Breakthru

Companies spend $500B each year marketing to youth online yet $0 goes into the pockets of youth. There is no equitable access to opportunity and historically underrepresented communities are affected the most. Breakthru allows young people to earn Breakthru Dollars in a completely equitable way. 60% of Gen-z don't own a bank account while our app is free to use and users can earn an average $15-30 per month on our app by learning about companies, initiatives and obtaining new skills. There are 1 billion young people worldwide that want to earn given the rise of the gig economy and current labor shortage.

Breakthru meets our users where they live which is online. Our solution is an mobile app available for iOS and Android devices. Students sign up and learn about companies, services, initiatives and obtain new skills. We provide learning in a fun way with games, mini-lessons and monetary incentives. Our customers are companies and institutions that are looking to reach youth to provide opportunities like GirlsWhoCode, WeWork, The Gist, Front Office Sports, and College Ave Student Loans. Here's a video of the student experience: 

Today, our solution impacts young people in the US aged 13-26 who are seeking to earn money. Our withdrawal partners include Paypal, Amazon, Uber, Coinbase and Dunkin' which allow our users to buy books, get a ride to a tutoring session or school, buy a meal or a coffee, or invest in digital assets to build wealth. We believe that an additional path to build wealth will help our users get ahead in life and uplift their families and communities. We have 80,000 users and 60% of our users identify as girls/women while 75% come form historically underrepresented backgrounds.

Co-Founder and CTO Gean Martinez experienced the problem of lack of access to resources as a student. Gean immigrated to New York when he was 5 years old with his mom. Growing up in Queens and coming up through the NYC public school system, access to capital was a problem plaguing him. Furthermore, Gean didn't even speak english but when he discovered computer technology, he fell in love with coding and that allowed him to get ahead in life. 

CEO and Founder Alex Miles, a former professional rugby player immigrated from Australia 8 years ago and saw the problem Breakthru is solving when he arrived as he was volunteering his time coaching soccer and rugby for high school students at an affluent Prep School and at a public school in Harlem. He saw first-hand the differences in opportunities presented to both groups and given the differences in the student demographics of those two schools, Alex had the unique opportunity to A/B test how students were accessing opportunities and thats where Breakthru got started. 

Gean lived through the problem we are solving, and Alex saw it in his coaching.

We have 80,000 users that have downloaded and registered on Breakthru, with 5-10K monthly active users. We project our user base to be at 160,000 by the end of 2023.

We are seeking guidance and advisory on scaling our business model and to help us solidify our Product-Market-Fit. Today, we can solve many problems for companies, and have been paid to deliver many solutions given our user base, but we need to select the best solution and focus on it to capitalize on a given market.

Breakthru is creating a new way for youth to earn by engaging with companies and is truly the future of brand engagement with smarter marketing and real results. Companies have been monetizing off of user data for decades and our solution puts funds back into the users' pockets in exchange for their time, data and attention. 

Our goals are to reach half a million users in a year, and reach tens of millions of users within 5 years, globally. We will achieve this by continue to divert customer marketing budgets and funds into the pockets of young people. The technology will expand from a mobile app to a web solution allowing anyone with internet access to earn. Our goal is to be the first solution for all brands to reach a younger demographic while also making an impact. 

We currently look at our user data and analyze behaviors from the minute they sign up. We track how many learning modules they complete per day and how much funds are being earned. We also track what withdrawal options are being used the most. We do not measure time in app, as that is not the vanity goal that we attempt to solve each day, instead we measure engagement by how many learn-2-earn modules are completed and how long a typical user journey takes. We aim to have months of daily opportunities for our users to join, and are excited to start to provide longer journeys that take years.

We believe our solution and the x-to-earn concept, which was first introduced with web3, will disrupt large incumbents and disrupt how brands and companies are reaching consumers while also empowering historically disenfranchised users who will now be able to earn virtually as they up-skill and learn about companies, initiatives and programs that can help them get ahead. Gen-z has ushered in a new era where not only do they want to own their data, but they also respond to opportunity-based marketing and gravitate towards communities that are making tangible impact.

Our solution uses mobile apps available for iOS and Android. 

We are leveraging the technology and behavioral concept of X-to-Earn which has risen with the rise of Web3. Breakthru does not implement our technology using a blockchain or a crypto token, although the have implemented the concept with traditional web 2.0 technology. Our users come to our platform to earn money and can do so in many ways. We have implemented, Play-2-earn, Refer-2-earn and our most popular Learn-2-Earn.

This article discusses more about x-to-earn models, but keep in mind we do not use blockchain nor web3 technology. https://medium.com/@davidwjia/...

We have 80,000 users who have signed up with a 34% 7-day user cohort retention. It is evident that our users sign up, and keep coming back to leverage our technology to earn. We have distributed thousands of funds through our app. Furthermore, we have evidence that our solution is impacting the demographics that are in most need, given that 60% of users identify as girls/women and 75% come from historically underrepresented backgrounds; a testament that our solution is working.

DE&I is in our DNA. Our founding team is made up of immigrants with our CTO being hispanic/latiné. Our broader team includes a staff made up of 50% women across different regions in the US. Our investors and supporters are also DE&I focused. We were accepted into Techstars inaugural Equitech cohort/class in Baltimore, MD, which focuses on companies with solutions anchored under the belief that diversity is a force multiplier. We were also selected into the 3rd cohort/class for the Headstream accelerator, one of the top youth innovation programs in the world, which is supported by Pivotal Ventures, the incubation company created by Melinda Gates. DE&I is something that echos throughout all decisions we make and is deeply embedded into our growth strategy.

In our ecosystem we have users who are students/youth between the ages of 13-26 and they never pay for anything. We then have our Customers who are Companies and Brands who want to engage with you. Today, we make money from Companies in 3 ways. The first is through our Learn-2-Earn product which is where a company like WeWork is trying to educate young people about careers at WeWork. They do this by posting a WeWork Champion Badge and a monetary reward for collecting the badge. A student learns about WeWork careers, collects the badge and a reward, ie. $1.00. Our model for this product is if $1 goes to the student, then $1 goes to us. 

Now a student has done this a few times over a few days and they want to go and spend funds earned on our platform. We have partnered with Visa and have a Breakthru Virtual Card so our users can spend earned funds on any website or app they want, while earning rewards. We make money from the merchant fees collected by Visa.

Lastly, given that we are driving transactions to partner platforms like Uber, Amazon, Dunkin, Coinbase and Paypal, we are in discussing regarding a revenue share agreement with partners which we call Multi-Channel Origination.

We earn money each time our users engage. Focusing on attracting users and keeping them engaged is a major part of becoming financially sustainable. We also need companies/brands to provide money making opportunities on the supply side. We know that each customer can provide thousands of youth with months of engagement, so focusing on brining on some trusted partners and customers to do longer engagement products with us is a major focus for us. We have raised some venture capital as well as won pitch competitions and grants, but in order to make the most impact, we need to continue to grow and becoming profitable is what will unlock our ability to raise a Series A. 

We have raised nearly $3M to date and our latest raise of $1M included RevTech Labs, Old Line Capital, Conscious Venture Lab with participation from strategic angels, Niche Capital and Goodwater Capital. Other notable investors include Techstars, Underdog Ventures, Stonks and 37 Angels. Our participation in the Headstream Accelerator included a $40K grant and we have recently won the Queens Economic Development Corporation's 2023 QUEENS TECH + INNOVATION CHALLENGE which includes $20K grant.