News & Insights

Michael Biron, the founder of Altis Biosystems, graduated from Penn State with an undergraduate degree in marketing. Upon graduation, he worked in construction management and real-estate development for five years before switching to sales.  After working in insurance sales for a couple of years, Michael decided to join the U.S. Army, where he served as an Officer for four years. Afterwards, he earned a MBA from the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler.While attending UNC, Michael met a group of scientists who would later partner with him to create Altis Biosystems. Altis is a biotechnology startup that uses a stem cell platform to recreate the human intestinal epithelium, which is essentially the inner lining of the intestines that directly interacts with foods and medicines that human ingest. Altis’ platform can be used by pharmaceutical and other biotech companies to test their drugs before human consumption. Current pharmaceutical labs use animal models and cancer cell lines for testing; Altis sets itself apart by using live human cells to test drugs. The benefit of using human cells is that it serves as a better indicator for a human reaction and has the potential to decrease the need for animal testing. Ninety percent of drugs that go into clinical trials fail to meet FDA approval; Altis’ physiological model hopes to reduce clinical trial failure rates. Michael was introduced to VentureSouth through a mutual friend about three years ago, but was reintroduced in 2019 to VentureSouth’s managing director, Paul Clark. After telling Paul Altis’ story, Michael pitched his idea to VentureSouth’s investors. VentureSouth then became a lead investor and lead the round. When asked what advice he would give burgeoning entrepreneurs, Michael said, "If you want to start a company, give that one company 100% of your focus; don’t try to juggle more than one start-up at a time.  Expect to devote a large number of hours a week to your company. It will consume your life for a while. If that sounds good to you, then go for it! If it doesn’t sound good, then maybe starting a business isn’t the right fit for you."Michael left Altis in good hands in November 2022, and now works with startups and scientific companies in North Carolina and beyond. 

Dan was raised in a military family and has lived all over the country. He attended 12 different school in his youth and visited all 50 states. As an adult, Dan has lived in 11 cities and several countries. However, he considers the Carolinas his home, splitting his time between Charlotte, Greenville, and Triad, North Carolina. For most of his career, Dan worked in big business. In 2008, he left corporate America and started his own investment group. Dan’s group focused on investing in good companies that had been poorly managed. During this time, he made several investments in turnaround opportunities. Once the economy recovered from the 2008 recession, turnaround opportunities dried up, and Dan had to find other investment ventures. He decided to start his own company; simultaneously, Dan became a member of the Upstate Carolina Angel Network, the first group at VentureSouth.Not only has Dan invested through VentureSouth, he has also raised capital through VentureSouth. Since then, Dan has created three startups and invested in over 30 companies. Dan’s advice to future investors is that if you have any interest at all in investing, do it! However, take it slow and do your homework. Participate in the due diligence, learn about the company and their aspirations, and recognize the risk vs. reward. Dan’s favorite hobbies are traveling and running. He hopes to combine these activities and one day participate in marathons on each of the world’s continents!

Samantha Boensch Efird was born and raised in Charleston, SC. She attended Clemson University, where she studied Psychology and minored in Genetics. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Sam moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to work for Insight Global as a recruiter. After working there for almost two years, Sam decided she wanted to return to her home state. She heard about VentureSouth through a friend, who encouraged her to apply for the job. In January of 2021, Sam was hired as the Director of Operations. Sam’s favorite part of the job is two-fold: she likes to learn about the different types of startups that partner with VentureSouth, and she likes to observe how our investors provide guidance and advice to these young companies. “Watching how VentureSouth impacts these companies by providing guidance to help them grow and be more successful is very inspiring.” Recently, Sam watched one of VentureSouth portfolio companies successfully exit, and she is excited to watch more portfolio companies exit and grow in their success.Sam grew up by the coast in Charleston (and, for a brief time, Costa Rica), so she loves to be in the water, whether its surfing or swimming. Since she moved to the more mountainous upstate, Sam likes doing outdoor activities such as playing sports, gardening, and camping.

Matt Dunbar was born and raised in Rock Hill, SC. He attended Clemson University where he studied Chemical Engineering. After receiving his undergraduate degree, Matt moved to eastern Tennessee to work for Eastman Chemical Company. A few years later, Matt decided he wanted a change of scenery and a change of careers, so he rolled the dice and got accepted to study business at Stanford University. There, he was exposed to many new ideas, concepts, and opportunities in the world of business. Matt was particularly interested in the theories and practices of consulting. He was impressed by his classmates who had consulting backgrounds who could synthesize solutions to complex problems and articulate them in a compelling way.After graduating from Stanford, Matt joined Boston Consulting Group in their Atlanta office. After three years with BCG, Matt and his wife decided to return South Carolina to start their family. While looking for career opportunities in Greenville, Matt met two investors who wanted to launch an angel investor network in Greenville, and together they launched the Upstate Carolina Angel Network (UCAN) in April of 2008. As the founding, managing director of UCAN, Matt developed the operations that became VentureSouth, which has now been named a three-time Top 10 Angel Group in North America.In his free time, Matt and his family love to travel and spend time outdoors. Matt also loves fly fishing and scuba diving.

Chuck Tutterow is a former chief financial officer of several public and private companies. A couple of those companies had large legacy pension plans, so he gained portfolio investing experience through those, including evaluating “alternative” investments. Chuck believes that once a person decides to start investing, the toughest challenge is finding the right community and deal flow. When he was searching for a venture group, he came across VentureSouth. What Chuck found most attractive about VentureSouth was the company’s orderly process to evaluate a variety of high-quality deals. Even though there is a set process, Chuck still feels that there is a lot of freedom for its members to make their own decisions based on their own criteria. Another quality that Chuck values in a venture community is the variety of members. “Having a wide variety of experiences throughout membership base is a tremendous asset that allows us to evaluate many things that you might not understand on your own, and exposes you to a tremendous group of individuals.”

Alex Biermann is VentureSouth’s Director of Portfolio Management. Alex was born in Fayetteville, NC which is where he currently resides. After graduating with his MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia, he moved back to his hometown. His parents already knew the VentureSouth Fayetteville market director, and so Alex got connected to VentureSouth. Alex helped launch the Fayetteville group, and was encouraged to apply for a position with VentureSouth; soon after Alex started in his current role.Alex's favorite part of his job is an inside look at so many interesting companies. “We have a large, diverse portfolio, and it’s enjoyable (and a great educational experience) to hear updates from and interact with our portfolio CEOs, see the questions posed to them by our members and staff, and read investor reports and company financials.”In his spare time, Alex enjoys traveling (he has been to 27 U.S. states and 18 countries),  as well as playing pickup sports, and being involved in his local church.

David Grisell started his career as a physician, specializing in Oncology. He graduated from The University of Texas - Medical Branch with his undergraduate degree, and then continued his education at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth to complete his DO. After working as a physician for 30+ years, he decided he did not want to work for other people anymore. David went back to school and graduated from Clemson University with his MBA. He then went to start an online medical service business with his son. With the success of uMedMarket, David hopes to expand into the cosmetic industry, providing transparency on price, provider, credentials, and availability. Learn more about uMedMarket here.David has been an investor all his life. He became interested in angel investing when his son moved to California to work for Instacart. By talking with his son about new startups happening on the West Coast, David decided to look for an angel group in the Southeast. Through VentureSouth’s Charleston branch, he was able to connect with Matt Dunbar and join VentureSouth UCAN. As of writing, David has been with VentureSouth for 6 years and has served on 22 due diligence teams. When asked what advice he would give to starting investors, David says, “Education is key.” Through VentureSouth and their educational subsidiary, members can learn about many different areas of angel investing. If someone wants to start investing on their own, they should visit the American Capital Association website to learn the terms, ins and outs, and other basic building blocks of investing. “You can lose your shirt in investing if you don't follow some few basic principles, like going through due diligence and diversification.”David now cohosts the Venture In The South podcast (with Paul), dropping episodes about angel investing in the southeastern United States every Monday!

Paul Clark grew up in Skegness in Lincolnshire, England - possibly the greatest seaside resort in the world. (Editor's note: It is not.)Paul somehow used his Masters Degree in Medieval History to land an investment banking position at NM Rothschild and then an private equity investing position at BC Partners in London and New York. Both of those institutions still exist despite Paul's contributions.In 2010, he relocated to South Carolina for his wife’s job. After he moved to Greenville, he began a career in banking. In 2013, the bank Paul was working for planned to become a sponsor for VentureSouth UCAN. Before the plan could be executed, the bank went out of business. (Not just because of the pennies on the ceiling.)Undeterred, Paul still wanted to work with Matt Dunbar and Charlie Banks, so they joined forces to co-found VentureSouth.Paul finds it hard to pick one favorite part of his job. He likes it when the portfolio companies get acquired because that generates positive returns for VentureSouth investors. For the entrepreneurs, they get to see the culmination of hard work generating great results for everybody. Along the way, Paul enjoys seeing management teams develop and mature, grapple with problems, solve them, move on to the next one, and grow their companies. Paul finds it very fulfilling to be able to help in that process. In his free time, Paul likes to go camping with his family. (Editor's note: This is not true.) They also spend a lot of time traveling to England to see family and friends.

Jamie Christensen is the President and co-founder of Outdoor Access. Jamie was born in Durham, North Carolina and now resides in Richmond, Virginia.When Jamie was young, he would often visit his grandfather’s cattle ranch in California. While spending summers with his grandfather, Jamie learned about the importance of land use and its ability to make money. Unfortunately, when Jamie was fourteen, his grandfather had to sell the ranch because the bottom fell out of the cattle market and he couldn’t afford his ranch on cattle alone. When Jamie was eighteen, he studied Geographic Information Systems. GIS, in layman terms, is adding data to maps; Jamie was very interested in the application of GIS to aid in understanding conservation and sustainability issues. In his mid-twenties, Jamie started a GIS software company called World View Solutions. Jamie ran the company for over twenty years, until he decided to sell it in 2018. In 2016, Jamie co-founded Outdoor Access. Outdoor Access helps outdoor enthusiasts find private land where they can pursue their outdoor passions, while helping the landowners more effectively monetize their land without creating any additional insurance exposure or administrative strain. While World View Solutions helped large landowners, Outdoor Access focuses on helping small landowners diversify their income. Jamie believes that if his grandfather had more options to monetize his land, the ranch might still be in his family. Jamie found VentureSouth through its investors. They encouraged him to partner with VentureSouth, and in 2019 VentureSouth started investing in Jamie’s company. “Outdoor Access is very much about working with investors who bring more than capital to the table, and VentureSouth does that.”Jamie’s advice for new entrepreneurs is this: Anything worth doing is hard. “Founders often look for short cuts and easy ways to get things done, but if it was easy to do, someone else would have done it already. Even though there are a lot of temptations to take the short cuts, don’t. Do the hard thing. The best business strategy is identifying what the hard thing is,  and figure out what your superpower is to make that hard thing happen.”

Dr. Juliana Iarossi is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Juliana teaches corporate strategy, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance. She also teaches in the MS in Technology Innovation program in the College of Engineering and Computing.In addition to teaching, Juliana also advises early-stage startups and is on the board at several organizations. Most of her activities are focused on helping organizations identify paths to becoming viable and durable. Before Juliana made the leap to teaching in 2013, she spent over 20 years in financial services with most of the major commercial and investment banks in a variety of roles and before that she worked as an engineer. She has also had the benefit of living all over the US and overseas. In 2012, Juliana started to invest in early-stage startups. With deep experience in due diligence, assessing risk, and analyzing investments and acquisitions, she felt comfortable making investments on her own. However, she decided that being part of an angel group provided access to broader investment opportunities, as well as the chance to learn from other angels who had different perspectives and industry experience. She joined Atlanta Technology Angels, as well as two other angel investment groups prior to joining VentureSouth. Juliana joined VentureSouth in 2017 because “VentureSouth has such a commitment to not only the Southeast, but also to the portfolio companies. VentureSouth helps the portfolio companies grow and thrive. I like the way VentureSouth constantly finds ways to develop what they are doing, and to bring more people together to embark on this mission to help build companies.” Juliana also notes how impressed she is with member engagement in the investment process. Juliana’s advice for new angel investors is focus on the why, what, and how. She advises new investors to be clear why they want to invest in early stage companies. For example, is it for economic development, investment return, to help build a certain technology or industry, or to keep their brain active. She also encourages new angels to identify what it is they want to invest in to narrow down investment choices since there is no shortage of deals in the pipeline and it can get overwhelming. For example, does an angel wish to stay in their area of expertise, is there an industry or technology of particular interest and what types of companies or deal structure do they want to avoid. Finally, she suggests that new investors think about how they want to deploy their funds in early stage deals. Does a new investor have a limit for this asset class or per deal and do they want to invest all at once or in stages. Once an investor has considered these issues, they will be better situated for what can be a profitable and fun journey!