The History & Insight Behind
AngelPreneur & It's Founder
The AngelPreneur Venture Group (APVG) is a privately-held family office, an asset management and venture development firm, established in 2010 by our Founder, Peter “The AngelPreneur” Ortmann, 65, aka: The Shark (in the logo). The Shark is a serial entrepreneur inspired in part by Walt Disney and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' - "Never Quit" attitude.
The Shark formed APVG to consolidate his many business concepts and streamline them to build a unified but diverse group of socially-focused, impact-driven companies working together in a common "Just Cause". That Cause being to increase awareness of the global single-use ocean plastic waste crisis, while building companies that can convert plastic to power, for use to run atmospheric water making and indoor vertical farms.
To build a group that creates good paying jobs and creating a network of sustainable regional business models that produce alternate energy (Plastic2Power and Integrated Solar Systems), indoor vertical farms (fruit & Veggie), produce fresh atmospheric water (HumidaPURE AirWater Company), and other businesses under its Integrated Impact-Driven Ventures (Integrated Ventures) business model.
The Shark is an offshore sailor who is passionate about addressing the ocean issues. He grew up along the Southern California Coast near Malibu and Ventura, where he was a successful specialty metal fabricator and industrial general contractor for many years. In late 2003, as a result of the tragic events of 9/11/01, his businesses suffered greatly and that led him to close them in 2004, which also resulted in the sale of his California home.
In true entrepreneurial spirit, however, The Shark and Corrin, his wife of 25 years, relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2004 to launch an online membership-based Travel Club, designed to help address the ocean issues and the single-use plastic waste crisis. That effort failed in part due to a lack of interest in plastic waste issues, funding and lack of cost effective online technologies to drive this model forward. In hindsight, that experience proved to be a blessing.
The Shark did not give up, he continued to work with his small team of associates in Canada, the USA, and Caribbean as online technologies and social media platforms improved, refined his concepts into the "Mother-of-all-Start-ups" you see today, his combined APVG/CBO model. A true out-of-the-box, large-scale vision with a disruptive and self-funded business development approach.
It has taken The Shark many years, and well over $2.4 million to get the APVG/CBO model to this point. Along the way he endured many unexpected personal and business set-backs. His take-away from those experiences was learning that we must "Never Let Other People's Perceptions of You or Your Ideas - Become Your Reality," and that "Nothing Worth Having Ever Comes Easy."
Life events outside of The Sharks control have caused him pain, hardships and ongoing delay in launching his projects over the years. Most notedly, on Christmas Day 2012, while in the process of launching his all electric powered Hybrid Sailing Club in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), with Dave, a close friend and Canadian business partner, Dave, suddenly
died next to him while driving back to their hotel (with their wives). A tragic day that he will never forget.
The Shark stayed in the BVI after Dave's death to move their project forward, however, in April 2012, Hunter Marine,
their well-established electric-engine yacht builder filed for bankruptcy, eliminating any hope for launching the club as designed. By late September, The Shark found himself on the Mexican Caribbean, in Playa del Carmen.
While continuing to work his ocean passion in Mexico in 2013, he
discovered a new waste process called pyrolysis and developed his
plastic-to-oil waste management solution. One that called for
building a network of waste collection centers in the Caribbean
to processing and recover the lost oil it was made from (10 pounds
of plastic can reclaim1 gallon of fuel oil).
As an entrepreneur often does, The Shark recognized that with an
estimated 10 million tons of plastic waste entering the world's
oceans annually, never mind what is stored in our landfills, the
opportunity to collect and reclaim billions of barrels of fuel oil, while
reducing the local carbon footprint presented a unique opportunity. I
It also represents a massive silent oil spill dumped directly into the oceans and local landfills, without any consumer or media outrage. In 2014, The Shark went to Vancouver, Canada to refine and ready his Plastic-to-oil business model for launch with his Canadian Partners. Oil was selling in excess of $100 per barrel at the time, and the model was very economically viable and profitable at $65 a barrel.
As fate would have it, Just as that business was ready to launch, oil prices began dropping substantially, which resulted in the business no longer being viable, and his investors becoming unwilling to risk further capital to develop it. Oil would continue to drop in 2015 to under $30 per barrel briefly, which only diluted the business model further, and In February 2015, The Shark had lost another close friend and Vancouver business partner, Roland, who died suddenly from a fall.
By June 2015, The Shark returned home to Las Vegas to once again rethink his plastic-to-oil model, with a goal to make it less dependent on the price of oil. By September 2015, Plastic2Power USA (P2P-USA), a refined business model was born, which called for developing a regional waste collection network within the Caribbean Sea, and using the plastic oil recovered to generate power, while still producing some transportation fuel for its own needs.
As power is relatively cost-effective in Nevada, selling power generated from plastic oil there is not well suited for Las Vegas, but from an environmental point of view, it still makes sense to address this waste issue there. Wasting no time The Shark developed a waste management solution for the greater Las Vegas region, that would convert the estimated 300 tons of daily mixed single-use plastic waste , as well as scrap tires into low sulphur transportation fuel.
By early 2017 The Shark concluded that his model is best was more investor friendly in island locations that import oil to generate power. With that in mind, he elected to build out his Caribbean P2P waste management strategy, to be based in Puerto Rico. Just as he prepared to launch it there, Puerto Rico, and several other Caribbean islands, were hit with two destructive hurricanes (Irma & Maria).
Those events put the project on hold once again. In the summer of 2019, we elected to once again look at Puerto Rico, and focused on the City of Ponce, located on the Southern side of the island. Today, both models are ready to be taken to the next stage, and the new APVG/CBO model has been developed to overcome the required initial investment capital to build-out the first stages of his Plastic2Power model in Las Vegas, provided the federal, state and local political will exists to do so.
In 2018, as part of The Shark's integrated business and foundation entertainment marketing strategy, he also revised
The AngelPreneur: Building The Dream In Real Time - web series (Series) he first developed in 2012, while in Canada. The Series will now features him as he sets out to build and share his past business experiences, present day challenges and the ongoing development of his current APVG/CBO model beginning in 2020 and running through 2025.
The AngelPreneur Series will promote and engage viewers directly in TRTG, and the related APVG business building process, plus CBO Foundation initiatives. Collectively they set out to build a socially responsible means to address the global single-use plastic packaging waste crisis, overfishing and marine life issues head on.
The Shark has spent two years seeking out the best place to establish its global corporate operations. Although we will have operations in Nevada, California, Hawaii and Florida, he choose Sheridan, Wyoming over the others because it offers the best tax structure, most business-friendly environment and unique development opportunities. As a result, we are currently adjusting our Business Plan to relocate our principal office there.
The Shark has always been a passionate, creative big-thinker, originally inspired by Apple co-founder, Steve Job's "never give up" attitude. Like Jobs, he has always been a true out-of-the-box business disrupter in his own way, and certainly someone who always seemed ahead of his time. Popular "Jobs" quotes like those below still motivates him to keep
charging forward!
1.) “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of other’s’ opinions drown out
your own inner voice.”
2.) “When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most
people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can
oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to
get there."
3.) “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is
great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. Sometimes when you innovate, you make
mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations."
4.) “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust
that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma,
whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
5.) “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones
who see things differently; they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them,
but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and
while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that
they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
The Shark does not consider himself an environmentalist, but more a realist. He is not anti-plastic, but believes we can and MUST manage our plastic packaging waste and marine litter better. He will advocate and promote this issue to drive the necessary outrage to effect real change. If we do nothing, one day we will still reach our final destination, only it will be buried in plastic waste that will not have killed off only our oceans and marine life, but ourselves.
Successful change in the global mindset of how we buy, consume and manage this plastic packaging waste is our principal objective and cause. It will require the support of millions of people worldwide to collectively participate both online and offline to accomplish. The combined APVG /CBO model offers the unique opportunity for anyone, anywhere and of any age to become part of a mission bigger than themselves.
By working together to educate each other that our very survival depends on the oceans -our largest natural food and oxygen resource - we can reverse this damaging trend! Let us welcome you aboard!
