Portland startup Dayo was named the winner of this year’s Angel Oregon Technology competition, walking away with a $105,000 investment.
The company, co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Corey Scholibo and Patrick Triato, is developing an app to help people use social media less. It does this by rewarding people for time spent offline with points. Those points can then be redeemed for items from the app’s brand partners. These partners include Rumpl, Sunday Citizen and The Get Out.
“I am so excited that the Portland investment community would invest in an idea this big," said Scholibo in a written statement. “As a dreamer and a founder, I love that Portland has the resources and the will to change the culture for the better.”
Scholibo, who is CEO, previously founded women’s supplement brand Wile, which was acquired earlier this year. Triato, who is COO, previously founded consumer products brand Goodwell Co.
Four other companies were finalists in this angel investment competition.
This year’s AOTech investment came from 20 local investors, according to Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, which organized the event. The investment group evaluated a total of 12 companies before narrowing the focus to the five finalists.
AOTech is one of three Angel Oregon programs organized by OEN. In addition to an educational component for founders, the programs can feature investment potential. This year’s AOTech program wasn’t intended to have an investment component, but the OEN investor community demanded otherwise, led by members John Furukawa and Bonnie Page.
“The magic of this year’s AOTech is that it was 100% community-driven,” said Cara Turano, president and executive director of OEN in a written statement. “It shows the power of the network of founders, funders and business service providers who constantly and consistently step up to support local entrepreneurship.”
The other two Angel Oregon programs are Oregon Angel Food, which is focused on food and beverage companies, and Angel Oregon Life & Bio, which focuses on life sciences companies.
