Over $17M in Commitments and Additions to Senior Leadership Team Position Village Capital to Lead the Way in Reinventing VC

Nearly seven years ago, we started Village Capital with a goal of re-inventing how we solve the largest problems in society. Since our beginning, we have put the power over access to capital in the hands of entrepreneurs: our peer-selected investment process creates a more level playing field for founders everywhere, and by changing who gets a shot at solving society’s problems, we’re expecting better results.

Fast forward to today. We’ve supported more than 500 entrepreneurs across 40 programs in ten countries. What are the results?

• Different founders are getting a shot at solving problems. For example, 36% of VilCap’s investments are in female founders (double the rate of traditional seed investors, and triple the rate of traditional venture investors).
• When you change who’s at the table, you get improved results. A recent Emory University study showed that Village Capital’s female founders, despite raising about 80% as much capital as the average male entrepreneur, are growing their ventures 20% faster.
• We’re enabling more people in more communities to get their start. 78% of startup investment in the US, and 40% of startup investment in the world goes to just three US states. In contrast, four out of five VilCap portfolio companies are located in the rest of the world.
• The end result: better companies. Over 90% of the companies we have invested in are surviving and thriving, and our companies are growing revenue 3x faster and alumni of our programs are raising 8x more capital than a control group.

Creating this kind of transformative change doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve always prioritized investing for the long term, and investing in generational change includes building the best team possible. Village Capital has dozens of people around the world creating a world-class infrastructure for our companies, investors, and partners alike. As important to our staff is our world-class network of investors who share our long-term vision backing our new model for investing in entrepreneurs. Over the next decade, we will continue to deliver long-term returns, and make our team and networks even greater.

Today, we’re making two announcements that will help make this possible.

First, we’re thrilled to announce that VilCap Investments has reached a final close with $17.7 million in commitments. 29 investors have backed this fund, from Internet pioneers and philanthropists Jean and Steve Case, who played a role in bringing the Internet to everyone, to Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein, who helped people around the world use personal computers easily and are now working to make entrepreneurship accessible to under-represented founders; to entrepreneurs Jim Sorenson and Bob Pattillo, who have led the way in the emerging “impact investing” field — removing the distinction between what will make money and what’s good for society, aligning everyone’s incentives in the process. This has been made possible in large part by management company support from USAID’s U.S. Global Development Lab PACE Initiative, which recognizes that governments and the private sector can work together to solve society’s largest problems.

These investors all recognize that making entrepreneurship more open, democratic, and accessible to founders everywhere will deliver better results. It’s only with their support that we’re able to continue changing the playing field: the CrunchBase Women in Venture report recently recognized VilCap Investments for its leadership as a female-founded fund in an industry where only 8% of partners at venture capital funds are women.

We’re grateful to our investors who have placed a bet on the vision of Village Capital. Further to our desire to continue to build the best team possible, we’re excited to announce three new management team members who will play a key role in taking Village Capital to a whole new level:

• Allie Burns will join as Chief Operating Officer, and lead the day-to-day operations of Village Capital, effective in early July. For more than 16 years, Allie has been working with entrepreneurs and innovators in technology, philanthropy and at the intersection of entrepreneurship and social change. She joins us from DC-based venture firm Revolution, and the Case Foundation, where she’s served as SVP of Communications and has been an integral part of Jean and Steve Case’s pioneering work in the field of impact investing. We’ve been fortunate to work with Allie for several years through our great partnerships with the Case Foundation and Revolution, groundbreaking leaders in the future of entrepreneurship. Through this work, we’ve seen her leadership and operational instincts first-hand; we look forward to her taking the operational lead as we grow our work. Every entrepreneur who’s worked with Allie is glad she’s on their side, and we look forward to her backing hundreds more.
• Lewis Hower will join as the Chief Product Officer, and lead the growth of new strategic initiatives. Lewis joins Village Capital from Community Investment Management, where he served as Director of Investments and Operations; previously, Lewis was the founding Executive Director of the Sorenson Impact Center. Lewis has gained the trust and confidence of some of the world’s top investors and entrepreneurs through the way he has applied his razor-sharp financial mind to problems in society, combined with his tireless dedication to making sure that financial returns and what’s good for society are aligned. Lewis has been a leader over the past decade in accelerating the convergence between business and what matters in society, and has always been one of our closest collaborators; we’re thrilled to finally formally work with him.
• Marilyn Waite joins Village Capital to lead the firm’s energy practice. She has experience across four continents in venture investment, startups, renewable and nuclear energy at AREVA, economic development at the United Nations, and public policy. With an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge, Marilyn is a leader in helping people integrate energy sustainability into their daily life and is releasing a book, Sustainability at Work. As Village Capital tackles the most difficult sectors, we look to establish world-class practices that can source, train, and support the best entrepreneurs and Marilyn’s deep expertise gives us confidence in our ability to do just that.

And we’re not done building out our senior team. We are hiring a Director of Communications to lead strategic communications and the company’s public profile, as well as public outreach efforts to entrepreneurs and partners.

We’re grateful for all the partners who have been with us along the way, and if you’re reading this and intrigued about what’s next, email us at ross@vilcap.com or victoria@vilcapinvestments.com; we look forward to seeing how we can work together.

Best,

Ross Baird, CEO, Village Capital

Victoria Fram, Managing Director, VilCap Investments

ABOUT VILLAGE CAPITAL

Village Capital sources, trains and invests in seed-stage entrepreneurs with business solutions to major global problems. Village Capital recruits entrepreneurs solving specific problems in agriculture, energy, education, financial inclusion, and health, and then puts the power of investment in the hands of the entrepreneurs, who allocate investments to the two ventures ranked highest by their peers at the end of every program.

VilCap, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, supports early-stage ventures through training programs for founders, investors, and communities. Over the past seven years, the organization has supported over 500 companies in 15 countries; this year, Village Capital is working with 27 communities around the world to implement sector-focused, peer-reviewed investments in local entrepreneurs through its VilCap Communities initiative. To learn more, visit http://www.vilcap.com.

VilCap Investments is a for-profit investment fund that provides early-stage capital to entrepreneurs through a peer-review process. The fund has invested in 66 ventures to date with a focus on health, education, financial inclusion, energy, water, and sustainable agriculture. Recent investments include 1DocWay, a telepsychiatry network that was acquired in 2015 by Genoa; Student Loan Genius, which allows employers to help employees reduce student loans through a 401k benefit, and Simpa Networks, which enables families in emerging markets to own their own home solar energy systems through a unique pay-as-you-go model.