Do you have your Meet the Drapers appearance transcript?

Ash  Kumra:    Hi. I'm Ash Kumra. I'm CEO and co-founder of Youngry.

    Hi. My name is Ash Kumra. I am CEO and co-founder of Youngry. We are a united movement that helps entrepreneurs profit, expand and inspire, with helpful content, events and e-commerce.

    We are here, seeking half a million dollars to launch our national e-commerce platform, so that every early stage entrepreneur can get the proper mentorship and take inspired action, so that they can make their dreams come true.

    Youngry launched late last year in June, and we have already generated 100,000 members through our emails and events. We have done this primarily because we provide free premium content from helpful mentors, investors and entrepreneurs.

    For the last year, we've basically built a brand and a movement. So we've realized, now the next step is to scale and make money. We've made money in smaller ways, to prove out the e-commerce, but now we want to go a lot bigger with this national platform that can help any entrepreneur get monthly mastermind sessions, webinars, and the ability to get a follow on content such as courses, books, from those mastermind session leaders.

    Let's do this together, let's be a social impact inspiration, and let's help every entrepreneur right now in the world, succeed.

Bill Draper:    That's good.

Tim Draper:    Good. Well, this is great. You want to grab a chair and come on down-

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah, yeah. I'd love that. I got it.

Tim Draper:    ... and we'll ask you a few questions.

Bill Draper:    Tell us why you're doing this.

Ash  Kumra:    Look, entrepreneur saved my life at the end of the day. I was one of those kids who didn't know what my purpose was. I was bullied, I was labeled many things, but then, I saw that entrepreneurship can be inclusive, it could equalize the opportunity. And once I became an entrepreneur, I realized it's not just about me, it's about helping other people achieve their dreams and goals. So that's the core reason.

    On a business level, this is an untapped opportunity. Globally, every entrepreneur has the same issues. They need help with scaling, they need help on raising money, and they have this need to be part of a community. That is why Youngry ... we like to say we're a movement, using our original content, events and e-commerce, so you get the whole package.

Tim Draper:    At Draper University we might end up being a customer of yours, because we've got a lot of entrepreneurs coming out of there.

    But you have a lot of competition. A lot of people are trying to do the same kind of thing. Why are you special? Why are you different from all those other groups that are coming to me with software that can help an entrepreneur, and services that can help an entrepreneur?

Ash  Kumra:    I had mentioned that entrepreneurship globally has the same issues. So that makes a huge market of potentially hundreds of millions, eventually billions when we add Millennials and Gen Z. But what makes us different is that we hustle.

    In less than a year, I've already generated with my team of eight 100,000 members through our emails and events. I've already generated over 500 pieces of premium free content on Youngry.com. We already are doing paid events. At the end of this year, we're doing a national summit on entrepreneur equalization, and we have partners in discussion including NBC. All I've raised to date is $65,000 in equity crowdfunding.

Bill Draper:    What makes them a member? I mean, you send them a message and is that what makes them a member? Or do they respond and that makes them a member? Do they pay you anything?

Ash  Kumra:    The answer to your question, the last part, we don't charge you to be a member, because-

Bill Draper:    Yeah, [crosstalk 00:06:46].

Ash  Kumra:    ... we want to be this unified movement. The way you become part of our movement is by joining us through emails, attending our events, and also connecting with our different mentors.

    So what's great about our content model, is that it's extremely low cost. Literally zero, because we inspire entrepreneurial mentors, which are investors, entrepreneurs themselves, or thought leaders, to give helpful content. And they want to do it, because they want to give back. And these people send us back feedbacks saying, "Hey. We love this movement. We're part of something bigger."

Bill Draper:    So how do you count those numbers? They ask you for the content? Or what makes them a member?

Ash  Kumra:    Emails, event attendance, and then-

Bill Draper:    Emails from them, or from you?

Ash  Kumra:    On our website, through our social media campaigns, we also have a lot of partners who believe in our movement. One thing that I like to say is that we've been given so many amazing resources at zero to no cost.

    For instance, this national summit, we were given the venue for free. A 10,000 square foot facility, from one of our movement members. Our mentors, 200 of them, have all given us content for free, and they have told their audiences we really believe in influence-

Bill Draper:    And that's not your grandmother that gave you ...

Ash  Kumra:    No. It's people experienced like yourself and others.

Jesse Draper:    I'm a mentor on Youngry.

Bill Draper:    Are you?

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah.

Jesse Draper:    Yeah.

Bill Draper:    How's it going?

Jesse Draper:    He surprised me. I didn't know he was coming today.

Bill Draper:    Good.

Jesse Draper:    It's actually very exciting.

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah.

Jesse Draper:    But he's amazing. I mean, he's really made a movement around this.

Ash  Kumra:    Thank you.

Bill Draper:    Is that right? You've-

Tim Draper:    So there are 100,000 people who have given you their email addresses. And how is the word spreading?

Ash  Kumra:    The word is spreading through our social media. We do compelling social media content a couple of times a day.

Tim Draper:    I see. So then the social media then has a link and you click through, and you go to Youngry and you sign up. You want to become a member? Is that the end of each of those social media-

Bill Draper:    And how did you get her as a mentor?

Ash  Kumra:    Let me answer your first question. I'll be happy to answer that. We don't push in your face, "Become a member." It's kind of unofficial that if you're a part of Youngry, you're getting quality, authentic communications, access to events, which is why we know said, let's monetize this movement so that they can get better help, and we can make money at the same time. It's a win-win model.

    Your other question, I'm sorry?

Bill Draper:    How did you get her as a mentor?

Ash  Kumra:    One thing I take pride in is that 50% of our community is women and minorities. And in order to find those members, we have to find thought leaders who want to help those segments.

    Clearly your granddaughter has a passion for helping women entrepreneurs, so she was someone we had to get. So I did the same approach people do to you. We cold call them, emailed her.

Jesse Draper:    He's great. He throws great events. But yeah, as far as-

Tim Draper:    Where are the events?

Ash  Kumra:    Right now it's in Southers California.

Tim Draper:    Okay. So that's why you have found her.

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah.

    The three COGS of Youngry, if I had to sum it up is, we provide editorial content from our own team, where we find topics that are around how to scale your business, how to fundraise your business, and mindset content. We think those three topics, globally, are things that entrepreneurs need.

    On the second level, which is where Jesse is involved, we have a mentorship network, where entrepreneurs ... mentors I should say, provide content, speak at our events, and we find ways to feature them on what we do, this thing called Lunch and Learn, where they get to be on our Facebook live and answer Q&A questions.

    Using those two, that has helped us generate the 100,000 emails that I've mentioned to you, and from both our email marketing and our events. We decided to make real scalable money. We want to launch this marketplace, where quite simply you pay $99 a year and you get access to different mastermind sessions with someone like yourself, where you can say, "Hey. This is how you fundraise. I'm here to answer your question." Limited baches of 20 people.

    But the value for you, with Draper University, is that we're not going to pay you to do this, because we'd be broke, because you cost a lot. What we would say is, if you can do this, we will give you the opportunity to provide products from Draper University, that they can get at a discount. And we would make an affiliate fee out of that.

    Now take that model, with every successful author, super entrepreneur, VC. Part of our movement ... and this is a small COG in our revenue stream ... is, we have a really cool brand. And I know we're not a clothing company, but our brand, Youngry, young in spirit hungry in ambition-

Jesse Draper:    Hold it up.

Ash  Kumra:    ... really resonates with people, because everyone is Youngry. It's like a Youngry state of mind I guess you could say. So this is slowly become a good revenue stream for us, which kind of makes us-

Tim Draper:    [crosstalk 00:11:28] too? Did you get that brand?

Ash  Kumra:    I think you're Youngry at heart, because ... but that's funny though.

    That's why we want to do e-commerce. One last thing I want to say is that when we wanted to become this media movement, we thought that the ad model is eroding right now. I think a lot of reasons why you see a lot of issues with a lot of segments not getting proper placement, such as women, or minorities, or immigrants, is because most of these content sites are influenced by advertisers, and they want you to write about the majority audience.

    So with our e-commerce model, we can help anyone, regardless of what they are, or who they are, and still make money and scale this globally.

Tim Draper:    Do you have any revenues yet?

Ash  Kumra:    Yes. We launched January 2017. We've been incorporated since June 2016. And we have made as much revenue as what we've raised, $65,000.

Tim Draper:    Interesting.

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah.

Tim Draper:    Good for you. And word continues to spread. Do members ever sign up other members?

Ash  Kumra:    We get referrals. We do clever things, such as if you bring in one or two people for our events you'll get a free ticket, or we have partners that do ... we vet people. Like, for you, I already know who you are, but not everyone who has a university can be vetted and promoted. So we do these vetted kind of promotions, and that brings in members too.

    From day one, our number one metric has been emails. That's why I've been able to grow emails so fast. Also, my partner, who could not be here because we're growing ... we had to make changes to our website as we speak ... he is a master of e-commerce and marketing. He's generated over $100 million in e-commerce revenues, and he's done seven figure e-mail marketing campaigns for other consumer products and sites.

Tim Draper:    Tell us more about your team.

Ash  Kumra:    Of course.

Tim Draper:    And what do you do for the business? What's your strength?

Ash  Kumra:    Sure. I like to think of myself as just a community builder. I have helped built over 100 entrepreneurial communities across the country. I worked for the movement called-

Tim Draper:    So you're not a coder.

Ash  Kumra:    I am not a coder.

Tim Draper:    So you're building, you're the front man, the CEO ...

Ash  Kumra:    I guess I'm the ... Yeah.

Bill Draper:    The salesman.

Ash  Kumra:    The salesman. Thank you.

Tim Draper:    And is Ankur a ...

Ash  Kumra:    He's a coder.

Tim Draper:    He's a coder.

Ash  Kumra:    He's our chief revenue officer, and he knows how to build sites from scratch. What's great is I get two for one. I get a money guy who understands how to make money, and I also get someone who understands technology.

    We're a content commerce platform, so our technology is never going to be AI or anything grandiose.

Tim Draper:    How did you find your co-founder?

Ash  Kumra:    I met him at an event where I interviewed him. And I basically ... we both knew that we had this entrepreneurmance, where we were both in a state in our lives, we're like, "We're going to do something bigger than what were doing individually. So let's create this movement."

    And I have an amazing team too. My bad.

Tim Draper:    So you've been at it over about a year.

Ash  Kumra:    Yes. We launched our-

Tim Draper:    And do you feel like it's going the way it was supposed to go? What were your surprises and what were your successes?

Ash  Kumra:    Making money sooner than later. And I sincerely mean it. I thought after we raised our money from Republic.com, we were the first ... by the way. We were the first company to successfully complete an equity crowdfunding campaign.

Tim Draper:    Terrific. You know we're using them.

Ash  Kumra:    I know.

Tim Draper:    Yeah.

Ash  Kumra:    I love what they're doing. So we ... yeah.

Jesse Draper:    Okay. So you successfully created a crowdfunding campaign that went incredibly well. And then, what else should we know about you?

Ash  Kumra:    Okay. This movement is spreading. We have a national summit that was pitched to us by a company to say, "We're giving you the space, we want you to create this Youngry summit, and we want equalization to be one of the focuses." That was given to us.

    Our story of how we were able to create an idea, generate so many emails, create this united feeling, has been picked up by a 2018 book publisher. So we're going to be in bookstores in 2018, on how to create your own Youngry movement. And it's going to be called The Movement Economy.

    Lastly, I have a team of eight. We have an amazing editor. He's profiled over 15 start-up ecosystems. We have an amazing content influencer. She's kind of like the face of Youngry on our social. We have great marketing individuals, and we have a great team of advisors who've helped us.

    Here's what I was able to do. Just like Jesse, I got them in early. I got them to invest in us, in our equity crowdfunding campaign. And I said, "Listen. With this little money ..." because you know low it is for equity crowdfunding ... "Take a chance in us. Let us show you what we can do with a little money." And now, they're all active, because they've seen it-

Tim Draper:    So how much are you raising and what are you going to give up for it?

Ash  Kumra:    No problem. We'd like to raise up to a half a million dollars, and we're giving up 15% of the company for that. And the money's quite simple. It's used for three areas.

Tim Draper:    So you're valuing yourself at $7.5 million-

Ash  Kumra:    No. $3 million.

Jesse Draper:    $3 millions.

Tim Draper:    $3 millions. What did I ... half a million.

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah.

Tim Draper:    Yeah. Okay.

Ash  Kumra:    The cap for our equity crowdfunding campaign was at $2 million. And we raised $65,000 of ...

Bill Draper:    Tell me a little about you. Where did you grow up, go to school, and have you ever been a leader before in any company, or organization of any type?

Ash  Kumra:    Sure. I got most of my accolades are in media. For the last 10 years I've written two books on entrepreneurship. I run a radio show where I profile entrepreneurs. And did about 100 plus events, to different community organizations that profile successful entrepreneurs. Promoting entrepreneurship is in my blood.

    My big claim to fame was in 2011. I got an award from the White House for excellence in entrepreneurship, me and 100 other entrepreneurs that was 30, under 30 at the time. And that opened me up to realizing there's so much more I can do for our country and the world using entrepreneurship.

    I helped launch a movement called Start-up America's California Chapter. Start-up America, at the time was this big [crosstalk 00:17:25]-

Bill Draper:    Yeah, I know that.

Jesse Draper:    Yeah.

Ash  Kumra:    Okay. And then from there, I co-founded a social network on helping people achieve their dreams and goals. And on my own goal-setting board, which our product was, it had this kind of early idea of what Youngry was. And I was like, "God, I have this itch to not just be one to one, but one to many."

Jesse Draper:    It's great.

Tim Draper:    Tell me, you have ... my first question, isn't going to be my last question, which is, tell me how you're going to beat the competition? Because there is a million ... everybody's writing articles about entrepreneurship, everybody's creating their own media business. Everybody's got their own sort of following community. And there are thousands of these software packages out there that are helping entrepreneurs build their business, write their business plan, find their customers, get funding. It's out there.

    So what's special? What it is that you ... I mean, other than being down in L.A. where there's little less of it. What's special?

Ash  Kumra:    I think the first thing you have to understand is that the movement model automatically makes a stand-out.

    Most entrepreneurial media companies out there are these ".com" sites, which again, focus on driving page views, or what advertisers want, so they push this, "I'm going to tell you how to be an entrepreneur." Because we're building a community, we are forced to provide guidance in the form of mentorship. So the branding, how we brand ourselves, and the fact that we're mentorship first over page views, is our second driver.

    Number three, is that we're probably the only entrepreneur media brand that has big visions like us, that's using e-commerce as the main revenue model, because e-commerce allows us to scale globally. I can do a Draper University tie-up, whether it's with your India venture capital side, or whether it's with your Canadian side, because entrepreneurs all speak the same language. They all need those three things.

    And lastly, I think the reason why we grow so fast, and the reason why I don't care about competition, is because we do what we do. There's so much opportunity.

Tim Draper:    What are you selling on the e-commerce site? What does an entrepreneur buy besides content?

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah. First part is-

Tim Draper:    Or is it just content?

Ash  Kumra:    No. It's actually not. We want to focus and keep ... I'm sorry.

Bill Draper:    Mentorship.

Ash  Kumra:    Mentorship. So we have this ... it's very focused on just providing mentorship. So our rational is, you read our-

Tim Draper:    Did you bill her time?

Ash  Kumra:    I wish, but no. You get inspired by our content, you meet our community at our events, or through our social. Now, get mentorship so you can take inspired action.

    So it's a simple mastermind core set, where every month various entrepreneurs and investors will say, "Hey. These are the topics I'm talking about," in limited groups. "Here's some specific webinars that are specific to Youngry members," which is free to join. Eventually, once we understand our data, because we're very good with data, we'll then add follow on items.

    The idea of follow on items, even physical items, eventually we want to do that, but right now, digital is so much easier to scale and build a market share. And we already have the mentors, we already have a following, so let's drive that. Let's go to the core.

Jesse Draper:    Okay. I love-

Tim Draper:    Have you thought of doing like an ICO?

Ash  Kumra:    I would love that. And that's actually one of the reasons why I wanted to be on this show, because-

Tim Draper:    Because it's a community thing.

Ash  Kumra:    I agree.

Tim Draper:    Or get behind their coin.

Ash  Kumra:    Because you understand that world a lot better than us, and I was actually going to try to bribe you to do one of our ICO webinars, or mastermind sessions.

Jesse Draper:    Bribing is illegal, but you could probably ask him to do it.

Ash  Kumra:    Yeah.

Jesse Draper:    Anyway. I think we're running out of time, so what do you guys think? Do you want to vote for Ash? Do you want to fund Ash and his amazing company Youngry? It's up to you. He's also single and looking for a nice lady.

Ash  Kumra:    Oh my god. I'm loving this.

Bill Draper:    Very good promoter here.

Ash  Kumra:    I know.

Tim Draper:    Yeah, you could jus get her to [crosstalk 00:21:22]-

Ash  Kumra:    I need her on this slide. Wow, this is hilarious. Thank you guys.

Bill Draper:    No, thank you very much for coming.

Jesse Draper:    Thank you so much. It was awesome.

Bill Draper:    I appreciate it very much.

Jesse Draper:    Yeah.

Ash  Kumra:    Thank you.

Bill Draper:    Good luck.

Ash  Kumra:    Thanks.

Jesse Draper:    Thank you so much.

Tim Draper:    Thanks for coming.

Jesse Draper:    [crosstalk 00:21:33].

    So what did you guys think?

Tim Draper:    I think he gave me a really nice shirt, and a really nice hat.

Jesse Draper:    Yeah. Me too. I like the swag.

Tim Draper:    I think-

Bill Draper:    What are you going to give him?

Tim Draper:    I'm not telling, because we want them to be able to decide for themselves.

Jesse Draper:    And I thought he ... I think he's great. He's creating a nice movement. I'm familiar with it. And I think he has a long way to go.

    I feel like I could see more ... I'd love to see more of a revenue model. I don't quite understand the whole e-commerce element. And I think that he could make money in a lot of different ways, that he's not ...

Tim Draper:    Yeah. There have been a lot of these community groups, and they seem to be able to make money for the founder, but they don't end up transforming the world. So that's where I'm a little concerned.

    But I think he was ... he's great, and I am glad he's always looking for a way to build his community and make it ... he wanted to make contact with Draper University, and he's ready to do a deal. And he's going to make-

Bill Draper:    I liked that about him, that he had done some research and knew that you had Draper University. What I didn't like was, I asked him a question, "Where did you grow up and go to school and how did you get started?" and he didn't answer any question I asked. And I think that's a bad sign. You got to be a good listener-

Jesse Draper:    That's actually very intuitive.

Bill Draper:    ... and make sure you're responding to the questions that are being asked, in any entrepreneur.

Jesse Draper:    That's a very perceptive observation. And I think you're right, because we all kep asking him questions and he kept answering what he wanted.

Bill Draper:    Yeah. So I would not back him.

Jesse Draper:    Well, I think he's a nice guy. I like my T-shirt. And what do you guys think?

Tim Draper:    Are we going to do the thumbs?

Jesse Draper:    Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs all around.

    I'll give it a maybe.

Bill Draper:    Okay.

Tim Draper:    I'm thumbs down, but I like the guy, and I love what he's doing. It's just not going to be a unicorn in my mind.