VilCap, Inc.

Village Capital will launch its Ecosystem Mapping, Development, and Networking project to empower entrepreneurial support organizations to improve ecosystem efficiency and entrepreneur investment readiness. While entrepreneurial talent is universal, opportunity often is not. Across the nation, the entrepreneurs best positioned to start a business and solve an important problem are often overlooked by traditional investment systems. Ecosystem builders, investment groups, accelerators, incubators and other organizations are stepping up to attempt to address these issues, but face challenges including implementing proven investor-readiness strategies, and accessing resources available at the national level.

To help address these problems, Village Capital will recruit, select, and partner with five ecosystem leaders in areas across the US, with a specific preference for those working with entrepreneurs in Opportunity Zones. This project will identify barriers to access by mapping entrepreneurial resources, train founders in each area to become investment-ready using established curricula, develop pilot investment strategies for overlooked founders, and connect entrepreneurs, investors and resources to provide founders with a pathway to funding and technical assistance.

This project will have tangible and long-lasting impacts on each of the five selected areas, and will support the development and implementation of a national strategy. By the end of the first year, Village Capital expects to directly support at least 60 companies, catalyze the development of over 500 jobs, create sector maps that outline available entrepreneur resources, and help deploy $500,000 in investment capital to ventures supported through these programs.