CarLotz, Need Supply founders launch schools startup

For about a decade after meeting at a business function, Michael Bor and Chris Bossola met for lunch periodically, swapping stories about their shared experiences in launching and scaling companies.

Their conversations eventually landed on what they say could transform funding for public schools nationwide.

The two have plenty of entrepreneurial experience. Bossola founded Richmond-based fashion retailer Need Supply Co., which also ran a robust online business and merged with Seattle-based apparel retailer Totokaelo in 2019. The businesses, run by Bossola’s holding company NSTO Corp., shuttered due to the pandemic.

In 2011, Bor co-founded CarLotz Inc., a Richmond-based used vehicle consignment retailer that was valued at $827 million when it went public in October 2020. CarLotz sold 9,748 vehicles in 2021 and completed a merger with San Francisco-based Shift Technologies Inc. in December 2022. 

Bor says CarLotz’s 2020 IPO was a major “wealth event” for the company and its investors. Within days of CarLotz going public, he received a donation request from his alma mater, Phillips Academy, a private prep school in Andover, Massachusetts. “I thought that was remarkably sophisticated of them to do that,” he says.

It also sparked an idea, which he discussed with Bossola over lunch. Bor wanted to create a for-profit startup aimed at helping American public schools set up audited, well-controlled endowments to fund everything from overtime for language immersion programs to ping pong tables for student clubs.

“I thought it was a great idea,” Bossola says. “I felt like it could have a major impact.”

The Endowment Project Inc. launched last year. It has raised $4.5 million in funding, Bor said, and he and Bossola are planning a 10-school pilot program in Virginia. They’re still considering candidates, Bor says, “and if we prove that this works … then we will scale it nationally.”

The Endowment Project will act as a vendor for the endowments and charge the endowments for fundraising and administrative services.

Karen Booth Adams, CEO of Richmond-area investment firm Hot Technology Holdings and an early investor in CarLotz, says she’s making a “significant investment” in The Endowment Project.

Booth Adams says she was impressed with how Bor communicated with CarLotz investors about “the good, the bad and the ugly every step of the way.”