Inside Startup Investing with Chris Lustrino

Kingscrowd, Chris Lustrino
  • 5.0 (15)
  • Investing

Join Chris Lustrino as he talks to startup founders, angel investors, fund managers, investing platform executives, and more about the online private markets. Inside Startup Investing gives listeners the inside scoop on alternative investing such as startups from an investor and founder perspectives.

  1. 5d ago

    Greenlite Holdings CEO Jonathan Lewis on Buying Distressed Apartments in Oklahoma

    Jonathan Lewis started flipping distressed houses in Phoenix in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis. Seventeen years later he's the founder and CEO of Greenlite Holdings, a value-add multifamily company that buys dated, underperforming apartment communities in markets like Oklahoma City and Tulsa, redevelops them, and refinances instead of selling. For most of that time Greenlite invested only its own money. Now, through a Regulation A offering, everyday investors can own shares in the company itself.   Jonathan joins Chris Lustrino to walk through how the business works from the ground up: the move from single-family flips to a 50-unit building in Tucson to 100-plus-unit communities; why he targets Class B and C workforce housing rather than luxury product; how deals surface through broker networks and competitive bids; and why the corporate team oversees everything while property management and construction are subcontracted.   Chris presses on the risk every real estate investor worries about — debt — and Jonathan explains why Greenlite is dialing leverage back to 65–70% loan-to-cost now that it's raising outside capital. They cover holding periods and the cash-out refinance strategy, the current pipeline (a 252-unit property nearing completion and a 165-unit property under contract), and the distressed Oklahoma portfolio that Jonathan says has pushed out-of-state lenders to the table.   In this episode: ●      The Sam Zell / Equity Residential analogy — and why a listing, not a property sale, is the intended exit ●      What a shareholder of Greenlite actually owns, compared with a fund or a single-property syndication ●      The buy box: 100+ units, Class B/C, secondary markets, at least 80% occupancy ●      How commercial deals are sourced and underwritten when there's no MLS ●      Leverage: "it cuts both ways" — and the discipline that keeps emotion out of it ●      Why Greenlite now refinances rather than sells ●      Secondary vs. tertiary markets: Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City ●      Repositioning an occupied building: tenant transfers, rebrands and overcoming a property's reputation   Guest: Jonathan Lewis, Founder & CEO, Greenlite Holdings Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd   Greenlite Holdings is raising now. Kingscrowd rates Greenlite Holdings a 1.5 out of 5. To see the full analyst breakdown and discover how you can invest, visit kingscrowd.com.   Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. Subscribe so you never miss a founder interview.   Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy any security. Investing in early-stage companies and real estate securities is risky and illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    Greenlite Holdings CEO Jonathan Lewis on Buying Distressed Apartments in Oklahoma

  2. Oct 22

    Anywhere DX CEO Nathalya Mamane on Building a $25 At-Home Strep Test

    Nathalya Mamane is the co-founder and CEO of Anywhere DX, and she's building the thing every parent has wished for at 9 p.m. on a Friday: an at-home strep test. Not a throat swab — the FDA won't allow one at home — but a saliva-based, single-use device that runs a lab-grade molecular test and shows a result in about 20 minutes, for under $25 with telehealth and a prescription built in.   Nathalya joins Chris Lustrino to tell the story behind it: a mother of four, mid-MBA at Babson during COVID, watching a nurse in a hazmat suit swab her daughter through a car window and thinking, "Why can't we just do this at home?" What started as a strep test has become a platform the company plans to extend to UTIs, STIs and other infections with the same unmet need.   She walks through what's already been de-risked on the bench — saliva cleanup and concentration, the LAMP amplification process, an internal heater, a readout you see with your own eyes — and the engineering challenge of fitting all of it into one disposable device at a sub-$5 cost. Her co-founder, Dr. Michael Mina, worked closely with the FDA on diagnostics during the pandemic, and the company is building to a 510(k) path it expects to clear with a few hundred samples in a single cold-and-flu season.   In this episode: ●      Why the rapid antigen test in your pediatrician's office misses so many early strep cases ●      PCR vs. antigen tests, explained in plain English ●      The $5 build cost and the $25 retail target — and why doctors' offices may want it too ●      510(k) vs. de novo: what each FDA route means and why Anywhere DX is on the easier one ●      The ~$1.5–1.7M clinical and submission budget, and what the Wefunder round funds first ●      Market size: roughly 50 million US strep tests a year, and only 12–14% come back positive ●      Why she expects to commercialize through white-label and licensing partners ●      Lessons from "the ugly duckling of life sciences"   Guest: Nathalya Mamane, Co-founder & CEO, Anywhere DX Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd   Anywhere DX is raising now. Kingscrowd rates Anywhere DX a 2.7 out of 5. To see the full analyst breakdown and discover how you can invest, visit kingscrowd.com.   Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. Subscribe so you never miss a founder interview.   Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy any security. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    Anywhere DX CEO Nathalya Mamane on Building a $25 At-Home Strep Test

  3. Oct 15

    Bito CEO Amar Goel on the Context Layer That Cuts AI Coding Costs by 40%

    Amar Goel founded PubMatic in 2006, grew it to about $300 million in revenue and took it public on the Nasdaq in 2020. Now he and his PubMatic co-founder are building Bito: a context layer for AI coding agents that maps how a company's code actually works, so the agent writes production-ready code on the first pass and burns far fewer tokens doing it.   Amar joins Chris Lustrino to explain why coding agents that shine on a brand-new tic-tac-toe game struggle with 20-year-old enterprise codebases — "a toy house versus a skyscraper" — and why the real pain for big companies has shifted from code quality to cost. Developers who used to spend $100 a month on AI are now running agents that cost $2,000 to $3,000 a month each. One CTO with 350 developers told Amar he's budgeting $1.2 million a year on tokens.   Bito's two products, AI Architect and Governor, give the agent the "cliff notes" up front and route each task to the cheapest model that can handle it. "Do I need a Ferrari to go pick up my groceries?" Amar asks. Bito charges a percentage of the customer's new, lower spend, so it only gets paid when the savings are real.   In this episode: ●      The pivot: why Bito walked away from an IDE chatbot competing with GitHub Copilot ●      What a "knowledge graph" of a codebase actually contains — code, tickets, docs, observability data ●      Who's buying: mid-market and up, 250–1,000 developer teams, and a second-stage pilot at one of the largest US banks ●      Security and the sales cycle: "no code can leave our four walls" ●      Chris's take: AI labs are paid by the token, so they'll never build this themselves ●      A usage-based model that replaced per-seat pricing ●      Use of funds: engineering and an enterprise sales team ●      Amar's view of the next five to ten years of corporate token spend   Guest: Amar Goel, Co-founder & CEO, Bito Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd   Bito is raising now. Kingscrowd rates Bito a 4.7 out of 5. To see the full analyst breakdown and discover how you can invest, visit kingscrowd.com.   Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. Subscribe so you never miss a founder interview.   Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy any security. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    Bito CEO Amar Goel on the Context Layer That Cuts AI Coding Costs by 40%

  4. Oct 8

    bluShift Aerospace's Sascha Deri on Hybrid Rockets and America's Rocket Motor Shortage

    Sascha Deri, founder and CEO of bluShift Aerospace, builds hybrid rocket engines that aren't explosive, can throttle, and can sit on a shelf ready to go. He joins Chris Lustrino from his test cell at a former Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine.   Before bluShift, Sascha spent 25 years building a solar e-commerce company to nearly $40 million in revenue. He explains what a hybrid rocket actually is, and why both the solid-rocket and liquid-rocket camps ignore it. He also explains how safety turns into a business advantage: lower R&D cost, no explosive safety radius around the factory, and motors you can store like ordinary inventory.   Two and a half years ago, an astronaut advisor told Sascha the solid rocket motor crisis was real, and bluShift pivoted to it. Today it's working with a hypersonics company that needs a booster it can test quickly. Sascha says bluShift comes in at about a quarter of the cost of the solid motor that customer was planning to buy.   In this episode: ●      From solar e-commerce to rocket propulsion ●      Hybrid rockets explained: solid fuel, liquid oxidizer ●      Why solid and liquid rocket engineers both ignore hybrids ●      The solid rocket motor shortage and bluShift's pivot to defense ●      Suborbital research with four to eight minutes of microgravity ●      Seven-figure, milestone-based contracts with a hypersonics customer ●      Why bluShift is building a smaller 15-inch motor to move faster ●      Doing a lot with a little: concrete blocks, steel chambers and creative engineering   Guest: Sascha Deri, Founder & CEO, bluShift Aerospace Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd   bluShift Aerospace is raising on Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/blushift.aerospace Kingscrowd rates bluShift 4.5 out of 5, and it's a Kingscrowd Top Deal. Kingscrowd Edge members can read the full analysis at kingscrowd.com.   Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. Subscribe so you never miss a founder interview.   Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy any security. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    bluShift Aerospace's Sascha Deri on Hybrid Rockets and America's Rocket Motor Shortage

  5. Sep 29

    151 Coffee's Mark Wattles: Running the Hollywood Video Playbook on Drive-Thru Coffee

    Mark Wattles opened the first Hollywood Video in 1988 and grew it to 2,000 company-owned stores. Now he's running the same playbook with drive-thru coffee. He joins Chris Lustrino to talk about 151 Coffee, the chain he founded in 2017, and his plan to take it from 15 stores to 1,000.   151 Coffee's stores in Dallas-Fort Worth and Kansas City average about $1.5 million a year, with around $350,000 in store-level profit. Mark explains why drive-thru coffee has exploded without hurting Starbucks. He also covers why sweet, customised drinks are what customers actually buy, and why a coffee shop doesn't need you every day of the week.   Mark also compares opening video stores with opening coffee shops ("you're really managing people, not a business"). He covers his years as an activist investor and why he came back to building. And he explains why he refuses to franchise when 7 Brew has shown how well franchising can work.   In this episode: ●      Why drive-thru coffee took off, and the "elasticity of the consumer" nobody accounted for ●      151 Coffee vs. Dutch Bros and 7 Brew: high volume, sweet drinks, fast, fun, friendly ●      Hollywood Video: one store in 1988, a 1993 IPO at 15 stores, 1,000 stores six years later ●      Store economics, 15–20% same-store sales growth, and a food rollout adding ~$150K per store ●      Doubling to 30 stores in 24 months with a former Hollywood Video real estate VP ●      Why the exit plan is an IPO, and why every store stays corporate-owned ●      Boba, matcha, and building a kitchen that can survive a fad   Guest: Mark Wattles, Founder, 151 Coffee Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd   151 Coffee is not raising right now. It plans a new Reg CF offering and has a waitlist at 151coffee.com/waitlist. Research 151 Coffee and other startup investment opportunities at kingscrowd.com.   Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. Subscribe so you never miss a founder interview.   151 Coffee has not yet filed a Form C with the SEC for its planned Regulation Crowdfunding offering. No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response, will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement is filed, and only through an intermediary's platform. An indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.   Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy any security. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    151 Coffee's Mark Wattles: Running the Hollywood Video Playbook on Drive-Thru Coffee

  6. Sep 22

    AutoCamp's Neil Dipaola on Getting 100 Million People Outdoors

    AutoCamp founder and CEO Neil Dipaola joins Chris Lustrino to explain how a design-forward glamping brand became the "Marriott of outdoor hospitality" — nine locations, a Hilton partnership, and a plan to reach 100 properties without owning the real estate.   AutoCamp started in 2011 as a Santa Barbara mobile home park where Neil wanted to house teachers and nurses in Airstreams. Guests kept asking to stay overnight instead, and the pivot that followed produced a hotel room with St. Regis-level comfort inside an Airstream, a cabin or a tent, a short bike ride from Yosemite, Zion, Sequoia, Joshua Tree, the Catskills, Cape Cod and now Asheville.   The part investors should pay attention to is the structure. The land, the utilities, the clubhouses and the tens of millions of dollars each location costs to build sit in a separate PropCo. What's raising on DealMaker is the Brand Co. — seven or eight employees, the intellectual property, the Hilton, Rivian and REI partnerships, and a percentage of every property's top-line revenue under long-term license contracts. Neil walks through why that is the same model Marriott and Hilton use, and why it scales faster than owning campgrounds.   In this episode: ●      Why AutoCamp is "anything but a camping trip" — and who it's really for (the indoorsy spouse) ●      Site selection by data science: the top 40 metros and what's within a three-hour drive in every direction ●      Occupancy in the 65–75% range, and running near 100% during the pandemic ●      The Hilton partnership: 200 million Hilton Honors members, and the first time a major hotel company backed outdoor lodging ●      Field Station, the $150-a-night sister brand built from renovated roadside hotels ●      The path to 100 properties: organic growth plus M&A of other glamping platforms ●      Guests who invest, guests who get married on property, and a loyalty program funded by this raise   Guest: Neil Dipaola, Founder & CEO, AutoCamp Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd   AutoCamp is raising on DealMaker with a $1,001 minimum, open to accredited and non-accredited investors until October 31, 2026. Research AutoCamp and other startup investment opportunities at kingscrowd.com.   Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. Subscribe so you never miss a founder interview.   Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    AutoCamp's Neil Dipaola on Getting 100 Million People Outdoors

  7. Sep 10

    Farm to Pet CEO on Building a $5M Treat Brand

    Jackson Jones spent his career in manufacturing and supply chain — Berkshire Hathaway's Marmon Group, then acquiring Duracell from Procter & Gamble. Then COVID gave him time at home, and he started making dehydrated chicken treats for his dog Rooney in the basement. Five years later, Farm to Pet does over $5 million a year in single-ingredient treats for dogs and cats, ships from its fourth and largest facility, and just hit profitability for the first time. In this conversation, Chris Lustrino and Jackson get into the operational reality behind that number. Demand was never the problem — since last October the company has been production-constrained, running seven days of production and six night shifts across two buildings before moving into a space four times the size. The sales experience Jackson worried about turned out to be the easy part. They also cover the channel decisions that shaped the brand: why Farm to Pet went direct-to-consumer first and deliberately avoided distributors, how a thousand independent retailers found the company rather than the other way around, and why Jackson isn't in a hurry to get on a big-box shelf. Plus his honest, unusual answer on exit strategy — he doesn't have one, and explains why. In this episode: •   What "single ingredient" actually means, and why Jackson kept the product line narrow •   Growing up around farm dogs in West Central Illinois — and Rooney, the 14-year-old who started it •   From a KitchenAid and a dehydrator to a fourth facility in five years •   Being production-constrained since October, and what four-times-the-space changes •   Why the direct-to-consumer site is the hero channel, not retail •   A thousand independent retail customers acquired almost entirely inbound •   Where the crowdfunding capital goes: equipment automation and holiday inventory •   How long it really takes to launch a Reg CF raise •   The capacity ceiling on the new building — and what revenue it can support •   Hitting profitability for the first time this year •   Exit strategy: "I don't wanna put myself out of a job" •   Mapping the treat market by price point and by channel •   Halloween boxes, 6,500 ambassadors, and treating the brand as a community Guest: Jackson Jones, Founder & CEO, Farm to Pet Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd Farm to Pet is currently raising on StartEngine. Research Farm to Pet and other startup investment opportunities at kingscrowd.com. Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. If you like what you hear, subscribe so you never miss a founder interview. Disclosure: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Investing in early-stage companies is risky, illiquid, and you may lose your entire investment.

    Farm to Pet CEO on Building a $5M Treat Brand

  8. Sep 4

    HEVO CEO on the Race to Standardize Wireless EV Charging

    Jeremy McCool is back on Inside Startup Investing, and a lot has changed since his last appearance. HEVO builds wireless charging for electric vehicles — hardware and software — and it's chasing that market from an unusual angle. Rather than selling a charging pad direct to consumers, HEVO is working to become a tier one supplier to the automakers themselves, so the receiving technology comes built into the vehicle straight off the production line. Get that right, and the automaker becomes the distribution channel. In this conversation, Chris Lustrino and Jeremy dig into what the last year actually produced: roughly $2 million raised, five to six live automaker programs, and signed agreements with fleet partners including Autolane and STEER Tech. Jeremy also lays out the fleet math that makes wireless charging compelling — roughly $40,000 in ten-year per-vehicle operating cost for wireless versus $150,000–$175,000 for plug-in — and explains why the company's licensed polyphase technology, co-developed with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, may put HEVO in the lead position if the German automakers converge on a single universal design. Chris also gets put on the spot — by his own guest — to explain why Kingscrowd Capital invested in the first place. In this episode: •   What HEVO does, and why it sells to automakers instead of consumers •   Chris's investment thesis: founder alignment, market timing, and the de-risking power of an OEM partnership •   The last twelve months: $2M raised, strategic investor interest, and why institutional clean tech capital went quiet •   Fleet economics — 3–5x savings per vehicle over ten years for last mile logistics •   Autolane and STEER Tech: autonomous vehicles that dock and charge themselves •   Why warranty validation is the gate that only an automaker can open •   Hardware pricing: ~$250 on the vehicle side, ~$1,200 for the grid-side charger, 11–22 kW, bidirectional •   The revenue ramp: a couple hundred thousand this year, high six figures next, tens of millions by the end of the decade •   Stellantis, its 13 brands, its EV rollback — and why HEVO says it's still in the saddle •   The Oak Ridge polyphase license and the German standards play •   Jeremy's message to investors weighing a 15-year overnight success Guest: Jeremy McCool, Founder & CEO, HEVO Host: Chris Lustrino, Founder & CEO, Kingscrowd HEVO is currently raising on Wefunder. Learn more at wefunder.com/hevo. Research HEVO and other startup investment opportunities at kingscrowd.com. Inside Startup Investing is the only podcast where you can invest in every guest. If you like what you hear, subscribe so you never miss a portfolio founder interview. Disclosure: Kingscrowd Capital is an investor in HEVO. This episode is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Investing in early-stage companies is risky and you may lose your entire investment.

    HEVO CEO on the Race to Standardize Wireless EV Charging
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Join Chris Lustrino as he talks to startup founders, angel investors, fund managers, investing platform executives, and more about the online private markets. Inside Startup Investing gives listeners the inside scoop on alternative investing such as startups from an investor and founder perspectives.

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