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Angus Davis

Angus Davis

Dad, Entrepreneur & Investor
Dorado 🇵🇷 · NYC 🗽 · RI ⚓
📄 Bio (PDF)

Entrepreneur & Innovator

I began my start-up career at age 8, taking my grandmother's magazines, clipping articles, stapling them into my own creation and selling them door-to-door. My career as a media aggregator was short lived, but as a teen I joined one of America's first ISPs (Our class B was 155.212), where I built Web sites.

After creating the first online college application, I skipped college to become Netscape's youngest employee in 1996, where I worked with giants (marca, jimb) who were generous in teaching valuable lessons. I was product manager for our browser, worked on the anti-trust suit, and helped launch mozilla.org.

In 1999, I co-founded Tellme with Mike McCue. What followed were ten years of startup lessons learned, with very talented people. We built a profitable business with over $100 million in ARR. Our 300+ employees made speech recognition part of everyday life. We pioneered voice mobile search, years before "Siri." In 2007, Microsoft acquired Tellme for nearly $1 billion.

In 2009, I returned to New England to bring home a Silicon Valley spark, founding Upserve in Providence with to help restaurateurs thrive with an all-in-one platform for point of sale, payments, analytics and more. We were named "One of America's Most Promising Companies," recognized for 6 consecutive years as "Best Place to Work," and first RI firm on the Forbes 100 list. In 2018, after growing Upserve to over $35 mm in ARR and securing a strategic investment from Vista Equity, I transitioned from CEO to a board advisor role. Lightspeed Commerce acquired Upserve in 2020 for about $500 million in the (then) largest-ever exit for a RI tech startup.

I joined Foundation Capital in 2019, where I partnered with founders building companies from the earliest stages. In 2024, I'm returning to my entrepreneurial roots.

Education Reformer

I had an unusual educational path: skipping college to join "start-up U" in Silicon Valley. My parents gave me opportunities at great schools. I was lucky. Unfortunately many low-income children lack access to effective schools. America's achievement gap is the greatest civil rights injustice of my generation.

In 2007, Governor Carcieri appointed me to serve on the Rhode Island Board of Regents, the state's education policy-making body. Soon thereafter, working with Mayor Dan McKee, House leadership, CER, DFER, and others, we passed an ambitious expansion of RI's charter school law, ending a ban on such schools.

Working alongside prominent local leaders, I shared the case for education reform. I recruited Teach for America to Rhode Island, and I recruited a new Commissioner of Education, the first change in leadership in 17 years. Our strategic plan to improve education won the largest competitive federal grant in Rhode Island history.

In 2009, we opened Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy. By 2014, it became the state's highest-performing school, reversing the achievement gap: low income students of color outperform wealthier peers, proving demographics do not determine a child's destiny.

Around the Web

In the Press

Puerto Rico

In 2020, facing government-imposed lock-downs that shifted my work to Zoom, we decided to raise our boys in Puerto Rico. They are learning to speak Spanish and experience a more diverse culture than our native New England, where we still return often for vacations. We found a friendly, welcoming community with many young families, entrepreneurs and investors. Contact me if I can help you consider PR! Nos vamos! 🇵🇷