Companies know what their customers bought.

But very few know who they actually are.

In our 61st edition, meet Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman, co-founders of OuterSignal, the customer intelligence, personalization, and execution platform for modern consumer businesses.

Today, most companies know surprisingly little about their customers beyond what they purchased or clicked. Existing “personalization” tools are largely behavioral, tracking opens, purchases, and browsing activity.

They tell brands what customers did, but not who they actually are.

As a result, businesses market to customers like strangers.

High-value relationships go unnoticed. VIP customers remain invisible.

OuterSignal solves this by turning basic customer data into rich customer intelligence.

Using proprietary open-source intelligence technology (OSINT), the platform allows merchants to connect their Shopify store, CRM, or marketing stack and instantly receive rich customer profiles in real time.

A single order can suddenly reveal an executive at a Fortune 500 company, a major creator, a retail buyer, an investor, or a highly influential customer.

This intelligence powers smarter retention, segmentation, customer experience, outreach, and increasingly, autonomous marketing workflows.

And the customer love has been exceptional.

“OuterSignal exceeded all expectations and paid for itself the day we installed it. A buyer at the largest retailer in the world placed an order on our site using her personal email. OuterSignal identified and flagged it and we got a meeting. Highly recommend it to all Shopify merchants — it’s a no brainer.”

–Dan McCormick, Founder of Create

“OuterSignal gave us something we couldn't find anywhere else — precise, actionable clarity about who our customers really are. From uncovering hidden influencers and potential investors to shaping high-impact personas, it transformed how we target, segment, and speak to our audience.”

–Brian Keller, Founder of Rorra

The team behind OuterSignal is just as impressive.

Co-founders Zach Zelner and Noah Friedman bring a rare combination of technical, operational, and commerce expertise.

Zach is a 5x founder who has built, acquired, and invested in businesses generating hundreds of millions in revenue across SaaS, logistics, eCommerce, and marketing.

Noah co-founded Top Shelf Ventures, a prominent consumer venture fund, and also co-founded Uncharted, a global network of high-profile founders and investors.

In a world where every brand is trying to build deeper customer relationships, OuterSignal is helping companies move from generic marketing to truly intelligent personalization.

Want to learn more about OuterSignal? Reply to this email and I’ll connect you with their team.

And see what Zach and Noah have to say in this week’s Q&A 👇

*OuterSignal is a SuperAngel.Fund II portfolio company

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Zach: Market to humans, not orders.

Noah: Market to humans, not orders.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Zach: I’ve spent my career building brands and ecommerce companies, and personalization has always been at the core of how I work. OuterSignal is the platform I always wished I had. We’re ushering in the next era of commerce — and the brands working with us are already living in it. It’s deeply personal to me, and it’s my life’s work.

Noah: I’ve spent years investing in and helping consumer brands scale. The best brands build deeply human connections with their customers. OuterSignal is the tool that unlocks these capabilities and gives brand superpowers. This is the only thing I could possibly see myself doing. Building companies with people that motivate and inspire me is the ultimate dream.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Zach: We’ve already given brands an entirely new way to understand who their customers are. What comes next will make it just as easy to act on that understanding — without the friction and lack of personalization that’s defined marketing for the last decade.

Noah: TRUE persona-based marketing opens up a whole new world of growth, retention, and connection with consumers. Brands are already loving OuterSignal but wait until they see what’s coming next :)

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Zach: Pick an intense curiosity, dedicate your life to it, and work so hard that failure itself would be unreasonable. The founders who win are the ones who couldn’t put it down if they tried.

Noah: Remember that it’s SUPPOSED to be hard... nothing worth doing is easy. Building companies is equal parts insanely difficult and insanely thrilling. Enjoy the ride and when things get hard, lean in even harder.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Zach: Fly airplanes.

Noah: Exercise, golf, surf!

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Zach: South of France. I got engaged there — it forever has my heart.

Noah: Costa Rica. Blows me away every time.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Zach: Work life: Claude Code. Personal life: ForeFlight.

Noah: Work life: Claude Code. Personal life: therapy.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Zach: Cookie Chef.

Noah: Actor :)

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Zach: Obsession.

Noah: Resourcefulness and relentlessness.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

Most founders spend years building valuable companies.

But very few spend enough time thinking about how they own them.

And that can quietly become a multi-million dollar mistake.

In our 60th edition, meet Alessandro Chesser, Edison Salman & Kyle Hanson, co-founders of Dynasty, a modern trust company helping founders maximize Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) tax benefits.

Before starting Dynasty, the founding team spent years at Carta, where they saw firsthand how equity gets created, managed, and ultimately monetized.

After helping scale Carta from $0 to $300M+ ARR, the team had a meaningful outcome.

But when they sold shares, they paid the maximum capital gains tax.

Then they learned something that completely changed their perspective.

An angel investor had exited $40M and paid $0 in taxes, perfectly legally, by using QSBS trust stacking.

That moment sparked a question:

Why were sophisticated investors legally paying far less in taxes than the founders and employees who actually helped build these companies?

The insight was simple:

Many wealthy founders and family offices have long used trust structures to multiply their QSBS exemption and dramatically reduce taxes at exit.

But the strategy was historically locked behind private-client law firms, opaque processes, and expensive engagements.

So they built Dynasty.

Dynasty helps founders, GPs and early employees plan, create, and administer trusts to stack their QSBS exemption, potentially shielding $15M+ in gains, at a fraction of the traditional cost.

The platform productizes the full process:

• Planning
• Legal structuring
• Trust creation
• Compliance
• Administration
• Ongoing support

All designed to make one of the most powerful tax strategies in startup history accessible to founders, employees, and investors.

Dynasty is also the only venture-backed company that operates a professionally licensed trust company, making trust administration significantly simpler and less expensive than the traditional route.

Since launching in July 2025, Dynasty has already served 400+ founders, angel investors, and early employees and created 1,000+ trusts for QSBS stacking.

Revenue has increased rapidly month by month, reflecting strong demand for the product.

This is one of the few decisions that can materially change your outcome…without changing anything about your company.

Learn more or book a call with the team here: getdynasty.com

And see what Alessandro, Edison, and Kyle have to say in this week’s Q&A 👇

*Dynasty is a SuperAngel.Fund II portfolio company

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Alessandro: QSBS stacking for founders/investors.

Edison: QSBS Trust Stacking for Founders.

Kyle: We help founders save taxes.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Alessandro: I was employee #13 at Carta. I didn’t know about QSBS, didn’t exercise in time, and paid maximum taxes when I sold my shares. Meanwhile, a friend of mine (an early investor in Carta) told me he’d set up trusts and paid zero taxes on $30M+ in capital gains. So I, a middle-class employee, paid maximum taxes on a couple million. My wealthy investor friend paid zero on $30M+. That’s when I knew I wanted to fix it. For the founders and investors who can’t afford the traditional way of setting up these trusts, which can run $100K+ in the first year alone.

Edison: I wanted to build simple and modern infrastructure for estate and tax planning.

Kyle: Working at Carta I got to see an antiquated process (paper stock certificates) sucked into a software world. Creating those efficiencies was really exciting and I wanted to find other similar processes that we could convert to software.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Alessandro: Dynasty for GPs. We launched it last week and already have customers plus a strong pipeline. What’s interesting is it’s not just attracting early-career GPs with new funds. It’s also attracting some of the richest, most well-known investors in startups. We didn’t expect that. You’d assume they’d want to work with traditional lawyers, but it turns out they want a tech solution (even from an early-stage startup) far more than a traditional one.

Edison: Automating simple stock transfers through a 5 step workflow so founders don’t need to involve expensive corporate lawyers.

Kyle: Not necessarily a specific feature, but I am really excited to keep driving down the time to trust creation and funding. Reducing onboarding time trust creation is a company wide effort that includes crafting the document template, onboarding and funding. We have taken a process that took months before and condensed it down to as little as a day and I am excited to push the boundaries further.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Alessandro: Plan for your exit as early as possible. Even day one when starting your company. It can save you millions of dollars later.

Edison: Find the fastest way to test your assumptions so you can iterate toward the right answer. Building in the wrong direction is the biggest drain on both time and morale.

Kyle: It’s really hard to manufacture demand and it is much lower friction to go where demand already exists. Having a product that solves a range of problems and then zeroing in on exact use cases within that range can allow you to pivot faster.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Alessandro: Play with my kids, go hiking in the woods, and play basketball!

Edison: Spend time with my family.

Kyle: Right now I am really into 3D printing and have been printing variations of an open-source violin.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Alessandro: Sumba island off the coast of Bali. There were literally wild horses swimming in the ocean next to us. Most beautiful place I’ve ever been to by far.

Edison: I was at the underground parking of our new office building. It’s a smaller building in San Francisco and the parking entry is incredibly tight. I can barely fit my midsize truck through. It reminded me that we can do a lot with very little if we focus on a problem.

Kyle: With twin infants, the grocery store is about the most interesting place I’ve been able to get to recently.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Alessandro: Claude! It makes me significantly more productive. Automating manual tasks, helping me get through my inbox faster, and helps me create decks in a quarter of the time (or less).

Edison: I’m someone who likes to deeply understand problems before attacking them, which means I naturally fall into research rabbit holes. ChatGPT has been one of the biggest unlocks for helping me cut through the noise and get to clarity faster.

Kyle: Right now probably would have to say Codex. At work for obvious reasons and in my personal life I am using it to tinker with CAD and 3D modeling.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Alessandro: A grandfather! Maybe even a great grandfather if I’m lucky.

Edison: I want to grow my own food.

Kyle: I always thought it would be cool to open an American breakfast restaurant in Rio de Janeiro (where my wife is from) and sell French toast, bacon and eggs, etc.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Alessandro: Resiliency. We take a lot of punches so it’s important to keep getting back up no matter what.

Edison: Protect your time and delegate when you can.

Kyle: An ability to take 1000 no’s and stick to your convictions.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

This week we’re featuring one of the fastest-growing wellness brands redefining the creatine category.

In our 59th edition, meet Dan & Sienna McCormick, co-founders of Create Wellness, the first modern creatine brand.

Dan is an experienced consumer operator with a background in finance, operations, and brand building. He previously worked at Away, served as Head of Finance at Parade, and later joined Not Boring as Chief of Staff helping scale one of Substack’s top business newsletters.

Sienna spent six years at Goldman Sachs before co-founding Create.

But Create didn’t start as a market opportunity. It started as a personal frustration.

Dan had been taking creatine for over a decade. He believed in the science but hated the experience. Powders were inconvenient, messy, and difficult to build into a daily routine.

At the same time, Dan and Sienna saw a broader disconnect: creatine is one of the most researched supplements in the world, yet remains misunderstood and culturally pigeonholed as a “bodybuilder” product.

Together, they set out to change that.

The early days weren’t easy.

More than 20 manufacturers told them a true creatine gummy wasn’t possible. After months of R&D and iteration, they found a partner willing to build it from scratch.

That persistence led to a breakthrough.

Create pioneered the first creatine monohydrate gummy, transforming an inconvenient powder into a simple daily habit.

The product is vegan, non-GMO, NSF Certified for Sport®, third-party tested, and built around a science-first brand.

From day one, the brand was intentionally built for both men and women, expanding the category far beyond traditional bodybuilding audiences.

The timing was also critical.

Today, creatine is one of the most researched supplements in the world, yet only ~2% of Americans take it regularly, despite 100M+ Americans participating in strength or fitness routines.

A massive gap and opportunity.

Create has built a loyal and rapidly growing customer base across DTC, Amazon, and retail. Today, the brand is available at Target, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Sprouts & Wegmans, with more to come.

Since launch, Create has emerged as one of the breakout brands helping bring creatine into the mainstream.

A few months ago Create launched Creatine + Electrolytes, expanding beyond core creatine into hydration and performance, two of the largest and most important daily-use categories in wellness.

And recently, the company announced a $20M Series B led by Alliance Consumer Growth, with participation from Unilever Ventures and Impact Capital.

Want to give Create a try? Use code SUPERANGEL25 to get started.

And see what Dan and Sienna have to say in this week’s Q&A 👇

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Dan & Sienna: Leading Creatine Company.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Dan & Sienna: Only 2% of the population was taking creatine when we started Create. We knew that the other 98% of the population could experience the meaningful benefits of creatine if we made it more accessible from a product, brand, and go-to-market perspective. We just love creatine and wanted more people to discover it.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Dan & Sienna: Creatine + Electrolytes. This is our newest product that, as the name says, combines creatine with electrolytes. It contains 5g of creatine monohydrate, a balanced electrolyte blend, and taurine. From a practical perspective, so many of our customers are already mixing this up every morning -- we just made it convenient, delicious, and more affordable. From a science perspective, these ingredients are synergistic. Creatine helps you get more out of electrolytes and electrolytes help you get more out of creatine -- they just go better together.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Dan & Sienna: Pick the right category and make sure you’re able to care about whatever you’re doing within that category more than anyone else in the world for 5+ years. For us, we made a really timely bet on creatine in 2022 -- the category was already decently sized, but was (and is) growing rapidly. And within creatine, we were able to obsess over creatine gummies more than anyone else in the world. We’d like to say that there was not another person in the world obsessing over creatine gummies on a random Sunday night in 2023, but we were.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Dan & Sienna: Sienna and I love to stay active. We just completed our first Hyrox in January, and are doing the upcoming NYC Hyrox in June. We pretty much stick to the basics: fitness, family, friends, work. We also have a 4 year old golden retriever that forces us to spend most of free time in dog parks throughout the city.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Dan & Sienna: We honeymooned in New Zealand and Fiji last year. New Zealand is gorgeous with mountains, and beaches, and greenery, and lots of sheep. Fiji is a great place to completely unplug from the world.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Dan & Sienna: Been really loving Granola. We’ve implemented a policy in our company that every meeting needs to have at least one Granola recording. We’re building a system where all meeting notes are then saved down, piped into Claude, and then searchable for the team.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Dan & Sienna: The World’s Best Family Members.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Dan & Sienna: The ability to really care about things that we find extremely important, even when everyone else around us finds that thing silly.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

Insurance is one of the largest line items for many businesses, yet most founders only realize what their policy doesn’t cover when something goes wrong.

In our 58th edition, we are featuring JD Ross and Max Brenner, co-founders of With Coverage, an AI-enabled risk management and insurance platform helping businesses save money, improve coverage and proactively manage risk.

JD is a repeat founder who previously co-founded Opendoor, the real estate technology company that went public in 2021.

Max was part of the founding team at Compound, a technology-driven wealth management platform that now manages $1B+ in assets.

Today, most companies still rely on traditional insurance brokers and manage policies through emails, PDFs, and outdated systems.

As a result, many businesses:

• overpay for insurance
• have gaps in coverage
• lack visibility into their policies
• and don’t have a dedicated risk management team

Enter With Coverage.

Instead of operating like a traditional broker, With Coverage combines an expert advisory team with modern software and AI to help companies better understand, optimize, and manage risk.

The platform centralizes policies, claims, certificates, and compliance in one place while proactively monitoring a company’s operations to ensure the right coverage at the right time.

Unlike traditional brokers who are compensated through commissions, With Coverage operates on a flat-fee model, creating better alignment with customers and helping businesses save money while improving coverage.

Since launching in 2023, With Coverage has grown to support 700+ customers, including GoPuff, Bombas, Caraway, Windmill, Popsmith, Lalo, Hungryroot, Blank Street, Salt & Straw, Eight Sleep, and Chomps.

The company also recently announced a $42M Series B led by Sequoia, Khosla Ventures & Crystal Venture Partners, further validating its vision to modernize commercial insurance and risk management.

Want a complimentary insurance audit? Reply to this email and I’ll connect you with their team. It’s free, won’t notify your existing broker, and could uncover meaningful savings or gaps in coverage.

See what JD and Max have to say in this week’s Founder Q&A 👇

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

JD: Replace your crappy insurance broker.

Max: Modern Risk Management Solution.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

JD: Every year I had to handle insurance at Opendoor, and it sucked so much that I knew we could build an amazing business by just being better.

Max: Attack a backwards and misaligned insurance industry where businesses consistently get overcharged, are mis-covered, and left with a poor and opaque experience. Mission is to provide a solution that actually puts businesses first, delivers substantial value, and leads with transparency.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

JD: I love AI for how it makes our risk management offering superhuman, not just automation for cost savings.

Max: Claims Operating System. We’ve recruited top insurance attorneys to own handling claims for our clients, while pairing them with a claims management platform to identify repetitive problems and implement proactive solutions to better protect businesses.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

JD: Everything is now open for competition in a way it hasn’t been in 10 years. Lean in hard to what’s possible now that wasn’t possible last year, and then extrapolate that further into the future.

Max: Obsess over the actual value you can deliver your end customer. People are exceptionally busy and your product must fundamentally be worth their time.

What do you love to do in your free time?

JD: I live in Austin, Texas now, which is basically the “hosting other people” capital of the world. Come visit!

Max: Go for runs!

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

JD: The OB/GYN office, nothing like seeing your baby growing.

Max: Japan. The cultural and societal contrasts are incredible and it truly feels like a different world.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

JD: Codex and Claude -- everything else would be lying for cool points.

Max: Whispr - Voice to text tool.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

JD: A great father and husband, a leader for the next generation, a good friend to many, and someone who leaves things better than I found them, over and over, ad infinitum.

Max: A great dad and husband? Ha! Work wise though I just love building things that make people happy.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

JD: Successful founders know why they’re doing it. I think it’s incredibly important. Some people do it for money, for power, for legacy, or for love of the game. But if you don’t know why you’re doing it, it’s very easy to burn out. Everything takes a lot longer than you think it’s going to take, but it also happens much faster than you think it’s going to happen. “The days are long but the decades are short.”

Max: Relentlessness, while maintaining your kindness. People want to work with people they get along with, but you simply must be relentless in every part of the business.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

Hotels throw out millions of half-used toilet paper rolls every year.

In our 57th edition, we are featuring Ludo Siouffi and Greg Hegger, co-founders of Fox Fold, a company building sustainable, refillable tissue solutions for hotels.

The idea for Fox Fold came from a simple observation: hotel bathrooms are incredibly wasteful, yet the products used in them haven’t meaningfully evolved in decades. Early on, the founders partnered with Box Clever, the industrial design firm behind category-defining brands like Caraway and Away, to reimagine the experience from the ground up.

Hotels discard millions of partially used rolls and tissue boxes each year, creating enormous waste and unnecessary costs.

Fox Fold is changing that.

The company has built the world’s first refillable tissue system for hotel guest rooms, allowing hotels to refill instead of throw products away. The result is a better guest experience, improved operations, and meaningful cost savings.

Hotels can save 30% to 50% on costs while upgrading both design and sustainability.

Within its first two years, Fox Fold has deployed more than 40,000 dispensers and is on pace to double that footprint by year-end. The company is already working with many of the hospitality industry’s leading brands, including Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Fairmont, Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton, and Accor.

Last year, Fox Fold was featured in Forbes, highlighting how its bamboo-based refillable system is helping operators reduce waste, lower costs, and modernize the hotel guest experience.

Last October, the company announced an oversubscribed $5M Series A led by Alex Cabañas of Astound Ventures, known for his leadership roles with Benchmark and Pyramid Global Hospitality, which operates more than 230 hotels worldwide.

As the team puts it, they are building the “SaaS of toilet paper.”

See what Ludo and Greg have to say in this week’s Founder Friday Q&A 👇

Founder Q&A

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Ludo: Sustainable tissue solutions for hotels.

Greg: Patented tissue solution for hotels.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Ludo: Tourism is fun and amazing, but also incredibly wasteful as an industry. No fault of their own, innovation in the space is slow. We look to change that starting with facial tissues and toilet paper, reinventing what has been for 100+ years with a new sustainable, refillable option. Better for the the environment and your bottom line, while adding to the guest experience.

Greg: Well no one grows up dreaming of being a tissue salesman! Throughout my career, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur with a focus on real tangible things. On improving the real-life things we interact with every day. We happened to noticed a problem with a super simple solution: Hotels buy far more tissue than they need. That’s because toilet paper rolls and facial tissue boxes are tossed before they’re finished. We developed a refillable system that solves this - helping hotels save money and waste. Seems crazy, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed bringing the “disruptor” mentality to something as boring and unsexy as tissue paper. And frankly I think there are many other startup ideas that can drive change and create profit in boring categories.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Ludo: We launched with a refillable toilet paper and facial tissue dispenser, saving hotels 20-40% versus traditional rolls and cardboard boxes. What if we took it further and now made those solutions profit centers? #mindblowing

In short, we’re trialing the concept of a small sticker on our facial tissue dispensers what would allow guests to buy our dispensers at a discount with a hotel promo code. Every purchase would be revenue shared to the hotels.

With 200+ people going through a hotel room each year, all we need is 1% of them to make a purchase online for that hotel to then pay off the tissues in that dispenser every year.

Greg: Two things: 1) we continue to improve our packaging to make it as efficient as possible to transport and store our product. When you think of how much space tissue takes in a hotel’s small storage place - these improvements are a material benefit. 2) We’re building a front loading toilet paper dispenser to compliment our existing unit. This will allow hotels with smaller toilet spaces to benefit from our refillable solution.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Ludo: Just start. Don’t sit there in analysis paralysis mode trying to make it perfect.

Greg: You don’t need to be a tech wizard. You don’t need to create the next Uber, Airbnb or AI solution. You can launch and grow a business by improving an everyday product or function in boring categories. The key is making sure you’re adding true value to a person or company.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Ludo: Spend time with my wife and 2 little ones.

Greg: My kids. We launched Fox Fold 3 years ago when my kids were 1 and 2 - not ideal TBH. But it completely reshaped my priorities. I dedicate the overwhelming majority of my time to family and work right now. Because I work from home and set my own schedule, I actually spend more time with my kids than one would think, and I’m grateful for that.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Ludo: This new career in hospitality has taken me to some incredible places... with that being said, the most recent interesting place for me was the back of house of the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess - the immensity and perfect coordination of everyone involved in the background is unbelievable.

Greg: Casa Di Campo Dominican Republic. It may not be the most interesting place ever, but it was the first real vacation my wife, kids and I took in the past 5 years. The location, the house, the beach, the food - it was exactly what we needed.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Ludo: I use a lot of Fathom.ai for all my meetings and email responses. It’s saved me countless hours!

Greg: LinkedIn. I can’t express how much of our success has been a result of “building out loud” on LinkedIn. We share our struggles, our wins, our new customers... this seems to resonate with people and connects us with prospects.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Ludo: I love building and have 100x more ideas - especially within bathrooms. Would love to have a platform and partners to make those ideas into a reality.

Greg: I want to encourage youth to think differently about their careers, beyond your standard corporate path. I don’t think we do enough as a society to build the skillset required to be an entrepreneur. That I and I’m obsessed with music trivia, not sure how to make money there though. Perhaps a professor of music history in a big cardigan at a stuffy university?

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Ludo: The ability to keep pushing forward.

Greg: The ability to think clearly under mounting pressure and obstacles. The ability to stay positive and solution oriented in the many storms that arise.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

This week we’re featuring a company rethinking how renters qualify for housing, while helping landlords drive higher occupancy and income.

In our 56th edition, meet Zach Schofel & Jacob Schofel, co-founders of Cosign, a PropTech platform modernizing tenant qualification for both renters and property owners.

Zach comes from a family real estate business, Eastman Residential, and holds a Master’s in Real Estate from NYU and a B.S. in Information Technology from Syracuse University.

Jacob previously worked as an engineering lead at one of the largest real estate software platforms in the U.S., specializing in tenant screening and compliance. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Together, the brothers bring deep real estate operating experience and technical expertise to the rental market.

Cosign’s mission is to expand housing access for renters while improving outcomes for landlords.

In the U.S. rental market, roughly 40% of renters face barriers qualifying for housing due to credit history, income requirements, or lack of rental history.

At the same time, landlords face persistent challenges identifying qualified renters that can impact occupancy and financial performance.

Cosign is bridging that gap.

The platform acts as a rental guarantor, similar to a parent co-signer, becoming legally responsible for rent obligations if a tenant defaults.

Approved renters pay a one-time fee, while landlords receive a guarantee that enables them to confidently approve applicants who may not meet traditional qualification standards.

Since launching in September 2024, Cosign has scaled rapidly, partnering with 250+ property management groups across the country and becoming accessible across hundreds of thousands of units.

In just over a year, Cosign has become one of the fastest-growing companies in PropTech and has expanded its team to more than 25 employees.

As housing affordability challenges continue to rise, Cosign is building what could become critical infrastructure for the future of rental housing.

See what Zach and Jacob have to say in this week’s Founder Friday Q&A 👇

Founder Q&A

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Zach & Jacob: Boost occupancy + expanding housing options.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Zach: I built Cosign after spending years acquiring and operating 3,000+ apartments across the U.S., where I saw firsthand that nearly 40% of renters were being denied from their choice apartment because of a broken system. It felt like my experience as a landlord and my love for tech were the perfect combination to address the issue.

Jacob: I wasn’t actively looking to leave my role. But between my time working on tenant screening and Zach’s experience as a landlord, we’d identified a problem worth solving. Cosign was an exciting challenge that aligned with my technical background and what I find interesting, and the bonus of building it with family made it hard to pass up.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Zach & Jacob: Top secret!! One thing we always look forward to is continuing to invest in our systems to evaluate all renters and give as many renters as possible access to homes.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Zach: Don’t work with your brother :) Just kidding! Quick feedback loops — quick feedback loops across all aspects of the business and with customers. It allows you to have almost unlimited iterations as you find product market fit and continually iterate toward success.

Jacob: Answering this from an engineering lens: fight the urge to overengineer. Fast feedback loops are everything at an early stage, and getting there means intentionally taking on tech debt you won’t always have the resources to pay back. You have to be more ruthless about what’s actually worth building (and what’s worth building well) the first time.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Zach: I love to travel and explore the world! My goal is to visit every country and spend my Julys working from Tel Aviv. Also a big fan of sci-fi.

Jacob: Travel and anything outdoors. I love hiking, and recently picked up cycling too. Basically any excuse to be outside.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Zach: Panama! We did a company offsite there. Such a beautiful country — we went with our entire team two hours outside the city to visit an indigenous village with no access to the outside world. Really special seeing how they live, and it makes you appreciate the small things in life. Over 15% of Panama is indigenous!!

Jacob: Outside our team offsite to Panama, Crater Lake in Oregon was a recent highlight. The deep blue color is wild in person, not really something a camera can capture. You’re climbing up and then out of nowhere this massive lake just opens up in front of you.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Zach: Superhuman! I live in my email all day and it allows me to work so much faster. Also Slack — we automate a lot of our company through Slack, and it allows us to keep the important stuff in email. Personal is Twitter — I’m addicted.

Jacob: Work: Claude Code. As an engineer it’s changed how I build day to day, and it’s added a ton of context to the planning and management side too. Personal: Messenger, controversially. I know most people don’t love it, but I’m a fan.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Zach: A great dad/husband and world traveler.

Jacob: Someone who’s traveled and explored as much of the world as possible?

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Zach: What is a no and what is failure? Never heard of it. If you iterate quickly enough, you have unlimited tries — and failure becomes impossible.

Jacob: I don’t think there’s one answer. It depends on the business, your team, your role, and what stage you’re at. If I had to name something that matters regardless, it’d be communication, internally and with customers.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

This week we’re featuring a company modernizing one of retail’s biggest blind spots: what actually happens once products hit the shelf.

In our 55th edition, meet David Roger, Michael Rostowsky, Bobby Shomrony, and Mike Walters, co-founders of Hetal Retail, an AI-powered platform helping brands understand and optimize what’s happening on shelf.

The Hetal team previously worked together at Felix Gray, a venture-backed consumer brand they scaled into major retail channels like Target, CVS, and Best Buy before selling the company in 2023.

Through that experience, they saw firsthand how little visibility brands have once products hit the shelf.

I first met David while he was building Felix Gray and was fortunate to write the first check into Hetal.

While over 80% of purchases still happen in retail, 25% of sales are lost due to poor execution, and 20–40% of displays are set up incorrectly.

Hetal helps brands understand what’s happening on shelf and turns that visibility into better execution, merchandising, and sell-through.

Legacy solutions are expensive, manual, and slow. Hetal flips that model.

Using a network of everyday shoppers (“Hetalites”) and proprietary computer vision AI, Hetal:

• Captures shelf-level data across stores

• Identifies out-of-stocks, pricing errors, product orientation, number of facings, shelf placement, and merchandising compliance

• Connects execution directly to sales outcomes

Brands use Hetal to improve availability, win shelf space, and deploy merchandising spend more efficiently.

In short, Hetal is building a “Google Analytics for retail shelves.”

In just six months, Hetal surpassed 100 customers and now works with leading brands, including: Caraway, Cleancult, Freestyle, Lalo, Windmill, Grüns, Lemme, Oats Overnight, David Protein, Starface, and Everyday Dose.

Hetal is already helping brands audit major retailers including Target, Walmart, Sprouts, and Whole Foods, and will be expanding into conventional grocery including Kroger, HEB, and Publix starting Q2 2026.

As digital channels become more competitive, physical retail is becoming more important—and complex. Hetal is building the infrastructure layer that makes retail shelves measurable.

Reply to this email if you or anyone you know might be interested in speaking with the Hetal team!

And see what David, Michael, Bobby, and Mike have to say in this week’s Q&A 👇

Founder Q&A

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

David: Affordable/powerful shelf analytics/actionability.

Michael: Retail analytics and workflows.

Bobby: Auditing. Trends. Insights. Merchandising. Intelligence.

Mike: Continuous retail shelf data.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

David: Having experienced growing in retail firsthand at Felix Gray, we realized that the current system is broken. The data is expensive and it’s unwieldy. Auditing and correction shouldn’t be part of the same merchandising visit, it’s inherently what makes understanding the shelf so expensive. Computer Vision AI can be used to mine the data in the photos to actually generate useful data/insights. And, a platform needs to be designed to action the information. Operators are too busy to use another tool to help them figure out what to do. The best companies figure it out on your behalf.

Michael: Brands had no affordable way to understand what was actually happening on the shelf, a problem that directly impacted our last business. We wanted to build the solution.

Bobby: Nobody actually knew what was happening on the shelf in CPG. The data existed in spreadsheets and disparate data sources — never in real time, never affordably. That gap felt both obvious and fixable. So we fixed it.

Mike: Working with my other founders on a fun and exciting project.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

David: Our new merchandising coordination (Dispatch) is pretty amazing. We’re helping brands save 70-90% of their merchandising budgets, correct issues faster (2 week lead time), and no longer have to handle the time consuming coordination + confirmation. We hone in on what stores are worth visiting by cross referencing our audits with brand provided criteria and budget. Then we push that work out to approved merchandising firms, but we batch jobs across our customer set to get better pricing. We’ll handle all the coordination and grade the after-photos to grade issue resolution.

Michael: Improved merchandising coordination, it closes the loop from diagnosis to action. Brands can see exactly which stores need attention and dispatch help automatically.

Bobby: Campaign-based merchandising coordination. We’re building the ability to support recurring, reactive, and proactive merchandising workflows — giving brands a complete, closed-loop system for managing shelf execution from diagnosis all the way through resolution. No more one-off store visits or reactive firefighting. Just a structured, intelligent approach to getting and keeping — your shelf right.

Mike: AI across the board and its ability to give insights that were previously hidden.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

David: It’s a three legged race. Everyone at the team needs to work towards the same goal and put the team’s goals above their own priorities.

Michael: Your plan will change a hundred times. Be okay with that and stay close to your customers.

Bobby: Talk to your customers obsessively — before you build, while you build, after you build. Every major Hetal decision came from standing in actual store aisles, not a whiteboard. Reality always beats assumptions.

Mike: Perfect is the enemy of good. Get a good MVP and ship.

What do you love to do in your free time?

David: Outside of family/friends, anything that gets me into a flow state and clears my head. Skiing, biking, cooking, swimming all do this for me.

Michael: Tennis, trying new restaurants, reading when I can.

Bobby: Get outside — playing basketball, exploring new places and having fun with my kids.

Mike: Video Games and Family Time.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

David: Greenland for a backcountry ski trip.

Michael: The Magic Castle in LA, a private club for magicians. Hard to explain, worth experiencing.

Bobby: Disney World with my kids. Hundreds of thousands of people, all completely bought into the same experience — it’s a wild thing to witness. As a founder, you can’t help but marvel at the brand machine they’ve built. The operational scale, the emotional buy-in, the consistency across every touchpoint. Nobody executes an experience quite like Disney, everyone drinking the same Kool-Aid.

Mike: Sesame Place American Dream - Getting to see my daughter enjoy seeing Elmo in person.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

David: Evernote. It’s old, there are probably better solutions, but without my lists, I’m lost.

Michael: Work: Claude, has enabled so much. Personal: Spotify, always have a podcast going.

Bobby: Asana. It’s where my thinking lives and keeps the chaos organized enough to move fast.

Mike: Claude. Has changed how my development works and allows me to prototype in hours what took days.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

David: Would rather always be a kid, but you know, a responsible one. Life is too short: stay curious and have fun.

Michael: New York Knicks Season Ticket Holder.

Bobby: A great mentor and father to my children. The people who gave me honest, unfiltered feedback early on shaped everything. I want to be that person for the next wave of founders.

Mike: Video Game Designer.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

David: Depends on the role. For me, selling a vision, prioritizing the steps to get there, and communicating that effectively to keep everyone working together.

Michael: Resilience.

Bobby: Resilience with self-awareness. The best founders absorb hard feedback, adapt fast, and keep going — without losing sight of why they started.

Mike: The ability to see problems in a different light or attack them from unseen angles.

Know a founder building something exceptional?

Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

One of my favorite parts of this job is meeting incredible founders early, often before the rest of the world catches on.

Years ago I started Founder Friday where I showcase these entrepreneurs with my network.

I’m excited to bring the series back.

In our 54th edition, we are featuring Russ Wallace and Mike Constantiner, co-founders of Freestyle, a high-performance babycare brand redefining diapers and wipes for modern families 👶.

Russ and Mike bring deep experience across consumer brands and startups. Mike previously co-founded Cameo, the viral video platform that reached the App Store Top 10 before later being acquired by Vimeo, while Russ helped scale Hello Bello past a $100M run rate as Head of Business Development.

While legacy brands like Pampers and Huggies dominate the market, many parents have begun seeking cleaner ingredients, better materials, and higher-performance products for their babies.

So they built Freestyle.

Freestyle’s flagship diapers feature patent-pending 7-layer absorbency technology, are Total Chlorine Free, and EWG Verified®.

Since launching online in 2022, Freestyle has grown rapidly and expanded into major retailers including Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods, and is also available on Amazon and Freestyle.world.

The brand has also built an impressive marketing engine powered by 1,000+ creators and influencers, powering it to become one of the fastest players in the category, with ~400% year-over-year growth.

SuperAngel was proud to first back Freestyle in 2021 and continue throughout their scale up stages, including in their most recent Series A round.

If you or someone you know is currently in the diaper buying phase, feel free to use or share promo code SuperAngel20.

And see what Russ and Mike have to say in this week’s Founder Friday Q&A 👇

Founder Q&A

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Russ: High performance diapers and wipes.

Mike: Premium family essentials.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Russ: Hello Bello had been an eye-opening experience into the world of diapers and wipes, and it felt like even though the business was doing really well (at the time), they were leaving a lot on the table in terms of content around modern parenting. What I saw in the world as a parent was young people genuinely trying to rethink the entire act of building a family -- what it meant for them and their kids, how to fix perceived misses in their own upbringing, even where to live when raising a family. So when Mike and I found that we could talk about these generational differences for hours at a time, it felt like we uniquely had the kind of passion, insights, and experience that could support building a new brand for the category.

Mike: When I became a dad, I was genuinely disappointed by the options in the category. Most were dated, underperforming, or overpriced — usually some mix of the three. Freestyle started as our answer to that.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Russ: For sure our SkinShield diaper, which is low key the best diaper that has ever been made (unbiased opinion). Lab results confirm it, customers shout it out on socials, and the look on people’s faces when they actually test in person is shocking and deeply satisfying. And the fact that you don’t need a trust fund to have access to an exceptional diaper makes me very proud of the hard work we put into engineering it.

Mike: Our new diaper, SkinShield, is really innovative. We designed a completely novel way it absorbs and makes it the top performing diaper we’ve ever tested.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Russ: I’ve tried many times to build a venture-backed startup, and this is the first one that found the path to escape velocity. The difference that stands out the most to me is that (i) I got lucky in finding a great partner who balanced out the gaps in my capabilities and many of my bad instincts, and (ii) I finally learned to ignore the vanity metrics -- investment rounds, users, visits, reviews, social media metrics -- and get laser focused on revenue and the path to profit. At the end of the day, a business is just a cash-generating machine; you can convince yourself that it’s about something else, that yours is different, but it won’t survive unless it becomes that machine. So my advice is try to separate out the things that the company does for you -- the vanity stuff -- and learn to care deeply about the things the company does that generate (or that can generate in the near future) profits. It’s harder than it sounds, and for me, it was the unlock to building something that has a chance to succeed.

Mike: Lack of focus is the number one thing that kill startups. Have a clear goal of where you want to get to, and be very mindful of the daily steps it will take to get there. Nothing happens overnight.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Russ: Exploring anything -- an academic field or a place in the world -- with my family. I thrive on constant movement and new things.

Mike: Spend time with my family and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Russ: By far, it’s China. I had so many preconceived notions about our first visit to China to see our suppliers, and the experience blew me away. It’s a genuinely unique and authentic culture and place, and as a visitor and a business partner my experiences there have far exceeded my expectations.

Mike: China. It’s like jumping forward 10-20 years into the future in certain ways. Super cool to see what’s going on there first hand. Also, easily the best food in the world.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Russ: Using OpenClaw to help me organize my schedule and tasks has been surprisingly effective. It’s not everything the hype promises it will be, but I’m more productive with it than without it.

Mike: Work: As lame as it sounds, Slack. We’re a fully remote team, so it’s the hub of communication internally. Personal: Skylight. Keeps our family’s schedules easily accessible for both us parents and the kids.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Russ: Jimmy Buffett 2.0. That guy cracked the code.

Mike: Healthy and my kids to still want to hang out with me lol.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Russ: Persistence and a lack of shame.

Mike: Resilience.

Know a founder building something exceptional?
Reply to this email — I’m always looking to meet great entrepreneurs.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech, & Future of Work 😇.

Fund II is backed by the AngelList Systematic Fund-of-Funds (anchored by Sequoia Capital and Squarepoint, a $100B asset manager). Based on their data, SuperAngel ranks in the top 1% on markups over baseline.

👉 Learn more about Fund II

Why am I receiving this email?

You’re receiving this because you’re part of the SuperAngel Network — a friend, founder, co-investor, or connection who has expressed interest in receiving updates.

If this isn’t relevant, you can unsubscribe below.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work. So far, we have invested over $20m into 100+ companies. Apply to invest with us by clicking here.

In our 53rd edition we are featuring Andrei Negrau and Lisa Popovici, co-founders of Siena, an empathetic and autonomous customer service platform designed for commerce✨.

Andrei and Lisa are serial entrepreneurs with a passion for eCommerce and AI. While these Romanian-born founders have spent nearly all of their professional lives building startups in this space, it wasn’t until they surveyed hundreds of brand owners in 2022 that they discovered a massively growing pain point destined to be solved: As AI became more ubiquitous, merchants were eager to implement it into their customer service workflows. However, nearly all were extremely hesitant of doing so at the risk of jeopardizing their authentic voice and turning off customers.

Given their backgrounds, Andrei as a technical engineer at the forefront of the eCommerce & AI revolution, and Lisa as a growth marketer and sales leader, the two realized they were uniquely qualified to create the solution. One that would provide both an excellent customer experience and maintain a brand’s distinct identity.

Enter Siena, the world’s first autonomous AI Agent that can fully resolve customer service interactions with no human in the loop. Unlike chatbots and other similar options before it, Siena allows brands to automate up to 90% of conversations across all channels such as email, SMS, live chat, social media DMs and comments with zero backlogs and 24/7 coverage. Plus it can do it in 100+ languages and entirely in each individual brand’s voice. By combining the best of human empathy and intelligent automation, Siena transforms how brands engage with customers, turning lengthy interactions into low-cost opportunities to acquire, up-sell and retain.

And just as you would expect, Siena integrates seamlessly with dozens of partners like Shopify, Gorgias, Zendesk, Kustomer and more, removing countless hours of administrative tasks. As a result of its automation, Siena empowers brands to upskill their talent to focus on more strategic growth and innovation initiatives.

Given how transformative Siena is, it is no surprise that they have seen explosive growth in the past two years, capturing the attention of leading brands such as: Simple Modern, Coterie, Bandit, Madhappy, Brooklinen, Eight Sleep, and MUD\WTR to name a few of their customers.

As AI adoption continues, my bet is that Siena will remain at the forefront.

You can book a demo to learn more about their offering and see what Andrei and Lisa have to say in this week’s Q&A 👇.

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Andrei: Siena is the First Autonomous CX Agent.

Lisa: The Empathic AI Agent for CX.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Andrei: I saw how broken customer service was becoming. Companies were choosing between two bad options: cheap bots that frustrated everyone, or throwing more humans at the problem. Neither worked. The interesting thing wasn't that AI could handle customer service - it was that AI could actually make it better than human-only service. Not just faster or cheaper, but genuinely better. More consistent. More empathetic. Available instantly at 2am on a Friday. But it had to be done right. Not another chatbot pretending to be human. Something that could actually understand what customers need and solve their problems in a way that builds a relationship over time, doesn't just deflect a ticket. That's what got me excited - building an AI that makes both customers and service teams think 'finally’, someone got this right.

Lisa: I wanted to create something that truly makes a difference in people's lives. The best part is we impact both worlds: the business and the end shopper. When we started Siena, it was about solving a real pain point we experienced firsthand—scaling customer experience without losing the human touch. I’m passionate about building things, and after years of trial and error in eCommerce, I realized that helping brands connect with their customers in a more meaningful way and be able to do it at scale is what drives me. I’ve always been drawn to challenges that combine empathy with innovation, and Siena was born from that motivation.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Andrei: I'm excited about our AI Reasoning architecture. Here's what's wrong with most AI customer service AI agents: It's a black box of hope and prayer. You input a customer problem, cross your fingers, and pray the AI doesn't hallucinate. That's insane for enterprise CX. At Siena, we've built something radically different. Siena shows its work - every decision, every calculation, every policy interpretation is visible and traceable. If your AI agent can't explain exactly why it offered a specific refund or how it interpreted your return policy, you don't really have an enterprise solution - you have an expensive guess machine. We built reasoning into our core architecture because that's the only way AI should operate in business-critical environments. Everything else is just playing pretend with customer trust.

Lisa: I’m most excited about the reasoning feature we recently launched. It’s a breakthrough in making AI explainable and trustworthy for enterprise operations. Traditionally, AI has been a black box—you’d get an answer but have no idea how or why it arrived at that decision. With Siena reasoning, every step of the AI's process is visible and documented. it’s designed to show its work, explaining which policies it applied, what trade-offs were made, and even why certain decisions might need human input. This transparency transforms how businesses use AI, giving them confidence to scale it across their most critical customer interactions. It’s a feature that not only enhances performance but builds trust.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Andrei: Counterintuitive truth about starting a business today: Your biggest advantage is staying small and focused longer than anyone else is willing to. Pick a vertical so specific it almost feels like a mistake. Not 'SMB software' specific. Think 'AI scheduling software for independent tattoo artists' specific. When you focus on solving one precise problem for a small group, you start seeing things nobody else can see. Your product doesn't just work - it feels inevitable for that segment. Your early customers become evangelists because you understand their world better than they do. The magic happens when you resist the urge to expand too quickly. You'll want to serve different customers, add more features, tackle adjacent markets - this is where most founders slip. They mistake early success in one vertical as a signal to expand horizontally. Don't. Instead, go deeper. When adjacent markets start pulling you in - not when you push your way in - that's when you expand. This isn't just patience. It's strategic advantage.

Lisa: Just start, you'll figure it out along the way.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Andrei: I like to get into a flow state - whether that's running, riding my motorcycle, or going Othership Manhattan (love that place). Some of my best ideas for Siena surface when I'm moving. Not when I'm staring at a screen trying to force them. I'm always tinkering with something. Since starting Siena it's mostly AI models - can't help myself. After enough interactions with them, you start noticing patterns and behaviors that tell you exactly how they think. I find that fascinating.

Lisa: Workout, run, spend time with my Cavalier King Charles - Jazz, meet friends, visit museums, go on walks!

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Andrei: Argentina. I spent a few weeks in Buenos Aires. The city's story is fascinating - 40,000 people in 1800 grew to 1.3 million by 1910, largely from Italian immigration. You can still feel that influence today. Walking through Buenos Aires, you realize pretty quickly why it's called the Paris of South America. And then there's the buses - you have to see them to understand what I mean. It's one of those city quirks that's impossible to explain.

Lisa: Paris is my favorite city after New York City. It's my second home. When I'm in Paris I feel like I'm living in the book I'm writing at the same time, helps me slow down, have different perspectives on life, and immerse myself in the art, history and beauty of the city. It's always been interesting to see how people live life there and what they value most: friendships, having a good time and enjoying the small things.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Andrei: Apple Notes. I know it sounds boring - there are a thousand note apps with fancier features. But it's fast, syncs everywhere, and search is instant. I dump everything in there - work ideas, personal stuff, random thoughts.

Lisa: Perplexity - my new search engine great for digging into my curiosities and being able to rely on the answers and sources I'm getting as results.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Andrei: I want to look back and know I gave it everything.

Lisa: A lot of things! dancer, actress, wedding planner! movies always inspired me, I'm a big cinephile.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Andrei: Being naïve enough to believe you can do it, yet curious enough to close your gaps before doubts catch up. Also Grit + perseverance.

Lisa: Hard to pick one. I believe one of the most important skills for a successful founder is adaptability. Things rarely go as planned, and being able to pivot, learn quickly, and make decisions in the face of uncertainty is critical. It’s not just about resilience—it’s about staying curious, open to feedback, and willing to challenge your own assumptions. Adaptability allows you to navigate setbacks, seize opportunities, and keep growing alongside your business.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. The syndicate allows members to learn about select investments that we make and participate alongside us or pass at their discretion. There is no upfront commitment required. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. The fund is our primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company that SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early-stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

Want to Pitch us?

• Please fill out the form here and we will review your submission. Thank you in advance for taking time to share your opportunity!

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work. So far, we have invested over $20m into 100+ companies. Apply to invest with us by clicking here.

In our 52nd edition we are featuring Brian Keller, Charlie Carlisle & Jordi Hays, co-founders of Rorra, a water filtration company dedicated to solving the tap water crisis in America 💧.

A few years ago, Brian, Charlie & Jordi all became fascinated with water quality for different reasons. For Brian and Jordi, they had become new dads and found their children, Ro and Rora, separately suffering from eczema. As it turns out, it was a direct result of the harmful substances in their water. Being the serial entrepreneurs that they are, they set out to build better solutions to address the problem of poor water quality.

After several years of research and development, product testing and dozens of painstaking design iterations, Rorra finally launched yesterday 🎉🚀!

Rorra is developing a suite of beautiful water filtration products that use best-in-class technology to protect families wherever they use or consume water.

Unfortunately, tap water contamination is one of the biggest issues facing Americans today. This is a direct result of deteriorating infrastructure, poor regulation and inadequate treatment at water plants. The water piped into our homes can be a filthy cocktail of heavy metals like lead, PFAS (AKA “forever chemicals”), microplastics, SSRIs, bacteria, chlorine, and hundreds of carcinogens known to cause lasting health problems. The water we shower in, bathe our children in, wash our dishes in, and use in our everyday lives is more harmful to long-term health than it ever has been.

For these reasons, Rorra’s mission is as important as any company that I have ever invested in. They are committed to reducing exposure to these harmful contaminants to give consumers peace of mind and to live healthier lives.

And while the company plans to launch plenty of product expansions over time, they are starting with a 2.5 Gallon Countertop System that utilizes a proprietary Enfinity™ Filter to significantly reduce harmful contaminants. It is made from Stainless Steel instead of cheaper and more harmful plastic materials designed for high performance, durability and ease-of-use. The Countertop System also delivers clean drinking water without the need for a plug-in power source and can be used anywhere in the world. And better yet, it is available at an affordable price with a filter subscription to guarantee customers continuously clean water.

Prior to Rorra, Brian and Charlie worked together for nearly a decade at another mission-driven consumer product company called Love Your Melon, which Brian co-founded in 2012 in an entrepreneurship class as a student at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Over 10+ years, Love Your Melon reached extraordinary success before getting acquired in 2021. More importantly, the brand had a similarly inspiring mission: to improve the lives of children and their families battling pediatric cancer. By the time they exited the business, Love Your Melon had donated nearly $10m and 250,000 products to the fight against pediatric cancer!

In deciding on their next adventure, all three partners sought an opportunity where they could create an equally large and everlasting lasting societal impact. Enter Rorra.

With the largest companies in the space created decades ago and using technology and designs that are also decades old, Rorra believes there is an opportunity for a new brand to modernize the industry. The company is focused on transparency, working with the best labs and certification bodies in the world, such as the NSF, to test their products and provide data to consumers that many other water filtration brands obfuscate or omit entirely.

To advance their mission, the company plans to sell its products omnichannel to optimize for mass distribution, wide scale accessibility and at a reasonable and more compelling price point for all.

Together, Brian, Charlie and Jordi collectively bring a vast set of skills across product, operations, and financial expertise rarely found all together. These hard skills are only matched by their soft skills: resiliency, grit and resourcefulness, that I believe are needed to become a true outlier success.

Click this link to order your Rorra system and get your drink on!

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Brian: The water you can trust.

Charlie: Cleaner water for healthier lives.

Jordi: Beautiful water filters.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Brian: I had a daughter, Aurora, about two years ago. She suffered from eczema with an unknown cause shortly following her birth. My son, about two years older, had it as well and I realized it wasn't a one off issue. The doctors told us to bathe her every day and gave us steroid cream to apply to the hot spots. The more I bathed her, the worse it got. I wanted to understand the source instead of applying a Band-Aid fix. I got a filtered showerhead and after bathing her in filtered water for about 2 days, her eczema completely subsided. This lead me to dig further into what was in our water and how it affects our overall health. We looked into the solutions in the market and realized there weren’t great options. We realized that water quality was one of the largest issues facing Americans today and we set out to create a solution - Rorra.

Charlie: I live in Denver, we've got a widely publicized lead problem in our area (The city literally takes out billboards about not using tap water for baby formula, etc). I've been in and out of about six different filtration solutions over the last decade. Implementing a lot of those learnings and my own experience as a user was extremely useful in developing our requirements set for our first product and those to come to make sure they work reliably, are highly effective at reducing harmful contaminants, and ultimately create a user experience that will lead to brand loyalty and preventing product use attrition.

Jordi: Wanting clean water for our families.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Brian: The Countertop System. It's a huge step forward in reducing our exposure to the harmful contaminants we are drinking every day and it truly delivers water that is not only better for us, but is done without cutting corners. We invested a significant amount of time, money, and engineering into building a product that can deliver better performance and a user experience that is simple to use and fits seamlessly into any kitchen.

Charlie: Honestly for the Countertop System our filter tech and weight-based accurate usage sensor are distinctly unique to our space. Separately having spent so much time in our system components factory overseas has given me a profound appreciation for how difficult it is to actually make beautiful products from stainless steel, which also sets us apart from a lot of our competitors who either make ugly objects or otherwise use plastic materials instead for their systems.

Jordi: Our countertop system. It's two years in the making and by far the most beautiful product I've been involved with making.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Brian: Find the intersection between what you're passionate about, what you're good at, and where there is market fit. In that intersection is where you will find a business worth pursuing.

Charlie: Grit/grind, go together to go far (get at least one badass business partner), and the squeaky wheel always gets the grease. In order to succeed as an entrepreneur you need to have an uncommon amount of grit and persistence to weather storms, believe in yourself and team even when things are rough, and have the confidence, charisma and persistence. Get important stakeholders (investors, manufacturers, influencers, etc) bought into your vision to help you bring it to life.

Jordi: Play the long game. I believe that when we launch we'll look like an overnight success to the world, but we've been building Rorra for two years in silence.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Brian: Spend time with my amazing children and wife.

Charlie: Backcountry snowboarding, hiking, camping, working out, spending time with my dog and loved ones.

Jordi: Hang with my family, invest in other startups, and drive fast cars.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Brian: Last December, when we were working on Rorra, I traveled with my family to Florida. Neither of my kids had any skin issues since we began filtering our water but it only took a few days of them bathing in the water there until both of them had flare ups all over their bodies. It reinforced the need for what we're building.

Charlie: Mainland China is an extremely interesting place that I've now been able to visit quite a bit in the last year through Rorra. As much as the media makes you believe (and in some cases realities) are vastly different from the US, the people I meet are really similar to us. Everyone just wants a better life for themselves and loved ones.

Jordi: Hereticon - Founders Fund's annual conference in Miami. It was a pretty remarkable group of people and everyone had an opinion on water.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Brian: Supermetrics is a very powerful tool if you know how to use it. I use it for multiple purposes to track data across platforms to be able to make more informed projections and daily optimizations.

Charlie: Google Sheets. If you are highly competent with it's different features and plugins you can go very far.

Jordi: X - best way to learn and connect with peers.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder)? 😊

Brian: Build companies that solve the largest issues we face.

Charlie: Self-reliant, Renaissance Man who supports his family and protects the outdoors and environment at large.

Jordi: Since I was a kid I always wanted to be an "international business man" so hopefully we can sell a lot of Rorra units overseas quickly.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Brian: Leadership & determination.

Charlie: Unwavering belief in yourself, team and vision.

Jordi: Vision + relevant execution.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. The syndicate allows members to learn about select investments that we make and participate alongside us or pass at their discretion. There is no upfront commitment required. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. The fund is our primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company that SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early-stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early-stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work.

SuperAngel is led by Ben Zises and invests in early-stage Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work companies. So far, we have invested over $20m into 100+ companies alongside more than 500 LPs. Click here to join the syndicate and access free deal flow.

In our 51st edition we are featuring Tayler Carraway & Rett Carraway, co-founders of Happy Medium, a modern arts club that offers one-of-a-kind experiences, art supply products and other creative activities for adults & kids 🎨.

Tayler & Rett have been working together for over a decade after meeting at UNC Chapel Hill where they had back to back Art and Advanced Macroeconomics classes. Tayler built a career in eCommerce, spending four years at J. Crew and training under the legendary Mickey Drexler, before moving onto Ralph Lauren, Victoria’s Secret and most recently as VP of Revenue at Hill House Home. Rett began his career in investment banking and finance before becoming a self-taught product and technology aficionado.

Along the way, the pair became increasingly burnt out staring at screens all day and turned to arts and crafts to slow down, disconnect, and destress. To their surprise, they were shocked at the state of the creative goods industry. Outdated websites, low quality products, and a complete lack of concern for customer success defined the likes of Michaels, Blick, and Hobby Lobby.

In the summer of 2019, they turned their living room into an art studio and started hosting art parties as an excuse to make art with as many people as possible. When they started getting invite requests from strangers, they knew they were on to something and Happy Medium was born.

Happy Medium officially opened its doors in July 2021, and has served more than 150,000 customers since, doubling the size of the business each year. In March 2024 the company opened its second location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to satisfy the insatiable demand.

Happy Medium offers a number of different products & services, events and experiential offerings. They have art classes & figure drawing, woodworking, canvas painting, pottery and pioneered a now viral “Art Cafe” concept whereby just like a restaurant, customers make a reservation and order art experiences tableside instead of food.

What started as a simple idea has turned into a massive vision, with enormous commercial and financial upside. After seeing success in these first two locations, Happy Medium is looking to expand into other major cities over the coming years, including Chicago, Austin, LA & Miami, among others. 

Beyond physical store experiences, Happy Medium plans to launch a robust consumer product line of art supplies which they plan to sell eCommerce via their own website and in strategic wholesale channels. And, just as they’ve done from the start, the company plans to run a profitable business in perpetuity, adding to top line revenue growth only when it comes with bottom line results.

Through a collection of ongoing PR hits, including features in The New York Times, Time Out, Thrillist, Secret NYC, Architectural Digest (Listed among the 19 Best Things to Do in NYC), and their ever growing social media following across TikTok, Instagram and reviews on Google, word of mouth has spread like wildfire. All of this organic marketing has led to a surge in customer demand with classes often selling out within minutes and a waitlist that quickly fills up. Click here to see their October 2024 event calendar!

With the Global Arts & Crafts market exceeding $40B+ and projected to reach ~$80B by 2030, coupled with the historically strong financial attributes like high margins and repeat purchase rates, they saw a way to reinvent the way adults (and kids!) engage their creativity, transforming making art from a childhood pastime to a modern form of active meditation.

Click here to learn more about the Happy Medium experiences and make a reservation to experience it for yourself!

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Tayler: Arts Club for Casual Artists.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Tayler: My own desire to get back into my creativity as an adult.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Tayler: Expanding outside of our 4 walls and into CPG!

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Tayler: Test your idea on as many people, as cheaply as possible before committing to any major expenses.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Tayler: Hike with my pup :)

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Tayler: Behind the scenes of the Whitney Museum - we interviewed a curator for an upcoming podcast and it was so interesting to see where and how they work!

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Tayler: My iPhone! I shoot most of our marketing content on my phone and would be totally lost without it.

What do you want to be when you grow up (besides a successful founder, of course)? 😊

Tayler: An author.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Tayler: Resourcefulness.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can choose to invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the Fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work.

SuperAngel is led by Ben Zises and invests in early stage Consumer, PropTech & Future of Work companies. So far, we have invested $20m into 100+ companies alongside more than 500+ LPs. Click here to join the syndicate and access some of our deal flow.

In our 50th edition we are featuring Shehryar Hussain, Co-Founder & CEO of AccelPay, an eCommerce software platform that is building the "Shopify for alcohol,” by enabling brands to sell online direct-to-consumer (DTC) in compliance with federal and state laws.

Shehryar is far from a beginner when it comes to building or working with startups. While attending the University of Connecticut where he earned a degree in Economics, Shehryar started a marketplace specifically for college students to buy and sell products directly from each other at their university. After graduation, he taught himself how to code and landed a coveted role as an iPhone app developer at a VC-backed tech company before spending six years as a Senior Software Engineer. Suffice to say, Shehyrar put in his time working for “the man”!

In mid 2021, Shehryar decided it was time to build for himself again and joined the OnDeck Founder Fellowship program. And after tinkering with a handful of ideas, one of Shehryar’s friends told him about the struggles he was facing while launching a new Tequila brand. Unlike most CPG companies that expanded into the eCommerce channel over the past 20 years, selling alcohol on the internet has been a far more complicated task with slower market adoption. Since Prohibition ended in 1933, alcohol brands have been forced to adhere to the "three-tier system” whereby producers (brands) can only sell to wholesale distributors, who can only sell to retailers, who are then allowed to sell to consumers.

This structure has resulted in rigid compliance requirements, all but eliminating most alcohol brands from selling online (except via third party marketplaces) given the impact on payments, shipping, marketing, data privacy and putting significant downward pressure on margins. Even worse, it limits a brand from owning their own first-party data and maintaining a direct relationship with their customers - crucial for any marketer. 

AccelPay set out to solve these problems - not just for Shehryar’s friend - but for the industry as a whole. Along with his co-founders, Josh Waller, Jim Saunders and Wesley Yee, three of whom have engineering backgrounds, the team built a platform that provides the underlying technology allowing brands to sell to consumers on their own websites (DTC), while staying compliant with the “three-tier system” and other regulations.

With the online alcohol sales market expected to grow dramatically over the coming years, forecasted to increase from $35B in 2023 to $50B+ by 2029, the timing could not be better. Through their suite of eCommerce and payment solutions, AccelPay not only boosts an alcohol brand's operational efficiency but also give them ownership of all their customer data while enabling an entirely new sales channel. 

Given the innovation, it’s no wonder customers are taking notice. Last year, AccelPay processed more than $10,000,000 of Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) and earns a portion of that in the form of transaction and recurring revenue platform fees. The business is on a tear, with sales up over 80% YoY and tracking towards $25,000,000+ of GMV in 2024.

The company has grown from 100 customers in June 2023 to more than 300+ paying customers today, including some of the world's largest brands owned by ABInBev, Pernod Ricard, Moet Hennessy, Promixo, Tilray and Stoli.

AccelPay’s mission: To modernize the alcohol industry by making it simple to sell, market and distribute alcohol products, and potentially other regulated items in the future (think Cannabis or Tobacco).

Explore the AccelPay website here and check out our Q&A with Shehryar below! 👇

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Shehryar: E-Commerce infrastructure for Alcohol brands

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Shehryar: The alcohol industry has lagged behind dramatically when it comes to E-Commerce, brands in this category haven't had a good way to engage their current customers and find new ones online. Finding ways for software to help enable these businesses to own their digital channels is an exciting and complex problem to solve.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Shehryar: Find a real problem, let that guide you to the right solution, don't fall into the trap of having a solution and then finding a problem for it to solve. If you solve a real pain point then you have the beginnings of something.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Shehryar: Walking the dog, eating around the neighborhood, and if I can actually - writing some code!

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Shehryar: Singapore! They take their food very seriously.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Shehryar: It used to be Alfred for just the clipboard history/launcher but now that I'm constantly in my inbox it's become Superhuman. I was skeptical about Superhuman at first but the small time savings with all the shortcuts has really been amazing, and I haven't even really dug into using snippets yet.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Shehryar: Resilience.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. Fund LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work.

In our 49th edition we are featuring Julia Tolmachyov and Michelle Liao, co-founders of DayZero, an AI-powered financial operating system for eCommerce, CPG & omnichannel merchants.

Julia and Michelle know a thing or two about finance. The pair first met at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where both earned degrees in Economics, Finance & Accounting. Julia spent the next five years as a public credit and equity investor covering software and retail, while Michelle worked in investment banking and private equity before joining an eCommerce aggregator as Head of Finance. After performing due diligence on hundreds of eCommerce brands and operating over a dozen more, Michelle identified a major hole in the market when it came to managing finances. 

In September 2023 the two founded DayZero, a vertical software platform purpose-built for eCommerce and omnichannel sellers. The company launched its first product a few months ago, an automated accounting general ledger to tackle all the most critical bookkeeping and accounting functions on behalf of its customers. Unlike a costly CPA or other legacy solutions on the market, DayZero pulls in real time data 24/7 and uses proprietary AI for mapping and categorizing transactions. This provides more accurate financial statements which get updated and reconciled 5x / day vs. once a month in Quickbooks. By leveraging its platform, business owners and their finance teams can spend more time on more strategic analysis, not manual data entry, offering a smarter, modern Quickbooks replacement.

The market for DayZero’s solution is massive and growing, with over 1,000,000 Shopify sellers in North America, and millions more across Amazon, WooCommerce, Squarespace and other platforms. The number of Shopify merchants tripled during COVID and continues to grow, however, with approximately 95% of these businesses generating < $1mm in revenue, most lack a dedicated finance team which is causing them to be itching for an all-in-one solution. 

Thankfully, that solution is finally here. Brand owners or accounting firms can click here to learn more. For talented engineers looking for a career change within a high growth company, please reach out to julia@ondayzero.com. And, of course, check out our Q&A with the DayZero founders below 👇

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Julia: Automated accounting for e-commerce sellers.

Michelle: Quickbooks killer.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Julia: I believe the way small businesses receive their financial information today is super antiquated. The traditional accounting process, where financial statements are prepared and reviewed monthly, was designed to give deference to the hours of manual work needed to gather and reconcile financial information from a business’s receipts and papers. But in 2024, we have the ability to track, gather and analyze data immediately. It’s crazy to me that most founders and business owners still only receive their financial information once a month.

Michelle: Numerous personal frustrations with Quickbooks; it was unusable for me, clunky, slow and the integrations with e-commerce platforms were subpar. At the e-commerce aggregator I worked at previously, I closed the books for all of our brands monthly and it was always a huge headache. And when I was looking at brands to acquire, I’d have to go in and redo all of their financials by hand, because everyone was calculating things like net sales and COGS differently. Plus many times, brand financials would be stale and not updated for months. Standardizing reporting across brands seemed beneficial not only for the brands themselves to have access to real time data, but for buyers, underwriters and investors into the brands. 

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

Julia: We’re launching our working capital financing solution shortly, which I’m super excited about. eCommerce is notoriously capital intensive, as brands have a ton of cash outlay for inventory and marketing before making any revenue. They also require a lot of capital to scale effectively. A lot of brands we speak to are in a cash crunch, and we’re excited to be able to offer financing options for them. Given the real time financial data in our platform, we make for a great underwriting partner. 

Michelle: I love our collaboration feature that we just launched. It makes it super easy for accountants to tag business owners and vice versa in transactions to ask questions and make edits. No more going back and forth in email. 

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Julia: Don’t try to do everything yourself, even though you are going to want to. Ask for help, and outsource certain tasks that others can do better and faster. Your time is incredibly valuable. 

Michelle: Make sure you have intimate knowledge of the pain point and the problem you’re trying to solve. And take all customer feedback seriously, even if it doesn’t validate your original thesis. Try not to have biases! 

What do you love to do in your free time?

Julia: Michelle and I both try to be active as a way to destress from DayZero. I love a good Barry’s class, Michelle loves anything outdoors like biking or skiing. 

Michelle: Training for a triathlon! 

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Julia: Hiking in Patagonia. It was breathtaking. 

Michelle: I went to Brazil over New Year’s and absolutely loved it. The food, the culture and the weather was unbeatable - can’t wait to go back. 

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Julia: Dripify (work). Peloton App (personal).

Michelle: Superhuman (work) and Strava (personal) .

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Julia: Being able to distinguish between high value and low value tasks and being able to make fast decisions with imperfect information.

Michelle: Resilience and thick skin. You’re going to hear “no” a lot - from investors, customers and potential employees. You’ve got to have the grit to keep going through setbacks. 

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can choose to invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work.

In our 48th edition we are featuring Will Gahagan, Co-Founder & CEO of biom, the world’s first refillable, plant-based & non-toxic wipes company.

Will has 12 years experience leading go-to-market strategies and exceeding revenue targets at early stage startups. Prior to starting biom, he was the Head of Sales at a Sequoia-backed company responsible for all revenue functions, and is a graduate of the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business with a concentration in Finance.

While Will’s prior roles may not be what you would expect to see from a CPG brand founder, this “outsiders” mentality is exactly what is needed to bring about a change to an otherwise dated industry.

You may not realize it but the wipes industry is in DIRE need of a makeover - just look at their competition (image below)! As many investors know, it often takes someone with a totally fresh and unencumbered view of a category to transform it, and that is exactly what Will is doing here.

While the Pandemic drove a 180% increase in the use of disinfectant wipes, most consumers are unaware of the harm these products cause. Not only do they contain toxins that have some serious known and unknown impacts to our health, but approximately 90% of all wet wipes contain pesticides and microplastic fibers that never break down. Of the 260 trillion wipes produced each year (yes, you heard that number right), most are also sold in plastic packaging which makes them difficult to recycle and contributes to billions of pounds of waste, much of which ends up in the ocean - enough to fill 50 Empire State Buildings 😱.

As a resident of the port city Charleston, South Carolina, and having spent his most formative years on boats and swimming in the water, Will had seen enough of this pollution and was determined to clean up the wipes industry.

Along with co-founder Hank Schellenger, a product-obsessed industrial designer, the pair knew that they needed to deliver a customer experience that was 10x better to effect more meaningful & long-lasting change. They spent months researching and a year prototyping to create the perfect dispensers and wipes formula.

Biom is the result of their extraordinary efforts and delivers a product that is not only beautiful but 100% plant-based, non-toxic, biodegradable, and made with zero plastics and all natural ingredients. Its wipes are safe for skin, kids, pets and the planet.

The company launched last year and has seen remarkable consumer, retailer and wholesale demand in this $28B category. Beyond selling through their website, biom has expanded to meet demand from commercial accounts such as Auberge Hotels, Citadel and Stanford University. They are the top selling wipe product in The Container Store and will soon be available at your local Target 🎯. Outside their core product, they’ve already expanded into new categories selling All-Purpose, Flushable, & Sanitizing wipes, with more on the way to support facial, baby, pet, disinfectant & intimate.

Follow biom on Instagram to keep updated and enjoy this Q&A with Will below 👇

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Will: Design-driven lifestyle brand.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Will: My dad was a professional sailor so I spent a ton of time on the ocean growing up – it’s my happy place. Just being near the ocean gives me a sense of comfort (why I spent 8 years in SF and now live in Charleston). I would do anything to help preserve it so my kids and grandkids can enjoy it the way I have. I kind of stumbled into wipes at the start of the pandemic as I was helping a friend source PPE for a large convenience store -- this was when I learned how horrendous wipes are, not just for the environment but also for human health. The more I dug in the uglier the reality became. My motivation in starting biom was to build a brand that contributed to a solution, rather than compounding a problem. I will also add that I am oddly drawn to unsexy, large markets – this checked both boxes and I found it to be uniquely stale. 

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Will: Sounds cliché but if you genuinely believe in something, then fully commit to it and refuse to give up. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Will: Run, anything on the ocean, and ski (less often now that I’m in SC).

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Will: Hokkaido. I am obsessed with Japanese culture. It also snowed 12 feet over 8 days…Heaven.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Will: Work: Figma/Slack (tie), Personal: Strava

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Will: Resilience.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can choose to invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work. You can learn more at SuperAngel.Fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

In our 47th edition we are featuring Dipti Desai, Founder & CEO of Crstl, a B2B commerce platform that enables brands to scale beyond direct-to-consumer into other sales and distribution channels such as retail, online marketplaces, and wholesale accounts.

Dipti is a Silicon Valley veteran who has held multiple leadership roles in product and engineering at growth-stage startups across adtech, logistics, and SaaS. Prior to Crstl, Dipti was a Product Management and Strategy Lead at Uber. There, she oversaw a suite of more than eight data products, managed a team of 40 engineers and helped launch a crucial data platform to support the rides marketplace. Dipti has an Electrical Engineering Degree from Virginia Tech and Master’s in Public Policy with a focus in Technology from UC Berkeley.

Unlike some founders who experience a lightbulb moment, the idea for Crstl did not come about quite as simply. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Dipti offered her expertise to help a nonprofit sell masks and other PPE online. Her job was to develop a digital storefront so that consumers could purchase supplies without leaving their home. However, what she discovered as an eCommerce seller was a total lack of data transparency, no consistency in information availability and limited visibility into supplier logistics. Along with other brands she spoke with, it was very difficult for them to understand what was going on in their business. And, as they reached a saturation point selling via their own websites (AKA DTC), they started to think about what comes next.

Looking deeper into this problem Dipti saw the challenges that emerging brands and small businesses faced when trying to expand into other channels such as “big box retail”, online marketplaces, and wholesale. Namely, they were ill-equipped technologically to handle all the data, logistics, connectivity, compliance, testing & certification required by leading trading partners, such as Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, and CVS to name a few.

What Dipti learned was that all the major retailers and their key suppliers use a data standard called EDI, which stands for electronic data interchange, to transact with each other. EDI allows for the streamlined exchange of information between parties while enabling compliance across each’s unique specifications. By using EDI, organizations including brands, retailers, suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers, could quickly and securely send and receive purchase orders, ship notices, invoices and share dozens of other required document types with each other.

However, it turns out, there were very few EDI solutions and the ones that did exist were extremely dated, cost-prohibitive and geared for developers as opposed to business owners, operators and non-technical teams. Enter Crstl 🎉.

Dipti started to realize the enormous market opportunity to modernize this category that would also leverage her experience building data products at scale, and recruited Suparna Gharpure as Head of Engineering, along with other extremely talented team members to assist in her efforts. Today, Crstl has more than 50 customers who account for millions of dollars in transactions between brands, retailers and wholesale distributors including UNFI and KeHE, with tons more more in the pipeline!

Given their early success Crstl was featured in TechCrunch earlier this year, and has become a constant mention in industry reports, such as those by Bain Capital Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and Fulfill.com. 

Know someone that might be interested? Click here to sign up for a free demo.

Can you describe your company in 5 words or less?

Dipti: The modern B2B commerce network.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Dipti: Democratizing data access.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Dipti: Don’t do it if you thrive on external validation; make sure you are rooted in internal validation while focusing on solving a problem that genuinely motivates you.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Dipti: Travel and be outdoors.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Dipti: With Covid, travel has been limited. Got a chance to explore the Santa Cruz mountains and surrounding redwoods after all these years in the Bay Area, which was a reminder to be grateful for many things.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Dipti: Work life is Google Docs. Boring answer, but it’s just so easy to use individually and across a team. Personal life is WhatsApp, which is one I use a lot more now as my friends and family are more distributed than ever.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Dipti: I’ll let you know when I’m a successful founder : ) But I do know that grit is essential – it is a lot of grinding away in obscurity while facing numerous obstacles every day, without any obvious acknowledgements or rewards coming your way for a long time, if ever.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can choose to invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work. You can learn more at SuperAngel.Fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

In our 46th edition we are featuring Ben Wunderman, Co-Founder & CEO of Packsmith, a modern logistics, fulfillment and distribution platform for brands.

Co-founder Ben Wunderman (above right), started Packsmith in 2021 with CTO Simon Robb. The pair draw on their deep engineering and operational experiences working at some of the fastest-growing transportation and logistics startups in the world, including, Uber, Lyft, Postmates and Cruise. Ben launched new markets for Lyft, ultimately carving out a leadership role in Competitor Intelligence, responsible for analyzing every component of his firm’s own business and that of leading competitors. Some might call him a Spy but we won’t go that far 👀🔍

The idea for Packsmith was born out of Ben’s understanding of the distributed marketplace model, the efficiencies it provides to all stakeholders, and ideating other industries that might benefit from its advantages - enter the legacy world of eCommerce logistics.

Packsmith is a new fulfillment and last mile delivery platform for the $7 trillion global eCommerce industry. Traditionally, merchants and brands work with 3PLs (Third-party logistics companies) who store their goods in warehouses, “pick and pack” them into delivery boxes, transport them from distribution center to distribution center, ultimately landing on customer doorsteps. However, these 3PLs often lack transparency into how items are stored, picked and packaged. They are rigid in enabling order customizations, have dated technology, and force brands to work in spreadsheets and email. They are also quite costly. For these reasons, their services are inadequate for many emerging and growing brands, preventing them from competing with larger ones. Meanwhile, consumers are demanding faster and lower cost shipping which most brands can’t afford to operationalize.

Packsmith’s solution allows ordinary people (AKA Packsmith’s) to fulfill orders on behalf of merchants within their own homes instead of warehouses. This localization between fulfiller and consumer leads to lower costs and quicker last-mile delivery. Each “Packsmith” sets their own schedule, follows packing instructions via a user-friendly app and hands it off to one of the company’s delivery partners. For brands, they get more control of their fulfilment operations and can customize orders with ease. They also get access to real time reporting, trend analysis and forecasting. All for a lower cost.

Since orders are no longer transported long distances from warehouses to distribution centers, and instead are fulfilled closer to their final delivery location, the last-mile delivery costs and associated carbon footprint of every order is reduced, while speedy delivery times are increased. Everybody wins.

Given the value prop to each stakeholder, it’s no surprise the company has exploded out of the gate, going from $0 to $3.5m ARR within its first six months. Learn more here and check out our interview with Ben below 👇

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Ben: Intelligent, distributed fulfillment for growing e-commerce brands

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Ben: To fix one of the hardest problems in e-commerce last mile delivery.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Ben: Start with a big vision, a clear understanding of the market, and a defined growth strategy.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Ben: Hiking and adventure travel with the smallest backpack possible.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Ben: Pacific Grove, CA -- truly amazing to see thousands of Monarch butterflies in the air as they migrate to Mexico and back.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Ben: Airtable -- it has changed the way we manage and structure data on a fundamental level.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Ben: Resourcefulness.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can choose to invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work. You can learn more at SuperAngel.Fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

In our 45th edition we are featuring Zaid Rahman, Founder & CEO of Flex, a finance super app for small businesses that combines the entire finance stack into a single platform offering credit, banking, payments, and insurance products.

Zaid Rahman is a serial entrepreneur and Thiel Fellow, a program designed for talented youth that skip or drop out of college to receive grants and support from the a network of founders, investors, and scientists. Zaid’s prior company, Volley, was backed by JPMorgan and Mark Zuckerberg whose goal was to teach computers how to understand knowledge with AI - similar to ChatGPT - just a bit early!

Growing up Zaid’s father ran a construction company in Dubai where he saw first hand the pain points that small and medium-sized business owners (SMBs) felt when trying to manage cash flow. His father suffered a heart attack when a customer refused to pay a multimillion-dollar invoice. Together with co-founder Hadi Solh, the pair set out to solve this problem so that other SMBs would have easier access to capital and reduce cash flow problems.

While Fintechs startups receive enormous sums of venture capital, and with more companies formed in this sector than most in the past decade, it turns out that finance is still a mess for most SMBs, as the focus has been to serve larger corporations. That is especially true in certain underserved, non-digital industries such as construction, logistics, farming, and professional services, which, include upwards of 20 million business owners. As many of us experienced in the recent banking crisis, traditional banks typically deprioritize small business owners to focus on clients with significantly larger assets or transaction volume. Yet, the number of SMBs has accelerated as evidenced by the rise of new business applications.

Enter Flex, which consolidates the entire finance stack into a single platform. Their core products are a business credit card which provides 0% interest for 60 days on every purchase, and an FDIC insured banking suite with high-yield checking, savings and treasury management. Customers pay no account maintenance or late fees.

Since launching in 2022, Flex has grown to serve more than 500 customers. Based on this success they recently secured a $120 million Series A financing(!) including debt and equity, led by Florida Funders with participation from other strategic investors including Home Depot Ventures. Of course, SuperAngel.Fund is proud of have backed Zaid and his team twice over recent years. You can apply for a Flex card here and let me know how it works out for you!

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Zaid: Finance Super App for Businesses.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Zaid: Helping entrepreneurs achieve the American dream.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Zaid: Work hard, think big, never give up.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Zaid: Play padel :)

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Zaid: Colombia -- amazing dev talent there + also great nature.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Zaid: VAs for research, emails, etc. Game changer.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Zaid: Persistence

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share and can choose to invest or pass at their discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work. You can learn more at SuperAngel.Fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

In our 44th edition we are featuring Alek Koenig, Founder & CEO of Settle, a cash flow management platform built to help eCommerce brands scale.

Alek Koenig knows a thing or two about finance. After graduating from The Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering & Mathematics, Alek spent six years at Capital One in the risk management and consumer lending departments. He then worked Affirm as Head of Credit and Director of Strategic Partnerships. With a front row seat to businesses looking for better solutions to bill pay, credit and related services, Alek identified a major hole in the market that needed to be filled.

In November 2019 he founded Settle, an all-in-one payments solution tailored to the needs of growing consumer brands, helping them pay bills, manage purchase orders, track invoices, and access flexible working capital solutions. His mission? To make it easier for founders to build the incredible brands we love. Soon after coming up with the idea he recruited a prior co-worker, Shane Moriah, to join as CTO.

Since launching in June 2020, Settle has grown rapidly via word of mouth with founders describing it as “lifesaving” for their business. Today, they work with hundreds of brands including Dagne Dover, Lalo, Starface, and Branch.

If you are a brand or accounting firm that works with brands, click here to learn more. If you are a super talented engineer, product manager, product designer, or generally looking for a new career change within a high growth company, click here to learn more.

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Alek: Cashflow management for e-commerce brands.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Alek: Personal frustrations with bill.com; it was unusable for me, clunky and slow. Once I conducted 30+ user interviews, I was convinced that Settle could be a thing. Secondly, it would be predatory lending in the space. Businesses get less protection than consumers, so there are more bad actors out there.

What new product/feature are you most excited about and why?

We actually just launched a whole suite of features to simplify the purchasing workflow for eCommerce brands. Now they can use Settle to create and email Purchase Orders in minutes and easily 3-way match POs, receipts, and bills all in the same platform they use to pay their vendors. Purchasing is yet another way we’re bringing enterprise-level tools to small consumer brands without the enterprise-level pricing. To get started check us out here! 

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Alek: Ensure the solution you’re offering is a pain-killer, and not a vitamin. Make sure you’re solving a real problem.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Alek: What’s free time? Settle pretty much consumes me. But in the time I do have, I definitely dedicate it to my wife and daughter.

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Alek: I haven’t been to too many places recently but when I went back to Poland, where I’m from, I made a trip out to Lviv, Ukraine. We have 15 of our engineers based there and it was my second time since starting the company. Lovely, small town in western Ukraine. It was great to spend time with them in person and I am hopeful peace is made soon. I would love to go back!

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Alek: I’d say gated.com. It's an email plug-in to help reduce noise in my inbox while also benefiting charity. I get so much spam all day and every day, and it really keeps my inbox clean so I don’t get context switching I don’t want. If you live in your email and want to keep some flow you have to get it.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Alek: Grit. You’re going to run into so many walls, you need to persevere and fight through it.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share, and can choose to invest or pass based on their own discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work. You can learn more at SuperAngel.Fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error, please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

In our 43rd edition we are featuring Andy Cloyd & Anders Bill, co-founders of Superfiliate, a modern referral program that enables merchants to empower their most influential customers, influencers, ambassadors and affiliates, to promote the brands they love in exchange for rewards.

Prior to starting Superfiliate, Andy Cloyd and Anders Bill were already active in the early stage and eCommerce space. Andy worked at Cultivation Capital and Revolution focused on software investing, following two years as a Venture for America Fellow. He graduated from the University of Alabama with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Finance. Anders previous startup, Darkroom, powers thousands of artist and creator storefronts enabling them to sell their works online seamlessly. He has an Economics degree from Boston College (Magna Cum Laude, in case you’re keeping tabs).

The pair met serendipitously after a roommate fell through on a lease at the last minute and Andy was invited to step into their shoes by a mutual friend. Less than a week after their first meeting the two found themselves living together. What was supposed to be a short term arrangement turned into an extended stay, full of late night brainstorming sessions, ultimately discovering their shared views on the eCommerce world and vision for what Superfiliate could become.

While each of us likely spends a couple of hours per day scrolling through our social media feeds, some of us do not realize just how much of that time we are actually being sold to. Enter “Affiliate Marketing,” which is one of the leading revenue drivers for brands - some of which capture as much as 30% of their sales from this tactic.

Given the headwinds that brands continue to face around finding profitable channels to acquire new customers (See Alpaca VC’s ‘Brand Discovery Report’), the need to diversify into new advertising strategies has become table stakes, with marketers increasingly opting for affiliate as their primary choice. Perhaps this is no surprise as influencers are very good at convincing people to buy products and already have a large, trusted following of consumers. [A recent report found that 20% of brand marketers rank affiliate as their most successful channel, with 54% ranking it among their top three.]

Enter Superfiliate, which removes all the friction from creating and managing affiliate programs. It provides fully customizable shopping experiences for affiliates to send their audiences to, and has proven to drive increased sales and conversion. Creators can tell the brand’s story in a way that is authentic to them, curate their favorite products, and get paid for the sales they generate. Click here to view a storefront demo powered by Superfiliate.

Since launching last year the company has moved quickly to add brands onto the platform, including Florence by Mills, Dr. Squatch, Olipop, Hiya Health, Beam, Mudwtr & others, and is on track to serve over 100 more by end of year. You can book a demo here, tell them I sent you, and let me know how it works out!

Describe your company in 5 words or less?

Andy: Personalized Storefronts for Creators + Customers.

Anders: Cobranded Creator/Customer Landing Pages.

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Andy: To build a product and a team that we're proud of and learn a lot along the way. Also to see if I have what it takes - naively, I had given a lot of advice as an investor with limited operating experience. It was time to see if any of that was actually worth anything!

Anders: After investing in a handful of CPG companies, we saw that the best brands were executing a frontend strategy in the form of cobranded landing pages for their best affiliates, influencers and customers but this strategy never scaled. Word of mouth has never been a more important channel for brands yet there has been so little innovation. We want to build a platform that allows a brand to unify their word of mouth strategy across referral/loyalty, affiliate and influencer while allowing them to deliver a best in class frontend experience for their customers and creators.

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Andy: Get started - taking the leap isn't about having all the answers but rather having the confidence and drive to figure out where the opportunity is and solve the problems that come up along the way. Once you go all in, you quickly become one of people thinking most about a problem and if you talk to enough people, they'll probably bring you a problem worth solving.

Anders: Create a narrative driven thesis on the product you want to build, pitch it to as many thought leaders in the space that you can and then deeply reevaluate the assumptions that underlay that thesis. Ideally you can build an MVP during this process and continue to run retrospectives on those same product assumptions.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Andy: I walk, listen to books and podcasts, talk to friends, play music, and go see my favorite band Goose. All powered by a borderline dangerous amount of caffeine.

Anders: I love to surf and be in the ocean as much as I can!!

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Andy: Florianopolis, Brazil! It’s where so much of our team is, and it has such a rich history and culture. We're also lucky to have some pretty good guides when we're there. Our team there is family, and we feel that way every time we visit.

Anders: Southern Brazil -- Much of our team lives down there and it is one of the most welcoming + diverse environments.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Andy: Spotify - it gives me information and music, my two favorite things.

Anders: Loom - recording a video vs typing a long email brings me so much more joy and creates so much more alignment with those I'm talking with.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Andy: Perseverance - there are 1,000 times where you could and, in some instances, maybe even should give up but you have to keep going.

Anders: Striking the balance between conviction and doubt.

Want to invest with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share, and can choose to invest or pass based on their own discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises or SuperAngel, who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error, please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.

In our 42nd edition we are featuring Kyle Connors & Chris Connors, Co-Founders of candidate.fyi, the missing candidate experience layer that helps companies attract, win and retain talent.

Kyle and Chris are brothers that bring a complementary skillset to the leadership table. Kyle is a former CTO/VP of Engineering at several venture backed companies, responsible for hiring 50+ people and scaling from $10m to $60m ARR. Chris is a top performing enterprise sales executive who closed the largest deal in Yext’s history. 

Today’s hiring process is broken. Lack of transparency around application status, how best to prepare for an interview, a company’s culture, and where a candidate stands in the process makes the life of an applicant more stressful and convoluted than it needs to be. So much so that nearly 50% of applicants decline a job offer to due to a poor experience. Even worse, they end up sharing the bad experience publicly on review sites like Glassdoor, which the majority of applicants look at before applying. Beyond losing out on a quality candidate, this has serious implications for an employer’s brand and reputation as a place to work.

After leaving his role at Google a year ago and embarking on an exhaustive job search, Chris suffered from these pain points himself. Kyle, on the other hand, also experienced these inefficiencies but from the employer angle. He was so dissatisfied with the existing solutions that he even wrote a book on the subject!

It was clear to them that the entire recruiting, interviewing and hiring process was inadequate. Together, the pair knew there had to be a better way and decided to build a solution to revolutionize the experience for both candidates and employers.

Since launching their beta in February the product has taken off. In particular, they have gone from $0 to $87k annual recurring revenue (ARR) with 14 paying customers and lots more in the pipeline 🚀. The company is currently onboarding select customers from their waitlist which you can join here. You can also check out their product demo or email me to get connected directly.

Describe your company in 5 words or less.

Kyle & Chris: The missing candidate experience layer

What was your primary motivation for starting your business?

Kyle & Chris: As brothers, we’ve always been working on different ideas together. It wasn’t about “if” but about “when” we would start a company.

We knew we wanted to build a business that checked two boxes - 1. We had the possibility to make a meaningful impact on a large scale and 2. It was something we were both passionate about. 

The interview process just hit us at the right time. Kyle was on the hiring side and constantly struggled with how manual the process of prepping candidates and providing them with an experience he’d want. Chris had just gone through interview rounds with several companies and felt defeated by how broken the process was. He felt like this process was setting him up for failure. 

We both knew how impactful this (interviewing) time was relative to the focus it’s given is vastly underserved. A person will spend about 8,000 hours at the company they choose. A company places a large investment in the future of its business by hiring someone. Why isn’t this better? 

What piece of advice would you give an entrepreneur starting a business today?

Kyle & Chris: Find a way to get your first 10 customers (do things that don’t scale) as early as possible, then listen closely to them. Figure out their pain points and what they’re really looking for (it’s not always what they say). Make them happy and have them become promoters of you/your company.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Kyle: Spending time with family and going for runs!

Chris: We have a one-year-old, so when I’m not helping talent teams with their candidate experience, I’m changing diapers or teaching the little guy how to hit a golf ball. I also love getting outside and running, I think it’s the best outlet for a founder. 

What is the most interesting place you’ve visited recently and why?

Kyle: I haven’t traveled a whole lot recently. A couple of years ago I took a trip to a friend's wedding to a fairly remote town in Turkey. As someone who has largely visited major metropolitan areas, it was fascinating to see this remote town operating independently and without any need for a city. Everyone had a job to do and it got done!

Chris: When we moved from Los Angeles back to NY we drove cross-country. This was an awesome trip. We got to see so many different places and had a blast trying new food, meeting new people, and looking at some of our country's greatest treasures.

What is your favorite app or tool in your work life and in your personal life?

Kyle: In my work life, it’s probably Airtable. I love the no-code flexibility of being able to tailor/customize the tables to my liking. For my personal life, I love little fitness apps - I use this app 7 every morning. It’s a simple 7 minute workout that hits all different areas. 

Chris: In my work life, it’s LinkedIn. I spend so much time on LinkedIn, connecting with thought leaders in the talent community. LinkedIn has created the ability to connect with virtually anyone worldwide, as long as they have a profile. I’ve cold messaged the CEO of LinkedIn, on LinkedIn and he responded. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. Personal life, it’s probably Headway. I love reading, but when I buy books, I usually start them and then don’t find time to finish them. Headway breaks down every book into 10-minute summaries, allowing me to digest the material quickly.

What do you believe is the most important skill or attribute of a successful founder?

Kyle & Chris: Resilience, persistence, and perseverance are crucial to being a successful founder. The highs and lows of founder life are very real, but if you can push through the lows then the highs outweigh everything else. Just keep driving forward day by day, and you’ll see success.

Want to participate with SuperAngel?

1. Join SuperAngelSyndicate.com. Once accepted, syndicate members are invited to review deal memos whenever I have a new investment to share, and can choose to invest or pass based on their own discretion. Minimums generally start at $2,500 and priority allocations are given to SuperAngel.Fund LPs on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to request an invitation to the syndicate.

2. Join SuperAngel.Fund. Unlike the syndicate, the fund is my primary investment vehicle and provides diversified exposure to every company SuperAngel invests in, one of the most important attributes of a successful early stage portfolio. LPs also receive priority access to co-investments. Click here to request more information on the fund.

SuperAngel.Fund is an early stage fund led by Ben Zises that invests in Consumer (CPG, eCommerce SaaS), PropTech & Future of Work. You can learn more at SuperAngel.Fund.

Why am I receiving this?

You are receiving this email because you are either a friend, co-investor, associate, or connection of Ben Zises and SuperAngel who at one point expressed interest in receiving updates and other correspondence from me. If you received this email in error, please accept my apologies and feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.