Radio Cade

In the final episode in our Smart Home series, host James Di Virgilio sits down with Akshay Bhuva, the founder and CEO of Kitchenery, a pioneering company revolutionizing the kitchen appliance industry. Akshay shares his journey from the inception of Kitchenery in his own kitchen during the COVID-19 pandemic, to the development of cutting-edge wireless power transfer technology. With a focus on embracing failure, persevering through challenges, and inspiring consumers, Akshay’s story highlights the importance of resilience and passion in the entrepreneurial journey. Join the conversation as they discuss the transformative potential of Kitchenery’s innovations and the vision to redefine the future of cooking experiences. “Innovation is not just about creating something new; it’s about embracing failure, staying lean, and persevering through challenges. Every setback is a lesson in disguise, and resilience is the key to success in the journey of entrepreneurship. Success in innovation isn’t about what you do; it’s about why you do it. Your passion and belief in your mission inspire others to join you on the journey to change the world.” – Akshay Bhuva Our Smart Home series dives deep into the brains behind the innovations, exploring how biometric data, wireless powerless technology, and AI are shaping the homes of tomorrow. Tune in and get ready to reimagine how you live!

This week on the show, host Richard Miles explores the possibilities of parenting technology with Sarah Ostadabbas, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University. Sarah isn’t just talking theory – she’s built a revolutionary baby monitor called AI Wover. Tune in to hear how AI Wover goes beyond simple monitoring, the key distinctions between AI and augmented cognition, and why Sarah believes mentors are crucial for empowering female engineers. Tech enthusiasts and parents won’t want to miss this groundbreaking discussion on AI and child development. “The thing that is very important for me as the lead founder of AI Wover is bringing equity to the hand of everybody, every household with an infant on their day watch. This baby monitoring system, without extra cost, can be equipped with advanced AI and watch out if the babies are going through every milestone on time. And if not, then that concern that they have can be brought up to the pediatrician, and then hopefully the chain of action could happen on time.”                                                                                                                      – Sarah Ostadabbas Our Smart Home series dives deep into the brains behind the innovations, exploring how biometric data, wireless powerless technology, and AI are shaping the homes of tomorrow. Tune in and get ready to reimagine how you live!

Listen as host James Di Virgilio and Andrew Gebhart, Senior Analyst at PCMag, for the first episode in our Smart Home series! Listen as Andrew breaks down the must-know facts about smart home tech, from easy steps for equipping your home to a glimpse of the futuristic features on the horizon. “In my dream world of, like, a smart home, I want Rosie the robot. I don’t want to do chores at all. And we’re getting there. I think we’re getting there. I think a lot of the pieces are there. But whether we’ll actually see it all come to fruition in a way that everybody’s really happy about in five to ten years, you know, I don’t know. Fingers crossed.” – Andrew Gebhart Our Smart Home series dives deep into the brains behind the innovations, exploring how biometric data, wireless powerless technology, and AI are shaping the homes of tomorrow. Tune in and get ready to reimagine how you live!

After just having wrapped up our animal health series, Beyond the Collar, the Inventivity Pod team has selected an inventivity highlight from each episode to share with you all. The conversations with our amazing guests were informative, inspiring and fun. If you like what you hear, we encourage you to go back and listen to the full episodes for some great stories, tips, and tricks from our guests. Be on the lookout for our upcoming smart home series where we talk about what a smart home is and what its future looks like. Join us as we chat with innovators and enthusiasts who are developing smart home technology that is safer, easier to use, and kinder to our world.

Join host James Di Virgilio and guest Scott Ijaz, Senior Product Manager at a veterinary health company offering diagnostic and therapeutic products for companion animals, for the third episode of our Animal Health series: Beyond the Collar!

Join host Richard Miles and guest Jordan Sand, CEO of Cold Water Technologies Inc.

Join host Richard Miles and guest Dr. Nancy Gee, Director for the Center for Human Animal Interaction (HAI) at Virginia Commonwealth University and President of the International Society for Anthrozoology, for the first episode of our animal health series: Beyond the Collar! “People come away with smiles. I mean, I can tell you some very impactful stories. I was there. I saw it happen. It gives you chills just thinking about it. But at the same time, I needed to know if there was anything real to it. And that’s what got me started doing this research all those years ago. And it’s real.” — Dr. Nancy Gee  Beyond the Collar is an exploration of animal research and innovations that are making waves in the animal health industry. Listen as our hosts and guests dive into the impact our pet relationships have on us, obstacles and triumphs in pet medicine, and tools for ensuring the safety of our pets.  About Nancy Nancy R. Gee, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry, Bill Balaban Chair in Human Animal Interaction, and the Director of the Center for Human Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The Center is uniquely situated in the School of Medicine and in addition to research and educational activities it also houses the “Dogs on Call” therapy dog program, which includes 90+ dog/handler teams who visit patients and staff throughout the VCU health system.  Dr. Gee, President of the International Society for Anthrozoology, has extensive research and teaching experience and has specialized in the area of Human Animal Interaction (HAI) for the past 18 years. She served for five years as the HAI Research Manager for the Waltham Petcare Science Institute, located in Leicestershire, UK. In this role she managed a large portfolio of collaborative university-based research projects spanning multiple countries and topics, including; how companion animals impact the lives of older adults, or help students learn, or reduce the impact of PTSD symptoms in military veterans. Dr. Gee's own program of research has focused primarily on the impact of dogs on aspects of human cognition, including working memory, executive functioning and physiological responses such as heart rate variability to interactions with dogs. Currently she is the primary investigator on three grant funded clinical trials examining the impact of a hospital-based therapy dog visitation program on loneliness, depression and anxiety in vulnerable patient populations such as children, older adults, and people with mental illness.  A recipient of multiple grants and awards, Dr. Gee has 70 peer reviewed publications and has edited and contributed to numerous books. Dr. Gee regularly delivers international presentations on a variety of HAI topics, serves on the editorial review boards of several peer reviewed journals and has actively promoted the field of HAI through participation on the boards of several HAI organizations including the International Society for Anthrozoology and currently as the Chair of Pet Partners' Human-Animal Bond Advisory Board. 

After just having wrapped up our series on the Blue Economy the Inventivity Pod team has selected an inventivity highlight from each episode to share with you all. With the amazing guests that joined us the conversations were informative, inspiring and fun. So while we could only pick one highlight, there is so much more to learn in the full episodes and we encourage you to go back and listen. Hope you enjoy.  Be sure to be on the lookout this year as we bring you series built around smart homes, automotive innovations and, of course, told through the lens of Inventivity!

Join host Richard Miles and guest Serg Albino, Co-founder and CEO of ecoSPEARS, for the third episode of our Blue Economy Series!

Our Blue Economy series is a look at what the Blue Economy is, who’s involved, and what the future is going to look like thanks to dedicated innovators.

“People used to think that taking care of the environment was just philanthropic. It just was a nice thing to do. Now it’s really showing that investing and the environment are actually more intertwined than you ever thought” – Katherine O'Fallon  Join host James Di Virgilio and guest Katherine O'Fallon, Executive Director of the Marine Research Hub, as they kick off the first episode of our Blue Economy Series!    Listen as Katherine gives an educational overview of the Blue Economy, the Marine Research Hub’s impact on it, and how anyone can be a steward for our oceans.     Our Blue Economy series is a look at what the Blue Economy is, who’s involved, and what the future is going to look like thanks to dedicated innovators. Listen as our hosts and guests cover topic areas of renewable energy, fisheries, maritime transport, tourism, climate change, and waste management.

After just having wrapped up our Hope for the Future series the Inventivity Pod team has selected an inventivity highlight from each episode to share with you all. With the amazing guests that joined us the conversations were informative, inspiring and fun. So while we could only pick one highlight, there is so much more to learn in the full episodes and we encourage you to go back and listen. Hope you enjoy.  Join us next time for the beginning of our Blue Economy series!

“These women had never invented before and they did what women have a tendency, you know, to do what we have to do.” – Edith Tolchin  To celebrate the release of the new book Secrets of Successful Women Inventors by Edith G. Tolchin, from Square One Publishers, the Inventivity Pod has welcomed Edith G. Tolchin, Kenya Adams, and Angelique N. Warner to the show!   Listen as the author and two inventor contributors discuss with host, Richard Miles, their inspiration and journeys. Obstacles like patents, funding and support. And learn what to do when what you want doesn't exist. Create it.   Be sure to purchase Secrets of Successful Women Inventors available now! 

“It’s not all the time, things you love, that you want to do, that you will succeed. It’s figuring out something that you love, or you can love, and someone else really needs it. So when you find this intersection, I think you’re going in the right direction.”  – Rodrigo Griesi Listen as host Richard Miles and Rodrigo Griesi have an engrossing, encompassing conversation. From how winning the 2022 Cade Prize impacted Rodrigo's business, NEPTUNYA, to insights into different business cultures, and what we can do with failure. Join us for the final episode in our Hope for the Future series.   The Hope For the Future series is an innovative look at sustainability. For this limited series, we talk to inventors contributing to the sustainability movement. Listen and see why they provide, Hope for the Future. 

Today, Inventivity Pod Host Richard Miles brings us an Inventivity Update! Join him as he congratulates the finalists of the 2023 Cade Prize.  The Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention hosts the annual Cade Prize for Innovation. Which, since 2010 has been Florida's premier Innovation prize. And this year, 2023, has become a national prize with an overall purse of $100,000.    Join us next time for the continuation of our Hope for the Future series!  

“You have to go from a bunch of original ideas, then you have to find ones that people want to do.” – Dr. John Cotter Join host James Di Virgilio and guest Dr. John Cotter, of Cotter Research and Development, as they delve into the creation of John’s lumber alternative. A concrete that has nailability! In the continuation of our Hope for the Future series. Listen as they discuss how John discovered the importance of customer discovery and the different avenues you can take to get your innovation out into the world. The Hope For the Future series is an innovative look at sustainability. For this limited series, we talk to inventors contributing to the sustainability movement. Listen and see why they provide, Hope for the Future.

“It’s important to make the most of what’s in front of you at the time.” – Dr. Anthony Engler Join host Richard Miles and guest Dr. Anthony Engler, of Polymer Solutions, as they kick off the first episode of the newly branded Inventivity Pod, with the first episode of our Hope for the Future Series! Listen as they discuss Anthony’s journey from an inquisitive student to CTO of a company he co-founded! The company develops polymers and is focused on energy and material sustainability. The Hope For the Future series is an innovative look at sustainability. For this limited series, we talk to inventors contributing to the sustainability movement. Listen and see why they provide, Hope for the Future.

“Inventivity. What does it mean? The state of being inventive, creating, or designing new things or thoughts” Join hosts Richard Miles and James Di Virgilio as they discuss the future of the podcast! What was once known and loved as Radio Cade will now be known and loved as the Inventivity Pod! Want to find out more? Give this minisode a listen! And stay tuned for all new episodes of, The Inventivity Pod! Brought to you by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, in Gainesville, Florida.

DJ Schmitt and Michael Finkelstein join host James Di Virgilio for a limited series that explores stories of innovation, patent protection, and product commercialization in the state of Florida. DJ Schmitt and Michael Finkelstein founded Neuro20 Efficient Health, a company that manufactures washable and wearable electrical muscle stimulation suits. Neuro20’s mission is to be the leading provider of advanced wearable technology that specializes in the use of Electro Muscle Stimulation (EMS) training and rehabilitation.   This series was made possible in partnership with the Cade Museum, Florida House on Capitol Hill, and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

DJ Schmitt and Michael Finkelstein join host James Di Virgilio for a limited series that explores stories of innovation, patent protection, and product commercialization in the state of Florida. DJ Schmitt and Michael Finkelstein founded Neuro20 Efficient Health, a company that manufactures washable and wearable electrical muscle stimulation suits. Neuro20's mission is to be the leading provider of advanced wearable technology that specializes in the use of Electro Muscle Stimulation (EMS) training and rehabilitation. This series was made possible in partnership with the Cade Museum, Florida House on Capitol Hill, and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Sylvia Wilson Thomas joins host James Di Virgilio for a limited series that explores stories of innovation, patent protection, and product commercialization in the state of Florida. Dr. Sylvia Wilson Thomas leads the University of South Florida research enterprise and is the first African American female to lead an R1 university research program in Florida. Dr. Thomas also serves as President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Engineering in Medicine and Biology Florida West Coast Section, advisor for Society of Women Engineers and National Society of Black Engineers, and member of the Board of Directors for Black Girls Code and Florida Senate Appointee to the Florida Education Fund Board of Directors. This series was made possible in partnership with the Cade Museum, Florida House on Capitol Hill, and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Sylvia Wilson Thomas joins host James Di Virgilio for a limited series that explores stories of innovation, patent protection, and product commercialization in the state of Florida. Dr. Sylvia Wilson Thomas leads the University of South Florida research enterprise and is the first African American female to lead an R1 university research program in Florida. Dr. Thomas also serves as President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Engineering in Medicine and Biology Florida West Coast Section, advisor for Society of Women Engineers and National Society of Black Engineers, and member of the Board of Directors for Black Girls Code and Florida Senate Appointee to the Florida Education Fund Board of Directors. This series was made possible in partnership with the Cade Museum, Florida House on Capitol Hill, and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Paul Sohl, joins host James Di Virgilio for a limited series that explores stories of innovation, patent protection, and product commercialization in the state of Florida. Paul Sohl is the CEO of the Florida High Tech Corridor Council, an economic development initiative of the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida, and the University of Florida. This series was made possible in partnership with the Cade Museum, Florida House on Capitol Hill, and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Paul Sohl, joins host James Di Virgilio for a limited series that explores stories of innovation, patent protection, and product commercialization in the state of Florida. Paul Sohl is the CEO of the Florida High Tech Corridor Council, an economic development initiative of the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida, and the University of Florida. This series was made possible in partnership with the Cade Museum, Florida House on Capitol Hill, and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Stefano Alva, joins host Richard Miles to discuss how Farm to Flame Energy is providing affordable and renewable power in areas across the country. “So, the fuel that we’re using to power our generators is really where our patent is around, which is the way that we convert the biomass into a powderized fuel that is very uniform and it behaves in a very predictable way. So, what has been a challenge in the industry is really to be able to overcome the different types of biomass that are available and be able to find the system where you can create a uniform output out of this mixed biomass waste. And that’s exactly what our patent focuses on and what our expertise really lies in.” Stefano Alva is Chief Financial Officer of Farm to Flame Energy. Farm to Flame Energy was a Fibonacci Finalists in the 2021 Cade Prize Competition for Innovation. To learn more about Farm to Flame Energy visit their website at ftfenergy.com or visit Wefunder.com/farmtoflameenergy2

Stefano Alva, joins host Richard Miles to discuss how Farm to Flame Energy is providing affordable and renewable power in areas across the country. “So, the fuel that we're using to power our generators is really where our patent is around, which is the way that we convert the biomass into a powderized fuel that is very uniform and it behaves in a very predictable way. So, what has been a challenge in the industry is really to be able to overcome the different types of biomass that are available and be able to find the system where you can create a uniform output out of this mixed biomass waste. And that's exactly what our patent focuses on and what our expertise really lies in.” Stefano Alva is Chief Financial Officer of Farm to Flame Energy. Farm to Flame Energy was a Fibonacci Finalists in the 2021 Cade Prize Competition for Innovation. To learn more about Farm to Flame Energy visit their website at ftfenergy.com or visit Wefunder.com/farmtoflameenergy2

Tready Smith, CEO of Bayshore Capital and Chairman of the Board for USA Rare Earth, joins host Richard Miles to discuss rare earth metals, what its like running an investment firm, and what she looks for in potential investment companies. “We believe the team that is trying to bring an idea to market is crucial and having a, we call it a purpose-built team that has been rounded up. Having people on the team who have specific capability and experience in an area makes that team either successful or not successful. So having that purpose-built team where you look at it, you can say, oh, I see why every member of that team is critical to the success of this idea. People drive ideas, people have relationships, people are the critical part of investment success.” In this episode, Smith also shares advice for young entrepreneurs and what it was like growing up with an entrepreneur father.

Tready Smith, CEO of Bayshore Capital and Chairman of the Board for USA Rare Earth, joins host Richard Miles to discuss rare earth metals, what its like running an investment firm, and what she looks for in potential investment companies. "We believe the team that is trying to bring an idea to market is crucial and having a, we call it a purpose-built team that has been rounded up. Having people on the team who have specific capability and experience in an area makes that team either successful or not successful. So having that purpose-built team where you look at it, you can say, oh, I see why every member of that team is critical to the success of this idea. People drive ideas, people have relationships, people are the critical part of investment success." In this episode, Smith also shares advice for young entrepreneurs and what it was like growing up with an entrepreneur father.

Russell Donda, the Entrepreneur in Residence at Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise, joins host Richard Miles to discuss the secrets to startup success. “It is the beginning of an idea, [i]f the startup is going to be successful… that idea should be novel. Secondly, it takes generally a serious plan and then working that plan and working that plan includes the other important component of startups. And that is funding, bringing money in to move that startup along.” In this episode, Donda discusses the five fundamentals for startup companies, and his own professional path that brought him to where he is today.

Russell Donda, the Entrepreneur in Residence at Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise, joins host Richard Miles to discuss the secrets to startup success. "It is the beginning of an idea, [i]f the startup is going to be successful… that idea should be novel. Secondly, it takes generally a serious plan and then working that plan and working that plan includes the other important component of startups. And that is funding, bringing money in to move that startup along." In this episode, Donda discusses the five fundamentals for startup companies, and his own professional path that brought him to where he is today.

Santh Sathya joins host Richard Miles to discuss how his company, LuftCar LLC, is revolutionizing the realm of regional transportation, providing both sustainable and affordable multipurpose mobility vehicles. Sathya and his company are in the process of developing hydrogen powered, modular, autonomous air and road mobility electric vehicles with vertical takeoff and landing: “A lot of people have to travel hundreds of miles to go to a large commercial airport to take an overseas trip or take a long-distance flight. So, what we are doing is promoting an alternative for those people to fly from their little hometowns, from the rural areas, from small cities to these bigger commercial airports and both those sides”. In this episode, Sathya discusses how the movies he saw in his childhood inspired him to find a solution to the problems many face regarding regional transportation—only about 28% of the American population has access to air travel, because it is too tedious or expensive, but Sathya believes it does not have to continue to be this way. He believes inventors should collaborate and solve similar problems together.

Santh Sathya joins host Richard Miles to discuss how his company, LuftCar LLC, is revolutionizing the realm of regional transportation, providing both sustainable and affordable multipurpose mobility vehicles. Sathya and his company are in the process of developing hydrogen powered, modular, autonomous air and road mobility electric vehicles with vertical takeoff and landing: “A lot of people have to travel hundreds of miles to go to a large commercial airport to take an overseas trip or take a long-distance flight. So, what we are doing is promoting an alternative for those people to fly from their little hometowns, from the rural areas, from small cities to these bigger commercial airports and both those sides”. In this episode, Sathya discusses how the movies he saw in his childhood inspired him to find a solution to the problems many face regarding regional transportation—only about 28% of the American population has access to air travel, because it is too tedious or expensive, but Sathya believes it does not have to continue to be this way. He believes inventors should collaborate and solve similar problems together.

Raha Saremi joins host James Di Virgilio to discuss how her company, EcoaTEX, is disrupting the highly pollutive textile industry by using natural materials to develop sustainable products for dyeing, coating, and finishing textiles. Saremi and her team developed fabric treatment methods that uses 90% less water and fewer harmful chemicals than traditional techniques: “”[T]he good thing about our method is, you don’t need to have any specific type of equipment in order to use the method, we can just modify and adjust the existing textile manufacturing equipment and use it with our technology.” In this episode, Saremi shares the experiences that inspired her to change the textile industry. She discusses how aspiring entrepreneurs need resilience, even if it means exploring avenues that hadn’t considered before. To learn more about EcoaTEX visit their website at www.ecoatex.com

Raha Saremi joins host James Di Virgilio to discuss how her company, EcoaTEX, is disrupting the highly pollutive textile industry by using natural materials to develop sustainable products for dyeing, coating, and finishing textiles. Saremi and her team developed fabric treatment methods that uses 90% less water and fewer harmful chemicals than traditional techniques: ""[T]he good thing about our method is, you don't need to have any specific type of equipment in order to use the method, we can just modify and adjust the existing textile manufacturing equipment and use it with our technology." In this episode, Saremi shares the experiences that inspired her to change the textile industry. She discusses how aspiring entrepreneurs need resilience, even if it means exploring avenues that hadn't considered before. To learn more about EcoaTEX visit their website at www.ecoatex.com

Carlos Moreno joins host James Di Virgilio to discuss his medical diagnostic company, ResonanceDX, and his unconventional journey to becoming a medical researcher. Like many innovators, Carlos started his career in a different field, yet those experiences have proven to be beneficial: “It’s not the traditional path. Most people started either going to med school or biology as their undergraduate major. I guess sometimes I wish I had maybe not been so focused on aerospace…but as it turns out, it worked out very well for me.” Carlos Moreno is an Associate Professor at Emory University of Medicine, and the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at ResonanceDx, Inc. ResonanceDx placed in the Final Five for the Cade Prize Competition for Innovation in 2021. To learn more about ResonanceDx visit their website at resonancedx.com

Carlos Monero joins host James Di Virgilio to discuss his medical diagnostic company, ResonanceDX, and his unconventional journey to becoming a medical researcher. Like many innovators, Carlos started his career in a different field, yet those experiences have proven to be beneficial: "It's not the traditional path. Most people started either going to med school or biology as their undergraduate major. I guess sometimes I wish I had maybe not been so focused on aerospace...but as it turns out, it worked out very well for me." Carlos Monero is an Associate Professor at Emory University of Medicine, and the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at ResonanceDx, Inc. ResonanceDx placed in the Final Five for the Cade Prize Competition for Innovation in 2021. To learn more about ResonanceDx visit their website at resonancedx.com

In this episode, Dr. Christine Schmidt talks with host James Di Virgilio about her research in biochemically processed nerve grafts and what inspires her as an innovator: “When you think about innovation and invention, be open to the fact that what you’re doing may have applications in different spaces and that you may take turns and enjoying those turns versus resisting. Those turns may lead you to some interesting pathways.” Dr. Christine Schmidt is the Chair of the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. She is known for her work in biomaterials science and cellular tissue engineering. In 2020, Dr. Schmidt was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

In this episode, Dr. Christine Schmidt talks with host James Di Virgilio about her research in biochemically processed nerve grafts and what inspires her as an innovator: “When you think about innovation and invention, be open to the fact that what you're doing may have applications in different spaces and that you may take turns and enjoying those turns versus resisting. Those turns may lead you to some interesting pathways.” Dr. Christine Schmidt is the Chair of the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. She is known for her work in biomaterials science and cellular tissue engineering. In 2020, Dr. Schmidt was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.

Mohit Patil and Parth Shah advise other future entrepreneurs on conceptualizing a company and its products: “Don’t come up with a solution looking for a problem, that almost always never works out…what you need is a problem. A problem that the society has, a problem that people are desperate to get solved and then use your engineering mind to think, oh, how can I solve that problem?”. Mohit Patil and Parth Shah co-founded Abilitare, a company that provides hands-free access to computers and smartphones for people with hand disabilities. Their products include: the Abili headmouse, a head-wearable sensor that allows the user to control the mouse cursor using head motions instead of hands, an adaptive switch that can be used with feet, fists, or elbows, and Dwell toolbar, a mouse clicking software. In this episode, Patil and Shah share the inspiration behind their ideas with host Richard Miles and recommend always having patience, especially when starting a new business. Click the links below to learn more: Abilitare Products Disability Technology TEDxLSSC by Jeff Paradee

Mohit Patil and Parth Shah advise other future entrepreneurs on conceptualizing a company and its products: "Don't come up with a solution looking for a problem, that almost always never works out...what you need is a problem. A problem that the society has, a problem that people are desperate to get solved and then use your engineering mind to think, oh, how can I solve that problem?". Mohit Patil and Parth Shah co-founded Abilitare, a company that provides hands-free access to computers and smartphones for people with hand disabilities. Their products include: the Abili headmouse, a head-wearable sensor that allows the user to control the mouse cursor using head motions instead of hands, an adaptive switch that can be used with feet, fists, or elbows, and Dwell toolbar, a mouse clicking software. In this episode, Patil and Shah share the inspiration behind their ideas with host Richard Miles and recommend always having patience, especially when starting a new business. Click the links below to learn more: Abilitare Products Disability Technology TEDxLSSC by Jeff Paradee

Dr. Jean-François Rossignol discusses the development behind a class of antiviral drugs, such as Nitazoxanide and Thiazolides, that stimulate immune cells, activating gene pathways that block viral transformation: “You’re leading an entire population, and you give them a pill for treating their problems, and you cannot have any side effects, any toxicity, or any kind of things like that. You have to have a safe drug. And that’s what we did.” Dr. Jean-François Rossignol is the Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Romark Laboratories in Tampa, as well as a professor of Medicine and Infectious Disease at the University of South Florida. He is a scientist, medical chemist, and physician who developed groundbreaking treatments for parasitic diseases. In this episode, Rossignol talks with host Richard Miles about his recent induction into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and shares his research on antiviral drug development.

Dr. Jean-François Rossignol discusses the development behind a class of antiviral drugs, such as Nitazoxanide and Thiazolides, that stimulate immune cells, activating gene pathways that block viral transformation: "You're leading an entire population, and you give them a pill for treating their problems, and you cannot have any side effects, any toxicity, or any kind of things like that. You have to have a safe drug. And that's what we did." Dr. Jean-François Rossignol is the Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Romark Laboratories in Tampa, as well as a professor of Medicine and Infectious Disease at the University of South Florida. He is a scientist, medical chemist, and physician who developed groundbreaking treatments for parasitic diseases. In this episode, Rossignol talks with host Richard Miles about his recent induction into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and shares his research on antiviral drug development.

Dr. Norma A. Alcantar discusses the mechanisms in cacti ecosystems and the personal inspiration behind her research: “There were many other things that I learned from my mother and my grandmother, very valuable. And so, I think transferring knowledge from one generation, of our parents and our grandparents to our children…I think that’s very valuable. We should not lose that ever.” Dr. Norma A. Alcantar is a Professor of Chemical, Biomedical & Materials Engineering at the University of South Florida. She is internationally known for her breakthroughs using plant-based technology to decontaminate water. Her research and applications are crucial to future global sustainability and advances in biomedical applications for Alzheimer’s and cancer. In this episode, Alcantar reflects on her recent induction into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and shares her research on biomaterial from cactus plants with host Richard Miles.

Dr. Norma A. Alcantar discusses the mechanisms in cacti ecosystems and the personal inspiration behind her research: "There were many other things that I learned from my mother and my grandmother, very valuable. And so, I think transferring knowledge from one generation, of our parents and our grandparents to our children...I think that's very valuable. We should not lose that ever." Dr. Norma A. Alcantar is a Professor of Chemical, Biomedical & Materials Engineering at the University of South Florida. She is internationally known for her breakthroughs using plant-based technology to decontaminate water. Her research and applications are crucial to future global sustainability and advances in biomedical applications for Alzheimer’s and cancer. In this episode, Alcantar reflects on her recent induction into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and shares her research on biomaterial from cactus plants with host Richard Miles.

Susann Keohane discusses how she uses remote sensing to study behavior patterns in the aging population, a project she hopes will help the elderly thrive: “Overall, I really want us to make older adults feel like technology is for them…and it’s theirs to be used to, and it should be marketed, advertised, and designed for everyone”. Susann Keohane is the IBM Watson Health Innovation Leader for Healthy Aging and Longevity. Her induction into the Florida Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 2021 is amongst one of her achievements; another includes having 137 U.S. patents. She has become an expert in enabling human ability through emerging technologies with a focus on accessibility research, aging-in-place Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and cognitive systems to deliver personalized insights and adaptive interfaces. In this episode, Keohane shares with host Richard Miles the importance of building more intuitive design solutions for the aging population, alongside having them feel comfortable with the technology.

Susann Keohane discusses how she uses remote sensing to study behavior patterns in the aging population, a project she hopes will help the elderly thrive: "Overall, I really want us to make older adults feel like technology is for them...and it's theirs to be used to, and it should be marketed, advertised, and designed for everyone". Susann Keohane is the IBM Watson Health Innovation Leader for Healthy Aging and Longevity. Her induction into the Florida Inventor's Hall of Fame in 2021 is amongst one of her achievements; another includes having 137 U.S. patents. She has become an expert in enabling human ability through emerging technologies with a focus on accessibility research, aging-in-place Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and cognitive systems to deliver personalized insights and adaptive interfaces. In this episode, Keohane shares with host Richard Miles the importance of building more intuitive design solutions for the aging population, alongside having them feel comfortable with the technology.

Craig Bandes discusses how to avoid the same pitfalls of companies he has worked with in the past and how to create a structurally sound order of operations through his experience in business and finances: "And you get to a point where you just realize that if I don't try it, I'll never know, and I'll always regret it. And then you jump into it . But jumping in with more experience, I think, really increases the odds of surviving".Craig Bandes is the CEO and co-founder of Pixelligent Technologies. He has over 25 years of experience serving as a CEO, entrepreneur, and angel investor. Additionally, he is a member of the NanoBusiness Alliance Advisory Board.In this episode, Bandes shares with host James Di Virgilio the importance of having a business background before entering the business world, how he's saved a company from bankruptcy, and the next steps for said company in terms of workplace diversity, globalization, and sustainability.

Craig Bandes discusses how to avoid the same pitfalls of companies he has worked with in the past and how to create a structurally sound order of operations through his experience in business and finances: “And you get to a point where you just realize that if I don’t try it, I’ll never know, and I’ll always regret it. And then you jump into it . But jumping in with more experience, I think, really increases the odds of surviving”. Craig Bandes is the CEO and co-founder of Pixelligent Technologies. He has over 25 years of experience serving as a CEO, entrepreneur, and angel investor. Additionally, he is a member of the NanoBusiness Alliance Advisory Board. In this episode, Bandes shares with host James Di Virgilio the importance of having a business background before entering the business world, how he’s saved a company from bankruptcy, and the next steps for said company in terms of workplace diversity, globalization, and sustainability. TRANSCRIPT: Intro: 0:01 Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade — a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. Starting in running your own company — it’s not for everyone. For those who have done it, it can be exhilarating, exhausting, and easily the hardest thing they’ve ever done. We decided to go out and talk to some of those people and find out what they’ve learned, what they’d repeat, what they’ll never do again, or hear stories from their first year, then from the period when they realized they’re going to survive and how they intend to position their companies for the future. We’ll find out what a CEO’s normal day is like, how they build and manage their teams, what it’s done to their personal lives. And finally, when is it time to move on? Join us for CEO101 — a limited series of deep looks at people who are their own boss — for better or for worse. James Di Virgilio: 0:54 We’re talking with Craig Bandes, the president and CEO of Pixelligent Technologies. It’s a nanotechnology company that does a whole lot of fascinating things that Craig is going to tell us all about. But first, Craig, tell us about your background as a leader. You’ve done a lot of things — both co-founding companies, as well as being brought in to be a CEO. Craig Bandes: 1:14 Yeah. Well, great. Thanks for inviting me to join today. So, you know , I think it’s , it’s nothing that I think you can prepare for without being in the role. There’s so much of it that you figure out as you go. There’s definitely taking advantage of books on leadership or being mentored by others that have come before you, but there’s nothing like being in it to really make all the mistakes, hopefully learn from them, and start to formulate what you think is a, a good compilation of strategies, right? There’s not just one that I think makes a leader, or a CEO, successful. James Di Virgilio: 1:45 Give us a little bit about your, just, biography, sort of the companies that you’ve led. Give us a CV here. Craig Bandes: 1:51 So, very different companies, very different industries. The first company I co-founded with a partner was in IT staffing and consulting — and that was an area where he had slightly more experience than I did in it. And we were big users of those, sort of resources and vendors when we’re both working together as executives in a telecom company, which [inaudible] many back around the uh, circa 2000, didn’t work out after raising lots and lots of money — which was my main job when I was there. And so we started it together, and it was not my lifelong dream to do it, but I had more entrepreneurial background than he did, so it was more, helping get started. I did that for a couple of years, and I’m still running more of a lifestyle type of business today, and decided that really was not what I was looking for, so [I] moved on from that and got recruited to go join a — very early stages — a company that was being formed in the Homeland Security sector, not too long after 9/11. So this would have been in, like, early 2003 when the Department of Homeland Security was just really coming together; and there was a huge need for companies that could come in and provide services to this [inaudible] organization to try and find all kinds of ways to make sure we were better prepared for all kinds of things and acts of terrorism, for sure, but just generally, even natural disasters. It’s not something that was well-integrated in state and local and federal governments. And so I was brought in [inaudible] Global Secure as the president. I wound up taking over the CEO title about a year later and grew that company to, from really three of us, to about 300 people with operations in five states that span software development and training services, and many batches of protective gear and raised about $25 million, maybe closer to $30 million, had nationwide distribution channels we set up… And then ultimately, after trying to go public, but not hitting the window at the right time, when I’m selling off the business at the end of 2007, into early 2008. And that’s about the time that I was approached by a friend, who’s a corporate attorney in D.C., to try and take a look at this company called Pixeligent, which was a very early-stage, non-material company at the time, but also happened to find themselves in a bad spot of bankruptcy and litigation against a large public company. So I was really brought in to see if it was salvageable, and brought in some experts that knew IP portfolios much better than I did, said there was good IP here, and decided to get involved and see if I could at least get it turned upright, and then see what happened. Appointed by the bankruptcy court, the chief restructuring officer wound up restructuring the company, ending the litigation, getting back control of the IP. And then we had to raise money for a pre-revenue, recently bankrupt, [inaudible] technology company in January of 2009 — which could not have been worse timing. So we got out by the skin of our teeth, for myself and a bunch of local investors that I know and started the process of rebuilding Pixelligent. James Di Virgilio: 4:38 That’s a fascinating story that we could spend an entire podcast on, for sure. I also started my wealth management firm in February of 2009. So I know, I know exactly what kind of time that was. All right, Greg, take us back to what you would consider to be your early formative years as either a CEO or a co-founder. What was it like for you to take on that kind of role? Craig Bandes: 5:02 So, we went in with — on the first one, at least — called Focus Technology, we went in saying, “hey, we’re going to start this company.” The telecom company had ended. And there were a bunch of really good people that we thought we could bring on quickly. First time I wrote a big check to get something started as did my partner. And it was just dark right, and very entrepreneurial, not a lot of great planning. It was just, “we think there’s a good opportunity and let’s, let’s go.” And the first big lessons for me there were, one: we hired a lot of people too quickly. And all of a sudden we had a burn that put a lot of pressure on us to go close business in a way that was really not organic. We figured it out, but it wasn’t without a lot more pressure [ inaudible] that we really needed to put ourselves under, and we should have started much more cautiously with a handful of people, including ourselves, and built it a little more brick by brick. I think the timing was, around when we started the business, was when things were contracting in the world of telecos. And we thought that meant it would be a good opportunity to go after short-term staffing, as these companies were cutting fixed overhead and we realized that that was not the right premise, that the consultants were the first to go. And so there , there is a lot of things that we jumped out of the gate on, and I put a lot more faith than my partner, who felt he knew that business better than I did. And within about six months, we were digging ourselves out, as opposed to growing the company. That first lesson, or basket of lessons, was: when you’re starting, start more carefully — really understand the markets better, the timing of what’s happening in those markets better. Figure out what is the right number of employees you need to really just get things started — and even if it means you’re going to lose some really terrific talent that you may not be able to get back, it’s a safer, better bet to do that and then go find other team members as you grow. Those were the main lessons on that. And we learned them righting the ship. We wound up, you know, growing a lot more carefully after that, but those were some early missteps that, in hindsight, seem obvious, but at the time we were just excited to take off. James Di Virgilio: 6:58 Yeah. Why take on a project like this? You come out of school, you’re starting to do whatever it is you want to do. Why take on an entrepreneurial project in the first place? Craig Bandes: 7:07 I wouldn’t advise it, actually. In fact , if I look at some of the issues that led to pretty serious circumstances that Pixelligent found themselves in, it was started by three PhDs that just got through their postdoctorates and started this company without ever having worked in a business, and then really understanding what all the facets are. And sometimes for folks that are sort of, deep buried in the technology, they think the technology is the hard part in business and growing is the easy part, which obviously is not the case. There’s tens of billions of pieces of paper, of patents, out there that will never see the light of day. Most of the time — and there are the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Bill Gateses of the world — for every one of those there’s millions more that maybe try too early. And so I would say the first thing is, that it’s better to go out and just get some level of experience before you start. I think once you have that, and you have an idea of that you think is a service or a product that’s missing in , in whatever market that you’re in, or you’re aware of. And you get to a point where you just realize that, “if I don’t try it, I’ll never know, and I’ll always regret it.” And then you jump into it . But jumping in with more experience, I think, really increases the odds of surviving . James Di Virgilio: 8:14 This is a lot of good information. Let’s probe this a little bit further. You talked about funding early on, and obviously that’s the lifeline of any company that’s trying to go anywhere. You have to fund your ideas, be able to get your product or service to market. It’s much different obtaining funding in your current role at your current stage, I’m sure than it was in the beginning, in the early stages. What was it like for you to take on a project and then have to go out and get funding in the early stages, given that you had probably never generated funding for something before? Craig Bandes: 8:42 So my background was a little different. I came out of investment banking and venture cap. And so, so I was very comfortable with the capital markets. Back — growing up, my family had an over-the-counter trading firm when I got my [inaudible] seven right after high school. So I was deeply enmeshed in the financial markets and was very comfortable in the language, and the way things worked . So, for me, jumping into raising capital was something that was a skill set that I just already had, so I think on that front, I definitely had an advantage. I did a lot of capital raising at the telecom company where it was $275 million of equity and debt capital for that company, and then filed to go public with that company as well, and ran that process. So I had a lot of really good background . So when I jumped into, even with Focus — the first company — we raised a little bit of money, like a million and a half or $2 million, maybe. Beyond that we put into it ourselves, it wasn’t that difficult. I think as you start to go into companies that have a much bigger appetite for cash, like this one — Pixelligent — today, we raised over $50 million of equity so far, and we’re not done yet. But what I learned along the way here is that there’s many different types of capital. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs get focused on venture, and very few of them get it. And so you can spend a lot of time , especially at the early stage of launching, trying to go chase that capital with a very low likelihood of success. And so I think about it of: there’s many pockets of capital , right? There’s the initial friends and family round, then there’s the angel round, then there’s a super angel round, family offices. And then there’s different flavors of different stages of venture capitalists. There’s corporate venturing — and that helps bring in some strategic capital that may help you scale your business faster, open up markets faster than you could on your own. And so when I tell friends, or , or when I mentor for classes, that you really want to understand, what type of capital do you need, how much do you really need to get to the next one or two milestones to start to show real progress? And you can point to success that will help you go raise additional and greater sums of capital and really know the audience who you’re talking to well — in terms of the type of investor you’re talking to because each one of those that I mentioned will have a very different set of criteria they’re looking at and a different set of objectives that they’re looking for. And so sometimes I see, especially first-time money-raisers , kind of put together a deck and think it’s a one size-fits-all. And it’s not. I have probably put together, even with Pixelligent, hundreds of different decks, targeting different types of investors, depending on really understanding what their objectives were and why they would want to write a check. James Di Virgilio: 11:13 Yeah, that’s really good information, especially on the funding side, which you mentioned a little bit already about. Especially if they’re inventors on the technology side or the ones that created the innovation, the business side tends to be foreign to them — and the funding side tends to be very, very foreign. What were some challenges that you faced or found particularly difficult during the early stages of your career? Again, as a CEO and co-founder. Craig Bandes: 11:37 I think some of the challenges or the key lessons learned, well we covered a little bit of this already, which is: start more slowly and build into it so that you don’t put too much pressure on capital raised and just control the burn until you really start to get real revenue traction with your customers. I think the understanding of all kinds of different stakeholders that can help you be successful, right ? So we talked just now about raising capital — that’s one area you need to know — but I had great success in bringing on awesome advisory board members along the way who bring skill sets from a technical perspective, a financial perspective, maybe more of a strategic or a market entrepreneurial perspective. And having them on the team not only makes the team overall smarter, we can leverage their experience. We can leverage their networks in terms of capital raising, customers, or just an understanding of how markets work. And I think the other key piece of it is: when you’re out there building the company, you’ve really got to focus on bringing on the right employees, right? And every time I settled for anybody, you’re bringing on the wrong body. You have to, even though you might be under a great deal of pressure, you know you need more people, you really have to focus and t ake the time to bring on the right people. And the right people will be the ones that you have to sell. It’s just not a matter of you’re going to give them a job and pay them a salary a nd g etting t hem m ix equity. B ut people that I brought on that have been the best, h ave really been the ones that have put me through the pieces the most a nd t urned o ut to be the most productive and most loyal employees. And so, really understanding as t he CEO, it’s your job to basically convince and sell all your stakeholders. I t’s not just t hat in this case, a, uh, an investor stakeholder, but really everybody that you need to be on the team to help you be successful. James Di Virgilio: 13:21 So true when it comes to people being what moves these things forward, right? The wrong team and the best ideas — not going to get it done. You have to have both of those things. Let’s move from, let’s call it, your rookie years, your early years to your middle years. You’re a veteran now. You’re established, you’ve done some things already. You’ve learned some of these lessons, which you’ve already shared, thus far. How did that change how you were able to lead as a CEO, having some of that experience under your belt already? Craig Bandes: 13:46 So I think part of it is you , you learn to be a little more thoughtful before you make decisions, in terms of people over investment. Once you’ve gone through some of those painful processes in the past that you were maybe moving too quickly, I think you start to realize how important the CEO is in setting the tone for the organization and understanding really the impact you have on the organization. Sometimes we’re so focused on the objective of just getting it done and charging hard to go after, especially after you raise some capital and you’ve got investors over your shoulder. It’s really important that you make sure that the team really understands where you’re headed, and why that’s hard, in an entrepreneurial venture, is that that changes, right? The classic word, pivot — there’s many pivots. I can’t count them [inaudible] here. And when you do that, it’s really important to make sure everyone understands what the new objectives and goals are and to spend the time with everybody. And I think some of the mistakes I’ve made was: I thought it was clear after one meeting and “we got to go do this.” And it wasn’t. And sometimes that would make people frustrated. Sometimes it would make them feel alienated . Sometimes they would leave, because they didn’t understand the direction . And so really making sure that as we’re moving forward, everyone that’s in the huddle really has a good understanding of where we’re going, why we’re going there, what the play is that we’ve called. And so when we go execute, we don’t have a problem . And I think that’s something that I did not really take into account or grasp as much as I needed to early on. And now I spend a lot more time communicating with the team, making sure we all understand where we’re moving forward. I think you can’t over-communicate — you can have too many meetings — but you can’t over-communicate to make sure everybody understands really where we’re at. James Di Virgilio: 15:21 That’s a great one. Oftentimes as a leader, you can have a lot of thoughts in your head and you live with those thoughts every single day. And you spit out a few sentences, a paragraph, some moments at a meeting where you think the direction is clearly understood, but other people are not necessarily living in your head all day, knowing all the thoughts you have, and it comes out to them as some passing thoughts. So that’s a great key takeaway there. During the veteran’s stage, if you will, the middle stage of your, your CEO life, how did you handle growing and expanding rapidly, really starting with X number of people and then very quickly you find yourself with growing resources, growing staff — how are you able to navigate that successfully? Craig Bandes: 15:56 I think it’s been different with different companies that I’ve been a part of. With Global Secure, we were a buy-and-build strategy, so we acquired three companies and another one, but it was more like a foreclosure and we got the product line and some people. So that one, we were able to scale very quickly because we had the cash and we were able to make some good acquisitions. And then that was more around an integration of the company. Now, each of these companies that we acquired were meant to be in separate areas and talked about. So it was software, it was training, it was product manufacturing. So it wasn’t meant to make them work together, but still finding a way to keep, thematically, why we did what we did, and scaling that. So it was more, each one of those was very much like scaling three individual companies, which had its own set of challenges, but I also had very competent executives running those divisions. And so we were able to, as a team, move that one along pretty quickly and scale pretty quickly based off of the infrastructure that was already there when we acquired this company, but Pixelligent’s different — Pixelligent was seven PhDs, and then me, and this is a chemical manufacturing company — it’s around novel technology and nanotech , and I had never taken chemistry. I’d taken some physics. So it really was an amazingly steep learning curve for me across everything that we did. And so for this one, it was more really getting my head around, “okay, what are we doing?” And what the initial path was didn’t work. So what capabilities do we have? And I think we can go sell to the market that differentiates us, and really kind of start here one step at a time and build it brick by brick, as we start to get some level of customer interest in them, and then start to build up a brand, initially here. And then we started going to Asia very early to build up our reputation there because that’s a big market for us — still spent a lot of time there, you know, non-COVID time. So it was a much more methodical approach of how we build and scale a team. But even here, we scaled very quickly. Around 2015 or 2017, we got our first big market –it was going to be in the area of solid-state lighting and LEDs. And ultimately, we missed the timing on that and we had to scale back and cut the company [inaudible] very quickly just to kind of give ourselves time to pivot, and now we’ve been in a rebuilding mode again, really since 2019. But in this situation, I was able to read much more quickly what was happening, make the change — as painful as it was — very fast, early on to give us time to recover and redirect ourselves. And had I not had the prior experiences, I think it would have made the decision [inaudible] . James Di Virgilio: 18:20 So the prior experience obviously helps you as a leader to make better decisions. You have an algorithm in your mind that says, “I’ve tried that, that’s not going to work in this situation. That’s going to more efficiently get you to the right answer.” How does your own personal brand help you? Obviously, if you’re in the middle stage, you’re a veteran, right? You basically have a resume that people can look at where it says, “hey, Craig has been successful doing this and that.” And at the table, that gives you a little bit more credibility, right? When you’re having these discussions during those years, what you say has a little more weight than if you’re in the beginning where you’re , you’re sort of fighting tooth-and-nail, just to get some respect. Craig Bandes: 18:54 I think that’s right. But beyond the credibility that may be on a piece of paper, your experience just comes out, right? In conversations with potential employees, with investors, with board members, you’re trying to recruit budget board members, customers, you just have more confidence because you’ve just been through so many battles; you’ve made, and hopefully learned from, a number of big and small mistakes along the way. And like anything else, you just feel better prepared. Whether you’re looking to recruit a junior marketing person who has 10 offers and you really want her and her business, or you’re in front of the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, trying to convince them to write a check to invest in you. You just have the confidence to be able to have those conversations. You prepare for them obviously, but then there’s just a certain level of understanding and background, and reading a room or a person that you just get with experience, right? So I think for me, that’s the biggest part of it is just having lived through so much of it. I’m sure, you know, having a good background and people see you and check you out on LinkedIn — that all helps, like, establish your credibility maybe before you get in the room. But I think we’ve all met people who are a lot better on paper than they are in person. And so being able to, when you’re in that situation, in person, with whoever it is you’re trying to talk to, having that experience and confidence and being able to understand what their objectives are, what yours are, and trying to find the right way to get to the result you want is really just experience. James Di Virgilio: 20:13 And you’ve touched on this now, at least you’ve touched on the now throughout this conversation, which has been great. Let’s bring you into the now in this moment right now — here we are in 2021 — you are the Pixelligent CEO; you have this wealth of experience behind you. The first question I want to ask is: in your opinion, is being a CEO today — is it different than it was 15 or 20 years ago? Is it harder? Is it easier? Craig Bandes: 20:36 I don’t think it’s ever easy — it’s different, right? I think it’s a much more global environment. I mean, even for the size we are today — which is not big — in terms of employees, I have a team, small team in Korea and Taiwan. Prior to COVID, I would be in Asia once a quarter, visiting three or four countries, talking to customers and partners; we have distributors in Japan and China and Korea, Taiwan. You got to keep on top of those guys. So I just think everything is more spread out. Everything is global. And you have to think about your business and today probably on a much more global way than you ever have, and it’s not going to go backwards. I think having the mindset that what you make is important, but also how you make it, and the people you have onboard your team that are responsible for delivering it is really important. So I think diversity should have always been important. I think now it has obviously a lot more of a spotlight on it. We worked and had a very diverse workforce across everything and everyone that’s here. And I say everything. I mean, everything that we do, we have manufacturing, we have our research and development, we have formulation technology, I mean finance, and we have diversity really throughout the organization. And I think that adds to it. And I think there’s thankfully been a lot more focus on that, but you know , I’m reading more and more articles of how that is really in this ESG movement, more and more how CEOs are being judged. And I think that’s right. I think having a more sustainability and environmentally conscious mindset is critical. What we do as a materials company — it’s super important. What we make makes everything we go into a lot more efficient. So we’re directly in line with that. But we also think a lot about how are we making it? And what kind of footprint are we leaving? So I think from that perspective, it’s a lot more today about, broadly, what are you delivering and how are you delivering it ? Can it be more efficient, maybe less impactful? I think that’s different than what you probably had 15, 20 years ago, which creates opportunities, but for sure, a lot more moving pieces. James Di Virgilio: 22:25 So how do you handle the pressure of the media, public opinion, these goals, these directives, the globalization of being a CEO, how is all of that handled? Craig Bandes: 22:34 I think it’s different for every leader in how they internalize that process and use it. For me, it’s really about — doesn’t matter the size of the organization — we all have an impact on making sure that we create environments that are creating good opportunities for our employees to grow and to learn and to contribute. I think when you read some of these stories out there of CEOs who’ve gone astray that have made some pretty poor choices. You read some of these crazy pay packages that CEOs of large companies are getting paid, even when they don’t do a great job, and they have these massive payouts. I think it’s harder when you’re talking to other media folks sometimes and saying, “not all CEOs go about their business the same way.” And so I do think there is a little bit of extra thought you have to put into, to make sure that you are understood by your stakeholders and the media in a way that you want to be portrayed, which is being a thoughtful leader, that you understand the responsibilities we have as leaders; it’s not only about making a lot of money for your shareholders or for your top people at the company, but it really is trying to make sure you share that as much as you can along the way. And you have equal balance on your overall responsibility along the way. So I think some of what’s happened has been an important wake-up call. I think it’s good. I think holding the senior executive leadership of companies, large and small, more accountable is really important. And again, I think it’s a difference from what you saw 15 or 20 years ago, but I think it’s a good difference. James Di Virgilio: 24:04 Craig, I can tell through all of your answers that you’re someone who’s constantly trying to improve, and you’re taking lessons from the past and you’re applying them to today. So with that lens, what are you thinking about and focusing on now, as it pertains to you improving as a leader? Craig Bandes: 24:20 A lot of my focus now is on how do we, as still a relatively small company, have ultimately the impact that we believe we can have, and then how do we attract more like-minded people like us to our mission here to continue to grow the company? I’m spending a lot more time — we touched on this a little while ago — I’m really just thinking about: where are the critical roles we need to bring on? What do those people look like; if they have a similar mindset; and to make sure we maintain that, as things continue to progress for us… Because as you grow and, we are about to hit another, I believe, pretty serious rapid growth spurt in the next 12 to 24 months, how do you not lose hold of that? In terms of really focusing on these critical issues of impact, footprint, bringing on the right people along the way, making sure we continue to maintain the diverse workforce that we have, and just making sure that we continue to really live up to the credo that we have and the ideals that we have as we grow the company through this next level here. I think that’s probably the thing I focus the most on right now. We have the ability now with what we’ve accomplished to go, you know, access different sources of capital. We know our products that we have are impactful and the customers are telling us that. And we’re, we’re actually in a great position where we, in some ways, almost have more business than we can keep up with right now. So now it’s a matter of: how do we continue to keep the right focus here as we grow the company along the lines that we just mentioned? James Di Virgilio: 25:46 Craig, let’s talk about strategy. Obviously, you had mentioned right in the opening that when you came onboard with Pixelligent, there was a very interesting landscape, all sorts of things going on — legally, a bankruptcy, et cetera. How did you decide first that you were going to take on this project, that it was worthy of taking it on; and secondarily, how did you go about deciding what strategy to take to be able to take the IP that was obviously good, as you said, and bring it actually to market in a way that was going to work? Craig Bandes: 26:14 With Pixelligent, I had just finished with Global Secure and was joining some boards and doing some angel investing. As I said, a friend of mine in the D.C. area, his lawyer said, “hey, there’s this company that’s doing some work for the University of Maryland. They’re saying they have some of the most important technology they’ve seen come out of their incubator program, but they need to be helped. Can you go talk to them?” And so I sat down and I got with the team and then some of the advisors, and they had some pretty good folks. And the more I understood how they found themselves in that terrible bind, it was just a lot of really bad decisions, right? The technology was good. They actually had a financial backer who was really strong, who was still a supporter of the company. It was just a series of bad decisions. And then a lot of that driven by the inexperience, because they hadn’t been in the business environment before — they just started it right after their PhD programs — I felt this company shouldn’t die because of financially inexperienced decisions. So I decided to get involved. I had some time, of course it was on my time. Rolled up my sleeves, figure out what’s going on. I’ve gone through the restructuring processes before. So I was able to jump into that and go talk to the bankruptcy judge and buy some time, and then just start to untangle the mess. And so I brought in these IP lawyers who said, “there’s really important, valuable patents here around this brave new world of nanotechnology. And so there’s value here if you can figure out a way to make the mess go away.” So part of this job was at the end of the day, if we could get out of bankruptcy and the litigation, we might just sell off the patents and have a return and move on. Or we were trying to actually build something. At that point, I had taken a deep dive in “why had so many nanotechnology companies failed?” And at that point, most of them had — about $4 [billion] or $5 billion of venture money went into a nanotech company circa 2000, about $12 billion of government funding had gone into supporting growing nanotechnology initiatives and universities and companies, and then another $4 [billion] or $5 [billion] or $10 billion [inaudible] these days went in with corporate, and very little came out. And what I realized was, taking a deep dive, is that a lot of the first round of nanotech companies looked a lot like Pixelligent — brilliant scientists , nobody from a manufacturing perspective or a business perspective. And so really what I decided is that, if we could get in and find a way to make these products, these materials at scale and manufacture them, then there’s potential here, because at some point there would be a billion dollar company here. In the world of nanotech, it just has to happen with as much money and talent and energy was going into it. And so if we could crack the manufacturing scale-up code, where almost everyone else failed, then we would have a shot at becoming a meaningful company. And so as part of that, we went after a very large government program just after getting out of bankruptcy, and it was a hail Mary, and it was one of the first programs focused on the manufacturability of a nanoparticle versus the invention of one [inaudible] . And that really launched the company. And since then, manufacturability is deep in our DNA as the invention of human service . And that’s really what sets us apart. So when we have fortune 500 companies, can’t talk about most of them, but one of them was [inaudible] and that many others come and visit us and kick our tires. They see that we’re different because they can see our manufacturing lines right next to our R&D labs. And so part of it was, I felt that there was the potential to build something meaningful that could have a big impact, would help in the world of sustainability because of the way we make the materials and the efficiencies that they bring, and, ultimately, there were going to be some really big successful companies in the space. And if we can get the manufacturing down, that we would have as good a shot as anyone. James Di Virgilio: 29:48 So, you build out this broad strategy, which was very well laid out right there. How does it go from that to something more narrow — strategy into actual tactics, as you moved along through the curve of progression with Pixelligent? Craig Bandes: 30:01 So you start with, “okay, we have to know that we can manufacture whatever, right?” So the first thing is to hire the right people. So I brought on, pretty early on, a great senior executive and a manufacturing group , understanding of our business. And I told them when you join, “look, here’s the deal: walk down to the scientists , see what they’re doing. And if there’s anything that they’re doing that you think won’t scale, we’re going to tell them to stop.” And they came back and said, “there are a number things that they’re doing that won’t scale. They are using materials that are [inaudible] … or they’re so toxic, you can’t put more than a gallon of them in the building, or you can be shut down by the fire marshal, or downstage processing, and environmental and safety and health issues that no large company will let you go into their building, from a manufacturing perspective. So very early on the tactics were, “okay, we’re only going to make things in the lab that we have a 75% chance that we believe can be scaled, and not violate those issues of safety and scalability that are required to be in fortune 500 supply chains .” So I think that was the key first step around manufacturing, tactically. And then it was okay, how do we build a new manufacturing line that has never existed before that makes these nanoparticles at scale? At that point, we’ve made them like a beaker [ inaudible] , right? How do you start to put these in large, 30, 50, 100, 200-gallon reactors that are making tons of material and still keep the same quality — which is really what set us apart from everyone else in the world, with the quality of the particle? And so we spent a lot of time and cracked that code, and a lot of money to crack that code, both from that program we got from the government, and then more equity that we raised around it. And so, tactically, it was just really spending time stage-by-stage. And from the scale-up perspective, there are steps you have to take so that you don’t just start with a coffee cup and go to a 200-gallon reactor. You start with a coffee cup, you go to a Crock-Pot , you go to a pressure cooker, all along the way to make sure that as you scale, you are able to control what’s happening. And we did that very methodically. So from that perspective, I think tactically is what we did there. Then the other side of it was to get out there into the market, and really just explain that what our technology can do, because we didn’t really know yet which customers in which markets were going to care most. But we started going out to conferences very early on; in generally the area of advanced materials and electronics, and slowly started to figure out after many, many of these trade shares and conferences, which areas that we were seeing the most pull from, and then we would focus our energy and capital around those. And we’ve kind of followed that same methodology throughout. And then we started seeing pull from Asia and, “okay, let’s go over there and start meeting with central customers and partners.” And then from there, “okay, we need a distributor because we need someone that can import this for us.” And , and then if you start with one and then you’ve got two, and then you get five , right? And so you start with what is the big problem that we need to solve, or prove that we can solve, to get the credibility? And then what’s the next one? And then what’s the next one, and what’s the next one? And then, tactically, bring in the right people to execute out all those plans. James Di Virgilio: 33:03 Really well said. That’s a nice curve of progression through strategy, down to tactics being flexible and nimble, but then really making sure that you solve, solve the code-breaking problem that either breaks you or breaks for you. And scalability is certainly one of those things that affects a lot of companies and it’s often too late by the time they realize it. So lastly, now we’re standing today where you are, you’ve built Pixelligent to where it is, of course you and your team and everyone working there, you’ve utilized all of the strategies and tactics. You’ve mentioned you have this wealth of experience in front of you and behind you. What are you looking at for Pixelligent into the future? Craig Bandes: 33:36 I think we have a really unique opportunity over the next three to five years to become one of those first companies to really break out in a market that has been waiting for somebody for 20 years. We have the right combination of the right technology at the right time. When I say “at the right time,” you know, the materials that we make, to get geeky for a second, they’re referred to as “high index materials.” It’s a way for us to get more light into or out of the system or bend light in a way that makes something work better. And that was a(n) interesting concept. And that’s kind of cool when we first started doing it in 2013, and now we have to have that in these next generation displays, augmented and mixed reality devices that we’re all going to be wearing in the sensors that are moving into really becoming part of everything from self-driving cars and drones, and everywhere you touch there’s a sensor… That all of these products now require the materials, the types of materials that we make, in a proprietary way. And so we’re having some of the best companies in the world approach us about integrating that into their technology. Our challenge now is that we’re supporting some of the biggest technology companies in the world with a very small, relatively small team, less than 50 people. And we have to scale that quickly now to not lose these opportunities, because they’re now expecting us to look like the companies we compete against, which are massive companies: Dow, DuPont, Merck, and others at that scale in electronic material space. And so we now have to prove to them that we can deliver at that same level. Now they’re saying they’re bought in on the technology. Now they have to buy in on our capability to really deliver, to give them the customer support that they need, the quality metrics that they demand, and then the ability to supply them wherever they are around the world. So now it’s a matter of, back to your question about strategy and tactics, and we have the strategy of where we want to go. We have the customers, and now tactically, how do we start to go do this? So, I was in Korea. I first shipped out of the country in a long time, three weeks ago, and was able to get an expedited quarantine time. And we closed a partnership with a large Korean partner who is going to be a manufacturing partner for us in Asia. Critical staff . We started that 18 months ago and worked through a number of them before we found the right one and had to go there to meet the CEO. And he had to meet me, and make sure that it was the right thing — thank goodness it was. And so we’re putting in place the infrastructure also on a global basis to be able to go do that and not entirely on our own, even if you have all the resources, all the cash you need, it still makes sense to partner , especially if you’re going into new markets and new regions that you’ve never built anything in before. And so it’s continuing to execute on what I think I have a pretty good handle on, of expanding the types of partners and stakeholders that can really help us execute a pretty big strategy on a global basis and realizing that you can’t, and you shouldn’t, do it alone. And just making sure you’re picking the right partners and the right people to help you get there along the way. James Di Virgilio: 36:26 And perfect. That’s a wrap. Great job, Craig, great answers, really insightful stuff, really logical linear thinking, which makes sense from a finance guy. That’s , that’s how we tend to do things. And from Radio Cade, I’m James Di Virgilio. Outro: 36:39 Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. This podcast episode’s host was James Di Virgilio, and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews. Podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeek. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

Weaver Gaines shares his experiences as the CEO of several startup companies in terms of the highs, the lows, the expected, and the unexpected: "So I think you can inculcate a culture from the top, from the beginning, that says, 'We don't lie. We don't cheat. We don't steal. And we're not going to tolerate people who do those things.' You can make that happen throughout your company, regardless of its size. But the other stuff, the commitment to the task, the belief in what you're doing, all of that stuff, has to be established when the company is small and then you hope it will permeate the company as it grows."Gaines has served as the CEO of Evren Technologies, OBMedical Company and Ixion Biotechnology. Additionally he has been the chairman of several companies and non-profits, and is a member of the Keck Graduate Institute's Corporate Relations Board.In this episode, Weaver shares with host Richard Miles the importance of a CEO's role to encourage teamwork, foster trust in a company, and grow -- in a way that's not just about the money. 

Weaver Gaines shares his experiences as the CEO of several startup companies in terms of the highs, the lows, the expected, and the unexpected: “So I think you can inculcate a culture from the top, from the beginning, that says, ‘We don’t lie. We don’t cheat. We don’t steal. And we’re not going to tolerate people who do those things.’ You can make that happen throughout your company, regardless of its size. But the other stuff, the commitment to the task, the belief in what you’re doing, all of that stuff, has to be established when the company is small and then you hope it will permeate the company as it grows.” Gaines has served as the CEO of Evren Technologies, OBMedical Company and Ixion Biotechnology. Additionally he has been the chairman of several companies and non-profits, and is a member of the Keck Graduate Institute’s Corporate Relations Board. In this episode, Weaver shares with host Richard Miles the importance of a CEO’s role to encourage teamwork, foster trust in a company, and grow — in a way that’s not just about the money. TRANSCRIPT: Intro: 0:01 Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. Starting in running your own company — It’s not for everyone. For those who have done it, it can be exhilarating, exhausting, and easily the hardest thing they’ve ever done. We decided to go out and talk to some of those people and find out what they’ve learned, what they’d repeat, what they’ll never do again, or hear stories from their first year, then from the period when they realized they’re going to survive and how they intend to position their companies for the future. We’ll find out what a CEO’s normal day is like, how they build and manage their teams, what it’s done to their personal lives. And finally, when is it time to move on? Join us for CEO 101, a limited series of deep looks at people who are their own boss — for better or for worse. Welcome to another episode of CEO 101, a series of special episodes in which we talk to and about CEOs of startup companies. I’m your host, Richard Miles. Today my guest is Weaver Gaines , the CEO of several companies, including Evren Technologies, OBMedical, both of those are medical device companies, as well as Ixion Biotechnology. He’s also served as a chairman of numerous companies and non-profits, among other things. Welcome to the show, Weaver. Weaver Gaines: 1:18 “Well, thank you for having me here,” I think is the formulaic response to– Richard Miles: 1:22 That’s right, there’s only one right answer. You’re not going to be here. Weaver, you’ve done a lot of stuff in your life and your career. So why don’t we just start with a short overview of your career? Weaver Gaines: 1:31 Okay. Well, one way of thinking about my career is, “here’s a guy who obviously can’t keep a job.” I went to law school primarily because even though I was an ROTC commissioned officer, everybody else was trying to avoid being drafted into the war in Vietnam. And they were all going to law school and they were on the debate team at Dartmouth, so I went to law school too , with about that much forethought about it. And when I graduated from law school, I went on active duty and I spent two years in the army — one year in Europe, in Heidelberg and Berlin. And one year in long been Vietnam — an experience for which I will be always grateful. The whole experience was extraordinary. I’m glad I did it. I can’t talk anybody into doing it now, but I think it’s really one of the formative experiences of my life. And I’m glad I got involved in it. Richard Miles: 2:17 This is being in the military or being in Vietnam, or both? Weaver Gaines: 2:19 Both. Well, the military itself is an extraordinary experience, and being in a world at war where there are people who are actually trying to kill you every day, although you could argue that that was like being in New York, and , um , it was a different circumstance and I’m glad I did it. Richard Miles: 2:35 And you were in an infantry unit in Vietnam, correct? Weaver Gaines: 2:37 No, I was not in an infantry unit in Vietnam. I was a company commander in Berlin, but when I got to Vietnam, the army had just invoked the update to the military justice system, in which for the first time, if the defendant asked for a lawyer, he got a lawyer. Before then, he only got a lawyer if the trial counsel , the army’s prosecutor was a lawyer. Otherwise officers served in that role and the army and its usual degree of incredible forward thinking came up on the day where they had to supply a lawyer to everybody without any lawyers . So a lot of non-JAG lawyers got JAG positions — Judge Advocate General positions. Richard Miles: 3:14 You had a law degree. Weaver Gaines: 3:15 I had a law degree, and by the way, it made the judge advocate guys really mad because they had signed on for four years in order to avoid combat. And here were all these combat arms like me. I only had two years and also avoided combat, but we didn’t avoid people shooting at us or setting– Richard Miles: 3:34 You were in a combat zone. Weaver Gaines: 3:35 We were in a combat zone. And then I went to work for the law firm that I had intended to go to work for. And I worked for them for a bunch of years and decided that being in a law firm wasn’t that interesting. So I went to a corporation and in the middle of that gig, I realized that, really, I wanted to do it more than I wanted to give people advice about how to do it. So I now call myself a recovering lawyer. And while I provided legal services to the companies that I’ve founded, mostly I’m being an executive and mostly in financial or life science businesses. So to get to the crux of CEO 101, I came to Gainesville after I had spent a year on the national reelection campaign for Bush-Quayle in 1992 . And since Bush didn’t get reelected, clearly doing something in Washington, D.C. was not in the cards. I came down to Gainesville where I had a weekend place and a friend said, “Let’s start a biotech company.” And so that’s how I started my first entrepreneurial biotech company. Richard Miles: 4:34 So, Weaver, I’ve got to say that the first parts of our lives eerily track one another. Of course I was in the army as well, got out of the army. And if things had gone right, I’d be in the Jeb Bush administration right now. But things apparently didn’t go that way. So I moved to Gainesville too , but I didn’t start any successful biotech company. So apart from that small asterisk, essentially we’ve lived the same life. Weaver Gaines: 4:55 Well, I can’t say the first one was a successful biotech company. It was named Ixion Biotechnology and I picked its name, a Greek name, very common in science to use Greek. Ixion sounded good. It said that Ixion had been condemned by Zeus to be bound to a burning wheel for eternity. And since the product we were thinking about was going to be used to treat recurrent kidney stones, I thought, well, that sounds like being bound to a burning wheel, that’s not bad. And after the company had been going for two or three years, I asked my very first associate, the first person who joined me, I said, you know, I don’t know anything about this guy, Ixion, whose name, by the way was pronounced ex-eye-on, but I gave up. Everybody called it Ixion. And he comes back to me and he says, “well, do you want to know why he was condemned by Zeus to be bound to a burning wheel for eternity ?” “No. Why?” “Because he attempted to rape Hera. That’s why.” So I named my first company after an attempted rapist. Richard Miles: 5:50 So marketing was not really your strong suit– Weaver Gaines: 5:51 Absolutely not . Nobody knew that except us. And so we never told anybody, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever broadcasted it, for that matter. Richard Miles: 5:58 Anyone owning Ixion stock out there, maybe now’s the time to sell. Weaver Gaines: 6:02 Now’s the time to sell or to put it on 4Chan or something like that, but that was an enlightening experience, Richard. I made, I literally made every mistake a startup entrepreneur could make, although there were some mistakes I couldn’t make because an earlier mistake had sorta foreclosed the possibility of– Richard Miles: 6:19 So we’re going to get into that. But before that, I wanted to ask you. So you get out of the army. This must have been what? Early 70s-ish? Weaver Gaines: 6:25 Yeah, 70s, basically. Richard Miles: 6:26 And you’re an army brat. So what brought you to Gainesville? Did you have a family connection here? Weaver Gaines: 6:32 Okay. So my dad was a graduate at the University of Florida, ROTC graduate — World War II, Korea, Vietnam vet himself, and my sister had gone to the University of Florida, one of my sisters had gone to the University of Florida and her best friend here was my current wife, Mary True. And my sister — I’d been married once before — and she said to me, “Look here, Weaver every time you pick out a girl for yourself, you do a poor job.” That’s not exactly what she said, but that’s what she meant, right ? Yes. “I’d like to pick out your next girl for you.” And I said, “well, I can’t do any worse than that.” So, she was from Gainesville. Mary was from Gainesville. So I got to know her and I got to date her, and then we got married and I told her if she would just keep her apartment in Gainesville and not bring her car to New York for less than the cost of parking the car in New York, we could keep the Gainesville apartment . So that’s how I ended up with a place in Gainesville. Richard Miles: 7:27 This was planned from the very beginning, Weaver Gaines: 7:28 Yes, everything thought out carefully in advance with the primary reason for changing directions, being that I had cracked my shins on something and it hurt. And so I would stop to see where I was going. That wasn’t it. So that’s how I got to Gainesville. And that was in late 1992 after the election with the Bush-Quayle campaign. Richard Miles: 7:46 Okay. Prior to that, you were living in New York? Weaver Gaines: 7:50 Prior to that, I was living in Manhattan, New York, except for one year in Philadelphia, where all I could think of was how to get back to Manhattan. Philadelphia is — sorry, Phillies . So I started the first company, as I said, being completely ignorant. And that’s probably the only reason why anybody would start his first company. Richard Miles: 8:10 Take us back to the first few weeks, even of what that was like, first of all, start with what was the core idea or the core business model insight? And then what were your first steps? Did you just sort of file the papers and rent a space somewhere? Or what was– Weaver Gaines: 8:23 Yeah, basically well, sort of that. I got the idea of starting it from a fellow I’d hired at one of my previous jobs who said, “look, let’s start this biotech company. I have a brother who’s a research scientist, the University of Florida, very smart guy.” And he was a very smart guy. And he’s got some technology, which is really exciting. And he had two completely distinct technologies. One was a stem cell treatment for type 1 diabetes. And the other was a probiotic treatment using a bug called Oxalobacter formigenes, you know how that rolls off the tongue. So the very first thing was to learn to pronounce Oxalobacter formigenes. Richard Miles: 8:59 Now I see why Ixion was a more attractive alternative– Weaver Gaines: 9:01 Yes, right, than “Oxalobacter Formigenes Company.” And so the first thing I told him was, “well, I can get the company started, but really, I don’t know anything about biotech.” And he said, “well, you don’t need to, my brother knows about biotech. You need to know about starting companies.” That turned out to be wrong, by the way. And so I said, “well, the very first thing to do is to kind of get our arms around the intellectual property.” Y ou got nothing if you don’t have that. And the intellectual property was resident at the University of Florida, and the University of Florida had an officer in charge of licensing technology. And on a good year, they would license two or three. They license 90 or 100 now. And on a bad year, they didn’t get much done at all. And so it took about a year to negotiate the license for the technology, but you really couldn’t do much else. I mean, I was running it out o f my house because you really couldn’t do much else, right? Because you didn’t have anything to do i t with. Richard Miles: 9:54 Right. Weaver Gaines: 9:55 And in those days you couldn’t be sure you would live long enough to license it from the university. Richard Miles: 10:00 So there was no point in continuing research or things like that or making an investment because you don’t own anything. Weaver Gaines: 10:05 You don’t own anything. And the research has continued and a guy who’s the research side and he’s going on, doing the research at the university. And there was a fellow named Shelley Schuster who, at that time, was the head of the biotech program here at the University of Florida. He’s now at the Keck Graduate Institute. He’s the president of the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, California. And he said, “I have some space in the Progress Center. Why don’t you come out there and have an office in my space while you’re trying to license the technology? And I won’t charge you anything for it.” So yes, I did arrange for an office, but I didn’t pay anything for it. And I went out there and got the office in Progress One, which was, at that time, owned by the university and set up my first computer to demonstrate, yes, we were a company because we had an office– Richard Miles: 10:48 It was a physical, awaiting a computer? Weaver Gaines: 10:50 No, no, it was an IBM. It was an IBM. It had like, I don’t know, 250 bytes of board memory, or so, it’d use the big four-and-a-half-inch floppy disks. But then we got the license. Now you’re going to actually start trying to do something. Richard Miles: 11:06 So after you got done with your bottle of champagne, from getting the license– Weaver Gaines: 11:09 We couldn’t afford champagne. It was a bottle of cold dock , but , um , yeah, we got the license and now we were actually in a position to try and do something. So there’s a whole bunch of things you try and do to get ready to do the thing that you most need to do. So what you most need to do is find money because you can’t do anything without it in the startup world, but you can’t just go say, “give me money; I have an appealing face,” — even worse if you have my face. And so you have to do things like come up with a business plan, think through how exactly you’re going to exploit this technology. What’s feasible? What isn’t? What kinds of research needs to be done? Where are you going to get money to do the research? How far do you have to go in the research before you can make a plausible claim for the money? One of the big mistakes I made was if it’s a really brilliant idea in a magnificent market, they’re going to give you money. No, they’re not. And in this case, it was two, basically, pharmaceutical preparations. And I took a long time to learn that those are decade-long projects — and that’s if they’re ready to be taken out of the university, if they’re developed enough to be taken out of the university, which they said not — another one of my mistakes. And I also didn’t know then, like I know now, that about 90%+ of them will fail. They will not, in fact, ever reach the market — and that’s assuming you can finance it. I’m just talking about the ones that go through the process of bringing a biotechnology, pharmaceutical entity to the point where somebody will buy it or at least be willing to support it to the point where it can be sold, mostly fails. Richard Miles: 12:40 It’s one of those statistics you really don’t need to hear early on. Weaver Gaines: 12:42 No no, well, actually I said, “if you knew, if you knew when you started what you will learn along the way you would go into another line of work,” like, I don’t know, bicycle repair. Richard Miles: 12:50 Something more lucrative, right ? Weaver Gaines: 12:52 Right, plumbing. Richard Miles: 12:53 Plumbing. Yeah . Weaver Gaines: 12:53 So you have to develop a business plan. A lot of people think that you can get somebody to develop a business plan for you, but you can’t. You really have to do it yourself because that’s going to be where you learn about the things you need, but don’t have, and think through how you’re going to get them and then make some guesses about what it’s going to cost you to get from here to there, and with your business plan, and your intellectual property, and some sense of people you might be able to get involved with you that you can talk into working for nothing or nearly nothing, because you’re likely to be working for, not very much money, particularly at the beginning. Quite common for you to go without pay for months at a time, which by the way, Richard, means that if you want to do this sort of game, you can’t be in it for the money because t hat’ll never be good enough. You have to be in it because you think you’re trying to do something that’s worth making some kind of sacrifice for. So when I left the campaign, when Bush lost in 1992, the first thing that happened was I got a job to go to work for a financial service company. And I thought to myself, “well, if we get to the end of the day and they say, ‘okay, Weaver, w hat did you do with your life?’ Say w hat — made a lot of money?” That just didn’t seem very satisfying to me because you can make a lot of money a nd people don’t do that, and there’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money. Good for the people who do. But for me, I thought, you know, my father was a s ervice m an. He spent his life in service and that’s w here I felt a little … smarmy. If that’s all I was going to be able to say, “he made a lot of money,” but if you could say, “well, I tried to cure type 1 diabetes.” Even if it didn’t work, I tried to deal with people who a re suffering from recurrent kidney stones. You ever had a kidney stone? Richard Miles: 14:33 I have not. I’ve seen people who’ve had. Weaver Gaines: 14:35 You don’t want them. Richard Miles: 14:36 Not something I want to do. Weaver Gaines: 14:37 And it turned out, by the way that, that, wasn’t what we ended up trying to get that probiotic to do, because that costs too much money, a long shot, too much money. It ended up being a treatment for a condition called primary hyperoxaluria, which is a genetic condition in which half of the people who have it will die before they’re one year old and the rest will die by the time they’re 12, and there’s no cure. There’s nothing you can do except a kidney-liver transplant. Richard Miles: 15:01 Well, good point that you made there about doing something that you feel makes a difference, and David Brooks, the author, talks about the difference between resume virtues and eulogy virtues, which I think is a nice way of encapsulating ’cause a lot of what we do, certainly as early adults, what we focus on is resume virtues. Weaver Gaines: 15:15 Sure! Richard Miles: 15:16 What’s going to get me my next job? What’s going to get me promoted? What’s going to make me look really good? But if you think about it, when you’re dead and gone, and they’re saying, “Weaver Gaines…” And they just rattle off your qualifications and degrees… Weaver Gaines: 15:29 It’s the same sort of dissatisfaction. And Richard, you and Phoebe have achieved this in your lives with the Cade Museum, and what it represents in terms of contribution to, not just our local community, but to the country and to the world. Richard Miles: 15:42 Well, thank you. Weaver Gaines: 15:44 So you know what I’m talking about. You can only put up with some of this stuff if you’re motivated by something besides the money. Richard Miles: 15:50 But let’s talk about those first few days, because as you well know, from your first few days, it looks really daunting because you wake up and every day your to-do list has a hundred things on it. And all of them are objectively urgent. They all have to be done first, right? Because you get an office. Well, great. Well, your office needs a phone. Well, does it have a phone in it? Maybe it doesn’t. Well, you get a phone and you have to have someone to answer the phone and get the mail, and all of those things were sort of “must-do,” but yet you’ve also got to raise money. So one of the most crucial decisions early on is your first hire, your first couple of hires. Did you have any help in making that decision or was it the first person who walked through the door and needed a job? You said, “go get a phone, go get the mail.” ‘Cause that’s sometimes how it happens, right? Weaver Gaines: 16:30 Well actually I would say what happened in this case was that, because Mary had lived here for a long time, she knew a whole bunch of people: college graduates. Master’s degree in history and he’s helping his wife run a deli, and he became a friend, and he came to me and he said, “either you have to give me a job or I’m going to kill my wife and go to jail. Those are my options. I can’t afford to pay a fine, just as long as I have a job.” And it turned out that one of the critical things, on those first few days, is that there be somebody else there. So while you may have to do everything yourself, sometimes you just can’t do it all today. And even if you could do it tomorrow, even if you could do it tomorrow better than the person that’s working with you, you just can’t bring yourself to do one more thing today after you’ve gotten the mail arranged for the phone, and arrange for the post office to deliver the mail to you the way they said they would, when you put the post office box down and all that sort of stuff … It helps to have somebody there. And somebody you can go in and say, “could you get the phone? Will you answer the phone?” And all that sort of stuff. Richard Miles: 17:33 Right. Weaver Gaines: 17:33 So the very first hire actually was critically important, but did not functionally supply one of the nominal things that we needed, a person who could oversee the science and a person who could handle the legal stuff and all the things that you think of go into a company. But if you’re the only guy on the ground, there’s one person you want to have there that you can turn to and say, “I just, I can’t face this today.” And they’ll do it for you. So that was the very first hire. He was terrific in that role. He later worked for me one other time. In between times, he worked for another one of our local companies that got acquired by SmithKline . Richard Miles: 18:10 And what was his background? Weaver Gaines: 18:11 History major — master’s degree in history. Bright guy, competent, and totally competent and enthusiastic and got caught up in what we were doing. And [he] later took over a lot of things just because he was there, and he was smart, and he could do stuff. And not because he had any background in science or engineering or anything else. Richard Miles: 18:30 This is what we tell people from our limited experience with tech companies is that, people make this assumption, “well, a tech company is just full of engineers and people like that.” It’s like, well, no, every company needs a fairly broad array of talents to just make it to that first milestone. Weaver Gaines: 18:44 Absolutely. Richard Miles: 18:44 Because again, if you don’t have somebody who can help you do all the mundane things that need doing — a room full of 10 engineers that don’t answer the phone or answer the mail is not going to make it. Weaver Gaines: 18:53 And also if you have a company of all engineers and you aren’t, you think you’re speaking their language — it sounds like English — but it’s not. It’s “engineer’s speak.” And it’s hard to communicate with 10 engineers without a translator. Richard Miles: 19:06 So let’s fast forward a little bit, maybe if we’re talking about Ixion or it could be any of the, one of the companies that you started, and I don’t know what the timeline for these companies was, but let’s say you’ve hit your first, maybe, good milestone — whatever that is, and whenever that is. But inevitably, almost every company that succeeds has had at least one, maybe two or more big setbacks. What was, if you’d like to share the details without triggering any lawsuits, what was maybe one of your first big setbacks and how did you recover? Weaver Gaines: 19:32 Okay. Well, I would say that the setbacks tend to come in categories. The one that you’re most conscious of most of the time. So if you’re the CEO of a startup company, you have several jobs and they’re all full-time jobs. And one of them is actually making sure the entity will function, and that it does have telephones and so forth. You don’t have to do it, but you have to make sure of it. And one of them is to make sure that the science is moving forward because it’s never fully developed when you get it. And one of them is raising money. And so basically you’re always raising money. The biggest science setback came when we could not replicate in the company’s labs, the results that were taking place in the scientists’ labs at the university. It was critical that we be able to do the cell culture that he was doing in order to have a product that we could show off to get some more money, right? We couldn’t get it to work. And this is going on for a long time. Now, competent scientists working hand in glove with the people at the university, we can’t get the cells to reproduce? Same refrigerators, same T75 flasks. They won’t grow. “Why not?” A scientist is rolling his eyes. You know, Jesus, he comes out, he can’t get them to grow out there , at the Progress Center either. So the answer to that one was that it turns out that there are two manufacturers of T75 cell culture flasks: Cornell Glass and Phillips . And he was using one and we were using the other — their nominal specifications were identical, but it grew in one, it didn’t grow in the other. And you tell this to people who are cell culture experts, and they say, “Well, yeah, everybody knew that.” I wish they would say, “That’s not possible.” What they say is, “Everybody knows that.” Yeah. Right. No, it made a difference, but that set us back by months. Well, when you’re burning cash every day, whether you’re being set back or not, any one of those kinds of scheduled delays will eventually turn into a financial problem. And the setback comes when you go to people and you say, “We’re not going to be able to make payroll next month. There’s not enough money. We got maybe some coming in, but we’re going to all be working with no money or very little money…” Because some people can’t work with no money. They can’t. Richard Miles: 21:44 Yeah. Weaver Gaines: 21:45 And so you say, “Well, okay,” and one of the ones, this guy I was telling you about, Teddy, said, “Well, I can defer income.” So that was one of them. One of them was, as sometimes happen, you’d get an agreement to make an investment from an angel group or a high-net-worth individual, for example. And you’re very close to closing the agreement, and it falls out of bed for some reason or another. And you’ve made the mistake — one of the many mistakes — you’ve made the mistake of thinking it’s going to close around this day. And then it doesn’t. And now you don’t even know if it’s going to, because the problem that came up is one that isn’t immediately obvious how you’re going to settle it, because it’s a fundamental issue in the deal itself. And those are grim. Richard Miles: 22:25 It’s not in some little insignificant detail. Weaver Gaines: 22:28 No, they’ve thought it over and they need 45% of the company instead of 20% — something major like that, and you can say no, and they say, “Fine, I’ll pack up my bags and wish you the best of luck.” Or you can see if rolling over on your back and exhibiting your unprotected belly will work, or if there’s some other option that might help out. And then there’s the one where you have the fight with the big investor. He’s already invested. He now basically could control the company. He hasn’t yet. You’ve had this conversation that goes, “Well, I invested in you because I believe in the management of this company and I’m going to sit on the board, but I’m going to be influencing as a board member and not as a big investor.” And then you come to a point where you don’t agree with the big investor. And he says, “Well, have you forgotten who owns this amount of money in your company?” And you say, “No, have you forgotten that you said, when you invested, that you were going to rely on the management?” And he says, “No, and I stopped relying on you because I have the money and you’ll either do what I say, or you’re going to quit or get fired.” And “get fired” appeared to be one of the alternatives that turned out was the one that happened. But , uh, all kinds of grace, of course. Richard Miles: 23:35 Right. Weaver Gaines: 23:35 He took over and put one of his young proteges, the Swede — he was a Swedish guy. In fact, he was the only Swedish multi- millionaire I know who was an actual member of the Communist Party. Really interesting, very interesting, cultured man. So that’s an example of an actual death experience. Yeah. Right. Richard Miles: 23:52 Weaver, earlier , we were talking about institutional culture, and it kind of fascinates me and I think it does you as well. And one of the ways in which institutional culture changes is related to the size of the company. And so you’ve been in companies literally where there are a couple of people — that’s the way it starts, two or three people — and you hesitate to even call it a company, right? It seems more like a family or a frat party or something, right? Not an actual company, but then there’s a certain point at which you do have to start resembling an actual company with titles and sort of clear responsibilities and divisions. What does it do from a managerial standpoint? If you’re the leader, what things do you have to consciously do differently? Because you now, instead of two employees, you’ve got 20 or 200 employees. Weaver Gaines: 24:33 Yeah, well first I think, organically, there’s a theory of “span of control.” I’m sure you’ve heard of “span of control.” And some people say, “The most people you can really have usefully reporting to you is somewhere between five and seven, maybe 10.” So early on in a company — when there’s five or seven or eight or nine people in the company — one of the things that’s true is you pretty much all know what the other person’s strengths and weaknesses are. You don’t give a person with a weakness a task that you know plays to the weakness, and you don’t keep a person whose strength from doing that. But you all know what it is. And you, the CEO, can really have a material, substantive effect on all of the major decisions made by your company. And then it goes over that number. And two things happen when it goes over that number — up to about 25 in my experience — one of them is: it’s no longer the case that you really can do everything. And you mustn’t, you have to start relying on people. And sometimes that’s a different person. So the person who could handle lab operations, when there was one person in the lab, can’t handle lab operations when there are 10. It went outside their “Peter principle.” They’re not competent at lab management, as opposed to– Richard Miles: 25:40 Working in the lab. Weaver Gaines: 25:40 Working well in a lab with some scientists. The second thing is: you no longer know all of the strengths and weaknesses of all of the people in your company, although you should still know who’s good and who’s not, and the people who are reporting to you. And as a CEO, you must resist the temptation to meddle in the operations of the people who are now responsible for operations of their own. This is one thing that’s really disabling to people. It’s the sense that two things happen — they’re both bad. One is: you tend to make decisions where you don’t know what’s happening on the ground, like they do. And perhaps the worst aspect is: they start thinking, “Well, he’s going to be the one staying up at night, not me, because he’ll double-check my decisions. And if he doesn’t agree, he’ll tell me to change it.” And if you want a comfortable-running company, you can’t let people think they can move hard decisions to you that is within their area. So I tell people, “Look, there’s three kinds of decisions that affect you,” — and this starts at around 20 people — “One is the kind of decision I expect you to make. And I don’t expect you to tell me, because it’s the kind of decision you should make. And I don’t want to be bothered by being told you did it because it’s your decision. And the second is the kind of decision that I expect you to make, but I do expect you to tell me. It’s something I need to know, but I don’t need to prove it. And I’m not going to disapprove it. And the third: this is the one where you’re about to make a decision that could result in a hole below the water line,” — for all you Navy guys out there — “that one you have to consult with me in advance.” And inevitably, these people say, “Well, how will I know which one’s which?” And I say, “Well, you have to use your judgment.” And by the way, if you get it consistently wrong, you’re in the wrong job. So you have to get this sort of thing right. But I don’t want you to bring Category Two decisions, the kind you need to be making, to me for prior approval. I’ve got all the hard decisions already. You have those. Then, when a company gets to be about 100 or so, you need a lot more bureaucratic structure than you had before. You can get along with a lot of informal arrangements — doesn’t have to all be written down. Yeah, it’s useful to have an organization chart and so forth, but you don’t need it. It’s a bleak day in a company’s existence when it needs a Human Resources department, because that means there will be human resources — people there who are basically spiders or vampires, you pick the name, and that company is a completely different company. And the way you nurture some kind of camaraderie and corporate culture has to come from the top-down and it has to filter through the CEO — so there is no escape from this — to see if you can inculcate that with the janitor in the lab, who’s working for you and whose job is important too , but not at the level that you’re going to go in and pat him on the back and say, “Nice job, Junior, you know, I really appreciate your mopping.” ‘Cause, you know, it’s not gonna work. Richard Miles: 28:26 Right. Weaver Gaines: 28:26 And the other thing you have to do, in my opinion as a CEO, is you cannot rely for your information entirely on the people who are reporting to you. So you actually have to get up and walk down into the lab and say, “So how are things going here?” “We’re completely out of beakers.” “You’re out of beakers! Is that right? Well, does Joe know that?” “I’ve told him several times and we’re still out of beakers.” “Well that’s interesting. Okay. Thank you.” I mean, people will talk to you. Ross Perot, you’ve heard of Ross Perot– Richard Miles: 28:52 Yes, yes. Weaver Gaines: 28:52 Ross Perot ran a company and his cafeteria, you sat at the next seat at whatever table was open — they’re trestle tables — and he would sit down with whoever was at the table and say, “Talk to me.” This did two things. One: he learned what was going on. And the second thing is: the people who reported to him knew he would learn what was going on, which is also useful. So I think you can inculcate a culture from the top, from the beginning, that says, “We don’t lie. We don’t cheat. We don’t steal. And we’re not going to tolerate people who do those things.” You can make that happen throughout your company, regardless of its size. But the other stuff, the commitment to the task, the belief in what you’re doing, all of that stuff, has to be established when the company is small and then you hope it will permeate the company as it grows. Richard Miles: 29:37 Weaver, we were talking about this earlier in a different context: Contrary to popular belief, CEOs are not superhuman. Weaver Gaines: 29:43 Really? That explains a lot. Richard Miles: 29:46 I know, I’m bursting your bubble. Weaver Gaines: 29:47 That explains a great deal. Richard Miles: 29:49 And certainly when you start out and you founded your own company, as we’ve already talked about, there’s no shortage of things and worries to occupy your day. From the minute you get up to the minute you go to bed, you can be working in the company and often you do. At a certain point, that’s not a great personal-life-work-life-balance strategy — particularly if you’re married or you have children and so on. What are some of the things that you have seen, both good and bad? How should CEOs think about their commitments to their company, but then the commitments to the rest of their life? Because they’re just not probably gonna make it very far or, we’ll put it this way, they may have a successful company and ruin the rest of their life. What have you seen, in terms of successful strategies, to avoid that? And then, are there any horror stories you can relate in which people did the exactly wrong thing? Let’s leave out, say, the first 30 days in which, okay, you’re just going to be working 24/7. Everyone gets that. But let’s say you’re a little bit further along. You’ve got some employees, maybe even some revenue, but yet that feeling hasn’t gone away, that you gotta be Johnny-on-the-spot all the time. Weaver Gaines: 30:49 Let me start by saying when I started my career, it was as an associate lawyer at a big law firm on Wall Street. And there was no work-life balance. It was just work. And I think maybe half of the people who started in that law firm with me, including myself, were divorced in the course of six or seven or eight years. You basically communicated through notes on the refrigerator ’cause you were working till 10:00 many nights and almost every weekend. When you’re in a startup company, it’s more than 30 days that it’s like that. And you’re really asking the people who are around you — I don’t have children, so I didn’t have that particular problem, but I do have a wife that I cherish — and you’re basically saying, “Look, you’re signing onto this with me. Are you okay with that? You know what you’re signing on for? Because I can get a job that’s 9:00-5:00 or 9:00-7:30, if it’s a bigger job than that.” But it reminds me of when I was growing up, army wives — they knew what they had signed up for. Foreign service wives knew what they’d signed up for. They’re going to make a sacrifice too, and, in some cases it’ll be a big one, and you can’t do it alone, I don’t think. I mean, maybe for a bachelor, you can, but if you’re married, you have an intimate relationship with somebody or you have a close, personal relationship with somebody. They have to be on board with you too . Or you won’t be able to do what I think needs to be done to be a success in the first couple or three years of a startup company, because it’s going to be that long before you get to the place where you can take a breath and, “Where’s the dog?” “The dog died last month.” You know, I mean it didn’t, you know, we never had a dog. Richard Miles: 32:18 Right. Weaver Gaines: 32:20 I think that the thing that probably engenders more work-life balance is increasing exhaustion in age than it is any kind of conscious stratagem that I know of. And when I look around at the people who are successful CEOs, they may not have dark shadows under their eyes now, but they all went through it. And as I said, you need that team at home who’s willing to back your play and understands what’s involved. I don’t know any other answer to give you, Richard. I mean– Richard Miles: 32:48 No, it’s a good one. I found, just in my very limited experiences, there’s a step of humility and trust, once you start seriously delegating your responsibilities, right? Where when you first start out, you just think, “I’m the only one that really understands this company, this technology. And it’s so important — my understanding of it — that I really can’t ask somebody else to do it.” But at a certain point, you realize you’ve got to make that step. You’ve got to hire that person, mentor them, teach them, because otherwise you are a prisoner of your own creation, right? You will never break free– Weaver Gaines: 33:19 Never. Richard Miles: 33:19 … Until you are able to find and train– Weaver Gaines: 33:23 Community service. Richard Miles: 33:23 … Those people. What I find in many instances, and this is what’s really gratifying, is you find people who can not only do it, they can do it better. And that’s when you realize like, wow, if I really want to build something, first it’s a trust issue because you don’t think they can do it better. And then it turns out they’re really good at it — not always, obviously, there , there are some misfires. And I think that, to me, from what I’ve seen is the secret to building — as we said earlier today — something built to last is a recognition there are talented people out there that can do this job. I’ve got to find them, I’ve got to train them, and so on. And then you’re off to the races. Weaver Gaines: 33:55 All true with this corollary. It took me a while to realize that just because it was different, didn’t mean it was worse. So somebody who did something different from the way I would’ve done it, didn’t mean they were doing it worse. And in fact, my goal in hiring people was to hire people I thought could do it better. But the very first thing I had to get used to doing was the judgment that that was good enough. And then after a while , I got to thinking, “Well, maybe it’s not only good enough. Maybe it’s actually better than the way I would have done it.” But that first step, in which it gets done differently and you think, “Oh my God, you know, we’re doomed! This is not going to — I got to step back in here.” So good enough was the first thing to do. Richard Miles: 34:34 Yeah. Weaver Gaines: 34:35 But sometimes you can’t find somebody that you think is going to be better. You’re happy with somebody fogging a mirror because you have to fill this position. You need a quality person because otherwise you can’t pass the FDA audit. And this is the quality person you could get in Gainesville. This one. And the one thing you know for sure is he knows more about quality than you do, but that’s all you know, and not looking good, right? And recalls are going to be bad — that sort of thing. But even as people take up a bigger share of the burden, the burden itself is growing. So the company is getting bigger. And if you’re lucky enough to actually have a product, which has now been approved by the FDA, well, somebody has to be the manufacturing manager because you got to make sure it’s made. And then somebody else has to be the quality manager to make sure it’s made right. And if you’re dealing with a distributor , somebody has to be in charge of the distribution program in the marketing and sales operation. And you, the CEO, are responsible for all of those things, whereas before you had only the scientists and you and there’s still — notwithstanding Einstein and quantum mechanics — there’s still only 24 hours in the calendar day and you have to spend some of them sleeping, and you really do need to spend some time with the other person or persons in your life, even if they’re taking the short end of the stick for a while. And so sometimes it’s not possible to assemble the dream team right away, as you have to do with what you got. Richard Miles: 36:06 Weaver, one final question and that is: In any of your CEO experiences or leadership positions, have you ever gone in with sort of a personal exit plan? Do you say, “Okay, I’m going to do this, but I’m leaving after 10 years,” or “I’m leaving after we hit this certain milestone,” or is it more, “I’ll play it by ear. I’ll see how it goes. And if it turns out well, I stay.” How has that sorted itself out for you? Weaver Gaines: 36:26 I have never gone in with a personal exit plan, but you remember my planning skills are … defective. Um , more often than not, the exit has been attributed to an exogenous circumstance. Something happens, and it’s appropriate now for you to leave. So, in the first company, Ixion Biotechnology, when the Swedish investor took one of the two technologies and left the other one behind, left the stem cell one behind, and getting together with all of the scientists and everybody, we determined that it was going to take five more years and maybe $20 million to see if it would work. We decided that was not a good play, that we couldn’t justify taking $20 million of somebody’s money, knowing what we now knew. And by the way, that technology has never worked, although, other people have tried it. We could do the stem cell magic — we just couldn’t do it in commercial quantities, couldn’t make enough to sell. So that resulted in leaving. I mean, that’s what we did. In OBMedical Company, the failure of an investment involving one of our local Florida investment groups, — whose name I won’t mention over the air because I can’t mention it without running the risk of a lawsuit… Richard Miles: 37:33 We’re a lawsuit-free podcast here. Weaver Gaines: 37:35 Right . When that was over and it was necessary to go out and now solicit people who had already contributed when you told them, “Okay, we have a term sheet and we’re ready to move forward.” And now you’re going to have to go back and say, “We had a term sheet and we’re not ready to move forward because the other guy’s a jerk.” And everybody’s going to think, “Yeah, well, was he the only jerk in the room?” And my sister was dying of a glioblastoma. I said, “It’s time for a new person to come in — a fresh voice. You’ll put up with what CEOs put up with, which is the new CEO, can blame everything on you for a while ” . And in fact, that’s what happened: A really good guy came in that I recruited, and who pushed the company over the finish line till it was sold. I stayed on as an advisor, so that wasn’t planned. And this current company that we’re doing, I did deliberately promise Blythe Karow, who’s the CEO right now, who’s taken over — I’m the executive chairman, because she’s not quite the complete CEO, and I’m not quite the board chairman, but it’s gradually getting to the point where she’s going to be the standalone CEO. When that happens, when the board says, “Okay, she’s ready. Are you ready?” I’ll be ready. But that will be more planning than I’ve ever done before. And I think she’s probably ready now, but we need to get through this next round of financing and then we’ll see what happens. So, I don’t know, ambiguous answer to that question. Richard Miles: 38:52 Good answer, and well thought out. It’s been a great conversation, Weaver, and I feel charged up and ready to go. I’m going to go out and acquire a company. Weaver Gaines: 38:59 There you go. Richard Miles: 38:59 Now I’m sure that the job offers will flood in, I said — Weaver Gaines: 39:02 Any moment. Richard Miles: 39:03 And that ends our conversation, Weaver Gaines, so you’re ready to go, but I appreciate you coming on the show and look forward to seeing what’s next for you. Weaver Gaines: 39:09 Thank you, Richard. I appreciated being here. It was a lot of fun. Richard Miles: 39:12 Great. Thank you. Outro: 39:14 Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews. Podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

As a first-time founder and CEO, guest Vinny Olmstead reflects on what it felt like to start something new: “The one word I would use is just excitement. If you were taking a picture, I think you would see wide eyes and a smile on my face... In my early days, as I was looking at opportunities, I was hyper focused on solving some type of problem and spending a good amount of time to figure out what the solution would be for that type of problem.”Olmstead is the Co-Founder, Managing Director, and Partner at Vocap Investment Partners based in Vero Beach, Florida. Prior to Vocap, Olmstead was CEO of Bridgevine, an advertising technology company focused on customer acquisition.In this episode, Olmstead talks with host James Di Virgilio about his experience as a CEO and investor, and to share his advice for entrepreneurs that are trying to rise above the crowd to get funding.