Click here if you’re an entrepreneur in Virginia raising money, or an investor looking for good deals in Virginia. To learn more, read on.
Sam English is an entrepreneur in Richmond who started a company called Attention Point. He’s figured out a way to make a more effective online assessment for ADHD.
Sam’s made a lot of progress, but like any entrepreneur, he’s had a hard time raising money. He’s getting some “Nos” and many more unreturned calls and emails.
This summer, Sam had a different kind of investor meeting, with Paul Nolde, a director at NRV, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Richmond. Sam and Paul used the VIRAL Pathway, developed by Village Capital, to go point-by-point through an assessment of Sam’s business, helping get on the same page on categories like Team, Problem and Vision, and Business Model.
VIRAL is a methodology that categorizes the entrepreneurial journey from Level 1 (a dreamer with an idea on paper) to Level 9 (a wildly profitable large company), and matches entrepreneurs with people who can help them at every step of the way.
Sam learned that he was a Level 5 entrepreneur, while Paul communicated that NRV tends to invest at Level 6 and 7. What would have been a “no” in the past instead turned into a conversation about milestones: Paul was able to say “not today,” but highlighted what Sam would need to do to be a great candidate for NRV investment one day.
“VIRAL helped me take what could have been a multistep process and made it much more streamlined,” Sam said. “We met for half hour, and I left with a clear sense of what steps we’d have to take to become a good investment for them. It saved us a lot of time. Now I know when to reach back out to them again.”
From Paul’s perspective, the VIRAL pathway helped him add value beyond money. “I hate saying no to founders who are too early-stage,” said Paul. “Being able to talk with Sam and Attention Point using the same levels of development helped me give him clear feedback on how he needed to grow his business, and conditions under which we would be excited to invest.”
Paul added that while NRV uses its own assessment scorecard developed internally as a company enters formal diligence with them, the VIRAL scorecard helps to make more transparent the top of the deal funnel for both sides (funder and entrepreneur), and creates a common language that makes initial conversations more efficient and substantive. “Ultimately I see VIRAL as somewhat of an automation and directional tool for the top of the deal funnel, which mitigates the opportunity cost of raising funds for both parties.”
By speaking the same language, Paul and Sam went from opposing sides of the table to being on the same team.
We’re excited to spread this investor-entrepreneur collaboration across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Village Capital, NRV, and dozens of other champions of entrepreneurs are now part of a statewide coalition: Virginia is for Entrepreneurs (VA. The flagship pilot of this coalition is the Virginia Investor Marketplace, which has a basic diagnostic that categorizes investors and entrepreneurs across Virginia by sector, stage, and VIRAL level. Whether you’re a Level 2 agriculture entrepreneur in Abingdon or a Level 8 cybersecurity entrepreneur in Arlington, the marketplace seeks to connect you with a resource that can help.
We piloted the Virginia is for Entrepreneurs Marketplace on November 2nd in Roanoke, with 50 investors and entrepreneurs from Southwest Virginia learning their VIRAL level and making connections with people who could help. On December 11th, we’ll be launching the statewide version in Alexandria, with entrepreneurs, investors, and public leaders from across Virginia, including Senator Mark Warner and Governor Terry McAuliffe. If you’re interested in attending please email ross@vilcap.com.
If you’ve got a great idea, and are willing to work hard, you ought to be able to succeed. Our hope is that by having entrepreneurs and investors speaking the same language, we can make it a little bit easier.
As Communications Director at Village Capital, Ben works on sharing what we’ve learned from our work in order to amplify our impact and help catalyze the fields of impact investing and entrepreneur support.
