. Walk the audience through kind of when you realized that you needed to raise money and kind of what was your process to go and secure that capital. Yeah. So when we, you know, turned down the 20 million, that wasn't an easy decision, but, you know, I had my child and then COVID. So, you know, the pandemic was actually a great time for my family because I was able to be home, you know, kind of being a mom for the first time. So, it worked out for me. But, you know, in wanting to get back into the workplace and kind of the advent of what was next for us, it was this content play. and we understood that in order to capture the content, we needed pretty expensive equipment and we needed labor. So, we needed more than, you know, him and I at the time. So, we started having conversations with the communities that we've built in Los Angeles of who's interested in, you know, this type of content or who's interested in just the the new virtual world, right? So it happened that we had been talking about potentially wanting to connect with the Roman Catholic Church and when we had said what's the most magnificent thing that you could scan and we were like a church or like you know just like the think of like the stained glass windows and all of that. So we're like, "Oh, that's, you know, amazing. Let's let's do a church." We're like, "Who do we know that knows someone at the Vatican?" Or, "Who knows the Pope?" Right? So, it's like no small question. Like, who knows the pope, right? But it just so happens that we put it out into the universe and what came back was someone who had a direct contact to someone that meets with the Pope monthly. So, right away, we had a connection in and our proposal was presented to the Pope and it was approved. And then we had to go into working with the Vatican and and many different layers. And we're still in those layers. But during that process, we found someone who was a very dedicated Catholic and who believed in the mission of wanting to preserve history and culture. So our investor is local to California and he has this, you know, pride in his religion and his belief set. And when I said to him, listen, we want to, you know, digitize the Vatican and the and churches, but then there's also this larger story about the world, he believed in that. And one of the funny comments I said to him was, so he comes from uh farming and manufacturing uh vehicles that are used for agriculture. So obviously here in California, we have a lot of almonds and he makes the units that you put agriculture almonds into. and he also owns a lot of land. So I said you are a you own land. You understand real property. I said I want to be a digital land baress. I want to own the digital land around the world. And that's what he understood. So there was this connection to we us wanting to scan churches and then also the connection to real land versus physical digital land. And he understand he understood that too. So, I think when you know talking to investors, you have to figure out who they are. What do they care about and then frame it with what you're doing if it makes sense and and don't lie or don't make up, you know, just frame it in a way that's it's understood to them and what they resonate with. So, you took a very non-standard, you know, capital raising approach that, you know, you put your mission out to the world, got connected to the right person and high net worth individual. So, this is, you know, one check from one person, right? Whereas, you know, your typical technology seedstage company is going out pitching a 100 VCs. Did you try that path at all or did this just kind of work out in your favor? Uh, no. So, I you know, unicorn, you know, I call my investor. He's he's our unicorn. But I will say, you know, we still had those same moments in the early days of when we showed him the business. We took him to a big conference so he could see that we are known in the industry and we got all the paperwork to him and then you know he got cold feet like many investors do and he tried to jellyfish away but here's what happened. He shook my hand you know and we did the deal and he shook my hand and I called him up and I said, "Jean, you shook my hand. Are you a man of your word?" Oo, nice. And I left it at that and the next day he sent the money and the paperwork arrived. So Gan is a man of his word. He has kept to it. He is a great investor and we're going to our next round. So we're raising 25 million now. We have a commitment from Microsoft that if we find a lead, they will come in alongside them. And for this approach, it's a little bit different. So going back to AI, we are a Microsoft startup. And you know, gosh, I'm going to reveal my secrets now to Microsoft. But on their platform, when you are in their startup platform, they have this drop-own list and they want you to tell them who you're working with or who you're interested in of all the venture capital firms or anyone that Microsoft deems like worthy, right? So, I go in and I try and copy this. You know, it's just like a drop down list and I try and copy this list, right? And I, you know, I can't copy it. So, then I just do screen screen grabs of this entire list. It's 260 firms, right? I'm like, "Oh this is going to take me forever to like find out who, you know, so I took all the images. I threw it into AI and it created the alphabetical list for me, right? Doesn't that a few times?" Yeah. And and then I applied deep research to it. I said, I want, you know, who's the one doing the deals? I want their email cross reference with LinkedIn. You know, are they likely to invest in us? Yes or no? Give it a value score. So I have this immensely datari set now of exactly who Microsoft would a be willing to work with. It's 260 firms and I have contact info and then it also weighted who is more likely to talk to us versus less likely. So that's my next version and that's what we're actively in right now. Oh well could have saved you probably a little bit of hassle and time with uh the Thunder platform. I mean you just input your data and then we give that all to you right. Oh really? Okay. you just input your uh your data on the the company. So founders come in, they give us their company data and then uh within about 10 15 seconds we output all the VCs that are relevant to them to okay with the probability that they'll take a meeting. So we take a probability score of 0 to 100 of how likely a founder or how a VC would take a meeting with with a founder. Oh interesting. Okay. And then yeah you download that list get all the contact information or you can reach out through the platform. So that's okay. That's some of the kind of like technology things that we built at our firm. Well, that's an easier solution to my problem. I you know I took the path harder traveled, but most entrepreneurs like to you know to make it challenging on themselves. DIY is the name of the game for most founders and we that's why we have a DIY solution that just you hey just save yourself a little bit of time. You know you're going to do that kind of process like I've been there but you know it's just a lot easier just put a couple data points get what you need and then you know get back to to building. But you know quick quick little shameless plug for for Thunder. So okay this is this is fascinating in terms of what you're able to do in terms of securing the investment from Gene. Now you're you know moving on to the next you know bigger round and you have this kind of play into the robotics and AI space now that you're kind of digitizing the real world. So, and you bring up really just I would say generally practical advice, you know, male or female in terms of, you know, you use the word feelings, but the end of the day, it's a gut feeling of whether or not you align with a VC or an investor of some kind or a potential partner uh of just being able to do you feel like this person gets you and is going to give you the the rope to go and run and you build the company you need to go build. Exactly. either will they give you the rope to run and in gan I found that for my first you know investor and and that's so important right because that's going to set up your standard of how you're going to be able to do what you need to do and as the founder you're you have this vision right and you need someone that can support that vision behind you. Yeah, it's mission critical and a lot of founders just don't they go to the traditional path. Who's going to throw me money? You know, who who's just going to put money in my bank account? And then, you know, they don't really think about the ramifications of the term sheet. They want the higher valuation. They don't look at the terms and then you they don't really trust their gut in terms of like maybe there's something off here. And then, you know, one bad month, two bad months, and then that whole relationship dynamic can just completely flip. And that's when you kind of see the the true colors of that, you know, partner or investor that makes things a little bit more difficult when maybe the trajectory of whatever was originally planned has to change a little bit. It kills your vibe. It kills your momentum and then your whole team feels that, right? Like if you're their leader and your vibe is killed, well, that's going to trickle down, you know? So, you need to make sure that just like feelings and the whole structure that you set up around you is best as you can make it. And yes, finding money is incredibly hard, right? So, if you get a term sheet and you're like, "Oh my gosh, yes. Yes, it's finally." But then deep down you're like, "Oo, you feel it. It's right. It's down over here. You can feel it." You're like, "Oh, oh, oh." Trust it. Trust it because it's just going to lead you to more problems, you know, in the future. Or your appendix burst. Either way, yeah, both are bad. And so, when you you and let's talk a little bit about your your background before Global Objects. So, you're a serial entrepreneur. not your first, you know, go around. Not my first rodeo. So, you know, tell us a little bit about kind of your time back in Chicago building your first company and then kind of what led you to coming to to LA to launch. It was interesting in college I never felt like I had a home. They didn't really have entrepreneurship programs back then or you know the true sense of like what it means to be an entrepreneur. And so I had knew what was called Tipper at the time. that came out of a company called Innerworkings which was like a white labelled solution for print. There was a gentleman who was creating what became known as Groupon and I saw what they were building with it was tipping point and then became Groupon. I saw what they were building and thought it was an interesting concept and let's call a spade a spade. I copied the idea and but added an element of video. So what we built was if you saw a deal, we would go out to that restaurant and film the ambiance. We would, you know, see the chef in the back making, you know, the food and, you know, serving the table. And we called that concept Shy Town deals. Again, I was local to Chicago. So at the time, that was before you could game the system in social media. So we had more followers, we had more engagement, we had more likes, we had more everything than Groupon had. and they had all this investment, right? So, it was interesting. Uh, yeah. So, very quickly we had an LOI from the Trude Company, but in the end we wound up selling to a company called Tipper based out of Seattle. So, very quickly I built and sold Shytown Deals at the time. And what I learned in that process was I had done very well with organic social media and the growth of social media. So from there I created a a white labeled solution for social media. We called it mixed media solutions. Grew that company and then we were it was I went through an aqua hire for with a company called Legacy Marketing Partners and then I came on to run a big fancy title at 27 you know I guess I sold my second company at that point and I went to work for all of their brands doing digital social campaigns. I worked a lot with Absolute and Jameson and kind of the whole Perno Ricard brand. We did Kmart and Sears and I got to work with a lot of amazing, you know, blue chip level brands. Hindsight's 2020 when you sell your second company and you've always been your boss and then you enter a larger organization through this aqua hire process and again you're 27, you've got some money now. You don't really want a boss. So I had my lawyer kind of negotiate out of that. They weren't seeing eye to eye with me. I wasn't seeing eye to eye with them. So, we parted ways and I just took some time off. But my parents finally agreed that I did have a job. So, that was good after selling. Yeah. It took it took me about to like 28 to, you know, have that conversation with my parents after multiple companies. Good job, mom and dad. So, it was good. And then I, you know, I just fast forward went I was dating someone. I went to a conference in Vegas. I met my now future husband and we have children but we and I have the ring but we just never had the wedding because the pandemic got in the way but we're finally getting married this year so yeah so I call him my husband but you know we've been together for seven years so again we met in Vegas and you know kind of love at first sight type thing and I moved to California so I had been in Chicago he lived here meeting in Vegas so then I was immersed in the world of entertainment and he comes from a background of being a visual effects supervisor and artist worked on big films like Titanic and Jurassic Park and kind of Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, he he sees the world and he was a child actor as well. So, he sees the world in pixels and you know, how do we make the best version of what we're looking at? and and I had also written a book about how the brain reacts to imagery during my time at my second kind of acquisition because I was you know representing social media and how does the brain react to imagery and specifically Pinterest was something and I actually hold my book. So this is my book Pinterest for business. But this was this was back in gosh 20 2011 or 2012 but the book actually allowed me to travel around the world and give keynote speeches and so this was a great so if you're an entrepreneur books still exist they still are paper and uh they help get you speaking gigs. So I will tell that say that about books. You're likely having trouble raising money or selling your company. Personally, I've had four exits and I've raised over $145 million. If you want a free coaching session with me, just like, subscribe, and leave a comment down below letting me know what you think of today's video for a chance to win a free coaching session with me. I'll select three winners every single month. You just have to like, subscribe, and leave a comment down below for a chance to win. Now, on to the video. You know, it's amazing to kind of hear the the origin story and just how you navigated your first couple exits and the typical story of a postexit of founder of ending up at the choir and being like, I don't like a boss and Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I w up in LA and then my, you know, future husband was in entertainment and that's how I wound up in entertainment. So, with anything I do in my life, I just want to be the best at it and and not like the best like egotistically, just like the best for me, right? So and I do a lot of that through community. You know I find strength in teams and group and you know I tend to do like to be the leader of the group but I want to hear from the group and be a part of the group as well. So dived into entertainment. I'm like you know I looked at the requirements so well you know the television academy Emmys well how do you become a member? What does that look like? You know and you have to meet so many different credits. So I was like all right as fast as I possibly could I was like get me these credits. you know, I want to work hard. I want to do the thing. And I was very quickly able to to do that. And, you know, people can say, "Oh, well, you had the connection with your husband." Yes, I did. So, I'm very fully aware of of my access. And I realize that, you know, that's not always easy for some people coming into Hollywood, but I was able to get in the academy and then worked really hard. And I will say my husband is not in the producers guild and I did that on my own and I got my executive producer titles without him. So, fair enough. Well, I I do want to talk about this a little bit more because I that was something you kind of hit on in the very beginning of just how you got to where you are like you didn't just walk in the door open like you fought your way to kind of get to be on the board and you know be a leader in the positions and like something this is something I did very aggressively early in my career in terms of joining these like more my case is more local communities for my business but like what would you tell the founders that maybe they're in a particular industry um and whether it's access to clients, partners, investors or whatever How did you go about, you know, kind of identifying these communities and knowing that this is where you need to invest your time where maybe both personally beneficial but also professionally? Yeah. So again, it's all events for me. Events is like been the key to my success, right? So, and you can do keyword searches for events, right? Or with AI, you could just train your robot to say, "Hey, make sure I go to these events." So, you know, there's things like Luma and Eventbrite and, you know, Particle. just make sure you have, you know, that on your phone and specific to your industry. So, say you're like, I don't know, you're in roofing, right? I don't know anything to do about roofing, but if there's organizations that are having events about roofing or all the things that are connected to roofing, like all of the the vendors or, you know, house building or, you know, real estate, you know, I would go to that specific event about roofing, but then I'd also branch out to like real estate or manufacturing of whatever it is to make shingles for the roof, you know. So find all those events and go to them and go meet people like say hi, smile, look people in the eye, smile, say hello. Most people will talk to you. They're not going to be I promise. So, but when you joined these groups, did you have your eye on the prize of, you know, being on the board, being a leader before kind of really immersing yourself or did it kind of natively, you know, come about? Yeah. No, I think I'm a very personable person and, you know, getting into events. I I like bringing people together to have a good time and to to educate each other. So I think it it just was a process of like specifically to the the visual effects society. They had asked me like, "Hey, we'd love for you to run for a board seat." Then I did. So then so then that process of running was like very important to me. So I was asked and then I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to do this." So then I became annoyingly about it on LinkedIn. So I created all these like images of just for vees and I like posted every day until the vote was happening and people remember that right like you have to see something seven times to like take action they say so I made sure I was posting like multiple times a day and LinkedIn for me has been a huge success throughout my career and LinkedIn's obviously been around for a while now but I think LinkedIn I've always been active about posting about what I'm up to but always in in relation to you know career and sector and not you you know, too much personal stuff, but how does it relate back to my career and posting on there has been super helpful and people remember that. So, if you see a trend with me, it's it's how do I resonate with people and then, you know, it's all about community and connecting and just being personable well and persistent uh and persistent. Yeah. And a maniacal focus, I think, is also key attributes that maybe you skipped over there when it comes to like All right, so I want to bring this up. I I'm a big believer in like repetition. I talked to so many founders that feel like all right well I did it three times and it's like you know like speak to that a little bit more like you know it's a common advertising you know trope of just like the seven points of contact is so important but so many founders are afraid they're like oh it's going to be annoying or like you know like I don't want to do cold email I have this with my team like we do cold email for a million things and it's like we can't just send one email like life happens people get busy so like what's your what's your kind of advice to like founders that need get over that that fear. Fear is a real thing, right? Fear of being embarrassed, fear of of seeing yourself as being annoying. And I just had to get over that, right? Like, so this example that I just gave about running for the visual effects board, the visual effects society board, I posted so many times, but I don't know how the LinkedIn algorithm works, right? So, how do I know if I'm It's not reaching every single person every single time that I'm posting, right? So, I just had to be proactive and get through the fear of, okay, I'm going to post this three times a day, seven days before the election happens, right? And yeah, it might seem annoying. It might seem cutesy or it might seem whatever it is. And but who gives a Why do we care what other people think if we're if the goal for me is to be successful and to get that thing? Well, then why am I worried about what other people are thinking when they're not doing it, right? So, they have that fear. So, you have to break through the fear. Don't And and and the algorithm, I promise you, is not going to send it to all those people every single day. Yeah. Exactly. You're not that annoying. I promise. Well, you know, even when you think about Facebook ads, like the fre they show kind of like the frequency rate and it's like 1.5 too. It's just like spending thousands of dollars targeting a very specific audience and they see it like one or two times and you know so I think it's always important to remind founders to you know keep being persistent like even with emails like when I reach out to investors to on our clients behalf or when you know we're setting up meetings with them it's usually like the third email that gets the highest response rate like we have like our close contacts like that you know always reliable very quick to you know communicate first email is always fine but like the ones we haven't seen in like six months, a year, and you kind of have to like pop back up. I'm like, "Hey, this is actually important. Can you take, you know, just take take another look?" And they're like, "Hey, sorry, got busy. My bad." Yeah. The same like if you don't follow up with me. I'm like, "Wasn't that important?" Well, you know, we we talked about earlier in the chat that I've created this, you know, this agent of me, right? So now if I'm not like feeling the best about myself that day, I ask my robot, you know, like, hey, I need to follow up with this person, here's the chain, input it, like what's a what's a funny quick comment I can send to them, you know, and and and my bot will give me something now to do. So, it's funny that like I have this twin of myself, right, in in the digital space. So, so when I'm not feeling my best that day, it can still be the best of me to put out. So, very very well said. So going back to the the investor side of things and raising money for what could be perceived as more like in the media industry obviously it's a technology company loud and clear but you know selling of the media industry like I've worked with countless companies that are in or adjacent to that sector and it's usually often a grind like there's not a lot of I would say traditional VC interest in that category. Have you seen that kind of sentiment like what's your take on that? Yeah. So I think that's where we decided to implement other areas of our business. So we're actually and never did we ever think we were going to get into hardware, but we are actually developing our own scanning unit. So we are building out a unit that has blue laser phototrics and photoggramometry in a sphere. So imagine what we in what we see for the web 3.0 know and what's happening and everything needing to be 3D is imagine every FedEx Kinko's in the world will have one of our units where you can input you know your coasters your object into our unit we can scan it for you and then we have that data and we can output you know a 3D asset for you to put wherever it is you know in whatever the future of you know spatial content is what we really see coming down the pipe so you know one of the things that we have also talked about is like how do we get all of our units into like every wei work in in the world, right? Where you know, everyone needs their, you know, the f you know, we we've taken pictures of everything. You know, I'm trying to like grab stuff. You know, pictures of everything. Oh, here's sunglasses. Here we got some sunglasses on my desk. You know, how do we take these and make the 3D file of whatever it is that you have to put into, you know, the three 3.0 web? And that's something that we didn't necessarily think about when we created the company, but it's something that we can create a pipeline for and revenue chain to appease investors. And was that do you feel like you were kind of put in the position to innovate in that area because of investor feedback? Yes, I think there's definitely been investor feedback of, you know, we were essentially going to create a platform, you know, similar to like a Turbos Squid or what have you with a subscription model, but then we were like, well, how do we get the, you know, if we're the only ones scanning and putting into that library, that's going to take us forever, right? So, how do we multiply that? And we're like, oh, well, if we, you know, we've developed this proprietary scanner that we have sitting in front of us. Well, light bulb went off, right? like, well, why don't we just productize this thing that we've built so other people can use it and train on it? And that's been seemingly successful for us because we now have interests from like advertising agencies who are like, "Oh, well, we do all these photooots, right?" Well, the future of of that is generative AI. But what we found with generative AI is that the best input is 3D data. You know, obviously they're trying to train on 2D data, but if you've got the 3D data set, well, that's even better to produce your generative things. And the future of generative AI is I believe 3D. Well, H&M just announced their generative AI model campaign for the models on their website using generative AI as opposed to actual models which you know is going to be I would say one of the more disruptive use cases we've seen in like a large scale cor you know commercial aspect uh which is pretty exciting. for that exact you know use case. As a member of the academy I have to be honest in saying that I try to stay away from humans because I understand the sensitivities around you know what SAG is trying to fight against with likeness. I am proud to say that SAG did approve. We worked on a film where we handcanned actors and maintained their likely you know their likeness and it worked out well. So you know working within those parameters but I am not focusing on digital humans because that is a that is a lot. So but but yes political answer well done. Uh well uh Jess it's been really fun having you on the show. Loved your energy as we part here. What would be your advice to other female entrepreneurs looking to to build the next big tech company and attract uh outside investment? I would say to other entrepreneurs looking to raise money that there is more help out there than you would even imagine. You just have to be willing to ask for it. So if you wake up in the morning and you have dread and fear, you know, swallow it. Swallow it. Swallow it and and get out there and pump yourself up like, you know, look yourself in the mirror. Look deep into your eyes and say, "You can do this. You've got this." You know, manifest that And community. Go to the events. Be there. Show up and ask for what you want, you know? And and you're not annoying. I promise you're not annoying. I love that. Uh yeah, and it's really true. It's like, you know, if you're actually coming out and you're leading with value, you're trying to add value to the world and you ask for what you want, most people are in line to, you know, work and support that effort. And you know specifically you know from my experience having been built my businesses in the US for so many years and now coming to the UK where it's like that what you just described is organic in US culture in capital raising entrepreneurship or here in the UK it's like it's starting but like historically it's never been that way like you go out and ask for help it's like like what do you mean like go back get back in line to where you were you know kind of thing as opposed to you know like here take my hand let me lift you up. uh which was more of that my experience in the US where you put your hand out and people want to lift you up and uh you know here in Europe and UK it's it's not that it doesn't exist it's just not as common as you would say uh in the US it's just an interesting uh experience that I've noticed since uh being here for about a year. No. Amazing. Yeah. I think I would also say like knowing your place like I don't Someone was saying to me the other day about what type of CEO are you? Are you the 0 to 50? You know, the 50 to 100. We're talking about people and size. And I really thought about it and I was like, you know, I don't know that I always want to be the CEO of this company because I want to be the best for that time and place of where we are in the company. And if ever there is a time I'm not going to let my ego or hubris get invol like involved like if it's if it's time for me to be the founder or to just be the evangelist of the company. I understand that and I'm willing to accept that. And and I don't know if that's more of a female thing where we can understand our place in time of where the company is at. Like I am not the best. I'm not the smartest. I am not this or that. I know what I am and I know what I'm not. And am I the best evangelist for the company at the time? Yes. Did I raise the money? Yes. Did I get Gene to shake my hand and call him out on it? Yes. I did all of those things. But do I want this to be a billion dollar company? Yes. I actually also believe in my dreams. I believe in my gut. Uh that's actually what my sign says. I see it in my dreams. And actually on my wall there, uh, as a kid, to get my brothers and sisters to do chores, I created what are called jest bucks. And I would hand out money to them to do my chores for me. And then all of the things that I no longer wanted in, you know, as a kid growing up, I set up a store in my closet and they would go buy my old things with just books. So here at Global Objects, we've created a system to earn equity called Go Bucks. And those are some go bucks on the wall and I wrote on there 1.7 billion and I had everyone sign it. So, you know, I'm trying to manifest that we will be a$ 1.7 billion company. And if I'm not the right leader to lead us to that 1.7, I will still be on the team, but as far as a CEO goes, I'm always willing and open to listen to feedback and where we need to be in the company at that point. I think entrepreneurs have a lot to learn from you. uh appreciate your self-awareness and your maniacal focus on delivering on your dreams and I find it absolutely fascinating. You've been a wonderful guest. What would be the best way for people to to learn more about you or potentially, you know, try to try to reach out to you? Yeah, so I'm crazy about LinkedIn. So, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. Message me if you're in Los Angeles. I host a ton of events. So, I have a community called Tech Me Out. Like, check me out, but check me out. So feel free to join my newsletter. I definitely, you know, talk about what I'm doing in entertainment and tech. And we host production summit in Los Angeles every year. If you have any interest in AI or what's going on in entertainment, feel free to reach out and attend that. We're going to be doing that in October of this year. But yeah, LinkedIn, catch me on LinkedIn. Beautiful. We'll make sure to leave a a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes down below. Jess, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Thank you for watching today's episode. As a reminder, I'm your host, Jason Kirby. I have built and sold multiple companies with over 135 million in transactions as either a founder, operator, investor across multiple industries. I'm currently the managing director and founder of Thunder.bc, where we help companies and founders at all stages navigate what capital to raise and who to raise it from and help improve company's odds of raising the capital. If you need help, reach out to us at help.under.c. If you like today's show, please share with your friends. Give us a like or comment down below. And as a reminder, this show is published weekly. And to get notified of new episodes and our newsletter, be sure to go to our website at join.thunder.bc. And if you sign up today, I'll send you a few freebies on how to negotiate a term sheet, how to get a free list of relevant VCs, and much more. That's it. No more shameless plugs. Thank you, and see you next week.