Nitin Bajaj

Everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Nicole Ogloza. Nicole, welcome on the show.

Nicole Ogloza

Thanks for having me.

Nitin Bajaj

Pleasure is all ours. So let’s start with who is Nicole?

Nicole Ogloza

Yeah. So I am a University of Florida graduate in communication sciences. And then from there, I started my professional career in technical sales, while I later actually moved on to becoming a systems engineer at Workday for government and education, systems. And then later on, I actually ended my professional career, at Warner Bros doing the same exact thing except for communication system systems engineering. And then later on, I founded my own company, Asaf. But prior to, you know, kind of all of that, a little bit of a professional or, like, personal story here. I’ve I went through so many challenges that really made me resilient, being and creating, the found being the founder of Etha 1. Long story short, COVID had impacted me just as many of you, on the show might be listening to. But at that point, I lost my dream job at Warner Bros, in addition to a $32,000,000 contract for my other startup that was with a colleague of mine at SpaceX. Went through this incredible journey of losing my phone across my hike back from California to Florida. And, you know, kind of from there, I really learned, many different types of perceptions, how misinformation really spread across COVID 19 pandemic, in addition to how news media has really affected all of our lives through that journey. And for the people, for our platform, you know, there’s a huge impact that came out of my story. It’s a very personal one for me. So I I believe that Etha will continue to exist and really share the facts, as opposed to anything else that is in the media to currently today, with our technology. And I believe that, you know, I won’t give up as easily through these personal experiences that I’ve had from getting lost in the middle of the desert, after losing my dream job as well as, you know, working with some of the most amazing start up entrepreneurs out in Los Angeles. So, you know, I came here today, to be on the show just to create a very inspirational story ahead.

Nitin Bajaj

And you you’ve had quite an adventure, I can tell, and, a transformative one. So would love to hear a little more about that. But now that we know a little bit about Nicole, let’s play a little game about these big themes that impact us as a community. And, we call this the underrated, overrated. So when you’re ready, I’ll throw some themes at you and see what you think about them.

Nicole Ogloza

Sure. Go for it.

Nitin Bajaj

Alright. Let’s start with NFTs.

Nicole Ogloza

I would say those are highly overrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Metaverse?

Nicole Ogloza

Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj

And while we are at it, crypto? Underrated. K. Real estate prices?

Nicole Ogloza

Highly overrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Inflation.

Nicole Ogloza

Especially in New York City. Yes. Extremely underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Right. What about cash?

Nicole Ogloza

That’s definitely an addition to the news media. Oh, underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

1. And, startup valuations?

Nicole Ogloza

Definitely underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

1. And, the great resignation.

Nicole Ogloza

Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

1. Well, thanks for playing along. That was fun. I really appreciate it. And, with that, let’s come back to some questions that are closer to your heart. Tell us about Etta. What is it? What’s the mission and the vision?

Nicole Ogloza

Sure. Sure. So what I thought is is that it’s a social and news media. It is actually using AI to bring a lot of transparency and accountability to news media, but not only that, politicians. A lot of people ask, you know, it’s just another AI, social news media. That’s not actually what it is. It’s actually a government 2 point o system, which will allow people from all over the nation, even from the down to the community levels to really support and Bajaj up their favorite or least favorite politicians and help them solve issues that they’re facing in their communities. And eventually, the system will be able to help create laws and policies and also find a middle ground to the political polarization that we’re facing these years, in the very in the very near future. One of our specific AIs that’s actually one of the most intriguing ones to me is finding the source of origination. So what that is is, like, in the media, most of these larger news media houses, whether you’re Fox or CNN, whatever spectrum you do fall on, they actually do find and source their stories from smaller blogs before they become what they’ve become.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm. And

Nicole Ogloza

this AI will actually target the first time someone has ever mentioned this particular statement, whether it comes from a politician or otherwise on the web, and it tracks the narratives over time of how the story has developed and actually who it came from. So really, really quick example is that people actually that can go on our platform will eventually be able to get to see that this came from a 4:4 AM prankster blogger about a celebrity death as opposed to, you know, it being discredited overnight through our AI. Very powerful stuff.

Nitin Bajaj

It is. And it’s almost so there’s a lot of blockchain terminology for authorizing the source of this, and then you either credited or discredited based on, like you said, if this is coming from a humor based site, some of them is just kind of building our stories, that are not meant to be real. Because, you know, I I recently started paying a little more attention to this. Fake news travels for 6 or 7 times faster than facts, which is really sad.

Nicole Ogloza

Yeah. And and a lot of this has to do with the way that the media is actually structured, how our communication systems are structured. And now that everyone is doing this whole fake news thing, it’s obviously gotten so much out of Nicole, but, yes, fake news does travel much faster than, credible news. 1, because we don’t actually have the manpower to fact check everything that does go out and the juiciest headlines really win. But the other fact is, you know, a lot of people do get fooled from other pranks that are lying around on some of these blogging sites that are really just kind of looking to spread fires that are worth spreading. You know? And I think that this is something that can be solvable, this misinformation crisis, if if you’re just creative enough with how some of your systems work.

Nitin Bajaj

True. And I may have answered my own question here, but I would love to hear your perspective. Why do this and and why now especially?

Nicole Ogloza

Personal journeys that, yes, of course, misinformation does spread, very quickly, and every person, it seems, that has a different perspective about COVID. Not only that, but political polarization is the biggest piece of all of this is why I’m doing it. You know, we can’t even sit in the same room together with our friends or families if we’re on opposing sides of the political spectrum

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Nicole Ogloza

Without basically tearing each other apart. And this is something that I really wanna prevent. We’re basically at a tipping point when it comes to political polarization. And if no one really does this now, we can indefinitely harm not only our democratic processes, but also our economy. And we’re really trying to prevent an economic collapse that really can happen through the use of technology as well as cleansing the Internet of misinformation. There are areas of court show where we can start healing this polarization. But, again, you know, middle ground is disappearing much faster than we’ve ever seen before. And this misinformation really continues to threaten our democracy, the lack of fake narratives that really destroy the credibility of some of our political news. We really wanna restore people’s faith back into, believe it or not, either the government, the media, or some of our democratic processes by giving control back to narratives of people. So we really love our country. We want it to be prosperous, and we really wanna have a thriving democracy by truly mitigating that polarization and giving access to actual credible news that cuts through the noise. And we really wanna also help as another part of our mission, understand really the true meaning of democracy and what it means for the US to continue to free, to lead the free world and also give a sense of trust to voters back into our political system unlike ever before.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm. Extremely important mission there, and, kudos to you for taking this on. Right? It’s not gonna be easy. And before we talk about the challenges, give us a sense of the size and scale of your operations. I know, you know, you’ve just got on this journey. So also give us a sense of what’s coming over the next few months.

Nicole Ogloza

Sure. Yeah. We’ve been in operation for about 11 months now. Mhmm. June, July will be our 1st year. But other than that, you know, we’re still in the preinvestment stage. We’ve gained probably $565,000 in commitments out of a $1,000,000 round.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Nicole Ogloza

But prior to all of this, we actually have a team of 38 people, all without investments, all volunteer team. All of our current developments, product, growth, everything has been done without investment Nitin addition with our lovely team. And now we’re really in a stage to set and raise funds for to bring our company, to make it go further. We don’t have any revenues or anything like that, but we will intend to start generating revenue towards the end of year when we do amass a couple of users.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Nicole Ogloza

We actually the difference between our startup is we only need about 25,000 users as opposed to a1000000, and startups to start monetizing because of our value proposition to

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Nicole Ogloza

Customers and investors. And currently, to this day, we’re really happy to announce that we have about 11,000 users on our platform each day. And we really wanna grow it to about 300,000 people towards the end of this year. So anyone that really listens to this, I would encourage, you know, checking it out because we are actually building it for the public Mhmm. In the public’s eye. And, again, you know, to the users, we wanna provide clear and unvarnished visibility to key issues in policy and lawmaking through the news, keeping leaders accountable, you know, through leader q scores. This is almost a report card about politicians and progress and how the entire public feels about them in real time. And then, obviously, provide such detailed verification to the source of news by the elimination of fake news that, you know, from there comes our customers. For customers, there would be media houses, current existing ones like Fox and CNN, government and campaign agencies, as well as polling organizations that are missing out of undecided voter data, even people that are more liberal or republican libertarian in nature. So for customers, we actually give an issue by issue breakdown to where voters stand, really understand how undecided voters are voting for some of these particular topics for politicians that are brought up, attract funding to campaigns for politicians in the future based on real issues. And then we really wanna bridge the gap between the general public and politicians to help their policy better, and lawmaking. So the basis of what our system is is that it’s called an algocracy, and algocracy are literally an algorithm that controls the form of government working with people as well as bridging that gap. And it uses artificial intelligence and blockchain to do so.

Nitin Bajaj

Well, congratulations again for building what you have built, like you said, through, consortium of volunteers that is a testament to the mission and your leadership. So congratulations. Let’s talk about, you know, as you’re taking on something that’s really institutionalized over centuries. What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing as a business?

Nicole Ogloza

Sure. So currently, it’ll probably be growth for the next few years. And when I mean growth, I mean user growth. Right? It’s not easy to create a social media And, you know, it’s to get a full blown solution, it’s really difficult to gain a lot of users as we progress through our product. But, you know, when we are product ready, you know, we are expecting about 25,000 users in the next 2 months. But, you know, growth to get to 300,000 people towards the end of this year and around midterms, It is going to be very difficult, obviously, without investment, but, you know, growth hacking our team, our morale, all of those things really do contribute to our growth.

So, you know, it’s like we’re really doing this all for the people, and we really hate what we see out there right now. We really wanna change that and for it to be at least semi controlled by somewhat of a general consensus. Yes. So we really kind of work on the best ideas that we hear from other growth hackers, our internal team to see and ensure if it’s a platform for us to enjoy. So all of our users, we actually do take the time to speak to everyone and hear their thoughts as to what they wanna see on our platform. So, you know, we’re very community owned, we’d like to say. Mhmm. And we would really encourage against to anyone that be the part of the mission or contribute, either in user growth to some capacity, we really would, like, allow the general public to help, either with our user growth, or, you know, even to invest in our rounds and be a part of this new system for for all of us.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. Let’s talk about the most exciting opportunity you’re targeting.

Nicole Ogloza

Yeah. I’d say, you know, being that in the media, we either have media or we have social media. Mhmm. But I really say that what we’re really trying to do is challenge and also change the way that people perceive politicians in real time. So we actually can observe ideologies and perceptions that people believe in through our AI internally. This is also done completely without any personal information. It’s just basically how someone is actually chatting to one another on the platform. But when 2 different politicians say the same thing, you can observe that and see the differences. Mhmm. In addition to that, you know, we could use the leader q score feature that we have, that report card feature that I might have mentioned earlier, and show how people actually react to politicians and see how much they’ve promised us and have kept those promises to give really, you know, answer some of the unknowns that we all have from our politicians. It’s a very direct bridge to gap. So I think that’s, like, super exciting that’s coming down the pipeline for us. You know, it’s really about time that someone has created something like this where it really does give people an option to actually show in real time how everyone is feeling about everything because none of us have that ability to converse anymore without having extreme toxicity in our systems with, like, Twitter. You know? So, the, you know, the AI that will pinpoint that origination source of the statement, that’s really big. That’s groundbreaking. In just a few short months, we’ll be at a 92% accuracy rate. Wow. And in about 3 years, we’ll be looking at a whole new world of media. 60 to 80% out there can be discredited overnight through this AI. So I’d say, you know, that’s pretty exciting. We’ve reindexed all of Google, you know, and really made a database of 10,000 media houses that we actually cross check all of this information with. And, you know, this AI will eventually balance, will find that balance between a lot of these news sources and what politicians are speaking of and how people react to it. So, you know, any disruptions in this balance of this new system could actually be flagged as possible sources of misinformation that just need to be investigated further. And this literally allows us to find the actual core and origin of the stories that we actually see in the news today that is buried, very deep into the abyss.

Nitin Bajaj

It’s super exciting. So let’s transition from talking about the future to talking about something you have learned and have come to adopt. And this happens to be my favorite part of the show. We call this the one line life lessons. And, I’d invite you to tell us your one line life lessons.

Nicole Ogloza

Sure. It’s up to you if you’d like me to explain them, but here’s some of them. Mhmm. So network equals net worth. You know? Yes. That’s a pretty great one. Mhmm. And then there’s another one out there that I always go by is, like, I hope there are days that you fall in love being alive because some of the best days of your life haven’t really been lived yet. Yes. You know, I’m an optimist by nature, so that’s a really big one for me. And then another one would be the same boiling water that softens the potato, hardens the egg.

Nitin Bajaj

Yes.

Nicole Ogloza

Life isn’t about what you’re made of. It’s about what you’re made of, not the circumstance.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Nicole Ogloza

So whatever you go through, if it doesn’t kill you, it literally does make you so strong that never be worried to take risk for things like that is what I think that means. And then, I’d say, like, I think I have 2 more. And then one of them would be one day, you’ll wake up and there won’t be any more time to do things that you love. Do it now. And then the last one, attract what you expect, reflect what you desire, become what you respect, and mirror what you admire.

Nitin Bajaj

Love it. Nicole, thanks very much for sharing your online life lessons. And for our audience, we have an entire collection at onelinelifelessons.com and wherever you socialize digitally. Nicole, thanks again for being on the show, for sharing your journey, and for what you’re building with Etha. Thanks again, and we really appreciate you making the time.

Nicole Ogloza

Thank you so much, doctor Bajaj. Thanks.