If you listen to this show and you’ve made it all the way to the end, you’ve heard Peter Ricchiuti say, “Our Acadiana business consultants are Pete Prados from Innov8 Acadiana, Zack Barker from the Opportunity Machine, and Dr Blake Escudier.”

Pete, Zach and Blake all do great work helping people launch new businesses. But it doesn’t matter how great of an idea you have a for a business or how helpful your consultants are, if you don’t have one essential ingredient. And that is investment capital. Or as it’s called in some circles, money.

Running up debt on your credit cards and your friends and family chipping in can only get you so far. The next step is to find somebody who has access to real capital and believes in you, even though in the early stages of starting a business you might have very little to show for your idea other than a business plan.

At this stage you can turn to what’s called an Angel Investor. An Angel is someone who is prepared to invest in your business and in you, and risk real capital on your crazy idea.

Here in Acadiana, Angel investment has been hard to come by. Until now.

The founder of Innov8 Acadiana and our business consultant Pete Prados is the director of the recently founded Acadiana Angels. 

If you’re looking for an example of a crazy idea that’s just crazy enough to work, how about this one? It’s called Yellow Jacket. It’s a case for your cell phone. So far you’re probably thinking “A cell phone case? Big deal.” Well, wait till you hear the next sentence. The Yellow Jacket cell phone case is also a 7 million volt stun gun. Yes, The Yellow Jacket cell phone case is a 7 million volt stun gun!

The CEO of this crazy product is Chris Zavala. 

Imagination, creativity, and intelligence are not the sole properties of Silicon Valley. We’ve got our share of impressive thinkers here in Acadiana. And now we have our share of people with money to back them.

Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Gwen Aucoin.