Lafayette Julius
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Lafayette Julius with Valor Ventures and we’re excited to welcome you guys to another episode of the Atlanta Podcast on introducing Startup Runway finalists. Today, we’re very excited to have Safir with UnDelay joining us today and also my co-host, Austin Meacham with Valor Ventures. Safir, glad to have you today. Definitely, congratulations on being a finalist in the 10th cohort of Startup Runway. Definitely a great achievement to have, you’ve won out of a lot of applicants that applied and wanted to pitch. So congratulations to you on that. I definitely want to just dive right into it, what did Startup Runway do for you? Why would you recommend it or would you recommend it to other founders?
Safir Monroe
Definitely. It’s a great competition. I definitely recommend it to other founders to get a lot of exposure and also the chance to get ten grand without going to any equity is a great opportunity for a lot of founders. You get a new VC. I’ve got a library and I got a lot of great connections. I was able to get a lot of meetings after that when I was finished. I think it was a great experience
Austin Meacham
Safir, for the people listening, could you give some background on your company, and we would love to hear about why you decided to start?
Safir Monroe
Definitely. Just an overview of my company, we have developed proprietary hardware technology that has the capability to scan hundreds of different radio conversations in aviation across the world. And with this data, we aggregate it and determine the cause and the exact technical details of different flight delays, as well as possible delays that might be upcoming in the future. In my past experience, I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree, and then after that, I worked for Delta Airlines as a web developer for about two years. I know a lot about operations, and just after leaving Delta, I read a lot of books and articles. I always kept up with the industry and then decided now I finally figured out how I could develop to innovate in this space.
Lafayette Julius
I’ve got a lot of feedback from a lot of founders from Startup Runway about the virtual pitch experience versus actually pitching in front of a lot of VC, founders, and entrepreneurs. How was that experience better or worse for you? Also, mentioning the mock board?
Safir Monroe
I feel like it’s pretty much the same. In terms of pitching online and pitching a person, I never ever felt a major difference. It was probably easier to pitch online, I guess just because you won’t have to travel. I would have people typically say that you make fewer connections, but I’m finding out that, honestly, I’ve been able to connect with probably a lot more people just because everything’s online. Getting everybody’s contact information is faster. I think it’s a great experience both ways, pitching in person and online. I like both.
Austin Meacham
I remember from Startup Runway that your pitch was really strong. It was awesome to hear. It’s a real strength of yours as a founder. I’m curious about what you would say some of your other strengths as a founder would be?
Safir Monroe
Oh, thank you for that. And I think, really my strength, the founder is being technical. I know a lot of startups, they always try to find a technical coach to help them pursue that idea and build their idea. I’ve been working on this for about two and a half years and am working on a lot of different applications. It’s hard to persevere with some people if you’re not the one building it in a lot of stories, a lot of technical co-founders leaving after a year or two of being in business. But just for me to be able to build my own applications, I can essentially have my startup forever. I think that’s probably my best quality, just to be able to persevere mostly in building technology. And then finally we’re getting a lot more. We’ll be able to sign up about nine, actually ten since yesterday, business companies as our beta platform within the last sixty days.
Austin Meacham
That’s awesome. And I completely agree that the technical capabilities are bounded. It’s super important, where did your tech interest come from?
Safir Monroe
I was in mechanical engineering but it’s funny, because when I went to Howard like my sophomore year, Google came, and they’re giving free tablets for anybody who kind of took a coding class. I wanted a free tablet so I definitely took the coding class. In my senior year, I was like, “Dang, I may be good at this.” I just always been into tech after that really.
Lafayette Julius
That was a great point Austin just mentioned and that kind of goes into my next kind of question and then I’ll send it off to Austin to another question. Building something, a startup, and being a founder, and a lot of things goes into a day in and day out. But what would you say, as a founder building UnDelay has been the hardest thing for you to do as far as that founder-life balance?
Safir Monroe
I think the hardest thing for me is to get the feedback that I need to get what people like. I think that the hardest question every business has to solve is what do people like? What will they love? How much will they love it? And then how much are they willing to pay for the thing? The harder you get the information out of people in a way, that there’s something I can build. It’s a very imperfect science. Coding is math and logic, but when it comes to finding what people want, it’s a very unique science. Difficult.
Austin Meacham
Yeah, I would definitely agree that it’s difficult. I kind of like what you said about the customer, and just really paying attention to the customer. My personal opinion that the customer is everything, you really do have to work for them, so that’s great to hear. Just on that point, I guess, if you want to sort of flip it, what kinds of customers are you personally looking for now based on the customer research that you’ve done?
Safir Monroe
Definitely. So most of my beta customers are travel reimbursement companies right now. It’s easier to engage with more small and midsize companies based in large entities like airports or airlines, just from the speed of the sales cycles. But as I gain more traction in the travel company space, I definitely want to move to airports. I just had a call with the former CIO of Knox Airport, which is a great call, and he’s got airports in the industry. I understand the sales cycles for airports are extremely long, so I want to make connections and start talking to them as well as get contracts in the travel space.
Austin Meacham
That definitely makes sense.
Lafayette Julius
To have a purpose and be present and building and forging those partnerships and relationships, I think that’s something that every founder can learn from and talent sows possibilities. That’s definitely great. What do you want your customers to think and feel about UnDelay?
Safir Monroe
I really want my customers to win, and take in that after, you don’t have access to this data that they can do things that they never could do before. Instead of listening for multiple days of audio to get a problem, you can search through millions of rows of text and a search query through my data to figure out what different problems in different airports around the world. As we expand, I want to revolutionize the industry. This data isn’t being collected in the aggregate and people aren’t using it to get insights, and I like to be the one that changes that forever.
Austin Meacham
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s definitely a great goal. I’m curious. Generally, founders are in it for the long haul, right? And it’s a long slog, and quite honestly, just a difficult journey. What sort of keeps you motivated on a day to day basis?
Safir Monroe
That’s a great question. I’d say, I just like the journey of just talking to people about the product, just people downloading. My first MVP was a mobile app. Just to get people to download, get feedback, and just tell me about the industry. The second application was a web app, the third application was the main API built around AI five predictions. I also work with ACR airports. A lot of things that I’ve built, I’ve got some traction and some people to sign up for. It’s a journey that I really appreciate. You know, even whether or not we’ve got one on one, it was one of my first grants for the company. So just those incremental victories keep me going. Even if one person downloads my application to get enough money to put it further, it’s just the journey I appreciate.
Austin Meacham
That’s awesome. What victory right now are you most proud of UnDelay?
Safir Monroe
Definitely winning the Young Founders Pitch Competition sponsored by CashApp at Afrotech pitch competition. So that grant was about $25,000. Definitely my biggest accomplishment today.
Austin Meacham
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a really incredible milestone.
Lafayette Julius
Well, I think that something to highlight is what makes a great idea into a great startup and foreign investors what makes a great startup into a great investment. So, landing that grant, and showing that you are adding value to different industries day in and day out, is definitely excellent for founders and companies. Congrats to you on that, Safir. I think we have maybe a few more questions from my end and Austin may have a few more. One more question for me is, what is the single most important thing that is different from others that are doing the same thing in your space or competitors?
Safir Monroe
The top three competitors in the industry are FlightRadar24, FlightAware, as well as FlightStats, and also LiveATC gives a lot of fees, as well. But a lot of those competitors, they deliver the amount of time of planning delayed, as well as weather index, plane tracking. They also have different fee systems where different users around the world can enter their flight feed day, they can click around their houses that might be near different airports. What we do is we aggregate actual radio calls. With our processing, we deliver that data. So we deliver, though, the why, and how a plane was delayed and a lot of our competitors deliver how long and if it was due to weather if something was late, and what and which plane is delayed if that makes sense. So it’s a different type of dataset. So for example, the flight stats and their API suite get data from our radar, they find out where they sit, they all kind of do different things. You can integrate all the services within one. That’s kind of my vertical. So in theory, a customer can integrate all four of our solutions within their platform because we all do the same thing. But at the end of the day, all customers want quite a disruption of data.
Austin Meacham
That definitely makes sense. That’s definitely a great value proposition that will differentiate you from your competitors. We spoke a little earlier on feedback. I think we’re talking within customer contact. But any feedback just in this journey is incredibly important, right? So I guess from a VC perspective, and whether or not you got the feedback from Startup Runway or otherwise. From a VC perspective, what has been some helpful feedback that you’ve gotten?
Safir Monroe
From VC, just on a specific sales pitch to entities that are unfamiliar with the industry? I understand that explaining the technology can become very complicated because I have customers, or customers within the airport industry, airlines, and other travel companies, and then explain how the data affects different verticals might be a little complicated. I think that just making sure I break down what I do, and then break down who’s using it now and break down a value proposition. It’s great feedback from a lot of VCs.
Austin Meacham
Gotcha. It definitely makes sense.
Lafayette Julius
Well, I want to say congratulations to you again, Safir. I imagine being a founder is a very hard thing to do and actually succeed and building a startup is even more incredible. Congrats on that achievement and if you want to share how other founders or startups can reach out to your investors, feel free to share.
Safir Monroe
Definitely. Feel free to contact me through email. My email is safir.monroe@undelayapp.com. Feel free to email me or go to our website and contact me through the form box. Or add me on LinkedIn, Safir Monroe. I am definitely accessible.
Austin Meacham
Awesome. I wanted to echo Lafayette and say how much we really appreciate you coming on the podcast. It’s been amazing. And we’re all really excited about your company.
Safir Monroe
Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. And thanks for having me.
Lisa
The Atlanta Startup Podcast is produced by Valor Ventures as a service to the startup and investor community. We couldn’t do it without the support of our sponsors–Atlanta Tech Park, the global innovation center, and Write2Market, Atlanta’s favorite tech, and healthcare marketing firm. If you’d like to get your information on the Atlanta Startup Podcast, our share a message with our listeners, visit us online and check out our affordable rate card. All advertisements here are tax-deductible donations to the Startup Runway Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is connecting underrepresented founders to their first investor.
