by Mark Garver, June 2nd, 2024
In September 2020, during COVID, I received a message on LinkedIn, not an invite, simply a message from Ewelina Woloszyn wanting to schedule a ZOOM call. Like many of you, I get LinkedIn requests, but this was different… it was simply a request for a meeting.
The call was amazing to me, a person from Poland reaching out wanting to make Healthcare like a Trusted Family Friend again. She had a vision, but wanted to develop a team to help deliver on her dream.
Long story short she asked me to join her as a co-founder of AI Healthcare Capital. At the time I was heavily invested in my start up using AI and creating self-healing farms, but COVID had impacted virtually all of my customers. I had a choice at that point… HEADS or TAILS… I flipped the coin and the coin toss ended up with me joining her on her journey, that’s when I won the coin toss.
Why the reference to the coin toss? Watch the movie secretariat, where Phips thought he won the coin toss and got the horse he wanted. The team I left my company to felt in their heart they won the coin toss and they have been successful, but I won, because the horse I chose knows how to run the long race, to win.
Who is this horse, her name is Ewelina Woloszyn, she just somehow knows how to win, by running the long race! When I joined her, she wasn’t out to raise money as a first-time manager, instead she built an incredible team that has been together since 2020, working together and learning the market and the pain points in that market. As a team, we have been building models on potential investments since October 2020, our virtual investments saw three unicorns succeed as of March of this year and many others having successful exits.
Back to the coin toss, at first I felt like Penny who won the coin toss and believed in her horse, later named Secretariat, and then I realized I had to be her (Ewelina’s) trainer, I knew she could win, she was born that way. So as any trainer would do, I put her out there to see what she could do! She already knew how to run her race, so I was all in. How could she lose, she had built an incredible team around her!
People ask what sets a first-time fund manager apart, it is simply what I see in Ewelina. To quote from AJ Michalak’s song from Secretariat, “It’s Who You Are”. You want to know Ewelina, watch this video and you will see, what I see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjJ0J1bQ76A
This is who I see when I look at her and work with her each and every day, she’s running her race!
I WON THE COIN TOSS!
p.s. I do know something about picking a winning horse, when I had my horse business I bought I’m French Yawl, sired by Frenchman’s Guy, one of the winningest Barrel Racing Horses of all time! I paid a lot of money for a 12-year-old off-spring of this great horse one that no one thought could be a winner, especially at 12. Well, I proved them all wrong, I was the trainer and I found a brilliant rider and minus all of our winnings, I doubled my money on that horse in less than 18 months.
That is how I feel being in this great adventure with what I see in this wonderful person, Ewelina!
