A pair of Atlanta angel investors and startup veterans have launched their own company.
Scott and Jordan Arogeti, who also lead Arogeti Endeavors, have raised $1.5 million to start Mi Alma, a startup focused on individuals who are grieving, according to a May 1 announcement.
Early investors include well-known names in Atlanta’s startup ecosystem: Terminus founder Eric Spett, PlayOn! Sports founder David Rudolph and his wife, Kristine, and DoMyOwn.com founder Michael Gossling. Real estate developer Michael Staenberg also participated, and the round included 20 people overall, said Scott Arogeti, who is serving as CEO.
Mi Alma is a website for grieving individuals, providing a centralized registry for support, such as meal trains or donations, and a place to store photos and videos of loved ones. The company is partnering with a variety of local organizations, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Kate’s Club. Jordan Arogeti is chief operating officer, and Morgan Lopes is chief technology officer, according to its website.
“It’s time for a modern piece of empathetic technology to change the status quo,” Scott Arogeti said in an announcement about the company.
The new company comes a few years after Scott and Jordan Arogeti founded Arogeti Endeavors, a small firm that advises and funds early startups. The Arogetis invest in food recovery startup Goodr and procurement software startup Procoto, both based in Atlanta.
Scott Arogeti previously worked at automated messaging startup Voxie and was an early employee at supply chain technology company Stord. Jordan Arogeti was at Salesloft, a sales engagement platform valued at more than $1 billion.
The funding round is an example of Atlanta’s startup ecosystem at work. Previous startup founders and early employees often become investors for new companies. For example, David Cummings founded popular startup incubator Atlanta Tech Village after selling his company.
The angel investor round comes as institutional venture capital, which is often used for later-stage companies, has dried up in the past six months. Scott Arogeti said the duo specifically raised money from angel investors, many of whom have tech expertise and personal experience with loss, and did not try to raise VC money.
Nationally, tech firms raised a collective $37 billion across 2,856 deals last quarter. It was the lowest quarterly deal amount since the fourth quarter of 2017, according to a report from venture capital data firm PitchBook Data.
Atlanta startups' deal count was 61 for the first quarter, compared to 67 in the fourth quarter of 2022 and 96 during the same period last year.
The funding slowdown comes amid a broader tech industry downturn that's resulted in layoffs across the sector and the failure of startup-friendly bank Silicon Valley Bank.
A headline in a previous version of this article misstated which company Scott and Jordan Arogeti launched with this seed round. This has since been corrected.
