Inside Startup Investing with Chris Lustrino

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rejuvenate Bio CEO Dan Oliver joins Chris Lustrino to discuss the company’s gene therapy platform for aging-related disease. A spinout from George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School, Rejuvenate Bio is developing therapies designed to change gene expression profiles associated with aging rather than edit or replace a patient’s underlying genome. Dan explains how the company uses viral delivery to help the body produce beneficial proteins over time.

The conversation explores Rejuvenate Bio’s dual strategy across animal health and human health. Dan explains why dogs offer both a meaningful commercial market and a scientifically useful path for developing aging-related therapies, especially because dogs age faster than humans and owners increasingly view pets as family members.

Chris and Dan also discuss Rejuvenate Bio’s partnerships with animal health companies, its development and commercial milestone agreements, its recently closed round backed by Merck Animal Health, the FDA approval process for veterinary products, and the company’s long-term plan to generate first-in-human clinical data that could create major partnering, acquisition, or public market opportunities.

Avadain CEO Brad Larschan joins Chris Lustrino to discuss the company’s effort to commercialize one of the most promising materials in advanced manufacturing: graphene. Brad explains what makes graphene so powerful, why it has been difficult to manufacture at scale, and how Avadain is working to create a technical pathway for large, thin, defect-free graphene production.

The conversation explores the potential applications of graphene across aerospace, drones, critical minerals, building materials, energy storage, and other industrial use cases. Brad also outlines Avadain’s capital-light strategy of licensing its production technology to established chemical and advanced materials companies rather than manufacturing graphene itself.

Chris and Brad discuss the company’s pilot plant, commercialization risks, recently completed $5 million crowdfunding raise, and long-term vision for building recurring royalty revenue from graphene production.

Influence Mobile founder and CEO Daniel Todd joins Chris Lustrino to discuss how the company built Rewarded Play into a major rewards platform for mobile gaming. Influence Mobile helps game developers acquire and retain high-value players by offering rewards to users who discover, play, and spend inside mobile games.

Daniel explains how his decades of experience in internet advertising and rewards programs led to the company’s current model, why older women are among the most valuable mobile gaming audiences, and why mobile gaming’s scale is often underestimated. The conversation also covers Influence Mobile’s $28 million revenue base, its Android success, upcoming iOS expansion, white-label opportunities, and the long-term vision for a broader rewards ecosystem.

Hill Road Pictures’ Frank Peluso and Bob Vanech join Chris Lustrino to discuss So I’m the Crazy One, an upcoming R-rated comedy built around a creator-driven film finance model. Frank shares his Hollywood background, including work with Nick Cassavetes, while Bob explains how his experience in digital media, YouTube networks, and equity crowdfunding shaped the film’s financing strategy.

The conversation explores how Hill Road is combining independent film production, content creator casting, audience ownership, Reg D and Reg CF fundraising, and direct-to-consumer monetization. Frank and Bob argue that creator audiences can help both fund and market films, while giving investors a more understandable product than many traditional startup opportunities.

Key Highlights

Lumida Wealth founder and CEO Ram Ahluwalia joins Chris Lustrino to discuss how the company is building an AI-powered wealth management platform for sophisticated investors. Ram frames Lumida as a next-generation investing platform designed to combine the best parts of brokerage accounts, financial advisors, market intelligence, and AI-powered portfolio tools into one experience.

The conversation explores why traditional 60/40 portfolios may not fit the next generation of investors, how Lumida uses AI agents and factor models to surface investment ideas, and why Ram believes investors increasingly want more control, better insights, access to pre-IPO opportunities, and a stronger sense of community.

Chris and Ram also discuss Lumida’s growth, revenue traction, customer profile, business model, and long-term vision for an AI wealth advisor that can eventually understand an investor’s full financial picture, goals, risk tolerance, and portfolio needs.