Posts

Robert Maccini

Angel Street Capital Invests in Sharetown

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STLogo-01Sharetown is a platform and a marketplace that allows simple, convenient, and social ways for individuals in local communities to connect and safely sell, rent, or share goods and services with family, friends, and neighbors. Sharetown is revolutionizing the local face to face transaction by empowering individuals in local communities to leverage their underutilized assets and helping them make and save money. Traditional classified like platforms and marketplaces are not solving many of the current trust issues and social engagement problems and opportunities their users have today. Sharetown solves these problems by providing a trusted and socially engaging experience, in essence becoming the evolution of the traditional classified model and enabling true peer to peer collaborative consumption. Sharetown also provides opportunities for local media companies and other locally focused brands to partner, license the platform, and provide this experience to their end consumers while also providing a unique “non-advertising” revenue opportunity they are not touching today.

Robert Maccini

Angel Street Capital invests in flexReceipts

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logoAngel Street Capital, LLC recently completed an investment in flexReceipts, Inc. based in Orlando, FL.

flexReceipts, the leading enhanced digital receipts solution, offers retailers a post-sale opportunity to communicate with their customers. flexReceipt’s enriched receipts build customer loyalty and drive sales, while allowing retailers to monitor spending habits and shopping trends. The company’s patent-pending software allows retailers to add social media links, videos and customized offers to digital receipts. Go Beyond the Sale! Learn more at www.flexreceipts.com

Watch the product offering video here.

Robert Maccini

ANGEL STREET CAPITAL INVESTS IN FUNDATION, INC.

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Angel Street Capital recently closed on an investment in Fundation, Inc‘s convertible note round.  Fundation provides on-line commercial loans of $50,000 – $250,000.  Fundation has developed an automated credit decision engine and will use the Internet to target its offering to select industries and geographic areas.  This is not a peer-to-peer lending model but rather a fund that will deploy capital utilizing Fundation’s platform.  The platform will launch in the 4th quarter.

Robert Maccini

RADIO STATION WEBSITES

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For the most part there is nothing compelling on radio station websites.  The primary reason that most people visit is to start the station’s stream or find information about what a station is playing.  In a just released survey by The Media Audit, visits to station websites declined YOY from 17.7% of U.S. adults to 17.6%.  As more and more options exist for listening to a station’s stream off website (through mobile app, Facebook, etc.) traffic will continue to decline.  Most stations don’t promote their website because there is no original content and when the station’s website is mentioned it’s usually due to a contest which in my view artificially drives traffic to a site.  Tweets and posts show up in a listener’s stream in many cases so no need to access the website.  So how can radio develop unique content?  Without investing a considerable amount of funds I don’t think there is much that can be done.  However, I do believe there are other opportunities to create content and develop other brands.  For example, one company I am working with Inner City, has for many years put on a weekend event in New York City called Circle of Sisters where over 40,000 people attended.  There is an opportunity to further develop this well known brand apart from the radio station.

At Angel Street Capital we have invested in a local news site called GoLocal Providence (www.golocalprov.net) and they are in the process of rolling this same platform out to Worcester, MA.  The site has been incredibly successful in challenging the local newspaper. Initially GoLocal launched in Providence with a local radio station partner.  This opportunity exists for radio companies but I would suggest partnering rather than trying to develop it internally.  Radio stations have a giant megaphone to launch other brands as they have been doing for their advertisers for many years.  It’s time to use this megaphone themselves to develop brands they have an equity stake in.

Robert Maccini

ANGEL STREET CAPITAL INVESTS IN PLACESTER

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Angel Street Capital, LLC recently participated in Placester, Inc’s Series Seed Preferred equity raise.  Placester, located in Cambridge, MA, participated in the TechStars Boston 2011 program.  Placester is an Ad Network for the real estate industry and it’s platform provides value to both advertisers and publishers by enabling the ordering, serving, and fulfillment of ads in the real estate vertical.

For advertisers Placester’s platform serves as a hub to plan, purchase, and monitor advertising across multiple vertical-specific and traditional publishers offering increased ROI through access and analytics. For publishers the platform is a complete solution for order management and scheduling as well as ad serving. Placester’s technology allows publishers to reduce operation costs while improving pricing through data and access.

The founders of Placester are Frederick Townes, the CTO of Mashable, and Matt Barba, a real estate veteran.

Robert Maccini

ANGEL STREET CAPITAL INVESTS IN LIVIO RADIO

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Angel Street Capital recently completed an investment in Livio Radio. Livio Radio, a Detroit-based team of auto infotainment and digital audio veterans, has established relationships with key content providers, automotive companies and retail players and has a validated, scalable business model that addresses a large, global market.
Specifically, with the car being the final frontier of the rapidly growing internet radio market, Livio Radio has developed a suite of hardware products & middleware/software solutions that enables full in-car audio experience via smartphone for nearly any car – new or old.  Put simply, Livio has enable Internet radio in the car.  I recently wrote a post on Livio which can be accessed here.


Robert Maccini

ANGEL STREET CAPITAL INVESTS IN iWEB

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Angel Street Capital recently completed an investment in iWeb as part of a going private transaction.  iWeb had previously been traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange  (TSX-V: IWB).  iWeb has been providing hosting infrastructure with is shared web hosting, dedicated servers, managed hosting and colocation services for over a decade.

Founded by Martin Leclair and Eric Chouinard in October 1996 and headquartered in Montreal since 1998, the company has enjoyed steady growth since its inception, currently employing more that 170 hosting specialists and operating four data centers in the Montreal, Canada area.  Today iWeb is one of the largest web hosts and Internet hosting infrastructure providers in Canada. 

Robert Maccini

ANGEL STREET CAPITAL INVESTS IN AIRKAST, INC.

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Angel Street Capital recently completed an investment in AirKast, Inc.’s Series A Preferred Stock offering.  AirKast develops mobile applications which run on its AirBridge platform.  One of the industry verticals it has targeted includes Internet radio.  AirKast clients include many of the leading radio companies.  The company’s TuneKast offering allows stations to stream their content as part of its application.  Clients include ESPN, Radio Disney, Citadel Broadcasting, Salem Communications and many more.  Members of Angel Street Capital have previously invested in earlier AirKast funding rounds.  The company is growing rapidly and is well positioned to take advantage of the explosive growth occurring in mobile.

Robert Maccini

Angel Street Capital Invest in Mercury

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Angel Street Capital has participated in Mercury’s latest equity raise.  Mercury (www.mpmri.com) has been in business for over 50 years providing direct mail and printing services.  Over the last few years they have been transitioning their business into a digital marketing firm.  Mercury works with customer data and develops strategies to enhance that data for more accurate and effective campaigns.

Mercury is developing the TWOBOLT Marketing Platform, an easy-to-use, online direct marketing solution designed specifically for small businesses. It offers multi-channel direct marketing services like print, mail, email, mobile, and social networks with NO installation fees or binding contracts . TWOBOLT delivers better response rates with measurable ROI through a simple, online interface.

Robert J. Maccini of Angel Street has joined Mercury’s Board of Directors.