Monday, January 24, 2011

CloudTree




Company:  CloudTree31E065E1-4B5D-3C5F-5F56-9F2A09C2463B



Funding Status: Seed?


Founders Backgrounds: Ellacoya, Arbor Networks, Akiban, Whaleback


Investors: We have our ideas, but none announced


Industry: Virtualization, Cloud Computing


Offering Description: CloudTree enables the social, mobile, real-time Cloud.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Boston Angel Series: Bantam Group

The Angel investor community here in the Boston area is growing and the newest players like Roy Rodenstein , David Cancel   and Dharmesh Shah  are getting well deserved press and visibility.

But there are some established and accomplished Angel investors here with perhaps a lower profile but an even more impressive track record.




Joe Caruso of Bantam Group has been investing in local startups for the past 20 years. One look at the Bantam Group investments below and you will see that Joe knows how to pick winners.

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His investments have included Constant Contact( IPO), many acquisitions, a couple companies bought by Microsoft, Carbonite (IPO candidate 2011) and two of the hottest Cambridge startups, Hubspot and
SCVNGR.

But what is most interesting to me is the newest crop of companies like Localytics, Dexrex and Marginize that were seeded by Bantam. This is one Boston angel that is not afraid to invest in web and mobile startups.

Not only is Joe an investor, he is entrepreneur friendly and provides CEO mentorship and coaching, with glowing testimonials from some of the areas best founders to attest to the value of his involvement.

That value comes in all forms. The Bantam web site states, the mentorship may include; "The occasional "wake up call", whack on the side of the head, or forceful listening session."

As an example of how he operates, on our first encounter with Joe at an MTLC unconference, he was generously suggesting people we should meet (and he pretty much knows everyone), within the first 5 minutes of hearing what we were working on.

At the community level Joe created Boston Region Entrepreneur Week BREW to celebrate and shine a
spotlight on the entrepreneurial spirit in Boston.

In summary, Bantam Group may be our best example of an active and successful consumer web investor. If you are an entrepreneur in Boston and will seek seed funding at some point, you will be well served to receive it from Bantam Group.

If you are interested in the portfolios of other Boston Angel groups, check out Lead Dog Ventures. We just updated it with the new widget so you can link into and explore any company.

PS:  We just released the company graph widget as an embed button on our CompanyDetails page. Just click the button and cut and paste the script to have a live/dynamic graph of any company or investor in the talentGraphz database.