Month: April 2021

Richelle Martin tells The Savvy Entrepreneur show that she founded the Winnow Fund and got into venture capital by chance.  She never planned to raise money for a venture capital fund.  But with the encouragement of one of the directors of Wisconsin's state Badger Fund of Funds, she became the first woman to create a venture capital fund in the state.

The Fund of Funds was looking for someone to help more professors and researchers within the state's university system to take the plunge and become entrepreneurs.  Wisconsin, like most states, has many people in academia creating new ideas.  But the challenge is to get those ideas out into startup companies.  Richelle's  background as a lawyer, her familiarity with the University of Wisconsin system, and her knowledge of intellectual property and technology transfer made her a great fit for the Winnow Fund.

The Winnow Fund provides seed money to companies (and even just ideas) in agriculture, medical devices, medical imaging, advanced manufacturing and engineering products.

Click on the arrow to the left to listen to Richelle's amazing story of how she founded the Winnow Fund and tips on  what seed investors look for.  Or, you can read a transcript of the interview here.

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Jason Weaver, founder & CEO of AirDeck, knows how to zero in on game-changers.  He also knows how to take a concept and build a successful business around it.  AirDeck is Jason's third startup.  He previously built and successfully exited Shoutlet and Spendship.  He's also a high-profile consultant, an angel investor, and a prominent author.

This time, he's focused on presentation software.  AirDeck is a fast and easy way to add voice or video to any document or presentation.  It allows the user to easily edit each page or slide separately without needing to use a separate video editing tool.  Its users are trainers, educators, marketers, lawyers, and frankly, anyone who wants to narrate a presentation or document so that the recipients can understand the context, on-demand.

Jason joins The Savvy Entrepreneur to tell the story of how he decided to start AirDeck.  He shares how he found funding, and tips for staying sane while building a fast-growing startup. His candor and humor make him relatable.  His formidable track record of startup success, along with his numerous other accomplishments, make him a force to be reckoned with.

What follows is a transcript of that interview.  But if you prefer to listen, you can access the podcast here.

Doris Nagel  0:42

Hello everybody and welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur show. We're broadcasting from the Greater Chicago Milwaukee area.

If you're an entrepreneur or small business person, this show is for you.

I'm Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour. I'm a serial entrepreneur, and I’ve also counseled lots of startups and small businesses over the past 30 years.  I’ve seen a lot of mistakes, and I’ve made plenty myself.  I’m driven to help others avoid some of these pitfalls and be more successful.

The show has two goals:  to share helpful information resources, and to inspire — to make your journey as an entrepreneur faster and easier, and maybe just a bit more fun!

To help with that. I have guests every week on the show who are willing to share their stories and their advice.

This week's guest is Jason Weaver, the CEO and founder of AirDeck.  AirDeck is a company that allows you to create distributed and track narrated presentations. Its users are recording things like on demand webinars, personalized a sales presentations, creating employee onboarding guide, sending investor pitch decks. Frankly, almost anything that you can think of that is used for PowerPoint presentations or precede eggs or other kinds of presentations to communicate with other people. AirDeck, Jason says, is much easier to use than creating videos and everybody knows how important video is for today social media. And he says it has better tracking capabilities.

Before I share Jason's biography, I have to warn you that he is one seriously accomplished human being. He's a prominent author and thought leader in product innovation, digital marketing and entrepreneurship. Prior to launching AirDeck, he founded and successfully exited from two other technology companies, including Shoutlet, a social media management platform, and Spendship, a mobile loyalty platform.

He's authored numerous articles for publications, including Forbes, Mashable, and Bloomberg. He's a frequent speaker, and his book Managers Guide to Online Marketing has become a go to guide for companies. Jason has raised over $50 million in venture funding for his companies. He's also an active angel investor.

He also works as an advisor for several emerging technology companies in the likes of Emma, Live school, Venture 360, and Directly. In addition, he advises both venture capital firms and network Angel funding groups. And he's been a technology advisor to some of the world's most recognizable companies, just to name a couple in a very long list, eBay, Miller Brewing, American Family Insurance, Best Buy, IKEA, and Nissan, to name just a few.

Jason, with all your accomplishments already,

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RealityBLU provides marketers with 3D interactive, media rich content to deliver their ideas into the crowded social media world.  Co-founders MJ Anderson and Stefan Agustsson joined forces to develop enhanced reality tools made especially for marketers.

Stefan Agustsson & MJ Anderson

They join The Savvy Entrepreneur Show to share the story of how they met and started the company.  They relate some of the challenges of finding funding, and scaling the company.  They also share a peek or two at where and how the company will be expanding.

Their story is compelling.  But just as riveting is their predictions for the future of media and marketing.  RealityBLU's founders are also visionaries, envisioning a future that is truly inspiring and a little terrifying.

For example, they are convinced the smartphone will be completely obsolete in less than 5 years, and we will all soon be using wearable devices to receive and interact with media.  They see it as inevitable that we will move closer and closer to immersive experiences.  The result will increasingly blur the lines between reality and enhanced or even altered reality.  The possibilities for improving our lives are many, and also create potential scenarios that we as a society will soon need to grapple with.  RealityBLU and companies like them will definitely be ones to watch!

Click on the arrow to the left to listen to the absolutely fascinating story of RealityBLU and a look into the future of technology in our world! Or, click here if you prefer to read the interview.

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