Category Archives: News

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

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce that members have invested in teleCALM, which allows family caregivers to control phone usage by family members who face memory or judgment challenges while still allowing those members to continue to use the phone that they are familiar with. This protects loved one from phone solicitors while keeping them connected to friends and family.

teleCALM is led by husband and wife team, Tavis and Jill Schriefer.

8Jun2018

Portfolio company OneSeventeen Media announces platform to help Pre-K through 2 graders

June 8, 2018

With school safety and student mental health a national priority after school shootings, Austin-based, AI EdTech company OneSeventeen Media has launched a mobile-delivered mental health and behavior management tool for elementary schools. The ThinkingApp pilot launched May 2018 at the request of Austin ISD in direct response to a new law by the Texas State Legislature prohibiting behavioral expulsions of PreK – 2 graders.

See the Built-in Austin article.

ThinkingApp employs intelligent, adaptable machine learning to tailor advice to a child’s specific needs, helping them make wiser decisions. The platform assesses emotional and mental states, enabling students to process difficult emotions, understand their behaviors, and navigate those of others, while adults receive real-time, in-depth insight into what is on a child’s mind. Whereas many school safety solutions are reactive, ThinkingApp is based on trauma-informed, restorative and social-emotional learning (SEL) principles to provide real-time “emotional digital triage”™ for upset students before they escalate damaging behaviors, engendering a safer learning environment for all students.

OneSeventeen Media’s solution for PreK – 2 graders is smartly disguised as engaging, interactive eBook stories meant to transform this age group’s misbehaviors. Underpinning the powerful backend-technology are algorithms that deliver evidence-based, restorative exercises for creating safer campuses and inclusive learning environments to improve student mental health, school safety, attendance, and grades while reducing lost teaching time.

Backed by seven years of third-party, evidence-based research, components of the technology resulted in a “statistically significant reduction in students’ emotional distress.” One school reported a 77% decrease in alternative school transfers, preserving more than $100k while averting a potential school shooting. The real-time, actionable insights provided about a troubled student are a nod to the study’s observation that students share five times more information via the apps than they do in face-to-face interactions – data that makes OneSeventeen Media’s work crucial to today’s urgent need for improved school safety.

Cedars International’s Les Simpson noted, “the apps provide a secure way to de-escalate classroom drama, enabling teachers to focus less on discipline and more on teaching.”
For more information and to deploy ThinkingApp and reThinkIt!, visit www.oneseventeenmedia.com.

15May2018

The Southwest Angel Network invests in DayOne Response

May 15, 2018

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to join angel network Golden Seeds in investing in DayOne Response, which was founded and is headed by Tricia Compas-Markman.

Addressing the vital need for clean water in disaster relief situations, DayOne Response has developed one solution called the DayOne Waterbag. This is a 10-litre personal water purification unit that can be transported like a backpack. A closed system, which prevents contamination, it is designed specifically to be distributed after a disaster. It purifies 10 litres of water in 30 minutes, and is reusable so a family of four can have clean drinking water for up to 2 months.

Tricia has a civil engineering background with 6-years’ experience working on water treatment technologies for developing countries, such as Thailand, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Tricia is co-inventor of the DayOne Waterbag and her work has been recognized by President Clinton. She is an Unreasonable Institute fellow, recipient of the Junior Chamber International, Osaka Outstanding Young Person’s Award for social innovation, Creativity Foundation legacy prize winner, a North America Finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, 2013 Engineers Without Borders Outstanding member, a Pipeline Fellow investee, and a 2014 “Mother of Invention”. Tricia received her BS in Civil Engineering and MS in Civil/Environmental Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

28Mar2018

An Investment in start-up Accelerist

March 28, 2018