Successfully Funded

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

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

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

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

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