Speaker 2
Yeah, well, I think it's really interesting that you were able to see across these different corporate partners. It's funny, sometimes we'll use the word supply chain. It's kind of a cover all that a lot of people define however they want, but there's a supply chain underneath every single corporation out there. That's very interesting. You were able to see some signals even from groups that aren't, call it your 3PLs or your logistics oriented groups. So I'm sure you guys had a front row seat to see where things were headed and maybe aligned to all those corporate partners. You touched on a little bit earlier, but another area I'd like to dig in behind all of your accelerator programs is a really large corporate network, really amazing the network you guys have built that's curated and aligned to each of the various sectors and focuses you have. When it comes to really building out this, let's call it a win-win-win model between plug and play the corporates and the startups. Tell us a little bit more about how you make sure you frame in that there is a value proposition for each of those different constituents when you are making these connections between groups.
Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely. So I think the value for plug and play is inherent, but I can focus on the others. We're plug and play, obviously we're getting a ton of value as an investor and just that front row seat to seeing what's happening on both sides. I think that's so important and it's also great for us to get kind of trust within the market in goodwill, whereas when we're able to help a great entrepreneur connect to a leading company, then whether it's we invest in this company or their next company, they're going to remember the support plug and play provided and we'll be able to hopefully get into their upcoming investment round and really build that kind of strong relationship with both sides. I think where we provide value, I'll start with corporate partners, is that on the corporate partner side that these are very large incumbents generally where markets, as you know, are changing, they're being disrupted. The need for technology and automation, for example, is becoming increasingly important and the lifespan of a corporation is also decreasing as well, where these new kind of startups are coming out and they are having a bigger impact and they're also able to have an ROI, for example, or a cost savings, especially in supply chain, where you're able to integrate, for example, a robot within one of your DCs or you're able to have some automation platform for making deliveries or providing visibility. All those things are becoming increasingly important and the benefit of a startup is that they are more agile, they can adapt more quickly and oftentimes can provide a solution that can scale most effectively across the market. So it's becoming a necessity for all the corporate partners or large corporations essentially to know what's happening in the startup market. There's a million examples you can think of, like whether it's the taxi company's not realizing what's happening and then Uber coming in and disrupting the market. There's definitely a lot of opportunities for disruption in supply chain, but also areas where there can be incremental value as well. So our goal is just to provide exposure to the startups plug and play, I think, and we've had a lot of, I've seen a lot of our corporate partners also on your podcast, for example, like Ryder and Prologist, for example, and they're able to essentially come in and test a lot of the startups and plug and play is a really good source for deal flow, but also just connecting them to startups worldwide. And we have a lot of examples of that. And then on the startup side, like I'll just take an example of a plug and play portfolio company that essentially we were able to bring from Croatia, which was kind of a random company called Gideon Brothers that we actually invested in quite early in the sea brown. We brought them into Arkansas, which the guys never even got to experience the United States before. So they thought, Bensonville, Arkansas was kind of, this is America. And it's definitely, there's a lot of different parts of America. Ben and Bill Arkansas is a great place. We're very proud to be there. And they were able to get a ton of traction in Bentonville. So they actually were able to get an investment led by Koch Industries, which was connected through Georgia Pacific, which is an active plug and play partner, which led their $31 million or so round. And then they also got large connections to a lot of the large companies like Walmart or JB Hunt and Tyson. So that's just an example of a startup that can get both an investment, but also major opportunities as to work with the customers that we have in our network. So I think that that's an example of, and I have countless examples of a startup who's kind of improved their pitch or found product market fit just by discussing with the large corporates that we have. So across all stages, I think the value for the startups, I think is a no-brainer, whereas we're really not charging them anything. We're just not taking equity like other accelerator programs I know do and really just trying to help all the startups. And we do end up investing in a handful of the startups and into the batches, but that's something also unique is that we're also just supporting a lot of startups and we also don't have equity in as well.