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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Andrew Bare, founder of HiiPitch software, which revolutionizes the way meetings are scheduled by incorporating meal vouchers and charitable donations. Andrew shares his journey from software sales to creating a platform that not only helps users secure more meetings but also contributes to social good by providing meals to those in need. The conversation explores the unique business model, target audience, and the social impact of HiiPitch, as well as the challenges and future vision for the company.
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Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (00:00)
There’s 35 million.people in the US go without food every day. There are 10 million meetings that take place every single day in America. If 1 % of those used Hiipitch, we would end hunger in the United States in 17 days. We’d be able to feed every single one of those people in literally under three weeks. So there’s a lot of incentive to tie social impact to something that happens as frequently as business meetings do.
And by the way, the IRS is going to pay for the whole thing. So not using Hiipitch is almost, it’s almost like saying you don’t like money, right? Or you like paying taxes.
Michelle Kesil (02:08)
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Andrew Bare, who is the founder of the HiiPitch software. So excited to have you here today, Andrew.Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (02:23)
Thanks for having me, Michelle I’m excited as well.Michelle Kesil (02:26)
Yeah, I think our listeners are going to take something away from how you’re supporting people get more meetings and up their networking game. So yeah, let’s dive in.Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (02:37)
Let’s do it.Michelle Kesil (02:37)
First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your platform, can you share what your main focus is?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (02:42)
Yeah. So Hiipitch is a meetings platform that allows you to use lunches leverage and get more meetings, source more deals, plan more deals and get off on a better foot.We’ve got a kind of unique approach that uses lunch as leverage. So we’re delivering Uber Eats vouchers 90 minutes before every meeting. And we’re also making a charity donation so that your investors, your brokers, your homeowners actually have some benefit to taking a meeting with you. And they show up ultimately in a better position to do business.
Michelle Kesil (03:13)
Awesome. How did you get started with the launch of this software?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (03:17)
It’s a good question. So I came from a software sales background.and getting meetings back in those days was difficult. It was hard to stand out. It was hard to get people to see the differentiation for our software tools. So I started using lunch to get more meetings. I would simply email and say, hey, look, I’m going to be in town. I’d love to buy lunch for you and the team if you’ll take the meeting. And it worked pretty well. So what we did is we actually built a software platform around that. And now we’re taking that sales hack.
and giving people a place to repeat that over and over again. I’ve never missed President’s Club ever since starting to do this, so it works.
Michelle Kesil (03:54)
Yeah, awesome. So how does the software work in setting up meetings with people?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (04:02)
Yeah, so it’s pretty simple. It’s just, it’s similar to Calendly. you would schedule the meeting just through a link. and you can explain in any of your outreach that, if you take this meeting, I’ll send you a $25 Uber Eats credit right before the meeting. So 90 minutes before, and all we’re also going to make a donation to a charity of your choice. if you accept the meeting, they booked the meeting just like they would with Calendly. And then the software takes over and handles the donation flow. All of that’s automated. So you don’t have to worry about that. and you, at the end of the day, you get a prospect.who’s been fed, they’re happy to meet with you. And it’s a much better first impression when you have demonstrated that you value somebody’s time in advance of a meeting.
Michelle Kesil (05:27)
Yeah, absolutely. So just to be clear, the software doesn’t do the prospecting, it just sends the calendar invites.Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (05:33)
Right. So it doesn’t do prospecting for you. still got it. You still got a prospect, but it does open up the ability for you to have better meetings and actually land more of those meetings than just your typical cold outreach and real estate, just like every business is a, it’s a relationships business and it all starts with the meeting. So the more meetings you’re in, the more deals you can source, the more deals you can ultimately be a part of.Michelle Kesil (05:55)
Right? Absolutely. So what is the incentive for people to use this versus just sending someone a regular calendar invite?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (06:05)
Yeah, that’s a great question. it’s a unique.system because we take advantage of a tax arbitrage that’s created. We’re sending meal vouchers which can be expensed as meal deductions and then the donation that we make on the back end can also be deducted as a charitable donation. So the net to you is negligible. It’s like a cup of coffee but you’ve distributed $50 worth of value down the chain. So the person taking the meeting has gotten a free meal and we’ve also donated 25 meals to
feed the homeless and it’s cost you about a cup of coffee. So the cost is negligible because we take advantage of that arbitrage scenario. So that’s one impact. If you’re the person who’s receiving this Hiipitched link, you’re getting a free lunch. You you got 90 minutes before the meeting, you can actually enjoy lunch during the meeting or you can save that and use it whenever you want. But at the end of the day, the more people that you meet with, the more money you have to spend on food, which is less that comes out your pocket.
Michelle Kesil (07:04)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome. What type of people are mostly using this software right now?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (07:12)
So we work with a lot of recruiters, salespeople, real estate investors, anybody that relies on meetings as part of their KPIs. So if your golden measurement starts and ends with getting meetings, Hiipitch is a pretty good fit. We’re seeing a lot of enterprise interest in actually using this to automate.the incentives as well as the charity donations as part of every business meeting. So that the charitable donations are automatic. They’re not, it doesn’t require any seasonality. Like yesterday was giving Tuesday, a of people donating yesterday, but that the hunger needs and the food insecurity doesn’t stop one day a year. It’s continuous. So if we can match.
business donations with business meetings that happen every day. It presents an opportunity to potentially solve a massive societal problem.
Michelle Kesil (08:03)
Yeah, definitely. What are some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to run smoothly?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (08:10)
Well, I think the fact that you know there’s a charitable piece to this, we’re able to send 25 hot meals to people in need for every meeting. That generates a lot of goodwill and it generatesa lot of interest in working with you. I think everybody, if you were to ask nine out of 10 people would tell you that they’d be more willing to take a meeting if they knew it was gonna help somebody downstream kind of paying it forward. So I would say that’s contributed pretty significantly to our growth so far. But I think at the end of the day, we’re all humans, right? We’ve all gotta eat and we’d all like to help if we can. Automating that and giving people a platform to connect
with like-minded business people and still make a donation at the same time has really gone a long way to growing the business so far.
Michelle Kesil (08:56)
Yeah, absolutely. And how are you focusing on scaling this product?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (09:37)
So it’s a mix, right? It’s partnerships. We partnered with Global Giving to help us on the API side. So all the donations are done programmatically through the API. There’s no human in the loop. You don’t have to worry about where the donations are going. If there’s any integrity issues, it’s all done automatically once the meeting is scheduled. Those donations flow through the pipeline. They’re donated from an API. So that’s a huge part of the, a partnership perspective and then just traditional salesof
marketing. We’re reaching out to companies who are looking to make an impact through either corporate giving or ESG type scenarios within their company and it’s a pretty good match. It just makes a lot of sense to take something that happens as frequently as meetings do and attach some kind of social impact with that so that we can improve outcomes for everybody with every single business meeting.
Michelle Kesil (10:30)
Yeah, absolutely. And how do you see this for investors?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (10:38)
So if I’m an real estate investor and my job is tied to the number of deals that I’m doing or the outcomes of those meetings, I’m absolutely using Hiipitch because A, I’m a human. I do care about people that are experiencing food insecurity and I want to help solve that. And two, I want to get more meetings. I want to have better rapport with the people that I’m meeting with before I meet with them. And I want them to know that I value their time. This isn’t just a cold sales pitch. I’ve actually investedmy time and my money in getting this meeting so you know for a fact on the other end that this is a serious meeting. I’ve invested in it. I want to value your time and I want to make a societal impact as well. it helps you get off on the right foot and just book more meetings.
Michelle Kesil (11:22)
Yeah, amazing.So is this like a subscription service or how does it work?
Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (11:28)
So there’s two layers to this, right? There’s the consumer piece, which is, you know, I get a lot of cold emails every day from salespeople, recruiters, you name it. So what I’m able to do is actually respond with my Hiipitched scheduling link, and it puts a paywall in front of my calendar and essentially tells any of these people who reach out, if you want to meet with me, that’s fine, but there’s a cost. You’re to have to buy me lunch and make a donation to the charity of my choice before you can unlock my calendar.So that’s the consumer angle and I got to tell you it helps knock down the spam and helps me kind of filter out the people who actually are serious about talking to me, are willing to invest time and money into booking time on my calendar. So the spam goes way down. And then there’s the flip side which is for salespeople, which is subscription based and allocates a certain number of paid meetings to your account per month. So we’ve got plans to start at a thousand dollars a month and that’ll give you
25 meetings paid for per month, which tends to go pretty far if you’re just an individual operator.
Michelle Kesil (12:29)
Awesome. and you mentioned like you said an Uber Eats card. Is this like in collaboration with Uber Eats in any way? Or how does that work?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (12:37)
Yeah, so we’re partnered with Uber Eats. The incentive that we’re sending is an Uber Eats digital voucher. comes straight to your email. As soon as you click on it, it’s $25 to your Uber Eats account, and you can choose to spend that whenever you want. So literally every meeting that you take is $25 in your Uber Eats account, and $25 that doesn’t have to come out your pocket for food.Michelle Kesil (13:41)
Yeah, that’s awesome. What are your goals for scaling or growing with this business?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (13:49)
It’s a good question. So we actually measure growth in a couple of different ways. And one of the ones that I think I’m most proud of is number of meals delivered through our charity partners. So you can look at number of meetings, you can look at revenue, but really what this is all about is being able to make a dent in the number of people experiencing food insecurity in the United States.There’s 35 million.
people in the US go without food every day. There are 10 million meetings that take place every single day in America. If 1 % of those used Hiipitch, we would end hunger in the United States in 17 days. We’d be able to feed every single one of those people in literally under three weeks. So there’s a lot of incentive to tie social impact to something that happens as frequently as business meetings do.
And by the way, the IRS is going to pay for the whole thing. So not using Hiipitch is almost, it’s almost like saying you don’t like money, right? Or you like paying taxes.
And I don’t think any of us really do. So to the extent that the government is willing to pay for this whole thing and solve a societal problem that they probably should have solved a long time ago, I think it’s a home run.
Michelle Kesil (14:58)
Yeah, definitely. So how are you connecting with the companies or the people that are the best fit for this product?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (15:06)
Yeah, so there’s a viral loop to this entire thing because as people start to get cold emails or emails from salespeople, they’re responding with their Hiipitched link to kind of screen out their vendors or their salespeople. And that drives more salespeople back to the platform, and the cycle continues. So it does have a pretty high viral coefficient, where every user creates 2.4 more users.So once the wheel starts in motion, it tends to pick up pretty quickly. And then you add in the enterprises, the companies that are using it, the word that comes from that. And obviously the social impact, or the social media impact. Every donation you make, auto-posts a badge to your LinkedIn or your Facebook and says, hey, I just did a meeting with HiiPitch and I fed 25 families.
Michelle Kesil (15:50)
Yeah, absolutely. Is there any sort of pushback that people give you that you know are maybe questioning the software?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (15:59)
Yeah, I mean, there’s always gonna be people, there’s always gonna be haters, right? And to those people who are concerned that it might seem gimmicky, it’s really a matter of do you value people’s time? And…It’s really not a gimmick as much as it is me demonstrating to you that your time is valuable and I appreciate that. And my commitment to solving hunger in the US is strong enough to where if you want a meeting with me, this is the new price of business. If you think about it, think about showing up to a wedding with a gift, but not having an envelope. You just wouldn’t do it, right? It’s, it’s, it’s not.
the norm and Hiipitch is becoming the envelope for these donations. It’s something that we’re going to all do in the very near future. It’s, you know, in three years we’ll look back at normal calendar invites without Hiipitch as rude almost or I can’t believe they just sent me a meeting invite without Hiipitch. It’s almost socially tone deaf.
Michelle Kesil (16:53)
Yeah, absolutely that makes sense. So how long has this platform been out?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (16:59)
So we launched the company last year around this time in December. But the idea has been with me since, as I mentioned, I was a software sales rep. So what ended up happening was I was at a meeting in Seattle and I left.left that meeting and I had one extra meal in my bag. of the one of the attendees didn’t show up so I had you know a burrito bowl in my bag as I was walking out to the the cab and there was a homeless guy sitting there with the cardboard sign so I gave him the extra meal and kind of the light bulb started to flicker and I thought about it all the way back to the airport I thought about it the whole flight home. If I
can donate one meal to somebody in need and not have to pay for it, right? Because I expensed all of that. My company’s going to write it off. That is the movement of money from expense budgets to help feed the homeless. And if you can do that once, odds are you could probably do that at scale and make an actual impact into solving that problem. So I thought about it for a long time. Like, how can we move?
money that’s already tax deductible, expenses, communities and people that need it. And there’s never really been any software that’s done that. It’s software as a social service at the end of the day, where we’re taking tax advantaged dollars from corporations and moving it straight to the people that need it the most. And we’re letting the IRS pay for the whole thing.
So to answer your question, we’ve been around a year, but it feels like it’s been a couple since that aha moment.
Michelle Kesil (18:28)
Yeah, amazing. That’s such a cool story.Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (18:31)
We like to take some.Michelle Kesil (18:32)
Yeah. So before we wrap up here, if somebody wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?Andrew Bare (HiiPitch) (18:41)
Yeah, so it’s hiipitch.com. It’s H-I-I, so it’s got two I’s. You can contact us there or you can get me by email. Mine’s A-B-A-R-E at hiipitch.com. We’re also about to wrap up a seed round. So if there’s anybody that’s impact focused from an investment perspective, if you’re accredited, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you if this is a project that you want to be a part of.Michelle Kesil (19:05)
Perfect. Well, appreciate your time and your perspective. Thank you for being here. Of course. And for those listeners tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Andrew who are building real businesses, and we’ll see you on the nextAndrew Bare (HiiPitch) (19:10)
Thanks Michelle.
