| Have you felt something missing in your life? An unexplainable void? A lack of snark and wit tinged with the buzzwords one could only learn in the best-most-prestigious business schools? Let me right that ship, fix our holistic cadence, and value-add this long tail drip campaign with a quick win— rife with mission-critical millennial mindshare market-focused news. Your newsletter is back, Asheville. We took two weeks off to crush a successful Demo Day and prepare for new mentor onboarding for the Elevate program. I know you missed me, loyal newsletter readers. I’ve missed me too. I’m glad to have me back with you. Let’s schmooze. |
Micro Grant
Tired of feeling like this and want to feel like this? Last night, at Demo Day, we announced the opening of the Asheville Impact Micro Grant, a program that supports early stage startups with $5K grants.
Why early stage startups you may ask? Because in this stage, they are in a daily battle for survival. Much of the early stage needs aren’t necessarily expensive, but force founders to compromise, choosing between learning a new skill or hiring out, choosing between keeping manual labor or buying a machine, choosing between working in the business or working on the business.
What you do has far greater impact than what you say. Everyone says they support local startups, now we’re asking you to show how much. We’re asking you to do more.
In creating this grant, we are asking our community to step up and donate through our nonprofit, the Community Betterment Foundation, to pool donations and return those as grants to the community. There is only one level of giving: $200. This is a first-of-its-kind grant. It is totally community sourced and radically democratized. For every 25 donors, we’re funding a startup with a $5,000 grant.
Each of us doing a small part has a huge impact. You can donate as an individual, as a business, or both – it’s tax deductible.
The donation window is open now. Just go to ventureasheville.com/microgrant and submit your donation. We’ll have this open for about six weeks, pooling as many $200 donations as we can. Then we’ll have an open application, followed by selection from a diverse committee representing the Asheville startup ecosystem. The recipients will be announced at a private reception for the donors and winners in Mid-April. We’ll award as much money as we can raise. So get on it, donate now, and be part of the next great Asheville Startup Story.
| Demo Day Is there anything better than watching 15 entrepreneurs at the top of their game perform that voodoo that they do so well?! Oy vey, I’m verklempt with nachas, I could plotz! Since Elevate started, these startups have created around 100 jobs and raised nearly $9 million. The startups really knocked it out of the park last night. The 200+ attendees were rapt with attention while our Elevate startups gave updates, pitched their products, and announced open fundraising rounds. Here’s the four that are actively seeking funding:Elite HRV (also the #1 fastest growing startup at the Venture 15) opened their round at Demo Day seeking $1M.Ginger’s Revenge (the #2 fastest growing startup) announced seeking $1.03M over the next 2 years.Brightfield Transportation Services (the guys from the cover of Capital at Play) have an open $750K Convertible Note.WatchPitch is doing something really exciting– seeking $250K and a co-founder. So, an investor who is itching to get into the arena of entrepreneurship can jump on the team, become co-founder, and work alongside Trey. Super cool opportunity for the right person.These events just don’t happen on their own. The team at the Asheville Chamber worked the event, our pool of ~50 mentors helped prepare and scrub every pitch, and the Collider hosted us in their exceptional theater. One individual needs to be called out: Hannah Sizemore, our Operations Manager. We could not do Demo Day or Elevate without her. She is the coordinator of each mentoring session, each monthly mentor meeting, pulls our data for reporting together, and so much more. She was even pouring drinks and taking out the trash last night. No job is too big or too small, Hannah is the glue holding everything together here. Thank you, Hannah. Later Gator, Jeffrey |
