Category Archives: News

The Southwest Angel Network’s Executive Director, Bob Bridge, was invited to serve on a panel at the Impact Investing Conference held on May 24th at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. The conference was organized by the Texas Impact Alliance, a statewide organization working to scale social and environmental impact in the state of Texas by uniting stakeholders from the private sector, academia, public sector, and finance. Bob discussed how the social-impact of mission-driven start-up companies is measured and reported.

23May2019

An investment in Brobe International

May 23, 2019

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce an investment in Brobe International.

Brobe is a thoughtful, empathetic company that designs high quality, functional, products for humans affected by health challenges. By listening intently, empathizing authentically, and generously supporting patients and caregivers, they continually find opportunities and to develop items that offer comfort & dignity. The company wants to transform the experience of recovery and empower every individual by equipping them with comfort and confidence.

16May2019

Announcing an investment in Yotta Solar

May 16, 2019

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce an investment in Yotta Solar.

Yotta Solar harnesses our Sun’s abundant but intermittent energy simply and efficiently, which has been up to now a major challenge. SolarLEAF™ represents a step change in storage technology with the battery and power electronics mounted behind solar PV modules using existing panel installation cables and procedures, allowing storage to be added to solar in minutes.

The SolarLEAF™ is a battery storage device whose biggest value is reducing the soft costs of designing, installing, and maintaining an energy storage system compared to traditional centralized systems. And the SolarLEAF can passively control its battery temperature to optimize battery performance and operating life.

The SolarLEAF is optimized for commercial rooftop installation.

9Apr2019

Our Network has taken the Diversity Pledge

April 9, 2019

In support of its social-impact mission, the Southwest Angel Network has pledged to increase diversity and inclusion in the tech community by taking actions outlined in the startup diversity and inclusion pledge.

The Startup Diversity and Inclusion Pledge is being launched in Austin, Texas in 2019 with plans to expand nationally.

Diversity and inclusion matter for a wide variety of reasons, including that it is better for business, increases investment returns, lowers volatility, and drives innovation. And while female founders receive less venture capital funding than their male counterparts, there’s data that shows that female founders outperform their male peers.

The core idea of the Startup Diversity and Inclusion Pledge is that startups will pledge to take a few concrete measures in the way they operate their company that should, over time, increase the number of women, people of color and people who identify as LGBTQ within their ranks.

The centerpiece of the pledge is The Walker Rule, which is inspired by the NFL’s Rooney Rule. The Rooney Rule requires every NFL team to interview at least one minority candidate for head coach vacancies. In the years following its implementation in 2003, the number of minorities hired as head-coaches dramatically increased.

The Walker Rule is named after Madam C. J. Walker (1867–1919) who was America’s first female self-made millionaire. She was an African-American entrepreneur, hair care industry pioneer, philanthropist, patron of the arts, political activist and one of the 20th century’s most influential businesswomen. That’s unbelievably impressive given she was born only two years after the civil war ended and built her company during the height of the Jim Crow era.

21Mar2019

Speaking at the Angel Capital Association annual conference

March 21, 2019

Bob Bridge, Executive Director of our network, will be speaking at the annual conference of the ACA that will be held in Chicago at the end of April. Bob will be leading a session entitled, “Measuring Impact … and Impact Results”. The session will explore how to bring the same level of quantitative analysis to measuring social-impact results as is used to measure business results. And how is that level of rigor beneficial to impact investors?

6Mar2019

Supporting the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Superstars Program

March 6, 2019

The Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce works to brighten the future of disadvantaged students through their Superstars Competition, which teaches entrepreneurial skills to students and which culminates in a city-wide competition for students from Austin’s five Title 1 high schools.

Heaven Leigh Contreras being award the Social-impact Scholarship

The Southwest Angel Network is involved in the competition in three ways:

Our angels helped mentor and coach all the student teams at Akins High School in January and February.
At the city-wide competition on March 6th, our network selected Heaven Leigh Contreras from Lanier High School, and her company Trace Ace, as the Social-impact Winner, and awarded Heaven a $2,000 college scholarship.
Heaven will be presenting the Trace Ace business plan to our network of angel investors at our Q2 dinner pitch event in May.

15Feb2019

Announcing funding of Binary Bridge

February 15, 2019

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce that the network has led the initial investment in Binary Bridge. The company, under the leadership of Lori Most, has the mission to improve access to healthcare and increase the quality of care in underserved locations, providing software solutions for mobile clinics in remote, low-resource areas. BackpackEMR targets medical teams working in rural areas, Medical teams are not experts in technology, and hiring an IT person or staff is very expensive. Binary Bridge enables teams to focus more of their time and resources on the people they are serving.

9Oct2018

Two social-impact investments

October 9, 2018

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce two new investments, in Scriptly Rx and ResilientGrid.

Scriptly Rx

The mission of Scriptly Rx is to help people save money at the pharmacy on prescription medications. With or without insurance, people save up to 90% at 65,000 pharmacies nationwide! Too many people have to choose. Every day people choose between affordable prescriptions and food, or medical care, or clothing – the list goes on. This is why Scriptly Rx is happy to distribute their savings program through non-profits around the country, in an effort to help ALL residents from having to make that tough choice. Scriptly Rx’s prescription discount program is 100% free to both the users and the non-profits. Scriptly Rx also donates to Feeding America each and every time someone uses Scriptly Rx to save money on their prescriptions. The company’s name was previously GoodNeighbor Rx

ResilientGrid

Resilient Grid provides a situational awareness & advanced visualization solution for utility grid operators, significantly improving decision making and dramatically reducing decision time by operators in times of grid emergencies or natural disaster. Energy management systems are growing more complex, as networks create a multitude of data streams. The ResilientGrid Map is a single pane of glass for all network data streams, improving operator performance and collaboration through visualization, analysis, and collaboration, and provides an architecture and interface built entirely around operator situation awareness and enhanced operator collaboration within, and across, organizations.

21Jul2018

Announcing an investment in teleCALM

July 21, 2018