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Accredited Investor? Check Out Our Syndicates: Link to Syndicate Page DACA recipient, Berkeley grad, and a Googler, Victor Santos is not a typical startup founder. His Boston-based startup, Airfox is addressing a huge problem: access to affordable financing in Latin America. Through a partnership with one of Brazil’s leading retail lenders, Airfox is able to gather data that enables lower-cost lending in a country where consumers routinely pay interest rates of 400% per annum. Highlights from the interview include: Airfox seeks to accelerate financial inclusion in developing markets. Focus for next three years is Brazil. Imagine your neighborhood bank being a payday lender; 50% of population use only cash. Airfox mobile app acts as free banking simplifying user’s life. As data builds on app, Airfox creates an alternative credit profile and user can take micro loans. Scalable sub-prime lending at more affordable rates. Via Varejo, Brazil’s biggest retailer to low-income people, with 1,000 stores gives Airfox great reach. Retailers make money from financing. Via Varejo has $1 billion consumer loan portfolio. Attractive to Via Varejo because it simplifies their operation which now uses coupon books for payments. Brazilian banking system has advanced features but average consumer has limited access. Brazil’s world-class central bank has opened up to fintech companies but traction is still limited. Victor left Google because he did not want to be working in advertising. Time at Google served to show Victor what it’s like to work at a big company. Was COO of failed startup, determined to found his own company where he could control the direction the company took. Also wanted to bring some type of utility to the end consumer. First instance of Airfox provided software to cellular carriers that made it easy for them to give free data plans to low-income users who opted into receiving ads. Three carriers signed up with 2,000,000 users. Sal asks listeners to leave a rating or a review on iTunes. Victor Santos tells about the major pivots Airfox executed. Airfox’s solution created real value for carriers in terms of increased retention of users. Carriers were frustrating to work with, slow to adopt system that could address massive user churn of 8 to 12% per month. Airfox realized user data could be the key to providing funding to users. Decided to look for way to go direct to consumer. Victor saw an opportunity to apply what they had learned in the cell phone business to the Brazilian market that was being de-regulated by the Central Bank. Contingent life of middle-class Brazilians. Airfox’s digital wallet will be offered through Via Varejo’s 1000 stores. Via Varejo sees Airfox as a way to grow their lending and decrease defaults. With launch of debit card in Q1 Airfox will become a full digital bank for consumers. AirFox brand name will have to change because the name has less than great associations for consumers. Via Varejo’s equity stake reassures the retailer that it will continue to benefit as Airfox’s credit business expands. Comparison with Amazon Pay in India. Advice for fundraising, make sure investors understand how your vision of social change will pay off in terms of profits to the company. Via Varejo has a two-year call to buy 80 percent of Airfox. How angels took that. A call option is a right to buy at a certain price. On cap table have Techstars, Project 11, Launch Capital, Boston Seed and One Way Ventures. Victor came to the US at age 12. Parents were entrepreneur by necessity not by choice. Primed Victor to think about entrepreneurship. Experience with startup in Silicon Valley confirmed in Victor’s mind he wanted to start a company. Immigrants have to be scrappy and resourceful, prepares you to be an entrepreneur. Brazil’s economic dichotomies. Airfox’s consumer loans are 13 to 26 percent per year vs. 400 percent in other places. Victor advises founders to determine what are the principals that underlie their company. Handy in difficult time to know what you stand for. Company values from the A-Team & Ray Dalio.

Accredited Investors, Join Boston's Leading Angels in Our Syndicates: Learn More About Our Syndicates Brilliant Spanish postdoc, Carlos Castro-González, goes to MIT’s “Magic Wand” lab, and joins a superb international team to address an important medical problem. Leuko, their startup, now has a device and software that can tell when cancer patients are becoming immuno-compromised. Leuko’s product has the potential of saving 4,000 lives and $1.5 billion every year by cutting in half opportunistic infections associated with chemotherapy. Some highlights from this charming conversation with a well-spoken scientist & founder: Carlos Castro-González bio. What Leuko does. How the company came about. How Carlos became an unlikely entrepreneur. MIT’s Martha Gray Lab, often called the “Magic Wand” lab building a new approach to applying technology to real-world medical problems. What the device and software actually do. Potential impact. Who might pay for this product? How much money and time will it take to get the product to market? Licensing the technology from MIT. Team ideally suited to technological task, but created entirely by accident. Have worked well for four years. Four founders have passed up well-paid and safe positions in industry to get this company going. PlenOptika came from the Martha Gray Lab as well and share space with Leuko Commercial input from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service. Advice to other scientist/founders form a company more than a year before leaving academia to apply for non-dilutive funding for the company. When the funding is granted then separate from the university to avoid conflicts of interest. Heard this from another founder. Carlos advises potential founders to broaden their network to investors and people with commercial experience. Super-connectors. Being coachable and listening to advice. Reporting frequently and succinctly is valuable. Having a narrative thread that ties one report to the previous one. Reports as a way of eliciting help from investors. Process of interviewing physicians took care to ensure candid opinions. Concrete steps to get unguarded responses.

Invest Alongside Boston's Leading Angels: Learn About Our Syndicates A Renaissance man still lives in our times. He’s been a priest, a Harvard prof, a non-profit exec and he’s now a founder.  The startup Larry Sullivan helped found has built a platform on which C-level executives implement strategic initiatives. The proof of the pudding is that Chiefofstaff.com’s platform has been adopted by some of the biggest names including Deloitte. Larry is a charming guest. His vast knowledge and dry humor made for a really fun podcast! Highlights include: Larry speaks nine languages, plays rock on a faculty band and is a devoted husband, father and grandfather. com is a B-to-B SaaS platform to help C-level execs implement strategic plans. I was surprised to discover that poor implementation of strategic plans is a top worry for CEOs of large enterprises. Larry was a beta tester for the platform when he was CEO of a large foundation. The results were so impressive that Larry joined founder Bob Epner at the startup. Platform gives managers with strategic responsibility actionable items every day. The platform ties in to the enterprise’s management software. There are no comparable platforms that compete with Chiefofstaff.com. McKinsey sees a gap in this space. Harvard Business Review study found that failure to deliver on strategic plans was the top worry for CEOs. Competition is from software designed for other uses. Chiefofstaff.com is the only software custom-designed for the C-suite. Initially thought about selling direct to large enterprises then realized that it was far more effective to go through partnership channels such as major consulting firms like Deloitte. Due diligence with Deloitte was a day at the dentist for a whole year. Learned that the business proposition for their partners was to use the platform to present the strategic plans to their clients. Chiefofstaff.com helps the partner get the engagement and makes it easier to deliver the strategic plan. Hard behind Deloitte are other major consulting firms. Finally reaching the end of the long dales cycle. Larry has raised money across a broad range of activities, his advice to fundraisers is to build a rapport with the investor so that she or he understands what drives you and your company. People who have suffered the problems addressed by the platform tend to be the most open to investing in the company. Sal, given his decades of experience in small companies, did not initially see the need for Chiefofstaff.com. The Harvard Business Review article was an eye-opener. The company developed a formal process to channel the advice of the senior executives who invested because they understood the pain point being addressed by Chiefofstaff.com. The Harvard Business Review article, based on a very robust study (8,000 senior leaders tracked for 8 years), also found that executives had little confidence in information provided across functional units (less than 9%) versus information provided directly within the business silo (80% reliable). Chiefofstaff.com was designed to address this disparity. Larry was drawn into the priesthood by the prospect of working in war-torn areas of the globe. Worked as priest for 16 years. Larry got “heart disease” while at the University of Chicago doing a PhD in comparative religions; he met and married a doctoral student in anthropology. Created their own “kin unit”. Larry left an endowed professorship at Harvard to create a program in world religions at Notre Dame. A unique opportunity for a Roman Catholic. Had to win the hearts of the world’s largest university faculty of theology. Later he was invited to head up the Fetzer Institute, a large non-profit with activities in 40 countries. Picked up Latin, Ancient Greek, French and German at BC High. Knowing nine languages opens up unexpected possibilities of connecting with people and ideas. In summation Larry expressed astonishment at the chain of events that had to have occurred for us to be sitting here able to contemplate the Big Bang that occurred 14 billion years ago. It leads him to be grateful and appreciative of the similarities and differences of people around him. Larry ties this to the work of Chiefofstaff.com.

Some of our most interesting founders are immigrants. That is certainly the case with Federico Cismondi, a bioengineer from MIT. His path began at the foothills of the Andes and has led Federico and his co-founders to build a company, doDoc that is radically changing how the world’s technology leaders handle complex documents. This was a scintillating interview. Highlights include: doDoc is not your grandfather’s Google Docs, it’s more like Google Docs on super duper steroids. doDoc allows users to do things no other platform offers, for example an owner can share a portion of a document, not the entire document. On doDoc every piece of information is an object allowing great flexibility in privacy, accountability and presentation. Pharmaceutical companies appreciate that every key stroke is instantly auditable. This saves a lot of time for auditors and significantly reduces the risk of mistakes. doDoc’s founders are from Argentina and Portugal and yet was founded in Cambridge. It probably has the best soccer team of any Cambridge startup! Los tres amigos, Carlos, Paulo & Federico knew they wanted to build a company but were searching for an idea. Their first idea was to help in scientific collaboration where massive documents are common. Competition is MS Word, MS SharePoint, Viva. doDoc’s features make it valuable to integrate with existing offerings. Techstars allowed doDoc to expand its connections to investors in Boston. Portugal is becoming a dynamic place for startups. A long journey to get product/market fit, now the company is focusing on scaling up First pivot was from research to industry. Money sparing vs. time sparing. Shortening the time to market for pharmaceutical companies is highly important economically. Entry point includes the regulatory group, another is quality also R&D. In early raises doDoc did not use mentors; now they do. Frankness and good communication are really essential. doDoc manages investors with a formal and methodical sales process. Federico was initially drawn into nuclear medicine by an inspiring teacher and eventually built a company in the space. An introduction to building software. Federico’s advice is to hire fast. Get the new hires involved in hiring new people. Read your family into the ups and downs of your company so they are prepared to support you. The relationship with co-founders requires really good communication.

Amanda Drobnis has a technology that facilitates the use of tissue from animal placentas to regenerate tissue in other animals. The procedure, known as a placental allograft, is gaining acceptance in human medicine. Amanda plans to translate that trend to the veterinary space. I met Amanda at a mentoring session at The Capital Network (TCN), a really valuable institution that helps founders and investors. Some of the highlights of the interview include: Intro and a Shout Out to The Capital Network How Amanda Discovered What She Wanted to Do in Life Regenerative Technology in Use in Human Medicine Being Applied to the Animal Space “…this therapy in particular is really interesting because it has all of the proteins and all of the properties to regenerate tissue, and we can now have the technology to use it at a room temperature.” “…almost no chance of [tissue] rejection” Creating a New Source of Recurring Revenue for Vets “…you already have a population of veterinarians and influencers that understand the value of the product…” Some Research Will Be Needed Amanda’s Father Is an Entrepreneurial Physician Who Has Invented the Technology Amanda’s Experience with TCN Horseback Riding Teaches Important Lessons Amanda Thinks Her Business Could Grow to Annual Sales of $20 million It Even Re-Grows Hair at the Wound Site!

Our Investment Syndicates: Link to Our Syndicates Page Techstars and Shark Tank alumna Alice Lewis is building both a business and a movement. Her startup, Alice’s Table, offers a “business in a box” to entrepreneurial women who need a flexible schedule and want a meaningful activity. Alice’s Table helps with logistics, marketing, training and technology; the members, called “execs”, bring energy and connection with local brick & mortar businesses hungry for new things to keep their locations busy. Don’t miss this sparkling interview with her generation’s Martha Stewart. Highlights include: Alice Lewis’ Introduction – The Martha Stewart of Her Generation Building a Movement as Well as a Business – Women Connecting Across Functional & Economic Strata to Create Events that Are Fun and Meaningful Alice’s Parents Are Both Entrepreneurs – This Inspired Her to Get Started Being in a Musical in the 8th Grade Helped Her Realize She Has a Talent for Management “I thought I was going to the art world 100%. My mom is an interior designer, but she also helps clients collect art. So, I saw that and I was like, this art world thing is really cool.” "Oh my gosh, you're just another lifestyle blog, like the world does not need another lifestyle blog. Like stop, quit, Leave this. This is not a business opportunity." Her First Job Was Working with the FBI & US Customs on International Art Fraud “One of the things that I loved about Penn and why I wanted to go there so badly was because they had lots of majors that had many dimensions to them.” “Normal People, Normal Results; Abnormal People, Abnormal Results” “…like it's so scary to launch a business. How do you get over that hurdle? My response is always, if you can't get used to that pit in your stomach, just stay in your job.” No Serenity in Startup Life: Gimlet Media’s Alex Blumberg Is Up at 2:45 AM Talking to His Wife About the Business “Raise your hand if you recognize that we hit a target that we really were gunning for and nobody else has noticed, because it happens all the time.” “So, Techstars was our first move out of the basement.” “…what about this company are they doing that's not just women playing with flowers?" “…stealth mode is the most ridiculous thing ever because everybody has good ideas. It's about the execution of the ideas.” Weekly Team Meetings: “I don't want you to bring anything to the table that's good. I want you to tell me what scares you in your world because I can't know everybody's world.” The Founding Story of Alice’s Table “…we've got to figure out a way for women who want flexibility to participate and build a business…” Alice Lewis Tells Us What Alice’s Table Is About Alice Lewis’ Experience on Shark Tank What Alice Lewis Learned from Funding Her Startup “…your approach doesn't entail pestering all your relatives to buy…” Alice’s Table Execs Build Alliances with Existing Brick & Mortar Business Eager for More Activity “We're really lucky that right now, brick and mortar is struggling…” What Alice’s Board Does for Her The Future Plans for Alice’s Table

Repeat founder Keith Elliston has found the capstone to his brilliant career. His startup Axiomedix is supporting the creation of a massive bank of patient data tied to the genetics of each patient to enable medical research on an unprecedented scale. Imagine what could be learned by comparing the medical records of millions of patients with their genomic data! Keith also has the ambition of building blockchain technology to create a transparent marketplace where patients might make their medical data available to researchers in a safe and accountable way. Don’t miss this engrossing and accessible peek into the future of patient-centered medical discovery. Here are some highlights from the podcast: Keith Elliston, PhD Bio “I think one of the things about that and about entrepreneurism is luck favors the prepared. You need to be in a position for these things to happen.” Synopsis of Keith Elliston’s Career The Collaboration between Merck & Rutgers Shaped Keith’s Thinking about Translating Findings from the Lab to Industry Partnership between Merck & NIH Opened Keith’s Mind to Collaborations between For-Profits & Non-Profits Keith’s First Company – Viachem Systems Keith Elliston’s Take on MBA Programs 9/11 Happened in the Middle of Viachem’s Series C “I think one of the things that people don't ...don't understand is that the entrepreneurial element of our economy is the most tenuous with respect to economic distress.” I2B2 tranSMART What it Does and How it Came About “The key challenge that we see with open source is that crossing the chasm challenge.” You Don’t Own Your Medical Record Powerful Combination of People’s Genetic Data with their Health Records The tranSMART Platform already Has 15,000 Cancer Patients on It Among the Universities that Do Tech Transfer Well Keith Names Washington University Keith Elliston Suggests that Big Pharma Copy the Process that Allowed Ford to Design the Mustang

Accredited Investors, an Exciting Syndicate Is Under Way: Click to Learn More Coming from a family of lawyers in Italy, Laura Indolfi was an unlikely candidate to found a tech startup. Yet, her love of engineering and fascination with materials took her to the storied labs at MIT led by Elazer Edelman and Bob Langer. Her startup, PanTher Therapeutics is using off-the-shelf cancer drugs and biomaterials to create a new way to treat cancers that are really hard to treat such as pancreatic cancer, Laura’s first target. Don’t miss this lively interview with a stellar founder. Highlights include: Laura Indolfi Bio How Laura Indolfi Decided She Wanted to Be a Materials Engineer Laura Indolfi Explains Why She Came to the US “Like the first six months I was thinking of probably I will go back to Italy and probably join my family into the law firm. But once you pass that moment and you get adjusted to the space then it was much better.” The Founding Story of PanTher Therapeutics Business Mentors Have Been Very Helpful Could MIT’s Process for Licensing Technology from the Institute’s Labs Be Improved? What PanTher Is Doing and Why It Matters “You end up with 12 times the cancer-killing drug on the tumor as you would get from intravenous application of the same drug.” “We are planning to submit our final application to them [the FDA] beginning of next year, January 2019. That will allow us to start enrolling patients the first quarter of 2019.” “The things that makes me as the CEO of the company very excited is the engagement from the clinical community. We had a partnership with clinical oncologists that they are operating on these patients, coming up to Boston to operate on the pigs.” Sal Daher Reads a Review from a Listener and Asks for Your Review on iTunes Laura’s Indolfi Advice on Fundraising A Major Change at PanTher and What Drove It Laura Indolfi’s Parting Thoughts Arrigo Bodda, This Is for You

Accredited Investor, an exciting syndicate is under way:Learn More Here How do you become the giant player in a fragmented business like that of finding voice-over talent? This is just one of the questions that intrigued me in this interview with David Ciccarelli, CEO & Co-Founder of Voices, a business he stated and runs with his wife and co-founder Stephanie. If you’re raising money, this episode and “The Secrets of Fundraising” (Click Here) are must listen. Highlights include: Introduction to David Ciccarelli & Voices.com “"What is the intersection of this? Art, science, technology, music, sound," and really had this desire to do something in that space…” “That's been the same idea right from the very beginning to what we do now is, it's evolved to a global marketplace of over 500,000 users from all around the world…” David Ciccarelli and His Wife Stephanie Are Co-Founders – How Do They Make It Work? David Ciccarelli’s Parents Encouraged an Entrepreneurial Mindset The Remarkable Funding History of Voices.com The Three Crucial Questions You’ll Be Asked on Your Raise GOLDEN TIP FOR FUNDRAISING!!!! “Over the years, I'd developed a massive spreadsheet of 200 names of investors that had either shown interest, or I'd met at a conference, or something along these lines, of names of the firm, the city they were in, and the phone number and email on the contact, basic information. I created a one-pager, almost like a business model canvas-type idea, but really tight one-pager with some key stats, problem, solution, results.” DON’T MISS THIS EITHER!!“Now, you've previously made, I think, a really important point, and these are not cold emails. This isn't just, "I googled around."” “I think one of the challenges that were currently faced is how to manage the growth efficiently…” How Voices.com Built Its Dominance in a Fragmented Business Jean Hammond’s “There’s No Second Thing” Story “We describe that as leading and transforming the industry…. Being the place… where the world comes to find their voice.” Starting a Business in the US vs. Starting One in Canada What Has Made London, Ontario a Tech Hub? Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs from David Ciccarelli

New Syndicate! Sign Up to Learn More: Link for Signing Up Running a landscaping business while in grade school gave Sean Eldridge a taste for entrepreneurship. Years later, after a successful career in large corporations, he decided to start a business, Gain Life, building software to change people’s lives. Big players in the insurance business are betting that Gain Life will help their bottom line. Here are some things that came up during my interview of Sean Eldridge: “…these individuals had… transformative experiences through either medical or surgical weight loss… They became a different person. They had an identity shift.” “…you sort of became a missionary for mind change around health.” “Yeah. I think it probably all started back when I was probably in sixth grade. I started a lawn mowing business…” “…I loved… being able to marshal resources that weren't under my own control, to be able to help individuals and make some money while doing it.” In College, Sean Dreamed of Starting a Sports Publication on the Web – Instead, He Became Hooked on Healthcare during an Internship “I think there's something about starting out in a landscaping and going on to become very successful entrepreneurs and assassinating a few plantings along the way.” “At Gain Life, we build digital behavior change programs…to empower individuals to achieve their best life.” “…right now, we have part of our business that's growing really fast around helping individuals actually return to work from temporary disability…” There Is Evidence that Digital Intervention Gets People Back to Work Faster Most People Out on Disability Want to Return to Work – Gain Life Helps Them Deal with The Loss of Income and Connection That Comes from Being Out of Work & Gets Them Back to Work Faster Sean Loved His Jobs in Corporate America but Wanted to Apply that Experience to Helping People Transform their Lives Gain Life Was Founded by Three Alumni of Procter & Gamble’s Future Works Division Who Enjoyed Working Together Gain Life Re-purposes Behavioral Science Used to Sell Consumer Packaged Goods for Helping People Make Changes in Their Lives “Huge Study of People Who Lose Weight Successfully Points to Identity Shift” Gain Life Pivoted Away from Weight Loss to Disability – From Selling a Vitamin to Selling a Painkiller Sean’s Extracurricular Activities at Harvard Business School Primed Him for Entrepreneurship Three Big Trends that Help Gain Life Behavioral Sciences Are Transforming Big Consumer Companies Chat Bots Are Relieving Insurance Employees of Mundane Tasks Algorithms Are Starting to Have an Economic Impact in the Insurance Industry – Lemonade Inc. “Boston is like the greatest city on Earth.” “…venues like this that talk about a founder's journey are so helpful, not just for founders who are going through it and sometimes feel isolated, but for individuals who are even considering entrepreneurship as a potential journey.” “People think that this podcast is about technology. It's about human nature, really, as it confronts technology, as it confronts markets, and so this is why it is an endlessly fascinating subject…”