Julia Turnbull: From Global Development to Award-Winning Agent Builder - Ep 15

Kyle James (: 00:02

couple seconds to let this thing buffer and get going. Awesome. Welcome, welcome everybody to another Builder Stories, Prompted Builder Stories by Agent AI. And today I've got Julia Turnbow with me today. Julia, welcome to the show.

Julia (: 00:17

Great, thank you Kyle. It's wonderful to be here.

Kyle James (: 00:19

I'm super excited to have a conversation because with this one, we're gonna talk AI agents and how they help entrepreneurs and startups find grant opportunities to help them with fundraising. A little bit more startup entrepreneurial than some of the other ones, but still something close to my heart and something that I'm sure a lot of people get a lot of value from is we were kind of just talking in the pre-show. But before we kind of really dive into some of this, I always like to let people...

Talk a little bit more about their background. You are the associate director of executive programs at MIT Sloan Executive Education. So we'd love for you to tell us a little bit about what you do there. Talk about how you got exposed into the fundraising landscape and other elements of your background, if you wouldn't mind.

Julia (: 01:08

Great. Thanks, Kyle. So yes, so I do work in MIT Sloan's Office of Executive Education. I'm on a team, fantastic team of people who work with companies, organizations, and individuals who are thinking about different opportunities to use MIT frameworks to expand upon the opportunities that are available in today's marketplace.

So think at MIT as a whole, we like to think about solving complex challenges, Through innovations in technology, business model applications, leadership in systems. And so I did not necessarily have a straight line path. I did not know many years ago that I was going to work in higher education or executive education, but I've been fortunate to land here. So I actually started kind of learning more about

what we now call or think of as entrepreneurship before it necessarily became the discipline that it is now. So way back when I was an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to do some research in Mexico.

understanding kind of what were the factors that made people, you know, maybe work in the informal sector, go into the formal sector, and then back into the informal sector. And so I spent some time working with an organization in Mexico City, got to meet people who are starting all kinds of businesses for different reasons, but they were all solving this need of something was missing in their local economy, right? And so they kind of had these unique and creative ways of going about that. And that was very interesting to me. So I back to

graduate school and continue to pursue international economics and business, thinking about trade, interest rates, things that maybe we don't really think are very interesting, but they're the things that get your coffee to you every morning or your afternoon snack chocolate bar, right? Kind of all these things that keep the economy going and that keep us kind of happy and going as people, right? And so...

Kyle James (: 02:59

They keep the economy running, you know?

Julia (: 03:07

I had a chance in graduate school to again go back to Mexico. That time I went to Oaxaca and worked with an organization called Fundación Envía and their direct mission really was to grow local economies.

They focused mostly on indigenous communities and working a lot with women who had started their own companies because a lot of changes in the labor migration market, a lot of responsibilities were falling on a narrow segment. And really the focus was how do we kind of develop local talent and knowledge around operating a company and how do we get resources reinvested in local.

communities because that's how economies grow. And so it was a group-based lending model. There were opportunities for women to grow their companies, to explore new sectors, so a very traditional artisan communities, but how could they think about small-scale production, manufacturing, and these other things? And so from there, I went to the Inter-American Development Bank, again, kind of thinking, going to this kind of constant tension between what's happening at the small local level and what's happening at the regional economic level.

Kyle James (: 04:12

Yeah.

Julia (: 04:15

right? But the trends were all the same and these things are connected. And so again, I had an opportunity to think about infrastructure, deepening local capital markets, what did those things mean? And went from there, I came from DC, came back up to Boston and worked with an organization called Root Capital and they do factor based finance for coffee and cocoa cooperatives, mostly in Latin America and Africa.

Again, kind more working with companies to expand, kind of build up their financial statements, and really just become stronger, really focusing on those fundamentals. And so a lot of the same things entrepreneurs face. How do you get organized? How do you focus? How do you prioritize resources during challenging times? How do you understand what the trends are?

n industry. so I guess around: 2014

And we're starting technology-based companies in Latin America, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. And so I spent a couple of weeks just calling them, understanding where they were with their companies, maybe how much funding they had raised, who were their customers, and then how was their MIT program going to accelerate them right in the next stage of their company. And that was fascinating. And there were lots of challenges. Some of them were spinning out of family companies. Some of them had an idea they'd been working on.

know, 10pm to 2am every morning while they had a day job.

Kyle James (: 06:04

It's a weekend.

Julia (: 06:05

Right, so really understanding that commitment and what was motivating people, oftentimes lived experiences of these challenges, right? Not having local transportation, very expensive internet access or cellular data access, inability to transfer currencies across borders, Things that we take for granted every day, emergency transportation, all those things. So really, from there, that kind of transitioned into a full-time job.

So MIT allows people lot of creativity to create their own paths. so had an opportunity to work with a lot of fantastic professors and colleagues at MIT building up an entrepreneurship program focused on.

g out of the financial crisis: 2008

Kyle James (: 06:55

Yeah.

Julia (: 07:23

little bit of growth was maybe a little bit slower. So where else were things happening? Where's the middle class going to be in a couple of years? And so these startups kind of needed visibility and they needed funding. They needed that early stage non-dilutive funding. so as part of my role, I started sourcing what were these opportunities for people. And that took the form of a weekly email. These are when all of these deadlines are coming. These are the

grant opportunities. are the early stage seed equity funding, right? SAFEs were just coming out at that time. And so that was...

Kyle James (: 07:57

Mm.

Julia (: 08:02

a very interesting space to be in. So I worked with one of the first team from Africa, right, to go onto Techstars in New York City, and that was really exciting. And they've gone on to really achieve tremendous things in Africa. And so, you know, so from there, I think that knowledge base kind of grew. And then, you know, there were other partners in the space. So I spent some time at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. They had a program for thinking

about not just grant funding, but really how do you manage an investment or funding stack for a company that's not a traditional large, mature company, but one that's figuring out these kind of different pieces of traction or scaling in a region that doesn't have uniform.

Kyle James (: 08:39

Yeah.

Julia (: 08:53

governance principles or standards or maybe even a common language, right? So think about going from Francophone to Anglophone Africa or the other direction.

Kyle James (: 09:03

It sounds like there's a whole lot of, mean, yes, these companies are all over this place, but there's these common themes that run throughout it, especially around financing and moving money across borders and scaling and hiring that are just universal, right? And once you've kind of seen it, you know the playbook and can kind of help all sorts of companies with these standard things that entrepreneurs aren't necessarily great money managers, right?

Julia (: 09:09

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Julia (: 09:20

Right.

Julia (: 09:28

Right, there are ideas people, right? And we need ideas. But yeah, but I think really giving people like a structure, right? Frameworks, goals, things to work towards. So a lot of it was really about kind of what are those key milestones, right? So what's the business model innovation? What's the technology? What is the team you're building around it, right? So in the early stages of the company, especially in a university environment, right? You're bringing together.

Kyle James (: 09:31

Yeah.

Julia (: 09:54

you know, people who want to be with you on the journey, right? And you're making most of everyone's talents and experiences. And then at some point you have to figure out, okay, you know, what skills, what talent, what people do I need on my team to get me from?

Kyle James (: 09:57

Yeah.

Julia (: 10:09

to see to see or to get into that next market that's going to achieve a substantial scale. so we will, know, so a lot of this is thinking about not just the funding, right? But what are all of the other pieces?

Kyle James (: 10:11

Right.

Julia (: 10:25

that have to be in place, right? There's a tool by Village Capital, right? And it kind of maps, it charts, you know, it's a stepwise, it looks like a checkerboard, but you know, it's where should you be for this level of funding? Because the only thing worse than not having any funding is having like the wrong amount of funding, right? So too much dilutive funding, right? That's not good. And so it helps people think about, you know, not just...

Kyle James (: 10:39

Mm.

Julia (: 10:54

not just the funding, right, but who's on your team, who's on your board, the key milestones.

Kyle James (: 10:57

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you've kind of built this, let's call it what it is, an award winning.

kind of app or agent here. And I know you built that with kind of the Bon Billo team. So talk a little bit about how that kind of came together because the Bon Billo team did really well in the Community Choice Award. think they won three of them total, but talk about how kind of that ties into kind of the agent and what you're doing and kind of working with startups and companies.

Julia (: 11:27

Yeah, the Bambilo team is really outstanding. So, Sriraj Kripalani, who's the founder of the group. Awesome. Yeah, I know. Yeah, he's excellent. Yeah. So, could not have done it without him. He did a lot of the groundwork and I think brought a lot of discipline to this process that we've done as a team. And then Ashna and Mishka as well, who helped with the marketing and promotion. But really that was about... So, Bambilo started...

Kyle James (: 11:33

We'll have him on here at some point in the near future, I promise. He won an award too.

Julia (: 11:55

very much on the ground, in person, boot camps in Boston. thinking about how to help early stage entrepreneurs get through that transition, either from the university environment into the marketplace, or even just just people who are, again, working these day jobs and starting companies in their spare time. And so then COVID happened, right? All of sudden we were online. was the mission of the organization always was to be global and have global impact.

Kyle James (: 12:17

Yeah.

Julia (: 12:24

and focus on team building frameworks and funding for companies that are working toward the sustainable development goals. So really think about those kind of critical pieces and those are challenges that are universal, right? So as we've gone kind of into the online space for various reasons, right? We've really thought about, okay, what are some tools that kind of take the in-person experience and make it available?

to the community but also to broader audience of entrepreneurs who can benefit.

Kyle James (: 12:57

Nice, and I guess that's kind of where the agents come in. Like, how do we take these things that typically you'd sit down and talk with someone and have a deep conversation, a deep understanding, and here you can kind of take your knowledge of grants and fundraising and say, hey, let me build an agent that can kind of get you off the ground and give you a bunch of ideas to start with, right?

Julia (: 13:16

Right, because time is a finite resource, And we're across time zones. And so it was about, I think, understanding, because we had knowledge of what are grants that are applicable at early stages. When is it appropriate to bring in either convertible funding or possibly dilutive funding, depending on the stage of the company. From there, we were able to build the agent. And I think that's why agent AI is such a fantastic tool, because it gave us the opportunity to experiment with.

Flexity and chat dbt and clod and all the different things that are out there right because this was something I learned right I use one version in my day job and but then when I was out searching and putting myself back in the place of an entrepreneur You know not not using the Microsoft office suite for like it you know every day to do do my things right, but You might be in a low bandwidth environment or you might be so we had to think about not just kind of what are what are the best answers but

Kyle James (: 13:47

all the different models. Yeah.

Kyle James (: 14:06

Yeah.

Julia (: 14:14

what's going to work for someone. We want this to work for someone who is in Ghana and someone who's in Asia, you know, so. But it's exciting. I mean, we're kind of excited about the opportunity to really scale this knowledge and.

Kyle James (: 14:18

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 14:28

But let's talk about the grant funding ecosystem.

know, go into a bank or go into angel investing. And I think probably, I see that personally and I think about, okay, we know money's not free. And what I mean by that is zero interest rates are gone. So the difficulty to raising capital for companies, startups, is a lot different, a lot harder in lot of ways. I was like, oh, this makes sense. Here's an alternative funding path that, you know, entrepreneurs can use. But talk to me a little bit more about like,

the challenges of kind of figuring out grant funding and kind of how you went about like thinking about that. And then I promise everybody will get in and kind of show an example of kind of running the agent here in a second.

Julia (: 15:13

Yeah, so, you know, startups have to move fast, right? They're constantly iterating, learning from experiments and testing. And grant funding tends to be a little bit slower, right? Unfortunately, that's just, I think there's just misalignment, right? But I think understanding the value of grant funding, is it's non-dilutive. There might be some reporting requirements, right? So it always caution people, like if you're gonna go for grant funding, really think about.

Kyle James (: 15:27

Sure.

Julia (: 15:42

what that means for your organization and for additional resources. But there are, you know, can have a chunk of funding that is allocated for a research trial, if you're in healthcare pharmaceuticals, you can maybe get a critical piece of equipment, right, if you're looking for a more efficient way to process something in agricultural space, right? So I think really think about, as you would any other funding, right, what does that grant help you achieve that you couldn't otherwise achieve?

Kyle James (: 16:11

Mm.

Julia (: 16:12

And if it's non-dilutive, yes, there's no, maybe there's not a financial cost, but what's the time cost going to be or the reporting cost? But also what are the other opportunities, right? All funding comes with connections. And so who are the other people in that network who are going to help you reach that next stage with your company? So yeah, I think just with anything, right? Always balance, right? Even if there's not a financial cost.

Kyle James (: 16:33

Nice.

Julia (: 16:42

And I think grant funding is a great way to demonstrate that you have uses of funds, right? What were those funds? And I think really being able to track that and tell that story for your next level of investor, whether it's angel investor, a consortium, an early stage organization like Bumbulo, being able to document that and tell that story is important.

Kyle James (: 17:06

Nice. Well, you want to show it? You want to show the agent? Let me, I have it up. Let me get a window up.

Julia (: 17:09

Sure, you have it ready?

Kyle James (: 17:19

see if that does it.

There we go. Let's size this a little bit.

Julia (: 17:25

It's so different seeing it from the side and not like the nuts and bolts on the other side.

Kyle James (: 17:29

I'm

Yeah, yeah. So I've got a website. This is a company that I work with that does cancer research and a lot with kind of the NIH. And I thought we'd use it as an example. Let's see if I...

to just kind of run it. And I guess while I'm plugging some of this information in, would love you just to kind of, this is your first agent, right? Like you mentioned, you kind of wrote it with some other help, but talk to me about your kind of experience, kind of building that, you know, your background. It's not necessarily that of a software developer or anything like that. you know, thinking through processes and bringing in your expertise as a subject matter expert, talk to me a little bit about that as I kind of run this.

Julia (: 17:52

Yeah.

Julia (: 18:03

No. No.

Julia (: 18:11

Yeah, I think it's always, you know, it's very good exercise to go back, you know, explaining, it's one thing to explain knowledge or concepts or ideas or questions to other people all day, explaining it back into an agent, you know, kind of using that language and understanding how it's, how what you're saying is being interpreted and applied. It's really an interesting exercise in kind of thinking about

you know, what were the things that were most important? So as we were going through and building this, right, we wanted to make sure that organizations, companies, startups can find resources that are relevant for their geography, for their industry that are timely. And so it really, you know, to build something that's really useful and impactful.

it actually takes that kind of patience, right? Because the first couple of tries we didn't necessarily get the results we were looking for, right? And so as a team, we're really committed to making sure that what we publish or what goes out actually is useful, right? We didn't want people using this to find dead links or expired information, right? And so you just kind of...

Kyle James (: 19:06

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 19:25

Yeah, well, and I think we'll get some of that as we kind of show some of these results because, you know, cancer research, they get a lot of their funding from the NIH, it's kind of as you and I were talking about before, which has changed a lot recently with administration and politics and all of that stuff that, but to me, I think the value of this is like people don't know where to start a lot of times, right? They don't have your years or decades of experience trying to figure this stuff out. So, you know,

Coming up with ideas and all right, to provide the details. I don't remember this step. Be happy to help you identify however I notice any specific startup provided in your message. what did I not do?

Julia (: 20:07

Let's see, there's the website. Sorry, scroll back up for second.

Kyle James (: 20:19

Well, we might have to go.

Julia (: 20:20

if you, okay, share the website and the target customer.

Julia (: 20:30

I think,

Kyle James (: 20:34

place into your email.

Julia (: 20:37

Did you, were you able to input, let's see, share my startup website. If you click on that carrot and the sharing,

Kyle James (: 20:50

Well, I'm not sure what happened.

Kyle James (: 20:56

Share my website. Go.

Julia (: 20:59

Sometimes if you try both, it works a little bit better.

Kyle James (: 21:01

does it. think.

I think I just did this last time. And then, arch.

Julia (: 21:08

okay.

Kyle James (: 21:15

This shows it.

Kyle James (: 21:26

It's always fun to play with these things in real time when you don't always know exactly how they're going to work.

Julia (: 21:39

I mean, this is definitely a constantly evolving environment, The funding landscape, what you get on any given day might be slightly different.

Kyle James (: 21:43

Right.

Kyle James (: 21:49

True. Well, and guess kind of continue what we were saying while this thing continues to run is, yeah, like just getting ideas about where to start. You know, and I shared kind of the results here with kind of the company that I've worked with. And like, hey, I don't know if you're thinking about doing grants, but.

Julia (: 21:51

Yes.

Julia (: 21:58

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 22:10

ranking criteria. I noticed that your startup idea and crawler web pages weren't providing a message. Okay, I might have to cut this piece. It happens.

Can I go back to profile?

Julia (: 22:30

Yeah, we can always do.

Kyle James (: 22:34

Well, I can always... We've got the video here.

Kyle James (: 22:43

Yeah, could share the video with them. Do you want to try a different one?

Julia (: 22:47

Sure, let's try Blitz energy in Indonesia.

Kyle James (: 22:51

It just.

Kyle James (: 22:56

energy drink.

Julia (: 22:58

This is like a last mile delivery service.

Kyle James (: 23:07

So can get a website.

Julia (: 23:11

That's it, yep.

Kyle James (: 23:12

This one?

Julia (: 23:14

The one that was in the top of the AI search. Yeah, Blitz energy mobility.

Kyle James (: 23:20

Let's see, is this?

Kyle James (: 23:28

do I get to that side?

Kyle James (: 23:37

Well good thing is, Ryan, you might get to cut some of this. Ryan's my production guy.

Julia (: 23:43

Okay, rideblitz.com.

Kyle James (: 23:53

There we go, alright.

It might not be us at all. might be H &AI is having some. All right. Let us try this one. Should we enter our startup ID as well?

Julia (: 24:09

Yeah, try both and see what happens.

Kyle James (: 24:11

Let's try it, bud.

Kyle James (: 24:18

website and I guess for this can I just grab

Kyle James (: 24:29

Well, let the AI write it for us.

All right. Go.

Julia (: 24:36

It's always fun to see how AI models read each other. Target customer.

Kyle James (: 24:38

Who's your target customer, right?

Julia (: 24:50

large and small delivery service providers. Yeah, or that, yeah, enterprises.

Kyle James (: 24:58

I just...

Kyle James (: 25:02

Let's do this.

Kyle James (: 25:09

See if that works. Jim and I helping us answer all the questions here. Feeding AI into AI.

Julia (: 25:17

It's great.

Julia (: 25:23

Yeah. No, but I think really the whole concept behind this is startup founders are busy and in CFOs are busy and it's easy for any of us to focus on what's right in front of us. So it's sort of, this is a tool for people to take off the blinders and see what else is available.

Kyle James (: 25:37

Yeah.

Julia (: 25:44

it's really a research tool. Maybe there are other AI things that will write the grant or the funding application for you or help you put together the deck. But really this has helped to just give busy early stage C-suite teams a high level overview of what's out there. And then simply write the criteria, exactly.

Kyle James (: 26:02

Yeah, it's a discovery tool. Find some shortcuts. I'm curious, like, do you have any success stories of startups that you've worked with or teams that you've heard about using this that have found funding that they otherwise might have missed or not found?

Julia (: 26:18

You know, I think I don't have any specific examples right away to share, but what I can say is, you know, we've had teams reach out and say, you know, this is so helpful, or I remember that email you sent when I was a student, and this is kind of the online version of that, and it's still applicable, and these are founders who have gone from that very early stage, right, when they were students five or six years ago, and now maybe they're thinking about Series A, Series B, and so that's very, like, rewarding to hear and to, you know, it's...

a huge part of what makes all of this worthwhile. But if you do have a success story, definitely share it with us because we want to know what's working and how so we can improve on that.

Kyle James (: 26:50

yourselves.

Kyle James (: 26:57

Yeah, so listeners out there, anybody that's played with this or anybody that's got some success or found some funding or even able to get a grant from using the tool, please share it back with us. I know as a builder, Julia always, any builder loves to hear how their tools are being used successfully. So please pass that on. Send it back up the food chain to us.

And I guess while we're waiting on this, do you have any other plans for agents that you're building in the pipeline or things that you're thinking about and spending over?

Julia (: 27:28

We do. So I think really our goal is to help founders curate, you know, kind of what are viable sources of funding for them to pursue or to work towards through this milestone. So stay tuned. Grant funding is just one piece of the investment stack of the funding stack. And we're going to keep working on this. But again, this is really important.

Kyle James (: 27:44

Nice.

Kyle James (: 27:49

Nice, maybe I get some more tips how to survive he comes on. Because when I talk to him, gosh, in October, this is the beginning of September when we're recording now. But he's like, wait till mid-September. We've got some announcements coming. So I know y'all are building a lot of these things kind of in tandem together.

Julia (: 28:03

Yep.

Julia (: 28:08

Yeah, yeah, great team and we really want to see this work for.

Kyle James (: 28:15

Yeah. So how do you see AI agents changing the landscape of entrepreneurship support and like business development?

Julia (: 28:24

I think there are a of things, right? Founders have a lot of decisions and things are constantly changing and coming at them. And I think these tools can actually help people sift through some of that, and kind of accelerate some of the decision making. if there are, there might be things you're not aware of that you become aware of, right, through using some of these tools. Because an AI model is sourcing.

all kinds of information that's out there. And so think of it as another perspective, right? Maybe, you you might not follow the advice of one person, but if you hear it from three or four people, then maybe, you know, it's valid, it's worth considering, right? And so I think, you know, think of it, you know, in some cases, yeah, maybe AI could become another member of your team, right? You know, maybe you set up your own agent or something that does some of this.

Kyle James (: 29:04

Yeah.

Julia (: 29:16

for you so you don't have to, right? founders should be clearing their minds to focus on the hard problems as much as possible, right? And so I think as much as AI tools and agents are available to free up that bandwidth, definitely use them.

Kyle James (: 29:40

Nice, nice. Well, this thing might be timing out on us. Luckily, we can fix all that in post. If we can't demo it. I hate that because that's always fun to show that, but Ryan, I might have you cut a little bit more of this in normal because it is kind of its own other panel. We can't cut all that out and just kind of go with the conversation. It might be, I was just gonna say it might even be worthwhile just a week.

Julia (: 29:44

Okay.

Julia (: 29:59

I see. Okay. I know. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Kyle James (: 30:08

talk a second about the video and maybe that, we're not going to run one of these for time's sake. But you know what I mean?

Julia (: 30:19

Yeah, I the Bambula team. think Mishka and Ashna put one together too. I think that was posted in some of the LinkedIn posts. Yeah.

Kyle James (: 30:30

Because someone wants to come in here and run this thing. There's kind of a video ideas on how to do it. Are y'all starting to build out a lot of these agents on the Bon Billot site, or are they starting to live there? OK. So that'll be part of it too. And that'll probably come out part of it with this launch. And depending on when this one goes live, that might already be up or not.

Julia (: 30:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Julia (: 30:42

I think so, yep.

Julia (: 30:50

Yeah.

Julia (: 30:54

and it them.

Kyle James (: 30:56

Well, let me ask you this, Julia. Anything else that you want to kind of add or let me stop sharing my screen here. Is there anything else that you want to add or kind of talk about or discuss that I haven't asked before we talk about how can people support you guys?

Julia (: 31:15

Yeah, I mean, I think really just sharing your experience, right? And not just for Bambilo, right? But for other entrepreneurs, who can learn. And I think really kind of focusing on what experienced entrepreneurs, you know, all of those can bring into these networks and what you can.

build upon that others are sharing, right? And so again, think of AI as a tool and AI as a bridge in these agents in ways that they can.

become team members and do some of that thinking or that work for you. But also think about using these things as entree into other networks and exposure to other opportunities or maybe the person who can help you take your startups to that next level or achieve that next milestone. So, yeah. So we're excited.

Kyle James (: 32:08

I do have some good news.

Julia (: 32:09

Kind of about opportunities to scale, reach people and open up, know, whether it's funding, connections, talent, technology, applications. It's all great stuff and we wish everyone out there the best of luck and keep in touch.

Kyle James (: 32:26

Nice. Look, it ran, it finished. we could kind of, Ryan, you're have to change the order a little bit to cut this back in here. But yeah, so we were able to get some results right from Blitz. You wanna just kind of quickly kind of talk us through kind of what we're looking at here?

Julia (: 32:32

Okay.

Julia (: 32:42

Sure, so these are starting with public grants. So those are, as you can see, kind of what we think of as the traditional government sources. So here we have European Union, Canada, United Kingdom, looks like Germany, Australia, right? entities that are really willing to invest in technology, right? That's sustainable that.

promotes safe, clean transportation and kind of looking at the different goals, right? So.

Kyle James (: 33:12

love it how it gives you like how aligned is it, you know, what is the possible funding range? Here's a link to if you want to learn more. mean, granted, not every single one of these is going to work for people. And, you know, some of these deadlines might be passed, but that doesn't mean that, you know, it's not still, then it might be worth making a connection. Yeah.

Julia (: 33:15

Yeah. Right. Right.

Julia (: 33:29

And by mean it's an annual grant, right? Yeah. So, or maybe it runs every two years, right? But it's worth clicking on and again, thinking about, you know, what are the kind of titles of the grant tell you a lot about what they're focused on? And then the mission alignment, right? So is that something that's going to be a good partner? Or is it something that's going to open up a market opportunity? Might be a great way, you know, to expand within a region.

Kyle James (: 33:58

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Julia (: 33:59

Or I think by parallel markets, right, markets have similar characteristics. We've seen companies scale from Nigeria to Brazil, right? They're obviously not land neighbors, right? But there are a lot of parallels in those markets, so.

Kyle James (: 34:11

Sure. Well, and you can never work a lead that you don't know about, right? So just knowing these things are out there, knowing what's available gives you a huge, I mean, there are what? Five, five categories. There's 50 different opportunities here. So even if 2 % works out, that means one of them is a real thing.

Julia (: 34:15

Right, exactly.

Julia (: 34:22

Yeah, lots of.

Julia (: 34:30

Right. it's $100,000, $500,000, $1 billion you didn't have before. that's all the difference. Yeah. Right. Right. And yeah, foundations are great. So lots of companies, family offices, large established institutional foundations. But again, the mission alignment is important. The signaling effect, the brand recognition.

Kyle James (: 34:35

I mean, the ROI is absolutely worth that.

Kyle James (: 34:57

Does that look like that that's the main way that y'all are ranking these things is by mission alignment first and then can I grant size second or?

Julia (: 35:04

I think that's important for grants, I mean, you want to think about what does it mean to be aligned or affiliated with certain things, right? Again, grants often come with reporting requirements and things like that. You're putting time, even if there's not a financial cost, but you're putting time into this and you want to make sure it's going to be valuable, right?

Kyle James (: 35:06

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 35:29

Totally. Non-profit grants.

Julia (: 35:29

Shell Foundation, all kinds of good things. And then other groups that are out there, whether they have more of a research focus, MVPs, pilots, testing.

Kyle James (: 35:41

and these state and local, like these aren't even necessarily United States. These are specific Chakras in Indonesia, I know.

Julia (: 35:45

Right. Local. Yeah. Yeah. So we really wanted this to be as comprehensive a tool as possible. Recognize there are a lot of different sources of grants. They themselves have different sources of funding and maybe different mandates or governance structures to companies. Consider, you are you registered in Delaware? Are you registered in Singapore? What might that mean? know, hybrid, right? Maybe one.

Kyle James (: 35:55

Yeah.

Julia (: 36:14

part of your business model isn't necessarily recognized in a part of the world or country in which you operate. So, yeah.

Kyle James (: 36:21

Very cool, very cool. This is awesome. So how can listeners in the community kind of support you? It sounds like if it's startups out there, you're always, I'm assuming, willing to kind of have a conversation, talk to people. But what other ways are you looking for ideas? Are you looking for new entrepreneurs to work with? And what is the best way for people to connect with you, Julia?

Julia (: 36:38

Yeah.

Julia (: 36:48

I mean, all of the above, right? So I think really, you know, use the tool, let us know what's working. If there are other similar tools that would be really helpful, then let us know, right? So this is great, but the next step is seed stage funding or whatever that may be, right? Kind of let us know what you need, right? We want to be receptive, you know, kind of responsive and thinking about what's...

you know, really top of mind for founders and where they see opportunities for agents to, you know, kind of become team members and take this on. I think we have our website, BumBilo.com. I have an email. yeah, you can share that. But yeah, but really just, you know, kind of use the tool, give us feedback and let us know what other opportunities you see.

Kyle James (: 37:21

Yeah.

Kyle James (: 37:31

I'll make sure all that gets in the show notes.

Kyle James (: 37:44

I love it, I love it. And once again, congratulations for kind of being an award winner. You probably never thought on your bingo card would be an AI agent community award winner, but Julia, you are now. So congratulations. And kind of just wrapping this all up, any kind of closing thoughts that you want to leave everybody with or words of wisdom or things to think about kind of going forward.

Julia (: 37:49

Yeah. Yeah.

I know. I know.

And thank you.

Julia (: 38:11

I should know who said this, but several founders I've worked with have said, you know, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. So when you're out there solving these large, complicated, you know, whether it's a local or regional or global challenges, really think about the problem you're solving and for whom you're solving it. Because the solution may always change. It may look a little bit different, but really think about the people who are using.

service, your product, your technology, your innovation, right? And you'll be successful.

Kyle James (: 38:45

I love that. That's great. Awesome. Well, Julia, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Really appreciate it. I know everybody out there got a lot from this conversation. Everybody out there, we are now on podcast as well as YouTube video. So please like and subscribe and follow us and stay connected because we'll keep doing this as long as you'll keep listening and watching. And until next time, everybody keep building, keep growing and keep playing with new agents. Take care everybody.