MakersHub Pitches at Startup Battlefield | TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

From Park City Utah in Austin Texas we Have Maker's Hub presenting from Maker's Hub is Fang Ying yo and Charlie Howie Bring them on out with a big round of Applause I am Charlie Howe co-founder and President of maker sub makers Hub Provides data enriched accounts payable Operations Good afternoon I'm Charlie Howe this is My partner Fong no and we're excited to Introduce you to makersub makers Hub Provides data enriched accounts payable Operations we enable our customers to Connect their disparate account payable Processes to capture all of their data With no manual entry and to collaborate Across the organization To illustrate the power of this I'd like To introduce you to Trey Cahill Trey's An early customer of ours and the President of Cahill Construction Cahill's large business since Inception They've built more than 1200 projects Transacted with more than ten thousand Vendors and this year alone they'll put Over 20 million dollars of payable Through their books In partnering with Maker's Hub Trey has Saved 70 hours a month on AP tasks Representing a 90 savings we've enabled Real-time job costing for their project Managers and enhance the collaboration Across his organization

If you're a business like Trey operating In the physical world bills and receipts Are the source of Truth for your costs Every time the business gets a bill a Series of jobs need to be performed First the right person or group of People needs to validate that the bill Is valid is this what we ordered did we Receive it in full are there any payment Terms to consider is the pricing correct Next every line I'm on the bill needs to Be coded to the appropriate customer and Job and accounting code and lastly all Of that data needs to be entered into The accounting system This protects against fraud and invalid Payments it allows a business to track Its costs and to bid for future work Precisely and understand its core Drivers Yet the vast majority of businesses Cannot execute these fundamental steps Why is that First bills are hard some are very long Others are structurally complex And some are just a total kitchen sink Second in a hygienic AP process multiple Functions in an organization need to Participate but they're all disconnected So even if you go through the effort of Manually capturing all this data you Cannot pass it from one group to the Next The result for Trey was more than 80

Hours a month of manual date entry Error-prone Double Entry throughout the Process and limited visibility for Management His was not a failure of awareness Either in his words he looked at every Solution a million times that is until He met makersub and we solved this for Him Let's move to the demo and show you how This is possible We're going to process for you in real Time those bills you just saw which will Take 15 to 20 seconds and while we're Doing that I'll explain the technology That powers it First We Take a very Different approach to reading bills we Extract more than 50 000 data points From every page The characters and their relation to one Another Then using spatial mapping and Proprietary indexing we start to make Sense and reconcile that data Further we then expose that partially Reconciled data to a series of Deterministic language models that help Us put a finer point on that Reconciliation Lastly users teach the system by virtue Of their actions in it using localized One-Shot learning The result you can see on the screen On the left hand side is the bill itself

And on the right hand side is makersub Interpretation or reading of this bill Starting on the upper left hand corner Of the right hand panel and moving Clockwise we'll see all of the things That Maker's Hub can read and Contextualize first the vendor Information then all of the bill details The invoice number the due date the Payment terms the PO number Beneath that is the approvers Box Because we can read and contextualize The data we can ensure the smart routing Of this bill only to the people in the Organization who need to review and Opine on it Below that is a customer and job Contextualized suggestion that if Accurate the user can assign to every Line item on the bill with a single Click And there you can see all of the line Item data broken out captured Individually editable if necessary and Pre-coded to the appropriate spot in the Accounting system Once a user has reviewed this and Validated that everything is correct a Single click approves the bill Auto Creates the associated record in the Accounting system and loads the next Bill in the queue The bill now validated is a live account Payable and from the account payables

Tab our users can pay the bill easily Flexibly with a single click to schedule Payments either on the due date or on Whatever date they desire Further since we can read and Contextualize everything that is on a Bill we've extracted net term discount Availability that users can capture and Assign with a single click ensuring that They never pay more than they need to The value of being a fully integrated System is that we can push this Contextual data thread all the way Through the process as you can see on The payment Details page from here the Vendor information the invoice itself The payment amount the authorizers who Validated that the bill was good who Authorized the payment all of the Transaction details the ACH transfer and Or physical check cutting status is here At the fingertips of project managers And accounting folks alike Let's go back to the presentation and We'll conclude As you saw briefly makersub is more than Just better data capture the Comprehensiveness of our workflow Software allows the tech bleeding edge Though it is to fade into the background And for our users to Simply prosecute Their AP tasks more effortlessly and More efficiently The result for Trey is a more efficient

Workforce better data for the Organization and greater confidence in His financial operations We are confident that there will be Thousands more like him thank you very Much And an extra clef for me for ending on Time thank you okay Rebecca do you want To start with you sure so this is a Really exciting category with lots of Companies attacking it because it's a Big problem but how do you think about Differentiation and the competitive Landscape who do you anticipate yourself Running into and how are you going to Cut through the noise Sure uh the way that we think of that is That though there are many people Participating in this space according to Our users there are not many people who Are successfully offering what we offer At the level of granularity detail and Complexity that we are I think what our Users would say is that there's not a Saturation of Solutions in the category There's a such a saturation of promises That have fallen short of what our user Base needs and that's not necessarily For every business we believe the Um you know the market is sufficiently Gigantic to build a huge company but There are many companies who just want To get the bill paid dump it all into Expense account and that's completely

Fine for our users where there's mission Criticality to capturing this Information coding it appropriately so They can leverage it for business Purposes there are not a wealth of Options for them today Okay we'll go tomorrow and then Sam Um I loved how you started with the Customer and talked about how you're Solving the needs of this one particular Customer it really brought it to life For me I'd love to hear what the kind of Big Vision if everything goes right what Does it look like in 10 years Sure I mean we think that there's Millions of businesses that look like Trey there's you know a huge host of Industry types that this is very Relevant for construction Trade Services Wholesale Services Manufacturing really any industrial Style business that cares about line Item attribution and needs to do that For the proper functioning of their Business needs this solution wants this Solution they throw manual resources at It today or they can see to not being Able to throw manual resources at it Today and Flying Blind A really nice job I thought the demo was Uh very cool to see thank you um just to Piggyback on the competitive landscape Question and in your comments around it Uh lots of AP like Solutions on the

Market today what would you say is your 10x feature or the thing that is really Like the aha moment when somebody sees a Product demo yeah when they see their Invoices go in or their bills go in and The quality and depth and Comprehensiveness of the extraction that Is not something that anyone we have Ever shown the platform to accounting Professionals AP professionals Controllers has ever seen or said oh Been down that road before XYZ offers This onto the next we have never heard That once because we don't believe it Exists Frederick so I love that you you can Explain to different verticals I think This is very powerful to be able to Duplicate it to to the different Verticals what is your go-to market and How are you going to tackle uh Addressing different verticals in very Fragmented uh category yeah we're going To address it very deliberately and in Staged Ambitions so the first go to Market approach is to sell to outsourced Bookkeepers accounting firms CPAs Etc Who specialize in doing outsourced Bookkeeping for the segments that we Care about construction firms Manufacturing firms things of that elk From there that's already Even in our Very early stage had the network effect Of saying okay I am a bookkeeper I've

Got eight construction firms I also have A flower shop and they actually Fundamentally run their business exactly The same way that these construction Firms do and this is a good solution for Them as well so we're starting with the One-to-many approach of getting those Accounting professionals behind us They've been delighted by it so far Because oftentimes they're the ones who Are viscerally experiencing this pain Directly as opposed to the tray in this Case Thank you Danielle Um two quick questions well first of all Thank you very much for being here that Was wonderful Um One what is your traction to date so With respect to error Revenue Um and then two would love to learn more About both of your backgrounds as well Sure uh I'll truncate the history for You but we founded the company in February of 22 set out to solve this Problem but from an adjacent starting Point I've been working on what you saw Today for approximately a year we Started q1 of this year with a handful Of design Partners we now have mid-20s To 30 live customers who are operating All of their AP through the platform Represents about 10 million dollars a Month as of last month in processed

Volume Um my background is in financial Services I spent almost 20 years at Citibank and Fong I'm a mini Trace I Used to run an equipment manufacturing Business where I'd be a variety of Production facility for automotive Aerospace and as engineering and Manufacturing specialized that we was The back office was a major problem for Us it wasn't something I could solve Ultimately impeded the grow because we Could not put a handle on what we were Doing on how well we were doing and That's the kind of problem the small and Medium-sized businesses could not have a Solution that they can afford today and That what set us out to build this Solution for great thanks any last Question Sam uh just real quickly on the Monetization strategy I think the Customer was Cahill maybe how much does A company like that do you expect them To generate in revenue for the business And then lots of sort of creative ways That you could monetize do you expect to Get into the flow of funds do you expect To get into lending uh any any sort of Vision there yeah so tray pays Approximately 6 Grand a year in just Software licensing that's not our Grand Vision we are in the flow of funds today We're not monetizing the flow of funds But as you can see we occupy a very

Powerful perch in that flow of funds in A very sticky perch by virtue of the Solution that we give to Trey how and in Which ways we choose to push the levers Of either transaction based monetization That's not our preferred one but being Either a lending perch or a verse Factoring perch or something of that Nature things that we're going to Evaluate with the benefit of more data And more time okay thank you very much Give them a round of applause Thank you