Invst Guru

About Invst Guru

Invst Guru: Your Guide to Equity Crowdfunding Opportunities Dive into the world of equity crowdfunding with Invst Guru, the podcast that connects you to the most exciting investment opportunities. Each episode spotlights one active campaign, providing insights into the company, its vision, and why it could be a compelling addition to your investment portfolio. From groundbreaking startups to innovative businesses reshaping industries, Invst Guru is your trusted guide for discovering ventures worth exploring. Whether you're a seasoned investor or new to equity crowdfunding, join us to learn, analyze, and stay ahead in the dynamic world of startup funding. Invest smarter. Invest informed. Be the guru. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Publisher

Pre-IPO Hype

Category

business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Nov 2024

Latest episode

8 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

147 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Aug 2026

   One Ingredient, 1,003 Stores, Zero Outside Money | Jackson Jones, Farm to Pet

   Most food brands grow by adding. Jackson Jones grew by taking things out. He was working at Berkshire Hathaway, sitting between Duracell and the Marmon Group, when a friend got him thinking about dog treats. So he carried a KitchenAid down to his basement, ground up some chicken breast, dehydrated it, and handed the result to his dog Rooney. No fillers, no preservatives, no cans. One ingredient. About six years later, Farm to Pet is a single-ingredient dog and cat treat manufacturer, stocked in 1,003 retail stores, operating from one consolidated Chicago facility, fully bootstrapped, and profitable in 2026. The product logic holds up. One pound of chicken breast shrinks to about a third of a pound, and what survives is protein density and crunch. The same formula applies to chicken, turkey, beef, and wild-caught Lake Erie walleye, which means a two-year shelf life and no reformulation. It also means that when a dog reacts, you know exactly which ingredient did it. That is why the sensitive-stomach crowd sticks around and why the subscriptions work. Jackson is candid about the parts founders usually skip. Farm to Pet was production-constrained for the better part of a year: seven days of production, six night shifts, maxed out on floor space and the building's electrical capacity. He could not chase new stores, because he could not make more. Four locations so far, five if you count the basement. Building on one ingredient also concentrates the risk. Bird flu pushed chicken and turkey up. Beef is still brutal. He chose to eat the margin rather than raise prices on subscribers, and he explains why. He runs independent retail, Amazon, and direct-to-consumer subscription at once, with no distributors by design. Instagram and the direct brand did the outbound work: retailers found him. That is how a company reaches a thousand doors without a wholesale team. And he is raising on StartEngine right now. Reg CF, first time through, after deciding he did not want to raise at all. He walks through why crowdfunding beat a strategic check, why bankers look at two years of tax returns and pass, and why he wants customers on the cap table instead of a professional investor base. The metric he says to follow: lifetime value, currently $130 and climbing, driven by subscriptions rather than one-time ad clicks. CONNECT Farm to Pet: https://farmtopettreats.com (https://farmtopettreats.com) Invest on StartEngine: https://www.startengine.com/offering/farmtopet (https://www.startengine.com/offering/farmtopet) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farmtopet (https://www.instagram.com/farmtopet) Disclaimer: For informational and educational purposes only. This is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and it is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security. Any Reg CF offering may only be made through the company's official Form C and offering page filed with the SEC on a registered funding portal. Review those materials, including all risk factors, before investing. Early stage investing is illiquid and carries a high risk of total loss. All metrics, projections and figures discussed are the speaker's own numbers and are not guarantees of future results. Past performance does not indicate future results. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

2. 

   5 Aug 2026

   Green, Gray or Red: A Traffic Light for the Stock Market | Sean Tepper, Tykr

   Most people open a brokerage account and then freeze. Every blog and analyst says something different, and the default move is to guess or hand your money to someone else. Sean Tepper lived that. He started investing around 2010, made some money, lost some money, and hit the pause button in 2015 before it got expensive. Then he went looking for what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were actually doing, and concluded they were not picking stocks on feel. They were starting with math. So he built the math into a spreadsheet, tested it privately for five years rather than five weeks, and turned it into Tykr: a platform that rates stocks like a traffic light. Green means on sale, gray means watch, red means overpriced. Duolingo style lessons sit underneath it, because the goal is not to hand someone a signal, it is to make them an investor who does not need one. And he is raising. About $600K in on roughly a $1.3M target, running on WeFunder, funded largely by the same retail investors who already pay for the product. He walks through why he chose angels over VCs, why he intends to keep 100 percent control, and the Kohler and Costco story behind his plan to reach a million subscribers. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro: the red light 00:25 The 90 second pitch: Tykr, 13,000 customers, 50 countries 01:16 Origin story: 20 years in tech and the 2015 pause button 02:17 Phil Town, Buffett and Munger, and the math behind value investing 02:43 Five years of testing before writing a single line of code 03:13 Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Simply Wall St and a thin field 03:41 A year to build, live in 2020 04:09 Bring customers into the build early (lessons from GE and Kohler) 04:58 Broker connections and the point of activation 06:10 Why not be a wealth manager or a broker? Choosing the wide moat 07:06 Only five or six reliable analytics platforms exist worldwide 08:16 The biggest surprise after 1,000 customer calls: it was never returns 09:04 Confidence is the product, education is the delivery 09:59 Where ChatGPT, Claude and TikTok gurus actually fit 10:28 Open source calculations and the guy who quit trying to rebuild them 11:19 The one thing AI cannot do: sync your broker (Benzinga, Nov 2025) 12:29 Protecting IP: $10,000 with a patent firm and why he walked away 13:26 Hiring a second firm to audit for the publisher exclusion 14:48 Why WeFunder: the partner who said "your customers will invest in you" 15:44 Use of funds and the three SaaS metrics that make every dollar work 16:57 The customer: 18 to 65, 70/30 male to female, 50 percent US 18:38 Sports betting, prediction markets, and why he sees them as a feeder 20:01 Fundraising status: $600K raised, $1.3M target, cash flow positive next 20:59 The Kohler playbook: $15 million of product through Costco in one day 21:40 Affiliates as the growth engine, and the road to 1 million subscribers 22:13 Bootstrapper to fundraiser: how the founder role has to change 22:52 Angels over VCs, keeping 100 percent control, and smart money 24:26 What keeps him up at night, and the six week breaking point 25:22 Hiring an affiliate agency and getting work off his plate 26:14 Where to start: tykr.com, 30 day free trial, $15 a month or $99 a year CONNECT Tykr, 30 day free trial: https://tykr.com (https://tykr.com) Invest in Tykr on WeFunder: https://wefunder.com/tykr (https://wefunder.com/tykr) Disclaimer: For informational and educational purposes only. This is not investment, legal, or tax advice, and it is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security. Any Reg CF offering may only be made through the company's official Form C and offering page filed with the SEC on a registered funding portal. Review those materials, including all risk factors, before investing. Early stage investing is illiquid and carries a high risk of total loss. All returns, metrics, projections and valuation figures discussed are the speaker's own numbers or illustrative examples and are not guarantees of future results. Past performance does not indicate future results. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

3. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Rice Waste to Plastic-Free Packaging: Bas Bale of Ecologic Circle

   Every year across Southeast Asia, rice farmers burn roughly 200 million tons of leftover straw. Not because they want to, but because a single match is cheaper than the equipment needed to till it under. The smoke fills the air for weeks, the fires scorch the soil into dependence on chemical inputs, and the farmers doing the burning are often deep in debt. A recent study found that more than half of Thai farmers will never pay off what they owe. Bas Bale looked at that waste stream and saw a supply chain. In this episode, Bas, co-founder of Ecologic Circle, walks through how his company turns rice straw into sustainable food packaging, and why the business only works because of a farmer base almost nobody can replicate. His co-founder, Arvin, runs the largest organic Jasmine rice supply operation in the world, with roughly 2,000 farmers and 25 agronomists. Those relationships took years to build. They are also, Bas argues, the real moat, because the molding technology itself is not rocket science. The result is a first: certified organic packaging. Bas explains how they convinced the certifiers that if one twentieth of the rice plant qualifies as organic, the other nineteen twentieths should too. That certification lets Ecologic Circle command a 20 to 25 percent premium and sell a complete story to organic food brands, a market north of 300 billion dollars growing at 10 to 15 percent a year. We also get into the parts most founder interviews skip. What the money is actually for. Bas is raising 500,000 dollars for a pilot molding plant, two units producing about 300 tons a year, with the molds already in development and the machinery already identified. Behind that sits a 5 million dollar round targeted within two years to reach 30 tons of raw material per day, scaling to 60 and then 120. And the risks. The EU rewrites its packaging regulations in 2027, which means adapting the technology and financing that adaptation on someone else's timeline. US tariffs could shift overnight. Sugar cane fiber competitors already have economies of scale and could drop prices. The voluntary carbon credit market has crashed. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN How a circular business model creates four revenue streams from one waste input: pulp, molded packaging, organic fertilizer, and biochar Why government plastic bans and burning fines keep failing, and what actually changes farmer behavior How to build trust with 2,000 smallholder farmers when contract farming has a reputation for broken promises across Asia and Africa Why the paper industry is dirtier than most people assume How plastic phase-outs in Thailand and France are opening a market window right now Where the defensible advantage lives when your core technology can be copied CHAPTERS 00:38 Who is Bas Bale and what is Ecologic Circle 01:33 Rice waste to packaging, explained simply 02:29 2,000 organic farmers and Thailand's farm debt crisis 04:02 From Africa to Thailand: Bas's background 05:03 Finding the circular value in a waste stream 07:11 How you get farmers to trust you and adopt 09:45 Why farmers burn: seasons, roots, and a single match 11:24 Government bans, fines, and why enforcement fails 13:21 The three products: pulp, packaging, fertilizer 15:01 Biochar, byproducts, and multiple income streams 15:59 Plastic phase-outs in Thailand and France 17:49 Molding tech, coatings, PFAS, and meat trays 18:28 First in the world: certified organic packaging 20:20 The 500K raise and what it actually funds 23:07 Next phase: 30 tons a day and a 5M round 23:45 The biggest threats: EU 2027, tariffs, and scale players 26:14 Where the moat really is 27:42 Carbon credits and the voluntary market crash 29:19 The ten year vision: 200 tons a day LINKS Ecologic Circle: https://ecologic-circle.com All episodes: https://preipohype.com/podcasts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsLUZkyDl5m-EhOWyWEUiaw Pre-IPO Hype is hosted by Jeff "Fuzzy" Wenzel. Founders raising capital, building real things, and solving problems worth solving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Who has been a guest on Invst Guru

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Philippe Reynier
• Karl Franz Williams
• Ezalife's representative
• Ezalife team
• TLH Reckoning

Podcast Authority Score: 29 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

58

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

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