How do you hold a seed investor to a handshake deal?

Episode 83 - Jess Loren Transcript Jason Kirby (00:01.954) Hey everyone, welcome back to Fundraising Demystified. Today I'm excited to have Jess Loren on the show with us, the founder and CEO of Global Objects, based out of LA, whom we actually met through our newsletter, Fundraising Demystified, when we did a special on Women's Month or what it's like to raise for women in the US. And I'm excited that she's on the show to share her story. Jess Loren (00:25.333) It's hard, Jason, it's hard. Thanks for reading my email. Jason Kirby (00:27.31) Well, I am, yeah, definitely want to talk about that and the story of what it's like raising capital as a female entrepreneur in today's market. But I think for, know, to kind of kick things off, I would love for you to kind of tell everyone a little bit about what it's like being in LA as a woman raising capital. Jess Loren (00:49.183) Being a woman in LA in general is an interesting concept, but being a woman in LA in a startup raising capital, now we're adding levels here, Jason. So, you know, I think it's, we're in the show me, you know, show me, show me, show me city. So I think it's just showing up. You know, I go to every networking event that I could possibly think of and I've created a community. So, you know, I operate in the tech space as well as in the entertainment space. So I am a producer by trade first and foremost and then got into tech and entertainment. So I'm in the academy. Yes, I'm an academy member and then I was like I joined the board. So I was able to do that and I organized events for the academy. So then I got into more events and then I'm also on the visual effects society. and then also was just recently voted into the board. So I'm now on the board and handle events for visual effects society. And I'm also part of the producers guild. So I really take a stand in becoming integrated into communities, into a sector that I wanna flourish in. So having those connections and being able to ask people, well, I need to get to this person or this person. So on the entertainment side, I've really done an interesting job of getting into the boards and, offering as much as I can to the community. So I have a large studio here in North Hollywood. I open it up quite often for education events and bringing people, and it's all about community. On the tech side, taking what I knew in entertainment, created an event called the Production Summit. So kind of bringing in the world of tech and entertainment together. Production Summit, we've been doing it since this year will be our fourth year. And I've worked with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and AMD on that. particular event. I also wanted to ingrain myself into tech and find who works in media and entertainment on that side. And obviously what's happening in AI in media is a large conversation across the board. So we talk a lot about those topics in production summit every year as well. So community is very important to me and getting on boards and getting involved. Jason Kirby (02:59.65) When do you have time to build the company? Jess Loren (03:02.325) So Jason, I'm also a mother of three. So that is something. So I do have to balance family time and travel time and the company and then my commitments to community and boards. So it's a lot. I think we have agents now, right? Agents. I personally am definitely taking those and using them to the best of my ability and helping with my schedule. I have a lovely project manager assistant and an amazing team. So we just make it work. Jason Kirby (03:40.686) And, you know, just, I'm sure everyone's curious, like, you know, are you building these agentic AI solutions for yourself? Are you having your team build them for you, hiring them out? Like, how are you creating the time with that kind of schedule and commitments? Jess Loren (03:56.671) feel that the best agents can only be built by yourself because you know yourself the best. actually had an opportunity to speak with his name is John Weisner and he's a global black belt for Microsoft for high performance compute and AI. And he said it best to me the other day. He's like, Jess, co-pilot is the UI for AI. So like the simplistic form. he said he, Satya had said that to him in a crowd. So it's credit to Satya, but I heard it from John. But I did want to say, you know, it just really boiled it down for me of like, okay, my user interface, how can I make the best thing for me? Well, only I can do that. So, you know, for mine, I've uploaded five years of emails that I personally wrote prior to, you know, things being able to be written for me. I took as many text messages that I could find that I've written. I've written a book. I uploaded my book. So anything that I had crafted or created or presentations that I had done, I put into my particular model. And I have to tell you, it is very good. It has down to, I'm very bubbly and quirky. It knows my jokes and it's done a really great job. So have I deployed it yet to answer my emails? No. But what it does, it can set up a suggested email reply. in your inbox and kind of sit in your drafts you can send it out from there. So there's little things that you can set up now that I don't think the everyday person necessarily knows about yet, but it's coming. The robots are coming. The robots are here. I'm ready. Go ahead. Jason Kirby (05:28.686) I know it's amazing. No, it's just amazing. It's just like for me, it's like, do I find the time to like, you know, get that, you know, get caught. pyrolysis by analysis of like, how do I make this like tweak tweak? And I'm like, okay, this is highest and best use of time. I had like stop myself because it's so cool. So much fun to kind of like go in and try to optimize your digital twin, which we've seen so much content on. I'm like, okay, how do I, how do I go about doing this? then next thing I'm buried, you know, trying to crank out things that actually, you know, keep the lights on. But Jess Loren (05:54.697) Yeah. Jess Loren (05:59.925) My entire business is about digital twins. that's all I eat, sleep, breathe, everything now. Jason Kirby (06:06.294) Well, let's talk about it. For context for the audience, tell them little bit about global objects. Jess Loren (06:13.215) Yeah, so at Global Objects, we're digitizing the world. And I know that sounds like a great big job, right? But if you boil it down and going back to like Noah's Ark, say when you're trying to take two copies of all the animals on the planet, stick them in a boat to make sure you have preservation, right? So that's what we're trying to do for the digital world is we are scanning real life items like this calculator that I have on my desk, scanning it. We do it with blue laser, photometrics, photogrammetry. LIDAR, and then we have a photorealistic digital twin. And that digital twin right now is we use it for media entertainment. So we place it into worlds to create digital sets. But these twins are also good for manufacturing, for training, simulation, and the future of robotics like we're talking about here today. So the robot can understand how to grab this, not crush it, to make it very simple. So. Why did I come up with this idea is I came from tech, got into entertainment, melded those worlds for tech and entertainment. And I saw the event of the show, The Mandalorian. And that was created through a process called virtual production. And my husband is one of the world's best visual effects artists. And I said, how can we take your knowledge base with mine, with entrepreneurship, tech, and now entertainment, how can we create a company where I said to him, said, I want to press a button and I want to be in our living room and go to Egypt. How can we make this happen? Like you understand light, you understand everything to do with how the camera reacts for visual effects and all of that. How can we do that? So we had we had reached out to many different people. We got it. L.O.I. for twenty million dollars to open our own virtual production stage. We then found out I got pregnant. So it just wasn't like the right time for me. And to be honest, the person who gave us CLOI wasn't the right group for us. So it just didn't feel like the best fit. So I'm a woman. I base a lot of things on my feelings or my hunches or, it just, great. Everyone's like, my God, we got $20 million. It wasn't the right fit. So we said no. My husband did not want to say no. Let me tell you. Jess Loren (08:35.221) But what we learned is, OK, if we had opened this stage, COVID happened. So we would have opened the stage, and then the pandemic came in, and we would have been sitting there with a beautiful stage with no one to film inside of it at that time, that particular time. But what we said is, said to Eric, the original story concept is I want to press the button and be in Egypt. OK, I understand that we need the walls for that, but who's making that content? Jason Kirby (08:35.884) Yeah. Jess Loren (09:04.723) And where are people going to have that library of content to go to Egypt? And so that's how we came up the idea of global objects is to create environments and to collect and scan the world of environments, as well as all of the objects that exist in the world in the most photorealistic way possible. So when we raised our seed, we set out into R &D motive to figure out photoreal. So through our process of blue laser and photometrics and photogrammetry and what we're doing with LiDAR and now with Splats, we've spent quite a bit of time figuring that out and we have delivered on that promise of photoreal with all of our digital twins where we have interest from Microsoft and HP and Nvidia and all the big names that you want to be associated with. We have that right now. Jason Kirby (09:58.466) Well, think what it does to training models and training robots and when you actually have the accuracy in terms of color, depth, weight, you know, versus what would be generated in say like a video game, like Unreal Engine that, you know, easy for people to create those assets, but to have the actual real asset could be a lot more material value to a greater landscape of. Jess Loren (10:19.669) Exactly. If the future of our world is we're going to put it in the hands of robots, I want those robots to understand the best version of the world, right? And do we really want them training on, you know, data that was supposed to be or created by an artist and maybe there was an artistic expression on that data? You know, we want to make sure that the data is based on the real world, that things that actually existed. So that's what we're building our data set on is the real world. Jason Kirby (10:49.582) So let's talk about this. You got a $20 million term sheet. You said, no, seems like it played out for the best. Um, but then you decided that you, you know, one of the continued to pursue this and you need to go raise a seed round, which you raised five, walk the audience through kind of when you realize that you needed to raise money and kind of what was your process to go and secure that capital. Jess Loren (11:10.975) Yeah, so when we turned down the 20 million, that wasn't an easy decision. But I had my child and then COVID. The pandemic was actually a great time for my family because I was able to be home, kind of being a mom for the first time. So it worked out for me. But in wanting to get back into the workplace and kind the advent of what was next for us, it was this content play. And we understood that in order to capture the content, we needed pretty expensive equipment and we needed labor. So we needed more than him and I at the time. So we started having conversations with the communities that we've built in Los Angeles of who's interested in this type of content or who's interested in just the new virtual world. So it happened that we had been talking about potentially wanting to connect with the Roman Catholic Church. when we had said, what's the most magnificent thing that you could scan? And we were like, a church or like, you know, just like the think of like the stained glass windows and all of that. So we're like, that's amazing. Let's do a church. We're like, who do we know that knows someone at the Vatican or who knows the pope? Right. It's like no small question. Like, who knows the pope? Right. But it just so happens that we put it out into the universe and what came back was someone who had a direct contact to someone that meets with the Pope monthly. So right away we had a connection in and our proposal was presented to the Pope and it was approved. And then we had to go into working with Vatican and many different layers and we're still in those layers. But during that process, we found someone who was a very dedicated Catholic and who believed in the mission of wanting to preserve history and culture. So our investor is local to California and he has this pride in his religion and his belief set. And when I said to him, listen, we want to digitize the Vatican and the churches. Jess Loren (13:34.687) but then there's also this larger story about the world. He believed in that. And one of the funny comments I said to him was, so he comes from farming and manufacturing vehicles that are used for agriculture. So obviously here in California, we have a of almonds and he makes the units that you put agriculture almonds into. And he also owns a lot of land. I said, you own land, you understand real property. I said, I want to be a digital land bearer. I want to own the digital land around the world. And that's what he understood. So there was this connection to us wanting to scan churches and then also the connection to real land versus physical digital land. And he understood that too. So I think when talking to investors, you have to figure out who they are. What do they care about? Jason Kirby (14:12.504) Thank Jess Loren (14:34.473) And then frame it with what you're doing, if it makes sense. And don't lie or don't make shit up. Just frame it in a way that it's understood to them and what they resonate with. Jason Kirby (14:46.03) So you took a very non-standard capital raising approach that you put your mission out to the world, got connected to the right person and a high network of individuals. So this is one check from one person. Whereas your typical technology seed stage company is going out pitching 100 VCs. Did you try that path at all or did this just kind of work out in your favor? Jess Loren (15:10.087) No. know, a unicorn, you know, I call a gene my investor. He's our unicorn. But I will say, you know, we still had those same moments in the early days of when we showed him the business, we took him to a big conference so he could see that we are known in the industry and we got all the paperwork to him. And then, you know, he got cold feet like many investors do. And he tried to jellyfish away. But here's what happened. He shook my hand. And we did the deal and he shook my hand. And I called him up and I said, Gene, he shook my hand. Are you a man of your word? And I left it at that. And the next day he sent the money and the paperwork arrived. So Gene is the man of his word. He has kept to it. He is a great investor. And we're going to our next round. So we're raising $25 million now. Jason Kirby (15:54.542) Thanks. Jess Loren (16:09.557) We have a commitment from Microsoft that if we find a lead, they will come in alongside them. For this approach, it's a little bit different. Going back to AI, we are a Microsoft startup. Gosh, I'm going to reveal my secrets now to Microsoft. But on their platform, when you are in their startup platform, they have this drop-down list and they want you to tell them who you're working with or who you're interested in. all the venture capital firms or anyone that Microsoft deems worthy. I go in and I try and copy this, it's like a dropdown list and I try and copy this list. I can't copy it. Then I just do screen grabs of this entire list. It's 260 firms. I'm like, oh shit, this is going to take me forever to find out who. I took all the images, I threw it into AI and it created the alphabetical list for me. Jason Kirby (17:02.734) Yeah, doesn't matter if you don't. Jess Loren (17:05.301) And then I applied deep research to it. I said, want, you know, who's the one doing the deals? I want their email cross-reference with LinkedIn. You know, are they likely to invest in us? Yes or no. Give it a value score. So I have this immensely data rich set now of exactly who Microsoft would be willing to work for, work with. It's 260 firms and I have contact info. and that it also weighted who is more likely to talk to us versus less likely. that's my next version and that's what we're actively in right now. Jason Kirby (17:42.99) Nah, well, could have saved you probably a little bit of hassle and time with the Thunder platform. You just input your data and then we get that all to you right. You just input your data on the company. So founders come in and they give us their company data. And then within about 10, 15 seconds, we output all the founder, all the VCs that are relevant to them, score to them with the probability that they'll take a meeting. So we take a probability score of zero to a hundred of how likely. Jess Loren (17:49.992) really? Okay. Jess Loren (18:04.693) okay. Jason Kirby (18:12.48) a founder or how a VC would take a meeting with a founder. So, and then yeah, can download that list, get all the contact information, or you can reach out through the platform. that's kind of like technology things that we belt at our firm too. Jess Loren (18:17.383) interesting. Okay. Jess Loren (18:23.027) Okay. Well, that's an easier solution to my problem. I took the path harder traveled, but most entrepreneurs like to make it challenging on themselves. Jason Kirby (18:33.23) What do do? DIY is the name of the game for most founders. that's why we have a DIY solution that just, hey, just save yourself a little bit of time. You're going to do that kind of process like I've been there. But it's just a lot easier. Just put a couple data points, get what you need, and then get back to building. But quick little shameless plug for Thunder. Jess Loren (18:39.124) Yes. Jess Loren (18:52.361) Amazing. Jason Kirby (18:58.37) So, okay, this is, this is fascinating in terms of what you're able to do in terms of securing the investment from Gene. Now you're moving on to the next bigger round and you have this kind of play into the robotics and AI space now that you're kind of digitizing the real world. So when it came to kind of building in LA and being a woman entrepreneur, what kind of friction points did you come across that you felt, you know, maybe your account, your male counterparts didn't have to go through? Jess Loren (19:30.229) know, friction points for me have been, there's still, and I don't wanna like generalize in saying that all men or, you know, view women as beneath them, but I've definitely experienced it of, you know, I was having a conversation with someone the other day and they're like, oh, you know, women are such special creatures. And I was like, really? I'm a special creature. Okay, thanks. So I, yeah, I mean, and I might want to say that like, Jason Kirby (19:55.106) Yeah, I can't do that. Jess Loren (19:59.853) women and men are equal in all ways. And I wouldn't say from my principles in the way I was raised or how I see the world, I don't think, you know, we are one to one. But I do think in the business sense that I can effectively run a company as well as my male counterpart. You know, so for me, I think I've run into some situations where other men don't feel the same. And I think that we've seen that in the research of who invests in. female-led startups. I think you put the stats in your email, and that's what prompted me to respond. It's interesting. We trust in women or mothers to raise children, raise everyone in the world, but we don't trust them to raise or put together a company. it's interesting. I've run into situations where I've felt belittled. or, you know, and I've just taken it, I use humor and I use resonance. So I try to resonate with people or whoever I'm sitting across the table for, from, how can I connect with them in the most authentic way possible, you know? So if someone is just completely giving me a wall and I can't break through, then they're not the person for me. So then I know to walk away, you know? So I think for me, it's again, going back to my feelings. and going back to just, you trust your gut. That's how I find people I know I can work with, be successful with. And I'm someone that always delivers, right? So if I say we're gonna do something, it may take some time, but I'm gonna deliver on it. So I jokingly tell you that I'm gonna be the world's first digital land bearness, but mark my words, I'm gonna own a lot of digital land. Jason Kirby (21:50.636) Hahaha. Jason Kirby (21:54.67) to the day we'll have you back on the podcast where you get to read that title. So you bring up really just, I would say generally practical advice, know, male or female in terms of, you you use the word feelings, but at end of the day, it's a gut feeling of whether or not you align with a VC or an investor of some kind or a potential partner of just being able to, you do you feel like this person gets you and is going to give you the rope to go and run and build the company and need to go build? Jess Loren (22:23.957) Exactly. Key there. Will they give you the rope to run? And in gene, I found that for my first, you know, investor. And that's so important, right? Because that's going to set up your standard of how you're going to be able to do what you need to do. And as the founder, you have this vision, right? And you need someone that can support that vision behind you. Jason Kirby (22:46.894) Yeah, it's mission critical. lot of founders just don't, they go to the traditional path. Who's going to throw me money? You know, who's just going to put money in my bank account and then, you know, don't really think about the ramifications of the term sheet. They want the higher valuation and they don't look at the terms and then, you know, they don't really trust their gut in terms of like, maybe there's something off here. And then, you know, one bad month, two bad months, and then that whole relationship dynamic can just completely flip. And that's when you kind of see the true colors of that, you know, partner or investor that. makes things a little bit more difficult when maybe the trajectory of whatever was originally planned has to change a little bit. Jess Loren (23:22.055) It kills your vibe. kills your momentum. And then your whole team feels that, right? Like if you're their leader and your vibe is killed, well, that's going to trickle down. You know, so you need to make sure that just like feelings and the whole structure that you set up around you is as best as you can make it. And yes, finding money is incredibly hard, right? So if you get a term chain, you're like, my gosh, yes, this is finally. But then deep down, you're like, Ooh, you feel it. It's right, it's down over here. You can feel it. You're like, oh, oh, Trust it. Trust it. Because it's just going to leave you to more problems in the future. Or your place first. Jason Kirby (23:50.67) Yeah. Jason Kirby (23:58.774) or your appendix burst, either way. Both are bad. And so when you, let's talk a little bit about your background before Global Objects. So you're a serial entrepreneur, not your first go around. Jess Loren (24:12.767) Yeah. Not my first rodeo. Jason Kirby (24:18.51) So tell us a little bit about kind of your time back in Chicago building your first company and then kind of what led you to coming to LA to launch Global Objects. Jess Loren (24:25.663) Yeah, sure. It was interesting in college. I never felt like I had a home. They didn't really have entrepreneurship programs back then or the true sense of what it means to be an entrepreneur. so I had knew what was called Tipper at the time. It came out of a company called Inner Workings, which is like a white-labeled solution for print. There was a gentleman who was creating what became known as Grubon. And I saw what they were building with, it was Tipping Point that became Grubon. I saw what they were building and thought it was an interesting concept. And let's call a spade a spade. I copied the idea, but added an element of video. So what we built was, if you saw a deal, we would go out to that restaurant and film the ambiance. We would see the chef in the back. making the food and serving the table. And we called that concept Shy Town Deals. Again, I was local to Chicago. at the time, that was before you could game the system in social media. So we had more followers. We had more engagement. We had more likes. We had more everything than Groupon had. And they had all this investment, right? So it was interesting. Yeah. Very quickly we had an LOI from the Trubing company, but in the end we wound up selling to a company called Tipper based out of Seattle. So very quickly I built and sold ChiTown deals at the time. And what I learned in that process was I had done very well with organic social media and the growth of social media. So from there I created a... a white labeled solution for social media. We called it Mixed Media Solutions, grew that company. And then I went through an aqua hire with a company called Legacy Marketing Partners. And then I came on to run, I had a big fancy title at 27. I guess I sold my second company at that point. And I went to work for all of their brands doing digital social. Jess Loren (26:46.645) campaigns. I worked a lot with Absolute and Jameson and kind of the whole print over card brand. We did Kmart and Sears and I got to work with a lot of amazing, you know, blue chip level brands. Hindsight's 2020 when you sell your second company and you've always been your boss and then you enter a larger organization through this aqua hire process. And again, you're 27, you've got some money now. You don't really want a boss. So I had my lawyer kind of negotiate out of that. They weren't seeing eye to eye with me. I wasn't seeing eye to eye with them. So we parted ways. And then I just took some time off. But my parents finally agreed that I did have a job. So that was good. After selling yourself a job. Jason Kirby (27:36.878) I think I'll about to like 28 to have that conversation with my parents after multiple companies. Jess Loren (27:44.989) Good job, I'm a dad, so that's good. And then I, you know, I just fast forward. When I was dating someone, I went to a conference in Vegas. I met my now future husband. And we have children, and I have the ring, but we just never had the wedding because the pandemic got in the way. But we're finally getting married this year. So yeah, so I call him my husband. you know, we've been together for seven years. Jason Kirby (28:07.138) No laugh. Jess Loren (28:13.301) Again, we met in Vegas and kind of love at first sight type thing and I moved to California. So I had been in Chicago. He lived here meeting in Vegas. So then I was immersed in the world of entertainment and he comes from a background of being a visual effects supervisor and artists worked on big films like Titanic and Jurassic Park and kind of, yeah, yeah. Jason Kirby (28:41.006) Right, guess. Jess Loren (28:43.697) So, you know, he sees the world and he was a child actor as well. So he sees the world in pixels and, you know, how do we make the best version of what we're looking at? And I had also written a book about how the brain reacts to imagery during my time at my second kind of acquisition because I was, you know, representing social media. And how does the brain react to imagery and specifically Pinterest? was something and I actually hold my book. So this is my book, Pinterest or Business, but this is this is back in gosh, 20, 2011 or 2012. But the book actually allowed me to travel around the world and give keynote speeches. And so this was a great. So if you're an entrepreneur, books still exist, they still are paper and they help get you speaking gigs. So I will tell that say that about books. Jason Kirby (29:23.427) No, I'm Jess Loren (29:40.723) But back to my story, we were talking, I got lost, Jason. Where was I? Jason Kirby (29:47.138) Okay. It's amazing to kind of hear the origin story and just how you navigated your first couple of exits and the typical story of a post exit, a founder of ending up at the choir. Jess Loren (30:02.513) right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they wound up in LA. And then my future husband was in entertainment. And that's how I wound up in entertainment. So with anything I do in my life, I just want to be the best at it. And not like the best like egotistically, just like the best for me. Right. So and I do a lot of that through community. I find strength in teams and group. And I tend to do like to be the leader of the group. But I want to hear from the group and be a part of the group as well. Dived into entertainment. like, you know, I looked at the requirements. you know, the Television Academy, Emmys, how do you become a member? What does that look like? You know, and you have to meet so many different credits. So was like, all right, as fast as I possibly could, I was like, get me these credits. You know, I want to work hard. I want to do the thing. And I was very quickly able to do that. And, you know. people can say, well, you had the connection with your husband. Yes, I did. So I'm very fully aware of my access. And I realized that that's not always easy for some people coming into Hollywood. So I was able to get in the Academy and then worked really hard. And I will say, my husband is not in the producers guild. And I did that on my own. And I got my executive producer titles without him. Jason Kirby (31:19.48) Fair enough. Well, I do want to talk about this a little bit more because that was something you kind of hit on in the very beginning of just how you got to where you are. Like you didn't just walk in the door open. Like you fought your way to kind of get to, to be on the board and be a leader in the positions. like, so this is something I did very aggressively earlier in my career in terms of joining these like kind of more, my case is more local communities for my business. But, like, what would you tell the founders that maybe they're in a particular industry? And whether it's access to clients, partners, investors or whatever, how did you go about, you know, kind of identifying these communities and knowing that this is where you need to invest your time where maybe both personally beneficial, but also professionally. Jess Loren (32:05.621) Yeah, so again, it's all events for me. Events has been the key to my success. And you can do keyword searches for events. Or with AI, you could just train your robot to say, hey, make sure I go to these events. So there's things like Luma and Eventbrite and Partiful. Just make sure you have that on your phone. And specific to your industry. So say you're like, I don't know, you're in roofing, right? I don't know anything to do about roofing, but if there's organizations that are having events about roofing or all the things that are connected to roofing, like all of the vendors or house building or real estate, I would go to that specific event about roofing, but then I'd also branch out to real estate or manufacturing of whatever it is to make shingles for the roof. Find all those events and go to them and go meet people. Like, say hi, smile. Look people in the eye, smile, say hello. Most people will talk to you. They're not gonna be assholes, I promise. Jason Kirby (33:12.718) But when you joined these groups, did you have your eye on the prize of being on the board, being a leader before kind of really immersing yourself or did it kind of natively come about? Jess Loren (33:22.601) Yeah, no, I think I'm a very personable person and getting into events. I like bringing people together to have a good time and to educate each other. So I think it just was a process of like, specifically to the Visual Effects Society, they had asked me like, hey, we'd love for you to run for a board seat. And then I did. then that process of running was very important to me. So I was asked and then I'm like, OK, I'm going to do this. So then. I became annoyingly about it on LinkedIn. So I created all these images of Jess for VES and I posted every day until the vote was happening. And people remember that, right? Like you have to see something seven times to take action, they say. So I made sure I was posting multiple times a day. And LinkedIn for me has been a huge success throughout my career. And LinkedIn's obviously been around for a while now, but I think LinkedIn, I've always been active about posting about what I'm up to. But always in relation to career and sector and not too much personal stuff, but how does it relate back to my career and posting on there has been super helpful and people remember that. So if you see a trend with me, it's how do I resonate with people? And then it's all about community and connecting and just being personable. Jason Kirby (34:43.81) persistent, and, and, and maniacal focus, I think is also a key attributes that maybe you skipped over there. when it comes to like, all right, so I want to bring this up. I, I'm a big believer in like repetition. talked to so many founders that feel like, all right, well, I did it three times. And that's like, you know, like it speaks a little bit more like, you know, it's a common advertising, you know, trip up just like the seven points of contact. It's so important. Jess Loren (34:45.085) And persistent, yes, that's it. Jason Kirby (35:12.558) But so many founders are afraid they're like, oh, it's gonna be annoying or like, you know, like I don't want to do cold email I have this with my team like we do cold email for a million things and it's like Can't just send one email like life happens people get busy So like what's your what's your kind of advice to like founders? I need to get over that that hop and Jess Loren (35:31.445) Fear is a real thing, right? Fear of being embarrassed, fear of seeing yourself as being annoying. And I just had to get over that, right? Like, so this example that I just gave about running for the visual effects board, the visual effects society board, I posted so many times, but I don't know how the LinkedIn algorithm works, right? So how do I know if I'm, it's not reaching every single person every single time that I'm posting, right? So. I just had to be proactive and get through the fear of, okay, I'm gonna post this three times a day, seven days before the election happens, right? And yeah, it might seem annoying, it might seem cutesy, or it might seem whatever it is, but who gives a shit? Why do we care what other people think if we're, if the goal for me is to be successful and to get that thing, well, then why am I worried about what other people are thinking when they're not doing it, right? So they have that fear. So you have to break through the fear. Don't, and the algorithm, promise you, is not gonna send it to all those people every single time. You're not that annoying, promise. Jason Kirby (36:36.129) Yeah, exactly. Jason Kirby (36:40.533) Even when you think about Facebook ads, they show kind of like the frequency rate and it's like 1.5, 2. It's just like spending thousands of dollars targeting a very specific audience and they see it like one or two times. So I think it's always important to remind founders to keep being persistent. Even with emails, like when I reach out to investors on our client's behalf or when we're setting up meetings with them, it's usually the third email that gets the highest response rate. Like we have like our close contacts, that, you know, always reliable, very quick to make, know, communicate first emails, always fine. like the ones we haven't seen in like six months, a year, and you kind of have to like, you know, pop back up and like, Hey, this is actually important. Can you take, you know, just take, take another look. and they're like, Hey, sorry, I got busy. My bad. I'm the same. Like, if you don't follow up with me, I'm like, wasn't that important? Jess Loren (37:08.181) Hmm? Jess Loren (37:27.057) Exactly! Yes! Jess Loren (37:32.917) Well, you know, we talked about earlier in the chat that I've created this, you know, this agent of me, right? So now I, if I'm not like feeling the best about myself that day, I asked my robot, you know, like, Hey, I need to follow up with this person. Here's the chain and put it like, what's a, what's a funny, quick comment I can send to them, you know, and, and, my bot will give me something now to do. So it's funny that like, I have this win of myself, right, in the digital space, to when I'm not feeling my best that day, it could still be the best of me to put out in the jink. Jason Kirby (38:14.744) Very, very well said. So going back to the investor side of things and raising money for what could be perceived as more like in the media industry, obviously it's a technology company, loud and clear, but you know, selling in the media industry, like I've worked with countless companies that are in or adjacent to that sector. And it's usually often a grind. Like there's not a lot of, I would say traditional VC interest in that category. Have you seen that kind of sentiment? Like what's your take on that? Jess Loren (38:46.217) Yeah, so I think that's where we decided to implement other areas of our business. we're actually never did we ever think we were going to get into hardware, but we are actually developing our own scanning unit. So we are building out a unit that has blue laser, photometrics and photogrammetry in a sphere. So imagine what we see for the web 3.0 and what's happening and everything needing to be 3D. is imagine every FedEx Kinko's in the world will have one of our units where you can input your coasters, your object into our unit. We can scan it for you and then we have that data and we can output a 3D asset for you to put wherever it is. Whatever the future of spatial content is, is what we really see coming down the pipe. One of the things that we have also talked about is how do we get all of our units into every we work in the world, right? Where everyone needs their, the future, we've taken pictures of everything. I'm trying to grab stuff, we pictures of everything. here's sunglasses, here we got some sunglasses on my desk. How do we take these and make the 3D file of whatever it is that you have to put into the 3.0 web? And that's something that we didn't necessarily think about when we created the company, but it's something that we can create a pipeline for and revenue chain to appease investors. Jason Kirby (40:24.204) And was that, do you feel like you were kind of put in position to innovate in that area because of investor feedback? Jess Loren (40:33.461) Yes, I think there's definitely been investor feedback of, we were essentially going to create a platform, you similar to like a TurboSquid or what have you with a subscription model. But then we were like, well, how do we get the, know, if we're the only ones scanning and putting into that library, that's going to take us forever. Right. So how do we multiply that? And we're like, oh, well, if we, you know, we've developed this proprietary scanner that we have sitting in front of us. Well, light bulb went off, right? Like, well, why don't we just productize? this thing that we've built so other people can use it and train on it. And that's been seemingly successful for us because we now have interests from like advertising agencies who are like, well, you know, we do all these photo shoots, right? Well, the future of of that is generative AI. But what we found with generative AI is that the best input is 3D data. You know, obviously they're trying to train on 2D data. But if you've got the 3D data set, well, that's even better to produce your generative things and the future of generative AI is, I believe, 3D. Jason Kirby (41:35.938) Well, H just announced their generative AI model campaign for the models on their website using generative AI as opposed to actual models, which is going to be, I would say, one of the more disruptive use cases we've seen in a large scale commercial aspect, which is pretty exciting. So that exact use case. Jess Loren (41:50.889) Yeah. Jess Loren (41:57.525) As a member of the Academy, have to be honest in saying that I try to stay away from humans because I understand the sensitivities around what SAG is trying to fight against with likeness. I am proud to say that SAG did approve. worked on a film where we hand scanned actors and maintained their likely, their likeness, and it worked out well. So working within those parameters, but I am not. focusing on digital humans, because that is a lot. Jason Kirby (42:34.222) Political answer, well done. Well, Jess, it's been really fun having you on the show. Loved your energy. As we part here, what would be your advice to other female entrepreneurs looking to build the next big tech company and attract outside investment? Jess Loren (42:52.415) would say to other entrepreneurs looking to raise money that there is more help out there than you would even imagine. You just have to be willing to ask for it. So if you wake up in the morning and you have dread and fear, swallow it, swallow it, swallow it, and get out there and pump yourself up. Look yourself in the mirror. Look deep into your eyes and say, you can do this. You've got this. Manifest that shit. And community, go to the events. Be there. Show up. and ask for what you want, you know, and you're not annoying, promise you're not annoying. Jason Kirby (43:28.066) I love that. Yeah, it's really true. It's like, you know, if you're actually coming out and you're leading with value, trying to add value to the world and you ask for what you want, most people are in line to work and support that effort. you know, specifically, you know, from my experience, having been built my businesses in the US for so many years and now coming to the UK where it's like that, what you just described as organic in US culture, in capital raising, entrepreneurship, or here in the UK, it's like, It's starting, but like, historically, it's never been that way. Like you go out and ask for help. It's like, like, what do mean? Like, go back, get back in line to where you were, you know, kind of thing. It goes to, you know, like, here, like, take my hand, let me lift you up. Which was more of that my experience in the U S where you put your hand out and people want to lift you up. And, you know, here in Europe and UK, it's, it's not that it doesn't exist. It's just not as common as you would say in the U S. Jess Loren (44:05.941) I'll leave you soon. Jason Kirby (44:25.312) an interesting experience that I have noticed since being here for about a year. Jess Loren (44:29.493) No, amazing. Yeah, I think I would also say, knowing your place. Like, I don't... Someone was saying to me the other day about what type of CEO are you? Are you the zero to 50, you know, the 50 to 100? We're talking about people and size. And I really thought about it and I was like, you know, I don't know that I always want to be the CEO of this company because I want to be the best for that time and place of where we are in the company. And if ever there is a time, I'm not going to let my ego or hubris get involved. involved. Like, if it's time for me to be the founder or to just be the evangelist of the company, I understand that and I'm willing to accept that. And I don't know if that's more of a female thing where we can understand our place in time of where the company is at. Like, I'm not the best. I'm not the smartest. I am not this or that. I know what I am and I know what I'm not. And am I the best evangelist for the company at the time? Yes. Did I raise the money? Yes. Did I get Gene to shake my hand and call him out on it? Yes. I did all of those things. But do I want this to be a billion dollar company? Yes. I actually also believe in my dreams. I believe in my gut. That's actually what my sign says. I see it in my dreams. And actually on my wall there. As a kid, to get my brothers and sisters to do chores, I created what are called Jess Bucks, and I would hand out money to them to do my chores for me. And then all of the things that I no longer wanted in, you know, as a kid growing up, I set up a store in my closet and they would go buy my old things with Jess Bucks. So here at Global Objects, we've created a system to earn equity called Go Bucks. And those are some Go Bucks on the wall. and I wrote on there 1.7 billion and I had everyone sign it. So, you know, I'm trying to manifest that we will be a 1.7 billion dollar company. And if I'm not the right leader to lead us to that 1.7, I will still be on the team. But as far as the CEO goes, I'm always willing and open to listen to feedback and where we need to be in the company at that Jason Kirby (46:50.082) think entrepreneurs have a lot to learn from you. appreciate your self-awareness and your maniacal focus on delivering on your dreams. I find it absolutely fascinating. You've been a wonderful guest. What would be the best way for people to learn more about you or potentially try to reach out to you? Jess Loren (47:07.733) Yeah, so I'm crazy about LinkedIn. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. Message me. If you're in Los Angeles, I host a ton of events. So I have a community called TechMeOut. Check me out, but check me out. So feel free to join my newsletter. I definitely talk about what I'm doing in entertainment and tech. And we host production summit in Los Angeles every year. If you have any interest in AI or what's going on in entertainment, feel free to reach out. Jason Kirby (47:21.549) Thanks. Jess Loren (47:36.851) and attend that, we're gonna be doing that in October of this year. But yeah, LinkedIn, catch me on LinkedIn. Jason Kirby (47:44.706) Beautiful. We'll make sure to leave a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes down below. Jess, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Jess Loren (47:52.543) Thank you, Jason. Have a great day.