About the position

Village Capital’s mission is to provide opportunity for early-stage entrepreneurs seeking a positive impact on the world. We do this by democratizing the entrepreneurial process, operating educational programs for entrepreneurs worldwide focused on peer support. At the end of each program, entrepreneurs assess one another, and the top-ranked receive capital from partner investors. To date, we have operated 14 programs worldwide, serving over 250 entrepreneurs, and we seek to expand the network.

Village Capital primarily serves entrepreneurs who have launched for-profit businesses that seek a direct impact on poverty alleviation and/or environmental sustainability globally. Examples of past entrepreneurs include an educational technology that improves student performance in low-income schools in the US, a waste processing company in India that has a direct impact on the incomes of waste pickers in Indian slums, and a software in Kenya that enables small business owners to accept mobile payments.

Village Capital was founded to address key system deficiencies in the “impact investing” sector, an emerging class of investors and entrepreneurs that are building for-profit businesses and intentionally pursuing direct impact beyond financial returns. Despite over 300 funds dedicated to the impact investing sector, with up to USD $10 billion under management, very few organizations work with companies in their earliest stages. Village Capital plays a key role in the impact investing ecosystem.

The Opportunity
The Director of Operations will lead the Company through its next phase of growth. As a founding member of the senior leadership team, the Director-Operations will manage relationships with 9 current partners and all future partners, a staff of 6 associates, and serve as lead on Village Capital’s investment relationship with ImpactAssets, our investment service provider. The Director of Operations will enable cohesion among the various programs worldwide, codifying and systematizing Village Capital’s best practices globally: critical as Village Capital grows and develops new initiatives worldwide.

The Position
The Director of Operations will provide Village Capital with strong internal leadership and develop world-class operational controls, systems, financial, and administrative procedures. S/he must be an internally-focused leader who is able to develop systems and incentives which enable Village Capital programs to recruit world-class entrepreneurs, leverage local investment and human capital, and scale the model in a cost-effective way.

Other responsibilities include:

• Serve as the primary liaison with all Village Capital team members worldwide.
• Facilitate a cohesive program cycle with all internal stakeholders, including identification of entrepreneur needs, curriculum development and testing, and costs/revenues of each program.
• Evaluate company performance on an on-going basis. Develop and monitor several metrics to evaluate progress toward stated goals.
• Analyze company structure and simplification of team management.
• Develop and implement regular internal communications programs to enable a shared vision for the organization’s growth from all key stakeholders.

The Person
A Bachelor’s degree is required, as well as a strong performance record in work experience relevant to the activities of the position. The person will have the desired qualifications:
o Management experience in a start-up organization, preferably a for-profit
o Proven experience/comfort working in a multi-site organization
o Proven track record of exceeding goals as measured not only by bottom-line growth, but other metrics such as delivery performance and improved serviced levels.
o Ability to effectively build organizational capacity, implement sensible, efficient policies and procedures, and develop a team
o Thorough understanding of finance, systems, and HR; experience with the full range of business functions/systems, information systems, human resources, marketing
o Experience with early-stage venture investment preferred; experience raising capital a plus.
o The ability to balance the risk of new opportunities against the realities of a budget.
o 4+ years relevant experience preferred

The ideal candidate will possess the following competencies and skills:
o Exceptional and demonstrable organizational skills, including the capacity for implementing objective measures to assist the Company in quantifying its performance at it scales up to serve entrepreneurs.
o Excellent written communication skills
o Excellent problem solving skills and ability to build and maintain strong partnerships
o Optimistic nature; a desire to “get to yes”; an ability to overcome difficult challenges
o Able to thrive in an unpredictable work environment, and act with limited information
o S/he should be committed to open, direct and constructive communication at all levels and have previously demonstrated the ability to interact with a wide range of personalities, ensuring that common goals are emphasized.

To apply, please send a resume and cover letter to joinus@vilcap.com with “Director: Operations” in the subject title.

2-minute video that explains the program best – http://vimeo.com/40384173

As part of our partnership, we wanted to let you know that applications will be closing May 20th and if you are interested in applying you should do so today! They are selecting technology-based companies who are working to solve the greatest social and environmental challenges of this century. If you are interested, or you can think of an entrepreneur who may be, make certain to check out all the details at www.unreasonableatsea.com.

Our mission is to utilize peer support to build world-changing companies; to date, we’ve launched 12 successful peer-driven educational programs worldwide, working with over 250 entrepreneurs generating a positive impact on the world. At the end of each program, the entrepreneurs vote on each other and the top companies receive an investment from a pre-committed investor. Our programs rely on trust and follow-through.

We’ve been particularly excited about the potential in one of our locations, London. In the fall, we ran a ten-week program in London in partnership with an investor who committed £50,000 apiece to two companies. At the end of the program, two great companies were chosen by their peers, but to our disappointment, the investor was unable to honor a signed MOU committing to fund them.

Village Capital is an enterprise based on trust, and we made a mistake by not protecting our entrepreneurs. We are deeply sorry for what happened. In the future, we’ll ensure this never happens again by guaranteeing funds in advance of each program launch, either through an escrow account or letters-of-credit from banks. At the present, though, this situation has left two promising entrepreneurs in very difficult spots.

Lisa Warner’s enterprise, Fink Cards, enables families, schools, and organizations to increase their communication skills; she’s bootstrapped Fink to over £100,000 in revenue. Fiona Marshall has launched two e-commerce sites based on local economies: Not Mass Produced, which focuses on artisans, and Tastia, which focuses on local food. These entrepreneurs were lifted up by their peers because of their promise and potential, but have had to put their company development on hold until they can get the help they need.

We encourage you to take a look at these great entrepreneurs, especially if you’re interested in education, local economies, agriculture, or supporting strong social enterprises in the UK. As a start, we at Village Capital have dipped into our small nonprofit budget and committed £10,000 to the companies; we commit any funds we recover from the investor to the companies as well. In addition, we’re encouraged by how the London ecosystem has rallied: the Sarah Dodds Fund has committed £20,000 to the companies; the Hub-Westminster has committed accelerator services and free office space for a year; Indy Johar of the Hub-Westminster has committed £2,000 personally, and the original investor has also committed £2,000. Please get in touch with us if you want to get involved.

Our top priority, as always, is protecting our entrepreneurs. We have learned a difficult lesson from this experience, but our hope is that we can get Fink Cards and Not Mass Produced on their way to success, and continue to support world-changing entrepreneurs.

Sincerely,
Village Capital

What: Impact Investing in Action is a global marketplace designed to showcase 25 exceptional entrepreneurs from Central America, Mexico and Atlanta, and match these world-changing small businesses with investment opportunities. The goals of this gathering are two-fold:

1. Connect entrepreneurs with investors and deliver capital to the 25 outstanding entrepreneurs from Central America, Mexico, and Atlanta. Entrepreneurs from both Agora’s flagship Accelerator Program and Village Capital’s Atlanta cohort will be pitching to global impact investors.

2. Foster the development of the greater impact investment community, which seeks to generate financial returns while also creating social and environmental value. This includes attracting and educating new members of the early-stage impact investing community, and expanding the boundaries of the industry as it stands.

Who: The entrepreneurs of Agora’s Accelerator class will join VilCap’s Atlanta cohort to present their businesses to an audience from all sectors of the impact investing world, including investment funds, foundations, academia, and global development agencies.

When: May 22-25, 2012

Where: Goizueta Business School, Emory University – Atlanta, GA

Learn more at ImpactInvestinginAction.org

So many things about Atlanta make it ripe for an explosion of impact entrepreneurship: We are homebase for numerous major nonprofit organization and Fortune 500 companies; we are consistently ranked among the top entrepreneurial cities in the U.S.; and we are home to one of the most successful B Corporations (Better World Books). In addition, Atlanta gave birth to one of the most innovative and impactful impact investment firms (Gray Ghost Ventures), which in turn gave birth to one of the most innovative accelerators of impact ventures (Village Capital). Now that Village Capital is running its first Atlanta-based program, this catalyzing event should unlock all of the potential for Atlanta to become a major hub for impact entrepreneurship and investment.

- Peter Roberts, Goizeuta Business School Professor, Emory University

We’re thrilled to bring it home in 2012 with a Village Capital program in our hometown of Atlanta! Our enthusiasm is partly because we love and care about business development in the ATL, and also because, as a place where startups are cost-intensive and seed capital is rare, Atlanta is ripe for Village Capital style entrepreneur support.

We know that venture-backed companies generate 21% of U.S. GDP, and startups have created almost 100% of net job growth in the U.S. in the last decade. And we know that Atlanta, as a ‘hotbed of entrepreneurship’ , is a nexus for this growth. Georgia even led the nation in new business startups in 2010, with Atlanta tied for the second-most among the 15 biggest metro areas. However, despite this momentum, startups in Atlanta are not reaching their full potential to impact the city or the economy. The trouble comes from a lack of capital and a lack of entrepreneur preparedness. An astounding 40% of successful start-ups leave the city within three years!

Enter Village Capital: What if entrepreneurs could learn from, and invest in, one another? In partnership with the Hub-Atlanta, Social Enterprise at Goizueta Business School (Emory University), and InvestAtlanta (Atlanta’s Development Authority), Village Capital aims to provide a low-cost, effective method for building and investing in high-impact, high-job-growth enterprises by teaching participants to coach each other over the course of a program focused on making companies investable.

Beyond access to capital, all Village Capital participants gain education around investment preparedness from mentors and advisors, exposure to potential investors, and a strong network of peers for support and accountability on their entrepreneurial journey. And at the end, two peer-selected companies will have the opportunity for $50,000 in investment.

The program details: 16 enterprises will participate in a 10-week accelerator program, launching in April 2012. Program curriculum will focus on business model/financial literacy, customer validation, and preparation for investment. All sessions will take place at the Hub-Atlanta, an enterprise accelerator in Midtown; entrepreneurs will have a shared workspace for the program. For more information, contact Program Director James Watson, james@vilcap.com.

[sources: Atlanta Journal Constitution; Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity;  “Sustainable High-Tech Clusters in Georgia,” Dan Breznitz, 2010]

I’m Elma Paulauskaite, from Lithuania, finishing my studies in the U.S., and interning in Brazil! To crown my MA studies in International Development at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), I’m also taking part in the Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) program, developed in partnership with Village Capital. VilCap’s partner in Brazil – Artemisia Negócios Sociais – IS the field of impact investing in Brazil.. More about this organization here. For now, suffice it to say that VilCap Brazil is currently in stage 4 – portfolio management – of its signature process. FMS scout Hallie McCormick and myself are here to work and learn alongside of two very promising social enterprises and VilCap Brazil investees Saútil and QMágico, respectively.

QMágico, an edtech startup, is one of 10 social businesses currently being accelerated by Artemisia Negócios Sociais in a Village Capital-like peer-support and selection-process. This post as well as the remaining five months of my foray into the impact investing field in Brazil go out to them!

What? QMágico uses a SaaS Learning Management System (LMS) to flip YOUR classroom into a blended learning paradise. But, really, all edtech jargon aside, think a Brazil-grown Khan Academy-inspired online learning platform covering the national curriculum and complete with a suite of features for a personalized learning experience. Some sources of inspiration for QMágico and like-minded edtech businesses include the U.S.-based Education Elements, Knewton and Grockit. Like most successful businesses, QMágico has been observing its market, picking the top ideas of best practices observed, and weaving it into an innovative product offering and business model of its own. QMágico’s CEO Thiago – previously a founder of two educational NGOs – deliberately opted for a for-profit business model to go after more scalable impact.

Why? Because improvements in education – especially aimed at primary and secondary schooling – drive economic and social development. On the macro level, they promote sustainability of investment and drive innovation. Social development effects materialize in better overall public health, lower population growth rates, greater human rights and liberties, a safer society with less poverty and more equitable opportunities for its citizenry. Oh, the enthusiasm of us development kids.

How? Any a critical-thinking skills-equipped person would question the potential social impact for the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) of anything that relies on technology reserved for those who can afford it. Fair enough, not all Brazilian schoolchildren have access to computers and the Internet, actually far from it. To address the issue, Qmágico spares no effort to scout complementors in the education sector, be it NGOs, foundations or government entities, to help it deliver its product with the technology needed for its utilization to suit.

For an interesting source on applying learning management systems in the classroom, check out the Blend My Learning blog. And for anybody interested in finding out more about VilCap Brazil, do shoot me an email: elma@artemisia.org.br

@VilCap_Brazil

Greetings from Managua, Nicaragua, where I am housed with Agora Partnerships as a Frontier Market Scout for Village Capital. This week marks one month down here, though without a calendar I’d never know that; time is flying and things are still picking up.

A lot of people have asked me about the Frontier Market Scout program, so I wanted to clear up a few questions and share some details:

First, let it be known that applications for the summer session are open!

The summer session holds 2 options:

• The shorter program: a 1 week training and 2 month field program.
• The longer program: a 2 week training and 6 month field program.

Applications for both are due April 1, 2012 and training begins on May 29, 2012 in Monterey, CA at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. Click here for more information and to apply.

The Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) is a collaborative program, designed by Ross Baird at VilCap and Dr. Shi, Dean of the Graduate School of International Policy & Management (a program in the Monterey Institute of International Studies – or MIIS – a Graduate School of Middlebury College). FMS was originally intended to offer fieldwork opportunities to MIIS MBA students, and provide VilCap with reliable field scouts. Recently, they decided to open it up to non-MIIS peoples, of which I am one.

With a BA in Anthropology, and an MA in International Development, I have always been very keen on doing fieldwork. But at the same time, I’ve had a difficult time finding opportunities that I found compelling and relevant. For me, this is what I found with the Frontier Market Scouts. I’m proud to be supporting Village Capital and the FMS program as I believe they are providing an innovative solution to an economically inefficient process (early stage financing). Also, I support the strategy of utilizing partnerships and the existing knowledge to experiment with this potential part-solution, and I support entrepreneurship as a ground-up, community-defined strategy for development.

Finally, I have to mention the training program at MIIS: it’s stellar, and beyond anything else I encountered in my research of fieldwork opportunities. It was great to spend time with the 2012 spring scouts, and as an impact investing nerd, I was giddy with excitement about sharing a room with, and learning from, the likes of Sara Olsen of SVT Group; and Taryn Goodman, the Director of Impact Investment at RSF Social Finance. Also, Ross Baird, the ED of Village Capital walked us through a mock-VilCap-program in 3 days where we acted as the entrepreneurs giving pitches; Jason Fairbourne of Fairbourne Consulting shared his BoP market research strategies (with a focus on microfranchising); and Dean Shi kicked us off with an Intro to Business Modeling, which was really about the essential adaptability of the business model.

I’m happy to have a longer conversation with any interested candidates – feel free to shoot me an email at clare.seekins@gmail.com, and if I can’t address your questions, I can probably put you in touch with people who can. Follow my adventures at cjseeks.wordpress.com, or @cjseeks on twitter.

It’s been a busy spring in Village Capital world as we continue to create opportunities with world-changing entrepreneurs. Today, we’re excited to announce our new slate of programs arriving this spring – some in exciting new territories and one on very familiar turf.

To date, we’ve run ten programs worldwide, providing opportunity to 160 entrepreneurs, and this spring, our eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth partners will join the ranks.  Two of our new programs are the winners of our contest with ANDE and Potencia Ventures: Village Capital-GrowthAfrica in Nairobi, Village Capital+ ECSEL in China, while the third program is in our backyard in Atlanta.

The programs are:

1. Village Capital: Atlanta

In partnership with the Hub-Atlanta, Social Enterprise at Goizueta Business School (Emory University), and InvestAtlanta (Atlanta’s Development Authority), Village Capital will operate a ten-week program in Atlanta, starting April 9^th.  We’re looking for companies in the Atlanta area seeking a positive impact on the city and the world; target sectors include health, education, energy/sustainability, local agriculture, and civic engagement.

Companies will meet weekly at the Hub-Atlanta, and over ten weeks will have the chance to find customers, partners, and investors. At the end, two companies picked by their peers will have the opportunity for $50,000 in investment. We’re excited for the chance to build the entrepreneurial ecosystem in our home city!

The application is open now on vilcap.com; apply here by March 15^th.

If you don’t plan to apply, but want to see the Village Capital cohort in action, you have two chances on the calendar already:

• April 5: RSVP here for our Village Capital-Atlanta Launch at Manuel’s Tavern, and see Atlanta’s most promising enterprises pitch the city.

• May 23-25: Save the date for Impact Investing in Action —a unique collaboration with Agora Partnerships to showcase this year’s Agora Partnerships cohort and our Village Capital group of enterprises.

2. Village Capital/GrowthAfrica: Nairobi

For our first African expansion, Village Capital is excited to partner with GrowthAfrica, one of the two winners in our Village Capital/ANDE/Potencia global search. Founded by Johnni Kjeelsgard, an experienced angel investor in Nairobi, and Patricia Jumi, an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow, GrowthAfrica currently serves as an incubator for start-up companies. The VilCap cohort will meet in the GrowthHub in Nairobi, and GrowthVentures, a new impact investment fund in Nairobi, has committed 50% of the funding for the peer-selected ventures.

The program will recruit 12-16 companies from across Kenya for a cohort spanning June-October.  Village Capital: Nairobi is particularly interested in companies in the mobile/ICT and clean energy sectors.  The application will open later this spring on vilcap.com; stay tuned!

3. Village Capital-ECSEL: China

In April 2012, we’ll launch our first China program in partnership with ECSEL, China’s premier organization focused on entrepreneurship and impact.  One of two organizations selected in our Village Capital/ANDE/Potencia global search, ECSEL is part of a family of enterprises that are trailblazing social enterprise and impact investing in China.

Launched by the Schoenfeld Foundation, ECSEL is a fully-subsidized incubation program for entrepreneurs looking to build or expand a social business in greater China. Through the course of their yearlong, part-time program, participants receive two international training trip (one in the US, one in mainland China), customized mentorship, and investment opportunities. ECSEL has reached over 1,000 active entrepreneurs and recruited a cohort of 30 enterprises from across China for its 2012 fellowship.

This year, Village Capital will be a core component of the ECSEL Fellowship program, with each of the 30 Fellows competing for two investments of $50,000 each to be awarded this fall.

We’re kicking off the partnership on Friday, April 20th with a day-long mock “Village Capital” at the HUB Bay Area (SoMa). We’ve love for you to join us from 2:30-5:00 PM (RSVP here!), when the finalists for this 1-day event will be presenting their enterprises. There are some amazing things happening in social business in China, and ECSEL has brought the best of the best to your doorstep.

We’re incredibly excited about the world of impact investing this spring, and proud to be working with such incredible partners as we do our part.

# 10: The U.S. Heats Up

#9: A Gap in India Gets Closed

#8: Mobile Goes Mainstream

#7: #socent vs. #impinv

#6: Fears of Silicon Valley IPO Bubble Shifts Investor Focus Elsewhere

#5: The Evolution of Rockstars

#4: Brazil!

#3: The Growth of Donor-Advised Funds

#1 Trend in Impact Investing in 2012: Human Capital

This is the year that talent goes mainstream. The biggest weakness in the impact investing sector is the lack of career opportunities for talented professionals.  Young job-seekers, MBA graduates, and career-changers attend conferences, have informational interviews, and network as best as they can, but so few career paths exist that too often, they get discouraged and move on, taking their talents and skills with them. The few people who are lucky enough to be employed in the sector are incredibly talented, but the sector is only as good as the people working in it.

Fortunately, that’s changing, and in 2012 we see a major step forward. We see a few significant trends that are providing more opportunities for talented people to take advantage of the sector:

Human capital programs of current impact investment practitioners expanding.

We’re seeing major impact investment players finding ways to get talent involved.  LGT Venture Philanthropy’s iCatz fellowship is actively recruiting professionals for their portfolio companies, and after pilot success, now they’re placing iCatz Fellows with entrepreneurs worldwide.  The Acumen Fund’s highly-regarded Fellows program, once one of the only opportunities for professionals worldwide, has expanded significantly to encourage domestic human capital development in emerging markets with the new East Africa and Pakistan Fellows.  And the Gray Matters Charitable Foundation—part of the Gray Ghost family of enterprises—launched the IDEX Fellowship for Social Enterprise last year—a sort of “Peace Corps” for recent college graduates—to provide the earliest-stage social enterprise career opportunity.

Universities stepping up opportunities.

We’re seeing hands-on opportunities from universities, both undergraduate and MBA, stepping up as well.  The traditional model—university students provide pro-bono consulting to an enterprise—isn’t hands-on enough for students or useful enough for entrepreneurs to be successful.  That’s changing . Village Capital’s partner Frontier Markets Scouts at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, gives students six months of hands-on experience with enterprises.  Wharton and the University of Michigan, to name two, have launched venture funds that are student-run. And the recent $150 million gift to Stanford to launch a center for poverty alleviation is sure to provide great opportunities for Stanford students—and spark an arms race among other universities to compete.

Increased recruitment and outreach to entrepreneurs: “social entrepreneurs who have never heard of social enterprise.”

Funds worldwide complain about deal flow, saying there aren’t enough entrepreneurs to invest in.  That’s partially true, but that’s also the fault of the impact investing sector.  One rising trend we see is active outreach to people we identify as “social entrepreneurs who have never heard of social enterprise.”  Our partners in Brazil and Atlanta have done an excellent job recruiting mission-driven companies in areas where social enterprise and impact investing are terms rarely heard.  Our Brazil partners aggressively targeted the health, education, and financial services sectors looking for companies serving the poor, and found one of the strongest cohorts we’ve had.  Smart recruiting and outreach from investors brings in companies that have been doing good things all along, only they’ve never heard of us.

This is maybe as much of a hope as a prediction, but we see 2012 as the year that we realize that human capital is way more valuable than financial capital.

By Ross Baird. Photo credit Shermozle.

# 10: The U.S. Heats Up

#9: A Gap in India Gets Closed

#8: Mobile Goes Mainstream

#7: #socent vs. #impinv

#6: Fears of Silicon Valley IPO Bubble Shifts Investor Focus Elsewhere

#5: The Evolution of Rockstars

#4: Brazil!

#3: The Growth of Donor-Advised Funds

#2 Trend in Impact Investing 2012: Vertically-Integrated Organizations

Starting and building organizations is hard.  To make an impact investment really work, an organization needs smart sourcing/recruiting, strong training for the entrepreneurs, investment capital to put to work, seed/risk funding to give companies a go, growth-stage investment to let the idea fly, and exit opportunities for the investor.

To date, most organizations have been focused on different parts of the enterprise lifecycle.  Incubators such as Dasra and Villgro have historically worked with training early-stage organizations, large funds such as Acumen and Bamboo Finance have provided growth capital, seed/angel investors such as TONIIC and competitions such as Echoing Green have provided “first funding,” and the commercial market has taken primary responsibility for capital from the later-stage through the exit.  But practitioners are finding that starting and growing companies is difficult.  Where do we predict this trend going in 2012?

Later-stage funders getting involved in seed investment to drive core business development.

The problem in impact investing is not supply of capital, it’s demand for capital.  The Rockefeller Foundation, the primary driver of investor-related activity over the past five years (spearheading the GIIN, IRIS, GIIRS, and more), is shifting focus to the “demand side” of impact investing in 2012, realizing that a large number of investors have capital to put to work, but not enough opportunities.  Funds such as City Light Capital, Vox Capital, and RSF Social Finance, long early-and-growth stage investors, are making more seed-stage investments as strategic allocations of their portfolio.  (First Light Ventures, founding partner of Village Capital, also launched a seed fund with Shell Foundation in 2011, who previously had done later-stage capital deployment).  And the Unitus family of enterprises–who run one of the sector’s best-known vertically integrated organizations–has recently made its first investments through Unitus Labs, a new seed funding organization in India.

Incubators developing affiliated funds to get capital for their companies.

Incubators have done great work worldwide building companies, but then find that without risk capital, these companies can’t fly on their own.  So incubation organizations worldwide have started raising/launching their own funds, often with strategic partners.  CIIE, India’s premier clean tech incubator, recently launched the INFUSE Fund with BP; UnLtd in Mumbai has recently started making its own seed investments, GrowthHub in Nairobi is launching with GrowthAfrica, an affiliated fund, and ECSEL in China is launching a new seed fund for Chinese enterprises.  In the US, we see the same thing with partner Hub Ventures in the Bay Area.

More “clustering” and collaboration among similar players.

We wrote in this post about the ecosystem integration in Brazil, where incubators, funds, and intermediaries are highly networked; we expect to see more of this in 2012.  We saw this in our London program, where the Hub Westminster has coordinated an ecosystem that works in lock-step. We are seeing this even in Asheville, NC, where Kevin Jones is planning to launch a new fund focused on local/community development that leverages the universities in Asheville, the growing Hub-Asheville, and the larger Good Capital/SoCap network.  Local and regional “clustering” has to happen, because we have so few resources, and it is–but it’s increasingly happening with different initiatives under the umbrella of the same organization.

By Ross Baird. Photo credit Eugen Nosko.