Angel investor John Williams comes from a background of leadership in sales and marketing in Big Pharma. He puts his experiences to work in helping his portfolio companies which include Lenoss Medical, Elidah and Eflex Energy. John’s affable personality made this really a fun chat.
Highlights:
Sal Daher Introduces Angel Investor John Williams
Elidah – Solving Postpartum Incontinence
Gloria Kolb of Elidah Embodies Howard Stevenson’s Definition of the Startup Founder
Lenoss Medical: Better Treatment for Fractures of the Spine Due to Aging
“...a guy who's 63 years old made the cut at the Masters this weekend. They [seniors] have higher expectations...”
No More Heart Attacks in 40 Year Olds Thanks to Statin Drugs Controlling Blood Lipids
“It's also fun to watch pitches. Because you're like, "Wow."”
Robotic Gloves Keep popping Up in Sal’s Angel Investing Career
Eflex Energy: Load Management for Your Home Backup Power
“I would have been able to manage my energy and my battery for five days with my phone if I had one of these connected digital circuit breakers in my home.”
How John Williams Started His Angel Investing
Became an Angel Investor but Never Watched Shark Tank
Interesting Startups That Have Pitched at Walnut Ventures Recently
John Williams’ Parting Thoughts
ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:
Purdue University entrepreneurship
Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson
Transcript of “Angel Investor”
Guest: John Williams
Sal Daher: I'm really proud to say that the Angel Invest Boston Podcast is sponsored by Purdue University Entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson. Purdue is exceptional in its support of its faculty, faculty of its top five engineering school, in helping them get their technology from the lab out to the market, out to industry, out to the clinic.
Peter Fasse is also a great support to entrepreneurs. He is a patent attorney specializing in microfluidics and has been tremendously helpful in some of the startups which I'm involved, including a startup came out of Purdue, Savran Technologies. I'm proud to have these two sponsors for my podcast.
Sal Daher Introduces Angel Investor John Williams
Welcome to Angel Invest Boston, conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. Today, we have with us angel investor, John Williams. Say, hi, John.
John Williams: Hi, everyone.
Sal Daher: John comes from a storied career in marketing in the pharmaceutical industry. He has been a very active member of River Valley Investors and has invested in some interesting companies. We're going to talk about companies, his angel investing. John, so let's talk about the startups first and then let's get into your angel journey in the second half. What are some of the startups that you're really excited about at the moment?
Elidah – Solving Incontinence in Women
John Williams: Sal, there's three startups that I'm really, really excited about. I've been doing angel investing for just about three years. You see so many different pitches, and when you get the opportunity to invest in exciting company, it's really fun. The first one is called Elidah, which is spelled E-L-I-D-A-H. You may actually know this company.
Sal Daher: Oh, yes. I know that. I regret not having written a check at the-- I saw them at MIT Angels early on.
John Williams: They're a Connecticut-based company. The CEO, her name is Gloria Kolb. When I met Gloria, I was really impressed with a couple things. First was they're really trying to tackle a large unmet need, which is urinary incontinence in women. It's been very educational for me to learn about this challenge. There's lots of treatments out there but theirs is different. They've done a lot of work to develop a medical device that's externally applied, it's FDA approved.
You can use it at home and use it externally so there's just not a lot to do. It's just been really fun to watch their journey from the beginning stages of product development to getting it out on the market and early commercialization. Then as you watch what they're trying to do to help so many women out there who are struggling with this, it's an interesting journey. I feel personally very fortunate to have met Gloria and be part of this great train ride, as I like to say.
Sal Daher: Outstanding. It's a hidden problem. It's not unusual right after birth for a woman to have incontinence. Having this resource is so valuable.
Gloria Kolb of Elidah Is Embodies Howard Stevenson’s Definition of the Startup Founder
John Williams: It's a very interesting time for them, because as a startup you get a product out in the marketplace and people try to use it and gain experience. Part of the challenge with the startup is that you're not Pfizer or Coca-Cola, so you don't have these massive marketing budgets to sweep across the nation with commercials or television ads, or whatever it may be. As she's working and her team is working, as every angel investor knows, they're doing so much with so little.
Sal Daher: Howard Stevenson of the Harvard Business School used to have this definition of a startup. A startup is an enterprise that uses resources it does not yet command. They don't have the resources, but they're using them. Somehow, they figure out some workaround to get some substitute for what's needed.
John Williams: Yes. I think you said something interesting to me when we first met Sal, you said, "You got to bet on the jockey."
Sal Daher: Yes.
John Williams: Gloria is just--
Sal Daher: Very impressive.
John Williams: Continues to do so much with so little. I sent her an email once in a while and I almost regret sending them because I feel like, don't distract her, John, just let her go. I do like to check in. I like to be active. It's just been really fun to watch her grow.
Sal Daher: It's astonishing. I've had on the podcast Jeremy Wiygul. I don't know if you listened to that episode.
John Williams: No, I will though.
Sal Daher: He's a urologist in New York and he has a wired device that is accessing the only part of the nervous system that's tied to the-
John Williams: Pelvic floor muscles?
Sal Daher: -pelvic floor muscles, exactly, in a connected device and so forth. It's called Pelex. He has an interesting approach to that. He came at it from exactly his wife having incontinence after giving birth. He is a urologist who specializes in this, and he couldn't coordinate the care.
John Williams: Wow.
Sal Daher: It's so complex. It's multi-disciplinary. There's a lot of work that's to be done in this space with a little bit of technology, and a lot of product development, and connection, and feedback, and so forth.
John Williams: I think half the battle is just, for a lot of startups, not just Elidah with their product, which is called Elitone, is making people aware that it's there.
Sal Daher: Oh, yes.
John Williams: That it's an option, and that there's physicians' awareness but there's also patients' awareness. It's fascinating.
Sal Daher: Very good. Is there anything else that you want to say about Elidah?
John Williams: No, I think that's the story right now. It's a fun one to watch.
Sal Daher: Hats off to Gloria.
Interviewee: Absolutely.
Sal Daher: Too bad I missed that one.
[laughter]
Please continue.
John Williams: As an angel investor, you always watch them, and I see probably 100 pitches a year. One day you see a company doing well, and you're like, "Aw, why didn't I make that investment?" Actually, I had that moment last week.
Sal Daher: In what circumstance?
John Williams: I saw a company pitch a while ago at River Valley Investors. Then I just saw them pop-up in another company, and they're doing well, and I was like, "Aw, why didn't I get in two years ago?"
Sal Daher: [laughs] Every time I go by a Lovepop store, I go, "Ah."
John Williams: [laughs] There's a lot of emotions for those.
Lenoss Medical: Better Treatment for Fractures of the Spine Due to Aging
The second company that I wanted to talk about is this really-- a very fascinating company. They came out of River Valley Investors. I first met them two years ago. They're a Providence-based company, which is always near and dear to my heart, I went to Providence College. The CEO is Dom Messerli, and it's Lenoss Medical. You may have seen Lenoss too, from--
Sal Daher: I saw them at Walnut. That's another one that I did not-- Unfortunately, I've been on the sidelines in investing because of operational problems with my IRA and some other stuff, and my buildings, and so forth. I haven't had the bandwidth, because this podcast takes a lot of time. My podcast is eating into my angel investing right now, unfortunately. I'm switching custodians for the IRA, and the building problems have more or less subsided, so I'm hopeful that things will get back to normal.
John Williams: So, you'll be back in the game?
Sal Daher: I hope so, yes.
John Williams: We'll keep our fingers crossed. Lenoss Medical is an interesting one. Dom is a very experienced CEO in spine-related biotech. He is trying to tackle a very interesting problem, which is trying to disrupt the treatment of spinal fractures, which are called vertebral compression fractures, very often caused by osteoporosis, and treated with a type of a treatment that is called kyphoplasty. It's the injection of cement to stabilize the bone. His product, which is an implant made out of 100% cortical bone, it basically gets into the vertebrae and allows the vertebrae to start to heal and form new bone.
It's an interesting journey. Dom's doing a lot of really good work at Lenoss. It's been another one that's been super fun to watch. When I made that investment-- As an angel investor, we're all so different. My background is pharmaceutical sales and marketing, like you mentioned, so my tendency is to go towards life science companies. When I saw Lenoss Medical, I was like, yes, I understand this. I started to meet with Dom every six or seven months just to have lunch. It was a great excuse to go back to Providence and see the city that I love so much. It's been fun watching him grow this company and try to tackle something that is affecting a lot of people across the United States.
Sal Daher: Oh, yes. That is really a growing problem; people with bone loss. As the population gets older, we're going to have more and more of that.
John Williams: The population, as it gets older, they're also very active, right?
Sal Daher: Yes. They have higher expectations.
“...a guy who's 63 years old made the cut at the Masters this weekend. They [seniors] have higher expectations...”
John Williams: You hear people playing golf. I was watching the Masters, and a guy who's 63 years old made the cut at the Masters this weekend. They have higher expectations for skiing, activities, and golf, and whatever it may be. You don't want to be held back by something like a vertebrae injury.
No More Heart Attacks in 40 Year Olds Thanks to Statin Drugs Controling Blood Lipids
Sal Daher: People are not aware of this, but I remember when I was a kid, my father's friends all used to have heart attacks. They were in their 30s and 40s and have heart attacks. It doesn't happen anymore. It's extremely rare. What's happened is with statins, the control of these blood lipids, they're able to reduce cardiovascular disease to such an extent. About 12 years ago, I had an aortic valve replacement. I had a birth defect with my aortic valve. Instead of having three flaps, I had two flaps, and over time it calcified, so I had to have an artificial valve put in. Thank God I just saw the cardiologist, says, "You got 10 years on your valve." Knock on wood.
John Williams: Knock on wood.
Sal Daher: The surgeon who put it in told me, "You know, I used to do coronary artery bypass surgery," which is a surgery that, again, if you get a heart attack, if you get a blockage in your heart and part of the heart dies, and so on, they used to graft another piece of blood vessel tissue to provide blood to that part of the heart. He says, "I couldn't make a living doing coronary artery bypass anymore because of the statins." There weren't enough heart attacks victims, and so he had to go into the valve replacement business. We forget this. These statins are out of patents. They're cheap. A few dollars for three months.
John Williams: They're all generic.
Sal Daher: They're all generic, and it's just an unbelievable boon to humanity in the developing world. Some of these simvastatin and these low-priced statin drugs, places like India and so forth, they're very affordable and they're saving a lot of lives.
John Williams: Yes, and extending life.
Sal Daher: So, you don't have a heart attack, so you expect to play golf when you're 60 and when you're 70. Then we begin to find things like bone loss, cancer, and these other things which are harder to deal with. I think heart disease, to a great extent, we've made a lot of progress there.
John Williams: Yes, there's a lot of progress. When you are an angel investor, it's always fun to make an investment into a company and then watch them grow. It's also fun to watch pitches. Because you're like, "Wow."
“It's also fun to watch pitches. Because you're like, "Wow."”
Sal Daher: And dangerous.
John Williams: And dangerous, right. There's so many fascinating and novel ideas that are coming out of entrepreneurs and when you sit back and you go, "Wow," to me that's part of the fun is listening to these fascinating scientists and engineers, and people from various backgrounds trying to tackle not only health problems, but even advancing medical care, advancing life or just nutrition, you name it. That's part of what really attracted me to being an angel investor.
Robotic Gloves Keep popping Up in Sal’s Angel Investing Career
Sal Daher: That's what attracted me to being a biotech angel investor. The first angel investment that I made, was on a robotic glove to help measure impairment in the hands of people who were going to undergo hand surgery. Beth Marcus was the inventor. [laughs] I don't know if you run across Beth. The company is called Exos. It didn't succeed because the technology wasn't ready. The computers didn't have enough computing power.
John Williams: They were ahead of their time.
Sal Daher: Yes. She had money in the bank. She was going to give money back to investors and shut down the company. She reached for the chocolate-dipped strawberries, and she bumped into Bob Metcalfe at MIT. She started telling the story and he says, "You got to go out to the West Coast and see my friend, Pierluigi Zappacosta, at Logitech." Everybody has a Logitech mouse, right?
John Williams: I think my mouse is.
Sal Daher: Maybe this could become your glove that failed as a way of hand surgeons measuring impairment of the hands, it's force feedback. Maybe you could create a force feedback mouse. Imagine a mouse that gives you a force feedback. She built one, and it's actually in the MIT Museum. It's this big-- [laughs] She took it out to Pierluigi Zappacosta. She borrowed a supercomputer to be able to make this stupid thing work. Like a Terminal. She borrowed terminal and she went there with this big honking thing. Pierluigi Zappacosta says, "Beth, forget force feedback mouse, that's never going to happen."
It has never happened. There are no force feedback mouses out there. He says, "Why don't you go up to Microsoft up in Seattle? I'll bet you they'll be interested in having a force feedback game controller." She sold the company to Microsoft. It was very nice. A very nice return for the investors. That was the first investment I made. This is circa 1993. Fast-forward 30 years. I have this person come to me from the Harvard i-Labs, pitching a robotic glove.
John Williams: Oh my God. I've been down this road.
Sal Daher: I was having this deja vu. It's a company called Imago Rehab. She's been on the podcast, Chrissy Glover. The company is going through a transition right now, but it's because of success. Chrissy is shepherd of the founding of this company that's doing really well. What they're doing is a robotic glove is for helping patients who have stroke get their hands working. I was talking to her. I was like, 30 years ago, I was talking to Beth about robotic glove, [laughs] talking to Chrissy about a robotic glove. You get these things. Anyway, so would you say his name again?
John Williams: Dom. D-O-M. His last name is Messserli. M-E-S-S-E-R-L-I.
Sal Daher: L-I, excellent. What was the third startup that you wanted to bring up?
Eflex Energy: Load Management for Your Home Backup Power
John Williams: Stepping away from life sciences and into climate/energy, a company that came through River Valley Investors a while ago was that Eflex Energy. This is a funny thing,
Sal. Sometimes during a pitch, I go, yes, duh, what a great idea. I call it my duh moment where I literally say out loud, "Wow, it was really good." The CEO's name is Andrew Winter. Eflex basically, the way Andrew describes what they do is he said, "When you were a kid growing up, you had a phone on the wall, and it was hard-wired.
The phone rang, you picked it up, and my sister would talk to her boyfriend. She'd take the long cord into the other room and hide and have a private conversation." He said, "You advance 30, 40 years later, now we have these incredible computers in our pockets called cell phones." Huge advancements in phone. He said, "How much have we advanced the circuit breaker in your basement that runs your power in your house?"
Particularly when you're putting solar panels on your roof and running them to batteries. What Eflex Energy is doing is they're trying to convert your home energy system into a connected digital WiFi-enabled system. I live right outside of Hartford. Where this triggered for me was, in my memory, one year we had- this is crazy- 12 inches of snow in October. I have these big oak trees with these huge oak trees.
Sal Daher: Crazy New England weather, or as it's called around here, "weather".
“I would have been able to manage my energy and my battery for five days with my phone if I had one of these connected digital circuit breakers in my home.”
John Williams: "Weather". Yes. The weather dropped a few branches that took out my power for five days. We live on the outskirts on the town, so we were not top priority, but we finally got it all fixed. I would have been able to manage my energy and my battery for five days with my phone if I had one of these connected digital circuit breakers in my home. Basically, what it does is, the sun hits your solar panels, it goes to your battery, and then he can do-- his company does load management. If you had that situation where you needed power, you could go on your phone and shut everything off in your home energy system, except for your refrigerator.
Sal Daher: Oh, wow.
John Williams: Your battery would just be going to-- you could do this if you weren't home because it's just on your app. I just thought, wow, we've advanced solar power with better solar panels. We've built batteries for your home, but it still runs through a 45-year-old circuit breaker that nobody touched since the day they installed it in my home.
Sal Daher: That is tremendous. It's interesting because it's internal. I mentioned to you that I invested in Pika Energy that had a system, which they ended up selling to Generac, and that is external. It's for managing the solar power coming into the batteries and so forth. That was the part of the technology, I guess, which Generac was really interested in.
John Williams: Yes, this is internal. This is residential, commercial. It's a beautiful system that looks on the wall. Tesla's put together some very nice-looking batteries, and they certainly spent the time to make this thing look really sharp. It's just cool technology. When I heard the pitch, I was like, oh, this makes a lot of sense.
Sal Daher: Looks good. Very good. Maybe what I can do now is do a little pitch for the podcast. Ask listeners to-- perhaps at some point you could do this yourself. The week we launch, if you are on the Apple podcast app at all, leave a review. Rating and a review, because what that does, one or two reviews tells the algorithm we're all dancing to the tune of algorithms. [laughs]
John Williams: Aren't we all?
Sal Daher: Algorithms says, this podcast is one that people care about, and so it gets shown to more people. To listeners out there, first thing you should do is you should follow us. If you found this podcast somewhere on the internet or whatever, follow us, so you get this similar content every week on your feed. You don't have to listen to it every week, but it'll be there. If you see something really, really interesting, then you can just listen to it because it's in front of you. Then also leave us a five-star rating. My mom told me to ask-- my late sainted mom told me to ask for five stars always.
John Williams: [laughs] There you go.
Sal Daher: Don't be shy about asking for five stars. Also, leave a written review to fool the algorithm doesn't have to be much, one or two lines. You can even be a little bit ironic. “I just wish we had less of Sal, and more the guests”.
[laughter]
The algorithm is not so subtle that it could figure that out. It just says somebody took the time to write and it's pretty cool. I was listening to a podcast some time ago, and apparently, algorithms are driving pop songs to become shorter and shorter and simpler and simpler.
John Williams: No way.
Sal Daher: Pretty soon they're going to be just like twinkle twinkle little star. [sings] [laughs]
John Williams: Whenever I go on the streaming app on my television, I jokingly say to my wife, I wonder what the algorithm wants us to watch this week.
Sal Daher: We're all dancing literally to the tune of algorithms. There was a move towards pop songs becoming simpler, like The Beatles and a movement that came after them made them longer, more complex. Then there's been a slow movement in this direction but the algorithms have really, really pushed them, so the pop songs get really short, because the algorithm knows. It shows a song, it wants to know quickly if you like it because it has lots like it to show. It doesn't want you to spend too much time on any one song. It wants you to show all the songs that it knows you're going to like.
John Williams: There's no more 11-minute ballads from Led Zeppelin coming out.
Sal Daher: No more ballads. Are you kidding me?
[laughter]
A very sad thing, very sad. Anyway, let's talk about your angel journey. You were, for 20 odd years, in marketing, sales in the pharmaceutical industry. When did you fall off the horse? When was your Damascene conversion, so to speak?
How John Williams Started His Angel Investing
John Williams: Like I said, 21 years, pharmaceutical sales and marketing. After a merger, I ended up leaving and looking for a new direction. I joined angel Investing River Valley Investors after I had a very--
Sal Daher: Shout out to Paul Silva.
John Williams: Yes. Boy, Paul has been-
Sal Daher: Great guy.
John Williams: -wonderful.
Sal Daher: He's been on the podcast by the way.
John Williams: Oh, has he? I got very lucky. He's been a wonderful mentor on this journey. It's a very funny story because after I left, decided to do a career change. I was speaking to a friend of mine from high school who was a very talented guy. He lives in Austin, Texas. He had a very similar change in his career. He has this degree in professional photography for-- if you open up a magazine and there's a picture of jewelry, he would take the-- that's the style of photography he would do, so, product for advertising.
He was taking photos for restaurants and magazines of food, and he became very involved in the Austin food scene. Fast-forward to when we were discussing, he was raising money to build a business to disrupt the frozen food industry particularly around several different things, but one of them being frozen foods like frozen pizzas. He was very talented in doing it. We were chatting and I ended up not making an investment because I didn't want to make an investment, like my friends come to me--
Sal Daher: That can be a little disturbing, yes.
John Williams: Little disturbing, but it whet my appetite, so I started looking about how do I this and learn more, and I found River Valley Investors. I joined Paul and started sitting on a few things. It was really funny, Sal. Paul called me afterwards and he said, "You did really good today. You had good questions and I could tell you're hooked."
[laughter]
Became an Angel Investor but Never Watched Shark Tank
I said, "Yes, I am." It didn't take long. That's part of the journey. Everyone always asks me when I tell people that I do angel investing, they say, oh, you must have watched Shark Tank, and that's how you got hooked. I said, I've actually not seen an episode of Shark Tank.
Sal Daher: I've never watched an episode of Shark Tank. I've had a company I invested in end up in Shark Tank.
John Williams: Really? Interesting.
Interesting Startups That Have Pitched at Walnut Ventures Recently
Sal Daher: Yes. [laughs] They got acquired afterwards. Anyway, I'm just thinking, just yesterday I was at Walnut I invited you to yesterday's meeting but you had a conflict. It was very interesting, there was one company that has this device that sits out in a blueberry field and looks at what is crawling around, and says they're good bugs. Uh-oh, there's a bad bug.
John Williams: No way.
Sal Daher: Time to spray, there's a bad bug.
John Williams: Wow.
Sal Daher: Spray this area because they have a bunch of them. It's prevalent in this area, but not that area. They minimize the use of insecticides, they save money. Fewer contaminants. Really cool.
John Williams: That is super cool.
Sal Daher: Another company, it's restaurant technology, they're figuring out ways to make menus more sensitive to the cost of the products. Because restaurants are a very thin margin business, and a restaurant owner can easily lose all the profit of the business if an item is mispriced. The idea of a printed menu, prices-- not everything, most things in a menu, the cost don't move around so much, but there's one or two items that could create a problem for restaurant, and they're able to create menus that are responsive to that.
John Williams: I would imagine that would be particularly important for things like probably lobster or that rely on the current market price.
Sal Daher: Lobster, they never put a price. They just say market price, and so what they do is they say what's the margin? The margins have disappeared in this product, so then restaurant owner has the choice of either raising the price of a product or bringing another product that'll have a margin and it'll contribute, because people think that there is a high markup. They were very thin margins.
John Williams: Razor thin.
Sal Daher: Razor thin because they have a lot of costs and so forth. Then another one, thanks to my Walnut buddy, Qiuyan, she chose this company. Another one is restaurant tech company that's doing bookkeeping for restaurants.
John Williams: Wow.
Sal Daher: Then the last one was fascinating. I'm going to have him on the podcast.
John Williams: Oh, great.
Sal Daher: He's creating a market for the digital nomads to live on Airbnb here, Airbnb there, and those costs have come up a lot. He's creating a market for fractional ownership, not timeshares but actually owning 1/13th of a house somewhere that you actually own. You buy and you have rights to occupy at a certain time of the year. He's doing it in Mexico, and is a very, very compelling young founder who five years ago was sitting at a Walnut meeting at Babson as a Babson student. I'll have him on.
John Williams: That's a heck of a vision, isn't it?
Sal Daher: Yes. I hope you can make the next Walnut meeting.
Williams: Oh yes, I'd love to. It's on my calendar.
Sal Daher: Awesome. This is how you discover this amazing thing of angel investing. Listeners who are not familiar with angel investing, they should understand we're not talking Bill Gates kind of money here. Average angel check is maybe, what, $15,000, $10,000? It's not unusual to get $5,000 checks. There are modalities of angel investing such as TBD Angels where you can invest $1,000 in a startup via a special purpose vehicle. If you're on the balance sheet, they'd like to be contributing a little more, but you can go in via an SPV. It's a little bit of money and a lot of sweat equity, a lot of help.
John Williams: That was exactly what I was just about to say. There's two kinds of angel investors that I've met. One that writes a check and disappears, and then my style which is I write a check and I say my door is always open, my background is in sales and in marketing, so if you need to tap into me or bounce something off of me, please feel free to do so. I don't want to change your calendar.
Just connect. You'll find that there is a lot of sweat equity. They they do reach out to you because every company hits great peaks and then some valleys, and they may need some help with certain things or connections. I think that's what's a lot of fun is because you can offer some financial help, but you can also offer your background which can help them and accelerate their product.
Sal Daher: In your case you ended up working for Lenoss.
John Williams: Yes. I met with Dom over lunch one time and he said I need help with sales, would you like to come on board part-time? I said yes, sure. It's been a a fun journey because I'm learning as much as I think he's learning. His background is more in product development and the engineering side, and mine's commercialization. It's been really cool. That's what I think angel investing needs, people who want to be interested in this need to understand is it's just not financial, you can actually contribute.
Sal Daher: You can be that kind of investor, there is that possibility. I think the most fun part of angel investing is really rolling up your sleeves. This brings us to the next thing which is not investing alone. There are two reasons for that. One is that a lot of the judgment about angel investing is what we talked about earlier. It's the jockey, it's the character of the founder or founders. A single person can be a good judge of personalities and character and drive and all this. A group usually is much better at that.
John Williams: I couldn't agree more, because a group brings varying perspectives. You may have a group with someone who's got software as a service background, maybe a CFO. River Valley, we had a couple physicians, so when a life science company came in, they had their own angle.
Sal Daher: No. I mean in terms of judging the character of the founder.
John Williams: Oh, completely agree.
Sal Daher: It's a crowdsourcing it a little bit. Then you have the collaborative approach to the angel group because, you need to have at least 20 companies in your portfolio in order to have a possibility of a return.
John Williams: Agreed.
Sal Daher: However, you cannot be involved in 20 companies, you'll go nuts. What ends up happening is, you're involved in one or two, or three at most, and then other people in your group are involved with other companies. You share information, you share knowledge. I pick Ben Littauer's brain all the time about people, and he connected me with someone who's on the board of Savran, was a CEO of a company that was just exited. That kind of stuff, that's what angels do. It is so fun, it is so constructive. We're creating the world of tomorrow with the experience we have.
John Williams: If Paul Silva was here, he would also say, we're creating jobs
Sal Daher: Definitely creating jobs, yes.
John Williams: Part of Paul's little opening dialogue for River Valley investors is that a lot of jobs are created through entrepreneurs. That's something I was proud of.
Funny, funny story about Gloria Colb with Elidah. I met her and I was trying to do some due diligence. I didn't meet her through River Valley. I called my friend, Zach, who was over at the venture forum in Worcester. I said, "Zach, can you take a look at this pitch deck for me? It's a really cool company, I'm really excited about it." I sent it to him and he called me four minutes later, he's like, "Great company. I really like it. Fascinating." I said, "That's not enough time, four minutes. You need more time. Due diligence." I was giving him a hard time, and he said, "John, I sat next to the CEO at Babson.
Sal Daher: [laughs] She is something else.
John Williams: He goes, "I know Gloria and I feel good." Then we started talking. We had a good laugh, and then we dug in. It's a small world, and looking at the CEO, and getting at different opinions is really important.
John Williams’ Parting Thoughts
Sal Daher: We covered startups, we covered discovering your angel investing journey. At this point, I want to have an open-ended question for you. If there are any thoughts that you want to communicate to our audience of angel investors, of founders, of people who are thinking of becoming angels, people who are thinking of becoming founders, what advice do you have? What thoughts do you want to leave them with?
John Williams: I think that's great. I think the biggest thought I have for entrepreneurs is continue to network, you'd be surprised how close someone that can really help your company just might be.
Sal Daher: Absolutely. Don't leave your light under a bushel, don't hide your light under a bushel.
John Williams: Do pitch contests and connect with people. It's just amazing how close you are to a breakthrough. Dom likes to say there's ups and downs when you're an entrepreneur, but if you have a very good vision and a very good network, you can find people who can guide you, or maybe connect you with someone else. It's amazing, LinkedIn and other ways of connecting with people really can help.
Sal Daher: Do your homework, okay? Don't spam people with random emails, find someone that you have a connection with. Use LinkedIn to see people that you're connected with, see if we can get an introduction and so forth. Do a little bit of groundwork because that's going to pay off, because it improves the chances of you connecting with a person that's going to be helpful to you, and it makes that interaction much more valuable for you and for the person that you're interacting with.
John Williams: I call those, warm intros.
Sal Daher: Absolutely. With your background in sales, you know exactly what that means.
John Williams: Yes. I completely agree with you. You're totally right. Being able to connect with someone through another connection is priceless. For angel investing, I think the biggest thing I would say is if you've ever considered it, get off the couch and try it.
[laughter]
Sal Daher: Start small. Start small.
John Williams: Just go to a pitch event, be a guest at an angel investing. You don't have to make an investment, but just go experience it and see if it fits for you, because I was tentative like, I don't know if this is really what I want to do, and it was a very good fit for me. It's a good way of giving back to someone who's trying to grow a business.
Sal Daher: Definitely.
John Williams: Believe it or not, as an angel investor, a lot of people don't have the experiences that you have, and they can learn so much from you, which is, someone comes up with a great product, they're an engineer, they don't know how to commercialize it or market it.
Sal Daher: No. They are like the founder is in the frontier of knowledge. Maybe they're a technical founder, a scientific founder, or they're in the frontier of knowledge about the market. They are doing stuff at rarefied edge of the market. You as an experienced executive, someone who's been for decades working in the real world, you've got a lot of real-world experience that can help that young person or young founder who knows a lot about this rarefied space but could trip on her shoelaces on silly stuff. I have seen startups blow up because people didn't know that in the state of Massachusetts if you don't pay your employees, they can put your company into liquidation. Silly stuff like that.
John Williams: I think that's the key, right? If you're contemplating it, give it a try.
Sal Daher: Gray hair is required. Different levels of hair or whatever, but experience. What I mean by that is experience.
John Williams: Absolutely. You may get a few gray hairs doing--
[laughter]
Sal Daher: When I started investing, I didn't have as many gray hairs as I have now. Correlation, but not causation.
John Williams: Exactly.
Sal Daher: Multicollinearity.
John Williams: There you go. There's some fascinating companies out there that are really interesting, and you should go check them out.
Sal Daher: I second that thought. Very good. John Williams, very glad that you came here to talk about your angel investing on Angel Invest Boston.
John Williams: Sal, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Sal Daher: Let's have you out to Walnut next meeting.
John Williams: Absolutely. It's on my calendar.
Sal Daher: By the way, listeners, angel investing is very social. It's all about meeting people, learning stuff from other people, and so forth. It's just so much fun.
John Williams: I completely agree. It's a great way of making new connections and finding people who are very similar to you trying to do something positive.
Sal Daher: Or totally different from you. With the similar goals, totally different, but with similar goals. Very wonderful.
John Williams: Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Sal Daher: Thank you, John Williams. This is Sal Daher, Angel Invest Boston, thank you for listening.
[music]
Sal Daher: I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.