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Episode 54: The Story of WasteWizer Bringing Tech Innovation to Waste Collection

I talk with Thomas Spencer, the CEO of WasteWizer about the problem they are solving and their unique solution, The Bin Bar. This is a solid state scale that fits under one end of a waste bin or container and provides an IoT data feed on weight. Thomas reviews how it works, how they make money, their customer pipeline and the IP that protects their innovation.

Episode 53: Crowd Investing

This interview with Josh Rollins explores the Crowd Investing platform offered by Vicinity. We talk about how Crowd Investing works under Regulation CF on the Vicinity platform, both for investors and Issuerers or Owners. This investing option is relevant for both non-accredited and accredited investors and focuses primarily on local/regional real estate investments and secondarily on established revenue generating businesses seeking growth capital.

Episode 52: Angel Investing: Beyond the Basics

David and Paul take a deep dive into all aspects of Angel Investing for investors with experience. We talk about the ins and outs of serious startup investing, some tricks of the trade and some suggestions on how investors can improve their chances for successful exits.

Episode 51: Angel Investing 101

In this show, David and Paul review the basics of Angel Investing for investors new to Startup Investing. We keep it pretty short and sweet while hitting the main issues and pitfalls.  We also offer some solutions to get started without excess risk.

Episode 50: Bublish Brings AI To Publishing

This interview with the CEO of Bublish reviews the strategy of applying AI to mostly automate publishing in the fastest growing segment of Publishing, Author Self-publishing. Bublish is an established publisher with positive cash flow, now planning a transition to SaaS model leveraging AI with Natureal Language Processing to mostly automate the publishing experience. Kathy explains how this new model brings greater control and revenue to authors.

Episode 49: MemberHub Breaks into EdTech

This interview with the CEO of MemberHub highlights innovation for school organizations. MemberHub solves school-level problems through state PTAs with: cloud based membership technology, shared CRM interfaced to district student information system (SIS), GoFundMe like donations, school E-Stores that can bring in national suppliers, sponsorships in newsletters & school E-Stores and a Shopping Marketplace for school related products that helps schools raise money.

Episode 48: Direct Indexing to Harvest Capital Losses

If your angel investing portfolio doesn't always generate QSBS returns that are free from capital gains, what approaches are available for reducing your tax burden on gains? Wealth advisors Doug English and Wes Johnson teach us about "direct indexing" - how you can tweak your approach to investing in public equities to generate tax losses that you can use to offset angel investing gains.

Episode 47: Angel Investor Tax Credits and How to Get Them

Startup Investor Tax Credits and Tax Exclusions are important incentives to startup investors which help mitigate some of the risk with these investments. David and Paul review the use of state tax credits in those Southern states that offer them and how out-of-state investors monitize these credits.

Episode 46: End of Year Portfolio Updates Part II

This Show with David and Paul is Part 2 of our End of Year Updates, updating some of the portfolio investments that we covered this year. In this show we update 3 more portfolio companies: PuchList, CaseStatus and HeatlthyCell.

Episode 45: End of Year Portfolio Updates Part I

This Show with David and Paul is Part 1 of 2 shows on End of Year Updates, updating some of the portfolio investments that we covered this year. In this show we update 3 portfolio investments: Iconic Moments, Zylo Therapeutics & 6amCity.

Episode 44: Angel investing as "21-st century philanthropy"

Prashant Prabhu retired from Michelin after a 35 year corporate career that covered R&D, a corporate incubator, and international business in Europe, India and Singapore. Prashant articulates his investing as "21st-century philanthrophy" - putting the societal and technological benefits of early stage investing first, and seeing the closely-related financial benefits following.

Episode 43: How HopDrive Is Capturing The Auto Transport Market

David Interviews Nick Mottas, Co-founder and CEO of HopDrive, a Gig-Economy Vehicle Delivery and Acquistion Platform. HopDrive matches vehicle move requests to their network of gig-economy drivers on-demand, solving a big problem for auto dealers and fleet operators. With over 10x YoY growth in MRR HopDrive is positioning for dramatic growth and just completed a Series A Raise of $7MM.

Episode 42: How Crypto Exchange Failures Impact Crypto Infrastructure Startups

David Interviews 2 Crypto Infrastructure Portfolio Startups for their perspective on the recent Crypto Exchange failures.

Episode 41: The Host's investment results from 2014

The hosts present their own 8 year results from 2014 to 2022, including the Gross DPI (Distributed Paid In equity), Net DPI, IRR, RVPI (Residual Value of Paid In equity) and the TVPI (Total Value of Paid In equity).

Episode 40: All about Follow-On Rounds

Should angel investors "follow-on" by investing a second time in an existing investment? Should VCs "double down" on their winners? There are no clear answers, but in this episode we think about how to answer these questions

Episode 39: The story of Baebies and how they are changing laboratory diagnostics for babies.

Listen to the story of Baebies and how they are changing laboratory diagnostics for babies.

Episode 38: How an economist approaches angel investing

Gary Shiffman is a company founder, economics PhD, academic, writer, and angel investor. He shares with Paul some of how his professional and research experiences helped his angel investing activities - and what lessons he has learned from angel investing that he would have used in his prior capital-raising efforts.

Episode 37: Part 2 of the Finalists from NEXT Venture Summit answering 6 questions in 6 minutes

This Part 2 show presents the remaining companies from the 10 finalists from The Next Venture Pitch Summit. I'm doing quick interviews with each CEO using a '6 Questions in 6 Minutes' format to understand the problem, solution, market, traction, timing, and funding dynamics of each. These companies will give listeners a taste of the robust startup deal flow we see here in the South. At the end of the show, I pose some questions to listeners about what they want to hear from us.

Episode 36: The Finalists from NEXT Venture Summit Answer 6 Questions in 6 Minutes

This Part 1 show presents 5 of the top 10 finalists from 90 startup companies competing to present at the NEXT Venture Summit held here in Greenville, SC. I'm doing quick interviews with each CEO using a '6 Questions in 6 Minutes' format to understand the problem, solution, market, traction, timing, and funding dynamics of each. A Part 2 show will follow later to include the remaining top 5 startups. These companies will give listeners a taste of the robust startup deal flow we see here in the South.

Episode 35: Angel investing over three decades

Malay Shah has been angel investing in early-stage companies in the southeast for nearly 25 years. In this episode, we explore how the "capital markets" have changed - and how angel investing has not changed - over those years. We invite your feedback and suggestions at ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com. If you like our show, it really helps us if you rate, review, and please subscribe. Thanks for listening and remember: Our mission is to HAVE FUN, MAKE MONEY AND DO GOOD.

Episode 34: The Story of RoundlyX and how they enable the purchase of digital assets with spare change roundups

In this interview we talk with Co-founder and CEO Andrew Elliott about how RoundlyX enables users to purchase digital assets with spare change roundups to create a dollar cost averaging approach to acquiring digital assets. He reviews their relationship with crypto platforms, consumers and the impact of the current crypto winter on their business. RoundlyX on track for >1.5x YoY revenue growth in 2022 and just completed a multimillion dollar raise in the Summer of 2022 to fund their growth.

Episode 33: Bad Behavior in Angel Investing

In this Episode, Paul and David review some of their experiences with bullying, opportunistic actions, duplicity and rarely outright fraud. While these things are no common in our experience, they do happen and we relate our owns experience. We try to provide useful guidance for both Angels and Founders on how to avoid and minimize these risks. This underscores our general emphasis on good diligence in investing since it's much easier to make money if you don't loose it.

Episode 32: Being an effective board member as an angel investor

Matt Bailey, VentureSouth's market leader in Greensboro NC, provides some of his greatest contributions to angel investing from serving on the boards of early-stage companies. In today's episode, he shares some of his experiences mentoring CEOs, serving as a sounding board, providing ideas and connections, and keeping a board operating cohesively even during challenging times.

Episode 31: The Story of HealthyCell, their Dietary Supplement Bioavailability Innovation and breaking into retail.

HealthyCell launched with a stem cell product that failed to gain traction but led CEO Doug Giampapa to a dietary supplement innovation that solved three big problems with supplements: Pill swallowing concerns, absorption, and taste. The HealthyCell's Gel supplement formulation has found impressive consumer acceptance in the Direct to Consumer channel as well as in a subscription model. Doug is now breaking into retail on the back of dramatic sales growth coming out of the pandemic and looks to 2 or 3 x sales again this year.

Episode 30: The Exit Waterfall, who gets what at Exit?

Startup Investors try to focus on great business ideas with market traction, great teams and a scalable business model. But the ultimate goal of an investor is an EXIT! This is when the investor gets their investment back with a profit (hopefully). This might be an acquisition, an outright sale or rarely an IPO. This show is all about the Exit waterfall, that is how Exit proceeds are distributed among investors. We'll cover some of the tricky aspects of calculating individual investor's share of exit proceeds and problems to avoid. If you have questions or comments, please reach out at ventureinthesouth.com or contact me at david@ventureinthesouth.com.

Episode 29: How the Kwipped Marketplace Evolved to Approve POS Financing

Kwipped started in 2014 as a B2B ecommerce marketplace for equipment renting/leasing/buying with great success. They then discovered 2 major friction points in the sales process, matching financing to the customer risk profile and seeking financing approval at the end of the purchasing journey frequently made the journy pointless if financing was not approved. Kwipped solved these problems by creating a new platform for Point of Sale (PoS) rapid online financing approval (Approve) from multiple providers and moved it to the beginning of the purchasing journey. Now the Approve platform is growing ~200% YoY with hundreds of vendor customers and near zero churn. As Approve has become 50% of revenue and the lion's share of revenue growth, Kwipped has changed their name to Approve and is looking to continue their rapid growth.

Episode 28: Sales for Startups: How to Start and How to Build a Sales Team

In this interview I talk with John Sterling, a cofounder of Datasteam. Founded in 1986, Datastream provides asset management software, integrated procurement, and supporting services to organizations and facilities worldwide. John was VP of sales there for 20 years until Data Stream ultimately exited at a valuation of about $230MM. He has now written a book about getting started in sales, titled Sales for Noobs and hosts a non-profit online resource for those new to sales, Noob School. He offers insights for founders getting started in sales, what to look for in sales talent and when and how to start a sales team when one is no longer enough.

Episode 27: Exit Strategy for Angels

It's the ultimate goal of both founders and investors to EXIT and early stage investment at some point. Bit this requires planning and preparation to create an optimal exit. In this show we talk about strategies for founders and investors to prepare for and optimize EXIT planning. If you have questions or comments, please reach out to ventureinthesouth.com or contact me at david@ventureinthesouth.com.

 If you like our show, it really helps us if you rate, review and please subscribe. Thanks for listening and remember: Our mission is to HAVE FUN, MAKE MONEY AND DO GOOD.

Episode 26: How Michael Stevens Pivoted from Crowdr to Booster to Joi, While Raising Pre-Revenue Financing

In this interview I talk with Michael Stevens, CEO of Joi, an ecommerce platform that enables easy live purchasing via Video Chat platforms. Michael started his journey in politics with modest pre-revenue funding for an idea (Crowdr), a video fund raising platform for political candidates. Learning from that experience he pivoted Crowdr to Booster to focus more on ecommerce and spent 12 months in Salt Lake studying multiple ecommerce platforms (which interestingly seem to concentrate in Salt Lake). Learning from that, he pivoted again to Joi which empowers real-time ecommerce on live video chat platforms, sort of like QVC or the Home Shopping Network but live streaming. He raised his initial funding pre-revenue with just an idea and we talk about that as well as his perseverance/resilience on that journey to get to Product Market Fit with Joi. We invite your feedback and suggestions at ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com. If you like our show, it really helps us if you rate, review and please subscribe. Thanks for listening and remember: Our mission is to HAVE FUN, MAKE MONEY AND DO GOOD.

Episode 25: How Live Furnish is Disrupting the Visual Content Production Industry by Making 3D Content Production Simple

In today's show I interview Preet Singh about Live Furnish and their journey into 3D prototyping that is disrupting the design industry. Starting with synthetic image  generation of home furnishings and eliminating the need for photo shoots, Live Furnish has progressed to digital prototyping. They enable non-professional designers to create exquisite high resolution photo renderings that allows vendors to evaluate potential products before even a physical prototype is produced. The home furnishings industry has embraced the technology to reduce cost and increase sales and Live Furnish is now experiencing exponential growth. We invite your feedback and suggestions at ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com. If you like our show, it really helps us if you rate, review and please subscribe. Thanks for listening and remember: Our mission is to HAVE FUN, MAKE MONEY AND DO GOOD.

Episode 24: Startup Valuation: Math or Art?

This show is all about how startup valuations are determined, what the critical metrics are to consider and the 'Art of Valuation'. Paul talks about his experience negotiating valuations and the strategies he has employed to reach an equitable deal that balances founder and investors interests while maximizing the opportunity for success. We discuss both the math and the art. We invite your feedback and suggestions at ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com. If you like our show, it really helps us if you rate, review and please subscribe. Thanks for listening and remember: Our mission is to HAVE FUN, MAKE MONEY AND DO GOOD.

Episode 23: How Case Status is Digitizing the Way Lawyers Communicate with Clients

Legal Tech is a new frontier with entrench legacy systems handicapping lawyer efficiency. Client communication is the top complaint among legal clients and one of the highest demand solutions by lawyers. In today's show CaseStatus CEO Andy Seavers explains how he identified the communication problem and solved it with the CaseStatus platform for legal case management/communication. Primarily directed at legal providers that are contingency or flat fee based, CaseStatus has successfully completed a $1.7MM Series A raise at a pre-money valuation of $8MM and is seeing dramatic growth. This interview with the CEO tells the whole story and what is coming next for CaseStatus. If you have questions or comments, please reach out at ventureinthesouth.com or contact me at david@ventureinthesouth.com.

Episode 22: Investing in NFT Infrastructure

NFTs are popular investments but are they opportunites for infrastructure investment to play the 'Picks & Shovels' strategy?  Part 1 of 3 of our Crypto/NFT/WEB3.0 series with Chris Cummings, CEO of PassItDown/IconicMoments. If you have questions or comments, please reach out at ventureinthesouth.com or contact me at david@ventureinthesouth.com.

Episode 21: Deal Flow And Why You Need It

All about Deal Flow: Why Angels need it, how you get it, and what you do with it.

Episode 20: The Proterra Story - Part 2

In this interveiw, we talk with Matt Dunbar, Founding Director of VentureSouth. He was intimately involved with the initial funding for Proterra, an early commercial EV company. Matt reviews the early back story of Proterra's founding. early growth and success in the market. Proterra was the first Unicorn for VentureSouth and one of the few EV companies with significant revenue. Early investors were encouraged by the growth of the company and their eventual exit via a SPAC in the Summer of 2021. However the initial enthusiasm quickly faded and the share price of Proterra has steadily fallen to a fraction of the IPO price while the early investors were 'locked up' by the SPAC conditions. The end result was a poor result for early investors while the SPAC investors did well. Matt reviews the lead-up to the SPAC in Part 1 and will discuss the dynamics of the poor outcome in Part 2.

Episode 19: The Proterra Story: Part 1

In this interveiw, we talk with Matt Dunbar, Founding Director of VentureSouth. He was intimately involved with the initial funding for Proterra, an early commercial EV company. Matt reviews the early back story of Proterra's founding. early growth and success in the market. Proterra was the first Unicorn for VentureSouth and one of the few EV companies with significant revenue. Early investors were encouraged by the growth of the company and their eventual exit via a SPAC in the Summer of 2021. However the intial enthusiasm quickly faded and the share price of Proterra has steadily fallen to a fraction of the IPO price while the early investors were 'locked up' by the SPAC conditions. The end result was a poor result for early investors while the SPAC investors did well. Matt reviews the lead-up to the SPAC in Part 1 and will discuss the dynamics of the poor outcome in Part 2. We invite your feedback and suggestions at ventureinthesouth.com or email david@ventureinthesouth.com. If you like our show, it reallly helps us if you rate, review and please subcribe. Thanks for listening and remember: Our mission is to HAVE FUN, MAKE MONEY AND DO GOOD.

Episode 18: Power Law and Why it's Important

The Power Law of asymetric distribution of envents is the foundation of Early Stage Investing success. In this show we review the early history of Venture that has defined the framework for Angel Investing today and discuss how Angel Investors can harness the Power Law to increase the probability of success.

Episode 17: The Ideal Startup Investment

What is the ideal early stage startup investment?

Episode 16: Digital Local News and 6amCity

The story of 6amCity

Episode 15: Full Time Angel Investing as a Job

How David started out in Angel Investing and it became his full time job

Episode 14: Investing in Angel Funds

This show is about all the Ins and Outs of Angel Funds and why you might want to consider a Fund. An Angel Fund has several advantages for Angel Investors such as effective diversification of startup investments, disciplined diliengence, low hassle factor and deal flow that can be hard to achieve on one's own. Some Angel funds offer the advantage of QSBS tax benefits which can be a substantial tax savings for high income earners.

Episode 13: The Story of PunchList

In this interview, we talk with Min Alexander the CEO of PunchList about taking over the CEO role from the original founder, creating a growth plan and executing. She explains what makes Punchlist succesfull and what comes next.

Episode 12: The Incredible tax benefits of Angel Investing

In this educational episode, we review the surprisingly robust tax benefits of Angle Investing and how you can harness these benefits.

Episode 11: A Successful Exit: Atlas Organics

In this interview, Joseph McMillin tells the Story of founding, growing and selling Atlas Organics.

Episode 10: The Story of Zylo Therapeutics

In this interview, Scott Pancoast tells his story of founding Zylo Therapeutics, how he raised money, how he built Zylo and how he made it a success.

Episode 9: About SAFEs, Convertible Notes and Preferred Equity

Paul and David discuss the most popular financing vehicles for startup companies, the pros and cons of each and some of the reasons to consider one or the other as an Angel and as a Founder.

Episode 8: How I Made Angel Investing Work For Me

An experienced entrepreneur tells his story of getting started in Angel Investing and why he loves it.

Episode 7: One Investor’s Experience with Angel Investing

An interview with an active Angel Investor about how he got started in Angel Investing. Steve describes what works and what doesn't work for him and how he makes money, has fun and does good.

Episode 6: All About Product Market Fit

Paul and David discuss Product Market fit, what it is and what it isn't, how to find it and how to prove it.

Episode 5: Managing Leadership Change In A Startup

An interview with a board member on managing a CEO change in a rapidly growing startup. Mr. Charlie Banks discusses the heavy lifting, how they made it a win-win and successfully transitioned from a speed boat to a rocket. View Charlie’s LinkedIn here.