Angus Davis

Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, and Education Reform Advocate

Angus Davis began his entrepreneurial career taking his grandmother's magazines, clipping articles, stapling them together into new magazines of his own creation and selling them door-to-door. His career as an eight-year-old media aggregator and syndicator was short lived, but in high school he joined the early team at one of the country's first commercial ISPs (Our class B was 155.212), where he built the first Web sites for many businesses. After creating the first Web-based college application, Angus turned down college to become Netscape's youngest employee in 1996, where he worked with giants (marca, jimb) who were generous in teaching him what they knew about building the world's highest profile start-up success story. He was product manager for their Web browser, worked on the anti-trust suit, and helped launch mozilla.org.

In 1999, Angus left Netscape to co-found Tellme with Mike McCue. What followed were ten years of startup lessons learned.The duo raised almost a quarter billion dollars in capital, built a profitable business with over $100 million in sales and more than 300 employees, and made speech recognition part of everyday life. Today Tellme answers every call to businesses like American Airlines, UPS and American Express and most calls to 411. Angus and Mike created voice mobile search, so you can "say what you want and get it." In 2007, Microsoft acquired Tellme in their largest-ever acquisition of a private company. The most valuable experience was working with incredibly talented people.

After two years leading speech recognition strategy, Angus left Microsoft in 2009, returning to New England with hopes of bringing home a Silicon Valley spark. He founded Swipely, a social commerce company based in Providence with a world-class team and the support of great Silicon Valley investors Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Greylock Partners and others. Swipely adds value to every "swipe" by rewarding consumers for their shopping and helping local merchants succeed.

A passionate advocate of education reform, Angus also serves on the Rhode Island Board of Regents, the state's chief education policy-making body, helping to pass an ambitious expansion of the state's charter school law, ending a ban on new schools and, in 2009, opening Rhode Island's first "no-excuses" public school.