#244 Will Zell (Vessel) — Empowering Founders and Democratizing VC in Ohio

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today's episode is a crossover episode republished from The Ohio Fund Report, a companion podcast where I explore some of the most ambitious companies and builders shaping Ohio's future. Stories that feel right at home here on Lay of the Land. So with that, please enjoy.

Disclaimer [00:00:24]:
Hello everyone, and welcome to The Ohio Fund Report, a show dedicated to raising the collective ambition of Ohio. Before we dive in, just a quick note, this podcast This podcast is for informational purposes only. Nothing you hear today should be taken as investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. Please note that The Ohio Fund and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed.

Disclaimer [00:00:44]:
Any forward-looking statements you hear today are based on current expectations and may change. Please do your own research and consult with your advisors before making any investment decisions.

Disclaimer [00:00:52]:
For more information on The Ohio Fund, please visit theohiofund.com.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:58]:
Hello everyone. I am Jeffrey Stern, your host of today's Ohio Fund Report with Will Zell, founder and managing partner of Vessel, founding CEO and now executive chair of AssetWatch, and a leading voice in rethinking how venture capital works across Ohio. Will's path into technology and venture was not conventional. He grew up and still lives in Bellefontaine, Ohio. At 17, he ran for city council under the slogan, A Voice for the Future. He spent time in ministry, built a real estate portfolio during the financial crisis, and ultimately found his way into technology startups, learning firsthand what it entails to successfully raise capital from Ohio. After a few early startup attempts, Wilco founded what became AssetWatch, a predictive maintenance platform serving global manufacturers that has since raised more than $100 million in venture capital and scaled into a high-growth industrial technology business employing hundreds across the state. But perhaps more interesting than breaking through Ohio's capital gap is Will's effort to redesign it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:58]:
In 2020, he founded Vessel, a diversified venture platform focused on investing in and building category-defining companies in Middle America. Through Vessel and the Ohio Angel Collective, Will is working to expand access to early-stage capital, grow the top of Ohio's innovation funnel, and shift the ecosystem from scarcity to abundance. In our conversation, we unpack the structural gaps facing Ohio's founders, what it took to scale AssetWatch to where it is today, why democratizing venture access matters at all, how to build a multi-stage venture platform outside of the coasts, and what it would mean for Ohio to invest in innovation proportionally to the size of its economy today. Will and I are, are on similar pages about many of the challenges and opportunities Ohio has today, And so it was very fun and insightful to unpack those and hear Will's perspective on all of these topics. So please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Will Zell. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Serity Partners. As a wealth management firm, Serity Partners shares Lay of the Land's same dedication to serving local business owners, and the Serity Partners Cleveland team understands the challenges that entrepreneurs and founders face here in Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, and beyond. Wealth comes with complexity and increased demands on time and resources.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:17]:
It is easy to become overwhelmed. Serity Partners clients benefit from a unified team of local specialists who coordinate across both business and personal needs. With Serity Partners' commitment to transparency and putting clients' needs first, complexity can become clarity. To learn more, please visit seritypartners.com or call 216- 464-6266 today. Serity Partners, proud to be recognized as one of the top financial advisory firms in the country. Well, we, we've known each other for a little while now, and I've always appreciated how consistently you show up for entrepreneurship in Ohio across companies, capital, community, and you've really lived it and experienced it from every angle. As a founder, as an operator, early-stage companies, scaled companies, also as an investor, you've taken these real ambitious swings and navigated a lot of the capital gap that, that we've talked about many times before, and are doing a lot to address it. And I think really elevate the whole conversation we're even having around it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:26]:
But when you zoom out, for those that don't know your story, growing up in Bellefontaine, Ohio, and running for city council as a teenager and spending time in ministry. You know, it's not the typical path to technology and entrepreneurship that I'm familiar with. And so I'd kind of love to just hear how you trace the arc of your story and how those earlier formative experiences paved the way for this clear passion that you have around entrepreneurship in Ohio.

Will Zell [00:04:57]:
Awesome. Thanks, Jeffrey. It's just a really great honor to be here. Big fan of everything that you do across the ecosystem and also being a voice and a champion for the startup community. Not, you know, I've lived all my life in West Central Ohio and you not being native to Ohio, but coming in and really embracing and understanding and taking time to learn the nuance of what is possible. I just, I have a ton of respect for you and grateful to be here and spend this time with you today. So my journey is certainly not, let's say, a linear path towards what you would consider being a tech entrepreneur and venture capital investor. But I will say, you know, the common thread that manifested early in my life as a teenager, young adult, was a willingness to go down paths that weren't paved already, right? To take risk and see, you know, with whatever it was, going to college and deciding to run for city council instead of going to living on campus.

Will Zell [00:05:57]:
I, from a young age, believed in myself and made decisions to really follow my heart of what I thought was the best decision, best path to take. And many times that has been down a path that does not exist. One of my favorite quotes is Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead to where there is no path and leave a trail." And in many ways, it's been a defining and kind of core belief for me and my journey. So, growing up in a small town, so Belfound, I've lived all my life. I've actually lived, I've never lived outside of Logan County, Ohio. All my life has been in and around this kind of small geographic area, just northwest of Columbus, about 45 minutes. And coming through public school, it was really kind of my junior year, senior year in high school where I started to get more very interested in politics and government and really interested in community and business and economic development.

Will Zell [00:06:56]:
And all of the kind of plans were to graduate and go to Ohio State, was accepted at Ohio State in the Scholars Program, had dorm picked out, but then kind of that first opportunity to do something different presented itself very randomly. And it was an opportunity to run for city council when I was a senior in high school. And I, through a lot of encouragement and primarily kind of the anchor point for that was an internship that I did in that fall with the president of the Logan County Chamber of Commerce, which is really my first time where I got to meet a lot of the community leaders. And, you know, it was, it was an interesting set of decisions to make, but ultimately it was, I would say, where I made my first entrepreneurial decision. Even though it didn't have to do with starting your own business. So if you think of the technical definition of being an entrepreneur, it was still the idea of going after a dream and going down this different path that had a lot of risk, a lot of uncertainty, and decided to do it. And I ended up losing the race. So that season not only was my first taste of making an entrepreneurial decision, but also my first taste of getting punched in the face and losing.

Will Zell [00:08:12]:
But shortly thereafter, it was also where I learned the value and experienced the value of just going after something different and taking a big swing. And really, it was that season of my life that I think really planted the foundation for this journey that ultimately led me through a lot of conversations with mentors to connect to the fact that I'm actually an entrepreneur. You know, I don't have the classical, I started a lemonade stand or, you know, ran a business when I was in middle school and high school. But, you know, I had that kind of fundamental wiring to take on risk, to go down a path that was really just me and my ambition and goals that I had and then figure out how to make it through. And that's from the decision to go after a political position through serving in the ministry, through actually starting businesses and then getting really involved in the Central Ohio tech and startup community. That's kind of been the common thread through my life over the last 20-plus years.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:14]:
Yeah. And you've always had this conviction in yourself and that tolerance or affinity for risk?

Will Zell [00:09:22]:
Yeah, I think so. I think probably over the last few years, I've been able to articulate it more. I think in many ways, I'm in my early 40s now. And I would say over the last 3 to 4 years, I kind of really found my voice as an entrepreneur and investor. So, I feel like I can explain more clearly what was driving me then today. And a lot of it was just really a curiosity more than, more than anything else, a, a kind of, so my campaign slogan in 2000 for my city council race was a voice for the future. And so I think I oriented around kind of two things. One, a curiosity for seeing problems that exist and wanting to go out and solve them.

Will Zell [00:10:07]:
And then an anchoring around this desire to understand what's next, right? And when you talk about being a voice for the future, you know, the status quo exists in life in any particular endeavor, and the question becomes what's next? And I think that combination of just a kind of innate curiosity and then a fixture on trying to understand where does something go next, what is the next opportunity, whether it's community, an industry, technology trends, so on and so forth. I think those are kind of the core anchor points of who I am that have been consistent over time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:46]:
A voice for the future. I like that.

Will Zell [00:10:49]:
And actually, I still ask myself, am I that? Just so you know, it was the campaign slogan when I was 18, and I still— it's probably one of the primary things I think about. Today is, am I still a voice for the future? And it's just on a very personal level, like, am I still anchoring to what I believe is next rather than growing complacent in the things that are today?

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:11]:
So, as you followed what you now would call your curiosity back then, what was the moment that entrepreneurship became more of a tangible thing rather than this kind of fuzzy concept?

Will Zell [00:11:27]:
Yeah. So there are a couple of parallel paths in my late teens and early 20s that ultimately led me to go all in, in terms of being an entrepreneur and building business. And so to kind of break down a couple of those parallel paths, I initially started with a focus on government. And when I lost the election, I was ready to leave my hometown and go live on campus. At Ohio State, and a lot of the community leadership came around me. And again, it was one of the benefits of taking a swing that even though the outcome was losing the election, the process and what it opened up to me was actually pretty significant. And a lot of those leaders came around and said, hey, we want you to stay involved and get involved in the community. And, you know, there's a path for you in terms of actually running again in the future and getting elected this time.

Will Zell [00:12:19]:
And so, I decided to stay local and a couple of things happened. Number one, I had the opportunity to start a weekly radio program. So, believe it or not, if you would have found this, I know you did some pre-work. If you would have found Zell on the Bell, I would have been extraordinarily impressed because I did for 10 years a weekly radio program in Bellefontaine, Ohio. And a lot of it was focused on politics, but also just broader government and economic development topics. And then secondly, I decided to work while I was going to college. So I did attend Ohio State. I commuted in the evenings to initially Lima and then the Columbus campus, but I wanted to work as well.

Will Zell [00:13:03]:
And I got my first job as an insurance agent and I worked at an independent insurance agency called Alan Galvez Insurance in downtown Bellefontaine. And for me, what that really was, is the first exposure to the small business world. You had a military veteran who served in Vietnam, had his own really interesting life journey, ended up in the insurance industry, built his own independent insurance practice, and working there for several years, it was just that first exposure to what it took to actually build your own business. And I learned a lot from that. During that journey, I had a really interesting faith experience, very powerful and profound in my early 20s that led me ultimately to leaving insurance and actually serving in the ministry. So, I went on staff full-time at a church in Bellefontaine and served there for around 5 years. And that was a ton of leadership development and being involved in the community. So, if I followed that arc, it is government and politics and then nonprofit world is a good way to maybe categorize the ministry.

Will Zell [00:14:10]:
And where I was really orienting around was like from first principles, community. And what I found that I cared about is, you know, I care about community. I care about the community that I live in. I care about the startup and tech community in Ohio. And the kind of what built mostly for me was a desire to positively impact communities I care about. And when you start to look at how that happens and where influence comes from and platforms for impact, a common denominator is often very successful business people. So if you look at where do politicians go when they need to raise money for their campaign, where do nonprofits go when they need support for their initiatives, and the businesses themselves that can not only provide a product or service to the market but can positively impact their community, you find that the marketplace and being an entrepreneur and a business owner actually becomes an extraordinary platform for, again, not only doing good and creating impact through your business, but to serve your broader community. So, taking my propensity for risk and finally connecting those dots to the marketplace and being an entrepreneur, where I ultimately landed, I spent a lot of time actually focused on this, is if I project myself toward at the end of my life, 85, 90, hopefully, maybe older by the time those days roll around, if I'm looking back, what do I want to be proud of building? And where that landed was having the core of that be building in the marketplace, building businesses, investing in businesses, and using that as a platform through which we can be that voice of the future and actually create that future.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:51]:
I always love the eulogy values framing of figuring out what you should be working on.

Will Zell [00:15:56]:
Yeah, I read a book. It was called Success Is Not an Accident, and it was a big framework. Around that. And it's— I, I— when we have a lot of young people on our team and in our ecosystem, and the number one thing I, I say is like, take your late teens, early 20s very seriously and think about that. Like, don't— you know, it's travel, have fun, you know, so on and so forth, but start thinking about your life early and start taking big actions anchored to, you know, a, a big vision that you have that's worthy of pursuit over decades.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:28]:
So how did, how did you get started? From there?

Will Zell [00:16:31]:
Yeah, so I actually started my first business while, um, uh, and as an insurance agent, and my first LLC, if you will. It wasn't a proper business, but I had the opportunity to buy a piece of real estate in downtown Belfallen. It was an old historic building that I actually rented the second floor, and the owner came to me. He was selling his men's clothing business and was getting rid of this real estate and just gave me a wonderful deal. So ended up buying that and held on that and kind of managed that property for a couple of years. And then, when I went into the ministry, that was in 2007, I also married my wife, Beth, of 19 years in 2007 as well. And as I started kind of 2007, 2008, I was really wanting that kind of shape of entrepreneurship and building businesses. Really was taking more of a, let's say, mindshare.

Will Zell [00:17:28]:
And the easiest thing to focus on at that stage was real estate because I had one property. The great financial crisis was actually starting to really hit at that point. And there are a lot of buying opportunities. And my family, my grandfather started a construction business. So, again, construction, contracting, and real estate were in my blood. So, my first business I really built was in real estate and it was primarily through 2008, '09, and '10, we did about 19 properties primarily in the Logan County area. So, single-family properties, a few multifamily, and a couple of commercial properties primarily in the downtown. For me, I would say that was my first business, but it was really where I cut my teeth as an operator, got punched in the face a lot, figured out what I was kind of pretty terrible at and what I was pretty decent at.

Will Zell [00:18:23]:
And, you know, the famous Mike Tyson quote, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face, is 100% true in business. When you start a business, the very first thing that happens is the market is literally going to punch you in the face and it's going to expose very quickly what you're bad at. And, you know, survival and growth is all about how you persist around those realities, either building capability, hiring team members, you know, whatever it takes to build that multifaceted set of skills that are needed to grow any business. So, that time was largely focused on real estate, had a view of kind of wanting to build a real estate portfolio, but also was really laying the groundwork for what would be more like a holding company with real estate just being kind of the initial anchor. And 2011, 2012 is, where I really started to make some more moves into that and specifically tech. And then also my wife and I, we, a big part of our relationship and the joy that we have with each other is around business building. She's actually an entrepreneur and founder as well. Valentine's Day 2012, we opened Sweet Aroma Coffee in downtown Belfound, a coffee shop and bakery.

Will Zell [00:19:38]:
And she operates that to this day and has just done an incredible job of building that business. So we were kind of in this like kind of crazy season because we also had 2 kids that were under 4 and a third on the way. It was an insane time, but we, you know, believed in each other and she was, has been an incredible partner over that time. I'm not the easiest person to probably be married to just in the context of this ambition and drive. But where I ultimately landed on in like 2011, 2012 is I wanted to move beyond real estate and more into operating companies, but specifically tech. Because when you look at like, how do you build wealth? How do you build impact? Obviously, learning as much as I could from Silicon Valley at the time, it was like, all right, if you can build a high-growth company as a founder and you have that founding equity, founding equity ownership is the greatest source of wealth creation in our society. How can I, as I'm building out what I want to be a holding company, How can I focus on that and start to take swings for building tech, which is the season that led me from, you know, all of my ecosystem and relationships being in Bellefontaine and Logan County to start coming down to Columbus quite regularly.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:57]:
Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance, headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio. Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self-funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium-sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high-quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community to be the cornerstones of progress. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per-employee, per-year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com. Roundstone Insurance, built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland. And so what were those, those first tech swings?

Will Zell [00:22:04]:
Yeah. And that was the beginning of a lot of pain that fuels us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:09]:
Yeah, a lot of punching in the face. That's my group.

Will Zell [00:22:12]:
Yeah, I'm actually permanently bruised from the neck. That's why I wear collared shirts all the time. So, so a couple of things were really interesting. So the very first idea that I had was a company that was called HuddleWoo. So the name was a little fun, H-U-D-D-L-E-W-O-O. But the genesis of that was I went to a conference down in Washington, D.C. and went with a few people. And met some incredible entrepreneurs and founders and business leaders that I admired.

Will Zell [00:22:45]:
And it was, it was cool to go to that. And I walked away from that with my first real kind of tech idea. And it was solving the problem of access. So if you think about social media is a very powerful thing in our society, plenty of negative, but I'll focus on the positive. When one of the most positive things about social media as it really started growing was if there was an author or an entrepreneur that I really admired, let's say, and they were active on social media, I could now follow them. And as they're putting content out there, I can get access into their life that I never had before. Right. So let's say it's an author, John Maxwell, for instance.

Will Zell [00:23:27]:
I can read John Maxwell's books and I feel like I get to know him through that. But then the moment that John Maxwell is on Twitter and he's posting every day, I can follow him and now I've got more access to his life. So, what Huddle was is like, how do you take that to the even next level of solving the access problem? Because if I ever wanted to have a conversation with John Maxwell, I'd have to spend thousands of dollars likely, go to a conference and may get a chance to say hi to him for, you know, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and that's about it. So, if you think of the journey of you've got people that you admire here and you're here in life and what is the arc to be able to actually spend time with them and ask them questions? What we want to do with Huddlewoo is close that gap significantly. And the idea was someone like a John Maxwell could have a Huddlewoo account. He could put a value for his time. So, let's say it's $500 for 30 minutes with John Maxwell in like 30-minute live video conversation. And if I really felt like the— that getting 30 minutes with John Maxwell to have a real conversation was worth $500, I could pay it and get that one-on-one conversation.

Will Zell [00:24:35]:
And a lot of that probably contextually was me living in very rural Ohio, being a huge fan of a lot of founders and business leaders that were on the West Coast and on the East Coast. And it's like, how in the world am I ever going to get to talk to these people? I would just love to be able to pay them, right? Because I got so many questions to ask. And so, it was a good idea, but from a market and value creation perspective, there are a lot of challenges with it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:04]:
Well, it's like the pre-Cameo Cameo.

Will Zell [00:25:08]:
Yeah. So if you think Cameo and then Intro, you'll see Intro a lot today. They do a lot of digital marketing. Intro is probably the closest thing to it, but it's still very, very challenging, right? Because on the kind of John Maxwell side of it, let's say the influencer side, the nice thing about social media is it's, I can spend, you know, 5 minutes putting a post together and that's going to go to a million people. With a HODLWU or that type of live video interaction, I'm giving one person 30 minutes and what is, you know, I'm getting $500 for that, let's say, or even if it's $1,000 or $5,000, the value trade of that was challenging. And then the second thing was just the fact that it was 2012 and live video streaming was not anywhere near what it is today. So there's certainly some tech challenges there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:58]:
I mean, one of the punches I'm sure you received at that point is like the old startup adage, being right too early is sort of indistinguishable from being wrong at the time.

Will Zell [00:26:08]:
Yeah, I've had that a couple of times. Yeah, unfortunately. So, but I would say kind of separate from that specific business, that season of my journey was interesting because as I was like thinking through that business, you know, being in small town Ohio, had a lot of great banking relationships and friends and went to them starting to talk about a tech company and needing seed capital. And there's no business that exists today and there's no financial history. And they're like, you're absolutely insane. So no, XYZ Bank will not give you $500,000 to go start this software business. It's like, all right. So it was like, there's no venture capital community in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Will Zell [00:26:50]:
I need to go to where there's a much bigger community and where I could go in. I was reading about angel investors and seed rounds and the whole venture capital continuum. I'm like, all right, Columbus, Ohio, it's an hour down the road. It's a thriving city, you know, one of the largest cities in the US, top 20. There has to be venture capital flowing through the streets. That was my very naive assumption. And so I literally just started driving down to Columbus every day, didn't have really any connections, started meeting people. Thankfully, I got plugged in and met a couple of key leaders at that time in the startup ecosystem.

Will Zell [00:27:27]:
Ended up going through an accelerator called the 10X Accelerator that was pretty active in those days. But more than anything else, what I experienced was hitting this very thick concrete wall of this— the difference between my perception of available capital and the actual reality of it. Yeah. And unfortunately, this is a wall that even today so many incredible founders across Ohio, across the Midwest, across Middle America. If you're outside of where capital concentrates in the VC industry, you have a lot of great founders that want to take a big swing from a tech perspective. And they need that early capital, at least to help get them going. And they go to their local community, and it's just not there. Now, the wealth's there.

Will Zell [00:28:17]:
It's the underwriting and the wealth that's available for the actual early-stage asset class that is just a massive gap. And when we look at how technology continues to transform literally every industry, the more that gap persists, the more, from an economic development perspective, great states like Ohio and the great communities they're in will continue to not keep pace with what we could in terms of wealth creation, job growth, so on and so forth. And I know obviously you spend day in and day out solving that problem as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:50]:
A lot of time thinking about it. The way I've been framing it most recently is, is just the dichotomy between the size of the economy of Ohio, which is roughly $1 trillion, and that Ohio, meaning we're a top 7 state, at the same time we get less than 0.3% of venture dollars. So there's just proportionally not representative at all. Of the economic activity and the innovation that's going on.

Will Zell [00:29:17]:
Couldn't agree more. And I like to view venture capital investing as a proxy for investing in the innovation economy. So if you think of whether it's fundamental research, and we've got a lot of that, but how technologies go from a research setting or idea setting into actual businesses that can grow and create economic impact, venture capital is one of the easiest tools to look at from a financing perspective of a state's proxy for investment in the innovation economy. And you are exactly right. We actually did analysis. So these are 2023 numbers. I know it's not better in '24 and '25. It's probably actually worse.

Will Zell [00:29:54]:
But when we looked at 2023, so you have Ohio's 7th largest economy in the US. When you looked at us from a venture capital investing in that year, we were 18th. And everyone would say like, okay, we're middle of the pack. But that, that really, that was in terms of amount of venture capital dollars invested in the state. But that really wasn't the great comparison to your point. And I think this is, if there's a message that we can share to state leaders, economic development leaders, it is this, it is this message right here. You have to compare venture capital investing to economic strength. And when you look at the ratio of venture capital dollars invested in the state compared to GDP, we're actually 31st in the country.

Will Zell [00:30:35]:
So we are swinging way below our weight in the context of are the size of our economy and the how anemic venture capital investing actually is. And it is, it's, and the challenge with it, Jeffrey, is like, it's a problem that shows up a decade from now and that you can't fix quickly, right? Yep. Like, just, you know, the, you know, the venture capital cycles and innovation cycles, like 10 years from now, if we don't, if we don't take big action now, we'll be even further behind 10 years from now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:08]:
Yeah. We'll unpack that a bit when we talk about what you're doing now with Vessel. But before we do, I think a lot of folks that know you today will maybe know you from your work at AssetWatch. Having raised over $100 million to date, I mean, you to some degree figured out a way to surmount that gap, that delta that you identified. So I definitely want to you know, hear your reflections on, on that journey and what, what you feel allowed for you to, to figure out how to, how to actually navigate this problem. That, that is a pretty pervasive problem for, for entrepreneurs here locally. But how, yeah, how you approach it.

Will Zell [00:31:50]:
So, um, yeah, it, um, so Huddlwoo failed. Yes. So we'll start with that. So, uh, and then I had another one, uh, sort of called ConnectHome, and we don't have to spend time on that, but that also failed. And so, kind of 2013 into early 2014, the prelude to AssetWatch is the brutal reality of having to shut down a couple of startups. And it's very, very painful, right? And I felt like coming in 2014, I had one more at-bat before my wife is like, "Stop. This show is over. This is insane.

Will Zell [00:32:29]:
I've put too much at risk." And again, I can't express to you how much my wife is an incredible human. Because there was a lot that was put at risk at that time. So, a number of circumstances led to starting what was originally known as Nikola Labs. So, AssetWatch before our rebrand in 2023 was a company called Nikola Labs. So, same company, we just did a corporate rebrand. And it's a spinout from The Ohio State University. And It was myself, a research partner, Dr. Chi-Chi Chen at Ohio State, and then another group, a capital group called Eco Capital Partners that were founded by Rodolfo Belessi and Flavio Lobato, who aren't from Ohio.

Will Zell [00:33:16]:
Rodolfo went to Ohio State, but they came to Columbus to really focus on commercialization of technologies out of research institutions. And specifically, if you look at Ohio State, it's a great example of where it should be a lot of potential, or there's a lot of potential that should should manifest as growth companies, and there's a lot of challenges there. So the big difference between the first two companies and Nikola Labs was the eco of capital. And specifically when we went to go and start to raise that early capital, my co-founders had relationships outside of Ohio. So the wall that I hit was the first two companies I wanted to start, or I started, did need early capital in order for them to get product to marketing and get to revenue and profitability. Same thing with Nikola Labs. The big difference was I was able, we were able as a team to access capital networks outside of Ohio, which again is part of the problem that we're trying to solve today. So we were able to get the company capitalized, get kind of the initial product going, very long and tough technology to commercialize and ended up very much evolving as a company.

Will Zell [00:34:29]:
To focus on the manufacturing space today. But interestingly, Jeffrey, the kind of craziness of that whole journey is, you know, I'm still very much a West Central Ohio rural farm boy at the end of the day. It's my roots. It's what I love. I love living out in the country. And my journey as a tech founder and capital raising, once it started going and working with Nikola Labs, it actually took us to Europe, took us to Asia. Like, we've raised a lot of our early capital at Nikola Labs actually came from European investors, specifically Monte Carlo Capital out of Monaco. So just this wild time of like, I'm just a farm boy from Ohio, and I'm sitting in Monaco of all places, meeting very incredible investors.

Will Zell [00:35:18]:
And these have become honestly lifelong friendships for me. So that craziness aside, it was really that infrastructure and those relationships that enabled us to raise the early capital that it needed to get the product to market finally and then really get product-market fit. And then the real inflection point happened in our Series A with G2 Venture Partners, just an incredible investment organization based in the Bay Area. And it was an interesting journey because they weren't used to seeing deal flow coming out of a state like Ohio. I mean, it took a lot of time in terms of really understanding that asset, you know, Nikola Labs at the time was really onto something very powerful with predictive maintenance. And thankfully they leaned in when we needed it. I mean, that whole journey, the journey of the company up until the Series A was we were surviving with anywhere between 4 or 5, 6 months of capital and 0 days of capital, actually negative 10 days of capital. And it was, you know, because a lot of the challenges and when you, when you, read about venture capital in the Bay Area and going and raising a seed round and you've got 18 months of runway, 24 months of runway.

Will Zell [00:36:29]:
It's just not like that, unfortunately, not yet in states like Ohio. And so it was very much fighting block to block. And I think actually, truth be told, I don't think I was actually an entrepreneur until that journey. I had some experience before that in building businesses, but I think I really became an entrepreneur through, through that journey with Nikola Labs. So thankfully, we were able to get the product to market in a great space, selling to manufacturing organizations, proved out.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:59]:
And what was the problem that you were solving?

Will Zell [00:37:02]:
Yeah, so the— where we landed, which is very different from where we started, is the problem of unplanned downtime for manufacturing facilities. So if you think of a manufacturing facility, you walk into it, you'll see a bunch of machines that are producing a product and there's a production schedule, there's planning of supply chain. There's a lot that goes into that. And if a machine fails during production, it could take the machine down, could take the line down, could take a plant down. And that is an experience of unplanned downtime, right? You're not planning on everything being down and it is one of the most expensive periods that any facility faces, any manufacturing facility. And it is very, very expensive for manufacturers across the world. What we brought to market was a hardware and software platform where we put sensors onto this manufacturing equipment. Think of like a gearbox or bearing, and we're monitoring vibration data.

Will Zell [00:37:58]:
And with vibration data, you can— let's take a gearbox. There are probably 20 to 30 different faults that you can see in a gearbox through vibration data. That you generally get a heads up, you know, weeks if not months ahead of that actually becoming a downtime event. So, you know, the status quo at the time was gearbox breaks and then the maintenance team has to fix it really quickly. With AssetWatch, we enable the maintenance team to see the failure mode in the gearbox and fix that issue well before it leads to unplanned downtime. And it is, you know, when we look at the relationship that we have with our customers, what they spend with us on an annual basis, we're generally saving them 8 to 10 times what they're spending with us. It is just that big of a problem to be solved. And we really, we brought that product to market in 2019.

Will Zell [00:38:52]:
Really by the end of 2020, we're, we're hitting product market fit and really starting to scale revenue. And it's been high growth since then. It's working really well. So companies up to about 350 team members across the country. We did our Series C last year led by Viking Global. So our key institutional investors, G2 Venture Partners, Wellington, Touchdown Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, and then Viking Global came in. And, you know, today it's a company that's still very much day one, an incredible runway ahead of it. and a team that is just crushing it on every metric that you can imagine.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:32]:
Yeah. Congratulations.

Will Zell [00:39:34]:
And I, and I'm more of a fan now. So I went from CEO to executive chair at the end of 2020. Uh, Brian Graham went from chief operating officer to, to CEO. Um, and that's a lot of our, our playbook at, at Vessel is we wanna be great at that zero to one phase. And then as a company grows, how do you bring in elite, uh, executive leadership? And Brian Graham, Brian Ratliff, Matt Longhouse, the whole C-suite has just done an incredible job of, of building a great organization. So I'm, I'm more of a, a fan, very much impacting in the business every day, but in terms of the real hard work and, uh, the results, just an extraordinary team that, that makes it happen every day.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:11]:
Yeah. Well, I'm sure it must have felt pretty good to be on the other side of getting punched in the face kind of relentlessly.

Will Zell [00:40:18]:
And yeah, it's good to be on the offense. Yeah, 100%.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:22]:
Yep. Yeah, well, that's, that's a perfect segue, I think, to talk about Vessel. And I think I want to frame it with this idea that I— is actually how I first became aware of you. It wasn't actually through AssetWatch, but it was through what I would kind of frame high level as democratizing venture capital access. And I, I kind of want to frame Vessel in that because I just, I love this idea. But I want to hear from you, why, why is this important to you? And and then really the kind of a formative story for Vessel.

Will Zell [00:40:50]:
Yeah, absolutely. So when you dive in the world of investing and finance and where investors can deploy capital with an expected return, so just kind of start at its most fundamental basic level. Right now there are two very distinct worlds that exist in our society here in the United States. There's the world of publicly available, publicly registered securities. So think of the stock market, mutual funds, bonds, so on and so forth. So relatively liquid instruments that in order to be able to give an investment opportunity to an individual investor, they're registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and they're marketable to the masses. And any adult in the US, regardless of wealth, can participate in those investments and can take on risk to hopefully drive a good return. But there's a whole other world that exists, and that's the world of private markets.

Will Zell [00:41:46]:
And obviously, I think a lot of people are familiar with private equity, venture capital, private real estate. And there's a world that is larger than the public markets world called private markets. And there's some really interesting components of the status quo that I fundamentally want to challenge in life and over my career. And one of those is around access and who can access private markets. So because of no greater instrument at the time. What the Securities and Exchange Commission did many, many, many decades ago was created a test that someone had to meet in order to be eligible to invest in private markets. And that was a wealth test. I mean, it was called being an accredited investor.

Will Zell [00:42:32]:
So, by law, in order to invest in private markets, by and large, you have to have a very significant net worth and a very significant annual income. And it's a big societal problem because if you look over the last 10, 15, 20 years, a lot of the action of where capital is invested and returns are generated, and let's say outsized returns are generated, is really in private markets. Companies are not going public anymore until they're much larger market cap. I think Google was $100 million market cap or something like that when it went public, Crazy small number, right? Where today, you know, if you're not $3 billion, $4 billion in value, then you just don't even want to think about doing an IPO. So you've got a lot of challenges where that wealth is still being created, right? So, you know, connected to one of the things I said earlier, the greatest source of wealth creation in our society is founding and early equity ownership in a company that grows to be very successful. So from first principles, that is a very true statement. And so as those companies are successful and people are investing in them, there's a lot of wealth that's created in those early days. And unfortunately, a lot of the masses, if you will, are blocked out effectively of investing in those asset classes.

Will Zell [00:43:57]:
So it's just something that I fundamentally care about. It is a very complex problem to solve. The kind of precursor, if you will, for Vessel was Zell Capital. And the effort there was around trying to figure out how to structure a fund that was open to the masses. And we were able to get a registration of a product through the SEC. It was, and it's really, was, is really a beautiful product. But the challenge was all of the complexity around going to market with it. And we ultimately had to pivot.

Will Zell [00:44:26]:
But even pivoting away from non-accredited investors to be able to invest in in private markets, it's still the idea of making the asset class accessible is very important for us. And so when you look at an individual who is in wealth creation mode in their life, how do they have the ability to start to build a portfolio of investments in venture capital or in private markets? We want to build that vessel. We have funds with larger investors and we'll continue to do that, but we also want to make make the asset class approachable. And the kind of key way we're doing that now is through our Angel Collective syndicates that we run and manage, where an individual angel investor, they do have to be accredited, but they can begin to build a portfolio of startups at a very small investment per deal relative to what you would traditionally see in private markets. So, you know, I just, at the end of the day, like, I get why the status quo exists. I do understand it. I just fundamentally disagree with it. And there are a lot of people across the country that are doing some good work to try to change it.

Will Zell [00:45:31]:
And I'm a very big fan of all that effort. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:34]:
So what is Vessel?

Will Zell [00:45:35]:
Yeah. So Vessel, the culmination. Yeah, it's a culmination. And actually, you know, I, I'm a big believer in brand story. So and if you look at like AssetWatch before was Nikola Labs, both had very distinct brand stories. And, you know, when when I went from CEO to executive chair at AssetWatch, I knew I wanted to get to the investor side of the table. And actually Zell Capital was always a placeholder name because we were dealing with a complex product itself and what we wanted to build. So it's like, all right, let's worry about the brand later.

Will Zell [00:46:07]:
So just call it Zell Capital. And so it was always a placeholder name. And in 2023, spent a good time, we went through the journey with that fund. And we're really starting to lay the future of what the organization would be. And it was the kind of time where I had with the team the ability to really sit down and think about what we want to build over time. And there is Vessel for us is an expression of gratitude for the founder's journey. So if you look at the founder's journey, it's actually a very similar archetype to explorers of old. And I've don't need to go into the details of it, but at a separate time, I'd love to have this chat with you.

Will Zell [00:46:48]:
So if you look at the Magellans of the world, Christopher Columbus, you look at all of the great explorers of old and the step-by-step journey that they had to go through for their expeditions, their voyages, and the risks that they took on. It's actually incredibly similar to the founder's journey today. And, you know, you can think and visualize a, you know, a captain and their crew in the middle of an ocean battling the storms, the raging seas, and this force of nature that could literally consume them. And you, you can very much see the peril of that journey in that kind of mental picture. And then you go look at a founder that you know, and you're looking at them and you don't see the peril of the journey, but it's certainly happening in their mind, right? So you could— we, you and I could be talking, and if we were literally talking 5 years ago, we'd have this conversation like this, but what you don't know is what's actually going on in my life is I am sitting in darkness on, in a small ship with a crew that thinks I'm absolutely insane. And there is a hurricane around us right now. And we're in the force of nature that could consume us in an instant. And we are fighting for survival.

Will Zell [00:47:57]:
And that's the founder's journey. And there's a lot more that you can unpack in that. And so Vessel is really that expression of honor of understanding what it takes, being founders and operators ourselves, to really take the steps to try to build a company and try to create the future of an industry. So that's the, the brand and the brand story. What we do is— the best way to think about us is actually as a diversified holding company, not a traditional venture firm. We are focused a lot on the venture capital asset class, but we kind of have two buckets. We have our control investment bucket. So this is where we are kind of flexing that muscle as founders ourselves, our venture studio where we'll launch companies from scratch.

Will Zell [00:48:42]:
And then we have our non-control bucket, which is where we operate as a traditional venture capital team where we will go find great founders, invest capital in their company, and generally take somewhere less than 10% of ownership and become much more passive. And over time, there's a lot that you'll see about Vessel out there, But we're executing strategies underneath those two buckets.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:05]:
What does success mean to you?

Will Zell [00:49:07]:
Well, that's a very complex question.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:11]:
In the context of Vessel, in the broader context, but what does it look like to build the best version of what Vessel can be?

Will Zell [00:49:19]:
Yeah. So Mark Kwame, who is one of the founders of the Ohio Fund and started Drive Capital, if you go back in time, the time capsule to Drive Capital's early days and their website, The number one statement is that the Midwest is the opportunity of a lifetime from an investing perspective. And my fundamental view is they were not wrong at all. That's a very, very right statement. And when we look at what we want to build at Vessel is as an organization, we want to build a platform that ultimately becomes a multi-stage platform to provide capital at the various stages of the, the business building journey, and we want to scale it to where we're competing with the coasts and we're competing at a very high level and elite level against coastal investors and investment groups. But the core underlying core is that we're proving along the way that there are great founders in middle America that are worthy of capital and that with the right capital and the right belief system behind them and encouragement, that they have the potential to start and scale and drive great outcomes in Ohio, in Michigan, in Kentucky, in Indiana. And, you know, the thing about Silicon Valley is it becomes a magnet that pulls capital in and pulls talent, pulls resource in. The problem that we have to solve from first principles is a more complex problem of how do you actually make something similar work disaggregated.

Will Zell [00:50:52]:
So between Louisville and Columbus and Cleveland and Cincinnati? How can we build this connectivity of relationships, of awareness, of collaboration to ensure that, you know, the right information is provided, that the founders can be discovered and that capital can be delivered to them? And how do we do that starting at the very earliest stages? So a startup ecosystem is very much like a sales funnel, right? So at the top of the funnel where From a sales perspective, you're starting with like marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, and starting to do that, that outreach. And then it ultimately narrows down to closing deals. And so the number of deals that you close is significantly lower than the number of opportunities at the top of the funnel. Startup ecosystems are the same way, right? So at the top of the funnel, it's the ideation, it's the angel investors, it's the pre-seed funds. And yes, companies fail through that funnel. right? But you still get a bottom of the funnel output, which are the growth rounds, the exits, the IPOs, the great stories of companies that are employing hundreds, if not thousands of people. And so if we want to have more outcomes at the bottom of the funnel, which is what we are all in the business for, we have to start with adding more to the top of the funnel. And that's why our focus is— initial wave of focus is the early stage.

Will Zell [00:52:15]:
Angel, pre-seed, so on and so forth. But we want to build that through, and we will be building the whole platform through the various stages of growth. We want to— we have a lot to prove, frankly, around impact, around being able to do this in Middle America, and having a hell of a lot of fun while we're doing it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:35]:
Yeah. How's it going so far?

Will Zell [00:52:37]:
It's good. The starting of investment firm is very much like starting a tech company. right, or starting any organization. So we, we're a startup. So if I could just kind of connect our journey to where, you know, you would think of the different cycles of a tech company, you know, you're generally experiencing a J-curve. So if you think of an XY-axis, the early days, you, you dip into the negative on the, on the X-axis. So it starts, starts by being bad, right? It doesn't start by looking great. It starts by looking horrible.

Will Zell [00:53:08]:
And it's this journey of looking bad. Worse, worse, worse, worse, oh, a little bit better. And then ultimately, if it starts to hit well, then as you start to grow, you cross back over into the positive land on the x-axis and your growth rate is actually significantly greater than a more linear curve. So anyways, we're on our own J curve and the first couple of years were really rough in terms of the registered fund. Starting in 2023, we just started to really connect with the team. I've got incredible senior partners, Corey Myers, Patrick Klein, Amit Rastogi, an incredible team around us, Mike Soupek, who runs Ohio Angel Collective. And, you know, you could have the coolest tech in the world, but at the end of the day, humans do business with humans and it's really a people-driven business that we're in. And so '23, '24, '25, we're very much about laying the groundwork.

Will Zell [00:54:06]:
Building the team, really defining the thesis and starting to execute it. And last year we had a couple of watershed moments. Having the Ohio Fund come in and be the anchor investor in our studio fund was just massive. The work that you all do, the team, I know you hopefully have a fan club. I hope I am in top 3 number in terms of fans that you all have. I'm a big believer in what you're building. So now where we're at is we're through a lot of that kind of bottom of the J curve and we're starting to come up. And as we come up, we're going to be coming up at a very high growth rate.

Will Zell [00:54:42]:
So a lot of what we do at Vessel is we're trying to invest in companies that have that type of venture scale output and returns. What may not be known, and I'll just share it very bluntly, is we want Vessel itself to be on that same journey. So a lot of times venture firms, it's not that there's anything wrong with this statement, but it's a lifestyle type of business. We're building Vessel itself to be a high-growth organization and it's pedal down every single day and our team is locked in and we're getting after it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:16]:
I want to revisit one topic you introduced earlier, which is that it's one, and you just alluded to it, now, which is ultimately it's about people. People do business with people. But this idea of community at the heart of it and how, how that ingredient is kind of requisite for the whole recipe of, of success here, and just how your thinking and approach has evolved with regards to the community aspect of all of this.

Will Zell [00:55:41]:
Yeah, it's, um, so an ecosystem is always kind of a complex thing, right? In the startup ecosystem, tech community, however you want to describe it, is a complex system. And so, you know, generally we try to kind of approach the world through a first principles lens. So you want to break complexity down to its fundamental truths or what you believe to be true about it, and then that's where you kind of begin to reason and build and build strategy and execute. And, you know, as you kind of start to, to break a complex ecosystem like a startup community down to its most fundamental components, one of them and the primary one is people, right? And value. And value more than anything else is the first principle through which I see the world. And really taking the time to understand whether you're a founder, an investor, whatever role you play in the community, like how do we create a dynamic and vibrant and positive and abundance-focused REIT culture, right? And if I could have expressed this clearly, I would say that the critique that I would have of the Ohio startup community over the last X number of years, and this isn't any one person, and in fact, especially the partners at The Ohio Fund, have been drivers of change. Ray Lieter, remember conversations with him many years ago, and Mike Venerable the same, where they're the champions of what I'm about to say. But we've got to take bigger action anchored in an abundance mindset.

Will Zell [00:57:25]:
We can't take small action anchored in a scarcity mindset or a competitive mindset where we believe and define each other as our competition. Because the reality is our competition is the fact that if great founders can't raise capital here, they will leave here and they will go to where they can raise capital and where it's more abundant, and they will create great businesses and jobs there. And that is, for me, what breaks my heart. And that is what I view as our competition. It's, it's where capital is abundant and available. So until that is the case in Ohio, We should spend zero time trying to put each other down as competitors and 100% of the time figuring out how I can make this a win for you, Jeffrey, how I can make— look, Fire Road in Cincinnati, Tim and the group that they're building there, Todd up in Cleveland, like we've got incredible investors throughout the state and we need to just be shouting that we need more capital, we need more investors at the table. And we need to come together in a very proactive culture from an abundance mindset. And then when you drill that down to the individuals and the different stakeholders, it has to be driven off of how we create value, how we encourage each other, and how we make this happen together.

Will Zell [00:58:45]:
And so a lot of what we do at Vessel is building community, is events of bringing people together because, you know, at the end of the day, we have to change culture. And that takes a significant amount of time and effort, but over time and with the right effort, it can happen. And I know you all are doing that every single day at The Ohio Fund and we're happy and very grateful to be partnered with you on that journey.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:09]:
Yeah. No, it's important and hard work, the community part of it, but it matters. It does matter.

Will Zell [00:59:16]:
It's extraordinarily hard work actually. And some of our team members are excellent at it. I'm actually not that great at it myself in terms of the actual detailed work that it takes to do it well. So literally right now I'm sitting in Solyco Capital. In Louisville, Kentucky for the Spilt Social Business Hop event here. And the relationship with Selleco and just everything about what's happening here in Kentucky is amazing. And that's the message that we want to take on the road throughout the Midwest and the Great Lakes region is, you know, now is the time. There are founders out there building today.

Will Zell [00:59:50]:
We see it every day in our pipeline. You have great founders really taking big swings and they're worthy of capital. So let's make it happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:57]:
Yeah. So you mentioned you feel you now have the vernacular, the language to know that maybe what was guiding you earlier was this curiosity tied to your ambition. What do you find yourself when you think voice for the future today, looking forward? What are you curious about? What's kind of got your attention? What do you see ahead? That you're most excited about?

Will Zell [01:00:25]:
So, I think when you look at what it actually takes to do what we want to do right now with Vessel and a lot of the collaborative partners that we have, that is a life's work. So, you focus on nothing else over the next 10, 15, 30, 50 years than just doing that. And, in many ways, how do we shake these great states like the state of Ohio and remind the state of the origins of greatness, right? If you look back at what made Ohio great and you look at some of the founders, they were the tech founders of those days, the Rockefellers of the world. And we have that DNA here. And what it takes to really change culture, you have to be very patient. You have to execute every single day. But that in and of itself is a journey that could take quite some time. On the tech side, there's a number of different things of both positive and negative implication around AI that has a lot of our curiosity.

Will Zell [01:01:23]:
So there are some kind of societal things that I think are— I'm really starting to think deeply about and hopefully figure out some way in which we can have a positive impact. But right now, I would say it's very singularly focused, even though there's a lot of complexity under this singular focus. Singularly focused on, you know, how do we change culture and make venture more understood in Ohio and the broader Great Lakes and Midwest region? And how do we change that, you know, that data point of Ohio being the 7th largest state in the country, but 31st in GDP to venture ratio? Like, how do we make those two the same, right? How does Ohio become the 7th largest economy, but also the 7th largest state when it comes to the amount of venture invested compared to the GDP. And just so you know, that number is roughly— we need to go from like $1.3 to $1.5, which is where we are, billion invested per year, to about $4.5 to $5 billion invested per year. And if we can grow the ecosystem to the point where that's happening, then I would say that would be where I would start to be satisfied with us as a state taking the appropriate amount of risk and deploying the appropriate amount of capital to great tech founders across the— Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:42]:
The best definition that I've come across for life's work that has always stuck with me is a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. And it's pretty cool. It feels like you've found that.

Will Zell [01:02:55]:
Yeah, it, you know, it's, it's a, I love that statement and I, A lot of what I've been thinking about lately on that is like, for me, the business building journey is actually a very creative journey. So if you think about great artists, whether painters, musicians, so on and so forth, you know, creating great art is a worthy endeavor. And I actually look at building a business as that type of creative and artistic expression. And it's complex because you're dealing with people, you're dealing with markets. There's a lot of complexity. But I think if I could say it one way, like what we want to do at Vessel is as we build companies and as we impact culture, I want people to be able to look at what we do and say like, oh, that's a Zell, right? Or, oh, that's a Corey Myers or a Patrick Klein. And the team that we're building is we're artists that come to the table and we bring our curiosity, we bring our skill, and the way that we package together our common beliefs and then execute them around our core values, I see it as a masterpiece that can be built over decades. So to your point, having that kind of view of the future of what you want to build in the service of others, and it's incredibly rewarding to see businesses that grow to employ tens, hundreds, hopefully thousands of people one day because you're talking about families, you're talking about livelihoods, you're talking about second order and third order impacts.

Will Zell [01:04:25]:
And those are the things for me that, that matter much more than anything else. The personal fruit of what, what comes from that is just a natural output of the, the product created.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:35]:
I know there's lots more that we could talk about, and, uh, you know, we'll just have to continue the conversation at another point. When you reflect on what we've discussed so far, is there something that feels particularly important that you want to talk about that, that we haven't yet?

Will Zell [01:04:48]:
No, I feel like we've covered— I, I think we go a lot deeper on a number of subjects. I think my, you know, if I could get a message out to the community, especially the founder community, is, you know, if you've been through the experience, you're likely jaded of the experience of what it takes to raise capital in Ohio, or if you're just getting going, you're probably hitting that wall. And I just, my number one thing is just don't leave. Give us a little bit of time. Well, if we can't invest, we'll try to connect people to other investors and see what we can do to help. We just need, like, we need great founders who want to take TechSwings to stay here and to build here. And there are actually resources that are available. They're just not as abundant and obvious as we would like one day.

Will Zell [01:05:40]:
But I love founders, any person, regardless of whether it's a tech company or just building any business. Again, Vessel is an expression, a brand story that is in pure honor of anyone who starts a business and goes through that journey of pursuing a dream through building a business.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:58]:
Well, I'll ask you an unrelated closing question, which is if any of us find our way through Logan in Bellefontaine, give us a hidden gem, some plugs.

Will Zell [01:06:08]:
All right. So Bellefontaine is actually— man, we could spend a half hour at least talking about Bellefontaine, primarily because one of my best friends is a gentleman named Jason Duff. He's actually one of my early mentors that helped me in the formative years connect myself to being an entrepreneur. I mean, he's the founder of a company called Small Nation. And what he's built at Small Nation is this really interesting model around helping small downtowns in, let's say, smaller communities transform from the trends, which have been a lot of commerce goes to the edges of town. Downtowns get hurt and how do you create a sustainable growth model for investing in historic downtowns across Ohio and, and other states beyond. And downtown Bellefontaine has been his masterpiece in many ways. And, you know, he and I go back to the high school days, and what he's done, uh, and really the effort that he's led in Bellefontaine is, is, is unbelievable.

Will Zell [01:07:07]:
And I encourage everyone to come see Bellefontaine, but don't just come see Bellefontaine and learn this story because 10 years ago, 12 years ago when we started Sweet Aromas, you know, 18, 20 years ago in terms of since I've been involved, the transformation of the downtown to a very vibrant, economically fruitful downtown area has been incredible. If you do come to Bellefontaine, hit me up ahead of time. I can connect you with the right people and give you a couple-day itinerary to really enjoy. It's a great part of the state, just northwest of of Columbus, about 45 minutes, and would love to, to host anyone that wants to come down for a day or two.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:43]:
Perfect. Well, if folks wanted to take you up on that or had anything they, they wanted to learn more about with regards to Vessel or the Ohio Angel Collective, where, where would you direct them?

Will Zell [01:07:53]:
Yeah, so, uh, connecting with me on LinkedIn is great, and then hit me a, a message. Um, you can shoot me an email, wzell@buildvessel.com, uh, is cool. Um, I I generally have a tsunami of stuff hitting me in terms of inbound messages, so it may take me a while to get back to you. But we're accessible. We got team members across the state, and, you know, the more we can connect with people and build community with them, the better it is for us. Awesome.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:24]:
Well, thank you, Will. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Will Zell [01:08:26]:
Yeah, thank you, Jeffrey. I'm again a big fan of everything you're doing and excited for what you personally will create and the impact that you'll have on this state.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:34]:
It means a lot. It's a mutual respect.

Will Zell [01:08:37]:
Awesome, my man. Appreciate you.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:39]:
Thanks, Will. That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter @podlayoftheland or or at sternjeffe. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show.

Jeffrey Stern [01:09:17]:
We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was was developed in collaboration with The Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on this show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening. And we'll talk to you next week.