Successfully Funded

Fresh off the sale of Mommybites, an online resource for expectant parents, Rebecca Dixon invested her background in media sales and community building in the*gameHERS, a long-overdue social-networking platform for female gamers. A lifelong fan of math, Rebecca breaks down the essential formula that inspires their crowdfund: in terms of the overall market value, gaming > 2(music + movies). We talk about how their community has grown to over 600,000 in under three years (hint: talk to them), setting an entrepreneurial example for her tween daughters, and the perplexing double standard of how moms and dads are judged as parents.

"When you're with Nixplay, you're not the product," says CEO Mark Palfreeman, whose subscribers retain secure ownership of every photo they share using smart digital picture frames and a mobile app intuitive enough for every family member to use. Nixplay is also a personal passion for Mark, who spends most of his time seven time zones away from his wife and children. Now that Nixplay has amassed $330 million in lifetime revenue and a community of over 3 million users, Mark (and COO Joel Durbridge) discuss their new Reg A crowdfund, setting aside time in his calendar every day to talk to his kids, and why boarding school didn't turn him into a looney.

Simple Labs CEO Mike Slone grew up in Louisville, where bourbon distillers accept losing the "angel's share" as the cost of doing business. When he saw California vintners facing the same problem, he created the Cogni — a wireless, barrel-aging monitor that finally gives centuries-old winemaking techniques a high-tech upgrade — which saves enough precious product to pay for itself within six months. We talk about the success of the Simple Labs crowdfund, finding the mentors he needed to build his business plan, and how developing the Cogni during COVID saved him from binge-watching Tiger King.

Pneumeric CEO and Chief Medical Officer Johnathon Aho grew up in the shadow of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, but it wasn't until he began studying engineering at Michigan Tech that he decided he wanted more in his life than writing code. So he pivoted to medicine, returned to Mayo, and in 2017 developed Capnospot, a visual detection device for treating collapsed lungs. We talk about why the usual therapy (listening for a gush of air from the chest cavity) fails as much as half the time, his 20 or so patents, Midwestern frugality, and why so much of a physician's life involves dealing with human goop. 

Kristian Hansen and Marshall Conley are building the slø jeans empire almost entirely on a massive TikTok platform, which provides constant crowdsourcing, propels their marketing, and accounts for over $10 million in estimated revenue potential. And their non-gendered, made-to-order denim is just the start. We talk about applying their "fash-tech" business plan into other clothing lines that need an upgrade, balancing their efforts with carbon offsets, and re-creating a time when quality merchandise was worth waiting for. 

Moments after Dan O'Toole hatched the idea of Dronedek — a versatile, secure receptacle for autonomous delivery systems that protects against the 1.7 million packages that are stolen every day — he called his patent attorney. And three years later, when the patent came through, he learned he had beaten Amazon by four days. Buoyed by the success of his second crowdfund (which has raised nearly $500,000), Dan has big plans for re-shaping consumer behavior, lowering the world's carbon footprint, and announcing a name change that's soon to Arrive.

Kettle is the result of the right pivot with the right idea at the right time. Originally hatched as a workspace broker, Kettle emerged from the pandemic as a hybrid workspace management software platform whose equity crowdfund has already raised over $1.72 million. We talk with CEO Nick Iovacchini about the massive new market opportunity of redefining work, why his baseball career influenced his entrepreneurial skills, why most employees value their time over their compensation, and the perils of "anticipointment."

After spending most of his life in and out of wheelchairs, GOGOTECH CEO John DeBenedette talks about why he developed ABBY in order to end 40 years of stagnant design and soaring prices. (Check out the ABBY crowdfund here.) And the accolades for ABBY's high-tech and lower-cost design keep coming, most recently from Melinda French Gates. We talk about how living in a wheelchair changes your perspective, his deep respect for assisted caregivers, and the sympathy he still has for the truck driver who nearly sheared his leg off.

The term "accredited investor" means nothing to Chris Lustrino, who knows firsthand that analyzing private companies is literally not rocket science. He created KingsCrowd as a data company designed to map an analyst's talents and instincts for investing in public companies onto the very different playing field of private equity. We talk about the blog that kick-started his career, how equity crowdfunding might function in a bear market, and life as "a capable quant with an empathetic, human side."

Bruce Berkoff is one of that rare breed of scientist marketers who enjoys the discovery almost as much as he enjoys telling people about it. And as CMO of Lightsense Technology, his job is to spread the word about the crowdfund for his company's miniature, handheld spectrometer platforms that are helping solve some major problems in public health, including detecting opioids, viral pathogens, and bacterial pathogens. We talk about his extensive expertise in physics, biophysics, and business development, raising his kids in Korea, and the mud puddle that sent him westward.