The Angel Nest

Social media has given marketers more reach than ever, but is any of it is working? Today on The Angel Nest, David sits down with Thomas Kramer, co-founder of Measure Studio, and Dan Zitting, the New York Angels member who led the investment and sits on Measure Studio’s board, to dig into why the analytics tools marketers have been using aren’t actually answering the question that matters most.

Learn more about Measure Studio at measure.studio and about how you can join or apply for funding by the New York Angels at newyorkangels.com. Reach us with comments, questions, or story ideas at theangelnest.com/contact.

What if the most effective therapy for stress, burnout, and anxiety didn’t come from a pill or a practitioner, but from a room full of puppies? Francesca Albo is betting on it, and the market agrees. Today on The Angel Nest, Francesca joins David to talk about Puppy Sphere, North America’s leading puppy wellness company, which is on track to top $6 million in revenue this year across 13 profitable locations in the U.S. and Canada, all bootstrapped without outside investment.

Francesca and her co-founder Leia met in a dog park. Both were escaping corporate burnout, both wanted to build something in the pet space, and both had tried and failed at earlier pet startups before landing on puppy yoga. What made Puppy Sphere different wasn’t the concept — puppy yoga already existed — but the execution. Francesca describes their working relationship as a clean split: she brings the big vision and the bold bets, Leia builds the systems and protocols that make scale possible. The result is $14 million in all-time revenue across locations that are profitable, not just open.

The episode gets into the operational realities of running a business around live animals. Puppy Sphere doesn’t keep dogs on site. It partners with local shelters and breeders who bring puppies in for each class and take them home after. Staff are certified in pet first aid and trained through a proprietary Puppy First program. Every guest signs a waiver. There are escalation protocols for anxious animals. The liability question comes up, and Francesca handles it directly.

Now the founders are ready to scale and looking at what that actually requires. The business runs on two tracks: public classes, memberships, and class packs make up about 80 percent of revenue, while corporate wellness events, bringing puppies to offices at companies like Google, TikTok, and Amazon, account for the other 20. That corporate side generates millions with no outbound marketing spend at all, entirely on inbound demand. Francesca walks through the investment thesis, the unit economics across markets, and what she plans to do with capital as the company moves beyond its bootstrapped roots.

You can find contact information for Francesca Albo and learn more about Puppy Sphere at theangelnest.com, where you can also reach David with suggestions, story ideas, or questions about the show.

Preterm birth affects one in ten babies in the United States, and for the smallest and most fragile among them, what they are fed in those first critical weeks can determine whether they survive and how well they thrive. The science has long pointed to mother’s own milk as the gold standard. The problem has been concentration: preterm infants need more nutrients than full-term milk provides at standard volume, and the current solution, adding formula fortifiers, introduces the very risks it is meant to solve.

Learn more about Mother’s Milk is Best and about joining or applying to the New York Angels at newyorkangels.com. Reach us with comments or questions at theangelnest.com.

Higher education is under pressure. Budgets are strained, research funding is being cut, and the gap between what business schools teach and what industry actually needs grows wider every year. Executive education is the one corner of the university that has always had to face the market directly. Now it is also becoming the place where AI may finally close that gap for good.

AI is reshaping every industry, but few are as ripe for reinvention as advertising, a business built on a slow and expensive mix of creativity and manpower.

Elementary schools are no longer exclusively about academics. Now, educators also share responsibility for building students' character, as well as their social and emotional health.

Angel investing in medical technology can be tough. The science is complex, the timelines are long, and the risks are hard to judge without the right expertise in the room. At the New York Angels, that has changed.

When Pascal de Mul was part of a young Spotify team revolutionizing music distribution, he unintentionally killed something he loved: the live bootleg. Now he is bringing it back, legally and in studio quality.

Learn more about Setmixer at setmixer.com and reach us with comments or questions at theangelnest.com.

Drones have been consumer products for years, but entrepreneurs are now finding their commercial potential. New ideas are coming fast, and few are as ambitious as SkyFire.

And, listen to more great interviews from our series with the New York Angels at https://theangelnest.com.

How are investors going to get ROI, from AI? We hear a lot about the

Catch up on the rest of the New York Angels series on theangelnest.com.