The downturn in the venture capital landscape nationally hasn’t deterred one of the Southeast’s most active firms, VentureSouth, from placing bets in local startups.
In fact, it’s actually a good time to be deploying capital, says VentureSouth’s co-founder and managing director Charlie Banks. Companies like Mailchimp, Slack, Square, Venmo, and Uber all have roots in The Great Recession between 2007 and 2009.
“If you look back historically, some of the most exciting and most successful companies [started] in weird macroeconomic times. The reality is the best companies get funded no matter the economic times. A solid company with a good team that is building shareholder value…they get funded,” Banks told Hypepotamus.
VentureSouth is reaching new investing milestones while other firms have slowed down the pace of work. The firm recently announced its 100th investment. That investment went into Darby, a Greenville-based HealthTech simplifying at-home care delivery.
While VentureSouth is industry agnostic, it has several HealthTech and life science startups already in its portfolio. Darby joins other portfolio companies like Bio 54, baebies, Wellbox, TendoNova, among others.
Hypepotamus readers will be familiar with VentureSouth portfolio companies in other industry verticals, including AmplifiedAg, Case Status, Emrgy, GoPivot, Spiffy, Sprockets, WasteWizer, and Iconic Moments.
How VentureSouth Works
VentureSouth’s investing model has helped it continue to deploy capital even during uncertain economic times.
By design, VentureSouth is set up to be a small portion of an investor’s overall investable assets. Accredited investors engage with VentureSouth either as an active member or through its more passive option of angel funds. The active investor side of VentureSouth works under a “pass the hat” model, says Banks.
The VentureSouth team will look at upwards of 30 deals a month. They narrow that startup pool down to a handful that go through a formal screening process each month with all VentureSouth members and ultimately a few go through the formal due diligence process. There is no obligation for members to invest in individual deals, but the minimum is set at $5,000.
VentureSouth also has a family of angel funds, known as sidecar funds, that invest alongside any active deals.
VentureSouth is currently made up of 500 individual members across offices in 21 different cities across the Southeast. (That number is only set to grow over the next couple of months with new partnerships).
Having access to hundreds of local investors is beneficial to any early-stage founder looking to grow with strategic parrtners, said Banks.
“There really isn’t a problem that a company could face that we don’t have the expertise to help them with,” he added.