Category Archives: News

The Southwest Angel Network is please to participate in follow-on funding for Family Plan. SWAN made a seed investment in September of 2018. Since that time Family Plan has made significant  progress and has now closed a multi-million dollar round.

Family plan works to reduce the stress on a family following a divorce.  Using Family Plan, parents can manage custody scheduling on a shared calendar in real time, arrange and make payments instantaneously and with authentication, and make and log texts and emails to support open communication and maintain a reliable record. No other mobile app provides this suite of functions. This app has been developed with input from a team of divorced parents, divorce lawyers, and ex-judges to address both an important social need and a large market opportunity.

Family Plan was founded and is led by Mark and Laura MacMahon, from Maine, who founded the company for the same reason many companies are founded – they had a problem they wanted to solve, and the available solutions just weren’t good enough. In the years after Mark’s divorce, he found that he was spending hours a week just trying to stay on top of managing his schedule, finances, and communications all related to the kids. Mark and Laura decided to build a set of tools that would help families thrive after a breakup – reducing conflict along the way.

The Southwest Angel Network continues to find attractive investment opportunities in the current COVID-19 and recession environment. We are making significant new investments in pre-seed and seed companies, and are also supporting portfolio companies.

The total dollars invested in the first four months of 2020 is larger than the total we invested in 2018, and is over 50% of the total amount invested in the twelve months of 2019.

SWAN made a first investment in CURB in 2019, and is pleased to announce a significant follow-on investment that will assist the company in its rapid revenue growth.

CURB provides an interactive energy efficiency solution that enables homeowners to reduce electricity consumption by up to 20%.  CURB uncovers home energy trends, pinpoints power hogs, and gives users control over their electric bill.

The heavy-duty engine industry is approaching a time when the rising cost of petroleum-based diesel fuel—and continued government regulation of CO₂ and diesel criteria pollutants (NO_x and particulates)—are leading to the decline of diesel-fueled engines. Heavy-duty engine manufacturers are aggressively seeking viable alternative technologies. ClearFlame Engine Technologies is introducing a disruptive, patented engine technology that easily integrates into existing compression ignition engine manufacturing which delivers uncompromising engine performance at a lower cost.

ClearFlame Engine Technology has the potential to reduce well over five gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Our network’s investment was part of the company’s $3M funding round.

Please see this helpful article. The article points out that “three of our [Lauchpad’s] highest return investments were made during the depths of the 2008-2009 recession. More modest valuations, less competition for talent, and strong positioning for economic recovery were a rare combination to drive outsized portfolio returns”.

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased and excited to announce an investment in SpeechVive. SpeechVive offers a proven device that allows the majority of Parkinson’s patients to the recover the ability to carry on a conversation. This patented technology was created by co-founded Dr. Jessica Huber. The company has revenue and is poised for rapid growth.

Acadeum was founded by 2016 and the Southwest Angel Network was one of the early investors in 2017. Acadeum, previously known as College Consortium, offers a software platform that allows universities  to share online courses. Students today can face challenges with earning a degree on a timely basis because the students are burdened by a lack of access to needed classes at the needed time. Making classes more available can increase graduation rates and decrease the time to graduation.

Our network is pleased to announce a follow-on investment in OneSeventeen Media. The company improves the social-emotional well-being of youth, and reaches those youth through partnerships with employee benefit programs and with schools.

Don’t Get Mad Get Paid addresses the problem that 78% of divorced mothers don’t receive the child support that legally belongs to them – money that could be instrumental in improving the lives of their children. Long time child support expert, activist and author Simone Spence has been successful in helping moms collect their arrears for more than two decades. Her expertise is now Don’t Get Mad Get Paid.

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce that it has participated in the funding both Harmonic Bionics and in Skyven.

The mission of Harmonic Bionics is to innovate the rehabilitation process with robotic technology. The company was founded in 2016 as a spin-off of ReNeu Robotics Lab at The Univ. of Texas at Austin, and is actively developing a robotic platform for introduction into the clinical market. The company aims to revolutionize the fields of therapy for stroke and spinal cord injury. Their exoskeletons are already being tested in pilot clinical trials and are well known in the rehabilitation robotics research community.

Skyven recognizes that industrial process heat is the last bastion of fossil fuels. It accounts for 20% of all emissions worldwide. And it’s expensive. Skyven is taking over this carbon stronghold, by turning industrial plants into their own heat sources. The journey to low-cost carbon-free process heat starts with Thermal Energy Efficiency. Thermal RE-injection™ captures high-value low-temperature heat rejected from process equipment such as boilers and dryers and re-injects it back into the facility. Each BTU of heat recovered is one less BTU of new fuel burned. And Intelligent Mirror Array (IMA™) technology capture heat from the sun, raises its effective temperature (up to 400F), and injects it into the plant to further displace fossil fuels.

With these two investments, the Southwest Angel Network has now invested $4M in 20 companies since the network’s founding in 2016.