What happens when paying for college becomes a six-figure financial risk, but families have almost no safety net when something goes wrong?

In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with John Fees, serial entrepreneur and Co-founder and CEO of GradGuard, to talk about entrepreneurship, higher education, insurance, and the financial risks families often do not think about until it is too late.

Fees has spent his career at the intersection of education, financial services, and technology. He previously built and sold companies to Viacom and JPMorgan Chase before co-founding Next Generation Insurance Group and launching GradGuard, a company designed to reduce the financial risks associated with college life.

A major focus of the conversation is tuition insurance. Once a university's refund period ends, a student who has to withdraw for a covered reason may otherwise lose tuition, housing, and other academic costs already paid. GradGuard was built to provide protection against certain unexpected events and now works with more than 700 colleges and universities. Its programs have served more than 2 million students across more than 1,900 institutions.

John and John also step back from the product itself to ask bigger questions about how America pays for education. They discuss student debt, whether the current financing system creates the right incentives, the economics of medical education, and why the cost of becoming a physician or other highly trained professional can influence career decisions long after graduation.

The conversation then moves into entrepreneurship and insurance innovation, including why Fees believes technology and AI will pressure traditional insurance intermediaries, where specialized insurance models can still create real value, and why entrepreneurs should focus on solving problems rather than fitting into an existing industry mold.

They close with a fascinating discussion about pattern recognition. Experience can help founders and investors recognize opportunities, but it can also create blind spots. Fees shares how his own assumptions contributed to passing on Facebook early, sparking a broader conversation about challenging what experience tells you and deliberately looking for the counterargument.

About John Fees: John Fees is a serial entrepreneur who builds technology-enabled ventures at the intersection of financial services and education. He previously sold Y2M and Members Connect to Viacom and JPMorgan Chase, respectively, and later co-founded Next Generation Insurance Group. He holds a BS in History from Arizona State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

About GradGuard: GradGuard was created around a simple problem: families can spend tens of thousands of dollars on a semester of college, yet have little protection if an unexpected illness, injury, or other covered event forces a student to withdraw. Since 2009, GradGuard has built insurance programs specifically for the risks of college life, including tuition and renters insurance. Today, the company works with more than 700 colleges and universities and has helped protect more than 2 million students across more than 1,900 institutions.

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 interval fund) and select SPVs, while partnering with founders through capital, strategic guidance, and its broader network.

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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.

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