Do you have your Meet The Drapers transcript?

Jesse Draper:             But first, let's take a look at what's happening behind the scenes.

Francis Hwang:             Hi, my name is Francis Hwang. I'm the CEO and founder of Bucket Technologies.

Francine Hwang:           And my name is Francine Hwang. I am the head of marketing.

Francis Hwang:             We're brother and sister and collectively, we're known as the Franks.

Francine Hwang:           Our parents are entrepreneurs and they raised us in a business minded household, and so we get it.

Francis Hwang:             The reason why I started this is to solve the problem of physical cash. We believe increasingly if money doesn't move at the speed of the internet, it ceases to be useful to society. So we're out to essentially turbo boost cash. Make is accessible for the world.

Francis Hwang:             In 2003, I was diogn some research for the Federal Reserve, and hadn't really thought about coins until that moment. After the research project was complete, it became really, really evident just how wasteful the entire life cycle of coins was.

Francis Hwang:             I think it's great to have family by your side, especially ones that are smarter than yourself. So it really helps us get through those lows.

Jesse Draper:                Welcome to meet the Drapers.

Francine Hwang:           Thank you.

Jesse Draper:                Give us your pitch.

Francis Hwang:             So the vision of Bucket is to accelerate the world into a digital economy, and we believe that there is a degree of urgency behind this. If money doesn't move at the speed of the internet, it ceases to be useful. Right now this is 2018. Cash is still buy and large, the most frequently used instrument. So using gain theory, design thinking, and a whole bunch of field research, essentially we've created a platform that we believe solves this problem. By eliminating coins out of retail transactions, we've built a business that can bring in three and a half percent of all the monies that we've digitized.

Francis Hwang:             we should be digitized and no less than 166 billion dollars a year. So how this works is our technology is really two fronts. First integrate at the retail level. Just say bunch of the change, and the cashier would hit bucket. Stores the remaining coin change they would get back on a ledger. They go into their phone, scan the receipt and that money goes into a digital piggy bank. Every time that piggy bank crosses $50 in the US, you can do it however you want. Direct deposit to your bank, donate to a charity, buy Bitcoin. For the end consumer, we put upwards of an additional $300 into people's pocket, which may not be huge to the people in this room, but definitely not insignificant to most people.

Tim Draper:                  How's it going so far? What are you revenues?

Francis Hwang:             So we are actually just about to lunch. We are launching in Northwest Arkansas in a couple weeks, and then we launch in Singapore with the Monetary Authority there.

Tim Draper:                  Have you gotten any funding for this so far?

Francis Hwang:             Two and a half million dollars in private equity, and we are currently engaging in an ICO. We're tokenizing our net income, which is pegged to a percentage of how much we bucket.

Tim Draper:                  The tokens will be a result of your profit. What if I buy your coin, and then and then you don't make any profit? Well that's, I guess a problem.

Francis Hwang:             Now you pitched us another business, entirely another business business a week or two ago.

Tim Draper:                  Sure, yeah.

Francis Hwang:             And tell us about that and how you going to be able to do both of those things at once.

Tim Draper:                  Yeah. So time is definitely not something that I have in abundance. Strangely enough, I moved out to Northwest Arkansas to commit to the launching Bucket first. Became close friends with the Deans of the University of Arkansas. So I had written a paper, I submitted to the university essentially saying all of the only secure ways to store your crypto, make it impossible to use your crypto. Sort of by accident the university got behind the project.

Tim Draper:                  We're utilizing a a ground-up design of a chip set at that essentially distills down to the mobile phone in the mobile app. So now you can carry and store large amounts of crypto, and then be able to interface it the way that the masses need to be able to ingest.

Francis Hwang:             Are you CEO of both?

Tim Draper:                  Yes, I'm founder inventor of the [inaudible 00:08:57] project?

Jesse Draper:                How can an investor bet on you if you have time is elsewhere?

Francis Hwang:             Francis really sells the vision for both companies, but operationally, we're much more in bucket.

Jesse Draper:                Are you co-founders?

Francis Hwang:             No.

Francine Hwang:           She's the head of marketing. She's my little sister. This is our first time ever working together.

Jesse Draper:                Oh great.

Francine Hwang:           So your question before of how can you focus on two different projects, I'm handling one of the projects.

Tim Draper:                  You're handling Bucket?

Francine Hwang:           I'm handling bucket.

Francis Hwang:             We've raised two and a half million. We've built the technology. If we want to accomplish our vision, we need to be everywhere cash is.

Abishek Punia:              It almost seems like physical cash is being phased out already by non blockchain technologies. So is seems like the digital, wouldn't is that digital cash conversion be equally as valuable?

Jesse Draper:                yeah I completely agree. I never have cash.

Tim Draper:                  Yeah.

Jesse Draper:                Ever.

Francis Hwang:             So in the US 68% of all transactions are cash. That's US. When you go to Italy, Spain, Germany, they're 85% plus. Last month, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the US, pretty much said that there is no slowdown in cash. It's not dying, and it's a problem.

Sanjay Nath:                 If this works you going to put, not just Arkansas, but Northwest Arkansas on the map right? Very interesting.

Francis Hwang:             So our lead investor is from Arkansas, but it wasn't mandatory that we move there. What actually became very appealing in Arkansas is that it's a captured market, so even if I were to take out a antiquated billboard ad, far more efficient because everyone that sees it exactly who I want to see it everyone typically lives, works, and plays in that.

Jesse Draper:                So it's a good case study, correct?

Francis Hwang:             Perfect.

Sanjay Nath:                 Yeah. I wanted to just go back. You talked about interesting choice of Arkansas to Singapore. Two very different places. So what is it for them? When you go and convince the Monetary Authority of Singapore?

Francis Hwang:             The conversation is largely consistent everywhere we go because every nation generally handles coinage the same way. So for banks, the cost of cash is between five and 13% of total make expenditures, which of a pretty crazy ratio if you break down the asset to what it's worth.

Abishek Punia:              Wouldn't you say, though, that centralized physical currencies are what make banks relevant, as well as monetary authorities relevant.

Francis Hwang:             Sure.

Abishek Punia:              So wouldn't they see this as almost competition with their existing currency?

Francis Hwang:             No. So we're not trying to eliminate the coins. We sort of see it as this river. What Bucket represents is a dam in the river that keeps coins, and eventually bank notes, because we can do the same thing with bank notes, digitized at the institutional level. One day, it'll allow a government to come in and be like we're ready now we can forklift the physical asset out.

Tim Draper:                  How about the consumer? I mean some old guy or a lady comes in, and is expecting change back, but instead gets this receipt with the QR code that they've never seen before.

Francine Hwang:           Well Bucket is consumer activated, so no cash you will ever have to say, "Would you like to look at the change?" The consumer always activates the process.

Tim Draper:                  Well that's going to slow down the whole spread of this.

Francis Hwang:             When Uber launched in San Francisco, they had a pretty steep learning curve. They had to teach all of us how to call a cab again from scratch, right? But by the time they got to Little Rock, none of that messaging was there. Everybody there knew what Uber was. They were simply waiting for them to turn on. So for us, even though we launching in an outlier captured market, you still have Taco Bell, McDonald's, Starbucks, Walmart there. With everything that we want lunch with, the idea is carrier applied savings additional revenue. So we can pretty much find where we have the most density of those participating, and then being expanding outwards.

Tim Draper:                  And what are your backgrounds?

Francis Hwang:             My last corporate America job was with Unitas Global. I was their Chief scientist. Helped design private enterprise cloud infrastructure for everybody from Forever 21 to Molina Healthcare.

Francine Hwang:           And I've done marketing in the technology space. She's done it for some pretty big agencies.

Francis Hwang:             Yeah.

Francine Hwang:           And stuff like that. Humble.

Francis Hwang:             Yeah.

Tim Draper:                  Terrific. Well thank you ...

Jesse Draper:                Thank you so much.

Francine Hwang:           ... for joining us here at Meet the Drapers.

Francis Hwang:             Thank you.

Tim Draper:                  Terrific.

Francine Hwang:           Thank you so much. Thank you.

Francis Hwang:             It was exciting. Thank you.

Francine Hwang:           Yeah, very.

Francis Hwang:             I'm glad I expected this, but the level of questions went really deep, so they were as intelligent as I suspected and have seen.

Francine Hwang:           I think that Tim Draper really understands the big picture of things, and is focused on that, and because of our mission driven innovation and what we're really trying to solve, I think he will understand it.

Francis Hwang:             You can check out token.buckettechnologies.com. We're currently and ICOo right now. We have a pretty cool revenue model and a way for people to make their return on investment, so we encourage you to go check it out.

Francine Hwang:           We know the grit that it takes to do a startup, and we love it.

Francis Hwang:             [inaudible 00:14:04].

Jesse Draper:                So what do we all think?

Tim Draper:                  I think it's a little odd for him to have pitched me two weeks ago on one business, and now he's coming back with another. There's something about this maniacal focus on one thing, one product, one service, and if their loyalties are split somehow, I think it's a lot harder to do.

Sanjay Nath:                 We like to say sometimes that it's our job to be to the VC. We don't want you to VC. We don't want you to splitting your time between the three portfolio companies, right? So what's your cycle, because one of the company that takes off you tend to spend more time with them and the other becomes like a stepchild. And they obviously have a great dynamic, between the brother and sister, but the fact is, if the other thing takes off, who's going to really run it? Because there's a lot of execution also. It's not just about selling the vision.

Jesse Draper:                He's very smart.

Sanjay Nath:                 What I liked is he answered the questions really well.

Jesse Draper:                Yeah, I thought he was great, but as a female entrepreneur, I was kind of bummed out that she didn't really participate. Why did you bring her, if she wasn't going to participate in pitch with you? She's a very skilled marketing person, but that's a very different skill. It's a silo. It's not a CEO.

Abishek Punia:              I think they seem to note about these two projects, is one, they're inspired by the same thing and I quite synergestic. Like the bucket that you get, has to go to some wallet. If he also owns the wallet, one which, might be a natural progression of the company in the first place, it's a little logical in that sense.

Jesse Draper:                So you're saying that the two companies actually kind of work together. It's just, he's almost like launching two products within the same umbrella.

Abishek Punia:              Yeah.

Sanjay Nath:                 Why are they different entities? If there are synergies, is it possible that they could be one entity?

Tim Draper:                  I do get the quandary in though. Until you have all of these little wallets out there, they aren't going to really make a dent in this Bucket business.

Jesse Draper:                I think we need to vote. First what we do is ...

Tim Draper:                  The crystal ball.

Jesse Draper:                We consult the crystal ball.

Abishek Punia:              Yeah.

Tim Draper:                  So everybody ...

Jesse Draper:                So we all have to consult the crystal ball.

Tim Draper:                  ... put your hands out there and when you get the signal from the crystal ball, Buckets, Buckets, Buckets. Okay.

Jesse Draper:                So ready? We go thumbs up ...

Tim Draper:                  Thumbs up.

Jesse Draper:                ... thumbs down.

Tim Draper:                  Thumbs down.

Jesse Draper:                Thumbs all around.

Tim Draper:                  Thumbs all around.

Jesse Draper:                Oh yeah. I'm must confused.

Tim Draper:                  [inaudible 00:16:09].

Jesse Draper:                You said yes?

Abishek Punia:              Yes.

Tim Draper:                  Hey, I'd be all for it, but I have to be only halfway, because he's on the highway.

Jesse Draper:                Yeah. I'm just confused which company were running.

Abishek Punia:              Yeah.

Jesse Draper:                Anyway, it's not up to us. Do you want to invest in them?

Tim Draper:                  You could own a drop in the Bucket.

Jesse Draper:                A drop in the Bucket. GO to MEETTHEDRAPERS.com and you decide.

What is the social impact of Bucket?

With a majority of households in the U.S. using a mix of credit and cash for every day payments, cash is still widely used.  What results from cash is coins, inevitably.  Yet coins represent an environmental impact: mined metals, gas used to distribute coins, coins being thrown away etc.  At Bucket, we want to stem the tide of coins by keeping them at the retail and banking level.  If the billions of coins are saved by consumers digitally instead of physically we can finally solve the problem of coins.

Once your Bucket account has reached $50, you have an option to cash out in 3 ways: prepaid card, gift card or a donation to one of our partner charities.  This way, your change can become actionable funds.