Angel Invest Boston

Invest with Boston's Top Angels: Sal's Syndicates “Their internal users will see that their access time to an instrument goes down. They can get on it sooner, which is counter-intuitive, but it is reality.” What if scientists could plan and run experiments much faster? Meenta’s software platform is making the use of high-end research equipment far more efficient. Co-Founder & CTO Stephan Smith is excited by the massive opportunity his startup is addressing. Highlights include: Sal Daher’s Intro Stephan Smith’s Bio “Half the time they sit idle and half the time if someone owns one of these instruments, there's still a long wait to get on them. They're not simple devices, but they are crucial for research.” “Used to take 3 months for you to book time on one of these high-end sequencing machines and have all the reagents and everything else lined up and the right people and so forth, and now you're doing it within 2 weeks, 12 days.” Biggest Obstacle: Convincing People That They Don’t Have to Do Things the Old, Slow Way The Unique Challenges of a Multi-Sided Marketplace “…we let our users make a decision based on whether they care about speed, or quality, or price.” How the Co-Founders, Stephan & Gabor, Came Together “…we were 10 minutes into him telling me about the problem and I think the top of my head blew off. I was like, this is what I've been waiting for. This is a massive market.” “We allow them [universities] to make their core labs more efficient by having more samples throw flow through these machines. These machines are able to run actually more efficiently.” “Their internal users will see that their access time to an instrument goes down. They can get on it sooner, which is counterintuitive, but it is reality.” When it Costs $15,000 per Run, You’re Not Going to Run Your Sequencer Half Full. It Pays to Get Others on the Machine to Share the Cost. Sal Daher Talks About Portfolio Company FineTune Learning The Burning Question for All Angel Investors: How Am I Going to Make Money on This Company? Academic Study on Meenta’s Approach to Two-Sided Markets “The bigger problem that I see is how do you provide value for both sides of the marketplace so you don't have a churn retention issue.” How Meenta Keeps Clients from Going Direct and Cutting them Out of the Business “…we assumed the $2,000 order size. Our order sizes are dramatically bigger.” “Our clear North Star is $1.6 million worth of gross revenue per month by December of 2020. That's our goal.” Meenta Is Hiring Geneticists, Field Application Scientists – Screen for High Emotional Intelligence Finding Your Calling Sharing Your Wisdom - Techstars We Are All Fans of Clem Cazalot of Techstars Boston “I would say your podcast helped people learn fast.”  

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Sal's Syndicates Creating new ways to experience startup events has led Oana Manolache to found Introvoke, a streaming service tailored to this growing space. Relying on her work at HP, Oana is getting strong traction from organic growth. A great interview with a compelling immigrant founder. Highlights include: Oana Manolache Bio & Introvoke Introvoke “…we take engagement a step further. So, we have an open chat where people from all over the world start conversations”. Founding Story of Introvoke Introvoke’s Traction 5000 Users through Viral Marketing – No Marketing Spend Sal Talks about Savran Technologies and Its Remarkable Ability to Capture Extremely Rare Cells How Introvoke Plans to Compete “…87% of consumers prefer to watch a live stream of a brand rather than to read a blog…” Introvoke Aims to Make Virtual Memberships Appealing “Our viewers stay engaged for at least 80% of the video…” Introvoke Just Stated Monetizing its Business with a Tiered Subscription Model Oana Manolache Wants to Make Introvoke the Norm for Startup Events How Oana’s Family Life in Romania Contributed to Her Entrepreneurship Raising Money Should Note Be an Automatic Reaction If You Are Planning to Start a Company “I strongly believe that you don't have to be a social impact company to actually have social impact.” Sal on the Social Value of Entrepreneurship Social Impact of Angel Invest Boston: Three Founders Inspired to Start Their Companies by Listening Finding Your Calling “I realized that I am supposed to be in technology, and I've always been supposed to be in technology.” “…we do want to, of course, follow certain norms in live streaming because people are used to certain things. But we also want to disrupt some others, so to build something new.” “And that makes you wake up in the morning, and those hard days when you're not sure if you're doing the right thing. So, passion strives.”

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Our Syndicates Lessons from a failed IPO led Christian Magel to great success in his own businesses. Now he’s built a shared work space applying those valuable lessons. A bravura interview recorded live at Venture Lane Startup Hub. Highlights include: Introduction to the Podcast and the Guest, Christian Magel Christian Magel Bio Sal Daher Explains How Nell Meosky Luo Connected Him to Venture Lane How Venture Lane Came About The Value of Being Mindful About the Needs of Startups “We are building community, but most and foremost is actually about creating that impact for companies”. The No-Jerks Policy “… let them interact around their interests but find other ways on how they connect”. “…if you're not a tenant here or not a member here, like how can you still take advantage of whatever we're doing here for early stage startups”. Sal Talks About His Investment in Fine Tune Learning What Christian Magel Got from the Failed IPO of Lestbuy.com; Listening to the Customer is Key What Brought Christian Magel to Become an Entrepreneur Post the Bankruptcy of Letsbuyit.com: “…frankly it was probably the toughest time that I had in my career”. “If you're not employed, it's going kind of you're a non-person. It's really tough”. The ABCs of MVNOs “So, you go online, fill out a profile and then a SIM comes in the mail”. “So, it was a crazy successful venture. And we were really proud of being the challenger. So, we could see things from the customer centric view of what would you do if you had been a telecommunication company without a network. And you can actually focus on customers rather than on your network and all the infrastructure”. Why Christian Started His Second Venture in Australia Big Turning Points in Christian Magel’s Life How Christian Magel’s Family Life Affected His Career How Christian Ended Up Studying in Germany, in France and in Phoenix, Arizona. Christian Magel’s Deeply Felt Advice Question from Saeid Gholami, M.D., Founder of iCareBetter Question from Ross Palley, General Manager at Venture Lane Questions on Pricing, Mistakes, and Purpose Startup Parade – A Mental Tour of the Companies at Venture Lane  

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels in Our Syndicates: Learn About Sal's Syndicates Making the capture of high school sports video easy and affordable is the mission of Realplay. Founder Justin Real explains the business and his motivations to get into it. Fun and insightful conversation with an energetic and focused founder. Highlights include: Shoutout to Podcast Listener and Walnut Member Erik Bullen for Suggesting Justin Real as a Guest Justin Real Bio What Realplay Does “Getting the video up until now was incredibly labor intensive and cost prohibitive… It limited … entry into the world of sports … the ability to use it to gain advantages and opportunities and education and professionally”. The Realplay Founding Story “… the problem with the business is not so much that the demand wasn't there or that the market wasn't vibrant, the volume was too high”. Realplay’s AI Identifies Players, Understands Their Actions and Edits to Put Relevant Content Together: “Every Player, Every Play” The Competition to Realplay’s Business Realplay and WePlayed: Compare & Contrast The Realplay Team Is Growing Thoughts About Athletic Founders Such as Bryanne Leeming, Adam Martel and Justin Real Justin Real’s Analogy of Startups as Baseball:” you fail 7 out of 10 times, you're going to go to the Hall of Fame”. Investors Undervalue the Social and Economic Impact of Sports Coaching Has Gotten Much More Effective: “…you're seeing 12, 13-year-olds looking like Olympians…” Unlike in the Past, Athletes Now Have to Be in their Training Regimen Year-Round: Tom Brady This Dedication and Focus Has Changed Sports, Massively Raising Performance Standards Sal Daher Talks About Portfolio Company Vedanta Biosciences – Pitch for His Investment Syndicates Justin Real on How Realplay Is Being Received by Coaches and Players “And the bestselling point that we have to those parents are when we see them, we tell them put their phone in their pocket. You're there to watch the game and you're there to watch your kid play”. Realplay’s Go to Market Approach 2020 Forecasts How Justin’s Family Life Shaped His Entrepreneurship Justin Real’s Parting Advice “I listened to your podcast way at the early days of Realplay and it inspired me to keep going and reach out to guys like Christopher in Launchpad You give us a path”.

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Our Investment Syndicates The brilliant son of immigrants discovers a way of identifying and counting bacteria that could upend the world of diagnostics. Listen to this engrossing interview with professor and founder Ed Goluch of QSM Diagnostics. Highlights include: QSM Diagnostics Is What Jeff Behrens Calls a “Scrappy Biotech” Ed Goluch Bio QSM’s Mission: Identify & Quantify Bacteria Present in a Sample in Minutes “No one wants to be the five or ten percent that's misdiagnosed, and so our technology really gets them closer to being perfect and these critical first few minutes and getting it right the first time”. The Founding Story of QSM Cool Example of Bacteria Interacting with Squid Bacteria Communicate to a Startling Degree Quorum-Sensing Molecules Allow Fine-Grained Detection Down to the Level of the Species of Bacteria “Trying to get a faculty job is actually a lot like starting a startup. You have your idea and you go around pitching to schools”. Boston as a Life Science Hub: “This was one of the great parts of being in Boston. I got 20 amazing candidates in less than a week”. Why QSM Wants to Get to Human Patients Via the Veterinary Market QSM’s Big Pivot: From Addressing Urinary Tract Infections that Require Six Sensors to Ear Infections that Require Just One How an Investor Can Make Money Investing in a Scrappy Biotech Like QSM, Hint: Capital Efficiency “…we don't want to overlook how large dog ear infections are as a problem… You're looking at 9 million dog infections per year”. Getting a Product to Patients with Just $1 Million in Capital Raised Is Very Efficient for a Life Science Business Sal Daher Talks About Another Option for Funding: Revenue-Based Financing How Ed Goluch Found His Calling: From Being Born to Immigrants in the South Side of Chicago to Getting a PhD “…just growing up seeing the hardships of having very little money, parents that are struggling… triggered me to say early on, "I want to get out of this...” " My parents said, "This is perfect, you'll have a job, you'll be comfortable." But for me, I was like, "I want to do more." Edgar Goluch’s Parting Thoughts “Looking back, I think we should have done even more research on…Who’s going to be the user.” Accelerators Ed Goluch Attended: Did Not Have to Give Up Any Equity

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Our Investment Syndicates How to fund scrappy biotech startups is foremost on Jeff Behrens’ mind. He was CEO if a startup that raised $20 million in funding but not one cent from VCs. An invaluable interview for anyone thinking of starting or investing in a life science company. Highlights include: Jeff Behrens Studied Philosophy at Harvard but Stumbled Upon Entrepreneurship: Renaissance Man for the 21st Century MIT/Harvard Medical School Collaboration, HST, is Discussed Siamab Therapeutics Siamab Pursues Therapies Based on the Work of Ajit Varki on the Weird Sugars on the Surface of Cancer Cells Siamab Did Not Go the VC Route, I Took a Scrappier Approach to Funding from Other Sources Ovarian or Pancreatic Cancers Are Tough to Fight; Siamab Targeted them Based on the Unique Sugars on the Outside of the Cancer Cells Creating Lethal Molecules that Attack only the Cancer Cells Standard Chemotherapy Is a Carpet-Bombing Approach, Doing Harm to Healthy Cells Jeff Behrens Has Started and Run Companies but He has an Unusually Thoughtful Approach to the Work VC Are Making Large Bets on “Big-Idea” Companies, Leaving More Targeted Startups Struggling for Funding More Targeted Approaches May Be Promising but How Do They Get Funding? The Early-Validation Trap “So, I think there's an opportunity, there's some funding available, but I think there's a real need for more attention and more creativity around sort of those next stages of how we take those ideas forward”. Sal Updates Us on Portfolio Company SQZ Biotech How Jeff Behrens Went from Philosophy Major to Entrepreneur “…my roommate said at the time, "You're really a business person. Why don't you just make this your thing."” Built Telluride Group to 35 Employees & It Got Acquired by a Fidelity-Backed Group “And we had enough money from that exit to be able to support that so I started thinking what would I be interested in learning about the life sciences…” “…but in biology, it struck me, we just don't know what we're doing. It's just it's hard”. “…who makes more money, drugs, devices, healthcare IT or other healthcare investments?” Unusual PhD Program for Business People at Lausanne’s EPFL “…how often do angel-funded companies go on to raise venture capital?... in tech companies that’s true only 8% of the time…” “…only about 4 to 5% of biotech firms start in angel land and then transition on to venture land.” Venture Capitalist in Life Sciences: “…have evolved their model dramatically from 10, 15 years ago. So, they're doing much larger rounds. They are syndicating a lot less. They're taking more of the early equity, and most importantly they're creating companies.” “...companies that are born out of this model start... They are born with $50 million…” Crucial Question for Biotech Entrepreneurs: “…how you get to that pharma exit without needing the venture money?” Capital Efficiency Is Growing in Biotech How LabShares Newton Came About Tenancy in Shared Labs Has Low Turnover Since It’s Not Easy to Get Your Lab Up and Running A Discussion of Meenta as Part of the Trend Towards More Capital Efficiency in the Life Sciences Jeff Behrens Urges Entrepreneurial Postdocs to Spend Time in Large Companies to Learn How they Work, Before Venturing Out on Their Own “One of the few ways you can get to know pharma is working at pharma for a while.” Savran Technologies as an Example of a Scrappy Life Science Startup “…memo to founders. When you're offered money, take it. You will need more than you expect.” Different Paths of Lives Well Lived – The Life of Joe Tosti Getting into Business Alongside Your Spouse “It's not easy working with your spouse…And you're never far away from the company and all those things.” Having His Wife as His Co-Founder Was Key to the Success of Jeff Behrens’ First Company “I think there is this unsolved problem of funding, not the first steps of an entrepreneurial scrappy biotech, but sort of the next steps.”

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Tech Angels: Our Syndicates DipJar makes charitable giving fast and compelling. 8,500 devices are deployed to 4,500 clients and the business is set to scale fast. My interview with Chris Selland, CEO was an excellent opportunity to learn more about this exciting company just after I invested. Interview highlights include: Sal Introduces Chris Selland, CEO of DipJar The Story of DipJar DipJar Started Out as an Easy Way to Tip Waiters – But the Economics Did not Work Out Fixed Fees Charged by Credit Card Companies Become Meaningful for Small Transactions Devices Are Connected to a Platform – Charge per Dips Are Pre-Set People Saw the DipJar in Coffee Shops and Started Asking If It Could Be Used for Charitable Giving “…but the bottom line is 80% of the money comes in when they actually get the donors in person”. “…we can take a lot of donations very, very quickly”. About the Team Startups Love to Create Brands Having No Idea of How Hard & Expensive It Is: Brand-itis “So, the DipJar you just power it up and it works. And that's a big part of our selling prop too”. Sal Talks About His Investment in Fine Tune Learning Like DipJar, Fine Tune Learning Had a Restart – Hired CEOs Are Much Maligned But… Investors Like Syndicates Because They Don’t Have to Write $25,000 Checks Sal Asks the Burning Question for Angel Investors: How Am I Going to Make 30X on DipJar? DipJar’s New Head of Platform Is Building Capabilities Critical for Scaling Revenue “We've now got … I think about 8,500 DipJars out there in market and 4,500 customers”. “We don't need to raise more capital ever if we don't want to”. On Possible Exits: “I mean net, we're a FinTech company, we're in a hot space, right”? On Being a Hired CEO CEO’s Big Challenge: “…you have to be inspiring and you have to believe in the company when there's very good evidence for you not to believe in the company”. “…optimism is not shading the truth”. West Coast, East Coast “The West Coast is more about top line; the East Coast is more about bottom line”.

Learn About Sal's Syndicates: Link to Sal's Syndicate Page Silicon Valley's angel-investing phenomenon Jason Calacanis is our guest. Hear how he turned $700K into a portfolio worth $100 million. We had an inspiring conversation about building companies and investing in them. Highlights include: Sal Daher Introduces Jason Calacanis as his Guest on Angel Invest Boston How Jason Built the Stellar Team that Makes His Success Possible Sequoia Capital Picked Jason Calacanis to Scout for Promising Ventures How Jason Calacanis Turned $700,000 into $100 million Jason Calacanis Once Thought Angel Investing Was Stupid The Odds of Success for Founders and for Angels “…we live in a time when people believe in balance, and they believe in getting Olympic-caliber rewards…but they only want to commit to putting in 40 hours a week.” Jason Calacanis Investment Syndicates versus Funds VC Returns Have Note Been Spectacular “If you want to be active, you can do syndicates…” “My personal goal is to train 10,000 people to be active investors in thesyndicate.com. We've got 3,300 members.” Why Jason Leads Syndicates Despite Having Raised Several Funds Syndicate Members Act as Scouts, Bringing in Interesting Companies Jason Would Not See Otherwise Syndicate Members Can Be a Resource to Founders As His Syndicates Develop, Jason Calacanis Hopes to Match Investor Background to the Needs of Companies “For me, media is my leverage…” Jason Calacanis Success Brings More Success How “This Week in Startups” Podcast Came About The Responsibility That Comes with Success “And I watch my contemporaries, and I hold many of them in contempt for the cavalier nature of which they go through their work. They must take the work seriously.” Jason Calacanis Jason Calacanis’ Launch Accelerator – Sam Bogoch of Axle.ai Found It Very Useful Jason Calacanis Recommends “Skin in the Game” by Nicholas Nassim Taleb “Angel” by Jason Calacanis, a Manual on How to Be an Angel Investor How Y-Combinator Plays the Odds Jason Is Building His Organization So He Can Start Delegating Investment Decisions Delighting Your Clients Is Essential, But It’s Not Enough: Luxe Valet The Unit Economics Has to Work for a Company to Make Delighting Its Customers into a Business “I think we could have at least 10 times the number of people participating in angel investing than we do here in the United States”. Jason Calacanis “Start small and start slow. Yes. And you know, it's just like learning how to play poker or blackjack”. Jason Calacanis on Angel Investing Jason’s Advice for Angels & Founders Distinctions Between a Life Style Business and a Venture Business

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels in Our Syndicates: Click to Learn More Which Founding Teams Succeed? Are Founders Born or Made? Can Innovation Be Crowdsourced? How Many Jobs Do MIT & Stanford Add to the Economy? Blockchain for the Supply Chain? Chuck Eesley, Stanford's Startup Prof Addresses These Questions and More. Highlights include: Introduction Professor Charles Eesley Bio The Traumatic Founding Experience Shivang Dave, PlenOptika & Entrepreneurs in Poor Countries How Chuck Eesley Ended Up at MIT Studying with Ed Roberts The Economic Impact of MIT & Stanford: Millions of Jobs Created & Trillions in Economic Activity “And the other big takeaway is that we had been looking at the impact of these universities in too narrow of a way previously.” Robust Finding: Larger Teams Do Better; Startups Tend to Have Teams that Are Too Small Chuck Gets a Great Idea for Research While Hiking with a Friend Cooperative vs. Competitive Commercialization “…, if the industry is high in the effectiveness of patent protection, and high in the importance of complementary assets ... you're motivated to go and talk to the big guys, because you need their complementary assets…” “…low effectiveness of patent protection, low importance of complementary assets, that's where you tend to get competitive commercialization…” “Are You Experienced, or Are You Talented?” Sal Talks About the Impact of Portfolio Company Concrete Sensors Evidence-based Entrepreneurship Blockchain to Make it Easier to Finance Supply Chains “And with that additional data, then we can also start to optimize more and more of the startup process, and do a better job of picking which ventures to invest in, and to devote resources towards.” The Value of Thrift in Life and in Entrepreneurship Chuck & Family Plan to Give Their Money to the Universities that Made Their Success Possible “So, I think it [thrift] is an underappreciated value. And definitely in Silicon Valley…” Early Google Investor David Cheriton Is a Role Model for Chuck Chuck’s Parting Thoughts: (1) Entrepreneurs Can Change Their Luck, (2) If Chuck’s Projects Interest You, Reach Out, and (3) Be Frugal in Life and in Entrepreneurship.

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Our Syndicates - Get Qualified The need to re-skill is essential for workers confronting AI with obsolescent knowledge. Techstars alum Ace-Up is addressing this problem with a software platform that makes executive coaching more accessible and accountable. Founder Will Foussier opened for us a fascinating window into this important but obscure industry. Highlights include: Will Foussier a young Frenchman who studied in France and Switzerland, had stints at Ralph Lauren, Raymond James and the Clinton Global Initiative. At the Clinton Global Initiative Will Foussier had the opportunity to use an executive coach and came to realize how valuable it is. Companies ranging from GE to the dynamic startup LovePop are seeing the value of Ace-Up’s coaching platform. It’s expensive to hire people; coaching makes the most of company’s most valuable resource, its people. “We leverage technology to deploy personalized executive coaching in a way that is scalable, impactful and measurable.” At Sanofi, Ace-Up deploys coaching to more than 100 women leaders in 22 countries and in five different languages. The skills gap within organizations is wider than ever. In the 1990s people’s skills were relevant for almost 30 years, digitalization has reduced that to five years now. 2/3 of employees consider that they are not properly supported by their employers. Founding story: working as an analyst of the telecoms industry at Raymond James in London, Will wanted to do something more significant. This led him to the CGI where he learned how an executive coach can change your life. Will started to dream about using technology to make coaching more accessible. Ace-Up’s team is 18 people from diverse backgrounds. Sal talks about his early investment in Vedanta Biosciences, a leading company in the microbiome space. He invites those curious about the intriguing startups that abound in Boston to fill out the accredited investor form at AngelInvesBoston.com. Will credits the traction Ace-Up is getting to the effort to connect with a lot of people aided by the introductions and mentoring provided by Techstars. The stint at this top accelerator helped Ace-Up sharpen their message. Techstars’ focus on giving helped mold the culture at Ace-Up. Ace-Up wants to build a seamless platform for one-to-one remote learning that is progressive and keeps track of what works. They now have 500 coaches on their SaaS-enabled marketplace. The next step is to build value around this core market by providing rich learning content and benchmarking tools. Seeking to automate instructional design. Tend to work with the Chief People Officer or VP of Talent. User start by doing an assessment. The platform recommends coaches for the user to evaluate. Coach and employee/user jointly develop a coaching plan. The solution offered by Ace-Up is framed as a benefit for employees. By the end of 2019 Ace-Up expects to be at $2MM ARR by the end of 2020 they project $5MM ARR. By the end of 2019 they will be in 100 companies. The goal is to develop long-term collaborations with their client companies. 94% of Millennials consider that the reason to stay at a company is career development, this places an emphasis on companies supporting the development of their employees through executive coaching. It’s getting harder and harder for companies with bad cultures to compete in today’s marketplace. They can’t hide anymore. Building an employer brand is growing in importance. Will realized at the Clinton Global Initiative that his calling was to redistribute opportunities to others. Coaching is an amazing way to do that. Inspiring. Will and Sal speculate how by 2030 Ace-Up’s services could be broadly available. Will thinks that coaching and mentoring will inevitably continue to grow and that this trend will greatly benefit the country. Will’s advice to founders: (1) every moment counts, make the best of it, and (2) get out of your comfort zone. Will emphasizes the importance of having a vision, which at first may be unpolished but which eventually, through effort, can be refined.