Founder Story: Prontopia by Sherry Akhtar

We have an interesting startup to introduce today: Prontopia. This innovative SaaS technology platform, co-founded by Sherry Akhtar, Ash Shehryar, and Will Feldman, is changing the game in video production.

They use AI to simplify the process, making high-quality video content both affordable and easy to create. With Prontopia, businesses can now unlock their creative potential and connect with audiences through powerful video storytelling. This AI-driven platform is all about empowering businesses to communicate more effectively, offering a fast and cost-efficient way to produce engaging videos.

Join us as we explore how Prontopia is transforming business communications with its cutting-edge technology.

My name is Sherry Akhtar. I am the CEO and Founder of Prontopia. Prontopia is an AI driven video platform that is revolutionizing the way businesses communicate with their customers. Our platform harnesses the power of AI to empower businesses to create compelling, cost effective video content quickly and efficiently.

Prontopia enables teams to collaborate seamlessly, maintain consistent branding and deliver engaging messages to their target audiences. At Prontopia, our mission is to make this powerful tool accessible to enterprises of all sizes, helping them to effectively communicate their value proposition, build stronger relationships with their customers and achieve their marketing goals.

Prontopia is a groundbreaking SaaS technology platform co-founded by Sherry Akhtar, Ash Shehryar, and Will Feldman. The platform leverages AI to revolutionize video production for businesses, making it simpler and more affordable to create high-quality video content. This innovative approach enables businesses to unlock their creative potential and connect with diverse audiences through effective video storytelling.

Prontopia's mission is to empower businesses of all sizes to communicate their value proposition clearly and engagingly. By facilitating seamless team collaboration and maintaining consistent branding, Prontopia enhances the delivery of engaging messages to targeted audiences. The platform’s key feature is the capability to produce personalized videos quickly and cost-effectively, addressing the challenge of reaching various customer demographics from Baby Boomers to Gen Z effectively.

Since its launch, Prontopia has gained traction through strategic partnerships, including a proof of concept with SAP, and by securing enterprise clients who actively utilize the platform. These collaborations have helped refine the product and confirm its market fit. As Prontopia continues to grow, it focuses on expanding its client base and exploring new advancements in Generative AI to further enhance its video communication solutions.

In today's diverse market, brands and businesses are struggling to effectively communicate with their customers. With four distinct generations, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z, each with their own preferences and values, creating video content that resonates with all of them can seem like an impossible task.

This is where Prontopia comes in. It empowers businesses and brands to craft customized messages tailored to specific client groups and deliver them in a personalized manner to each individual . By leveraging Prontopia, companies can personalize their messaging down to zip code level, ensuring their content is highly relevant and engaging to their target audience.

One of the key advantages of Prontopia is its ability to create hundreds or even thousands of personalized videos in a matter of hours hence saving businesses countless hours of work but also significantly reducing the cost of engaging resources to produce these videos.In summary, Prontopia solves the problem of ineffective and generic communication by providing a powerful tool to businesses to create and deliver customized video content to their customer base driving engagement, loyalty and growth.

After our product launch, we worked with some friendly businesses that were open to testing our system and providing valuable feedback. We also did a proof of concept with SAP. This collaboration allowed us to further fine tune our platform and optimize it for large enterprise clients. The insights gained from working with SAP were valuable in shaping our product development roadmap and positioning ourselves as a reliable solution for businesses of all sizes.

Currently, we have a paid enterprise client who is actively using our platform. This partnership has been instrumental in helping us refine our product market fit and validate our value proposition. By working closely with this client and incorporating their feedback, we are continuously improving our offering and ensuring that it addresses unique challenges faced by enterprises in their communication efforts. As we move forward, our focus is on expanding our client base and establishing ourselves as the go to solution for personalized video communication at scale.

We are also seeking out new opportunities to collaborate with businesses across various verticals, leveraging our success stories and proven track record to demonstrate the benefits of our platform. At the same time, we are committed to ongoing product development and innovation. Our team is constantly exploring new technologies especially in the Generative AI space that can enhance the capabilities of our platform and provide even greater value to our clients.

As a self funded venture, our biggest hurdle has been the lack of funding to hire additional team members who can help us capitalize on the traction we've gained and accelerate our growth. Operating on a lean budget has forced us to be creative and resourceful in our approach. Despite these challenges we have made significant progress and have seen promising traction. However, we recognize that in order to truly scale our business and reach our full potential, we need to secure additional funding.

To overcome this, we are actively seeking pre-seed investment from investors who share our vision and believe in the potential of our platform. We are confident that with the right funding, we will be able to accelerate our growth, expand our customer base and establish ourselves as a leader in the video communication space.

In my opinion, the current startup landscape is very challenging and demanding for several reasons. One of the main issues is that funding has become increasingly difficult to secure compared to previous years. Startups are finding that investment deals are taking much longer to close, which puts a significant strain on their already limited resources.

This prolonged process can be especially tough for early-stage startups trying to manage their cash flow and keep their operations running smoothly. Another major challenge I see is the lack of the right kind of advisors and mentors who truly understand the unique obstacles that each startup faces.

Every startup has its own set of hurdles to overcome, and having experienced mentors who can provide tailored guidance and support can make a world of difference. Apart from financial support, they require strategic insights, industry connections, and a sounding board for their ideas. Without access to the right mentors and advisors, many startups struggle to make informed decisions, pivot when necessary, and scale their businesses effectively.

We've just begun our fundraising journey and have had a handful of preliminary discussions with potential investors. To facilitate these conversations, we've put together a comprehensive pitch deck, created a compelling pitch video, and developed a detailed financial model that we share with investors as needed.

Our goal is to provide them with a clear understanding of our business, our vision, and the potential return on their investment. When it comes to identifying the right investors, our strategy is to focus on those who have a proven interest in our specific industry and are actively seeking to invest in early-stage companies like ours. We believe that targeting investors who already have a deep understanding of our market and the challenges we face will lead to more productive discussions and ultimately increase our chances of securing funding.

To connect with these investors, we've been leveraging our network and seeking out warm introductions and referrals whenever possible. We've found that having a mutual connection or a trusted referral can be incredibly valuable in getting our foot in the door and establishing credibility from the outset.

Given the current economic climate and pessimistic financial forecast, we've found that securing investments has become a much more lengthy and challenging process.

Deals that would have typically closed quickly in the past are now dragging on for extended periods, and the terms being offered are often less favorable for founders like myself.

One of the biggest hurdles we've encountered is the heightened level of scrutiny from investors, even at the early stages of our startup. They are understandably more cautious with their funds and are demanding a lot more information and proof of traction before considering an investment.

This increased due diligence has led to a more time-consuming and rigorous fundraising process, which can be especially challenging for a lean startup like ours with limited resources. Moreover, we've noticed that some investors have developed unrealistic expectations for the results they want to see from startups, particularly given the current market conditions.

They are looking for companies that can demonstrate significant growth and profitability, even in the face of economic headwinds. Meeting these lofty expectations can be a daunting task for early-stage startups that are still refining their product and building their customer base. To tackle these hurdles, we've had to be more strategic and adaptable in our approach to fundraising.

We've focused on creating a compelling narrative around our business, highlighting our unique value proposition and the potential for long-term growth. We've also been more selective in the investors we target, seeking out those who have a track record of supporting startups in our industry and who understand the challenges we face.

We're currently in the middle of several promising discussions with potential clients, and our primary goal is to successfully close these deals in the near future.

Landing these contracts would be a significant milestone for our startup, providing us with valuable revenue and the opportunity to showcase our product's capabilities on a larger scale.

In addition to our sales efforts, we're also dedicating a lot of energy to defining our future product roadmap particularly the AI roadmap. We see AI as a game-changer for our industry, and we believe that by leveraging this technology, we can create even more value for our customers and differentiate ourselves from the competition. While we're still in the early stages of our AI roadmap, we're incredibly excited about the potential it holds for our startup's future.

I'm really excited about all the advancements happening in the generative AI space right now. The rapid progress of large language models (LLMs) is unlocking a whole new realm of possibilities that simply didn't exist before. As a startup founder, I'm keeping a close eye on these developments and actively exploring ways to incorporate these cutting-edge technologies into our platform.

However, my focus is not just on jumping on the latest AI bandwagon, but rather on finding meaningful ways to integrate these capabilities. We want to be thoughtful and strategic in how we adopt AI, ensuring that it genuinely adds value and solves real problems for our users.

This means carefully evaluating each potential use case, testing and refining our implementations, and prioritizing usability and accessibility throughout the process. 


While I'm thrilled about the potential of generative AI, I also have some concerns about the ethical implications of this technology. It's worrying to see some large language models being developed at an astonishing pace without sufficient consideration for responsible development practices and robust model training methodologies.

As AI becomes more sophisticated and ubiquitous, it's crucial that we as an industry take a step back and think critically about the societal impact of these tools.

We need to prioritize transparency, accountability, and fairness in how we design, train, and deploy AI systems. This includes addressing issues like bias, privacy, and the potential for misuse or unintended consequences.

I will advise the following two things:1. Start the fund raising process before the product is launched in the market.2. Find advisors and mentors who have actual hands-on experience of working with a variety of startups.