DARE

The exit is the goal, until it isn't. Cecilia Leung, founder of Rich & Sassy Wealth Strategies, has spent 20+ years watching founders win the transaction and struggle with everything that follows.

In this episode of the #DAREwithDarwoft podcast, hosted by Ned Hayes in collaboration with the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Cece shares how she blends institutional financial strategy with Eastern philosophy to help founders make decisions that scale financially and hold up personally. From post-exit identity crises to her 10-day China Immersive leadership retreat, this one goes far beyond the balance sheet.

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Most founders think they're investor-ready. Very few actually are.

Jim Chi of the Oregon Startup Center has spent two decades helping early-stage companies understand the difference, and in this episode, he pulls back the curtain. From his years at Nike and The Home Depot to co-founding a coffee company and advising private equity firms, Jim brings a rare multi-industry lens to the startup world. He explains how the Oregon Startup Center identifies which ideas are truly scalable, what their challenge competition actually looks for, and why being the first dollars in is a strategy, not a risk.

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He ran a food truck. Then a bank teller's seat. Now he sits on both sides of the lending desk, and he's not holding back.

Travious Shanklin takes us inside the real cost of starting a food business: the wrong cart, the wrong location, and the brutal truth about getting funded with zero business history.

In this episode, we talk market research, tariffs reshaping the Pacific Northwest economy, which industries are thriving right now, and why Travious still dreams of building a business that creates real opportunity for local youth. Because not everything that ships creates impact, sometimes the lesson is the impact.

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Every gamer has someone in their life they wish they could play with. Antigone Nastos, Founder & CEO of No Sequels Cooperative, built her entire studio around that one insight, crafting couch co-op games designed to bridge the gap between gamers and the people they love who have never touched a controller.

In Episode 21, Antigone and host Ned Hayes dig into what it really takes to build an indie game studio from the ground up: bootstrapping without publisher support, developing 11 games simultaneously, and why in-person experiences, not online ones, are the future of connected play.

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Nearly 500 construction workers die in roadway incidents every year in the US. Gordon Larson, CEO of Audible Cone Alert Systems Inc., has been working to change that number since 1996 — and he's finally got the product, the patent, and the traction to do it.

In this episode of the #DAREwithDarwoft podcast — in collaboration with the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network — Gordon shares how he built a life-saving tech company from one of the most remote counties in Oregon, the challenges of scaling hardware in a world that favors software, and what it means to build a business that's quite literally saving lives.

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Most founders look for gaps in software. Ricky Lee, co-founder and CEO of VYE, found his in a nicotine pouch, and decided to rebuild the category from the ground up.

In this episode of the #DAREwithDarwoft podcast, hosted by Ned Hayes in collaboration with the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Ricky shares how AI tools compressed years of R&D into months, why they're launching in the UK before the US, and what it actually takes to scale a physical consumer product with a lean team and a global vision.

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Water is the most essential resource on Earth, and one of the least understood by capital markets. That's the gap Michael Ulwelling, CEO of Kreneon, is determined to close.

In this episode, Michael explains how creating a commodity market for water — similar to how energy markets work — could unlock the private investment needed to solve the global water crisis. With 70% of water basins in decline and 2 billion people without access to clean water, the urgency is real. But so is the opportunity.

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In this episode of #DAREwithDarwoft, Ned Hayes sits down with Ron Khormaei, PhD, Founder & CEO of STEELPORT Knife, a Portland-based company redefining what American-made manufacturing can look like.Ron shares how a gap in the market, no U.S.-made kitchen knives in retail stores, sparked a mission to build heirloom-quality cutlery designed to last a lifetime. Drawing on his background at HP and Logitech, he brings a tech executive's precision to an ancient craft.

This is a conversation about quality over speed, community over competition, and building products that people pass down, not throw away.🎙️ Watch and listen to the full episode on all platforms.Instagram/@darwoftLinkedIn/@DarwoftCompanyTikTok/@darwoft

In this episode of #DAREwithDarwoft, Ned Hayes sits down with Jim Ferry, Partner at Volition Capital, to get the unfiltered VC perspective on AI, SaaS valuations, and what it really takes to survive the current funding landscape.Jim shares why every company today is either AI-native or at risk, why inflated AI valuations worry experienced investors, and what founders must bring to the table before walking into a Series A or B conversation. This isn't just an investor story — it's a reality check for anyone building in 2026.🎙️ Watch and listen to the full episode on all platforms.TikTok/@darwoftInstagram/@darwoftLinkedIn/@DarwoftCompany

In this episode of #DAREwithDarwoft, Ned Hayes sits down with Charity Andrews, CEO & Founder of Stellify, a company that helps growing organizations turn operational chaos into structured, scalable workflows.

This conversation dives into the gap between buying tools and actually making them work: the behavior change, the process design, and the human elements most teams overlook. Charity shares why the real problem is rarely the software,  and what it takes to build systems where technology handles the manual work, so people can focus on what actually matters.

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