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Matt Wilkerson:         Hi, I'm Matt Wilkerson. I'm the cofounder and CEO of Paragon One. My inspiration came from my experience in college. I felt lost. Didn't know which career path to pick. A year in, from typign so much, I got tendonitis in my hands. I though what am I going to do here. A vice president came to me and said, "Look, the interns, they don't know how to do their jobs. Nobody has time to teach them anything." So I taught them how to do their jobs. By the end of that summer, all of them had full time job offers, which is rare. That had a huge impact on me.

Matt Wilkerson:            I've never done anything like this on television. Being here, pitching to the Drapers, I'm feeling thrilled right now.

Jesse Draper:                Welcome to Meet the Drapers. So give us your pitch.

Matt Wilkerson:            I'm Matt. I'm the cofounder and Ceo of Paragon One. We're simplifying the path from college to career. This is done through a network of professionals. Advisors who help students and guide them along the right path. The idea here is that colleges and universities as we know can be quite expensive, but students are coming away not knwoign how to land a job. We have Leo, and international student. He wants to break into consulting, but he has two problems. First, he doesn't know how to actually get interviews. And second, if he gets and interview, he doesn't know how to do well at the interview.

Matt Wilkerson:            So with Paragon one, he takes a short assessment, we then guide him through what we call a career learning plan. He goes down each checkpoint, and he checks off goals towards eventually getting a job offer. We've already seen 240% year over year growth. 97% of our students are getting job and internship offers in the fields that they care about. We're actually seeing an opportunity for a 3 billion dollar total adjustable market in the United States. China and India, we're already looking at as target markets down the road.

Matt Wilkerson:            Now the business model is tutioin based and subscription. I started this company because I've been passionate about career education all my life. So there's ...

Tim Draper:                  See, it's not hard to create a platform for mentors to reach students. So what's special about you guys?

Matt Wilkerson:            So just getting a resume fixed, having an hour coaching session, that's easy. But how do I take someone from resume to cover letter to LinkedIn profile? How do I do a mock interview. That's a very complex path and so we've actually built custom workflow software that is tailored around the experience of advisor and student. And it's put in the seat with a coach. So the coach monitors the entire process from beginningn to end.

Jesse Draper:                Could you use that software for other verticles?

Matt Wilkerson:            We actually see the opportunity now to go eventually to institutions. We're already talking to companies that work with universities.

Abishek Punia:              So I think the reason why these type of models haven't been able to get massive traction is because they're and to as individualized as clubs and career centers on campus. But the information they provide isn't as scalable or as generalizable as like Google search or a Wall Street Oasis for finance.

Matt Wilkerson:            When you actually have this crowdsource network of information and you have data behind that, and you provide a rally good match, that's where magic happens.

Abishek Punia:              Yeah, but then you encounter like a two sided market problem, whereas how do you get quality advisors how have [inaudible 00:30:52] existing careers to join your platform of mentors.

Matt Wilkerson:            We actually manage that problem in two ways. There's actually a concept of what we call a coach. Their job is to make sure the student si staying on track. The industry advisors are people who work in different fields. They have an expertise, but they don't have to worry about am I pushing the student forward, am I tracking them in the right way.

Abishek Punia:              The coach sounds almost like a virtual mom making sure you do your [inaudible 00:31:13].

Matt Wilkerson:            Sometimes it is. It's that support network.

Tim Draper:                  I want to hear about the conversation you had with your cofounders when you decidded to do this.

Matt Wilkerson:            Byron, my cofounder and CTO, we've known each other 15 years. And together between us, we've started, run, and exited three internet companies. We both went to MIT, great school, but we were both wanderign aimlessly. Years later, I kept talking to him about how the students I was coaching on the side, they were just like we were.

Tim Draper:                  Further in debt probably than you were.

Matt Wilkerson:            Much further in debt right.

Tim Draper:                  Yeah.

Matt Wilkerson:            1.5 trillion, and they're doing the same things. Going to job boards, going to career fairs. You wuoldn't tell a friend of yours who is working today, hey go to this job board or got to a career fair. We know that's outdated. I realize that my success today has been completely through the network of people that I've met along the way. 100%. It wasn't what I learned at MIT. I don't remember any of that stuff, quite frankly.

Matt Wilkerson:            Students have this opportunity to pick the first few steps of their life, and the profesional world out there is potentially closed off to them. There's all this knowledge that people have, and people actually want to help. So if we can unlcokt hat knowledge, suddenly students are now picking a life that's meaning for them, and they're not joining the workforce saying, "Okay, now what do I do?"

Jesse Draper:                So you really don't remember anything from MIT?

Matt Wilkerson:            Look, I mean my 6002, 6003 EE classes, those are probably ones I want to forget, but I remember the relatiosnhsips. I remember my mentors. The very few that I had when I realized I should start doing this very late.

Abishek Punia:              One would imagine that like valuable mentors come out of broader interpersonal interactions. It almost seems like paying for it would cheapen the experience and make it a little bit more comemrical.

Matt Wilkerson:            We're going to be soon launchign what's known as income sharing arrangemetns. Until a student gets a jbo with a salary, they don't have to pay us anything. And they only have to pay a small percentage back over a fixed about of time and after that, it goes away.

Sanjay Nath:                 Quick question. You talked about India and China. It's an interesting problem out there because you've got a huge drop between the top teir end students and then you have a lot of people graduating, but don't have jobs, so there is a pain point, but what's the stickiness and why do they come and why will they stay on your platform because essentially it's the same market. It's the job seeking. So what's the ...

Matt Wilkerson:            Sure. We look at the advisors as just imiportant as users on our platform, as students. Because if they're not engagted, they're not gonna stick around. The payment that we give them is there to help them understand that this is important. They take it seriously. But when you do things like provide them with agendas and content so they don't have to do a lot of preparation up front. And most importantly, we make sure that the students, their feedback, especially the positive feedback, comes to them often, and they feel gratitude for that.

Tim Draper:                  This is interesting because I've been focused on this a lot at [inaudible 00:33:39] Univeirsty. The same group of people. I know you've got an interesting problem. Thank you so much for coming to Meet the Drapers.

Jesse Draper:                So nice to meet you.

Matt Wilkerson:            Thank you.

Matt Wilkerson:            Which Draper is most likely to support my company? I think Jesse could because, as I undestand, she's a new mom. I'm a new dad and I'm already thinking about what world will my children go in the next 10 to 20 years? What will education look like? How will they enter workforce? What careers will they be developng? This idea around career education is on my mind with regards to my children.

Matt Wilkerson:            On the other hand, I understand that it's very possible that Bill Draper could see a lot of the potential for what we're building. We attracted a lot of international students as our early adopters, from China and from India. And so I'm already seeing a lot of potential to bring Paragon One into markets like China and India.

Jesse Draper:                It's funny, Punia, that you said it cheapens the experience if you have to pay for it. I don't believe you should have to pay for mentorsihip. There's a difference between tutoring and proviidng mentorship, and I feel like we should just encourage a society that wants to help each other.

Abishek Punia:              Yeah, and I think the confusion that people have when picking their career path, it's not just al lack of knowldege. It's also how our education is structured in the first place I don't think such a solution really hits the core, which is why they're never able to scale or grow or become prevelatn.

Jesse Draper:                Right.

Sanjay Nath:                 I think it is an interesting pain point. In India, for example, if you looked at it, you've got the [inaudible 00:35:10] that all of us went to, and then you've got a huge drop between the next university. These days kids are coming out and many ofthem don't have jobs. I see the problem. I see the market size. What I didn't see is how compelling, how different this was.

Tim Draper:                  I actually think it's okay to pay for mentorshsip. It's just in definitioni thing. If you called it a trainer or a tutor, you would expect to pay. I actually think that this is gonna be a big breakthorugh for a short time, but then the education system is gonna catch up. I mean at Draper University, we are trying to lead the way toward a new way of looking at education. Create your own jobs. A bunch of other schools are tryhgin to get education to job to be a closer match. And so I think that this might just be a temporary phenomenon. Putting my 15 year hat on, I'm not so sure this is gonna be a big winner.

Jesse Draper:                So should we vote?

Tim Draper:                  Let's listen to the crystal ball first. Paragon One. What do we thin?

Jesse Draper:                It sounds like an airline.

Tim Draper:                  It is. For a financial organization. I've got mine.

Jesse Draper:                Okay. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs all around. But he was really great.

Tim Draper:                  Whenever people say, I am really passionate about this, it makes me feel like they've heard from me saying we like to back people who are passionate about what they do. But then the second time I asked the question, the real passion did come out.

Jesse Draper:                I do think he was passionate about it.

Tim Draper:                  I think he got in to it. I think he was into it.

Jesse Draper:                He was passionate about it. That's his life path and good. Was this the company for you? Do you want to back mentorship? Go to MEETTHEDRAPERS.com and you can invest. You should stay tuned to listen to my dad's crypto chat up next.