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Send us a Text Message.E128: The story of Ozy Media is one of greed, betrayal, grift and astonishing hubris. But not the first nor the last such occurrence. While not on the scale of Theranos or FTX, it was not for lack of trying. David details the 10 year saga of Ozy Media's rise and spectacular fall, culminating with criminal convictions on federal charges of fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. Ozy raised a total of $83M over 5 investment rounds and 2 venture debt rounds. At it valuation ...

Send us a Text Message.E127: South Carolina is surging with founders and startups seeking capital investment. In today's episode, Paul Clark and Dawson Racek of VentureSouth and Venture Carolina recap the Upstate Upstarts List of South Carolina, and discuss how they plan to use list to select the 15-20 most promising Startups for their Upstate Upstarts Fund. They review the rationale for the UU List, the investment thesis for the UU Fund and how it will work. In the second half of the show, P...

Send us a Text Message.E126: HealthyCell is a DTC supplements business with the competitive advantage of a proprietary oral gel delivery system that makes their suppliments better absorbed, easier to swallow and taste great. HC was first interviewed for E93 when they were launching their growth plan and reaching for profitability. Today David interviews Doug Giampappa, Founder and CEO of HealthyCell to update listeners on their growth progress, profitability and funding plans. He reviews thei...

Send us a Text Message.E125: Kiyatec is a Cancer Diagnostics Startup focused on solving the problem of selecting the best chemotherapy for each individual cancer patient's specific cancer. The standard of care today is essentially trial and error following a menu of consensus empiric chemotherapy choices, then trying the most likely effective drug first and measuring response. Kiyatec's solution, 3-D Predict, uses a proprietary 3-D cell culture technique that grows cancer cells in the lab, di...

Send us a Text Message.E124: 757 Angels are based in Hampton Rhodes, VA and host a truely robust startup ecosystem. They offer a progressive support program for founders with a Startup Studio supporting pre-seed startups, progressing to the 757 Accelerate Program supporting growing startups and the 757 Angels who have raised over $100M of Angel Investment over the last 10 years. Paul interviews the leadership team of Paul Nolde and Charles Corprew of 757 Angels to explore their ecosystem and ...

Send us a Text Message.E123: The Southern US is a distinct geographic market for Startups and Startup Investors with specific strengths and weaknesses. David and Paul discuss the general thesis of startup investing and then dig into the specific thesis for investing in Southern Startups. We review the southern startup ecosystem, capital formation, valuations, and exit potentials -- and particularly how the fundamental differences between the southern ecosystem and the US west coast might guid...