News & Insights

April has been quite a month in the stock market. It’s less easy to see into opaque private markets, but it’s also been quite a month in the angel investing markets in the Southeast. Here’s the Vicinity Ventures April 2025 recap to give you a peek into what we’ve been working on.Investments: Big venture capital funds are making major bets on AI startups. Reflecting that national trend, VentureSouth members also made two big AI bets in April, investing over $1.2M in two rounds for AI-related companies. We don’t “break the news” of our companies’ investment rounds, but you’ll likely read more about these rounds as they are announced. We’re excited to invest in companies doing real things with AI here in our backyard.AI, though, represented less than half of our investments this month. VentureSouth members and funds invested over $2.4M in six companies (two new and four follow-on rounds) in total – not a bad pace of deployment for an angel group! In addition, Boyd Cycling successfully closed its community funding round, raising $589,550 from individuals across its “Vicinity” to fund continued expansion.Returns: As many tourist VCs and one-shot angels have painfully learned since 2021, deploying capital is only the first step; getting it back again is much harder!That is why we are particularly pleased that the last few weeks also saw VentureSouth members receiving proceeds from three companies – a bridge loan paying out interest, a prior-exited company releasing extra funds from a transaction escrow, and, most excitingly, over $3M returned as a long-standing portfolio company was acquired. Again, you’ll be reading more when the deal is announced, but (for now anonymous) congratulations to the team on a successful culmination of a LOT of hard work.Deals & Diligence: As usual, regardless of capital deployed or exits secured, work continues on new investment ideas, with four companies competing in the screening meeting at the beginning of the month, and two finishing the diligence gauntlet.Since the VentureSouth + Vicinity partnership was announced in February, you can begin exploring a subset of these investments yourself. Sign up for free at www.vicinityventures.vc or www.vicinitycapital.com to see the public deals, and upgrade to VentureSouth membership to see the menu exclusively available to VentureSouth members.Portfolio: Notable news from the portfolio in April included:A major partnership announced between Gradient Health and the Rajpurkar Lab in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical SchoolBabylon Microfarms made it onto NBC when it covered the MSC World America’s maiden voyage (complete with two Microfarms)Baebies received FDA “breakthrough device” designation for the first point-of-care heparin monitoring assay.And more, including Darby adding a new CEO, Healthycell now being available on iHerb, and Atticus starting its new clinical trial for androgenic alopecia.If you prefer audio: David welcomed portfolio companies Gradient Health, Yuva, and Bublish onto the Venture in the South podcast. (Subscribe on Spotify or leave a review on Apple podcasts!)Meetings & Membership:We held angel investor meetings in Asheville, Greenville (twice!), Atlanta, Chattanooga, and online, and welcomed new members to our flock across the Southeast.We thanked our sponsors Insperity, Burr & Forman, and Rhodes Companies for their contributions to the VentureSouth angel investor community.Out & About:And we hit the road, of course! You might have seen Eric and Allen scrambling to meet Fran Tarkenton in Atlanta, Paul Newsom co-organizing the No Boundaries pitching competition in Aiken, or Charlie flying the flag in Ponte Vedra Beach with our Jacksonville angels.But not before getting out all the VentureSouth K-1s. K-1 Kudzu ran longer than we like, but all K-1s were out by April 15th. Now just waiting for my stragglers from non-VentureSouth investments, then I can file…Lastly, it’s hard to believe it, but April 2025 also saw the 10th anniversary of the first meeting of Lowcountry Angels, back in the misty distant past of April 2015. Time flies like a Mallard when you’re having fun.

By Aubrey ZoodsmaWhen you hear the term “venture capital” you may think about businesspeople in suits, focused on the bottom line and building profits left and right. You probably don’t think about an angel investment network that leverages its connections to better their local communities and create a greater impact than just a dollar sign. But that’s precisely what VentureSouth is doing, and it’s something I’ve gotten hands-on experience with during my internship.I had the opportunity to work on one of these community projects with Carolina Women+ in Tech, a group for women and non-binary individuals in STEM, tech, and entrepreneurship fields. This chapter is just starting out in Greenville, SC, and was looking for some support. VentureSouth co-founder Paul Clark met with the Greenville chapter president, Samantha Cooks, to discuss what kind of assistance they needed. Based on that conversation, he felt that I would be a good point of contact for them, as a woman in a tech-centric field, and he connected us.When I later met with Cooks to help connect her to college students in the area, she told me how helpful the meeting had been. “Coming into Greenville as a remote worker, I didn’t have many professional connections. Paul helped us connect with local professionals in the tech field and gave us advice on how to grow,” she said.Since then, Carolina Women+ in Tech has hosted events, grown a larger support network, and added new members to their board. And they can’t wait to keep growing! “The chapter curator and board are excited to create a community for individuals that embrace the role tech plays in their careers, businesses, and lives,” said Cooks.  This is a great example of how VentureSouth uses its network to support small businesses in our communities, not just startups looking for seed money. But their investment doesn’t only strengthen local communities and economies; by choosing to invest in these startups, more job opportunities in our communities are created—something very much needed in uncertain economic times like these. In fact, all new net jobs in the United States can be attributed to startups like the ones VentureSouth invests in.And with VentureSouth’s partnership with Vicinity Capital, a capital-raising company focused on connecting locals with investment opportunities in the area around them, their impact will be even greater. Now called Vicinity Ventures, the partnership will allow a broader selection of local investment opportunities for both amateurs and accredited investors across the southeast.

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