The Dingman Center Angels is a Maryland based angel investment group, managed by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, which provides funding to early-stage companies within the Mid-Atlantic region. Since inception, the group has invested more than $12 million in more than 50 companies primarily in the enterprise software and consumer internet sectors. The Dingman Center Angels recently completed another successful year, expanding the portfolio and hosting meetings in College Park, Baltimore and Crystal City. Keep reading for an overview of the group’s activities over the past investment season.
Membership
Currently, there are 47 members in the group, seven of which joined in the last year. Two of the group’s new angels, Joshua Goldberg and Vadim Polikov, are entrepreneurs whose startup Astrum Solar, was acquired for $54 million. Flipping the coin from entrepreneur to angel investor, Goldberg and Polikov joined the group to offer a new perspective and find new companies to work with. Also new to the group, Mark Segal, CEO of Shady Grove Fertility, received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Health category in Greater Washington.
Startups
In FY’15 the Dingman Center Angels received applications from 106 regional startups. Only 48 companies were invited to review day, a thorough screening session conducted by a review committee consisting of Dingman Center staff and four to six Dingman Center Angels. Following review day, the committee selects three to four companies who are invited to pitch to the entire angel group at the monthly meeting. Thirty companies pitched the Dingman Center Angels this season, resulting in ten new and follow-on investments totaling $1.4 million. These are the companies who received investments from the group this past year.
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Describe It Founder: Ryan Yanchuleff |
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VitusVet Founder: Mark Olcott MBA’13 |
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OmniSpeech Founder: Carol Espy-Wilson |
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SnobSwap Founder: Elise Whang |
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Cobrain Founder: Rob McGovern ’83 |
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DivvyCloud Founder: Brian Johnson |
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Brazen Founder: Ryan Healy |
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Terbium Labs Founder: Danny Rogers |
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YouEye Founder: Kyle Henderson |
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SalesWarp Founder: David Potts |
Portfolio Companies
Many of the Dingman Center Angels’ portfolio companies celebrated milestones this year.
Veenome, a platform that automatically analyzes videos on web pages for content and brand safety, was acquired by New-York based Integral Ad Science. The Dingman Center Angels invested in Veenome in 2011.
Distil, a service protecting the world’s most successful website from malicious bots, closed a $21 million Series B in June of this year, led by Bessemer Ventures. The company has raised a total of $38 million to date, including an investment by the Dingman Center Angels in 2012.
Enterprise-focused chat platform, Brazen (formerly Brazen Careerist), also closed a round of funding this year. Dingman Center Angel investor, Ed Barrientos, joined the company as CEO following an investment in 2011. In June, Osage Ventures led a $4.7 million round of Series A financing, bringing their total investment dollars to over $10 million to date.
The Dingman Center Angels operates under the support of five sponsors. The 2014-15 sponsors included: Womble Carlyle, Cohn Reznick, Saul Ewing, McGladrey, and Nath, Goldberb & Meyer.
Interested in learning more about how to get involved with the Dingman Center Angels? Visit go.umd.edu/dcangels. Email DingmanAngels@rhsmith.umd.edu for questions.