A Shreveport software engineering firm aims to leverage local angel investment dollars and sink seed capital into new technology ideas. The CEO of BlueArx, Ryan Wooley, has six employees clustered in a downtown office suite. His new startup firm will provide all the tools necessary to take a novel technology to market – from startup cash to programming and marketing to launch and business development. Wooley said he’ll earn the trust of local investors and steer them toward the most promising high-tech ventures.
“If you want to foster innovation, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is in a community," Wooley said. "We want to be able to bring leadership to a very strong investor group. The reality is in northwest Louisiana there's a lot of capital.”
BlueArx’s first portfolio piece launched this week with a beta site. Wooley, 32, started building the InstyBook software application in January. It’s an electronic calendar system that helps people in service industries keep track of their appointments in a digital age. Wooley started his own business at age 21. He said you don’t want to be the first person filling a niche market, nor the last.
“There are about 100 competitors in the marketplace today that do something with appointments," he said. "Some of them have sophisticated customer relationship management programs, but very few just do appointments. My philosophy was to get a minimal, viable product into the marketplace that solves the problem of booking appointments.”
InstyBook is being offered on a free trial basis for now. Wooley hopes to have the full platform launched in a few weeks with a monthly subscription price of about $20. His hairstylist will get the full calendar system for free. If the software lives up, Wooley said, he's bound to be more on time for his appointments.
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