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Justin Brady: This is the Iowa Business Podcast. I’m, of course, Justin Brady, and we’re in the Jethro’s Barbecue studio. There’s the massive market opportunities, technology, and AI have opened up numerous, and I do mean numerous, career paths for our students, college students, high school graduates, and it’s a little overwhelming. Uh, it’s actually very overwhelming. It’s causing some problems. It’s causing students to leave the state. It’s causing students to drop out of school entirely. It’s a challenge because they don’t know what to do. “I don’t know what to do” is a common refrain, and a Iowa startup may be fixing that problem. We are joined with Sriram Pullapanthula, the founder of NextPath and, of course, a University of Iowa student. You’re currently in school, right? Thanks for coming on the show.

Sriram Pullapantula: for coming on the show Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And yes, um, this is a common problem I think I’ve seen a lot with my friends and a lot of people that I’ve talked to. What we commonly face is AI is growing like crazy, right? At the end of the day, the job that we get, is AI gonna take over? Yeah. That’s like the biggest question. Yeah, Like now we see all these Claude reports

Justin Brady: for sure, and we’ll be talking about all of that today. Um, before we do, though, obviously appreciate Dentons Davis Brown for sponsoring this show. We bring… They’re not just like, they don’t just give us cash. They actually come in here and share their expertise on the legislative session, on the state of M&A deals in Iowa, on H-1B programs and immigration law and how it pertains to you as a CEO or an ops person, and of course, also what it looks like for your HR executives ahead of time to find out your d- your talent is about to leave. They see these patterns, and they come in here, they share all their wisdom, so of course, we appreciate that. You can find all of those deep dives on Iowapodcast.com/business. So right now, I think the challenge that you, you were referring to here with most of your friends is that, uh, friends, students, one of the challenges, they’re, they’re… Are they getting any guidance at all when they pick these career paths that may define the next five, 10, 20 years of their, of their lives?

Sriram Pullapantula: So I think it– they definitely do get guidance in their college journey, but during that college journey, they’re not exactly sure, okay, what does my internship require, right? For example, you go to Handshake, you go to LinkedIn, and you’re applying to jobs. They maybe have certain, like, okay, your experience, it matches. Okay, apply to this job. But am I gonna land it? Like, what’s my success rate? Like, what do I actually need to get that role, right? What am I looking– what are they looking for? And that’s what Nexpath does, right? Our purpose is not really to replace the job portals, but is more to give you guidance on how to land, how to increase your chances of getting an interview. That’s what we’re doing

Justin Brady: Yeah. So wha- what is the, what’s the, the major problem you’re solving? It’s, um, are, are students ending up off their career paths that they intended? What, what’s like the, what’s the actual problem here? They’re, they’re picking the wrong paths, they’re ending up off the path that they invested in? What’s, what are the core problems you see a lot of students running into?

Sriram Pullapantula: many students nowadays in universities or when they’re coming into university, they’re, they’re not sure. So they’re just, uh, undecided majors. Or even like me when I was a junior, I switched, or sophomore, sorry, I switched from computer engineering to finance. That was a big jump. Like going from engineering all the way to finance, I was like, “Am I making the right choice? What do I do?” I luckily had a few friends, my brothers were there, but not everybody has that kind of connections, and NextPath kind of changes that confusion and gives you clarity.

Justin Brady: Yeah,

Sriram Pullapantula: That’s what we focus

Justin Brady: and we’ll, talk about how that works in the output, but is this a, um, it, it sounds like it’s more of a people dropping out, not getting the career path they want. It sounds like it’s more of a, uh, training problem, an understanding problem. But I think most people probably would assume, a- and it sounds like they assume incorrectly, that a lot of this is a money issue, like people dropping out of school. And it doesn’t sound like it is a money issue. It sounds like it’s a, like almost a confusion on what next step to take issue

Sriram Pullapantula: Correct, 100%. Um, the confusion part is what we’re trying to solve because, you know, the m- market keeps growing.

Justin Brady: Yeah.

Sriram Pullapantula: to keep up with, right? AI, you have, uh… Like, you don’t know what path is the right path. Like, is it sustainable? Is it gonna last me a while, or is it just am I gonna get, like, laid off? Is, are people gonna, like… Is AI gonna take over my job? What else can I do? Yeah. Like, what certifications can I do to keep up in the market? Right? Right? yeah, that’s a huge concern because right now people, uh, I know a couple years ago people were like, “I feel like I’m already … The career path I went to college for is already gone by the time I’m, I’m a junior.” So this is a huge, um, huge concern for people, and obviously a lot of people are trying to crack this nut.

Justin Brady: Um, let’s talk about the platform. You mentioned bringing clarity to students, uh, I’m assuming college students right now, but maybe high school students as well

Sriram Pullapantula: We’re looking for seniors, high school students. It applies to actually anybody, to be honest. Four simple steps, right? You upload your resume, you converse with the chatbot that we designed ourselves. It’s all simple. We d- we try to steer away from surveys, right? ‘Cause that’s tedious, boring. I mean, a lot of people can relate with me on that ’cause actually all of the team that is building this app are students as well. So we faced the problem, so we’re building the solution for it. So you get, you upload your resume, and then based off that, we tailor your feed, right? And then you figure out what is interesting to you, and then based off of that, you get your career choices with the certifications that you need to do. You can track each one of them. Is that right? So we’ve all heard of Duolingo, right? Think of a Duolingo for careers. Basically like that, simple to put it, so it’s not too confusing. ‘Cause there are steps that we’ve tailored in, but we don’t wanna, like, you know, get people confused. So we just give a simple analogy. It’s like a Duolingo for careers

Justin Brady: it’s, it is a software platform, obviously. You mentioned uploading a resume. This kind of implies that people are career ready at this point. So they, they are, like, done with their, or they’re getting done with their college already. Can they do this early? Like right out of high school they can upload their resume?

Sriram Pullapantula: Yeah. And so pretty much even because at high school we also consider this is, is like high school, you know, you work as a, at a food truck or maybe at a ice cream place, and you, that’s not really your interest. You’re just working there to like make money over the summer, right? Right. So we don’t really consider that. We decide to take like activities that you participate in in clubs like FBLA, maybe Boy Scouts, maybe other things like that. We try to play that into your feed on what can pop up as a job interest. And then even if as high school students, let’s just say you don’t, like none of your resume really helps, you can talk with the chatbot that we have.

Justin Brady: So you say feed. So it d- it sounds like it’s not just an, like an AI or a software coach where I’m uploading stuff and then it gives me feedback and says, “Here’s the next step you ta-” It, y- is this a, is there a social media aspect to this? Is there a… Walk people through what the UI, the user experience, actually looks like. And it, and it seems like this is something that will be almost guiding or coaching in some capacity for years. So how does this work?

Sriram Pullapantula: exactly. So the reason why I keep saying feed is because we’ve implemented this swiping feature because, you know, a lot of days we’re on Instagram, we’re on TikTok, we– People love to swipe, right? So because we don’t wanna take away all of a sudden when people hear, “Oh, this is a career clarity tool. You know, I’m just gonna have to, like, read and get feedback. This is gonna be boring,” uh, we implemented this feature so it’s fun. You know, people can swipe, and it’s a feature that’s quick. So that is the main intention. We, we wanna make this quick and just, you know, you, you have your clarity, and you’re done. We don’t want to waste your time. Wanna make sure it gives an impact in maybe the five minutes you use it

Justin Brady: And do you see this platform for, like, students and colleges? And is there gonna be, like, some job board functionality that connects possible employers? H- how does that work?

Sriram Pullapantula: So right now we wanna focus on institutions like community colleges, colleges, and maybe even high schools. But we don’t wanna replace job boards. But if job boards are, you know, intended to want to use this in their own program, we are 100% okay with that. It’s just more of right now we wanna function as an independent tool that helps students get the clarity they need in such a rapidly growing market. Main intention– Because me as a student, even till today, I use my own app ’cause I’m like, “Okay, I’m a little confused. What am I doing?” So I just ask, like, I look at the feed and I’m like, “Okay, so this is the job that I picked. Let me track the progress. Okay, what else do I need to do? Do I need to… What certifications?” Right? ‘Cause even as a finance, I wanna go into, like, and maybe as an accountant or as a private equity fund manager, um, okay, what do I need to do? Do I need to do CPA, CFA, CAIA? There’s so many certifications out there. Like, which do you know? What is perfect for you? And most of those certifications cost money to do as well. So it’s like with all of that knowledge, like, how do you figure out what’s right for you?

Justin Brady: Yeah. So the, the platform’s helping you understand what your future career path is, and then once you understand what that future career path is, it sounds like it’s almost giving you milestones to get there as well. Correct. So the– I mean, it’s a big pr- it’s a big challenge, obviously, and it’s probably not ready for market yet, or are you testing it

Sriram Pullapantula: So it’s already- ready for market. It’s already ready. It’s already ready. We’ve been building this, like- Okay. nonstop. Um, we’ve been, like, working on it almost this whole year. Mm-hmm. We did customer discovery before, and we found the target audience. We even tested with a school in Singapore, uh, with this, uh, school called, uh, Republic of Polytechnic in Singapore. We validated it. Students loved the idea. So, you know, because I study here and I wanted to bring it to Iowa. Grew up here for 14 years, so I wanted to bring it to the students here, let them try it. And, you know, all my friends who’ve tried it so far, they love it, and we’re trying to bring it to m- market. So-

Justin Brady: Yeah. So one of, I mean, just someone who kind of knows about, like, human strengths and skills and training and career paths, my own career path is a complete mess. The one of… I- it’s, it’s very difficult what you’re doing. It’s extremely hard, and one of the, uh, people I think that has come closest to understanding human strengths and skills and training is probably, like, Don Clifton. Uh, Gallup owns, like, CliftonStrengths right now. Yeah. So they have humans grouped into, I don’t… I always forget it. It’s 32 different strengths, and they can be… And the chances of you having the same top five strengths of someone else is, like, one in 1.4 million or something like that. N- they have this whole science on, um, how teams work with strengths, right? So this is, and you’re going more into the career side of this, but this is, like, human psychology stuff. So what’s the current version of this, and is the future version going to include, like, career psychologist or behavior analysis, or are you going a different path? ‘Cause it, like I said, it’s a tough problem.

Sriram Pullapantula: So, uh, I 100% agree. Right now, like I said, students, right? Um, then we wanna explore into just people who are trying to switch careers in their mid-30s. They wanna let… They’re like, “I don’t really like this job. I wanna switch into another field.” Like, my doctor from Fairfield, Iowa, um, he told me he wa- he became a doctor when he was 45, and I was like, “What happened?” And he was like, “I was a software engineer. I didn’t like that, so I decided to take, go in to do some medical courses and then just try to do MCAT and, you know, become a doctor.” And I was like, “Wow, how did, how’d you figure all that out?” And he was like, “Took me a long time.” So, so in that process, that kind of also got me thinking that, you know, this needs to apply to everybody. And also, I want to connect students and people into the day of the life. Like, have actual videos that connect people so they know how the day in the life of a doctor or a surgeon. Because-

Justin Brady: Oh, interesting Yeah Interesting … yes. Because- They don’t know. They don’t know. A lot of people will go and be like, “Hey, I wanna be a aerospace engineer.”

Sriram Pullapantula: Right. And one of my team members, he actually wants to be an aerospace engineer, and I’m like, “Do you know what a day in the life of an aerospace engineer is? Have you ever seen, have you ever shadowed? Do you, do you know what that is?” He’s like, “No.”

Justin Brady: Hmm. Mm-hmm

Sriram Pullapantula: work life can be very different to what you imagine it to be. Like, for me, like, I love entrepreneurship. I love just working all day, like, because it’s a hobby of mine. I don’t consider this as work. I just love it. But my friends who think that, hey, they wanna be a surgeon, right, I… They don’t know what that life. They have to be on call sometimes. They have to- Yeah they don’t know that life. So when they say surgeon, I’m like, “Do you even know what it consists of? Like, do you know how long you have to study? Do you know how long you have to work, like?” And when they say no, so that’s where I wanna incorporate that into the app is, like, so that they can connect and see what a day in the life is like.

Justin Brady: So do you have a lot of people that put… They upload resume information. I’m, I’m assuming they upload their, like their, their college status, like, “I’m junior year right now, here’s what…” Um, so do you have people then that, that put in their career aspirations and their future career path, and then they input all the information, and then once they do that, they realize they’re on the wrong path and they just switch everything?

Sriram Pullapantula: So yeah, actually I have gotten a few because when people– So like I said, we tested in Singapore with that school. Um, what actually happened is when I saw people upload their resumes, they would go back to the chatbot after seeing their jobs that were posted on their feed. They didn’t like any of the hours they had to work or the pay they got. So they would go back to the chatbot, and they’d be like, “Can you give me some, like, different position, but so I don’t have to work like the wh- I don’t have to change up my whole skill set?” So then the feed would generate something that still has their skills, but maybe in like a medical, like a medical technician, those kind of- That makes sense. Yeah. So there have been situations, that’s why it’s so important that I’m trying to bring this to market, is because once people realize what the market’s actually like with their skills, they don’t like it. They wanna change it. So before that major change happens, it’s best to do it in college. Or even when you’re in high school, you’re, you realize that, oh, no, this is not what I can

Justin Brady: Before you’re somewhat committed

Sriram Pullapantula: Yeah, exactly. Because once you’re done with college, you’re kinda, you need either, you’re gonna do master’s, maybe an MBA, depending on whatever you’re doing, then you go into the real world.

Justin Brady: Mm-hmm

Sriram Pullapantula: Which then how much time can you dedicate to studying again and working, saving money, all that. Things nowadays are really expensive.

Justin Brady: Well, not to mention, like most jobs want years of experience for something. Right. And so after you start to bank years of experience, you almost get in this position of, um, like s- sunken cost problem, right? Where it’s like, “Well, I already have 10 ex- 10 years experience in this. I don’t really like my work, but this is all I know, so I have to stick with it.” Right. And you’re kinda suggesting that your system allows people to adapt because it can pull skills and understand how skills apply almost to other industries. Is that fair to say?

Sriram Pullapantula: Correct. And also what we’re trying to do is, let’s just say you have 10 years of experience like you brought up, but maybe to get another job you just need a certification. So we find that missing piece, ’cause nowadays certifications are so useful, right? You don’t really need a full degree unless you’re going into like medical or whatever. But let’s just say you wanna switch from engineering to accountant, maybe you can do a CPA.

Justin Brady: Yeah

Sriram Pullapantula: You don’t need to go through all those courses and everything, and you can just probably do a CPA and switch

Justin Brady: So these skills that people have and have banked over high school, college, and in their career path, um, are more flexible than probably people understand. Yeah. But the problem is they don’t know how to sell it, and they don’t know how to communicate it. Right. And so do you see that people, um, on their resumes are often underselling their own skills then a lot?

Sriram Pullapantula: Oh, 100%. Um, that’s why we also generate a report for all these people once they are actually interested in a career, they are almost accumulated all the skills they need, certifications. We generate a report that they can send to a recruitment agency, and the recruitment agency can use that report to find a job. Oh. That connects them. So it’s a mult- like, it’s multiple angles that they can work

Justin Brady: their students, or not just students, but people looking for jobs are providing this report to recruitment

Sriram Pullapantula: Yeah Yeah

Justin Brady: see people providing this to HR departments?

Sriram Pullapantula: Probably could. You know, it could work either way.

Justin Brady: That’s fasc- Okay, so one of the things that’s interesting is, like I said earlier, and my own career path has been wild, but I, when I started, I did a design company that failed, but at the time I thought design was my lane. Like my skills, my background, I had a degree in design, that, that is what I’m meant for. And then I found out it wasn’t a good fit, and it took me too long to figure that out. It took me 10 years. Um, but what was surprising to me is then I went into radio, I went into GTM comms and PR, I went, I was doing writing there for a while for some of these publications, and I realized my skills applied to all of them.

Sriram Pullapantula: Exactly

Justin Brady: was surprising to me. And so do you see a lot of people making category errors or industry errors because they’re like, “I have these skills, and someone told me those skills apply to medical,” but in reality, those skills might also apply to jet propulsion or might, might apply to engineering at a car company or so- so do you see people making these category errors, r- like wrong category or industry errors all the time, and then you’re able to kinda correct them or help them correct themselves? I don’t even know if I’m saying this

Sriram Pullapantula: Yeah, so, so I think our program, if I’m not wrong what you’re saying, is kind of like help people find their skills that can overlap with other industries. Sure. Right? So with our program when we tested with that school again, um, we were able to do that ’cause they were, they proved the concept of that, hey, let me switch to anoth- another industry. Can these skills still apply to maybe… Because it was a business school that we tested with. Yeah And then some of the students were like, “Hey, can we test, can we use our skills that we’ve gained through our courses maybe in an engineering field?” And yes, they, they did get jobs that applied also in the engineering field, but they still needed more certifications to switch. Yeah They couldn’t just, you know, you can’t just go with your business and then it, to let it sink in with like an engineering field, right? You need to do more certifications. Maybe you need to do something else. It depends. It’s case to case. But we try to solve that in the app

Justin Brady: Are there any, um, common things, common skills, common background, common experiences that students and users of this platform are, are kind of realizing, ” Oh, I didn’t know that was a marketable skill. I didn’t know that was useful in the workplace”? Like, are, are there common skills that, or, or background or experiences that people are often surprised that are, that are actually, uh, marketable out there in the job market?

Sriram Pullapantula: Right. So interestingly, we get our data for all these jobs and the feed is from O*NET.

Justin Brady: Onet

Sriram Pullapantula: O*NET is this government database that US provides for the public to use and check for jobs and what kind of skills, certifications, all that kind of stuff. So we use that in our program, and under each job listing that comes out or from the feed, each job shows the skill, and we match those skills with the resume that the student uploads. So with that, it shows that those skills can be marketable because the government itself is providing a database for you to show what kind of skills you can market. So with that, that also gives the students an insight that they don’t need to work on this. They already have that skill

Justin Brady: Got it. Okay, so are there any… Let me de- dive a little deeper into this. Are there any, um, s- hobbies or skills or things that, that people are trained on that are quite useful that they didn’t think were useful? So like p- maybe piano, like they have piano lessons or they have musical, musical experience or they have cre- s- they have a, like a more of a creative understanding of the world and they don’t think that’s useful and so they’re like, “Well, but I also have, you know, uh, I took these classes, so maybe that’s useful.” So are there skills or hobbies that are actually quite useful to some of these job seekers that they don’t think have any value?

Sriram Pullapantula: So we ask a lot of students that if they have done piano or whatever, like maybe Boy Scouts, FBLA,

Justin Brady: you

Sriram Pullapantula: know- Yeah. you guys have … right, to put them under activities, ’cause then our AI extracts those.

Justin Brady: Oh

Sriram Pullapantula: high schoolers don’t really have a work experience. Right. They just, you know, work wherever to make money, and I did that to kind of just work over the summer to make a few bucks and then go buy myself ice cream. But essentially the point being here is that I put Boy Scouts, FBLA under my activities, and the AI extracts them to use that as a indicator that, okay, these skills might apply. But we can’t guarantee that, though. Of course So that’s why we do that with a little bit of like, okay, we try to ask if we missed any skills for them to type it in the chat bot so we can add them

Justin Brady: Oh, and it’s, so it’s using the ch- chatbot functionality as well. ‘Cause for me, like building a resume is hard actually, because my problem is I know that people want something different on their resume than I w- than I wanna write on it, and if that makes any sense. Right. And so having that interface is more helpful. But what, this is interesting to me because, um, you are extracting from activities that most people probably- Miss … miss or, or downgrade or de-emphasize. Right. Your AI and your process, uh, ideally is smart enough to say, “Hold up. The fact that you have this creative experience and the fact that you have art, art class is actually very applicable to this job,” because they want someone doing social media content, and social media content wants artistic viewpoint. And so your AI is trying to connect those dots for people that m- may put them at the top of the list, but because they just don’t think it’s valuable, maybe normally that wouldn’t have ever gotten through a job application.

Sriram Pullapantula: 100%. That’s, that’s the main reason why we also wanna focus on the activities is because many high schoolers, even college students, like some of their activities are like president of, you know, a certain club, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s leadership- Yeah, right there. So that indicates that, hey, maybe they can be fit for a role in terms of leadership. We can also train them in that aspect. Yeah. So that’s the whole thing why we search for activities as well, ’cause I feel like that’s a part that’s undervalued. A lot of people just add that in their resume. Like imagine, um, you’re a student that knows four different languages, and you just put that under activities and it’s all the way at the bottom. But that means that you can speak to so many different, like your, your communication skills take up a notch.

Justin Brady: Absolutely. Because when, yeah, when you try to learn a different language, it really enhances your communication languages even in your own

Sriram Pullapantula: Exactly.

Justin Brady: Yeah. That’s fascinating.

Sriram Pullapantula: add, add that into experience. Right. You have to add that into, like, activities or hobby or, you know. Yeah.

Justin Brady: Yeah. So, I mean, the big question is, and this, you may not know the answer to that, which is fine, but the big question is, are recruiters and are HR organizations gonna buy it? Like, do they, whatever this output is, they’re, they’re like, “Eh, that’s a stretch if you’re trying, you know, you’re trying to tie your creative background into something. That’s a stretch.” Or do they see that, this as, “Oh my gosh, I would’ve missed that”?

Sriram Pullapantula: Right. So yesterday when I presented at 1 Million Cups, um, in Des Moines, right here locally. Shout out to them. Um, uh, but amazing feedback that I got, and they loved the product. The only thing that they were wondering was, like, do I have enough, like, customer discovery, or did I reach out to the right audience, right? ‘Cause do I, do I talk to buyers? And that is what I’m trying to do, you know, this summer and fall. And we’re trying to also build in a feature instead of to kind of give it a reason to be bought, even by students as well. So we’re trying to focus on, like, maybe, like, how successful are you getting to an internship, right? Actually taking a listing and then seeing if they are resume matches and they can actually land an interview. Though that is tough, we are hoping to kind of tailor the app that way. Right now, we think many of the features can be helpful for recruitment agencies and universities, but we’re still in the process of

Justin Brady: Yeah. So there is, it sounds like there is a path here to almost make a, um, career platform and re- and hiring platform where organizations and colleges and maybe apprenticeship programs and local businesses would be signing up to this, so, uh, to almost pre-hire people or it, it’s, it kinda sounds like you can work with all those entities or this is maybe the, the goal

Sriram Pullapantula: Right. And the main reason why this product we are kinda also interested with recruitment agencies is because usually when they get someone that is maybe looking for employment, they– the st- the user who’s– or the person who came to the recruitment agency, the recruitment agency can offer this platform

Justin Brady: Hmm. Oh, interesting.

Sriram Pullapantula: the person to use so that you can generate a report and send it back to the recruitment agency, and now they have a clear, like, list of, okay, what does this person want? What skills do they need to develop? How do they get

Justin Brady: That’s interesting because right now, HR and recruiters are heavily dependent on the things you submit, right? And, and that sounds kind of obvious, but the things people submit, they’re just on their own making a resume. Right. And it may be completely wrong or not relevant, or you may have, whi- which is the case a lot, a perfect candidate for the job, but because they didn’t write their resume to matchy-matchy the job description, they actually don’t even get through the little screener. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, like, for recruiters and HR companies, uh, I know that this is a big struggle because they often don’t understand the skills and, uh, the, the, the skills necessary for the jobs they’re even recruiting for. Right. We had… And for people who are like, “Of course they do,” no they don’t. We had a, uh, recruiter in here that was talking about this, like, a month ago, that they’d talked to the department head, and they kinda hope they have the right job description written, and they kinda hope they’re getting the right candidates, and they kinda hope that they’re getting the right candidates through. So potentially, this can solve a lot of that. Um, if you’re connecting all these dots then, I know one big problem, because a business… I, I used to volunteer for Business Horizons quite a bit, and one of the challenges they’re always addressing is that students leave the state because they have no idea the skills that they have and their desired career path is actually already here. And so they leave the state looking for their career path elsewhere, having no idea that, like, 20 miles away there was a company that did their exact, like, dream job. So do you see this as being… You mentioned community colleges. You’re from the University of Iowa. Right. Do you see this as being a tool to let students know, like, and companies, like, “Hey, you’re already a match made in heaven. You don’t even have to move 30 mile… You know, you don’t have to move more-” Right. “… than 30 miles away.” Do you see this potentially helping repair that problem in the state of

Sriram Pullapantula: Yes. So that is one of the biggest focuses that we have- Really? is like retention. Keeping it in Iowa is because, um, we also have other APIs tools that we use in our program to kind of make sure that the student, if they wanna work, whether it’s remote, hybrid, or even the radius that they wanna work is nearby, we try to focus on that and see kind of what we can extract from the database, see what kind of jobs that they can get nearby with the skills that they have. And- The

Justin Brady: a geolocation aspect- Yeah … or a geofencing aspect. Yeah. Oh. The geolocation-

Sriram Pullapantula: is actually very… It’s stronger than it was before- Uh-huh … while we were testing like few months ago. But we’re still improving it to narrow it down to like, like near neighborhoods and all that kind of stuff. So we’re still like US-based. It’s still, we’re still trying to get it more into Iowa, Midwest area now.

Justin Brady: Sure. Okay. Well, this is interesting because it also sounds like there’s like a path for local companies to maybe invest in tools like this, so they’re almost pre-recruiting students and saying, “Hey, if you want a local job that pays really well, that has great benefits, that’s in this field, lit- here’s the path to do that and get your way to us, and here are the schools locally, and you can stay locally near family.” It sounds like, um, there are a lot of opportunities here for your company. And you said you’re a junior?

Sriram Pullapantula: I’m gonna be a senior in the

Justin Brady: You’re gonna be a senior in the fall. You already have your startup, and it sounds like you already have part of your team. That’s awesome. If, if investors, if recruiters, if colleges, um, want to partner with you, want to test the technology, or if, um, um, it sounds like you’re l- finding beta users right now. If anybody wants to reach out, uh, how do they do that?

Sriram Pullapantula: Oh, j- any– You can just email me at, um, or contact me on my number. Uh, I can give you my email. Do you have a website? I have a website, Yeah, Uh- What was your website? … literally just nexpath.sg. Nexpath.

Justin Brady: Nexpath. Nexpath.se? Sg. Sg, and that’s Nex- Yeah Yeah … path

Sriram Pullapantula: P-A-T-H, yeah. .sg.

Justin Brady: .sg? Correct. Perfect. Sriram Pullapanthula, the founder of Nexpath, and of course, a proud almost University of Iowa grad.

Sriram Pullapantula: ‘ cause I ha- I have my co-founder with me in, in another country right now. He’s on vacation, so-

Justin Brady: it. Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Iowa Business

Sriram Pullapantula: Thank you so much. for having me. I really appreciate

Justin Brady: Absolutely