What if voice communication could work anywhere a text message can get through?

In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with Julie Gerber, Founder & CEO of ShadowGen, and Chad Gerber, Founder & CTO, to talk about a new approach to voice communication built for the places conventional networks struggle most.

ShadowGen is a national security technology company developing resilient voice communications for degraded, congested, and unreliable networks. Its technology reduces the bandwidth required for voice by more than 99%, opening potential applications across defense, public safety, telecommunications, tactical networks, satellite communications, and other mission-critical environments.

The path to ShadowGen was anything but traditional. Julie began her career in global public health and disaster resilience, working with organizations including the World Health Organization before moving into music management, licensing, publishing, and technology. Chad built a career as a Gibson-endorsed artist and technologist, contributing to 10 gold and platinum records while also developing new tools for creative collaboration.

Their worlds converged through Meloscene, a spatial computing platform built for live creative collaboration. When Julie saw how the underlying technology could address a problem she had encountered years earlier in disaster response, she asked a simple question: “Can we do that with voice?”

That question changed the direction of what they were building.

John, Julie, and Chad explore how ShadowGen could keep people connected when traditional communications fail, why ultra-low-bandwidth voice matters in national security and public safety, and how the technology could eventually support areas like translation, secure communications, and data analytics.

They also get into what it is like to build a deep-tech company as a husband-and-wife team, how two radically different careers ended up converging around the same problem, and the moments that made them realize the technology could have applications far beyond music.

About ShadowGen: ShadowGen delivers voice where conventional communications struggle. Its technology cuts the bandwidth required for voice communication by more than 99%, helping keep people connected when networks are degraded, congested, or unreliable. Built for national security and other mission-critical environments, ShadowGen is advancing resilient voice across defense, public safety, and telecommunications.

About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in innovative private companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries. Xcellerant offers multiple investment vehicles, including the Jetstream Venture Fund ($5,000 minimum) and select SPVs, while partnering with founders through capital, strategic guidance, and its broader network.

About Deal Titan: Deal Titan is an AI-powered platform that helps investors evaluate early-stage companies faster by turning pitch decks into structured diligence reports covering the market, team, financials, competition, and key risks. Use code EntrepreneurRx for a free solo membership, including 10 full analysis reports.

What does it take to build a new American luxury car company from the ground up?

In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with Kristie D'Ambrosio-Correll, Co-Founder and CEO of Dacora, to talk about what it takes to challenge one of the most established industries in the world and create a modern luxury automotive house built around beauty, craftsmanship, technology, and experience.

Kristie's relationship with cars started long before Dacora. She grew up working on cars with her father before studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where she immersed herself in artificial intelligence at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. She later became CTO of MIRROR, helping bring the product to market and leading the company through its $500 million acquisition by lululemon. That experience gave her a firsthand look at what can happen when beautiful design and technology are built to work together.

Today, Kristie and her husband are applying those lessons to Dacora, with the ambition of creating America's next great luxury marque. John and Kristie discuss why American ultra-luxury may be ready for a resurgence, what the automotive industry can learn from Tesla's willingness to question everything, and how Dacora's coachbuilt model allows the company to focus on the elements it believes matter most to the customer while reducing complexity, cost, and time to market.

They also explore Kristie's evolution as a founder and leader, from a career driven by achievement and perfectionism to one shaped more by courage, resilience, and a willingness to take risks. Kristie opens up about the difficult pregnancy and birth of her daughter, how that experience changed her relationship with control and success, and why she now believes growth comes from the experiences you accumulate rather than the titles or security you hold.

About Kristie D'Ambrosio-Correll: Kristie D'Ambrosio-Correll is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dacora. Before founding Dacora, she served as CTO of MIRROR, helping lead the company through its $500 million acquisition by lululemon. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, where she studied AI at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Today, Kristie and her husband combine a lifelong passion for cars with deep experience in technology and consumer products to build Dacora, reimagining the automobile around experience, personalization, and human connection.

About Dacora: Dacora is an American luxury automotive house creating a new vision for modern transportation centered on beauty, craftsmanship, personalization, and human connection. Its coachbuilt vehicles are individually commissioned, combining timeless design and exceptional materials with an AI-native architecture designed to quietly adapt to the people it serves. Since emerging from stealth, Dacora has built a reservation pipeline exceeding its planned first year of production and begun commissioning its first Founder Series vehicles.

About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in innovative private companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries. Xcellerant offers multiple investment vehicles, including the Jetstream Venture Fund ($5,000 minimum) and SPVs, while partnering with founders through capital, strategic guidance, and its broader network.

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What happens when a college student looks at a decades-old surgical tool and asks a simple question: why hasn’t anyone made this safer? 

In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt reconnects with Casey Qadir, Co-founder and CEO of Hubly Surgical, several years after her first appearance to talk about how far the company has come, from an undergraduate idea to FDA-cleared technology being used in hospitals across the country. 

Casey started Hubly while studying neuroscience at Northwestern University after learning that emergency cranial access still relied on hand-crank drills without automatic stopping technology. Working with neurosurgeon Dr. Amit Ayer and CTO Tyler Panian, she co-developed the Hubly Auto-Stop Drill, designed to automatically stop after penetrating bone and help protect the brain beneath it. 

John and Casey revisit one of their earliest meetings, when John put his hand beneath a demonstration skull and drilled through it to see whether Hubly’s technology would stop. It did, helping turn a pitch meeting into an investment. 

Since then, Hubly has moved from early development to commercialization while expanding beyond cranial access. Casey shares how feedback from neurosurgeon customers led the company into spine surgery, resulting in FDA clearance for laminectomy and laminotomy procedures, and why clinician feedback continues to shape what comes next. 

The conversation also gets into the realities of building a medical device company: raising the first million dollars during COVID, finding physician champions, selling into hospitals, challenging the status quo, and staying confident when investors insist that if an idea were really that obvious, someone else would have done it already. Casey also shares what she has learned about balancing conviction with humility. 

About Casey Qadir: Casey Qadir is the Co-founder, CEO, and co-inventor behind Hubly Surgical. She started Hubly while studying neuroscience at Northwestern University and has since led the company from a classroom concept through two FDA clearances, nationwide commercialization, and use in thousands of patients across the United States. Casey holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in computational mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. She was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare list for 2026 and serves as an entrepreneur-in-residence and advisory board member at Northwestern’s Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. 

About Hubly Surgical: Hubly Surgical is a medical device company committed to making surgery safe. Its flagship product, the single-use, cordless Hubly Auto-Stop Drill, combines automatic breakthrough detection, mechanical plunge prevention, and real-time force indication to give clinicians greater control during high-stakes procedures. Initially developed for cranial access in the Neuro ICU, the platform now has FDA-cleared applications in both cranial access and spinal decompression procedures, including laminectomy and laminotomy. Since its commercial launch in 2024, Hubly Drills have been used to save thousands of patient lives nationwide. 

About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in innovative companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries.  Xcellerant partners with founders to provide capital, strategic guidance, and support as they build and scale their companies.  Learn about their newest fund, Jetstream Venture Fund, and its $5,000 minimum.

About Deal Titan: Deal Titan is an AI-powered platform that helps investors evaluate early-stage companies faster by turning pitch decks into structured diligence reports covering the market, team, financials, competition, and key risks. Use code EntrepreneurRx for a free solo membership, including 10 full analysis reports. 

What happens when life-changing therapies cost millions of dollars, but the healthcare system was never built to manage them?

In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with Annie Collins, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Aradigm, to discuss her journey from healthcare consulting and venture capital to building a company tackling one of the most complicated challenges in modern medicine.

Annie shares how her early interest in medicine led her from pre-med studies to Bain & Company and eventually to Andreessen Horowitz, where she invested in early-stage healthcare and life science companies. While at a16z, she became increasingly focused on the disconnect between groundbreaking therapies and the healthcare system’s ability to sustainably pay for and deliver them. Eventually, Annie and her co-founders stopped looking for a company solving the problem and decided to build one themselves.

The conversation explores the complex world of cell and gene therapies, where a single treatment can cost hundreds of thousands to more than $4 million. Annie explains how Aradigm works across payers, providers, manufacturers, and patients to create a more predictable and sustainable model while helping patients navigate an incredibly complicated treatment journey.

John and Annie also discuss what it was like to leave one of the world’s leading venture capital firms to become a founder, why entrepreneurship turned out to be even harder than she expected, and what she has learned moving from evaluating companies to actually building one. They also talk about persistence in venture capital, female founders and leadership, and why having other founders and mentors to lean on matters when the startup journey gets lonely.

About Annie Collins: Annie Collins is a Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Aradigm, where she oversees launches of new programs, the success of existing customers, and operational execution of Aradigm's program. She began her career at Bain & Company as a strategy consultant for large healthcare and life science companies before joining Andreessen Horowitz as an investment partner focused on early-stage healthcare and life science companies. While there, she was introduced to the commercial complexities posed by high-cost drugs like cell and gene therapies and the largely unsolved challenge of managing those therapies on the medical benefit. That experience ultimately led her and Will Shrank to leave a16z and start Aradigm alongside Spencer Carrucciu.

About Aradigm: Aradigm is an incentive-aligned, cost-plus platform managing the financial and clinical complexities of cell and gene therapies (CGTs). Our mission is to create sustainable, affordable access to life-saving medicines through a novel financial and delivery model that brings together every stakeholder — payers, providers, manufacturers, and, most importantly, patients.

About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in innovative companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries. Through multiple funds and investment vehicles, including the Jetstream Venture Fund, Xcellerant partners with visionary founders, provides strategic guidance, and helps connect investors with opportunities in the private markets.

About Deal Titan:  This week's episode is brought to you by Deal Titan. Deal Titan is an AI-powered platform that helps investors evaluate early-stage companies faster by turning pitch decks into structured diligence reports covering the market, team, financials, competition, and key risks. Use code EntrepreneurRx for a free solo membership, including 10 full analysis reports.

What if vascular disease could be detected years earlier, before patients face the most serious consequences?

In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with Josh Hanson, founder and CEO of ImageAiD, a Jetstream Venture Fund portfolio company, to discuss his path from biomedical engineering student to healthcare entrepreneur. Josh shares how growing up in Rochester, Minnesota, surrounded by Mayo Clinic and a culture of healthcare innovation, shaped his desire to build technology that could help save lives.

The conversation explores the problem ImageAiD is working to solve: diagnosing peripheral artery disease, or PAD, earlier and at scale. Josh explains how ImageAiD combines handheld Doppler ultrasound, cloud-based software, and AI to help clinicians capture and analyze blood flow waveforms in minutes, reduce diagnostic variability, and identify vascular disease risk earlier.

John and Josh also discuss Mayo Clinic mentors, ASU’s Biodesign training, building for all healthcare stakeholders, and turning peer-reviewed research into a platform that can reach patients. Beyond the technology, the episode covers entrepreneurship at a young age, imposter syndrome, humility, mentorship, and the courage to simply start.

About Josh Hanson: Josh Hanson is a biomedical engineer, entrepreneur, and founder focused on advancing cardiovascular diagnostics through medical technology and AI. As founder and CEO of ImageAiD, he is leading the development of an AI ultrasound platform designed to improve early detection of peripheral artery disease and broader cardiovascular risk. His work has been shaped by experience at Mayo Clinic’s Gonda Vascular Center, ASU’s biomedical engineering program, and the Mayo Clinic and ASU Alliance for Health Care’s IMPACT Program, where he trained in the Biodesign process.

About ImageAiD: ImageAiD is a medical technology company developing a handheld Doppler ultrasound platform that combines portable hardware, cloud-based software, and AI to make vascular disease easier to detect before it causes life-altering complications. The platform is designed to capture and analyze blood flow waveforms in minutes, helping clinicians identify signs of peripheral artery disease and better understand a patient’s risk of serious cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, strokes, and amputations. Initially focused on PAD, ImageAiD aims to make vascular diagnostics faster, more consistent, and more accessible in settings where traditional vascular testing may not be available.

About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in innovative companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries. Through multiple funds and investment vehicles, including the Jetstream Venture Fund, Xcellerant partners with visionary founders, provides strategic guidance, and helps connect investors with opportunities in the private markets.

About Jetstream Venture Fund: Jetstream Venture Fund is an interval fund managed by Xcellerant Ventures, that seeks to provide investors access to early-stage, high-growth companies with flexible terms, lower minimums ($5,000 minimum), and no carried interest. Jetstream is one of the first funds of its kind, bringing venture-style investing opportunities to a wider professional audience.

Disclosure for Jetstream: Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fund before investing. The prospectus contains this and other information about the Fund and can be obtained by emailing jetstream@sweaterfunds.com or by visiting www.jvf.vc. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing.