Angel Invest Boston

The best measure of a founder is how much she can get done with limited resources. By this metric, Bryanne Leeming is outstanding. A couple of years ago she had a paper prototype and vague hopes for a Kickstarter program. Now she has a sleek physical product that works and is likely to get built. She has the software to make it valuable and she’s completed a successful Kickstarter campaign. 3000 kids have played with Splat, the device and software Bryanne has built to encourage physically active and social play focused on STEM learning. The interview with Bryanne Leeming left me inspired. Here’s some of what we talked about: Bryanne Leeming Bio How Bryanne Leeming Decided She Wanted to Be a Founder What Bryanne Leeming Got from Her Babson MBA Balancing Time Between Consulting Gigs & Working on Her Startup How Being an Athlete Affects the Work Bryanne Leeming Does Bryanne Leeming Tells the Unruly Studio Story How Bryanne Leeming Overcame Not Being a Technical Founder Sal Reads a Listener Review – Asks Listeners to Review the Podcast on iTunes Bryanne Leeming Tells About Her Kickstarter Experience Bryanne Leeming’s Tips for Founders on Fundraising How Unruly Studios Is Doing a Lot with Few Resources Unruly Studio’s Go to Market Plans Product Roadmap for Unruly Studios Bryanne Leeming on Taking Advice as a Founder

Jay Singh co-founded ViralGains which is on Deloitte’s Fast 500 list of North America’s fastest growing tech companies. Still working on the marketing technology space, he has founded Clear Coin, a company hoping to apply distributed ledger technology to making digital advertising more accountable. He chose a token sale as a way of acquiring the resources needed to build his new company and seems to be off to a great start. Jay Singh’s is the first Founder Focus interview on Angel Invest Boston. This new format is a response to the growing demand from founders to be on the podcast. The interviews are shorter and done via VOIP, allowing for more immediacy while still maintaining good sound quality. These Founder Focus episodes will launch concurrent with our regular podcast to offer listeners a broader choice. I hope you enjoy them.

The way cancer is treated is about to change. Close monitoring during treatment will become possible, telling us within days with much greater precision if a treatment is working or not. Long-term monitoring of patients in remission will also be revolutionized by making fewer biopsies necessary and detecting relapses much earlier. All these promises come from the technology developed in the lab of Çağrı [Cha-ree] Savran at Purdue University that is being commercialized in Savran Technologies. The brilliant and charming Professor Savran was my guest in this laugh-filled episode. He told how he went from a childhood in Turkey to studying in some of America’s most prominent universities. He opened my eyes to the startup-friendly climate at Purdue University and he explained how his invention came about. Don’t miss this accessible and fun report from the most consequential frontier of innovation. Read the full transcript and see the video at: Çağrı Savran Episode Page Here is a list of the topics discussed: Çağrı Savran Bio (Çağrı Is Pronounced Cha-ree) Accident that Took Çağrı Savran from Turkey to Indiana Purdue University’s Remarkable Support for the Commercialization of Faculty Inventions Çağrı Savran: “So, when I say "extremely rare," I mean one-in-a-billion rare.” Çağrı Savran: “Our technology can find those five or six or ten cells that are, among about a billion.“ “…from a blood sample, you have a glimpse into the tumor without cutting into the person.” The Promise of Monitoring Cancer Treatment with a Blood Draw “The advantage is if you can do this with a blood sample, it gives you a chance to do this test frequently, right?” Applicable to the Prenatal Monitoring of the Fetus Savran’s Tech Is Simple, Fast and Results in High Purity and Yield – 1000 Times Faster than Typical Microfluidic Systems Like Alexander with the Gordian Knot, Savran Has Loosened One Constraint to Great Effect Bigger Scale and Faster Flow Allows the Fast Separation of Rare Cells Device Seems Amenable to Large Scale Usage – Handling Many Patients at the Same Time How the Invention Came About Why Çağrı Savran Founded a Company Purdue’s New Commercialization Policy Played a Big Role in the Decision to Found the Company Why Turbocharging Cell Separation Is So Important Other Use Cases: People Are Always Suggesting New Ones but Need to Concentrate Savran’s Tech Is a Game Changer because of Throughput and Parallelization Other Techniques Look at Pieces of DNA – Savran’s Tech Is Capable of Finding the Entire Genome Sal Daher Reads the Review by Spizzy Spong on iTunes and Asks for Your Review How Savran Landed Bigwig Advisor Ken Morse How Savran Found Its CEO – Patrick Rivelli "Oh, you have no idea how I wish that somebody would say that about me, that I'm 'quietly competent.'” Savran’s Choice of the Right Patent Attorney Was Crucial – Peter Fasse Helped Way Beyond Patents Patrick Rivelli, CEO Proposed a New Go to Market Approach What Makes the Savran Lab at Purdue so Productive Çağrı Savran Urges Fellow Academics to Bring Their Inventions to Market

My colleague at Walnut Ventures, Adam de Sola Pool connected me with four promising startups from Poland participating in the MIT Enterprise Forum Poland contest in Cambridge. This created an opportunity to interview four really promising young founders. Being a founder of a startup in a place like Poland where the infrastructure to support new companies is just starting is really challenging. The four young founders have all demonstrated impressive determination to bring their startup’s products to remarkably advanced stages. In this inspiring chat you will meet Sergejs (Sergey) who studied economics but is making the oil patch greener, Tomasz who trained in robotics but helped invent a new way to train cardiologists, Rafal whose marketing platform has been adopted by Citibank and brilliant Katarzyna (Kate) who invented a way to make counterfeiting of products nearly impossible. Sergejs Jakimous (pronounced Sergey Yakimov) CEO & Co-founder of Vortex Oil Engineering Tomasz Dziwinski, Ph.D., Co-Founder of Medical Simulation Technologies Rafal Kosno, Co-Founder & CEO of Waywer, a Marketing Platform Using Text with Video & Audio Katarzyna Sawicz, Ph.D., Founder of InnovaLab, a New Way to Make Branded Products Hard to Counterfeit

A curious but orderly mind prepared to take advantage of serendipity has taken Adam de Sola Pool on a remarkable journey during his career. His father, Ithiel de Sola Pool, the brilliant political scientist (look up Six Degrees of Separation or Convergence) took young Adam to many different countries. These travels sparked in Adam an interest in geography which led to a job on Wall Street. From Salomon Brothers he went to the EBRD to restructure companies emerging from communism. This grew into setting up Central Europe’s first cleantech fund which produced excellent results. Now Adam is an investor and advisor in the Boston area; much respected for his fresh approach to building young companies. Topics covered in this charming interview include: Adam de Sola Pool Bio From Geography Major at University of Chicago to Wall Street From Salomon Brothers to the EBRD Adam Poole Has a Chance Encounter in the Bathroom & Gets a New Job Overheated Factories in Poland Adam Pool Discovers that Local Businesses Can Be Extremely Profitable How Adam de Sola Pool Got into Angel Investing Adam Pool Compares & Contrasts Angel Groups in Boston Adam Pool Talks About Squadle, a Promising Startup Just Added to His Portfolio Adam Pool Looks for a Defensible Market Position in the Startups in Which He Invests Adam Pool’s Favorite Pivot Adam Pool’s Approach to “Inoculating” Startups Against Risk Adam Pool’s Poetic Statement of the Need for Founders to Give Way to Managers as the Company Grows

Howard Stevenson, Founder, Angel & Scholar of Entrepreneurship, shares condensed wisdom on investing and passing wealth to future generations. Highlights include his journey from forgoing high current income to building long-term wealth, choosing business school over law school, the significance of execution in entrepreneurship, the teachability of entrepreneurship, the importance of time and expertise in investment decisions, managing wealth and setting objectives, diversification in investing, and strategies for navigating a perfectly priced market.

At the TEDMED Conference in Palm Springs, CA I had the chance to interview people from interesting startups. These brief interviews will appear in the coming months interspersed with our regular episodes. Chee-Yeun Chung, a neuroscientist from Korea, was captivated by the idea that cures for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, could be found by doing experiments on yeast cells. Conventional approaches to neurodegenerative diseases had proved problematic. However, an MIT professor, the late Dr. Susan Lindquist, saw a remarkable connection between yeast cells and the human neuron that could offer a solution. This evolutionary conservation, the scientific name for the unlikely connection, might lead to a platform for finding human cures. The promise of quickly evaluating compounds on simple yeast cells opened up the possibility of testing large numbers of potential treatments. Such massive experimentation could not be done with the much more complex human neuron. Chee was thus inspired to become a scientific co-founder of Yumanity Therapeutics, the corporate embodiment of Dr. Lindquist’s passionate vision. With $47 million is Series A money, Yumanity has developed ultra-high throughput methods for testing the ability of large numbers of compounds to improve the functioning of yeast cells purposely afflicted with a certain defect. The defect, protein misfolding, is implicated as a cause of neurodegenerative diseases. Compounds found promising in treating yeast cells are then evaluated in human neurons in which protein misfolding is present. Yumanity has also developed methods to figure out the mechanism of action of these compounds based on yeast genetics and protein network analyses. The result has been the discovery of promising compounds that might become cures. Yumanity believes that its progress over the past two years will justify a Series B raise.  The new money is expected to take the existing compounds to clinical trials. For more details see annotated transcript at: [link to episode page to be added here] Topics covered include: Chee-Yeun Chung Bio Yeast Cells as a Model for Human Neurons – The Simplest Cells Used to Model the Most Complex Induce Protein Misfolding in Yeast – Test for Compounds that Alleviate Symptoms – Find Candidates to Treat Protein Misfolding in Human Neurons – Protein Misfolding Cause of Alzheimer’s Etc. Take Skin Cells from a Parkinson’s Patients, turn them into Stem Cells, Make the Stem Cells into Human Neurons with Misfolded Proteins – Neurons Then Used to Validate “Treatments” Found in Yeast Tests “There [were] a lot of evolutionary conservation between yeast and human neurons. And the compound worked in yeast and also worked in human neurons. So, this to us presented an amazing opportunity where we can create a drug discovery platform using yeast and human patient derived neurons.” New Approaches Sorely Needed, Previous Approaches by Pharma to Find Treatments for Neurodegenerative Diseases Failed Tony Coles, Yumanity CEO Raised $47 Million Series A to Maximize Freedom of Action & Long-term Support – Sanofi & Biogen Participating Two Years into Series A – Promising Results Justify Series B Raise The Biggest Obstacle Has Been the Chemistry – How to Make the Compounds Soluble, Stable Etc. without Compromising Efficacy What Led Chee to Give Up a Safe Position in a Leading Lab to Risk Being is a Startup Yumanity Hopes to Be in Clinical Trials Within 2 Years – Promising Compounds Have Already Been Identified Working in Yumanity Chee Has Gained a Greater Appreciation of Focus and Team Work Flexibility and Intense Communication Within the Team Have Proved Essential to Success Sought Advice from Others Experienced with Startup Culture – Listened to Advice Chee on Her Late Mentor Dr. Susan Lindquist The Late Susan Lindquist found Her Work on the Evolutionary Conservation between Yeast and Human Neurons No Accepted by the Scientific Community, Yet She Persevered Due to the Grit of Susan Lindquist, the Yeast-to-Human Neuron Platform for Drug Discovery Is Becoming a Reality

Ty Danco is an outlier in a population of outliers. His interests are varied and pursued passionately. He’s founded two fintech companies, he’s invested in a gazillion startups and he’s been a hugely generous advisor to companies, in fact the chief advisor at Techstars. Oh, I forgot to mention he’s an Olympian and also deeply involved with crypto-currencies. In this really meaty interview, Ty and I covered a wide range of topics. He explained his ideas in his affably quirky way. This was a super fun conversation. Quotes: "Danco, why are you here? You're a marketing guy." And I said that I was here to see Lever Brothers and he goes, "You idiot, you signed up for Lehman Brothers." “So, I took a leave of absence from school, and Wharton let me make up my remaining credits over the summer, and so I tried doing all three things at the same time. It was a success on paper, I did make the 84 [Olympic] team, I did complete the MBA, I did work at Lehman Brothers, but in truth I was overwhelmed, I did everything badly. I ended up breaking my heel and didn't compete in Sarajevo. I learned nothing in my last classes at school and I was just lost and floundering my first year on Wall Street. So, there's a pretty obvious lesson there about the need to focus and my inability to multi-task. That's maybe why they say focus on one metric that matters, don't try to do five balls in the air at once.” Topics covered include: Ty Danco’s Bio How Ty Danco Stated His Career – Lehman Brothers vs. Lever Brothers – Olympic Team "Danco, why are you here? You're a marketing guy." And I said that I was here to see Lever Brothers and he goes, "You idiot, you signed up for Lehman Brothers." Ty Danco Doing Too Much Ty Danco and the Importance of Focus Ty Danco on the Cover of Sports Illustrated Ty Danco Moves from New York City to Burlington, Vermont Ty Danco Discovers that, Thanks to Michael Bloomberg, It Was Possible to Do Investing in Vermont Ty Danco Founds His First Startup - eSecLending Ty Danco Recalls Wall Street Misogyny of the Past – Women Found a Haven in Hugely Complex CMO Deals Ty Danco’s Company is Hit by the Crash of 2008 Sal Daher Asks for you to Review the Podcast on iTunes – It Really Helps! Why Ty Danco’s Second Startup Failed Ty Danco’s Angel Investments Ty Danco Thinks Crypto-currencies Are Worthy Alternative Investments Ty Danco Believes One Can Eliminate Many Losers - But at a Cost Ty Danco’s Philosophy of Angel Investing Why Mass Medical Angels Is the Only Angel Group Ty Danco Attends Why Ty Danco Does Not Invest Based on Cold Calls Ty Danco Reveals the Secret of Getting into Techstars Ty Danco Likes VCs Involved in Every Deal, Why? “Virtually all of my deals, 99% of the deals come not from me directly stumbling over something, but from a lead from my network.” Boston Angel Pantheon: Michael Mark, Joe Caruso and Jean Hammond What Are ICOs and Why should VCs be Scared of Them? Some of Ty Danco’s Favorite Startups Ty Danco’s Categorization of Mentoring Styles What Sets Accelerators Apart in Ty Danco’s Estimation Ty Danco Takes a Page from Manu Kumar in Starting His Next Venture Visit our home page:Angel Invest Boston Web Page Sign up for our live events at: Opt In Link

While in prep school Matt Singer performed at a religious ceremony and became fascinated with the impact his music had on the congregants. This fascination led Matt Singer to major in music at Yale, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude, and to think of how to make a life in music. Matt hit the streets soon after graduating to start his music business. For ten years he built Dawn Treader Production with marquee names such as Paul McCartney, James Earl Jones and the New York Philharmonic. Relying on the emotional connection possible on TV, he sold the CDs he produced by the tens of thousands on QVC. In 2007 he joined co-founder Amanda Eilian, in starting a company that is now changing the way large enterprises communicate with their customers and employees via video. Videolicious makes it easy for employees to produce polished videos personalized to particular clients that make emotional connections. The platform is now used by 4,000,000 users in 100 countries, it’s even taught at 90 schools of journalism. Backed by Amazon and VC money, this startup is poised for continued growth. This is the story of someone who followed what seems to be an impractical passion but managed to create something that is useful to large numbers of paying customers. Listen to this candid and introspective conversation with a young man who thinks deeply but acts practically. In particular, I liked what he had to say about how founders can prepare their psyche for the arduous journey of building their startup: “It turns out that anything that you accomplish in life actually brings a crush of responsibility, so you really just have to enjoy the journey because there is no magic carpet ride of happiness that comes with any accomplishment.”   Here are the topics covered and some quotes: Matt Singer Bio Matt Singer Actively Looks for a Way to Turn His Passion for Music into a Living, and Succeeds The Story of The Talk Market Which Became Videolicious How Matt Connected with his Great Co-founder, Amanda Eilian What Videolicious Does Today Sal Daher Reads a Review from Listener ChangDS and Ask Listeners to Leave a Review on iTunes The Pivot that Turned The Talk Market into Videolicious The Vision Stayed the Same, the Implementation Changed Great Point about Finding Your Focus “From the perspective of entrepreneurs, I think it's just good to note that you can have a vision but there are a lot of choices along the way in terms of who should you really sell to.” Videolicious is Taught at 90 Schools of Journalism – It’s Becoming Ingrained Instead of a Sales Binder Videolicious Allows You to Send Your Customer a Compelling Personalized Video “Video is becoming the standard way that people create content.” Videolicious’ Board Has Been Very Supportive – They’ve Been Amenable to Reasoned Arguments “Yeah, you've heard that theme of focus, focus, focus, but exactly what that means is not always super clear.” "Wow. What do I need not only just to get in the door, but also to keep them forever?" How Matt Singer Got Amazon as an Early Investor in His Company How Videolicious’ VC Backers Help with More than Money The Interesting Route Videolicious Took to VC Funding The Path Ahead for Videolicious – Making Video Creation Ever Easier & More Effective Matt Singer’s Three Bits of Advice for New Founders “Definitely finding a great co-founder is important… someone that you can really work with… work through thick and thin, because there's going to be ups and downs constantly and so it's great to have someone that can support you and you can support them.” “…thinking through the entire lifecycle of your customer from the acquisition to renewal.” Having a Long-term View Is Crucial in Selling to Enterprise Customers Because Everybody Works from Home, Videolicious Looks for Self-starters ” I do find that being able to tell the story and the vision is a good way to attract talent.” Other Startups That Matt Singer Admires – Companies That Make Using their Product Super Easy What Matt Singer Has in Common with C.S. Lewis “…most technology is pretty disruptive for your average employee. It's different than what they're used to doing. That's what you have to contend with as a startup, you assume that's a big jump, even if your product in the isolation is easy.” Matt Singer’s Parting Thoughts – A Truly Valuable Observation “It turns out that anything that you accomplish in life actually brings a crush of responsibility, so you really just have to enjoy the journey because there is no magic carpet ride of happiness that comes with any accomplishment.”

Bettina Hein is the founder of Pixability, one of the fastest-growing companies in Massachusetts. She was also co-founder of SVOX, a profitable Swiss startup sold to Nuance Communications for $125MM. This record may make her success seem easier to achieve than it was. Bettina Hein overcame numerous obstacles to justify the sobriquet “Fearless Founder”. Learn from her as I did. She is an exemplar of resilience, grace under fire and plain common sense. She also has much to teach us about how a startup might best raise money. Whenever I ask angel investors about a remarkable pivot by a founder, there’s a good chance Bettina’s name will come up. Don’t miss this charming and instructive conversation with a star founder. Here are topics and quotes from the interview: Bettina Hein Bio How Bettina Hein Found Her Entrepreneurial Path in Life Bettina Hein Used to Write Computer Programs in Fourth Grade but Did Not Learn to Code in College; Why? Professors Discouraged Bettina Hein from Pursuing a Career in the Sciences “If I had to go back, I would probably get an undergraduate degree in either electrical engineering or computer science.” “I think I wanted to be an entrepreneur very early on. There's just that example that was set in my family. There's no one in my family that has had a nine to five job ever, except my brother…” Bettina Hein Founds an Entrepreneurship Initiative for Students at her University Called Start, that Leads her to Brains-to-Venture, Which Connects Her with Her co-founders in SVOX SVOX Has a $125 MM Exit to Nuance Communications Bettina Hein Starts Pixability – Looked for Co-founders But Could Not Find Any Willing Takers – How She made Being a Solo Founder Work Pixability’s Storied Pivots “We help large brands and their agencies place their video advertising and optimize it on YouTube, and we've expanded to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.” How Pixability’s Platform Impacts the Viewing Public “Consumers like it better, and brands get more out of it.” Sal Daher Reads an iTunes Review from HealthTech617 – Asks You to Leave a Review on iTunes Bettina Hein’s Advice on Fundraising for a Startup Bettina Hein on How Things Change Once a Startup Gets Venture Funding Bettina Hein Thinks Founders Are Scared of Having a Board So They Miss out on a Lot “Many beginning entrepreneurs are scared of having a board. They fear the meddling in their business. They fear that people will force decisions on them, on the board. I have not seen that ever happen.” “For me, often times the exercise of preparing for a board meeting is almost more important than the board meeting itself because it allows me to really think through the narrative of the company.” Bettina Hein’s Way of Balancing Work & Family Bettina Hein on Fundraising While Pregnant Bettina Hein on Marketing Technology’s Crowded Landscape