Welcome And Summer Banter

Kelvin Crosby 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We're not waiting for change, we're investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world. Hey, it's so good to see you, even though I can't see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I'm so excited that you're here at Investing in Accessibility. I'm your host, Kelvin Crosby, and I got my co-host Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher 0:42

I'm good, Kelvin. How are you buddy? It's always good to see you and be with you.

Kelvin Crosby 0:46

Yeah, man. It's been quite a bit of time since we did the last recording. And I I wonder if you change the smell.

Chris Maher 0:55

You always go there. You know, well, it's what we're getting into summertime and it's getting a little warmer out, so I think I'm still I'm you know, I'm I'm smelling fresh, fresh as the daisies.

Kelvin Crosby 1:05

Or sunscreen. You know, yeah,

Chris Maher 1:08

I do. Like I was gonna, I was gonna, you know, I was gonna say, like, if if you've seen me, but you haven't, you've been with me, but I'm pretty pale. And you know, I I if I pass under like a hundred watt light bulb, I can get sunburned. So I I I don't go out without sunscreen, you know, like, and it's like 50. Like my wife doesn't let me out of the house like and go to the beach or the pool without without you know a minimum of 50 on.

Kelvin Crosby 1:34

So so but so are you using the sport? Are you using organic? And like what what is this?

Chris Maher 1:39

It's a good question. I you know what, I don't like the stuff that feels greasy, so it's it's probably more the sports stuff that that but you know, maybe maybe a little bit of the the zinc oxide on the nose.

Kelvin Crosby 1:50

Um you know so then then you make your nose all white?

Chris Maher 1:55

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah, right, exactly.

Kelvin Crosby 1:59

Oh

Why Non Dilutive Grants Matter

Kelvin Crosby 2:00

well, so I'm excited about today's guest.

Chris Maher 2:03

Me too.

Kelvin Crosby 2:03

And I think this will be extremely helpful for those that are trying to get funding. And we've been talking a lot lately about funding, and so this is a different direction, this is a little bit different than all the other directions. So I'm excited about it.

Chris Maher 2:18

Yeah, they we're gonna be posting this episode after an episode that we that we do with an organization that helps startups, for-profit startups, activate philanthropic capital. As you said, Kelvin, you know, the startups, especially in ours, I mean, all startups, early stage, you know, they're all finding it challenging to raise capital, and certainly traditional capital, like venture, angel networks, and they're all trying to get creative. And right, so like philanthropic capital, being able to unlock that is a large pool of capital, but also non-dilutive grant dollars, right? And that's what we're gonna be talking about today with our guests. And so, without further ado, let's introduce our guest. Our guest today is Bevon Joseph, who is the founder and CEO of a company called Grant Logic AI. Bevon, welcome, pal.

Bevon Joseph 3:08

Yeah, to be here, Chris and Kelvin. Uh, appreciate you guys having me. And yeah, Chris and I, we've known each other for a long time, and you know, I always bring all my crazy ideas to you. And you know, this one was born out of frustration, like I told you earlier this year. And sometimes the best ideas, the best products, the best companies are really come from a lived experience. So thanks for having me.

Chris Maher 3:26

100%, 100%. Yeah, I was actually going back, and our our our mutual friend Jamie introduced us, it's like almost two and a half years ago now. So it's been it's been a while. And but immediately, at least I felt this way from the first call, I felt I had met a met a kindred spirit, like similar to when I first met Kelvin. And we've just kind of gotten into a cadence where like every few months, uh maybe not quarterly, but close to quarterly, we catch up and touch base. And and then we've and I'd say in the the past probably nine plus months, we've been talking a lot more, especially around this, you know, when you had came up with the idea with with Grant Logic AI. So it's a pleasure to be with you, my friend.

Bavon’s Wall Street Origin Story

Chris Maher 4:05

Always good to see you. Before we jump into Grant Logic, let's actually start with how you got to Grant Logic. Your background is awesome. And and as you just mentioned, like it's this collective lived experience you've had as an entrepreneur, a nonprofit, you know, a startup, you know, founder and entrepreneur, a startup nonprofit leader, and a lot of other stuff. But like just take us through the arc of your background because I think it's so fascinating. And and I think it really is kind of, I don't want to say culminating because you're still a young guy, but that that collection of experiences have really led you to where you are today. So let's start with the background.

Bevon Joseph 4:44

No, definitely. Um, you know, you'll you and your guests will hear that I have an accent. You know, so I'm I was born in Trinidad in the Caribbean, and after high school moved to the New York, New Jersey area, you know, and really was in pursuit of education. You know, I was always curious about computers, technology, and all that stuff, and started my career on Wall Street. Right. So I lived in New York for 15, 20 years. First job was on a trading floor at Chase Bank. And here I am, surrounded by a hundred plus traders, yelling, screaming. I don't know what they're talking about. I don't have a finance background, I had a technology background, but I was fascinated by what was going on around me. And you know, they're yelling at me because I'm the tech guy, everything breaks, is my problem. You know, but I was also curious about the markets. So I tell people all the time, my career in finance happened to me. I didn't have any family members, I didn't know anybody in finance. You know, we'll talk about social capital and stuff down there, you know, later, but I I really was exposed to a lot very early. But you know, I said, you know what, how do I learn about this environment I'm in? So I kind of went on this was before AI, this was before YouTube, this was literally like books, right? We had to actually read books. So you said that I'm a young guy, I'm actually 48 years old.

Chris Maher 5:59

You you you look like you could like I I really thought you would have been more in your like your early 30s.

Bevon Joseph 6:05

But thank you. I appreciate it.

Kelvin Crosby 6:07

You know, I mean, but let's let's do be honest. Chris could still be your dad, though.

Chris Maher 6:14

Come on, Kelvin, how about uncle? Come on, I thought we agree I'd be everyone's uncle, not dad.

Bevon Joseph 6:20

Let's go to uncle, Kelvin.

Chris Maher 6:24

You know, uh a young, handsome uncle.

Bevon Joseph 6:27

Right, exactly. So I again in my career on Wall Street happened that way, and I went from firm to firm, trading floor to trading floor, the New York Stock Exchange, UBS, all these firms. But the thing that I saw in my day-to-day was the lack of diversity on the trading floors. Again, nobody spoke like me, had an accent, was where I was from. I had nothing in common with these people, you know. I I felt out of place. Imposter syndrome was a real thing. I was like, I just stayed quiet. I tell everybody I stayed quiet for about eight, ten years of my career on Wall Street because I just didn't feel like I belonged there. But I was fascinated with the environment. I made friends, eventually got out of my shell. But through my career on Wall Street, again, I always had this idea in my head how do I change what I could change? What do I possess that I can open

Social Capital And The Greenwood Project

Bevon Joseph 7:15

up the doors for like young people of color to come into finance, etc., to really bypass those 10 years that I stayed quiet? How do I short circuit that to them? You know, and I came up with the idea of nonprofit Greenwood Project, which is uh 12 years old today, actually, this year. But the goal was to open up the doors for financial uh careers and financial services to high school and college kids, you know, through my lived experience, what did I learn being on the inside of these firms that could then get these kids in the door? Social capital was the key. Because again, and this is not just in finance, right? The world is a place about who you know, who you're connected to, what rooms you're in, right? Who can give you the inside game about what to expect at an investment bank, for example? And I had all I had a decade plus of experience with that. I said, how do I take that and empower young people from underserved communities in New York, Chicago, all over the country? Fast forward, Greenwood is a three, four million dollar organization, has about 15, 20 employees. Every financial firm is working with them. I've worked with thousands of kids over the last decade or more. And again, through my own little experience of being on a floor, being the only person of color there, and saying, How do I change this industry, given what I can do? And these young people, I know where every single one of them are today across the country. They're from the southern west sides of Chicago and from communities that nobody was even giving a look to. And I'm a strong believer in like you can't be what you can't see. And my goal was always to expose young people to the world of finance and financial literacy and all that kind of stuff. But I went from Wall Street to the nonprofit world, and then along that way, I was like, you know what? How do I do this at scale? Because a nonprofit is great, you can help who you can help. But I have these global kind of ambitions to like help young people and people across the world. I said, How do we leverage technology to do that? A couple of years ago, AI comes along and just pours gasoline on everything that I'm doing. And I came to Chris, I talk about all these ideas I had and stuff like that. But the one thing that I really have that was gold and still is today is relationships, right? Because, like you just said, we would touch base every now and then, and I would say, Chris, what do you think about this? And you're like, you know, you need to meet this person, and all these great things happen. So, again, my where I'm at today with grant logic is again because I had to raise money for my nonprofit endeavors, for-profit, and the nonprofit world, it's all about grants, right? It's all about foundations and knocking on doors and building those relationships. And I'm not a grant writer, but I had to raise money and I had to figure out grants, and the grant process is not a nice process unless you love doing that stuff. The research, the writing, you write all that kind of stuff. And but I had to figure it out, and it's it

The Real Cost Of Grant Chasing

Bevon Joseph 10:00

was very tedious, it's very like time consuming. I was chasing so many bad grants that I wasn't qualified for and wasted so many hours of my life.

Chris Maher 10:09

So yeah, and one quick thing, one like so. First of all, you're back, like I just a through line for us on this podcast, all of our guests, lived experience ultimately drives what they're doing, right? And and that's obviously the case for you. You know, for especially for smaller nonprofits who are understaffed, under-resourced, undercapitalized, like going after grants can be kind of like well, well, if you if you do it the traditional way, it's like a full-time job.

Bevon Joseph 10:39

It is, yeah, right, right.

Chris Maher 10:40

And so through that experience of yours, and and there's there's you know millions of nonprofits, but this you know, when you started telling me about this, and we're gonna get into what grant logic is, I of course understood the value for nonprofits that are seeking grants. But through my experience running Samaritan and working with lots of early stage startups in this sector of disability and accessibility assistive tech, they're having to get creative. And a lot of them were turning to non-dilutive grants. And so if you can get as a for-profit startup money via non-dilutive grants, I mean, that's gold because you're getting capital to continue to grow your business, but you're not giving up equity. And so, was that something you were thinking about initially when you were building Grant Logic, or you were thinking exclusively for the nonprofit sector?

Bevon Joseph 11:36

I built it out of frustration. I I looked at Grant, all these other products out there. I'm like, and none of them were replicating my workflow, my frustrations. I was like, nobody's doing this. Like, why does this exist? Again, having a technology background, playing around with AI. That's like, let me just build something to solve my problem. And I built it and it worked really well. And I said, you know what? Let me ping like five of my nonprofit friends, right? CEOs, etc. Hey, here's a link. Check this out, let me know what you think about it. Immediately they were like, I love this, I need this. How much does it cost? I was like, Well, I will now I have to start thinking about what you know, a business. And then I posted something on LinkedIn, which you actually reached out to me. I was like, hey, have you even thought about like you know, for profits that have a mission-driven business model, like accessibility, disability startups? I was like, I didn't even, I wasn't even thinking about that. And then you reposted it. Man, Chris, you I told you this before, but from day one to day 10, I went from like me and my five friends in the tires to like almost a hundred inbound based on your post and your right, you're talking about it in your networks. And that's when I'm like, wow, this is like this thing has legs because now the market is coming to me. Right. Zero dollars spent on marketing, but my frustration turned out to be a lot of people's frustration in different sectors, nonprofit, for-profit, social enterprise, etc.

Chris Maher 13:00

Yeah. Hey Kelvin, in your entrepreneurial experience, you've done you've had you've done some grant writing, right? And non-dilutive grants over time.

Kelvin Crosby 13:09

Well, I mean, I think one of the things is like as a a blind person, trying to do these grants, you you actually gotta actually dish out some income to be able to get some of those grants. And like I still remember really trying to apply for the SBIR grants and then building those relationships that are out that you need to have with those those like for those SBIR grants, relationships are the key. But I as like I think about some of the smaller grants that I applied for. J it would take me four or five weeks and and I would hope I would have enough time to be able to get get all the things together, put everything together and then send it over. And I know w especially when I was building my robotic blind cane back in the day, we were trying to really get it funded by grants. I mean nowadays I I don't know if they would even fund that project, but it was it was one of those things where I realized if I want to go down the grant path, i it was gonna take me having to hire somebody to do it. Because even though those databases are not even accessible. And so if you're a blind person and you're trying to do this and you're trying to run it all by yourself, it you're you're gonna run into accessibility issues in these databases.

Chris Maher 14:36

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, Kelvin, you bring up a really good point there is uh not only do you want to make the process of accessing of surfacing grants that are applicable to you and your organization, your business, your nonprofit, but you want to you also want to make that process accessible and inclusive of everybody. Bevon, you have you've you have embraced and engaged with with our sector of the market so quickly. And and I know because you and I have had this conversation, is that part of that is it's it's good business for you, but it's also you you've realized that there are some amazingly talented entrepreneurs and incredibly innovative businesses in this space. And we need to figure out ways to fund them, right? And this, I think Grant Logic is gonna be a really important platform for them to access capital.

What Grant Logic AI Actually Does

Chris Maher 15:25

So let's get into that. So tell our listeners what is Grant Logic AI?

Bevon Joseph 15:30

Oh, definitely, yeah. So again, talking about the process of finding grants and and and my goal with Grant Logic for myself, when I again building out frustration, how do I save myself time? Right? How do I make a quick decision on is this grant a good fit for what I do? So I don't waste the time right going down that line, that road if it doesn't fit. So um, just a little as you guys were just talking, and Kelvin was describing his experience, you know. Uh I think so $150 billion is distributed annually across the US and foundations, government grants, all that kind of stuff, right? About 30 to 80 hours actually per application sometimes, like Kelvin said it could be weeks, right? I have lived that, we've all lived that in some places. I'm like, how do I eliminate that that time? And I call it decision intelligence. I don't describe it as software, I don't describe it as an application. I said this is decision intelligence infrastructure because we want to change the way we go about finding and matching and applying for grants. So, what Grant Logic is is really a platform to get you to a quick yes or no. Does this make sense? Right? So we have a, and I think Chris, you and I have talked about this too. I describe it as a common app.

Chris Maher 16:42

Yep.

Bevon Joseph 16:42

Grand seeking organization. We have that for college, right? Kids go on the unfind the common app. We don't have that for the nonprofit sector or the grant seeking population, right? So in one place, you have a profile on the platform. You tell us everything about you, what you care about, what you do, what you're trying to use the money for, etc., etc. And we call it your brand DNA. So again, AI, we know can hallucinate. I didn't want to build something to say, hey AI, go out and find everything you know about Kelvin and what he does and his organization, build a profile, help him find grants because it can hallucinate and bring you stuff that doesn't make sense. Now you have more noise than you need. So I said, you know what? I want founders to tell me what they do. And you spend 10 minutes, you fill out this profile, and as soon as that profile is created, we have an agent as well that actually goes out and only brings back stuff that makes sense for you that you say you care about. And then you can also come and like dump links in there, RFPs in there, government grants, PDFs, you know, you name it, foundations, and immediately it does a in a couple seconds. And again, keep in mind what the normal process is.

Chris Maher 17:51

Yeah.

Bevon Joseph 17:51

I email Kelvin and say, Hey man, you talked about this. He had 10 links, go check them out. Then he has to click on each one, go, you know, do the research, could be hours, could be weeks. In seconds, now he can dump all that in there and it generates a report, a snapshot back to you. So it does a fit scoring from zero to 100. You got 60, 70% match to this. It also gives you intelligence on the funder. So think about what we normally do. Google these people, now we use AI, the recent news, who are they funding, who do the who do I know over there? We go out and gather that intelligence on the funder, on the application. What platform are they using? We help you generate a narrative on the platform now. This case, this is feedback that came from the users, actually. It says you're doing the Bevon, you know, this is great, you're helping us decide really quickly, but then we still have to go write a narrative for every grant. Right. And every foundation is different, right?

Chris Maher 18:44

And typically, like I haven't done many grants, but typically, like that narrative, you gotta have to customize it to the organization and grant you're applying for every time, right?

Bevon Joseph 18:53

Well, 10 foundations, they're asking you the same thing in 10 different ways, right? Right. That's what they're doing. So, what we did is we said, you know what, for these 10 foundations, that's okay, we get it. But now we can click a button and it'll look at your profile, look at the grant opportunity, and generate a narrative for you. Copy, paste, edit if you want to, boom, just eliminated hours of your life again of time doing that work. And anybody could do it. I describe Grant Logic as the grant writer you can't afford to hire.

Chris Maher 19:22

Right, right. You know what I you know what I I'm not sure, Bevon, from our conversations if I realize this. So I think some, you know, like some grant seekers might say, okay, well, if I come into the platform, do you have you know the entire universe of grants? Well, the response is, hey, we've got a lot of the grants already in there, but if you come across grants, right? I and I just I just sent a link, sent a link about a grant to a couple of entrepreneurs earlier this week. I think it was, I think it was that it was a grant, it might have been the Ford Foundation, specific to an area of disability. And I forwarded it and said, Hey, you have you guys ever you know checked this, you know, check this out from the Ford Foundation. But if I was using Grant Logic, I could take that the link to that grant and just dump it into upload it to Grant Logic AI, and then run my profile against that. And in seconds you're gonna tell me if it's a good match or not. Amazing.

Bevon Joseph 20:19

Yeah, uh done exactly. And that's that's the that's the thing, yeah. Definitely. And in the profile now, you can actually put keywords in there, you can put like everything you care about, uh geographic. Like, are you only serving Chicago? Are you serving the entire world? Like, you tell us everything you describe there, is like that's what then the our agent will go out and look for. And again, saving you the

Fit Scores Plus Auto Written Narratives

Bevon Joseph 20:40

the the noise of all the random because you know there's companies out there that will show you the entire universe of grants, and then you gotta filter, search, dig, you know, and keep going. We're saying we don't want to do that. And then to Chris's point, you know, we don't talk about Grand Logic as a grant database, but what we what we are doing is crowdsourcing opportunities. So every new profile that's that gets created, and we start sucking things in from the internet, and then you know Kelvin goes on there and he looks up 50 grants in a week and 20% of them are a good match for him, the rest of them don't just evaporate, they actually go into a database that we are building.

Chris Maher 21:12

Right.

Bevon Joseph 21:12

So now we are we're crowdsourcing grants that actually matter to the community. So and if Chris has is being funded by a foundation in California, but Kelvin is doing the same thing that Chris does, we will surface to Kelvin what who's funding Chris as well. Because again, if they love Chris, they'll love you. You know, so I think my building this is a for-profit business, but my the through line for everything I do is social impact. Like I want to help communities, and to your point, Chris, 75% of our inbound are from the accessibility and disability community, startup community, which I get I was not interacting with at all for my entire career in this business. But and again, I keep meeting these amazing founders, and they keep telling me the same thing how do we make this faster? How do How can you help? And I need you to meet this person then and that pointing me to all these directions. But I'm learning so much about this community. And I told you this before. I'm like I'm we're going all in to help and amplify that as well.

Chris Maher 22:12

I love it. I love it. And so there are multiple kind of value propositions in terms of stakeholders, right? So, like certainly we're very focused on helping startups within this sector uncover new pools of capital, in this case, non-dilutive grants. So you're certainly there's the value for startups, nonprofits, grant seekers, but there's also a value for the grantors, right? Because part of what they're trying to do is they have to distribute a certain amount of capital every year, especially if you're like a foundation or maybe a corporate corporate foundation or a large family foundation or private foundation, by law, you have to distribute a certain amount of capital a year. And you want to do that in an effective and efficient and targeted way. And I'm assuming it's a pretty manual process for them too. So this is a platform that they can also use, correct?

Bevon Joseph 23:03

Correct. So again, coming out of conversations we've had, we're connecting both sides of the capital allocation sector pretty much. So two-sided marketplace where we have grant seekers, we have capital allocators. And again, now that has, I was thinking just foundations. Now we have donor advised funds, we have, right? And if you think about it, and in in my finance brain, like deal flow, right? You're thinking about we're literally doing all the heavy lifting for the capital allocators. Because we can go to the money side of the equation and say, you know what? I have a community of grant-seeking organizations who are looking to do the exact same thing that you say you care about and you want to fund. And I could surface those to you and I can matchmake those. So the AI is doing the matchmaking. So again, yes, we are building this two-sided marketplace almost, and we are

Crowdsourced Grants And Funders Matching

Bevon Joseph 23:50

now removing another step for the grant-seeking folks to say, you know what? No, let's bring the money onto the platform now, and we can do that matchmaking. So, yes, we're doing that, kind of connecting both sides as well.

Kelvin Crosby 24:00

I'm gonna also ask what keeps coming in my head is databases. So I obviously were creating this crowdfunding database, but could you pay like have a tier where it pulls in all the state databases and the federal databases for grants? But then also there's that one database of like four or five thousand dollars a year to have access to this massive nonprofit database. Like, is that something that we could pull pull from without doing the crowdfunding side of it ?

Bevon Joseph 24:36

So we're doing that already for grants.grants.gov. I have had to navigate that site, I don't like it, nobody likes it. You know what I'm saying? So um, and then Illinois, I'm in Chicago. Illinois has its own, California has its own. So yeah, we those are free APIs to connect to. So we already we've been doing that from day one. Like for your when you log in according to your profile, your location, you can always everybody can connect to grants.gov, but we're only gonna pull in the things that matter to you. So you don't have to go to their website anymore. And yes, there's Candid out there, there's all these other grants stations. So we could eventually down the road say, you know what, let's plug into the universe of grants, but only show to our communities the things that matter to them.

Chris Maher 25:13

Yeah. And then the third, there's another kind of constituent that has popped up that I know from our conversations you weren't thinking about, but it's like all these consultants and advisors to nonprofit grantors or sorry, grantors, you know, foundations, etc. And then also mostly probably nonprofits that are seeking grants, but they're finding value in your platform as well, correct?

Bevon Joseph 25:41

Yeah, so we have a consultant kind of tier as well, because consultants, yeah, they might have a portfolio of 15, 20 nonprofits they're writing grants for. They don't have a place to manage that, right? So now, um, and they usually use their Gmail calendar, their work count, like they have all these calendars. Now we actually uh when I talk about infrastructure and this being capacity building infrastructure, we all have a spreadsheet. Grant consultants live on spreadsheets and they're tracking. I've done it for 10 years. We can actually we ingest your spreadsheet into the platform and analyze your historical performance, and now you can actually visualize your pipeline. So let's say in 2026, I decide I'm gonna go after $2 million in grants. I can actually see how I'm tracking towards that, right? So it actually is a nice dashboard and all that fancy stuff. Boards love it, it's great for reporting, but now you don't live in Excel anymore. We are changing the way so these folks who come onto the platform, they're getting off of their Excel life forever. Now they're managing so consultants love it because they can manage all their clients in there, and revenue-wise, that's actually probably one of the biggest revenue drivers is those consultants because they're bringing a portfolio of organizations with them.

Chris Maher 26:53

Yeah, and and so for a grant seeker, you're gonna help them, they can build a profile based on that. They can uncover grant opportunities that are the right match in instantaneously, whether that's grants that are already within your platform, or they can just upload links to other grants or RFPs, RFIs. They then have the common app that helps them complete the. I'm guessing it's probably 90% of an application for a grant is pretty standard stuff. And then you help them with the do the customization part in a much quicker and efficient way. And then it's up to them to add so you take it all the way up to it's ready to submit it. You're you're not connected to the pipes to submit because that's all those are all like different, right?

Bevon Joseph 27:46

Yeah, yeah, those are all different. They might be using Salesforce, they might be using other platforms. So we tell them, like, listen, we could take you all or get you all ready to apply for that. And now we're working on this, so they started asking the question. There's like, hey, what about the questions that they're gonna ask me? And can we just copy those questions into your platform and and draft? So we're working on that as well, too. So we can get them to the point where the application is ready. You just go dump it over there and submit it. And but to your question, I think down the road, when I think about bringing the funders onto the platform, that could be an opportunity for us to say, all right, here's end-to-end, right?

Chris Maher 28:22

Connected to the plan. You could you could, and it may not even be called an API at that point, but like API into their systems, and then people can push the button, apply, or send, which would be awesome.

Kelvin Crosby 28:34

The other thing I I was thinking too is is not even having to do that, is having a an agent that designated for you for you, and then the agent goes and learns that platform and then brings it back. And then because I I I I've done that a couple of times on a couple sites that I've been really trying to keep, I want to get a really good price. And it it just it keeps it keeps coming up, like, oh I like that, I like that. So I'm I'm like, this actually would work, and and be able to hit a button and be like, now go learn that website, come back, and then now fill it in. And and so it you wouldn't have to go learn each one of them. I mean, obviously you need to go review it, make sure it's in the right format, and especially those S SBIR grants. But uh, but one thing I wanted to ask, could this is for me selfishly, could I have a dream. I have a dream. Uh but I I I've always wanted the homestead. And and I wanted I wanted to create this Death Blind Potter homesteader, and I was like, you know, there's a lot of grants for homesteading lately. And I was like, could I apply for individual grants and through the platform?

Bevon Joseph 29:56

No, yeah, definitely. I think uh again, you create that profile, and if this is what you know, this is my target, this goal is I'm trying to achieve, I want to do the money, etc. And yeah, that's the goal is to find those grants, right? To say, hey, this is what Kelvin is trying to do, this is the mission of the organization, this is what he's trying to build, and help find those dollars. Because again, I think the money is out there, the issue is accessing it on knowing how to go about it, how who's who's the relationships that you need to build, right? I meet people all the time who's like, hey, Bevon, I'm trying to fund XYZ. You know, I have to give this money away by the end of the year, you know, tax purposes, whatever it is. I have friends who are financial advisors who call me up and say, listen, this second generation of this family just inherited this set of money. They don't care about the traditional things that their grandparents used to fund. They care about social justice, they care about financial literacy, they care about right, and then they call me up, it's like because they know that's what I do. And it's like, hey, how can we connect you to these people? So again, the money is out there, it's just we have this huge disconnect. And I think grand logic, I'm trying to make send it to

Pricing Tiers And Fast Market Pull

Bevon Joseph 31:00

like a bridge, you know?

Chris Maher 31:01

Yeah. And so, Bevon, let's talk now. If you're ready to share publicly, because I know you're live and and people are subscribing to this. Can you give us a sense of the cost structure and the fees and how that works for the various parties that are using the platform?

Bevon Joseph 31:18

Yeah, definitely. So we when I started this, I had this concept. Well, I always think about how do I know if this is gonna work, right? I think too many as a founders start building things without even with any input. Like they're so passionate. I have this problem, I know everybody's gonna have this problem too. Let me build it, and then they go test it in the market. I decided to have a founding 25. So I went out and I said, I want 25 organizations, you know, at a reduced price, they like pay like $29 a month forever. But they become my my brain trust, they tell me how we shape this thing going forward. Give me feedback, there's a break, like just kick the tires, right? And I think Chris, you've probably heard this before, but it's better to have like 25 people who love your platform than 5,000 who don't even use it, yeah. Right? Because that allows you to

Chris Maher 32:04

agree 100%.

Bevon Joseph 32:05

Right. So I found my Founding 25 and I say, Hey, this is what we're doing, and they loved it. And then uh once we but you know, when you shared it, that Founding 25 filled up really quickly. I my goal was like Jan 12th is when we launched, and I said by the end of March I wanted 25. We had 25 within like five, six days, you know, and then uh we had to shut it down, and then now we move everybody into this $99 a month pro level, so that's what everybody's kind of filtering into right now, if you're a single user, and then we have the consultant pro level starter level, which is at $149 a month. Then that's for five organizations to manage five, to manage ten, it's like $299 a month, and then you know, this you and I were talking before, there's these things that I didn't even know existed, these markets where you know people are asking to make Grant Logic the layer of technology between you know states and who are looking to do you know um accessibility fundraising to make tourism you know more attractive to certain cities, so it's all these like nuanced, like little parts of the industries that I had never even envisioned, but there's a need for it, and uh that's custom pricing around licenses. So I think there's so many things that have happened between January and and now that has just blown my mind. But I think it's a learning process for me. But I think it's it's just been really fascinating, you know?

Chris Maher 33:31

Yeah, I it's uh it's awesome. I've it's so exciting just how quickly the market has embraced it. But I think there's a couple of important reasons for why that is the case. One, you built this out of your own lived experience, like from your frustration of finding and applying to grants. So and then you went and you sanity checked that with your founding 25, right? You you you use inclusive design, right? And people that's not just for you know, like the disability accessibility space, although we talk about that all the time. It's just good business. Like, why would you not want to talk to what you think are your prospective customers to get their feedback before you go build something? And so you're building this with your customers, right? You you you you build this because you want to, you would be, you would be the first customer of this, and then you went out and got more people who would be prospective customers, and they've been they've been side by side with you the entire way, and that's why I think you're you're growing so quickly because you've got really good product market fit. Yeah, yeah.

Bevon Joseph 34:31

I think it's been and I again I I also when I do demos and I meet people for the first time, whether you introduce me or they reach out to me, I always uh lead with curiosity. I'm like, what like what's frustrating you right now? You know, and you know, ask them how they found us, etc. But when the UI is very simple, like I I built it in as basic language as possible because not everybody understands the language of grant writing and research, and we assume that people understand what these things are. I didn't know when I started, I was just figuring I made a ton of mistakes 10-12 years ago, and I wanted to build the entire platform as simple to understand. There's education, this tool tips are all everywhere because I work with solo founders all the way up to like, and this is uh some news for you, Chris. We just launched, we just signed up like a third 25 million plus nonprofit, like massive organizations are reaching out and saying, we can't figure this out, and we have this huge staff, they have an entire staff grant writings team, and they don't have something like this, and we're like signing them up as well, you know?

Chris Maher 35:34

Yeah, that's fantastic. And when you think about from a like I'm selfishly thinking about our startups in in the disability sector, for a little more than a thousand bucks a year, they have a tool that basically becomes an extension of their team, as you say, right? And like that, that's pretty darn powerful, right? The resource that that you have built for early stage companies and nonprofits that are seeking grants. Boy oh boy, I think you know, you get one grant and it pays for itself many, many, many times over, right?

Bevon Joseph 36:08

A lady told me last week that she avoided a bad grant, so it paid for it.

Chris Maher 36:13

So that's a great way to think about it. That's a good that's a really good way to think about it, right?

Bevon Joseph 36:17

Yeah, yeah. And we have a we have a feature where we in real time show you the ROI on you using the platform. Yeah, like as you're searching, as you're evaluating, are you pursuing things? We're showing you the dollar amount you're saving in time for your team, for you. You know what I'm saying? Like so if you avoid it, you avoid a bad grant, you'll also pay for yourself.

Chris Maher 36:36

Yeah, no, that's super you know, providing the analytics, one on their use of the platform and the ROI they're getting, but it's also as you say, a lot of these organizations have to report to their boards, right? And so giving them the dashboard, they can, I'm assuming, probably just download into a PDF or a PowerPoint deck and they're off and running. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. So congratulations, my friend. Uh, just awesome, awesome stuff.

Kelvin Crosby 36:59

Calvin, before I mean, I I think this this is exciting because I mean, as we were growing into AI, like I it it changed my life. Like it it's and it changed the ability of how I do things and and really work on things. And it it this is just gonna be a nether tool in my toolbox where I can I can do things that would t normally take me three or four months and get it done in literally a couple hours. And that to me is just like, come on, let's do it. And so I when I when I first learned about your platform and I was like, ooh, I wan I want to do this and really take this to the next level, j and be able to use because uh I mean I'm in a position where I gotta make some d hard decisions financially,

Accessibility Wins And AI As Equalizer

Kelvin Crosby 37:50

and I'm like, Oh, this could help me make some of those decisions and be like, Oh, there's some options. Alright, how long is that gonna take me to get to that point? And then we go from there. And so I'm I'm excited about it. I'm really excited about it, where it's going, and honestly, as it becomes a platform that is accessible because at the end of the day, there's so many blind people or other people with disabilities trying to get grants and trying to build their own nonprofits or their own programs, and they're all facing the same struggle. And so, and that's what I'm excited about. Is like we're creating something this this is being something that's gonna help everybody, yeah.

Chris Maher 38:35

And Kelvin, I think you bring up a really good point there. It's like as we talk, I think a lot of people are thinking of like the startups are they're all venture-worthy startups. Well, there are a lot of startups out there that aren't venture worthy, and the way they survive is they self-fund, they reinvest the revenue they make, they get money from family, friends, and they rely on small grants, like 5K grants, 10k grants, stuff like that. This is gonna be incredibly powerful. And there are millions of those companies like that, right? Most people, a lot of, I shouldn't say most, a lot of people with disabilities because finding stable employment and consistent employment can be challenging. What they end up doing is they become entrepreneurs and they start their own business out of a necessity and a need to support themselves financially. And accessing a 5K grant, you know, each year or every other year, or 10K, that can be the difference between whether their small business survives or not. And so I think it's gonna be super powerful for a lot of organizations like that.

Bevon Joseph 39:40

Yeah, I think that Kelvin's point to AI and what we're building with Grant Law is leveling the playing field.

Chris Maher 39:46

100%.

Bevon Joseph 39:46

Like you have the same shot at the big grants as everybody else now. Yep. Guess what? You'll you you can actually come across more prepared. Because we'll do all the work that you can't afford to hire a consultant, you can't afford to hire a full-time staff to do this. So we'll we'll say let's be that tool for you. And again, with the on the capital allocation side of things, let's surface because Chris, this is your world. A lot of these funders are only they're in a bubble. Yeah, they they fund who they know, who's in their circle. Now we could surface to them amazing organizations across the world who are a perfect fit for what they're looking to do, and now they get to have even more impact. So, again, we're on both sides trying to open up the eyes and exposure to everybody and say, you know what, let's level the playing field here for the first time and and and show each other and both sides amazing funders and grant seekers. And I think to your point, help the entrepreneurs again, and that's been the feedback I've been getting from them. Is like, listen, this really is a tool that is helping us um, you know, meet and exceed things when it comes to like grant seeking, research, etc., reporting back to boards and all that kind of stuff. So I think that's what really excites me is the fact that we're getting to empower those organizations like you fund Chris that you work with, that's in your community. So I think again, going back to my point of like my goal is always to have an impact, and how do we do that at scale, you know?

Chris Maher 41:10

Yeah, I I think your comment before, and I talk about this a lot, right? AI is it's like it's scary for a lot of us, but if we use it the if we work together and use it the right way, yeah, it it can be a huge plus for humanity and specifically a great equalizer, especially for people with disabilities. Now, it could also be used in a negative way, but I think your you and your company are a wonderful example of how it can be used to become an equalizer and give everybody

How To Reach Grant Logic

Chris Maher 41:40

a fair shot. And that's all that's all you can ask for. So, congratulations, my friend. It's awesome.

Bevon Joseph 41:44

Appreciate it. Thank you again, Chris. Uh, to for all your help.

Chris Maher 41:48

It's it's it's my pleasure. And so, as before we wrap up, how can people learn more? First get connected with you and learn more about Grantlogic AI.

Bevon Joseph 41:58

So, um, so Grantlogicai.com, you know, go there, you can request a demo, you know, check out um some of you know what we're about, features and all that. Uh, you can reach me at bevon @ grantlogicai.com. Again, uh, we're on social media as well. Too anybody who knows me, you know, I'm not shy to talk about what I do. Chris knows this on LinkedIn. I'm talking all day long, you know, and and it's actually been that's the last thing I'll mention is storytelling. I I really believe I'm not a sales guy at all, but I like to tell stories, and I love telling a good story about why I did this, how the customers are feeling, right? And I think the user experience, I'm obsessed with customer service, right? So I think um for me, you know, definitely follow us, you know, reach out, we'd love to talk to anybody from solo founders all the way up to big ones and help as many people as we can.

Chris Maher 42:46

Awesome. Thank you, my friend. Great to see you as always, pal, and hopefully we'll uh we'll talk again soon.

Bevon Joseph 42:51

Sounds good. Appreciate it. Thanks, Kelvin.

Kelvin Crosby 42:53

That wraps up Investing in Accessibility, as I always say. Go to be on your challenges, and we'll see you in two weeks. Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast, where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@SamaritanPartners.com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www.samaritanpartners.com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know so we can spread the word so that we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.