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 th...
Jan 23, 2019•45 min•Season 3Ep. 4
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...
Jan 16, 2019•50 min•Season 3Ep. 3
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 ...
Jan 10, 2019•46 min•Season 3Ep. 2
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...
Jan 02, 2019•46 min•Season 3Ep. 1
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 Netwo...
Dec 19, 2018•30 min•Season 2Ep. 26
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 location...
Dec 05, 2018•40 min•Season 2Ep. 25
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 medica...
Nov 21, 2018•55 min•Season 2Ep. 24
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, ...
Nov 07, 2018•42 min•Season 2Ep. 23
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: Introduct...
Oct 24, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 22
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… ...
Oct 10, 2018•38 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Gamer turned AI maven, Kevin Lyman is implementing Jeremy Howard’s vision of harnessing the super chips that power gaming machines (GPUs) to interpret medical images. Deep learning algorithms are already making radiologists faster and better at their work. It’s a story of man plus machine not man versus machine. Don’t miss this accessible report from the frontier where machine is starting to make a tangible difference in medical care. Some highlights from the interview: Kevin Lyman Versions 1.0 ...
Sep 26, 2018•30 min•Season 2Ep. 20
The secrets of startup fundraising revealed by an angel steeped in Boston’s tech investing scene. 35 minutes is all it takes to make you a better fundraiser. Sal Daher, CFA of the Angel Invest Boston Podcast is your mentor. Topics covered include: Introduction Why Do You Need Funding? “So, raising money has to be for a purpose. There's a real danger of getting money and it killing your ” Secret #1: Raising Money Is Selling – Stephen Hawking vs. Willy Loman – Warm Calling not Spamming Secret of F...
Sep 12, 2018•37 min•Season 2Ep. 19
His bonhomie masks a keen intelligence that has, for decades, taken note of what makes or breaks founding teams. Joe Caruso is the CEO Whisperer, the Father Confessor to Founders. Joe’s an intrepid angel investor who goes where other angels fear to tread. This makes him a highly sought-after board member or advisor. I was privileged to sit down with him for an hour and to imbibe his wisdom and good humor. Typical Joe Caruso comment: “…you don't train a Labrador to flap its ears. It makes for a l...
Aug 29, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Few are as well positioned to see the huge opportunities that exist for small and medium businesses in digital marketing as the founder of Constant Contact. In his new company, Brevi, Randy Parker is using software to allow mom & pop businesses to access those opportunities in ways that pay. I had loads of fun talking to this most clever and affable guest; and I learned a lot. Here’s what we touched on: Randy Parker Introduction How Randy Parker Discovered He Wanted to Build Software What To...
Aug 15, 2018•42 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angel in Our Syndicates: Link to Syndicates Page Angel investors Catherine Friend White and Ben Littauer answered questions about investing in startups in front of an audience at Babson College. Then the audience got to ask questions. The conversation ranged from the optimal portfolio size to the usefulness of the blockchain. Here are some highlights: Sal Introduces Live Event - Thanks Nina Block & Margaret Jone from Babson for Making it Possible Sal Introduces ...
Aug 01, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Zipcar’s first investor, Jean Hammond, is Boston’s indispensable angel. Her hands-on approach has been pivotal to the success of her startup and several others. She co-founded the leading accelerator for educational technology startups, LearnLaunch. The interview was great fun and hugely instructive to me. Don’t miss it! Here are some highlights: Sal Introduces Jean Hammond From Studying Biology at Boston University to Running a Food Warehouse Jean Decides She Needs a Rigorous MBA – Goes to MIT ...
Jul 18, 2018•46 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Timeless values of loyalty and integrity have helped Phillips Kuhl build a thriving company at the heart of one of the economy’s most innovative sectors: biotechnology. Holding more than 250 conferences per year, Cambridge Healthtech Institute or CHI, helps participants discover new perspectives on the problems they are addressing. This impressive feat requires the concerted effort of 150 talented employees whose encouragement and guidance are Phillips Kuhl’s constant concern. I really enjoyed d...
Jul 04, 2018•52 min•Season 2Ep. 14
The possibility of transcending the limits of human intelligence in scientific discovery has led this young British scientist to leave academia and found a startup. Founder & CEO James Field and LabGenius are engineering the evolutionary process to create novel proteins that have remarkable qualities. I caught up with James at TEDMED and had a most revealing interview. Topics covered include: Sal Pitches the Syndicate Sal Introduces James Field, CEO & Founder of LabGenius James Field Was...
Jun 20, 2018•22 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Click Here to Join Our Syndicates List Aki Balogh had a project to apply machine learning to help content creators. Suddenly it looked like a business when Jeff Coyle, the VP of Search at an established company, joined him as co-founder. MarketMuse is now a fast-growing startup helping hundreds of companies figure out what content to create. Aki, Jeff and VP of Engineering at MarketMuse, Noah Davis, were in studio for an engaging interview. Some highlights: ...
Jun 06, 2018•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 12
Invest Alongside Boston's Leading Angels in Our Syndicates: OPT IN HERE In this interview, repeat founder Jo Schneier addresses the problem of providing effective training to the 64 percent of the population that does not have a college degree. Drawing on Jo’s experiences and prior startups, Cognotion’s opening gambit is a training platform for Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) an occupation with stratospheric job turnover. Cognotion seems to be succeeding in improving retention of its client’...
May 23, 2018•30 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Invest Alongside Boston's Leading Angels Via Syndicates: Opt In Here Cambridge-based Wistia has taken the road less-traveled to success. They did not raise a lot of money but now compete with richly-funded startups. What’s their secret? Listen to the interview with the delightful founders of this popular video platform, Brendan Schwartz and Chris Savage, as they discuss the unique culture and vision that make the startup remarkable. During the interview I pondered naming the episode “They Did It...
May 09, 2018•54 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Join Sal's Investment Syndicate. Opt In Here: Syndicates Page At age 32 Molly Lindquist was diagnosed with breast cancer. Other women in her family had also endured this terrible ordeal. She survived it and is fighting back. Consano, the crowdfunding platform she founded, funds more than 65 medical research projects at leading academic centers such as Dana-Farber and Memorial/Sloan Kettering. Her work is getting serious attention because she’s figured out how to help disease survivors channel th...
Apr 25, 2018•27 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Invest Alongside Angels Like Bob Goodof. To Join our Syndicate List Opt In Here: Link to Syndicate Sign Up Growing up in humble circumstances in Ohio, Bob Goodof discovered he had a head for numbers from playing with his baseball cards. At MIT he excelled in material science. After stints in the chemical industry and an MBA from Harvard, Bob became an investment analyst on Wall Street specializing in the oil and gas industry. He now invests as an angel with Walnut Ventures and teaches at Babson....
Apr 11, 2018•53 min•Season 2Ep. 8
INVEST WITH BOSTON'S LEADING ANGELS JOIN OUR SYNDICATES: Opt In Here Joe Meyer founded ExecThread, https://execthread.com/ , to solve a pain point he felt acutely himself. Joe had sold his company to Apple and, after the obligatory stint at the acquirer, was looking for a senior executive position. He was astonished when he revealed all sorts of important things about his career profile to a recruiter and the recruiter did not take notes. That’s when it hit him that the recruiting industry was t...
Mar 28, 2018•25 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Invest with Boston's Leading Angels. Join Our Syndicates: Opt In to Syndicates List Roboticist Keenan Wyrobek’s first career was founding Willow Garage which created ROS (Robot Operating System) that now makes robotic components inter-operable. After creating a foundation to sustain this vital piece of open source software, Keenan went in search of new engineering challenges. He became intrigued with the idea of helping developing countries deliver crucial medical supplies to areas that are poor...
Mar 28, 2018•23 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Invest with Boston's Leading Angels. Click here to Opt In to Our Syndicates List => Syndicates Page In college, Diane Stokes juggled caring for a sick mother, working full-time, doing ROTC and even had time to be on U Mass Lowell’s cheer leading squad. This energy and focus served her well as she progressed in her career of helping build startup after startup. Eventually, Diane founded a startup of her own. It succeeded beyond her greatest expectations. She invested as an angel for a while bu...
Mar 14, 2018•39 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Since its publication in 2011, “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries has determined how startups are built. The idea is that little can be known up front about what customers really want, thus a series of cheap and quick experiments are in order. Minimally viable products (MVPs) are slapped together and put in front of trial audiences with the goal of having them “fail fast”. This rapid experimentation may lead the startup to change directions repeatedly. These changes in business direction have come ...
Feb 28, 2018•26 min•Season 2Ep. 5
When Sid Satish saw his first surgery he was struck by the contrast between the advanced technologies in use side by side with ancient practices such as the negotiation over how much patient blood has been lost. He saw an opportunity to apply technology to create an informed calculation of blood loss. This was in 2011, now this technology runs on iPad Pros and is in use at 30 hospitals. Here are some highlights from this eye-opening interview: Siddarth Satish’s Bio Got Hooked on Entrepreneurship...
Feb 28, 2018•16 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Invest Alongside Boston's Leading Angels in Our Syndicates Learn More Here: Angel Invest Boston Syndicates Guest: Semyon Dukach, Super Angel, Founder & VC - "The Energizer" When Semyon Dukach’s family came to America as refugees from the Soviet Union, they had a hundred dollars to their name. Semyon is now one of Boston’s most consequential super angels. Along the way he founded a couple of startups himself and made some remarkable angel investments that put him in a position to be helping f...
Feb 14, 2018•51 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Invest Alongside Boston's Leading Angels in Our Syndicates Learn More Here: Angel Invest Boston Syndicates Shiva Kashalkar of Green Piñata Toys The toy industry is hard for new comers. Building a subscription business in the toy industry is doubly hard. Despite the obstacles, Shiva Kashalkar and her company, Green Piñata Toys, are starting to get traction. They report 50% organic growth month over month with 90% monthly retention. The secret of their growth has been the creation of an algorithm ...
Feb 14, 2018•27 min•Season 2Ep. 4
