Category Archives: Recent Investment

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Southwest Angel Network is pleased to announce that it has led the investment in Accelerist. Accelerist is the industry’s only matchmaking and measurement platform for companies and causes. The relationship between companies and social causes is powerful. Accelerist believes profit and purpose partnerships mean too much in today’s world to leave it to chance and circumstance. Through a deep data-driven approach, the Accelerist platform helps companies find the right partners and measure their impact on the company’s mission, stakeholders and bottom line. Accelerist’s company name previously was Catalist.

Accelerist was co-founded by and is led by CEO Brittany Hill. As a data seeker and trend translator, Brittany specializes in using analytics and innovations to connect companies and causes to do more good in the world. Brittany leads the product and business development efforts at Accelerist – the online matchmaking platform for companies and causes. As a nonprofit entrepreneur, Brittany is behind some of the industry’s newest products and tools that help nonprofits elevate their mission.

Brittany’s extensive background in the nonprofit and agency supports her vision for nonprofit innovations. Mrs. Hill has built multi-channel partnerships and award-winning campaigns with some of the most notable blue-chip nonprofit organizations (American Heart Association, UNICEF, Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, Make-A-Wish International) and corporate brands (Pepsico, General Mills, Hasbro, Best Buy).

The Southwest Angel Network has made an investment in Family Plan, which 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.

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.

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.