Welcome to the inaugural edition of my “Angel Series” posts. As promised, I will be writing individually about the companies that I have invested in, both as an individual angel and as a member of the Baltimore Angels.
My first highlight is on Argyle Social, a leading social media marketing platform that helps marketers tie social media to revenue.
Here is CEO, Eric Boggs giving the sub-2 minute pitch:
Why I Invested:
Argyle was an interesting investment for me due to the backstory of my relations with the founders. To me, this is some of the most important “stuff” when an angel makes an investment.
First off, I had known of Eric Boggs and Adam Covati from the email marketing industry, as they had both worked for Bronto. They both did a great job raising their profiles and clearly standing out as emerging leaders within our industry.
My colleague, DJ Waldow bridged the gap in person a few years back during one of the spring marketing conference tours we used to do back in the Blue Sky Factory days.
At the time I was getting to know Adam, I also happened to be looking for a VP of Product Development. There was a very small window of time between Adam leaving Bronto, and starting Argyle. I was about to make Adam an offer, when he let me know that him and Eric were going to make a go at it. As a fellow entrepreneur, I wished them nothing but the best and let them know I would help them in any way I could.
As it turned out, my company Blue Sky Factory, was one of Argyle’s early alpha & beta testers. Adam and Eric spent a lot of time with DJ Waldow, Chris Penn, myself and others on our team, providing feedback on early versions of Argyle Social. Once they launched, we became a paying customer.
What was really cool, was watching them go from 1 to 100 customers in a very short amount of time.
While the Argyle team was cranking away, I was busy working on the Blue Sky Factory acquisition. Once the dust settled, I received a phone call from Eric Boggs who updated me on their traction, and on the details of their current raise and asked me if I would consider being a part of it.
As it turned out, this was the only investment I have ever made without doing deep diligence. Eric and Adam are solid entrepreneurs, with a great offering in a big market, and have my full confidence that they will do everything they can to succeed.
The investment terms were fair for where they were at, and not only did I know the founders personally, more importantly I watched them execute for close to 2 years. I saw the evolution and the traction of Argyle from the beginning.
I also invested because much like Blue Sky Factory, they are a BtoB software as a service (SaaS) player in the mid-market. They play ball with real companies, with real marketing departments who are looking to measure real revenue through social channels. This is almost identical to the experience and market knowledge that I had from my 10 years running Blue Sky Factory. I understand that market very well.
So, in the end, in turns out that Adam and I get a chance to work together after all, just in a completely different way. 