Venture In The South

Tech Coast Angels has been a major catalyst in helping build the startup ecosystem in Southern California. With more than 425 members and three angel funds, TCA has the wherewithal and financial ability to fund and help start-ups at the seed, bridge and early A-round. They seek great startups and entrepreneurs in the US and Canada with a particular emphasis on entrepreneurs located in California....

Proaxion is transforming the industrial workplace at the intersection of technology and teamwork with IOT sensing solutions for rotating manufacturing equipment to maximize industrial uptime. CEO Eric Murray explains Proaxion's innovative predictive maintenance strategy. ProAxion is transitioning to a 'Hardware as a Service' subscription model from their existing SaaS model, which f...

6AM City has pioneered the hyperlocal media market growing from 1 to 26 markets since 2017 with 60-80% YoY revenue growth. COO and co-founder Ryan Heafy explains their focus on hyperlocal news ex-politics, crime and punishment that has notched them ~1.8MM subscribers with an open rate of >40% in 2023. They target ~85% local and ~15% national advertisers with a highly engaged and educated audien...

GoPivot has found its sweet spot, creating a new standard in the Corporate Wellness and Safety industry by leveraging the latest advances in data analytics and behavioral science. CEO Don Doster describes the GoPivot cutting-edge platform, mobile-first approach, and modern incentives to motivate employees to reduce OSHA incidents, improve health and wellness, and achieve other behavioral improveme...

E75: David reviews 5 headline new items in Venture:  1) The Startup Bear Market, 2) The Exit Drought, 3) The US Federal Reserve actions 4) AI, is it a bubble? 5) Earthquakes in the Crypto markets (recorded 7/16/23) Follow David on X at https://x.com/DGRollingSouth Connect On LinkedIn with David at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgrisell/ Follow Paul on X at https: / /x.com/PalmettoAngel Connect O...

Zylo Therapeutics has experienced steady progress in product and partner development over the last 6 years as they approach their first year of revenue. CEO Scott Pancoast updates us on a very exciting partnership opportunity in the anti-aging space that will come to market in January 2024. He reviews all the other progress, the various other products in development and the future revenue stream....

The Atlanta Tech Angels has been one of the most successful seed stage angel groups in the Southern US. They are focused on tech startups and typically lead rounds of $300k – $750k, generally a convertible note with 6% interest, 20% discount, and a valuation cap between $2M – $6M while also participating in a variety of syndicated angel deals. ATA's minimum expectation for investment is a com...

Julie Hussey described herself as an average American until she came into generational wealth on the passing of her father. She talks about how she came to terms with her new reality and went about formulating and executing an investment plan that included venture. She walks us through each step of her experience, how she educated herself, and how she developed her own strategy for impact investin...

Pretty much everyone is familiar with 3D printing, using a liquid or fine particle material to 'print' a solid structure like an inkjet printer prints a page. The difference is that it prints many layers, thus the 3 Dimensional character. But what if you started with a solid block and subtracted material to create a solid structure, like a mill or lathe mechanically removing material to...

David interviews Allyson Eman, the CEO of Venture Atlanta , which began 17 years ago with one mission: to connect companies to capital. Launched in 2007 with a couple hundred attendees and 20 investment funds, Venture Atlanta now welcomes more than 1,300 annual attendees and over 350 investment funds. The conference’s networking and events have led to $7.5 billion in fundings raised and over $17 b...

Corporate Venture has become an increasingly common path for large organizations to gain access to innovation that cannot be achieved internally. Cutler Knupp heads the venture arm for The Haskell Company which is tasked to identify innovative companies in the architecture, engineering and construction industries that can lead to collaboration or outright acquisition. Cutler explains how this corp...

Meet Mac Lackey   who has been an entrepreneur for over twenty five years and has started, scaled and sold six companies in that time. He has been featured on CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, USA Today and The New York Times. He spent six years on the board of a multi-billion dollar public company and has written a free ebook about exits, Creating The Exit Opportunity , to help founders...

In this episode, we talk about Crypto, which has been in the news for regulatory issues, volatility, and its very future in the US. Our host bring together a Crypto panel of investors, enthusiasts, and operators to get their perspectives on the top 5 issues for Crypto in May 2023: 1) SEC efforts to regulate crypto by enforcement 2) Is Choke Point II real? 3) Coinbase sues the SEC to create regulat...

This episode spotlights Dan Ciprari who is a serial entrepreneur and met his cofounder, Habib Fathi , while working as an entrepreneur-in-residence at ATDC , the nation’s oldest technology incubator. The Pointivo opportunity met his criteria for jumping into a new startup: being truly innovative and differentiating with really strong IP potential, and the perfect cofounder. Pointivo is an industry...

David and Paul review the recent $1.3B Volkswagen incentive package offered by South Carolina to build the new Scout EV production facility in the midlands of South Carolina. We review the details of the deal, why it was done and how it might have been better. Our guest John Warner offers some key insights into the structure and motivations for this deal while David and Paul opine on their own ass...

In this episode, the host interviews Patrick Mateer, CEO and co-founder of Seal The Seasons, a locally grown frozen produce supplier. We talk about why it's hard to find locally grown frozen fruits and vegetables, and how Seal The Seasons is solving that problem at scale, working with local farms and local grocers. He shares the strategy and success he's had in the marketplace and a new...

In this episode, David talks with Min Alexander, the CEO of PunchList, who updates us on the rapid growth of PunchList. She walks us through how PunchList started, their pivot to additional lines of business, and their continued 3-5x year over year growth in revenue. She also talks about their fundraising and valuation history, and what the future holds for PunchList. Follow David on X at https://...

In this episode, Paul reviews the Exit experience for ThreatSwitch, a SaaS platform for Security Credential Tracking and Training. ThreatSwitch exited in July 2022 at 1.9x to 2.5x multiple of invested capital, depending on when the investment was made. They were an IRS sec 1202  eligible investment and since they exited in ~ 4 years, investors are able to roll that return over into a new startup i...

In this episode, the host ask: Did you know that startup investments are securities regulated by the SEC? David & Paul use this episode to outline the Reg D sec 506b & 506c as they apply to founders seeking investment and investors seeking deals. We talk about some basic awareness, some pitfalls, and some no-no's. We keep it as light as possible and focus on useful information. Follow...

In this episode, author Tom Eisenmann explains the six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. He details the data that demonstrates these  patterns and provides examples from his case studies at HBS. His book (Why Startups Fail, available here ) is the result of a multiyear research project on this topic and takes an analytic approach to the data he collected. Fo...

In this episode, our hosts introduces Angela Lee, an accomplished angel investor who has founded and led 37 Angels for over 10 years, an angel group in New York City. She is also a professor at Columbia Business School where she teaches venture capital, leadership, and strategy. She is an outstanding communicator and has been recognized in that role with numerous awards. In this interview, Angela...

In this episode, the hosts review the various metrics that are most helpful to follow in your startup portfolio and how to do it efficiently. We talk about strategy in following initial investments, follow on investments and tracking the various tax issues to help in tax planning. David provides The RollingSouth Tracking Template with embedded instructions to help you get started. Finally, we disc...

In this bonus episode, Paul follows up on the E57 SVB Failure podcast, specifically addressing the effects that he has seen on some VentureSouth portfolio companies.  Follow David on X at https://x.com/DGRollingSouth Connect On LinkedIn with David at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgrisell/ Follow Paul on X at https: / /x.com/PalmettoAngel Connect On LinkedIn with Paul at https://www.linkedin.com...

In this episode, David takes you on a guided tour of the Silicon Valley Bank failure, the 2nd largest bank failure in the US. SVB is intimately associated with Venture and this story reviews the lead up to failure, the contributing factors, why it happened, what we can learn from it, and how we might prevent this from happening again.  Follow David on X at https://x.com/DGRollingSouth Connect On L...

This is the story of luminell, a FemTech company focused on disrupting gynecologic care. Today, most uterine and bladder endoscopies and biopsies are in the surgery center and require anesthesia. The luminelle system is miniaturized and so endoscopy and biopsy can be done in the office without anesthesia, in both the uterus and bladder, and it costs less.  Follow David on X at https://x.com/DGRoll...