They're essentially building Slack for blue collar workers. It's called Mela. Dot Work.

They launched in 2017. One paying customer right now, paying call it $10,000 per year,

but they've landed three or four pilots where those pilots are five or $10,000 setup fees

as they experiment with how to build a recurring model around this.

Currently burning about $18,000 a month in capital. It's okay, though, they've raised $300,000,000 so plenty of runway. They've got six people remote too early to talk about unit economics as they look to scale,

got their first couple pilots using LinkedIn's sales navigator,

targeting things like Italy, engineering, or maintenance,

and then cold messaging them with a very specific ask.

Hello, everyone, my guest today is Francesco Putiano.

He is the CEO and founder of a company called Mello Work. He went

from identifying as a basketball player to graduating as a nuclear engineer. Worked in that

industry, got an MBA, and then joined a fast-growing tech company, lived in seven countries

while doing so he loves art, experimenting with food, and founded Mello with two of his best friends

a couple years ago. Francesco, are you ready to take us to the top?

Yes, Nathan.

Hi, thanks for having me.

You bet.

Okay, so tell us what the company does and what's your revenue model.

How do you make money?

So we are a SaaS, so we have a subscription-based model.

And what the company does is we have a tool,

imagine a mix between a collaboration platform like Slack or WhatsApp, but for blue-collar workers.

...