Dental lasers, pay-for-quality AI, and why customer rejection is better than an "A"

Happy Thursday.

In today’s issue:

• Angel Deals of the Week

• Bookmarks I think you’ll enjoy

• The best nugget from my conversation with Dr. Thomas Duening, founder of the International Collegiate Angels Network (ICAN)

• Exclusive opportunity for angel network leaders

🔥 Angel Deals of the Week

🤝 Recent funding rounds from angel networks. I have not personally vetted these deals and am sharing for informational purposes only. Have one to announce? Reply to this email.

🤖 Deal summaries generated using dealmemo.ai.

🧾 Check out every deal we’ve tracked here.

PS Fertility Inc. | Male fertility diagnostic test

Participating Group: CAV Angels

PS Fertility is developing PS Detect, a mail-order diagnostic test that measures a critical fertility biomarker in sperm cells to assess male fertility beyond standard semen analysis. The company addresses a market gap they see where 20-30% of men with normal test results are actually infertile. PS Fertility recently secured $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Flourish Investments LLC and Cassiopeia Foundation, with participation from CAV Angels. Funds will support scaling PS Detect and developing additional male fertility diagnostics.

Kevin Combs | $3.5M Series A | Charlottesville, VA | June 2025 | Source

Invicta Water | PFAS water treatment tech

Participating Group: Wolfpack Investor Network (WIN)

Invicta Water is developing a continuous flow system that removes and destroys PFAS contamination from drinking water, wastewater, and industrial runoff in a single process. The Burlington, North Carolina company demonstrated 99.91% PFAS reduction in Wake County trials and operates industrial installations processing up to 1.5 million gallons daily. The company recently secured $426K from WIN and Harbright Ventures to scale their technology, targeting a market where 45% of U.S. drinking water systems face PFAS contamination and 97% of Americans have PFAS in their blood.

Steve Wilcenski | Burlington, NC | July 2025 | Source

Enamel Pure | Preventive dentistry laser tech

Participating Group: Baylor Angel Network

Enamel Pure has developed an FDA-approved hygiene system that uses CO2 laser technology to make dental enamel more resistant to acid, preventing cavities and erosion. The company offers multiple products including PURE Clean for touch-free cleaning, with PURE White whitening treatments launching in 2025 and PURE Strength expecting FDA clearance in 2025. The company recently secured an investment from Baylor Angel Network to advance their preventive dentistry platform.

Nathan Monty | Worcester, Massachusetts | July 2025 | Source

🔖 Bookmarks

1. 💳 Emerging Theme On My Mind: Pay-for-Quality AI Content. Three stories on this theme stood out to me this week - OpenAI is integrating payments, Cloudflare is introducing “pay-per-crawl”, and Stratechery broke down what the future of the AI content market could look like.

   1. My Takeaway: We're entering a new phase where buyers pay for premium AI responses, so asymmetrically valuable content rises to stanch the flow of slop. Interesting business models could emerge around this, for example charging a $20/mo base subscription with additional fees per search for access to paywalled source data.

2. 🚀 Fast fast fast: A16z drops data showing $0 to $1M ARR in 1 year is now considered slow for AI startups.

3. 🔋 Where the Heck Did BYD Come From? Thoughtful piece from Aaron Foyer at Orennia on how BYD just overtook Tesla in global EV sales after starting with a $300K loan 30 years ago.

🥇 The Nugget: My Top Takeaway from This Week’s Conversation with Tom Duening

Great entrepreneurship programs force students to face rejection 💬

The biggest differentiator between effective university entrepreneurship programs and academic “theater” is what Tom calls "maturity" - the willingness to help students face reality and discover whether their ideas will work or not.

Most have spent 16+ years in a system designed around systematic quarterly grades, not testing their ideas in the wild with real customers. Mature campus programs actively force students out of this comfortable grade-seeking mentality by normalizing the experience of rejection and customer discovery.

Takeaway: Look for founders who lead with customer conversations, specific rejections they've received, and how customer feedback changed their product.

Diligence: "Can you tell me about the last customer who said ‘no’ and why?"

Want more? Check out my full conversation with Tom 👇

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and more.

📢 Angel Group Leaders: Need More Qualified Member Leads?

Every week, hundreds of angel investors read this newsletter. Many are interested in joining an angel group but don't know where to start. So, I’m helping them out.

What group leaders get: Pre-qualified leads for prospective membership.

Pilot program: First 5 leads completely free.

No commitments yet, I’m just soft circling interest. I expect to launch the program next week (Monday 8/4), hit the link to be included.

P.S. This only applies to subscribers who opt in. Everyone else - your info stays with me.

Until Next Week 👋

Thanks for reading - have a great week.

-Andrew

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