Tag: Cat Dizon

Austin-Based Notley Expands Programs to San Antonio
7May By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
Articles, Featured

Austin-Based Notley Expands Programs to San Antonio

Notley, a philanthropic organization that leverages funding from traditional investments in real estate, venture funds, startups, and donations to support social impact innovation, has set its sights on San Antonio. Founded by BuildASign co-founder Dan Graham, nonprofit executive Lisa Graham, and entrepreneur Matt McDonnell, Notley is a new type of philanthropic entity that brings entrepreneurial thinking and approaches to connecting for-profit and nonprofit spaces. Notley has run Philanthropitch San Antonio for the past three years, a fast-pitch competition created for nonprofits. This year’s event will be held at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts on October 12 with support from the Mays Family Foundation.  Read more: Youth Code Jam Pitch Perfect at Philantropitch San Antonio ...
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Beam Angel Network For Female-Owned Startups Launches Across Texas
24Aug By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Beam Angel Network For Female-Owned Startups Launches Across Texas

A new investor network is looking to close the massive gender funding gap for female-run startups. Women@Austin, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting female entrepreneurs, is launching the Beam Angel Network, the first Texas-based angel network for women-founded companies. Investors will fund early-stage, Texas-based, women-founded companies with high potential. Beam will aim for diversity and equity within their investor community, deal flow, founders, and community partners, said Jessica Gaffney, CEO  and executive director of Women@Austin. The share of venture capital or VC dollars that flowed into startups founded by a woman or a group of women in 2019 was $3.54 billion—only 2.7% of total VC investment. Yet, companies with a female founder perform 63% better than all-male f...
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SaaS Voice App Yac Closes $1.5 Seed Round led by Active Capital
16Jan By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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SaaS Voice App Yac Closes $1.5 Seed Round led by Active Capital

Without tone and inflection, it's hard to tell sometimes if an email, Tweet, or text is meant as a compliment or a complaint. One Orlando, Fla.-based startup developed a voice app solution to solve this problem.Yac announced Wednesday a $1.5 million seed financing led by San Antonio-based venture firm Active Capital with participation from angel investors. Betaworks and Booth VC invested $275,000 in a pre-seed round that closed in April 2019.The Yac app helps users send voice messages asynchronously (meaning, there’s a delay between the message sent and the recipient’s response). On average, there are about 4,500 messages a month left on Yac’s service, and the company has around 250 daily active users, according to Yac founder Justin Mitchell.Mitchell, who is also founder of di...
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Geekdom Pre-Accelerator Program Prepares Startups for Early-Stage Funding
15May By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Geekdom Pre-Accelerator Program Prepares Startups for Early-Stage Funding

Six San Antonio startups are using the opportunity to learn over the past six weeks from seasoned entrepreneurs and experts what it takes to grow their company. Coworking space Geekdom has been working closely with founders participating in its 2019 Pre-Accelerator program cohort since early April.The six teams will pitch at the Geekdom Pre-Accelerator Demo Day May 22 at the Aztec Theater. Register at the event link for a free ticket.The six teams include the following startups.Drones of Prey seeks to protect people and businesses against aerial terrorist attacks from commercialized drones by conducting risk assessments and creating defense strategies. Ah!Count helps accounting firms streamline operations and increase client security through its affordable document managem...
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Clean Energy Generator and Two Biomedical Devices Declared Winners at UTSA CITE Competition
30Apr By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Clean Energy Generator and Two Biomedical Devices Declared Winners at UTSA CITE Competition

A clean energy generator, a video-aided laryngoscope, and a cooling prosthetic socket caught the attention of judges at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) venture competition Tuesday. EnVault, the student team that created a zero-emissions portable generator, won the top prize at UTSA's $100,000 Student Technology Venture Competition.UTSA's Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) hosts the annual competition to give students hands-on experience as early-stage entrepreneurs. CITE is an interdisciplinary center in UTSA's Colleges of Business and Engineering formed in 2007 to create a pipeline for UTSA faculty, students and the surrounding business community to develop new technology ventures.  The top three teams will have access to a prize pool of more t...
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UTSA Startup Grind to Feature Active Capital and FunnelAI
18Apr By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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UTSA Startup Grind to Feature Active Capital and FunnelAI

Startup Grind UTSA will host its fireside chat April 24 at 6:30 p.m. with guest speakers Cat Dizon, co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Active Capital talking with the co-founders of artificial intelligence (AI) startup FunnelAI, Sridhar Kamma and Sujatha Kamma. The event takes place at the university’s College of Business. Register for a free ticket here.FunnelAI announced March 27 that it received a $1.5 million seed round led by the San Antonio based venture capital firm Active Capital. The investment included funding from the Geekdom Fund, Europe-based retail and consumer investor True, and angel investors from San Antonio and Houston.Read more: Active Capital-Led $1.5M Funding, Workforce Grant Fuels Growth for FunnelAISridhar Kamma created the first automated sa...
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Alamo Angels Investor Group Searches for New Executive Director
2Apr By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
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Alamo Angels Investor Group Searches for New Executive Director

San Antonio-based Alamo Angels, a group that invests in startups, announced Cat Dizon is leaving the executive director role and will be transitioning out later this month, according to an email sent to Alamo Angel members Tuesday.Before joining Alamo Angels in September 2018, Dizon was co-founder, chief operating officer, and partner at Active Capital, a venture firm based in San Antonio focused on leading seed rounds for business-to-business software as a service (SaaS) companies. She continued as a part-time Active Capital venture partner throughout her tenure at Alamo Angels and plans to return to Active Capital to help grow the firm she co-founded.Read more: Alamo Angels Names Cat Dizon as Its New Executive Director"With the support of Pat [Matthews, Active Capital founde...
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Alamo Angels Names Cat Dizon as Its New Executive Director
5Sep By Iris GonzalezNo Comments
Articles, Featured

Alamo Angels Names Cat Dizon as Its New Executive Director

San Antonio-based Alamo Angels, a group that invests in startups, announced Cat Dizon would assume the executive director role effective immediately, founding executive director Chris Burney said at an Alamo Angels pitch event Wednesday evening.Dizon has over 20 years of operations experience, 11 of which was at Rackspace where she was the director of corporate strategy and development leading in mergers and acquisitions, cloud business operations, staff operations, and customer support.  Before joining Alamo Angels, Dizon was the chief operating officer and partner at Active Capital, a venture firm based in San Antonio focused on leading seed rounds for business-to-business software as a service (SaaS) companies. She plans to continue at Active Capital as a part-time venture partn...
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