#MIGlobalEntrepreneurs

Event Overview and Judging Criteria

• The Milken Institute Global Entrepreneur's Competition convened for its second year to connect global entrepreneurs with investors and judges to solve key challenges in health, finance, media, and communications.
• Daniel Gorfine introduced the event's theme, citing Walt Disney's four "C's" for success: curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy.
• The competition format included 3-minute pitch presentations, judge feedback, and a voting system where the audience and judges held equal weight, with the host holding the tie-breaking vote.
• The panel of judges consisted of:
  • Avid Larrazadeh (General Partner, Google Ventures)
  • Lindy Fishburne (Executive Director, Breakout Labs / Senior VP, Teal Foundation)
  • Troy Carter (Founder/CEO, Atoms Factory)
  • Bonnen Bonneau (Chief Media & E-commerce Officer, Mondelez International)
• Judge Avid Larrazadeh emphasized seeking founders with a vision for "exponential change" and "disruption" who can clearly articulate why their solution is superior to competitors.
• Judge Lindy Fishburne prioritized deep customer understanding, opportunities to dominate a small market (monopoly potential), and scientific or technological leaps.
• Judge Troy Carter focused on the founder's "grit," the team's ability to execute, and verifying that the problem being solved is real and fits the market.
• Judge Bonnen Bonneau looked for a clear understanding of customer needs, market size (the "real prize"), a scalable growth plan, and potential partnerships with large-scale players.

Digital Genius (Mikhail Namov)

• Founded in New York City, Digital Genius offers an enterprise-grade conversational automation platform using AI and deep learning NLP to allow businesses to converse with millions of customers in real time.
• The company targets industries with high volumes of repetitive customer inquiries, including telcos, airlines, and utilities, where current call center costs are prohibitively high.
• Their technology uses a classification engine to understand context rather than just keywords, distinguishing it from antiquated search-based chatbots.
• Key Case Studies:
  • BMW: Used for a UK TV ad campaign where viewers could text questions about electric vehicles, enabling features like scheduling test drives and collecting consumer data.
  • Unilever: Deployed a "Chef Wendy" recipe recommendation engine that remembers dietary restrictions (e.g., vegetarianism, allergies) across its portfolio.
• Business Model: Operates on an SaaS basis; pilots last 30 to 90 days with fees of $50–$100 per brand to prove KPIs, followed by licensing for ongoing deployment.
• Scalability: The platform utilizes reusable "narrow AI modules" for specific tasks, reducing the need for custom coding per client; deployment for a new pilot takes 4 to 6 weeks.
• Traction: Currently serves six live clients, including over a dozen Fortune 500 companies.
• Team: Founded by Mario Dimitri, a robotics expert who began building robots at age 7; the team consists of 20 employees, half of whom are engineers in London specializing in NLP.

Honest Dollar (Worley/Hurley)

• The company aims to disrupt the US retirement system for the 70 million Americans without access to a plan and the 88 million who are underfunded or overpaid in fees.
• The solution offers a SaaS service priced at $10 per employee per month, eliminating administrative burdens for small businesses and removing all fees for employees.
• Financial Structure: The plan legally combines an IRA, SEP/Simple IRA, and HSA into a single account, avoiding the rollover hassles of traditional 401(k)s.
• Investment Strategy: Employees invest in six passive portfolios with fees kept below 9 basis points; the company invests its own funds in the same portfolios.
• Market Opportunity: Targets a market of $3 trillion in IRAs and $20 trillion in 401(k)s, focusing on small businesses that pay high fees (2–4%) to traditional brokers.
• Traction & Growth:
  • Launched a beta program in March; 5,000 applicants were reduced to 300 curated clients.
  • Goal is to onboard 50 clients by early May and 300 by the end of May, with a general availability launch in June.
  • Aims to reach 30,000 employees on the platform by year-end.
• Channels: Utilizing channel sales partners like the I Triple E (420,000 members) and Colo (18,000 members) to reach small science consultancies and other verticals.
• Legal Model: Predates 401(k) laws by structuring accounts as IRAs/SEPs to ensure portability and low legal liability for employers.

Neighborly (Jace Wilson)

• Neighborly is a marketplace designed to democratize access to the $3.7 trillion municipal securities market, removing intermediaries and high fees that currently exclude most investors.
• The platform seeks to eliminate the "value extraction chain," where bonds change hands up to eight times via "interpositioning," inflating costs for communities and investors.
• Value Proposition: Offers direct access to municipal bonds for communities (supply) and retail investors (demand), aiming to bring transparency and liquidity to a fragmented market.
• Target Market: Initial focus on charter schools and high-tax state investors; the company notes that cities borrow $1 billion daily, with a $35 billion annual gap in value extraction.
• Regulatory Status: Bonds are not subject to the Securities Act of 33; no accredited investor status is required.
• Growth Strategy: Targeting "high-affinity trigger access points" like schools and networks of charter schools where parents already have an emotional and financial stake.
• Market Context: Notes that retail holders still dominate the bond market and that more bonds are bought weekly than the entire history of Kickstarter funding.

Remedy Inc (Noor Sadiki)

• Remedy connects primary care doctors with specialists in real-time to avoid unnecessary patient referrals, addressing a system where 90% of referrals are avoidable.
• Cost Impact: Avoidable referrals, tests, and medications cost the US healthcare system $28 billion annually.
• Clinical Efficacy: The platform mirrors successful "hotline" models used at the Mayo Clinic (36% decline in referrals), Canada's RACE program (50% decline), and Finland (60% decline).
• Revenue Model: Charges self-insured companies, ACOs, and insurance companies a flat fee of $25,000 per provider per year; reported ROI is approximately 6x.
• Incentive Alignment: Capitalizes on the shift from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement, noting that value-based reimbursements rose from 0% in 2012 to 20% in 2018, with a target of 50% by 2018.
• Specialist Incentives: Specialists are paid per minute for consultations rather than by the visit, allowing them to reduce administrative billing time and focus on high-acuity patients.
• Team Status: Currently a two-person founding team (Noor and a co-founder with a medical background) plus two engineers; seeking industry veterans for the sales team.

Swish (Ari Leighton)

• Swish is a mobile app that contextualizes user-generated sports video highlights with real-time statistics, solving the issue of fragmented social media conversations about sports.
• Market Data: 170 million US sports fans, with mobile/social video consumption growing over 100% in the last three years, despite TV remaining the dominant content source.
• Monetization: Currently aggregates content from social media and user uploads in compliance with terms of service (similar to Google Images); future plans include licensing content from leagues and networks.
• Strategic Partnerships:
  • Partnering with top sports sites like SB Nation to provide on-demand video for writers (content available 5–10 minutes after plays occur).
  • Open to negotiations with leagues like the NBA to monetize fan uploads and create new business models.
• User Features: Allows users to create playlists of highlights (e.g., "LeBron dunks"), comment on specific plays, and share context-rich content with followers.
• Judges' Feedback: While the team expressed confidence in the "actual problem" of fragmented engagement, Judge Bonnen Bonneau advised strengthening the platform's editorialization and voice to differentiate from existing platforms like Bleacher Report.

Competition Outcome

• The audience voted via text message (code 22333) with company abbreviations, with final tallies combined with judge deliberations.
• The winner of the Milken Institute Global Entrepreneur's Competition for the year was Mikhail Namov of Digital Genius.
• Daniel Gorfine concluded the event by thanking the organizing team (Nancy Oseas, Wendy Wonderman, Steven Lin, Lisa Mitchell) and the entrepreneurs for showcasing innovations in customer service, retirement security, municipal markets, healthcare efficiency, and sports media.