KyleWe’ve recently started highlighting startups from “everywhere else” that appear on angel.co. Angel.co is one of the top resources for startups across the web. It’s right up their next to CrunchBase.
What we discovered though, was in our weekly email from angel.co every single trending startup was from Silicon Valley. Once in a blue moon we would get a startup from New York, but the trending startups are predominantly from the valley. This shows that Silicon Valley has a lot of active users on angel.co. This is no fault of the valley or angel.co however we figured we would start an ongoing feature series on Angel.co startups. It’s free to create your profile there and if you haven’t you should (you should also make sure you’re on Crunchbase).
Today we’re going to look at five angel list companies from New Mexico.
Volopt is based in Las Cruces New Mexico and is a web aggregator. They bill themselves as the “Huffington Post” for web content. We’re not sure if we get that reference from looking at their site. After all Huffington is a web site, and well the Huffington Post would be the Huffington Post of web content.
Volopt on the other hand has an easy to understand web interface. When you go to their site there is a “cloud” of content tags on the home page that you can click on to discover more information about the tag. There is also a search bar where you can travel outside of the content cloud.
The co-founders are Hank Muetterties, Joel Diemer and Louis O. Constantini.
They look like their on to something but when you’re building a startup that is going to encompass the entire web there needs to be an entire webs worth of content. There was a great amount of sports content, tags for the NBA,MLB and NFL served up great answers, as did tags for Mathematics and photography.
On the other hand a search for startup and startups returned no data at all.
The UI is very easy to use and understand, building scale may be a challenge.
Find Volopt on the web here and on Angel.co here
AgeNation (Santa Fe)
AgeNation is a web hub and content platform targeting baby boomers and seniors. As many baby boomers are entering into retirement in their work lives they were on the cusp of computers, new media and the digital age.
These baby boomers, no how to use a computer, and the internet but don’t have a portal or destination targeting them without making them feel old, like the AARP or any of the thousands of sites targeting seniors.
The AgeNation media group includes AgeNation.com, AgeNation Radio, AgeNation Live, NEXT Magazine, AgeNation Consulting and Coaching. They’re also about to add AgeNation television, publishing and travel.
The AgeNation group was co-founded by husband and wife team Sedena and George Cappannelli. Both workaholic, energetic babybooomers themselves they’ve set out to grow their media empire with their core audience.
Find AgeNation on their website here and on Angel.co here
MoTag (Santa Fe)
MoTag is innovating the QR space with a loyalty and rewards model gamifying discovery of products through a hide and seek platform. MoTag combines QR tag code info and UPC info with users personalized information, creating a fun social game based commerce network.
Think of it as Scavngr for products. But there is much more you can do with MoTag than just scavenger hunts.
MoTag presents themselves as a QR Code browser that has robust features.
MoTag is hoping to merge big box retailers and local retailers in reward and loyalty based games.
Co-Founder Allen Branch has a vast background in big box retail holding advisory positions at Whole Foods, REI, Home Depot and Autozone. He also founded Real Estate TV in 1995.
Co-Founder Bruno Allaire holds an MBA from Harvard and has 18 years experience in managing new business development.
See more about MoTag on their YouTube Channel and here on Angel.co
UsersUnite (Taos)
UsersUnite is a product review and social networking platform revolving around software reviews for business. The company seems to be taking an actual user approach to reviews and discussion about software rather than a techblog feel where readers often wonder about the deals behind the software reviews.
The premise for the idea seems solid. Co-Founders Bret and Linda Weir have over 29 years of software experience (Bret) and 10 years of public accounting experience (Linda).
Bret says in their YouTube pitch video that UsersUnite will be worth $200 million dollars within five years by saving businesses billions of dollars in software expenditures. That’s quite a lofty goal. If the startup lives by it’s user generated ideas and beliefs, especially behind the name UsersUnite, they could achieve that goal.
However, their angel.co profile suggests that their revenue stream is going to come from charging software vendors to participate, ultimately that will be what keeps them from the $200 million dollar goal. Once money from the publishers comes into play than the questions surrounding the authenticity and ethics behind the reviews put UsersUnite right back into the same categories as the TechBlogs that regularly run “sponsored” content.
Hopefully they will pivot back to the original premise, and make money off advertising or even affiliate sales of the software titles being discussed, then they could easily become a seven or eight figure company in revenue within five years. 9 figures though? Not likely.
More about UsersUnite from their website and from Angel.co
Enlitten.com (Santa Fe)
As online sales sites like Amazon.com continue to obliterate the local and big box bookstores into oblivion, one New Mexico startup, Enlitten, is trying to return people to local bookstores.
Enlitten uses a model that links users to local bookstores. They can pay through the website, which in turn pays the local bookshop and then the user can go into the local bookshop to pick up the book.While this isn’t as convenient as having the book shipped to your home or office, it can, sometimes mean you get the book quicker. Of course it also means you get out of the house and into the local bookshop.
A lot of local bookshops are adding entertainment, poetry readings, and cafes with increased menus to get customers to stick around longer.
Enlitten was founded by John Cole who is an award winning book designer
For more check out Enlitten at their website here and on angel.co here
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