This time they won the Smart Power category prize in the California Cleantech Open Semifinals for the development of a material deposition process that cuts fuel-cell platinum costs by 95%. This prize  is awarded to entries dealing with smart grids, and energy control and storage. Previously they won awards in the UC Davis Big Bang Business Plan competition, and gained national recognition in the Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge.

This win means they are going to the Global Finals in San Jose in mid November to compete for the $250,000. They are one of the 18 teams   .... Read More »»

Below is the press release from Welldog mentioning our recent investment. There is also a short note in the Sacramento Bee.

Laramie, Wyoming (8 June 2011) – WellDog announced today that it has closed on $5,000,000 in new debt and equity financing to support its continued expansion.  The round was led by Simon Ashton and his strategic investment company, ProX Pty Ltd, and included participation by members of Sacramento Angels, Houston Angels, and some of the successful entrepreneurs behind Pure Energy, as well as expanded investment from the Brisbane Angels.

“WellDog possesses all of the traits of a successful resource service company,” said Ashton.  “It’s operating   .... Read More »»

George Cimino, PhD, Paul Henderson, PhD, & Chong-Xian Pan, MD, PhD of Accelerated Medical Diagnostics

Anthony Santamaria, Daniel Misicak, PhD, Tomas Sudnius & John-Paul Farsight of Eco Catalytics

Accelerated Medical Diagnostics (AMD) won first place ($10,000) in the competition and Eco Cataltyics (EC) won second place ($3,000), as well as the People’s Choice award ($2,000).

The Angels on Campus program has again seen positive results from going onto the UC Davis campus to mentor teams taking ideas and research from   .... Read More »»

The Team: Anthony Santamaria, John-Paul Farsight, Tomas Sudnius, and Daniel Misicak

This is national competition for students to showcase their best ideas   .... Read More »»

Emerging Asian economies need energy and Asian energy exporters are struggling to meet demand. Coal based resources, including gas, are contributing but they need new technologies to meet demand responsibly and quickly, exactly the niche WellDog has found with its exploration services.

Welldog Raman Tool Going Downhole

Coalbed natural gas exploration is expanding rapidly in Asia and Europe and the sector is expected to grow at 70% CAGR over the   .... Read More »»

Vokle provides a web based, social media, live video talk show platform that enables anyone to build their audience via real time Q&A features. It has been used by the like of Huffington Press, Washington Post, Tony Robbins, and TimeWarnerCable.

The business premise: Millions of content creators, entertainers, authors, musicians, politicians, and self-help gurus are struggling to   .... Read More »»

The Sacramento Bee also had a short note on this story, and told of the involvement of regional venture capital company, American River Ventures. We also came across an interesting Read More »»

The $4.5M Venture Capital like Series A raise by Glue Networks has received local press, and been press released on the web. But there is another story behind this, one that involves deal sourcing, the power of angel collaboration and the ability of angels to put sophisticated deals together. So here it is.

We first became of aware of Glue from a presentation they gave to the SARTA board in the spring of 2010 (by the way they are currently located in the SARTA VentureLab). They were looking for Venture Capital but we actively solicited them to look to the Sacramento Angels for funding. They did   .... Read More »»

It is not often, however, that a company we decline to invest in after a presentation gives us some positive feedback. But that happened this fall. Here is what the entrepreneur wrote to us the day after the presentation: