Building Venture Capital, Startups & the Midwest with Conor Adler | Ep 14

Thanks for making the trek over here. Yeah, man. Appreciate it. Of course. How was the drive? It was great. Did you take Turnpike or 254? Yep. Turnpike. I love driving in Kansas. Yeah. It's a great time to listen to tunes, podcasts, the Killer Growth Podcast. Perfect. Yeah. Honestly, I drive back to Chicago all the time to see family. It's a 10-hour trek. Do you go up through Iowa to go back to Chicago? Yeah. I got a $50-a-night motel in Des Moines that's become my spot. Nice. And this nice family runs it. It's like clean, kind of like an underground spot. Wow. People don't know about it. Yeah. So I stop there. Shocking that it's clean and you feel safe. Yeah, right. Nobody knows about it. For $50 a night. For $50. I bring my dog. The dog's allowed to stay in there. Oh, perfect. Yeah, it's a great deal. When you drive from Des Moines to Chicago, that is a beautiful drive. Yeah. Like all the ag. No, no, I'm serious. Like, no, I know. That's what my friend in Chicago said. No, I personally, I think a lot of people, my friends in Chicago were like, I'm a drive-must-stay, you know? I'm like, no, it's actually pretty cool. Yeah, especially from there. And you see parts of the country that like, coming from a place like Chicago, you know, people see the Midwest, other parts of the Midwest, or like the South is very, they're not thinking about it right, but there's so many cool, like, small areas in the country that if you just open up your eyes, you're going to find cool stuff everywhere. Yeah, there's beautiful stuff in Kansas, believe it or not, people. We are a flyover state, but if you drive in it, it's pretty great. The Flint Hills is like driving through Ireland. Right there. Yeah, literally. Like, it feels like you're driving through Ireland. I mean, I've never been to Ireland, but it's pretty fun. Especially like in the, when it's super green, you know, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. Love it. All right, guys, I'm Sam McVeigh. This is the Killer Growth Podcast. Today we have Conor Adler hanging out with Nextis.io. Yes, you got it. Did I do it? Yes. You got it, man. Got it. And we'll get into everything else about you. But I like to start really easy. Give me your story from college to, and you've heard the podcast, to what brought you to where you're at today. Cool, man. Yeah. So, grew up outside of Chicago. One of three brothers, three boys. Went to Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island for undergraduate. I had an Afro in high school, called an Ifro, an Irish Afro, and I really wanted to go West and like be a ski bum. And my mom, being from Ireland, wanted me to go kind of with more East Coast culture. She pushed me that way. You said your mom's from where? From Ireland. From, okay. From Dublin. Yeah, yeah. Oh, she was born in. Yeah, yeah. Has an accent and everything. Crazy. I feel like I include Ireland in almost every conversation. Yeah. I'm very proud. Very proud Irish, second generation, first generation Irish. So yeah, went out to Providence College, happy I did. Learned a lot, studied finance there. So I thought a natural progression after school would be to go into banking. I ended up going into recruiting for six months. Recruiting for a bank? No, it was this company called Insight Global. Learned a lot in that role, but the culture is quite interesting. I'm not going to say much about it, but you can do some research. So I ended up leaving there. Scandal. There's talk of a documentary coming out, so we'll see. It's a big nationwide recruiting firm. Back then they were recruiting primarily for IT. So I left there for six months, and that's where I decided I'm going to use my finance degree. So I went to go work for U.S. Bank in collateralized debt. Was working in the back office. Learned a little bit there, but I just saw the career path I had to take if I wanted to be successful in that industry. I had always been a creative thinker and really wanted to use that part of my brain. So much to the chagrin of my parents, I moved back to their house in Chicago. I'd been living in Boston. What our generation does. Yeah. I guess it is. I guess I'm part of that. And moved back home and ended up working for two startups at the same time, both part-time. So one was a CBD company, people laugh at because it's become sort of like snake oil. Back then we were working with doctors trying to formulate good product and utilize other cannabinoids. Back then you were trying to get a doctor's stamp of approval for your snake oil. Yeah. Well, there is real, there can be real benefits. And CBD is one thing, but there's CBD. I don't want to offend you. I believe in it. It's okay. It is funny, but there's CBN and CBG, which are other cannabinoids that have great benefits for folks. So we were playing around formulations, working with doctors, partnering with athletes. That was kind of my, my role at the company was reaching out to doctors and then also finding collaboration opportunities with, with athletes. So we ended up signing professional, two professional skiers, got some surfers on board and that was going well, but it wasn't enough to make a full time salary. But also learned a lot just from trial and error, you know, I'm sure. Building something. Right. And I know from your career, like you've, you didn't have experience in everything that you've done. You just learn. Of course I did. You learn as you do. Completely qualified in everything I did. Right. And I was also working for a software as a service startup. Okay. It was a AI based sales forecast. I appreciate you saying software as a service and not SaaS. Yeah. I know. You know, that's kind of you. Yeah. Listeners might not have that, you know, understanding of what SaaS is. SaaS to them means something different. I feel like. That's what their five year old, five year old kids give them, right? I feel like some people say SaaS and just continue the conversation hoping someone will say, what is SaaS? Yeah. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of, there's a lot of terminology in the startup world that can, can become kind of highbrow. And I hate that. For sure. It shouldn't be. It's all pretty straightforward. Yeah. Right. So, so what was the software? It was a AI based sales forecasting. So it was, it was a Monte Carlo simulation. And the idea was to look at your sales team and sales process, um, uh, capacity wise. So, uh, basically understanding where there were capacity constraints on your sales team. You know, looking at your, your sales funnel and what you were paying everyone, how quickly it takes a new hire to, to be productive. Um, it was, it was, it was a cool startup and still around and they're, I think it's getting new life now. Uh, but we just didn't find. What year was that? That would have been 2019. Okay. So that was pretty early. Yeah. In the AI scene. It was, it was, and we were, we would actually lead with Monte Carlo simulation over AI back then, which is funny. And I didn't really know anything about AI going into it, to be honest with you, learned a lot. Um, and I was, my job was a little bit of everything at that company, um, and was talking to a lot of folks that I would have maybe had no business talking to if I wasn't employee number two and we needed to grow. Right. Right. So learned a lot in that role. We ended up getting funding and I was able to go full time. So it finally had a salary. I was also caddying on the side at a, at a golf club. Have you ever seen Caddyshack? Oh yeah. Yeah. So the place I caddied, uh, the Murray brothers. So Bill Murray and his brothers caddied there and they wrote Caddyshack loosely based on it. That's so cool. There's actually a few names in the movie that are real people. Yeah. And the Irish girl in it, uh, Nellie, she, there it is. You brought Ireland back into it again. You brought it back. She was running the, the restaurant. Uh, I think she still might be running the restaurant there. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, uh, you said you had nothing to talk about. Sam, maybe you shouldn't have interviewed me. I got, I got nothing to talk about. Well, there's, you got far more interesting guests learning about the cattle industry. You're doing pretty good so far. Don't mess it up. You're on the right trajectory. All right. Cool. So salary doing, and you were doing sales on that side. It was, yeah, I was doing, I was doing sales, but then also, um, you know, helping out partially with our financial forecast and then also marketing, um, ops, when it's a small company like that, you're doing everything right. Yeah. Um, so we, we got funding, I had salary, low salary, you know, startup, that's, that's what you give. It's all about opportunity costs. So I saw the opportunity cost as maybe missing out on some of the things my friends were doing or the lifestyles they were living, uh, in order to learn as much as I could. Um, I will, you could consider that a failure for me because we didn't end up exiting or we didn't end up making the progress we wanted to. And I ended up moving over to another startup in the venture studios portfolio. So there was a supply chain startup called chain of five. Our overarching goal was to remove brokers from the equation. So connect shippers directly to carriers, um, which is a lofty goal. Yeah. So also learned a lot in that role, uh, had a little bit more, um, responsibility in that role as well. And was this going to be via software? Yes. Yeah. Um, we had partnered with a, a broker, so we were actually trying to run some of their loads through our system, um, had almost closed the deal with Coca-Cola, had some other pretty big customers in the pipeline that we were nearing closes with after having so many conversations about the MVP. And we just had not made the progress that we needed. Um, I had reached a point in my career where I was 28, you know, I want to have a wife and kids and start a family and I just wasn't making enough to do that. So I saw, I looked in the mirror, I'm like, I have to, I have to make a change and I didn't want to throw away everything I had learned and just go right back into corporate. Not saying that, that, that would have been, um, you know, I have tons of friends that work in corporate America. There's, there's a lot of great, great things that corporate America provides, right? Stability and also tons of learning opportunities. But it being in the startup world that long, like four and a half years, and, um, I just couldn't, I had to, I had to scratch that itch. And that's when I started looking into venture capital, uh, read a few books, started a Twitter account. It was Twitter back then, um, called Venture Learner. I still call it Twitter. I refuse. Yeah, me too. It's like a letter. A letter. It's a letter. Who do you think you are? You could just be a letter. That's Elon for you. Um, so we, uh, or so I, I started this Twitter account called, uh, Venture Learner and the idea was to show other folks that were in the same shoes as I, like learning in real time. So reading industry reports, reading different books, podcasts, and then posting about what I was learning. So other folks that were trying to get into venture capital, um, they kind of feel that, that barrier to entry, um, start to fade a little bit, ended up connecting with some pretty cool people because of that, um, Landon Campbell out of Chicago, which is Drive Capital being one of them. He gave me some great advice back then and interviewed tons of different places across the world. Really? Like I was looking at companies in Ireland. There you go again. Um, I applied to, I applied to jobs in like Portugal, uh, Alabama, California. I was going to go anywhere, but I really, Portugal and Alabama are very different. So different. Yeah. Yeah. Quite the, yeah. I was, I was going to go wherever there was a good opportunity. Sure. And by the way, what you did, I believe is called public building, public building. That's right. And I love, I followed a few of those and I've heard some really amazing stories where the, to your point, the, what they built wasn't the success. It was the connections that came from people following them. So that, that's awesome. And the learning too. You're just exponentially learning because people, people connect to that. It's very real. You know, like I would, I would post things and they could, my, my take on them could be so off and someone might comment on the section, maybe you should think about it this way. Right. And, uh, it's just more real, it's more human than, than, you know, doing a full analysis and spending weeks on it. Um, so that, that was a, that was a good move by me. I was, I would say in my, in, in trying to transition over to this, this, uh, industry. And as I was posting more and more, a lot of what I was posting about was about the Midwest and about the Midwest capital scene, um, how it's overlooked by the coasts and came across Nexus job posting on LinkedIn. I think I easy applied, you know, I was applying so much and, uh, Mary Beth had reached out to me. What does easy apply mean? So you can, you can have LinkedIn, you can have your resume and all your, oh, it's just all together and you just press easy apply. Got it. Okay. Um, and luckily she reached out, she saw my resume, I, in my cover letter, my whole pitch was about how I had been, you know, an operator, a lot of people in the VC world came from consulting or investment banking. So my big pitch was like, I've done this, you know, I might've been a success, but I've learned a whole lot. So, um, once the interview process, uh, met Mary Beth Jarvis, who is a absolute force life, life force, um, loved her approach. I described, I always described Mary Beth this way, like she would, she could talk to a plumber and some big shot investor the same exact way. She's very talented. That's a talent. It's a talent and it's a, it's a, just the right way to be, I think as a person. So I really connected to that, uh, everyone on the team, super down to earth, but also highly motivated, um, very, very intelligent people. Um, Amber Dunn, also a force to be reckoned with, Ellie Peters, um, really coming into her own right now on the marketing side, uh, Colette Atkinson really crushing it with the pilot program she's running and, um, Colette wasn't on the team back then, but, uh, ended up interviewing for the job. Mary Beth was flying to, I think, see her kids in Utah at the time, I believe, or no, in Louisiana. Sorry. Sure. It wasn't Ireland. Semantics. Yeah. I'll always, I'll always figure out. So Mary Beth went to Notre Dame, which is a fighting Irish. She met me out at O'Hare for my final round interview. And that really, that really sold it for me. Um, that's cool. We had a board meeting January 16th. The interview final round interview was the day before New Year's Eve and I was going to my buddy's wedding in Wisconsin on New Year's Eve. I was driving up with one of my other buddies and I'm like, yeah, I just got this job off should I take it? He was my roommate. He had seen how much I was grinding, bartending on the side, um, trying to make the startup thing happen. He's like, this is your opportunity, man, you gotta, you gotta do it. So I, I moved down sight unseen and haven't looked back. It's been good. Been great. That's awesome. Hopefully that's a good background. That was awesome. I was rambling. No, that was rambling. No, you earned it all. Gift of the gab. Gift of the gab is an Irish, it's an Irish trade. It felt like it'd been a while since we got back to Ireland, so just don't let it go too long. Like maybe every two minutes. Every five minutes. Five, yeah, it's every five minutes. So tell me what is your actual role at Nexstys? Well, actually let's start, let's start with what is Nexstys? Yep. What does it do? What's its offerings? Um, and then move into what your role is there. Yep. So Nexstys is an entrepreneurial support organization, a lot of people refer to them as ESOs, acronym. We serve companies in, originally it was Kansas and now it's really the region, that are at a growth stage where they have some revenue traction, they've proved out that there's a need in the market for their product or service and they're really trying to scale. So we're not at the idea stage, we're a little bit farther along. A lot of folks have maybe not yet received funding from an institutional perspective. They might have some friends or family money that's been invested. And so we're really helping them on that hyper growth trajectory. We run a variety of different programs. We have a customer traction cohort, which Amber Dunn runs, which is really helping you on your customer discovery, marketing, building out your sales process, sales funnel, and how to properly scale a company. We have enterprise engagement series, which Amber also runs. Enterprise engagement series is basically teaching founders how to interact with corporates. Moonbase went through that. Yes. Correct. Yeah. He found a lot of success in that. Yeah. And that was a big deal for Nick. He's got a lot of value out of it and he's really echoed those sentiments throughout the ecosystem, which is really cool. He's a super impressive guy. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he sleeps. I don't think he sleeps, man. We're worried about you, Nick. Go to bed. Hey, Nick, if you're watching this, go to bed. And so enterprise engagement series, there's a lot of potential there too, even for further growth. Corporate engagement is such a central part in building a really good startup ecosystem. So Amber's constantly thinking about how to grow that program even more. We also do a financial technology pilot program and a community health and vibrancy pilot program. So both of those programs actually recruit folks from around the globe to come into Kansas and to pitch for financial technologies to banks, regional banks predominantly. And then community health and vibrancy is rural health systems. So how can global innovation impact Kansas? Collette Atkinson runs those programs. She's doing a great job. She came on the team back in April. So I think those are two of the coolest programs we have. Yeah. That's really cool. I haven't heard about that. The CHV, community health and vibrancy, will be in fall, but then the financial technology pilot program, that's virtually coming up. I'm not sure if that's open to the public. I should know that. We'll delay the release of this. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own lanes, it's nice that I wish I knew a little bit more than I do. And then Ellie runs our marketing and communication. So it's community-related activity. So really, we look at Nexus as customers, capital, community within the ecosystem. And our overarching mission is to build companies of significance. So that I'm on the capital side and the angel group business model is a tough one to succeed in. So there's a lot of different groups around the country that are no longer active because of that reason. But I guess to take a step back, on the capital side, we have programs that we run for founders. So Accessing Growth Capital, we run with Network Kansas, Thomas Papadatos and Sophia, you know. I think you might have met them at one of the founder happy hours. Probably. Probably. And that's running a founder through the fundraising process. So everything from getting your pitch right to a term sheet. And getting them in front of, or does that by itself have its own fund with some people behind it? Or is that just the educational- It's just the educational piece. But we have our angel group and then Network Kansas has eGrowth Ventures, which is federally sponsored dollars that they are deploying. So that's their fund, eGV. So the idea behind it is we want to see folks go through and actually not raise capital if they don't need to, right? It's not a metric of ours to say this X amount of people have raised capital. It's just as important for someone that does not need to go the venture capital route to not raise VC funding because that's a road that's not for everyone. And one small activity that we do at the start of class is do a newspaper article five years from now of your company. And it's a great way to contextualize how someone sees their growth. And if it's to really improve Eldorado, right, is it Eldorado or Eldorado? We say it the right way, Eldorado. Eldorado. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. If it's really to improve Eldorado, that's a great mission, right? Yeah. But it's not VC type of growth. So understanding that I think is really important for a founder. VC funding is supposed to be gasoline fuel. And if you don't want to be on that growth journey, then don't go that route. Makes sense. So that's one program that we run. And then talk about the angel investor group that you... I'm curious about that, how that works. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cool kind of sexy sounding entity. So and then one other quick program that we run that we just kicked off to is future funders. I've talked to you briefly about that. But as we... I guess I'll take a step back too on the angel side. So with an angel group, it's a network of accredited investors. Folks make investments and they sit on their wallets because they're waiting for an exit, rightfully so. If it was the best case scenario, you would have enough money set aside for angel investing where you put in, for example, 10K into 20 deals. So it's a lot of money, but it's that money that you need and to spread across a portfolio because the success rate of investing, right? So you want to build up a solid portfolio. You don't want to... The recommendation is not to put in $200,000 into one deal, but try to spread it across as many as you can. But that's not how everyone works and people are making real estate investments, they're investing in the public markets. So you have a turnover of angels and we're trying to figure out how do we recruit new angels? So educating prospective angel investors is one way and we were doing that in underrepresented communities. So the black and Hispanic communities around which to working with the leaders of those communities to diversify our angel group. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because those folks have real capital to deploy. Yeah. And then also the next gen investors. So folks that either could or maybe are on the precipice of being able to make angel investments from a accreditation perspective. So we're doing all this angel education, preaching the word of early stage capital to tons of different people. And we looked at ourselves in the mirror and asked, why are we just talking about the riskiest asset class? We should probably be covering the full gamma of investing, especially for the next gen investors. Yeah. That's when we create a future funders. That acts in two ways. One, it's a pipeline for our angel group. It's also a pipeline for entrepreneurship through acquisition around town. It's a pipeline for folks that might be investing in real estate, et cetera. So we're bringing in experts from around town to educate that next gen and really understand where the goal is for people to understand where they really glom on to. What part of the investing cycle do they really glom on to? Yeah. Does that make sense? It does. So that group though, so you're saying future funders, right? Yep. The future funders group is a certain age range. They have a certain amount of capital, like what defines a future funder? Yeah. Since it's so early, we haven't put heavy, heavy boundaries on it right now. It's really folks that want to learn. We could get to a point where either folks are paying a membership fee or there is some sort of a way to put gates around the group. For right now, I've talked to so many people at events or people come to our angel events where they might not be accredited yet and they don't know where to go or what to learn about. They go to YouTube and they see a video that says, hey, you can buy a cash flowing power washing business and be a millionaire in a year. That happens very rarely. Sure. It might happen sometimes, but it's really to point folks in the right direction and to get education from real experts like Todd Bailey. He's a business broker and he came and talked to the group. Gene Camarena, very successful franchisor. We had Mary Beth talk about business ethics and we've got some really cool lineup of speakers coming in 2026 as well. I'm going to ask you to speak too. Oh boy. Yeah. I don't know if you agree right now. Sure. Okay. You drove all the way to El Dorado and you've already asked this question three times and I go, what? And then I walk away. I think that's pretty much what I've been doing. It's a good way to... I appreciate that. That's very nice. Thanks, man. Not sure what to add, but we can talk about it later. Cool. What would be good to talk about. Okay. So talk to me about the angel investing group. Is Nexus that good? Yeah. Is Nexus somehow connected to that investment as well? Like does Nexus hold equity or stock in these ventures? It's a great question. And I feel like you keep on bringing up the angel investor group and I keep on talking about other programs. No, you're doing great. You're good. So definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's like... Let's talk about Chicago Bears. Actually wait, Ireland. It's time. We gotta talk about Ireland. Yeah. Anyway, this is how they do this in Ireland. This is how we do it. This is how we do it in Ireland. Yeah. So it's not a fund. Okay. And Nexus does not take carry on deals. There is no equity ownership from Nexus, from me, from Mary Beth, unless Mary Beth as an angel investor herself wants to invest. Got it. Okay. So the way that most angel groups work is it is the decision to invest is completely on the individual, but we pool their dollars into a special purpose vehicle and then invest under one line item. Okay. The idea behind that, there's a few different reasons. One, from a founder's perspective, it's one line on the cap table for them. That means it's one person they're communicating with, one person they're sending K1s to, et cetera. And who's that person? That's me. Is that you? That's me, yep. Okay. And then how are you or how's Nextus? I mean, that could go on for a while. Yeah. How is that compensated? I'll get there. See, there was a question that wasn't about angel investors. It still kind of is. No, but it's about the business model, right? Right. And I'll get there in one second. Yeah, you're good. So one line on the cap table for founders, it's a team sport. So talking about like spreading funds across multiple investments, a lot of startups will have like a minimum investment size, right? So it could be like 50K. If you're an individual that maybe shouldn't put in 50K to a deal and wants to put in 10K as an SPV, now we kind of have to figure out how we're going to do that. So it's a team sport, right? Yeah. And then how are you or how's Nextus? I mean, there's a few different reasons. One, from a founder's perspective, it's one line on the cap table for them. That means it's one person they're communicating with, one person they're sending K1s to, et cetera. And who's that person? That's me. And how are you or how's Nextus? So it's a team sport. So you could get 10 people at 10K and invest 100K as a group, right? Sure. So it becomes a team sport that way. And then administratively, we take some of the administrative functioning away from the investor and we take that on ourselves. So it was a good question you asked about the lifetime of an investment. And that's something that was keeping me up at night when I first joined the team. So what we've since done is we migrated all of our investments over to a platform called SPV Hub, Startup Steroid runs it. We paid quite a bit upfront so that the investments can live in this platform for their lifetime. On top of that, they're actually generating the K1s. So if I were to not be a person, right? Or if Nextus wasn't here. Exactly. Then investors can still access their investments and their portfolio and their tax documents. Well done. Is there some fee associated to that to the investors as well though? In the bigger picture, do they have some maintenance fee or- Per deal, yeah. Per deal, we do a fee that allows us then to pay for the K1s, pay for the platform. So we use those funds that we had saved up in case there is an exit or legal fees, etc. to pay then for the platform. So it's like from the investor side, it's a one-time fee or it's like an annual fee they pay for this vehicle? Because to me, I would assume if I invested in that, I should also pay for someone to... If I get that efficiency of, I don't even have to think about this and I talk to one... Or if they're only talking to you, that's also a benefit to the angel investor. Right. So there's a membership fee each year and that gets you access to all the deals, the deal flow. You have to pay a membership fee if you want to invest through Accelerate Venture Partners. That pays for part of my salary. But then, like I was saying, per deal, then we charge. So the deal fees help us pay for the administrative side. So you're making an investment of $10,000, you'll be paying a fee on top of that $10,000 to us as well. Makes sense. So what is Nexus Funding besides membership and those fees? Do you guys have federal, state? Yep. So we did have a federal grant from the EDA that had helped us for the last four years. That grant is now expired. So a big part of my job over the last year was to figure out growth potential. There's some pretty cool things that we're going to be announcing soon on the horizon. So it's back to the business model of angel groups. It's like, what's your funding source? And thinking about it like a business, it's a little bit different than I was used to coming from the startup world. Like grants, I didn't even know what a grant was really. Who's this grant guy? Yeah, right. Who's this grant guy? Is he from Ireland? Good job. Five minutes. On the dot. On the dot. Yeah, that is a big change. But like corporate sponsorships are a way that we fund Nexus and the group and then grant dollars. But then also figuring out other revenue streams. So like future funders, for example, if that group were to grow and we did charge a small membership, that becomes a revenue source. Yep. Perfect. Yeah. So let's talk about maybe more of the fun or weird stuff you run into. There's no weird stuff in the startup world. Yeah, right. Like what's the worst? And you probably on a local level, there's only so much you can say. So I'm just going to say names. I'm going to say names. I'm going to... Answer. You're right. However you want. I'm going to spill the tea. We'll go more broad at the beginning or vague. What's a common theme you see that's like a no-no? Like, oh, this is not going to be a good deal. Or there's a red flag specifically from the business or idea coming through the program. And then I have the same question on the investor side. Yeah, I think Nick Wendland is actually a great person to reference on what he's teaching founders right now. I have so many founders that come up to me and just like, I need money. I'm like, how many customers do you have? And it's a really... I put myself in their shoes and I have that empathy because I've felt that myself. But until you've proved that there's traction in the marketplace, our group is not going to come in and invest. We need to have clear indicators of traction. So I preach just customers, customers, customers, or validation. It could be a letter of intent. It doesn't have to be a paying customer. Oh, interesting. But some sort of proof point at that early stage. Interesting. I'm trying to think of like a funnier red flag. Yeah, I just think anytime anybody's... I've heard so many stories. But anytime you're a place people can find money to pay back. Salaries for founders, you know, it gets kind of tricky and interesting. Yeah. Nick would preach bootstrapping, you know? Oh, yeah. Startups for the rest of us. Exactly. Go to sleep, Nick. Go to sleep, Nick. Yeah, that's good. That's really good. Having a concept, our majority of people coming through something like Nexus, is it national concepts, regional, is it pretty diverse? I mean, if I came in and said, I want to start an auto detailing shop, you obviously can provide some assistance somewhere to become a member. But I think it's more... It'd be more on what are your goals? Yeah. So if you're going to create an auto detailing shop and you want to make it a franchise or you want to scale, then we have programs for you. But if you just want to have one shop and you're not really trying to technologize your company, then I don't think we'd be a good fit. Not even from a fundraising round, just overall. Overall Nexus, right. Within your education, it's more about scaling to medium, at least. And I would say I'm probably... My programs are more extreme. Amber serves more different types of companies, industries, and types of scaling journeys than I do because we're in the VC space. There is a specific type of company that we're looking for. That said, we look at companies, part of our thesis is regional. So the heartland, but we've expanded a little bit more to the broader Midwest. We've invested in a Chicago company over the last couple of years, a Minneapolis company. We had a pitcher from Indiana last year, Nebraska. We've had Iowa. So we're pretty right on with the regional thesis. And as we grow, we don't have necessarily a limit on what we can or can't do. We just always ask ourselves, are we properly serving the entrepreneurs? And then from an investment perspective, it's always a little bit different than the goal of a program from a nonprofit side. You're looking for returns, but then there is an element to angel investing that is fuzzy. There is a heart to angel investing. And connecting with that founder and being along for their journey is pretty vital to get our investors to buy into that, because then they open up their networks to the founders. And I've seen some really cool connections happen that way. I bet. And that's what angel investing really should be. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. More of a money with mentoring combination. What's the most difficult part? I can't imagine. I mean, I don't know how many angel investors you deal with on a regular basis or that are members. But I mean, entrepreneurs that have a crazy idea and there are a lot to handle. But also, these angel investors aren't who they are without any personality or opinion. Right, right. That's just like anyone in the world, any customer. But I will say, I'm not just saying this because I work for ADB, but our investors are very down to earth, good people. Well, and you're in the Midwest. That helps. Very lucky, especially Wichita, though, even compared to other markets. I am lucky to work for ADB and be surrounded by the investors that I am. I will say there is sometimes folks that, what's the way to put it? I think it really has to be their decision to become an angel investor. So I've stopped trying to sell that because when I do sell it and they become one, they might not understand spreading their money across portfolio, that an exit might not happen for seven to 10 years. If they go in with the mindset that they're going to get their money back in three years and they're in the completely wrong industry, you know. Yeah. Well, what other mistakes have you made? I mean, that's a pretty big learning curve to move. What else have you learned in being better at helping? Number one is K1 communication. So I assume that we would get all of our K1s by April 15th. That was a horrible assumption by me. Oh, that's true. Yeah, because you're at the mercy of all these other books. The founders. The founders, yeah. The founders. We get some K1s end of September. October 19th. October 1st, yeah, or October 15th. 15th. So that's tricky every year and it probably will never not be. Tricky is communicating that properly to investors. Yeah, that's- There's a push and a pull. I'll call up founders and be like, all right, man, come on. Yeah. But then at the same time, they might be going through something. So it's like, it's difficult. It's just a tough- And you're kind of to blame because the investors are talking to you. And that's part of my job. Right. I got to own that part. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought about that. That's something that I do not enjoy about the job. That needs to be automated in some way. Yeah, so that's part of the portal. And they went through a full season with them last year on the generating of K1s. And there was some hiccups, but now that they've done it one year, it should be a lot more seamless going into this. Is there any kind of accountability you can set up since the entrepreneur is essentially also a member, where they have to use a certain resource that you guys provide? Because that's, to me, a really scary part about investing is the books can... I mean, if you've got 30 different people touching all these different books, that's tough. That takes a lot of trust because you can write down whatever you want. Right. I keep on referencing the portal, the platform that we use now. But it was not only just for efficiency, but also compliance. So it was like an internal audit that we ran through from our perspective. On the founder side, there is that element of risk always with investing. And that's just an inherent risk. And we can be as due diligent as possible. Part of our thesis also is we're never usually first money into a deal. So we're following an institutional capital player, usually with a institutional capital player that we know. So we're piggybacking on their due diligence. We trust them already that they've done their due diligence. What would be an example of that, an institutional? So like KC Rise, their venture capital firm out of Kansas City. They invest in a deal. They set the terms of the deal. And there might be a carve out for $500,000 left in the deal. And then we come in for $200,000 entrepreneurial growth ventures. So Thomas and Sophia, they come in at $200,000. And then some angels come in at $100,000, right? Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. That's the risk mitigation. But it's the riskiest asset class for a reason. Oh, yeah. For sure. Do you mostly see software related stuff come through? It's funny. We have not historically invested in that much software. And software as a service, I think, is so difficult to get right. So Josh Oding, do you know Josh? Have you met Josh? He helped start Nexus and Accelerate Venture Partners. And he has his own fund now, his own firm. I think he's on Fun2 now. But he invests in a lot of SaaS and software as a service. Nailed it. Nailed it. But he understands that space really well. And it's a very saturated market. So for an angel group perspective, we're bringing in two companies a month to pitch. We're looking at a lot of deals. So we try to stick to what our investors know, right? Yeah, that makes sense. And manufacturing adjacent startups. Do you enjoy looking at those deals before you bring them to the group? Is that- That's the most fun part of the job. That's what I was going to ask. Yeah, for sure. For sure, the most fun part. I would say that's one of the most fun parts. I really enjoy the business growth of the group as well. Yeah. So we just hired a junior analyst. And they'll spend a lot more time at the top of the funnel doing that, some of that fun work. But I really do think my strength is not necessarily on the deal side, but on how do we scale AVP as a group overall. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Okay, good job. Was it good? Well done. It was all great. So apparently you're in a band called the Adler Brothers. Tell us about that. I have to figure out a way to plug this band in every conversation I have because we don't have a ton of streams and we got to get those streams up. My two brothers and I started the band back in COVID. So when I was back in Chicago when we started up, we would spend time just jamming. We'd do a lot of covers of songs. After a while, you're like, I want to write our own stuff. Yeah, sure. I've been writing songs for a while. A lot of them were horrible. We wrote a few and then recorded it over COVID. Some of our friends liked the songs. We got some good feedback and kind of rolled that into a proper band. We've had four other buddies that have played on and off with us. Drummer, two lead guitarists, a banjo player and a drummer. We've had a girl, one of our friends, singing a few songs with us. Cool. So yeah, it's a really fun way to scratch the creative itch. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I think everybody, especially in that world, the world you're in, I think having some creative outlets is important. Totally, man. And going all the way through, I do respect that, by the way, like putting yourself out there and actually recording it. There's so many very talented musicians that will not even go to that extent. But with the podcast, you get it. It's like the minute that you put your first episode out, you're being vulnerable to the world. Yeah. Now, you're going to over, I'm not speaking for you, but for myself, you overthink it. Oh, the people are going to think this, that, whatever. No one really cares that much. I like that. That's a piece of art I just saw on an ad I'm going to buy. And it pretty much just says... It's a great message. It says, nobody cares, work harder. I was like, that's a pretty powerful ad. Like, nobody cares, just work harder. Just work harder, I like that. Stop complaining, stop making excuses. Yeah, right. And if you got something you want to show the world, then just do it, show it. Yeah. And yeah, for me, it's like my brothers and I all have different strengths in the band. My youngest brother is a singer. He's a really good live performer, great voice. He also writes some of his own songs. And the middle brother is like the musical brain, really good at composing a song. And I really enjoy the writing process of creating a song. So all of us together... It's a cool combo. Create it. It's a fun combo. We all kind of understand each other's strengths and weaknesses. Are you going to play in Wichita soon, hopefully? I would love to. My youngest brother's a pro golfer. Oh, wow. Nice. Yeah, he's... What's he, is he on Corn Fair? Like, where's he at in the stage? He's got conditional status on the PGA Tour of Americas, but he just graduated. Okay, wow. So he's just starting off. Yeah. But he's playing great golf right now. That's awesome. He just moved out to Georgia to be somewhere warm to practice. Yeah, some good golf courses out there. Excited for his journey. But that makes it difficult to schedule stuff in advance. Yeah. I would love to play in Wichita. That'd be fun. Yeah, I'm sure you guys will make it happen. I really like Chicago Summer Nights. Oh, thanks, man. That was my favorite song. But I found you're on Spotify. What else? And then what was the genre? Because I think of Dan in real life. When... Have you seen the movie Dan in real life? Yeah, wow. Anybody listening to this right now, that's like one of my favorite movies. One of our family's favorite movies. Oh, really? But I don't know what that style is. What is the style? That's a good question because we have... Yeah, I don't know. It feels like kind of Billy Joel adjacents. We got some Rolling Stones in there. We got... Yeah. It's kind of rock, a little bit of jazz. Yeah. Yeah. We don't really have a jazz. Yeah, yeah. It's your style. We call ourselves dive bar delinquents. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of our ICP. Sure, that's perfect. We just want to sing songs and have some beers and be with friends and family. Yeah, yeah. It's very relaxing. It's a happy feeling. Like it's a good feeling. Five minutes. Yeah, here it comes. Yeah, the long-term goal is to one day make enough money to go into the pub business and which means I could lose money because it's a very difficult business to get right. What kind of pub? An Irish pub. Oh, no way. And my dream of all dreams would be to have like a small stage on the pub with my brothers. Yeah. Have like cool musicians come in and play sessions and then we could play every once in a while. That'd be awesome. So that's the dream. That sounds like a really cool venue in Wichita. Yeah, maybe that's a good spot. You know, a little lower risk. Yeah. Start somewhere in Wichita. Maybe that's a side project. Yeah. The money pit side project. The money pit, yeah. It's a passion project. Passion project. I promise you I want to do this the whole podcast, but I have to do it at some point. Yeah. So when I first met you, we're at Ziggy's with some tech guys, entrepreneur guys, and I could not figure out who you're reminding me of, specifically your voice. Yep. And your charisma, not your looks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But specifically like... A little bit the looks, yeah. Come on, you can be honest. But I was like, who do you remind me of? And then you were like, I don't know, Will Ferrell. And I'm like, no. And then you went... Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey. Oh, you did that the second time though. No, the second person you said immediately was Shane Gillis. And I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, it's Shane Gillis. And then I yelled at someone, do you know who he sounds like? And then you across the table were like, Sam thinks I look like Brad Pitt. And I sound like Brad Pitt. But the shade, how often do people say... I get that. I get that a lot, man. And I love Shane Gillis. Oh yeah, yeah. I take it as a high compliment. What's your favorite joke from Shane Gillis? I can't say it on this podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I got, yeah, there's... Is it the Marine joke? About his uncle. Oh, yes, yes. The Down syndrome joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He loves his uncle. Yes, he does. Sounds like a really cool guy. That's the beauty of that joke, is because you could tell he actually has heart. Oh yeah, he loves his uncle. And I feel like he did... I mean, I think he did... The way he talked about Down syndrome was beautiful. It was. You know, it really was. It's a great joke and it was good, but I hear you. That takes a special type of comedian to be able to do that, right? And because it... Like, I have cousins that have Down syndrome and they're very funny people. And how, but how do you do that in a stand-up setting, right? He nailed it. He nailed it, yeah. What are some of his quirks? His little... You want me to do that? Yeah, let's do a couple of them. Well, I got a first... I'll tell a quick story. So I was at Dempsey's one night and I was just eating a burger, having a beer. I was by myself, like Friday night, just very low-key. And this wrecking crew of like younger people standing next to me and they're taking shots and, you know, chucking beers and stuff. And they're like, man, you remind me of someone. I'm like, you know, so I feel like I got to have a couple of beers in me to do the impression well, but so they end up taking... This is the funny part of the story. So they end up taking a video of me doing it, right? And we had an investor meeting that Tuesday. So I'm at the investor meeting, talking to folks. And one of the investors comes up to me, they're like, Shane Gillis. I'm like, oh, yeah. People say I look like him or talk like him, whatever. And he's like, no, no, like I have a video. Oh my. Whoa. It leaked. Well, how did that happen? And they're like, he was like, yeah, you met my kids on Friday night. And they were great, great people. Yeah. Very funny. That's hilarious. Was not expecting that. No, no. And then he showed another one of the investors. I'm like, wow, you're seeing another side of me, guys. I just, I think it's really cool that you have one move. It's just like, yep. Perfect. Anyone who loves Shane Gillis, that's enough. Nicked me a little. Nicked me a little bit. So good. Well, dude, thanks for hanging out. Oh, man. This is really fun. Love your story. Be proud of your story. Thanks, man. Appreciate everything you're doing. Likewise. The Wichita surrounding areas. I learned a ton. And it's probably not the most appropriate way for me to learn everything about next this because I should have already known everything about this because I office with you. You are a busy guy. Every day. And I've learned a lot just from our conversations. Cool. I think you've got a really impressive story that I would like someone to come on your podcast, interview you. I've seen some podcasts do that. Could you call your cousin, Shane Gillis? Yeah, I'll get Shane to come in. But I think it would be cool if you had someone on Killer Growth interview you one time just to get your background. I appreciate that. Not giving you advice. No, no. Hey, you give me all the advice you want. You got a cool story, man. You got a cool story. I appreciate that. Glad I met you. You're a cool guy. And keep it up. Thanks for coming on. This has been two white guys in flannels talking. And we're out.