Triangle Tweener Talks

00:00:04 - Announcer
Welcome to Tweener Madness, the high stakes startup showdown where eight promising companies go head to head for a $25,000 investment prize from the Triangle Tweener Fund. But before the competition kicks off, let's meet the people making the tough calls. The judges. In this special meet the Judges episode, we're sitting down with the investors and industry leaders who will be asking the hard hitting questions, evaluating the startups and ultimately deciding who moves forward in this bracket sty competition. Each round, three judges will vote on which startups advance leading up to the finals in early April where one company will take home the top prize from the judges. You'll hear about their backgrounds, what they look for in a winning startup, and maybe even get a little inside scoop on their decision making process. So if you're a founder looking for investment, an entrepreneur curious about what investors really want, or just someone who loves a good business battle, you are in the right place. Let's meet the judges. Here's your host, Scott Wingo.

00:01:06 - Scot Wingo
Evan Shear of Oval Park. Thanks for joining us today.

00:01:09 - Evan Shear
Thanks for having me, Scott.

00:01:11 - Scot Wingo
So you are on the very prestigious selection committee for Tweener Madness and what we want to do is introduce folks to you that may not know you or heard about Yalls firm. And so maybe let's just start with the basics. Tell us about Evan, where he's from and how he got into the investing. Bizarre.

00:01:31 - Evan Shear
Sure. So my name is Evan Shear. I'm an investor at Oval Park Capital. We're an early stage venture capital firm focused on breakthrough physical and industrial technology startups. I grew up in the Boston area, moved down to Triangle to go to NC State in 2016. While I was there I did a couple of startup and investing internships. And during my internship the senior year or right before senior year, I got connected to Justin Rydex who founded Oval Par Capital here in the Triangle. That internship was with a private equity firm that was investing in convenience stores and gas stations. And I didn't really see a future for myself staying on there for for quite a while. So I decided to connect with Justin and see what Oval park was about. Turns out that I was quite interested in both the startup side and the investing side and it turned into a bit of a perfect match as Ovalpark itself was just in the early stages. So a bit of a startup venture capital firm. Since then we have raised two funds, invested in 15 or 20 companies and hopefully made a strong impact on the technology and the Triangle.

00:02:48 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Going back to your personal side, what did you study at State? Were you on the business side or do one of the engineering things or.

00:02:55 - Evan Shear
Yep. I started as a computer science major actually and. And switched and graduated as a finance major.

00:03:00 - Scot Wingo
Cool. Nice. Do you ever get back to coding or wasn't your thing?

00:03:04 - Evan Shear
I did a little bit early in college and then switched away from it recently.

00:03:11 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. So Oval Park's interesting because it's so different. Right. And I, I view that as a huge positive. So you mentioned breakthrough physical things. And what's refreshing is you talk to almost any investor and say what's your sweet. And it's B2B software as a service not only for the Triangle but everywhere. And as a founder that had a company that wasn't pure B2B SaaS, it's very hard to raise capital because. And it sounds like it seems kind of counterintuitive for everyone to invest in the same thing. So what does that mean? Give us some examples of. When you say and what was the. It was breakthrough physical. Physical.

00:03:50 - Evan Shear
Physical and industrial technology.

00:03:52 - Scot Wingo
Industrial technology. Yeah. Yeah. What's that mean?

00:03:55 - Evan Shear
Yeah. So it's somewhat akin to deep tech but now deep tech is getting a little cliche and a little more popular. So we try to make sure and make it clear what we're investing in. And for us that means novel scientific or engineering or new approaches to those types of problems that can be solved using new innovations in the physical and industrial world. Some examples of that could be clean energy, water, advanced materials, construction and prop tech. Really any solution to a large classly global issue. We really like to get out on the weirder side of the spectrum. So I think a portfolio company that both Oval park and Tweener share is a company called Finite which is turning hog waste into organic fertilizer and putting large dryers and taking this fertilizer and drying it and turning it into the end product. And not something that you might think is traditionally venture backable or has the type of returns that could be a venture investment. But hopefully both of our firms saw that. Indeed it was. And through really strong unit economics and end market demand that, you know, these things that might not traditionally be super attractive to the venture investors you know, around the globe might. Might be if you give it a second or third look.

00:05:25 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. When. When people outside the area kind of say what's interesting about the Triangle. I think it's this wide range of startups we have and we do tend to draw in a lot of these kind of physical companies because you know, the Triangle is an area where you have land. Another example, they're not in your portfolio. But planted is another one where, you know, they needed smart engineers, they needed a bunch of land and farms and you know, sure enough we, we have all those things and you know, the cost of if you're going to have a physical thing, you know, you want to be some, you know, you don't do finite in New York City. Right? Obviously there's no, no pig waste in New York City, but. Yeah, but anything with a physical element or like a manufacturing component is hard to do in a big metro. So in an interesting way, we're uniquely situated for that. So you mentioned you guys are on your second fund. Walk through a little history of the firm and maybe the size of each fund and the size of the check and the sweet spot and that kind of thing. We know the category now, but as it relates to typical kind of VC stuff.

00:06:27 - Evan Shear
Sure. So the firm started as a fundless sponsor, which means that we raised SPV or specially purpose vehicles for the first few deals that we did. Just going around to network and sort of herding cats to get into each investment. After we had four or five investments under our belt and felt like we were solidifying our strategy and sweet spot, we raised our first fund, which is our sort of flagship venture fund, typically making seed stage investments, writing one to one and a half million dollar checks and leading a seed round, although we're happy to follow along or syndicate. That sort of flagship seed stage fund was a $20 million fund that's now been fully deployed into 15 portfolio companies and won't be making any more new investments. Then we raised a second fund that we just closed at the end of this past year, 2024, that was a $10 million opportunity fund, which is sort of like a fund 1.5 from our perspective, making follow on investments and a few new investments until we raise a sort of venture fund too, which we're still thinking about and planning for internally. But that Venture Fund 2 will follow much of the same strategy as Venture Fund one.

00:07:41 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. And folks, want to learn more. You guys are@ovalpark.com actually have never asked this. Where does Oval park come from? I just assumed it was like something tied to Justin's office or something.

00:07:52 - Evan Shear
But Oval Park. Yeah, good question. I had the same question early on in my career as well. Oval park is a park in Durham where Justin, near where Justin grew up, that he would, you know, play around soccer and, you know, other things that kids do. I think it's now called Oval Drive park. But I think he came to that conclusion after naming the Firm. So a bit too late for that.

00:08:19 - Scot Wingo
So an homage to the triangle. Nice. Yep. So what? And I know it's the funds relatively early, but looking at your portfolio, I already see a couple. You got at least one exit on there. What's been the most successful and investment so far?

00:08:33 - Evan Shear
Yeah, I think there's. Maybe I'll put it into two different buckets. One is called exited and realized, and the other might be still outstanding. So I think for the biggest successful exit might be Carpe, which was founded by Casper and David out of Duke. It was for hypohidrosis. So if you or anyone, you know, has very sweaty hands, they might say, well, if I'm going out in public, I don't want to have, you know, sweat all over myself. And so Carpe started initially to solve that problem and grew to a very successful consumer products company that was acquired by Topspin this past year in 2024. In terms of still outstanding, I think Targan, which just opened their new facility in North Raleigh. It's a precision animal health company that started out as an idea to vaccinate baby chicks by shooting a targeted spray into their eye. But their first product that's being commercialized is actually sexing baby chicks. So saying is this chick a male or a female? Which helps the end producers know how much to feed them and save some feed costs.

00:09:44 - Scot Wingo
Very cool. How about some venture capitalists have an anti portfolio, so companies they said no to that went on to be very successful. And again, I know you guys are relatively early, but any names there come to mind?

00:09:57 - Evan Shear
Yeah, you actually named the one earlier in the show, which would be planted. We spent a good amount of time with them prior to raising their seed round, but decided not not to join. And it's turning out to potentially not be a very good choice.

00:10:11 - Scot Wingo
Yeah, the jury's still out. We'll see. Yeah, the. Okay, and then you've seen tons of pitches. What's your advice for folks on, you know, either what to do or what not to do when they pitch?

00:10:24 - Evan Shear
Yeah, I think in terms of when you are pitching, the things you do want to do is be very clear about why you both, myself, Scott and the rest of the judges see hundreds, if not thousands of pitches each year. And so you want to be abundantly clear and sort of like you're pitching to a jury, not leave a shadow of a doubt on why we should invest in you. Be very clear on the use of proceedings, why that you're raising the amount that you are. What makes you and your company different. From the rest of, you know, the companies in your field. And then on the other side, what we don't like to see is a lot of acronyms. Right. If you're using 15 different three letter acronyms that we don't understand, it's going to take us even longer to get up to speed on what's probably a not a very, you know, known industry or technology to us. A lot recently has been AI related or AI relevant. Buzzwords like AI for X tend to be a turn off for ourselves and a lot of other investors. And then maybe the last don't is unrealistic projections. If you show growing from a pre product company today to one and a half billion dollars of revenue in two years, that's more than likely not going to come true and be a bit of a yellow flag for us, you know, where we've likely seen a hundred reasons why that isn't going to come true.

00:11:55 - Scot Wingo
Yeah. Cool. Well, we really appreciate you taking time to do this and we'll see you live in the studio when we get down to doing the actual selecting. So appreciate you doing this and thanks for taking time to tell folks what it is you guys are up to.

00:12:10 - Evan Shear
Awesome. Thanks Scott. Thanks for having me.

00:12:16 - Announcer
That's a wrap on this Meet the Judges episode. Now you know the minds behind the decisions, the investors and industry leaders who will be putting these startups to the test as Tweener Madness kicks off. They'll be asking the tough questions, making the tough calls, and deciding who advances in the bracket, all leading up to the finals in early April. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a single matchup. And if you want to follow along with all things Tweener Madness and the triangle startup scene, head on over to tweenertimes.com also, if you're thinking about launching your own podcast or want to bring professional production to your brand, check out earfluence.com the competition is about to begin and we'll see you soon in the next episode.