An AI-powered, algorithmic-driven platform connecting diverse founders and investors.

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Hi there,

Let's kick off this month's newsletter with a drumroll: r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r (this is a text medium, so you have to say those r's out loud for effect). Please welcome Erica Kangas to the team as our Head of Engineering! 

Some things fall under the kismet category, and this is one of them. Erica first learned about our work two years ago when she was on the founding team of Dough, which supported women-owned businesses and women entrepreneurs and has since been acquired. Her passion for promoting diversity in entrepreneurship by using technology and data to solve hard problems has only grown, especially in the face of recent challenges to equality efforts. The stars aligned, and we could not be more excited to have her on board. You can expect EVEN BIGGER things from us in 2024.

Here in the US, we celebrated Thanksgiving last week - a time to reflect on what you're thankful for as you eat until you verge on feeling sick. We traveled to Florida to spend the holiday with family, including my 95-year-old grandmother. One of the highlights was visiting a park with a Banyan tree that is even older than she is, at over 120 years. A Banyan tree grows limbs outward, and roots develop from those branches, descending down to take hold in the soil, becoming new trunks that support the tree as it spreads indefinitely. 

This sprawling tree is a sight to behold, and as I stared at all the dangling roots and the winding trunks, I realized that this is what we do as entrepreneurs. 

We continually stretch ourselves and explore new spaces as we develop professionally and personally. The part we're not always good at is throwing down new roots to ground and sustain ourselves. Without these new trunks to support growth, our branches will crack under the weight of our own expansion. This is when both the founder and the company can experience burnout.

Scroobious is a trunk for those in the startup ecosystem. Whether you're a founder, investor, accelerator program, service provider, or other partner, we provide grounding and stability through our platform, resources, and authentic empathy to enable you to reach new heights. 

Trunks not only provide support, but they are conduits for essential resources, protect against outside forces, and are central connection nodes. I'm proud and thankful that our company is a trunk for so many.

Read on for some great upcoming events and opportunities, the Morse Minute, and don't miss our featured founder at the end! Thank you for reading this. Thank you for helping us. I appreciate you. 

Allison Byers, Founder & CEO

Click on an update to learn more and access content.

Virtual Workshop: Join us on 12/13 from 2-3 pm ET as Randy Fisher and Landon Steele will share approaches that actually work to help founders focus on what truly drives their business forward.

Virtual Workshop: Join us on 12/14 from 12-1pm ET where Joca Torres, a seasoned expert with over 30 years in product management and digital transformation, will share his invaluable insights and strategies to create successful products.

Meeting You Where You're At Podcast:  I joined host Richard Juknavorian for a really great discussion on his podcast that amplifies the voices of women entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs. 

OneMind Accelerator: The One Mind Accelerator seeks to address the global mental health crisis at scale and with a sense of urgency through the power of entrepreneurship. The Accelerator empowers founders with the catalytic tools- network, education, and capital- to build robust, scalable, and ethical companies that take innovations to market faster and with greater impact for people facing mental illness. Applications due 12/15.

Plug In LA Accelerator: Plug In empowers Black and Brown early-stage entrepreneurs through investment, mentoring, commercial expansion, and business development. Their accelerator is an opportunity to secure up to $100K in equity investment.

Total Mom Pitch: The Total Mom Pitch is Canada's LARGEST small business search that encourages mom entrepreneurs to follow their dreams. You will have a shot at national media exposure, expert feedback & advice, funding opportunities and a chance to snag the grand prize valued at $50,000 in funding and business services and support. Applications due 1/19.

Morse supports diverse founders through their Scroobious corporate sponsorship and their legal professionals create exclusive content for our community to help entrepreneurs.

When you're ready to buy or sell a company, it can feel overwhelming to keep track of all the moving pieces. This month Elizabeth Resteghini describes the key advantages and disadvantages of an asset purchase vs. a stock purchase. Some highlights are below, and click here for the full article.

Asset Purchase: preferred by the buyer

The buyer purchases agreed-upon assets and assumes certain agreed-upon liabilities of the company being acquired. Stockholders retain ownership but liquidate  the company after the sale and receive proceeds of the sale as distributions.

Advantages: target liabilities, basis "step up", cash-free.

Disadvantages: Third party consents, re-titling of assets, employee benefit and payroll changes, post-sale liquidation, tax results to the company and its stockholders.

Stock Purchase: preferred by the company

 The buyer purchases the stock of the company from its stockholders. The company continues to operate after the sale but with the buyer in control.

Advantages: Tax results to the company and its stockholders, third party consents, no re-titling of purchased assets.

Disadvantages: Target liabilities, minority stockholders, no basis "step up".

Each newsletter features the perspective of one of our members. I encourage you to reach out to offer networking, investment interest, or expertise.

This month's featured founder is Dr. Abraham Lin, Co-Founder & CEO of Orbits Oncology. Orbits is in the second biopharmaceutical cohort of the Merck Digital Sciences Studio (MDSS), a collaboration between Merck, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Northpond Ventures, McKesson Ventures, Microsoft for Startups, and the New Jersey Innovation Institute, a New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) subsidiary. I'm an Executive in Residence there and can tell you that Abraham is one super impressive guy!

His team is on a mission to bring patients into the heart of drug development and personalized medicine. They're building an AI-powered software platform that bridges laboratory research to patients in the clinic to better predict how patients will respond to cancer therapies ahead of clinical trials.

"As an award-winning scientist and leader in the field of plasma medicine, I was on-track for professorship before the age of 33. While my career appeared successful based on the metrics of academia, I realized that the science and technology I was developing were not reaching the real world to help real people.

My goal has always been to put my energy into work that has a direct societal impact. When the opportunity came to translate the technology of my team out of academia and into the real world, I joined Orbits Oncology as CEO. While this transition is daunting, it is not unfamiliar. I have extensive and successful experiences redefining myself from a nuclear engineer, to biomedical engineer, to cancer researcher along my career quest to help people.

I hope that by commercializing this technology, not only will research break out of the academic bubble and be democratized for the cancer patients who desperately need it, but I will also be equipped to help and mentor other scientists with the same heart, looking to make similar transitions.”

Do you want to be more Scroobious? Let's chat!

• If you're a founder or accelerator considering PiP but have questions, book an intro call.
• If you're a company looking to support diversity in the startup ecosystem, let's chat about collaboration.
• If you're an accredited investor looking to access our deal flow, sign up here.
• If you'd like to sponsor founder accounts and get involved in our community, let's chat!

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