In a special edition of the Angel Nest podcast, host David Hemenway talks with two prominent experts about the Rhode Island Life Science Hub and how the Hub’s support is integral to growing the life science sector in New England and helping to get great ideas to market faster.Among the most important priorities in life science today is the work being done on the human brain. Dr. Leigh Hochberg is a professor of engineering and brain science at Brown University and joins us to talk about his work and the rapid advances happening in the science now. As the director of the BrainGate Consortium, Hochberg and a research team of top neurologists, neuroscientists, clinicians, engineers, computer scientists, neurosurgeons, and mathematicians develop and test implantable brain computer interfaces that could very soon restore communication, mobility and independence for patients with neurological diseases like ALS or the loss of limbs.David also speaks with Thorne Sparkman. Sparkman is the managing director of the Slater Fund which invests in RI-based startups. He gives us the investor perspective on the Hub and shares how investors are getting more involved now in the RI life science sector. Learn about the RI Life Science Hub, the BrainGate Consortium, and the Slater Fund.Catch up on our two previous episodes about the RI Life Science Hub in our Angel Nest archives.

On this special New York Angels edition of the Angel Nest, board chair Cindy Cook joins us to interview the founder of the New York Angels, David S. Rose. He’s updated his famous book, “Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun in Startups.” We’ll learn what’s new and how angel investing has changed since he came to be known as the father of angel investing in New York.Rose and Cook are, respectively, the original and current leader of the New York Angels, the member organization of angel investors (including host David Hemenway) that fund and mentor great young companies. We’ll discuss how the New York Angels has grown in size and scope and has evolved along with angel investing since the 1990s.Learn more about The New York Angels here. David S. Rose is now Founder & Executive Chairman at Gust, a global SaaS platform for founding, operating, and investing in scalable, high-growth companies. You can learn more about Gust at gust.com. And visit theangelnest.com to catch up on dozens of past interviews with great founders and leaders. 

We hear a lot about AI these days and how it makes work efficient, but what does that actually mean in practice?In this special episode of the Angel Nest podcast, we hear from people who are actually making it happen in finance and accounting. Host David Hemenway welcomes Johnnie Walker from Rooled Outsourced CFO and Accounting and Parker Gilbert, CEO of Numeric. Rooled are the startup finance experts and often collaborate with Numeric, which is using AI to help companies make smarter decisions and close their books faster. We’ll discuss real use cases where AI is changing the game for finance teams with better transaction monitoring, account reconciliation, robust reporting, and month-end closing. Visit rooled.com to learn more about Rooled’s services.Get more information on Numeric at numeric.io. And, check out our archives for more great episodes at theangelnest.com.

The Rhode Island Life Science Hub is accelerating innovation in New England. In this episode of The Angel Nest, we talk with Dr. Tejal Desai, Sorenson Family Dean of Engineering at Brown University about how Brown and The Rhode Island Life Science Hub are partnering to bring groundbreaking ideas to market faster. Discover how collaboration across engineering, medicine, and tech is shaping the next wave of innovation. We also speak with David Uffer who shares the investors’ perspective on Rhode Island’s expanding life sciences ecosystem. A veteran in business development, M&A, and strategic partnerships, David highlights what investors look for in emerging biotech ventures—and how collaboration between academia, industry, and the new RI Life Science Hub is positioning the state for long-term growth and impact across New England. Learn more about the RI Life Science Hub at rilifescience.com. Hear previous episodes of the Angel Nest podcast at theangelnest.com.

This month on the New York Angels edition of The Angel Nest, we meet a great business inspired by a disaster. When his home flooded with water, John Rusk decided there had to be a better way to protect property. So, he invented an early warning system and started ProSentry in 2019 to prevent others from experiencing the same frustration. In a recent 18 month period, they alerted commercial and residential building owners to more than 6,000 water leak events. And they've done it so quickly that not one has resulted in an insurance claim. ProSentry collaborates with Chubb Insurance on water leak detection initiatives, now operates in six states and is growing quickly. We’ll talk with John and with Tom Hirschfeld, a New York Angels board member who co-led the group’s investment in ProSentry. He’ll tell us what it was about ProSentry that caught his attention.And, we also meet Seth Masters, vice chair of the New York Angels who shares how the group funds the most exciting startups and why he chose to join New York Angels after being a chief investment officer of private wealth management at Alliance Bernstein for 27 years. Seth has been a New York Angel since 2017, where he has already invested an astounding 70 rounds in 40 companies. Listen to the episode now and find dozens of past episodes at theangelnest.com.

Academically rich, Rhode Island and its capital city of Providence have traditionally excelled in research and innovation. Remember the industrial revolution started in Rhode Island. But now there’s a new catalyst to create businesses and jobs and bring new technologies to the marketplace that can help solve some of society’s most vexing problems. Investors are taking note and getting involved. In this episode of the Angel Nest podcast, we’re talking about how to get innovative and life-saving medical solutions to market faster. We’ll meet the people behind The Rhode Island Life Science Hub and the founders they are supporting.We are delighted to begin a series of episodes about The Rhode Island Life Science Hub, an organization created and funded by the state to spur innovation. In this episode, we’ll speak with Dr. Mark Turco, President and CEO of The Rhode Island Life Science Hub, and Katie Ellias, who is part of the Hub team that helps ventures find investors, partners and markets. We’ll also hear from one of the companies the Hub is supporting that is looking for ways to combat disease and aging through a better understanding of RNA. Learn more about the RI Life Science Hub at rilifescience.com. Tune back in for future episodes with the Hub and check out dozens of archived interviews at theangelnest.com.   

At Brown University they’re working on something called the extracellular matrix – a way to help the body promote tissue healing and regeneration with minimal negative impact and without debilitating drugs. It could be a game changer for heart disease and a host of other ailments. In this episode, we meet XM Therapeutics and the ecosystem at Brown Technology innovations that is working to make this amazing technology a reality for patients. Melissa Simon, the Director of Business Development at Brown Technology Innovations, and Karen Bulock from Brown Medical Biomedical Innovations work together to provide early funding and guidance so these amazing ideas that start in the research lab can make it to commercialization. We’re also joined by Dr. Jeffrey Morgan, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown and Frank Ahmann the entrepreneur who BTI recruited to scale XM Therapeutics.Learn about Brown Technology Innovations here.Read more about this amazing advancement at XMThereapeutics.com.And check out TheAngelNest.com for many more stories of innovative companies.

Building a winning startup brand takes more than just a great product. As this episode’s guests tell us, potential investors should also consider to how a company is positioning it’s brand in the marketplace to gauge whether or not it will be successful.

In this special New York Angels edition of The Angel Nest podcast, we talk with IC 360 which provides integrity monitoring and regulatory compliance for sports betting and has grown to more than $10MM in annual revenue. It’s clients include top brands like The NFL, MLB and The PGA Tour.

This edition of The Angel Nest features Cameron Hendrix, co-founder of Magellan AI, the company revolutionizing podcast ad measurement and attribution. Since receiving seed funding from New York Angels, Magellan has grown revenue 8–10x and now helps advertisers understand exactly where their podcast dollars are going.

Online sports betting topped $18 billion in the U.S. last year and is on track to reach $30 billion in the next 10 years. Nearly 95% of all sports betting was done online in 2024, with companies like Fan Duel leading the charge. In this episode of the Angel Nest podcast, we continue our series with Johnnie Walker of Rooled Outsourced CFO and Accounting Services and we welcome Nigel Eccles, a founder of Fan Duel. He’s also a board member to startup companies who has raised more than half a billion dollars in VC funding.Eccles’ next venture is BetHog, which combines sports betting with crypto currencies. Walker and his team at Rooled are helping BetHog get their finances in order for VCs and potential partners.Johnnie and Nigel join David to discuss the sports wagering industry and how startups like BetHog and successfully raising money today.  Learn more about BetHog at play.bethog.com.Connect with Rooled at rooled.com. Visit theangelnest.com to catch up on dozens of past episodes.

In this special New York Angels edition of the Angel Nest Podcast we talk to the co-founder of Fixe, an automated streamlined bookkeeping service for the restaurant industry.We'll hear how his chance meeting led to The New York Angels leading his seed investment round. Guests include Ryan Handel, the CEO of Fixe, and Simon Hopkins, a New York Angel, who co-led the investment in Fixe and has served on the board ever since. Cindy Cook, Board Chair of The New York Angels also discusses the current state of startup investing in New York and around the country, and how she went from corporate marketing to angel investing. Learn more about The New York Angels here. Visit getmyfixe.com for more info about Fixe. And, check out the Angel Nest Podcast archives to catch up on great episodes you may have missed. 

Pulse oximeters clip onto your finger at a doctor’s office or hospital to measure blood oxygen levels. Unfortunately, they are not always accurate across all skin tones. In this episode, we speak with Kimani Toussaint from Brown University’s School of Engineering about a new device that could solve that problem.

If you’re a B2B software founder or investor you want to talk to Tom Wisniewski. His Newark Venture Partners make big seed stage bets through a $200MM fund. And, he’s our guest on this episode of the Angel Nest Podcast.

You know David S. Rose as the father of angel investing in New York, and the Founder and CEO of Gust.com. Now he’s bringing liquidity to investors in commercial real estate through USREM (which stands for US Real Estate Market). You can meet him at The NYC Fintech Connect Event on February 27, but we’re pleased to welcome him to this edition of the Angel Nest podcast for a preview of the event. Rose will appear at the Withum-sponsored event in New York City and you can be there too. Save your seat. Get registered for the event now. Learn more about about USREM at usremsecurities.com. And, check out our archives to hear dozens of recent episodes of the Angel Nest podcast at theangelnest.com.  

Do your knees hurt? If so, you’ve got plenty of company. It turns out that arthroscopic knee surgery is one of the most popular procedures. In this episode of the Angel Nest, we speak to Dr. Chris Anderson, the founding surgeon of Native Orthopaedics.He grew up tying fly fishing knots in his native Tennessee and used that experience to invent the dragonfly finger trap method of repairing meniscus tears. It works in a way that could some patients avoid knee replacements in the future.Dr. Anderson is now a renowned orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sport medicine and works to heal peoples’ lives by restoring their mobility.Learn more about Native Orthopaedics at nativeortho.com. And, catch up on dozens of past Angel Nest episodes at theangelnest.com.

With everyone living and playing longer, orthopaedic issues are booming for baby boomers, and for the rest of us. In this Angel Nest First Look episode, we meet Native Orthopaedics. Their technology will revolutionize the way meniscus tears are repaired. And, it might just work for a whole host of other problems too. Brian Morley of Native Orthopaedics joins us for this discussion. We’ll have an extensive series of programs about Native in 2025, but this episode is a sneak preview about the company and the amazing solutions they are pioneering. Learn more about Native Orthopaedics at nativeortho.com. Catch up on all past episodes of The Angel Nest podcast at theangelnest.com.

Every venture fund claims to add value, but what does that mean to investors? Luke Timberlake and his partners at Fintech Ventures are finding ways to capitalize on the movement that gives small investors access to bigger potential returns and markets they can’t invest in on their own. In this episode of The Angel Nest podcast, we’ll talk with Luke about Fintech Ventures and how they provide the capital and funding know-how to help companies like Groundfloor take off. Groundfloor founder Brian Dally also joins us to talk about how The Jobs Act of 2012 provided a chance to democratize access to the $1.3 billion fractional real estate investing market. As a result, their customers get a unique investment opportunity with higher yields and, potentially, higher risks. The company’s auto-investing app is now in its 3rd edition and the company was recently named to the Forbes Fintech 50. Learn more about the Fintech Ventures Fund at fintechv.com. Check out Groundfloor at groundfloor.com.And, revisit some of our favorite past episodes of the podcast at theanglenest.com.  

How can startup founder build their brands through thought leadership and digital distribution in a way that actually gets customers? In this episode, we’re talking about marketing for startups.   This is another in our series of podcasts with Johnnie Walker of Rooled Outsourced CFO and Accounting Services about how founders are getting creative to get their businesses off the ground, raise money and find clients. We’re joined by Melissa Hollis, co-founder of The Taylor Street Collective which promises to supercharge your startup marketing and provide everything from consulting to fractional CMO services. Get to know Rooled at rooled.com. Learn more about Taylor Street Collective at taylorstreetco.comAnd catch up on past issues of the Angel Nest podcast at theangelnest.com.

It takes more than a good idea to have a successful launch. With funding harder to come by for companies of all sizes, proven technology and the partnerships to get it to market are more valuable than ever. In this episode of the Angel Net, we meet a venture studio that is helping founders get funded and connecting them to leading academic and government institutions - all with the idea of solving society's biggest challenges. This is another of our series of podcasts with Johnnie Walker of Rooled Outsourced CFO and Accounting Services about how founders are getting funded in this new environment. Rooled are the startup finance experts.Alex Goldberg of Ad Astral Funds is our guest. Ad Astral has a more hands-on involvement in the companies they invest in to ensure the big, innovative ideas they champion get the market traction needed to succeed. Get to know Rooled at rooled.com. Read about Ad Astral Fund's approach at adastral.org.   And, hear more episodes in the "Planning for 2025" series at theangelnest.com.