day two pitch three pelaton turns cycling into a $ 1.5 billion business straa did the same thing for running and one of the most successful startups to appear on our show is fight Camp they made a huge business out of a tech enabled punching bag on today's show the pelaton for horses well for equestrians actually but one of these Sports is not like the other to get started with horseback riding you have to buy a horse get a coach and a stable but running on the other hand is free just about anyone can go outside and run if they want to so the equestrian Market it's way smaller but it's full of passionate Riders is passionate enough to make horseback riding the next billion dooll business will the VCS see their next shiny unicorn or will they just see a horse I'm Josh mucho welcome to the pitch where real entrepreneurs pitch real investors for real money hey everyone I'm Beck bamger managing partner of bad ideas group hi am Al Basher the managing partner at interlock Capital hi I'm Jillian Manis managing partner of structure Capital I'm hoe Diamond managing partner of pure [Music] Ventures the pitch for ride IQ is coming up after this gidy up hello hello great to meet you I'm KY nice to meet you hi Al Jess nice to meet Jess hi he must be Jillian Jillian hi I'm keny and I'm Jessa Lux we're sisters co-founders recent Tech Stars grads and former upper level equestrians prior to ride IQ I was a senior investment associate at Blackstone and my background is in marketing and community building my experience as a rider includes winning a gold medal at the Junior Olympics I was 13 when I moved from Minnesota to Florida alone so I could learn from an Olympic coach I made that sacrifice but I was still riding without a coach most of the time 8 million equestrians ride a coach for four out of five weekly rides those solo rides are astoundingly unproductive and that's why we built ride IQ ride IQ is a mobile app with on demand listen while you train audio lessons taught by the world's best coaches open the app choose a lesson press play and you have an Olympic coach in your ear guiding you for every step we launched in August of 2021 and have organically grown to over 1,500 panging members and $430,000 in AR are 8 million equestrians paying $30 a month for ride IQ equates to a $3 billion Tam and that's just with our launch product The Tam is north of $20 billion when we expand across three other verticals ride IQ is bringing worldclass coaching to every athlete and we will drive a new era of athletic performance we're kicking off a fundraise of $1.5 million and are looking for partners who share this Vision okay interes so this is only audio correct correct so this really gives them the guidance they need to make progress between inperson lessons but it doesn't replace having your inperson lessons so can we talk more about the market size I think you said like eight million equestrians out there does that include like that's people that aren't really competitive they don't care about the training they just like riding like what does that number actually include that includes Riders who ride consistently so those are your Riders who are riding four to five times per week that said it's not necessarily only your competitive Riders your your competition Riders are definitely a big portion of that whole demographic but there's a lot of riders who really just do it because they're passionate about it and they have the horse in their backyard or they just enjoy doing it but they still want to develop with their horse yeah but that's 8 million in the US 8 million globally okay it's Global okay and so of those have you done the research to figure out like how many of them actually want training to go along with it yeah I mean based off of the customers we talk to the users in the market I mean everybody is looking to improve we have a user who she's an 89-year-old woman who she loves to go trail trail riding with her friend but she's a paying user of ride IQ because when she's not trail riding with her friend she wants to develop with her horse and she wants to learn something our users they've coined themselves horse nerds and there's always an opportunity to educate yourself and for $30 a month I mean it's a really small subset of what they're already paying how long have you had your customers and do you have anything on retention and yeah we launched in August of 2021 um our one month retention is 84% our 3month retention is 67% and our 12-month retention is 42% and I'll note that normal consumer apps that are subscription based um the 12- Monon retention is 21% is the median so we are double that I like that you've experienced the problem firstand and you really deeply understand it seems like the customer Journey because you've been on it yourself but just educate us a little bit on like is there a general playbook for success or like General best practices for each of these disciplines so the way that we think about our coaches is we have very strict criteria that we recruit coaches under and our number one priority is that they have a history and a reputation of proper horsemanship and we want to make sure that the information that they're putting out there is accurate and it puts the horse first so it's very compassionate approach and then two is do they have a proven record of producing Riders and then as thems as a rider a lot of our coaches are celebrities in their own right because they have that proven record they have decades under their belt of being successful in these Sports I mean there's a reason that the oldest Olympians every summer olympics are the equestrians because it really takes decades in order to become an expert and that's why these having access to the best coaches is just like absolutely so valuable where's the research or where's the conviction around audio learning yeah and I'll give you an example I do CRA mcau and I do group classes which are fine that's great that's fun it's super social but then I do one-on-one and my instructor yesterday was just saying oh you're a visual learner I show you exactly this you do it exact and it's also someone who's yelling at you one onone you can't hide so it's very impactful so where do you think on the audio learning and how does that sit into this to someone who might say no I need a coach who's right next to me or with me on the horse I don't even know how the coaching happens so where does that s the real value of audio for horseback Riders is during the activity so it meets you where you are when you need it most which is when you're in the saddle and the way that we think about the effectiveness of audio is we hear from our members they are never more focused than when they're listening to these lessons you channel in you're not thinking about that meeting that you had 30 minutes ago you're not thinking about what you have to do after your ride you are focused and they're saying they that they get their best rides out of their horses when they have audio lessons in their ear um and then the phase two of ride IQ is having a video support for every audio lesson so before you get on and take this audio lesson watch this two-minute video you can see the coach doing it it can make visual Learners feel safe because that's what we want it's obviously it's GNA be a higher cost to roll that out but um we're at that stage of the business what did it cost you to get the recordings done getting them put into the app like what did that cost yeah so it's a $100 on average per lesson that's it wait that sounds exceptionally cheap it it is exceptionally cheap and that is the natural response to that we pay the coaches $0000 per lesson that they record it could be a 9 minute lesson or a 45 minute lesson it doesn't matter to us our coaches record their lessons while they're on their own horse and we tested every way that a coach could approach these audio lessons they could record from the ground watching somebody they could record with a lesson plan in front of them or they could record on the horse and we tested that with our test Riders ahead of time every person said they prefer it on the horse and they enjoy the experience they feel like the coach is in their head while and they tell us things all the time like when that when the coach's horse blew air out of its nose and relaxed my horse did that in the same moment and those are such cool experiences especially given that this is a solo sport so it can be lonely and when you have someone there with you and you you're starting to feel like friends with these celebrities it's a cool experience but that's why we're able to pay $100 because it just makes it so that they can make $100 more than they otherwise would they record one lesson that's $100 not how many times a lesson has been played back correct we're Scrappy you guys yeah I'm struggling with like price as an indicator of quality and and to get the best coaches are these the best coaches that are just asking for $100 we have one Olympic gold medalist several Olympic medalists six Olympians all of them have competed to the top of the sports we're not making any sacrifice whatsoever in terms of quality like what you're saying is the nature of the equestrian Market unfortunately people who are top equestrian athletes they're still kind of living paycheck to paycheck like it it doesn't have a financial model that can support these people the way they should really interesting with that because there are amazing coaches in every sport that aren't quote unquote famous but they're professional at the highest level and they're only getting paid for the coaching they're doing one-on-one and so there's something really interesting with that Gap in the market on the coaching Market that you can come in and incentivize them to work with you at a scale that they've never experienced and for the world to be able to utilize their expertise how long is the focus on horses cuz I'm thinking in the billion dollar of like oh this is new audio learning this is the next master class in audio so for example I fly helicopters I'm like oh I could be listening to a flight thing like level to this so I'm seeing it in multiple applications but I wonder I'm asking are you just horses I don't think I think that would be selling the business short it's selling the vision short there there's so much opportunity with an equestrian if we capture 5% of the equestrian Market that's $100 million in Revenue but we see there's so much value to expand this to other sports every time we talk to someone they're like wow I'm a golfer when can you do golfing or I'm a skier when can you do skiing and um and so we do see the value there and we just want to make sure that we're doing it in a very methodical way where we don't uh risk under selling our equestri Endeavors what what level of scale engagement Revenue do you feel like you need to get to before you would want to expand for me it's really a matter of having expanded to all the disciplines that we want to address within equestrian we're already in the process of expanding to two more disciplines um in the next couple months and then we are getting more requests for Western disciplines every day so how many disciplines are there total there's like there's like 15 really there's English oh English and Western disciplines are like kind of two different sides of a coin um and right now we are primarily focused on English disciplines and so right we're expanding within English and then we are going to expand within Western and I think once we get really well established in like kind of over the next year once we feel like we're on that path that's when we start to do the customer Discovery in these other markets to understand where do we go next so curious on the raay one and a half million uh how far long are you have you set terms we're really just starting the conversations with this pitch so um yeah it's a good launching Point hopefully um and then we're targeting 10 million posts um ideally on a safe but we're flexible on that front one and a half million at what point does it achieve what goals yeah so ideally in the next 12 months we'd like to hit 2 million in ARR um and then in the next three years we want to hit over 5 million and where are you in AR now sorry 430 okay I never thought I would say this but I might be interested in investing in an equestrian company um yeah uh so yeah I'm relatively comfortable at 50k that'd be great we'd love to have you on board there you go I love the scrappiness of you two you guys clearly know the equestrian Market really well like in a deep deep level and the customer problem and everything that you're solving for that I get concerned about expanding outside of that is it just going to be a natural easy Evolution into these other markets and speaking the lingo and knowing the customers with these other sports and then just the revenue projections you know a three-year 5 million ARR doesn't make me super excited either I would really want to see you get to two to three million in ARR within the equestrian sector and then one expansion out of the equestrian sector into another Sports and then I'm I'm going to be in but for right now I'm out we'll keep your number I I agree on that I have the same concerns to get to Ho's Point like where are those other ones that are as sticky and small as for fly fishing golfing I mean where but let's hear from them I want to hear like where do you see that at least so some of the verticals that we're excited about would be things like boxing or gymnastics I also don't want to rule out activities like photography or physical therapy there's a lot of opportunity for audio lessons we don't have a lack of conviction in these other verticals but we certainly have less testing that's been done we feel a lot of conviction and product Market fit in our current equestrian Market if I mean I would encourage you guys to look up reviews on social media or in the abore of ride IQ the word game changer is used over and over they're glowing reviews seven of our members have ride IQ slogan tattooed on their body wait how many seven holy cow it's yeah it's not no it's it's it's F passionate user base to use an analogy like with the kind of like the horse blinders I think you're too horse Focus because and that's why I'm a pass for now I would want to hear listen audio learning is about to take off now we have found this first Market which we know deeply about so we're GNA own that market and then here are the next five ones so I can paint you the picture of how this is a multi-billion dollar company that's what I would want to see so I disagree with you and Howie let's do this let's do it because you're missing you're missing the point here point is a very very active engaged entry point you know this Market cold I don't want you to think about any other market right now cuz if if you do this well you can take every strategy that you're going to learn from this and bring it to another fanatical market so are you in yes I am in oh okay there we go I want you to crush this I'm in for 50k are are you good on those terms I'm a little uncomfortable with 10 Post Yeah I wasn't totally comfortable with it cuz that's that you're you're basically 10x over Revenue right now and that's high what what valuation do you feel like is appropriate 6 million I'll just tell you it's six million yeah Jullian we'd love to have you on the team so well if if it works for you guys do we like go into diligence have these conversations and then take it from there does that work that's how it work there's a contingency on Jillian's investment though you have to teach how to ride a horse easy that's Gallop here we love that well thank you guys so much for your time this was a blast thank you you guys thank you you guys are morons they'll take our money in a year and a half from now maybe not they will trust well maybe I won't let them oh okay you're going to block them for taking our money yeah all right I'll block you in the next deal okay fine fine um one of one of the things that I was super excited about with these two is um early 2000s I was big into four-wheeling I started a website called jeepaholic it was this ridiculous Community we had like millions of page views every month I didn't know what the heck I was doing with the business and I was a solo founder I made all the mistakes um but I had this ridiculously passionate group of people and they're on the inside they have this thing I just at this stage it's very much about the team and this investment is not a huge investment it's an early stage investment and get your foot in the door and like it's this team just felt right in a lot of ways and the position that they're in so a lot of that stuff got me really fired up about what they're doing so I love a good fanatical Market years ago there was a book it was knitting with dog hair wait what this is important who does that it's a thing and it was and they came and they pitched this to me and I thought this is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard but they showed me the numbers on dog owners and they showed me the numbers on knits MH and then they said this is combined everyone wants to have a little piece of Fifi that they can wear and it was crazy well I passed okay this has taken off and it just showed me that if you have a fanatical Market you could sell them anything it's like twitch is a great example of that too when people if someone pitch me on a Voyer platform for people watching other people play video games and be like what no that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard so uh what do you think you'll get the terms at six you think you'll get it down to six I'm not going to do it if it's not six their margins are great their growth is not yeah so like six between six and seven makes sense I think what's unique about this is it really is horeled growth which I think is the way hor growth wow to tackle this talking a lot of hor I like that they're combined intellectual horsepower too oh God all right we're done know what done feel like this conversation's a little bit over okay break time hi Kinsey and Jessa trotted out of the studio with a 100,000 in commitments from Al and Jillian who were ready to take this mustang for a ride but there's a loose end left untied the founders think their company is worth $10 million the investors think it's worth six that's a bit of a gap Kinsey and Jessa will try to close it but terms end up being the least of their problems he the rest of the story on episode 121 of the pitch podcast Link in the description remember to like comment and subscribe we'll see you next week on the pitch show [Music] a