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Hi, everyone. I'm Jean Miller-Truelsen, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Darkpatch Technology,
the creators of Flower. Right over there is my CTO and co-founder, Paul Mer-Truelsen.
And I'm here to tell you a little bit about how we think Flower can help the global refugee
crisis in a different way. So we know the numbers. We're planning on welcoming 85,000 refugees into
the U.S. this year. This is frustrating for me. That number should be higher. And why is because
the refugee crisis is a story that's personal in a different way. My mother was born on a side of
a mountain between China and Vietnam, as her parents were escaping civil war from China. Decades
later, she found herself leaving Vietnam with my father and sponsoring all of our family over to
the U.S. At some point, I got to live with all of my cousins. And it's because of this story that I
ask, how can I help? How can I change this? So what I realized was this question, how can I help,
is something that we ask at Flower all the time. And we built an app for support. We support
platforms to help friends and family better support each other. Help you, help others. We
wanted to answer that question quickly. How can I help? What we realized is that we built a platform
that was this combination of a wedding registry, a way to be able to list things you need and get
help, as well as a volunteer board, a way to offer help and your superpowers before anyone has to
ask. What we realized was we could use this platform to help connect refugees that come into our
community with the communities here. So we want to change it from here. We've been speaking to the
Legal Aid Foundation in LA and we were able to talk to the refugee forum. We'll talk to them more.
We realized that our goals overlap. That we want to build community. We want to build a support
system to help refugees integrate into their new communities. We have that platform. We want to
connect the givers in the US to those that are coming in and connect them to the global refugee
crisis at large so that we can incite real change. So we can change that number and increase that
number from 85,000 on up. And we want to be able to with Flower empower individuals to be able to
empower the refugees with resilience. One of the things that the folks at the Legal Aid Foundation
that LA had mentioned to us was how much the refugees, once they arrived, wanted to help.
They wanted to, through their crisis, through what they went through, they wanted to empower others
and help the next person coming in. This is how we think it may work. We've been talking
to organizations and we want to be able to take a deeper look at how easy it might be and make it
as easy as possible for them to be able to create flowers on our platform for families as they come
in and connect them to the community in which they're arriving. So that individuals in the
community can provide goods and services directly to the family. It's not just going to an organization.
They don't know where it's going to go. Everybody has their doubts. They know the family. This is
the family that's arriving in their neighborhood. How can they help? Here's a zoomed-in version.
A marriage just arrived in her community. She had to leave all of her belongings. This is just a
brief setup of what you can do in Flower. And also by the way I'm showing you version two,
this is coming out in the next few weeks. So version one is in the app store now. You can
offer meals. If you can't make it yourself, you can schedule a delivery. Once you offer,
you'll get more details about restrictions and anything that you might need in order to provide
a meal. As well as you can offer your superpower. And so we have put in translation as a superpower.
That's one of the biggest things that the intake organization is also excited that they need.
Being able to basically manage the volunteers and those that want to help and connect them to
real families. We just launched in March. So this is some early data. People want to give.
They've been giving five times more than they asked for help. Because by the way,
we hate asking for help. And for every flower, people have added on average three different
friends to help contribute. This is how we even further engage our community. We're looking to
raise 50k in order to conduct user research interviews and be able to pilot with intake
refugee organizations in the US and design, develop any additional tools as needed. As many
other founders know, you know, you'll get there and you realize you'll need to change things. So
we wanted to build that in. And I'll leave you with a quote from Pope Francis. He actually
said it really correctly. We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as
persons. This is a way where we get to connect with flower, the stories of refugees, and this
global crisis to each and every one of us. Work with us. We're looking for more organizations
to partner with in order to highlight this program and to do more research together and be
able to make some change. Thank you.
Questions?
I was curious. I saw there was this second option where you could say, instead of cooking, I could
order food. So can you do that anonymously and just make sure the food arrives? How does that
work? Is it like how do you order the food and get it delivered? And you can be sure that it's
delivered. Well, so our plan is so we're working with partners now in order to have food delivery
and we want to be able to keep it, keep privacy settings as well. So somebody can go in and be
able to offer a meal and then the receiver will go in and put in their address and it's all on our
and what their address is in privacy. And if they want somebody to come over and bring over food,
then we actually have a system to be able to coordinate with each other. So you get a confirmation
on both ends. It gets to be pushed out to your respective calendars as well. And then the individuals
can coordinate if they want to meet in person. But yes, we've been looking at different ways to be
able to keep it anonymous, be able to keep personal information like addresses on our side.
Other questions? Could you walk me through the spectrum that you have on screen? It seems to me
there's a mixture of supports and features maybe. I may be misinterpreting some of them. It's okay.
When it came to the screens that I showed you, I only showed you a few things. You can limit
how many things you want to add, what you need and what you want to offer. But the spectrum was
a way for us to show that there are many ways that people can help. And it's all about in what way
are we available. So on this side, we can, you know, and on flower, you can do this as well. You
can help in a text message, in a video, in photo. I didn't demonstrate those necessarily. But you
can also help by being there with foods, rides and gifts and superpowers. So we built this,
actually built flower originally as a broader support app covering use cases like cancer
diagnoses and becoming a new parent. So there are different things that you need at different times
of life and in different crises. And we wanted to do something more than a sad emoji on Facebook.
We wanted to be able to give people the power to give in whatever way. So if you can't bring a meal
or make a meal, you can send a message of support or you can send your superpower of translation.
Sometimes superpowers are also just waiting there, being there with somebody and keeping them company.
So we realized that, you know, we know about support. We did a lot of research when it came to
people that need it, as well as the friends and family around them, the communities that want to
better support them. I try to find your app. That is the tricky bit about being made flower.
If you search for a flower app, all one word, you should be able to find it. We are on flowerapp.com.
You can get the link that will send you to the iTunes store. We're on iOS now. In the next coming
weeks, you'll see the version 2 as well as you'll see us on. We're rolling out the red version as well.
What's your profit model? How do you be sustainable?
We take a fee off of every purchase that is made, so with our partners.
Just add it to my cost. It doesn't get added, actually. A lot of the partners already have
basically different affiliate models or ones that we worked out with them specifically.
Actually, you would pay the price that you normally pay for a meal or a ride or whatever it may be.
Then, we work with a partner. We're hoping to actually develop more add-ons and additions for the flower as well.
I like that you have that address to protect the refugees. I'm curious, what do you do for betting your volunteers?
Let's say they're going to be the ones to support, so that you can make sure that it's somebody who truly has a good motive
and isn't going to take advantage and misuse the app.
Absolutely. That's actually part of what we spoke about with LAFLA, Legal Aid.
We wanted to talk about different ways of betting. We wanted to be able to do the user research.
Working with how they're doing it now and not adding to their workload as well, they're overworked and underpaid and understaffed.
However, we can make it bring them as much support as possible and bring it in.
It's actually the whole idea that the flower is the many-to-one communication. We'll be able to bring that support.
Yes, I don't know the answers to that offhand, but we want to be able to work with organizations to be able to bet that and make it really clear and safe for everybody.
Any last questions?
Thank you.
