Bespoken is a curated gift-giving platform service that enables the gift-giver to easily and confidently choose a thoughtful, personalized gift for someone they care about. Bespoken allows the gift recipient to pick from 3 meaningful gift options specifically chosen for them by the gift-giver to ensure the recipient is getting something they really want and value.Instead of being forced to select a gift they’re not sure the recipient will actually value or justdefaulting to giving a generic gift card, Bespoken empowers the gift-giver to give a thoughtful gift with confidence. The gift-giver uses the website to select 3 personalized gift options for the recipient in a certain price range and designs a personalized card. The recipient receives the card on her special day and finds a QR code with a link to the gift options. When she chooses the gift she is most excited about, Bespoken ships the chosen gift and she is prompted to send a thank-you email to the gift-giver.

Many of us have experienced the passing of a loved one. Only hours into grieving, questions arise – where will the funeral be? Are there plans for a burial? How much will this cost? We make countless tough, and expensive, decisions about the imagined wishes of our loved ones and act quickly without time to reflect. Emotionally exhausted, we are in no state to negotiate costs or search for the best deal. What if you could remove this pain for your loved ones before your time comes?

Persephone is redefining the funeral industry, a $16bn market infamous for its lack of transparency and rapidly rising costs. We help families have challenging conservations about death, understand what really matters to them and make sure every detail is executed seamlessly. Upon establishing a will or signing up for life insurance, a customer will be presented with the option to create a plan and set aside funds for a highly personalized end of life celebration.

Through our website, customers can craft their experiences through a centralized digital menu or custom-plan their funeral with our team of Celebration Planners, who will meet with the customer and their family to learn about their fondest memories, and the legacy that they want to leave behind. Our Budget Calculator and Price Comparison Tool lay out choices of funeral arrangements and allow customers to lock in prices up front, enabling them to craft an experience of their choice and within their budget. When the time comes, Persephone sets the plan into motion and ensures each step is completed as planned together with our service partners.

Persephone has a profitable, self-sustaining business model that shares the value created with all stakeholders to our cause. Funding is completed ahead of time with customers pre-paying for our services at the time of planning. A nominal commission built-in to the final budget of the package constitutes our primary source of revenue. An additional source of revenue comes from investment returns on the pre-payed amount. Recognizing that funeral homes and local service providers in our target geographies are gatekeepers to the consistency in quality and continued growth of our service, we shares about 50% of our returns with our service partners. 25% of the returns are reinvested for growth and 25% of returns are contributed to subsidizing funerals for low-income families.

Persephone’s employees are hired based on demonstrated empathy and action-orientation. Our processes such as centralized marketing, procurement management and process transparency across touchpoints are optimized to account for customer variability so that employees are given the licence to operate at the top of their capabilities. This is further enabled by end-to-end ownership of the process, bounded by centralized training. We recognize that our employees are the key to our sustained success.

With each pillar of our business reinforcing the other, Persephone is dedicated to giving a customer’s family the gift of unburdened time together and giving the customer the peace of mind that they have left behind as little pain or complexity as possible.

Settler is a tech-driven recommendation and booking platform for “settlers” who are moving to a new city. A huge pain point after moving involves finding service providers for life needs (e.g., dentists, housecleaning, salons) tailored to one’s own preferences. Settler’s platform utilizes a machine algorithm-driven questionnaire to provide 2 options for each service category the settler selects, followed by booking integration that allows customers to see real-time availability. Competitors in the space offer mostly non-personalized reviews & recommendations (e.g., Yelp, Google), or recommendations in a limited number of categories (e.g., Zocdoc, Homeadvisor). For end users, Settler offers both breadth and personalization as a one-stop-shop. For service providers, we are a high-quality, premium lead generation channel.

The service model will be funded through two revenue streams:

1. Service providers will pay a one-time setup fee to cover integration with booking software, billing setup, onboarding, and early buy-in. To align incentives, the setup fee will be refunded after 12 months on the Settler platform.
2. Service providers will pay a flat fee per booking. This will ensure that more highly-priced service providers are not favored. Booking fees will be higher than market rates, as we are sourcing customers at a very valuable point in their lifecycle. Since we charge fees from a basket of providers for a given settler, we believe our revenue model is just as strong as a booking platform which operates in only one vertical (ie: OpenTable)–despite the transactional nature of our business.

Settler will be free of charge for end users.

The CMS for users is embedded throughout the customer journey. To ensure customer compatibility, users will first complete a tutorial which outlines the platform’s functionality, allowing for self-screening (decentralized selection). The upfront questionnaire will allow the algorithm to accommodate subjective preference variability in a low-cost manner. Unlike competitors, providing only two optimized recommendations per category will ensure only the best-suited services are offered (uncompromised reduction). Providing rationale for each recommendation will increase trust and reduce customer service inquiries. Finally, post-service feedback will inform the algorithm and enable quality improvement with scale.

Our second group of customers, service providers, benefit from high-quality leads that are more likely to convert than on other lead-gen platforms because Settler recommendations are personalized to each user. Providers must meet our centralized Design (online booking system, robust data privacy practices), Location (in our existing markets), and Customer (high quality, broad range of price points and services provided) selection criteria. To improve our curation algorithm, we require service providers to share data on rebooking rates, which we will cross-validate with customer feedback. A service provider dashboard provides operational transparency, increasing retention and satisfaction.

We have four functions: service provider advocates, customer advocates, product, and engineering. Compared to competitors, service provider advocates are our service employees who own end-to-end relationships with providers from a specific vertical (e.g., dentists), from vetting/sales to ongoing performance management. Performance will be measured based on metrics of sales, provider churn, and customer re-book rates.

A key barrier in building more diverse and inclusive corporations is the lack of advancement opportunities for minorities. Today, women represent 47% of entry-level employees but only 38% of managers. Women of color represent 18% and 12%, respectively.i We believe this problem can be solved with more transparency, objectivity, and support for diverse talent in the advancement process.

SuccessIn is a SaaS career management tool that empowers employees with transparent data and enables them to proactively manage career progression through transparency, mentorship, and training. This platform is differentiated through the aggregation and tracking of diversity statistics and auto-generated recommendations to improve career pipelines. The core value proposition includes:

1. Performance Tracker: Providing users with assessments of their performance relative to organization- wide benchmarks and leadership with organizational performance on diversity and career progression targets
2. Mentorship: Matching junior employees with tenured leaders within their organization for mentorship and providing access to external affinity groups to supplement internal support
3. Skill Development Training: Offering training modules based on skills gaps highlighted in performance reviews and recommending projects to support development

SuccessIn is available through two channels: directly to companies or via our consulting partners. In both cases, the pricing will begin at a base contract of $120,000/year for 1,000 accounts with additional accounts available in increments of 500 for $50,000/year. In the case of contracts via consulting firms, SuccessIn will split the revenues with our consulting partner, with 30% allocated towards our partner and the balance towards SucccessIn. This 30% allocation seeks to compensate our partners for participating in our sales process and to account for their teams’ involvement in customer onboarding and training. Compared to peers, our pricing will be on the premium end of standard HRM tools.

Our employee management system includes:

1. Employee Selection: A diverse team with appreciation for diversity and inclusion is required to ensure the authenticity of our service. Our interview process will determine candidates’ history of commitment to DE&I.
2. Employee Training: All employees will be trained on topics including HR management and DE&I reporting practices.
3. Job Design: Sales and customer success will be assigned customer accounts to promote ownership. Technical employees will work closely with sales and customer success and join meetings with customers.

We will implement a self-managed team model. Our key customers include:

1. End user employees: Our product will be designed for end users, but we anticipate capability and effort variability, which will be reduced by 24/7 support, training and frequent push notifications.
2. HR teams: We will train them through summits to ensure familiarity with the tool. We anticipate request and subjective preference variability, which will be accommodated by customization and reduced by clearly stating the role the tool should play in an organization, respectively.
3. Senior leadership: They will be trained by their HR counterparts on how to interpret organizational performance. We expect request and effort variability, both of which will be reduced through recommendations of workplace policy changes.

Our core service offering provides a B2B team bonding exercise through virtual cooking classes to connect employees across geographic areas. While many companies have tried to provide online cooking classes, most classes are unenjoyable due to poor instruction and video quality and lack of coordination. Our service offering aims to stand out from the others by targeting corporate clients with a streamlined, fun, and effective team bonding exercise.

Value sources include:

• Tailored website and video service platform to form a strong, cohesive brand
• Prepackaged boxes delivered to each participant prior to the event
• Unique experiences:
• Event Hosts facilitate team bonding during and after the instructive portion
• Optional rotating celebrities join for high-tier events
• Event Hosts emphasize their performance over their cooking lesson – the value proposition is entertainment and
  team bonding, not skill building
  Tradeoffs in ensuring we deliver these services include:
• Appropriate customer selection—we will not be able to serve teams who don’t invest time to meet with our team so we can best serve their specific needs
• Limitations to how much variability we can accommodate in terms of types of meals, customizations to boxes, etc.
• Experience quality and effectiveness will come at the expense of the price of the service

Our funding mechanism is driven by two arms: a subscription base and a single-use base. The subscription provides clients with options to tailor their regular use of our service. The single-use option enables smaller and one-time clients to utilize our service at a premium. Customers are incentivized to convert their single-use option to a subscription following their event. The pricing scheme reflects customers’ increased productivity and sense of belonging resulting from our services.

Our customer management system requires a client to choose their “Event Champion,” the individual who partners with our assigned Account Manager, to design and coordinate the experience. We communicate with each participant via email and our website portal to ensure they have materials in place and the appropriate tech available. Our Event Host encourages participation throughout the event. Following the event, we utilize our portal to collect feedback. While we encourage personalization of each event, variability accommodations are limited to the low-cost planning stages (e.g. predetermined menus) and strongly reduced as the team nears event production (e.g. cancellation fees).

Within our employee management system, our primary objective is to ensure our employees are empowered to create the best customer experience. Employee selection for the customer-facing roles of Event Host and Account Manager focuses on those with prior experience in the entertainment industry and engaging personalities. On-the-job training includes three trial events, ongoing feedback, and regular Tryst knowledge sharing among the team. Employees earn responsibility to manage higher profile events over time, and Event Hosts may leverage their time with Tryst to build their own influencer brands. Spot bonuses are awarded to hosts who receive great customer feedback. End of year performance bonuses are to be provided to all employees based on customer and co-worker NPS.