If you’re a heavy user of the startup community that is AngelList, there’s a useful little application that you should know about. The under-the-radar iOS app called “AngelList Wings” is a native app for browsing, searching, following and reading about the startups, founders and investors on AngelList. The app uses the AngelList API, allowing you to track your AngelList news feed, in order to see who has updated their status, invested, followed a company and more. It also lets you tap on each item to view more details and tweet to your favorite companies right from within the app.
While the app’s current focus is only on AngelList, the developer tells us the eventual plan is to expand AngelList Wings’ focus to become more of a resource for the startup community as a whole. He plans to do this by incorporating other APIs, including TechCrunch’s own CrunchBase API, for example, into the app’s interface.
The app was first launched at the beginning of the year, but recently saw a big update aimed at improving the user interface and overall flow. While we normally wouldn’t cover such “old news” (ha), this is one of those things that’s deserving of a little more attention. It’s not a perfect app by any means, but it’s still good to have. I happened to stumble across it a few weeks ago when it occurred to me that, surely, there was a better way to browse AngelList from my iPhone. Not that the mobile website is that bad, mind you, I just tend to prefer native apps. As it turns out, this app is the only one that appears in the iOS App Store search results. Well then. For 99 cents, it was worth a shot. *And frankly, I’m the kind of geek who would rather scroll through a list of startups than play a round of Angry Birds when I have a few minutes to spare.)
For those who are curious, the app’s creator is Gianpaolo D’Ambra, who tells me that he currently works at PMI as a Production Supervisor. But he adds that he’s passionate about the web, technology and the VC/startup world, which is why he decided to create aWings (as it’s called for short) in the first place. He started the app as a side project, funding it out of Omidea, an angel investor fund he bootstraps himself, which also includes a couple of other projects, including a PM tool called Kontup and a forthcoming big data analysis tool called Docpivot, expected out next year.
You can download AngelList Wings here on iTunes. Enjoy your weekend.