(2) Our second main workshop is “Angel Investing for Economic Development.” This session aims to tell more people about why angel investing is critical to local economic development efforts.
Why are we doing this workshop? VentureSouth’s primary goal is to make good investments and positive returns for investors. Our motto is “Make Money. Have Fun. Do Good” – in that order – for a reason. But we do believe in the “Do Good” part.
This is achieved in many ways, but an obvious one is that early stage entrepreneurial communities are of great value – and you can’t have one of those without people funding companies.
There are a lot of people in the Carolinas whose job is to promote economic development, from the Department of Commerce, to community foundations, to trade associations, to city council representatives. Many understand the importance of early-stage companies – though the headlines are always on the large manufacturing plant or the multinational company office opening.
Early stage capital providers don't do a great job of explaining the importance of both entrepreneurship and capital to these groups. When we’re introducing VentureSouth to a new audience, for example, we usually discuss job creation data. Did you know that all net new job growth in the US is from early stage companies? It’s true, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at our website. The chart below should, we hope, remedy that.
So, we welcome anyone with an interest in economic development, entrepreneurial vitality, job creation, wealth creation, and making the Carolinas even greater to come along to learn about a critical but overlooked way of doing that.