Bob Bridge, the angel network’s Executive Director, has been recognized nationally as a leader in social impact investing. Bob recently served on a Social Impact panel at the recent national ACA Leadership Conference in Houston. Bob has also been invited to moderate a panel discussion on “The Growth of Impact Investing” program at the ACA’s April national Summit in Boston.
With a follow-on investment in OneSeventeen Media and an initial investment in College Consortium, the Southwest Angel Network has now made over $1M in cumulative investments since its founding at the beginning of 2016.
College Consortium, led by a highly experienced team, provides tools that allow colleges to offer students more course offerings, allowing students to graduate in a shorter time, at lower cost and with less student debt. College Consortium can be especially impactful for students whose life-changes may have discouraged them from finishing their degrees.
Key elements of the pledge that are most relevant to our angel network are:
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A wonderful story about Beth and Amy, and their work to better the lives of children and youth.
“Beth and Amy had different early childhood experiences. As co-founders, this provides them a unique yin–yang approach to product development. They’re both motivated to build world class mobile apps that help today’s kids have safe access to information at their fingertips for help anytime, anywhere.”
Juan has joined as a Director and will be assisting the Bob in managing the network.
Juan has extensive experience as a Mentor, Startup Investor and Sales Consultant, and is focused on helping early stage companies get to the next level. He particularly enjoys working with B2B SaaS companies, platforms, communications, health tech, beer and social good.
He is passionate about helping teams find customers, listening to their challenges and delivering win-win solutions.
He is currently a Venture Partner at NextGen Venture Partners, and has held executive sales positions at Retreaver and Twilio. Juan has also has contributed in sales and technical areas at seven other companies, including both start-up companies and IBM.
The Southwest Angel Network has invested in ScribeSense, who has achieved significant revenue for their innovative and patented EdTech technology.
The company makes existing paper assessments more meaningful for teachers and students. By auto-grading handwritten, paper responses (not just bubble sheets), ScribeSense allows teachers to spend time using data to drive instruction, rather than spend hours grading.Teachers save hours of time which improves teacher retention, students and parents receive immediate feedback, and school administrators discover data beyond multiple choice.
See the list of networks.
The Southwest Angel Network is the only network in Texas focused on social-impact companies, and one of a handful in the US with that focus. In the 2nd quarter we had 25 companies apply for funding, including 10 from Austin, 10 from Dallas and Houston, 3 from California, one from Colorado and one from the Netherlands. Our angels reside in both Austin and Houston.
An Innovation Partner is an organizations that supports commercialization, entrepreneurship, and translation of National Science Foundation funded technologies into the market. Partners serve as a resource or sounding board for the research teams.
One of the social-impact areas of interest for the Southwest Angel Network is the environment. Therefore we are pleased to have been invited to become an Innovation Partner for the Nano Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Research Center at Rice University. The objective of NEWT is to develop new technologies to treat industrial/oil & gas wastewater in a more efficient, sustainable manner, and to make clean, safe water available to the millions of individuals who lack access to it by the use of innovative, low-cost, sustainable approaches.
Rice leads a consortium of four universities: Rice, Arizona State, Yale University, and University of Texas (El Paso) for the NEWT program, which is expected to receive $37 million from NSF over 10 years.
Aiqueous helps water utilities implement water conversation and water quality programs, and is led by a strong team with deep experience in working with utilities.