Dustin Herte: CEO of Blue Line Battery, Whitewater, Wisconsin. Blue Line Battery designs and manufactures industrial lithium-ion batteries for powering industry. Our vision is to make efficient lithium-ion battery technology accessible to all of the motive power industry, through intuitive engineering and better financing. There are currently 63 industrial customers operating 263 industrial batteries designed and produced by Blue Line. They are developing a “power-by-the-hour” model. More than $1 million in annual revenue.

Fiveable backed by top-tier seed investors to reimagine social learning for high school students. Today, we announced our latest round of funding of $2.3 million led by BBG Ventures with participation from new investors including Metrodora Ventures (Chelsea Clinton’s fund), Matchstick Ventures, Spero Ventures, and prominent edtech angel Deborah Quazzo. The round also included follow-on investments from Cream City Ventures, 27V, Golden Angels, and SoGal. This is a big moment for Fiveable and we’re so excited to work with investors who share our student-first vision for social learning.

Part of what makes Weber so much fun to interview is his boundless enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. This week he described an emerging Wisconsin company called Fiveable that created a clever way for high school kids to be tutored and study together online for advanced-placement classes. Another company he mentioned quickly made a sharp turn into a new market that only really emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic this spring.