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StartVirginia: Heard Around Virginia August 2024

Blacksburg is moving forward with the renovation of a former dry-cleaning business into a retail business incubator. Slated to open by the end of 2025, the Blacksburg Retail Incubator is planned at 414 N. Main St., a 5,000-square-foot building owned by the town. After the building has been improved, Downtown Blacksburg Inc. will locate there and operate an incubator to house entrepreneurs seeking to create or expand a business providing products to the community. Officials hope to attract merchants that serve a new or underserved market. There will be room for events and receptions as well. (The Roanoke Times)

Arlington County’s CareJourney, a health care data and analytics company co-founded in 2014 by former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, has been acquired by Arcadia, a Boston health care data platform, according to a June 27 announcement. A spokesperson for Arcadia declined to provide financial terms of the deal. The merged company will have 400 employees. CareJourney derives analytics from Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and commercial claims data across more than 300 million beneficiaries and over 2 million providers nationwide. Its clients include payers, providers and employers. Chopra, who served as the nation’s first chief technology officer under President Barack Obama, is now Arcadia’s chief strategy officer. (VirginiaBusiness.com)

CAV Angels, an investment syndicate composed of University of Virginia alumni, students and friends, recently closed three funding deals to push its lifetime investments close to $26 million. The recent investments include MITO Material Solutions, an Indianapolis company that makes resin additives for manufacturing, New York City’s Ask Alex, which offers AI-powered data and marketing software that automates workflows for brick-and-mortar operators; and Richmond augmented reality company ARtGlass. Exact terms of the funding deals were not disclosed. All were group deals. (Richmond Inno)

Shenandoah Community Capital Fund is hosting its third annual Shenandoah Valley Entrepreneurship Summit Sept. 9-10 at James Madison University in Harrisonburg. With the theme “Learning by Doing,” the summit will offer several hands-on workshops as well as networking and relationship-building opportunities. Session topics will be led by expert entrepreneurs and business owners and will center around subjects such as marketing, finance, technology and business management. Tickets are $155 (or $80 for students) and include meals and admission to SCCF’s first Demo Day on night one. More information can be found at sccfva.org. (News release)

Torev Motors, a Crystal City startup vying to improve the motors that power electric vehicles, crossed the $1 million funding threshold in June. The 2-year-old company recently closed a $650,000 pre-seed funding round led by BetterWay Ventures, a Charleston, South Carolina-based venture capital firm that funds green tech startups. Houston investment firm EcoSphere Ventures, Los Angeles-based Climate Avengers and Alexandria investment firm Intbox Ventures also participated. Torev is in talks with several automakers about establishing pilot programs that its founders hope will lead to its hardware being tested out in passenger cars and, eventually, construction and military equipment. (DC Inno)

McLean fintech Verituity has raised $18.8 million to expand the customer base for its software, which helps verify financial transactions such as refunds and insurance claims. Sandbox Industries of Chicago and San Mateo, California-based Forgepoint Capital led the round. Washington, D.C.’s Ardent Venture Partners and Santa Monica’s MTech Capital also took part. Forgepoint and Ardent led Verituity’s $10 million Series A round in 2021. Started in 2020, Verituity’s business has skyrocketed from processing roughly $13 million in payouts in 2022 to over $2.6 billion in the past year, according to investor Forgepoint. Customers include financial giants such as BNY Mellon, Citizens Bank and Assurant. MasterCard inked a partnership with Verituity earlier this year. (DC Inno)

Briggman leaving post as CEO of Activation Capital

Chandra Briggman is leaving her position as president and CEO of Activation Capital, the Richmond tech incubator announced Monday. Her last day is Friday.

Briggman joined Activation Capital, an accelerator arm of the Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership Authority, in May 2020; the organization includes a biotech park, startup development and cluster accelerator for pharmaceutical research and manufacturing. During her time at Activation Capital, Briggman played significant roles in raising $31 million to build an innovation center in the Virginia Bio+Tech Park, launching the Alliance for Building Better Medicine, and winning a $53 million federal grant in the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, among other achievements.

According to Monday’s announcement, Briggman plans to “pursue new opportunities to build innovation ecosystems and drive economic development,” but her specific plans were not disclosed.

“At heart, I’m a builder, and what I do well, I have done,” Briggman said in a statement. “The opportunity to contribute to Activation Capital and the Central Virginia community has been a highlight of my career. It gave me an opportunity to sharpen the organization’s strategy, secure the growth capital necessary to flourish and align every action with a mission-centric outcome. Together, we built a team of experts who are focused on execution and excellence during the next phase of Activation Capital. My goal was always to create the team, prove our model and then transition to the next opportunity to build.”

The organization plans to launch a search for Briggman’s replacement, but in the meantime, Kipton Currier, vice president of operations, will lead day-to-day operations, and Activation Capital’s executive team will oversee key initiatives, a spokesperson said.

“Chandra Briggman’s pivotal time at Activation Capital has been defined by impact, and her impressive body of work has energized our region,” said Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao, also chairman of the Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership Authority Board. “In 2020, Chandra was recruited from Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts, to grow the economic impact of Activation Capital. In four years, two of which were at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped reenergize the organization with a new vision and strategy. Chandra executed a bold roadmap that has since grown our regional innovation economy and strengthened Activation Capital’s sustainability model for the future.”

Israeli defense giant launches Herndon aerospace accelerator

Herndon will soon have something in common with Tel Aviv — an aerospace accelerator and innovation center run by Israeli state-owned aerospace and defense company Israel Aerospace Industries, which helped design Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

IAI and IAI North America, its Herndon-based U.S. government contracting subsidiary, in cooperation with California- and Washington, D.C.-based Starburst Aerospace, a global startup accelerator and strategic advisory firm, are launching an accelerator and innovation center called IAI Catalyst.

IAI has an innovation center in Tel Aviv supporting Israeli startups. Starburst, which consults for NASA and NATO, has run similar programs in the United States and Europe, but this is the first time Starburst is partnering with IAI and IAI North America to run an accelerator. IAI has about 15,000 employees, about half of whom are engineers.

IAI Catalyst has recruited the first cohort of startups for its inaugural five-month accelerator program, supporting early-stage startups focused on sectors including artificial intelligence and autonomy; quantum science; sustainability and energy; and space tech.

Applications for the first cohort — one of two planned for the year — closed in March, and four to six participating companies are expected to be announced in April. The spring program is expected to start the same month, with a demo day planned for September. The Herndon accelerator is open to companies nationwide.

“Our job will be to open all the doors for the startups, not just with IAI, but everybody that they can provide value to,” says Noemie Alliel, Starburst’s managing director for Israel.

Over five months, the cohort will attend three in-person, weeklong gatherings; at the beginning, midway and during the final week, when the companies will pitch in front of stakeholders. The rest of the program will be virtual.

Each selected company receives a $100,000 investment in exchange for equity, and another $100,000 worth of in-kind benefits such as access to IAI and Starburst’s networks of clients and partners, mentoring from industry experts, access to technology and free office space.

Innovation is a key focus at IAI, which feels it’s important to stay relevant and competitive in the marketplace, Alliel says, which is why it wants to work with startups.

“It will be like win-win opportunities for both IAI and startups to work hand-in-hand,” she says.  

Getting off the ground

When Sid Pailla applied to join Richmond-based accelerator Lighthouse Labs in 2020, he had an idea, a product and early customers but, he acknowledges, “at the end of the day, we didn’t exactly have a business.”

Sunny Day Fund, Pailla’s Falls Church startup, offers an emergency savings platform to which employers contribute in an effort to help employees avoid dipping into retirement funds when they have no emergency savings. The idea “was very much something that was working, but not something that was going to be able to be scalable and something that could be a venture-backed business,” he says.

But over the course of 11 weeks Pailla spent with Lighthouse Labs, Sunny Day Fund began to shine.

“With Lighthouse Labs, what caught our attention was, here was a program that was truly intended to help founders kind of figure out what does it mean to be a venture-backed company and all the different stakeholders that are involved in that process, including early hires, including investors, channel partners and so on,” Pailla says. “So, for us, it was a very formative part of our journey.”

Lighthouse Labs helped Sunny Day Fund increase its revenue, make its second hire — an account executive — and attract private equity financing.

‘Founder-friendly’

That’s the business Lighthouse Labs and other incubators and accelerators are in: Helping entrepreneurs figure out the best way to do business.

“We consider ourselves founder-friendly,” says Art Espey, former interim managing director of Lighthouse Labs. “We really try to help founders understand how to work with investors so it’s a good deal for the investors and a good deal for the founders.”

Lighthouse Labs, which has named former Shenandoah Community Capital Executive Director Debbie Irwin as its permanent managing director, annually runs two cohorts, with about eight companies accepted each session. Startups receive $20,000 in equity-free funding, as well as mentoring, education, programming and networking opportunities. The accelerator is popular and competitive; about 250 companies applied for spots in Lighthouse Labs’ spring cohort.

Across the commonwealth, a host of accelerators and incubators are helping founders get startups off the ground and scale up with the help of mentors, financial institutions, investors and perks such as equity-free funding and free office space. (See related list of coworking spaces below story.)

The first and final week of Lighthouse Labs’ program are in person, with a demo day and investor dinner included, but the rest is virtual, with each week themed around specific topics, such as marketing or human resources.

Meg Pryde, CEO and founder of Richmond-based Brandefy, was part of a Lighthouse Labs cohort in 2018. As a University of Virginia Darden School of Business student, she created Brandefy, which allows customers to compare skin care product prices and ingredients, at U.Va.’s incubator, i.Lab.

The mentors and advisers she met through Lighthouse Labs are still valuable to her, Pryde says, and the funding helped her determine if her business model would work.

Brandefy has doubled its revenue from a year ago, Pryde says, and its mobile app has been downloaded more than half a million times.

Pryde is thankful, too, for the relation-ships with other entrepreneurs from her cohort, as well as investors she met through Lighthouse Labs and Startup Virginia. They’ve helped her raise more than $1 million in capital, helping Brandefy expand. 

Pailla also places a high value on the relationships he built at Lighthouse Labs. “The whole cohort mentality was incredible for us,” he says. “There’s a very strong camaraderie.”

‘Faster and smarter’

For the past four years, Pryde has been a member of Startup Virginia, an incubator based in Richmond.

Startup Virginia has incubated 80 companies, according to its 2022 impact report, supporting them through one-on-one guidance and assistance with investment preparedness, mentoring, corporate partnerships, leadership training and more. The incubator, says Executive Director Richard Wintsch, helps companies “grow faster and smarter than they would on their own.”

Unlike more specialized organizations that focus only on early or mid-stage startups, Startup Virginia works with entrepreneurs at different stages — from those who are just getting going to founders who have raised Series A and B rounds. 

It also offers a 9-week entrepreneurial certificate course and the 7-week Idea Factory course, which helps participants refine their products and services to connect with customer needs. Startup Virginia manages the VentureSouth Virginia angel group, which pairs investors and mentors with startups and early-stage companies. Since 2008, VentureSouth has invested $80 million in more than 100 companies.

In Hampton Roads, Norfolk-based 757 Accelerate is a major player in the startup ecosystem. It has a similar mission to Lighthouse Labs and Startup Virginia, offering an annual 12-week session for between five and nine companies. 757 Accelerate receives 160 to 180 applications for those spots each year.

Applicants answer questions about their companies’ stages and personalities: Are they innovative and disruptive? Are they seeking equity investors or angel funders? How fast are they growing? Are they based in Virginia or willing to move here? To get a coveted space in the cohort, founders have to answer a lot of questions.

“We focus very much on investor readiness,” 757 Accelerate Executive Director Eileen Brewer says. “We are looking for startups [that] have customers and revenue and are ready to grow and need angel investing to support rapid growth.”

The accelerator gives cohort members $20,000 in undiluted funding, in addition to mentoring and programming. While some accelerators are focused on certain industries like health care or tech, 757 Accelerate is industry-agnostic — although most of its cohort members are tech companies such as Flying Ship, which makes aerial drones designed to fly over water, or makers of consumer products such as Mocktail Club, a line of nonalcoholic cocktails.

One benefit 757 Accelerate offers is the “investor road show,” allowing founders to pitch to angel investor groups in person, taking buses to Tysons, Charlottesville and Raleigh, North Carolina, to get face time with investors.

Aligned with 757 Accelerate is 757 Startup Studios, an incubator, and 757 Angels, which connects investors with founders. 757 Angels also works with VentureSouth. All three operate under the umbrella of 757 Collab, which has deployed $105 million in capital, helped 190 startups since its 2015 launch and worked across industries between the three organizations.

Norfolk-based 757 Startup Studios helps early-stage founders with their business journeys. Selected through an application process, entrepreneurs develop business ideas and customer discovery, with the entrepreneurship hub providing mentorship, programming, coworking space and free Wi-Fi. 757 Startup Studios provides rent-free space for up to 12 months to about 30 startup founders simultaneously.

‘The nucleus’ of innovation

In Roanoke, the Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program, or RAMP, serves startups across the Roanoke and New River valleys. Traditionally, that part of Virginia hasn’t had as many resources for entrepreneurs, but John Hagy, RAMP’s executive director, notes that his organization is helping change that. “We view RAMP as the nucleus of Southwest Virginia’s innovation and startup economy.”

Each year, RAMP welcomes two cohorts of five companies each for its 12-week RAMP-in-Residence program. About 15 to 20 companies apply for five spaces, Hagy notes, a comfortable number that provides a sizable peer group for cohort members but doesn’t overtax RAMP’s network of mentors and other participants.

Hagy sees RAMP as a critical layer of being able to take companies from ideation through growth stages, fundraising, private capital and post-acceleration.

Since its founding in 2017, RAMP has assisted 48 companies, which receive $20,000 each in non-equity funding, mentoring, free office space and other perks.

Like other startup boosters, RAMP has three primary functions: programming, mentoring and networking. Hagy, who started in January, says RAMP’s goal is to provide a full linear path, from having the idea to fundraising, growing and successfully accomplishing a mission.

One of RAMP’s programs, the pre-accelerator On RAMP, supports early-stage tech, health and life sciences companies. At the other end of the spectrum is Exit RAMP, an alumni program that includes meetings with venture capitalists and other investors, pitch polishing workshops and further coaching.

Virginia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is growing and evolving. Friendly competition exists among accelerators, incubators and other hubs — but they’re also collegial, working together to raise Virginia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to new heights.

“Our reason for being here is to help startups to be successful, to help grow the economy, to help the private sector in the region grow and create jobs and entice people to move to the region,” says 757 Accelerate’s Brewer. “So, there is no animosity about someone getting into someone else’s program. It’s really a very friendly ecosystem. We’re supportive of each other.”

U.Va. biolab seeks to catalyze region’s growth

Thomas Barker says his seed-stage startup wants to find “modern, modular, functional lab space” to allow the company he co-founded, Vasarya Therapeutics, to be “very efficient and optimal on our research enterprise.”

But good lab space is hard to come by in Charlottesville, and what exists is spread around, “so you don’t necessarily get the impact of having other startup and tech companies in your space being in close proximity,” adds Barker, who is also Vasarya’s chief scientific officer.

CvilleBioHub hopes to address those problems by creating CvilleBioLab, an accelerator where early-stage companies can spend a year or two performing research while also being mentored by business leaders and advisers who can help “de-risk” the startup process, including navigating issues like intellectual property protection, says Nikki Hastings, executive director and co-founder of the nonprofit. Founded in 2016, CvilleBioHub advocates for and works to build the area’s biotech community.

In March, the organization received a $100,000 GO Virginia grant to support planning for CvilleBioLab. While there’s no timeline for site selection, CvilleBioHub’s real estate partner, Rockville, Maryland-based Scheer Partners, is searching for an existing building to convert. “Ideally, we’d like 15,000 to 20,000 square feet, although we could get started with 5,000,” Hastings says.

Depending on the size, Hastings, the biotech track director at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, estimates spending around $3 million for infrastructure and equipment, with operating costs for staffing, maintenance, and overhead running between $500,000 and $1 million annually. Funding is still being determined, Hastings says.

The facility will include a wet lab and equipment including refrigerators, ultra-low-temperature freezers for DNA samples and other biological material, incubators, cell culture and DNA analysis tools, and basic lab equipment like microscopes.

The lab’s buildout is expected to take about a year. Companies will apply for a spot, with six to eight startups sharing the facility, though Hastings says CvilleBioHub will use part of the planning grant to “more definitively” determine programming during the summer. A lab director and entrepreneur advisory team will support occupants.

Charlottesville-area researchers who want to spin their work into a startup would benefit from having a formal incubator, says Renna Nouwairi, a Ph.D. candidate in bioanalytical chemistry at U.Va. “It would be a shame for our city and local economy to miss out on opportunities because a startup-friendly infrastructure is not in place.”

757 Collab announces promotions

After announcing a new managing director in April, 757 Collab announced more leadership changes and promotions to its umbrella organization May 3.

Hunter Walsh, previously a program manager for 757 Startup Studios, a coworking space in Norfolk where selected entrepreneurs can set up offices at no cost and receive mentoring, became its director on May 1.

Eileen Brewer, previously 757 Collab’s director of strategic partnerships, is succeeding Evans McMillion as executive director of 757 Accelerate. McMillion stepped down April 30 and Brewer began her new role May 1.

Walsh has more than a decade of leadership experience in the private and nonprofit sectors. Before joining 757 Startup Studios, he worked for the Hampton Roads Chamber and Cullipher Farm. He earned his undergraduate degree at James Madison University and his MBA from Virginia Wesleyan University.

Eileen Brewer
Courtesy 757 Collab

Brewer has worked for multiple tech companies in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years. From 2011 until 2019, she worked for Symantec Corp., a California-based software company now known as Gen Digital Inc. In 2015, she was a member of the Golden Seeds angel investing group. Before she joined 757 Collab, she built the first tech startup accelerator in Iraq, according to a news release announcing her promotion.

Paul Nolde, executive managing director of Lighthouse Labs in Richmond, will become managing director of 757 Collab and executive director of 757 Angels on May 30. Monique Adams, current executive director of 757 Angels and managing director of 757 Collab, will step down when Nolde starts work.

757 Angels launched in 2015 and has invested more than $100 million in 49 companies. About 90% of 757 Angels’ member investors hail from Hampton Roads, and all the companies 757 Angels invests in are either Virginia-based or have significant operations in Virginia. 757 Collab includes 757 Angels, 757 Accelerate, a startup accelerator program, and 757 Startup Studios. 757 Collab oversees 757 Angels, as well as 757 Accelerate.

Ready for launch

Virginia’s version of the business accelerator doesn’t always rely on the traditional model of sponsorship by angel investors who provide capital for startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity.

Here in the commonwealth, “it’s more founder-focused,” and accelerators are often run by nonprofit organizations, says Conaway Haskins, vice president for entrepreneurial ecosystems at Richmond-based Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp., a state government-related nonprofit that supports economic development-oriented Virginia-based startups through early-stage seed funding and other efforts. “There’s not as close a tie-in to investors.”

The reason for that may be that Virginia innovators who were involved with typical Silicon Valley-style accelerators had mixed experiences, Haskins says. These accelerators generally provide funding in exchange for equity in the company.

The Virginia approach, he says, generally allows startups to go through the intensive accelerator process “without investment being so much of a carrot.”

For the 12-month period ending June 30, 2022, VIPC provided about $960,000 in grants to support programming and operations at about a dozen accelerators, incubators and innovation hubs around Virginia. (Formerly known as the Center for Innovative Technology, VIPC also offers direct support for select startups through its commercialization and investment divisions.)

The accelerator experience can be intense for entrepreneurs, filled with scheduled classes, mentoring and peer-review sessions, with programs often running as long as 12 weeks.

Small business owners sometimes graduate from business accelerators to incubators, which typically provide long-term assistance, including office space. Some organizations, such as 757 Collab in Norfolk, run both accelerators and incubators or hybrid programs.

While accelerators and incubators are often associated with high-tech startups, their Virginia counterparts often offer programs tailored for a wider variety of industries, though some may target a particular sector that needs development assistance locally or statewide, Haskins says. 

‘Mom-and-pop businesses’

That type of industry-focused approach is on display at Capital One Financial Corp.’s Richmond-based Grow@1717 accelerator program, located within the bank’s Michael Wassmer Innovation Center in the city’s Shockoe Bottom area. The nonprofit accelerator meets the needs of “Main Street, mom-and-pop businesses,” says Toria Edmonds-Howell, the center’s community engagement manager. 

Grow@1717 launched as a pilot accelerator program in 2019. Two years later, the accelerator hosted a cohort of minority restaurant owners. In 2022, it focused on home-based child care providers, selected and funded in partnership with ChildSavers, a Richmond nonprofit that provides children’s mental health services and child care resources. Grow@1717 also has partnered with other organizations, including Lighthouse Labs, an equity-free, early-stage startup accelerator also based in Richmond.

“Child care is a hot topic coming off the pandemic,” says Edmonds-Howell. “When we wrapped up with the restaurant owners, there was an article [published about it] with a picture of an owner in her restaurant with her baby on her hip. That was an ‘aha’ moment for us.”

The child care program finished in November, with each of its seven participants receiving a $5,000 grant. To date, 19 small businesses have graduated from Grow@1717, and the accelerator has invested $145,000 in local small businesses and nonprofits.

DeShonda Jennings, owner of DJ Shining Stars Preschool in Chesterfield County, appreciates what she’s learned from Grow@1717’s free accelerator. She used the $5,000 grant her business received to make improvements to her facilities. “They taught us how to work on our business, not just in our business,” she says.

Grow@1717 plans to host another cohort this fall, but hasn’t decided on its focus, says Edmonds-Howell. “If it’s like in the past, there will be an ‘aha’ moment.”

About a 90-minute drive south from Richmond in Norfolk, 757 Accelerate also works on a focused model, seeking to aid “underrepresented founders,” explains Executive Director Evans McMillion. “We’re trying to remove barriers — not just financial barriers — for women, people of color and military veterans.”

757 Accelerate is part of 757 Collab, a nonprofit innovation network that also supports startups through its 757 Angels investment arm and its 757 Startup Studios incubator program. Participation in all 757 Collab programs is free.

Since 2018, 757 Accelerate has hosted five cohorts, with participants from 32 companies that have created more than 450 jobs. Accelerator participants receive $20,000 in seed capital without having to relinquish equity.

Following 12 weeks of training in a variety of topics, ranging from legal issues to marketing, investment pitches and more, each accelerator session concludes with an investor roadshow. Founders travel by bus along the mid-Atlantic to pitch their business ideas to angel investors. “It’s very competitive,” McMillion says.

Meanwhile, 757 Collab’s incubator counterpart, Startup Studios, has helped more than 70 early-stage entrepreneurs since its 2021 establishment in downtown Norfolk. Participating founders receive six months of free office rent, vendor discounts and access to mentors as well as programming on topics like those offered through 757 Accelerate, says Startup Studios Program Manager Hunter Walsh.

Mach speed

Initially, Mach37 in Tysons looked a lot like a tech-focused Silicon Valley-style accelerator, but its scope has expanded.

Created in 2013 with state funding as a division of the Center for Innovative Technology, which in 2021 rebranded as VIPC, Mach37 is now owned and operated by VentureScope, a Tysons-based consulting and venture investment company. Mach37’s name refers to “escape velocity,” the minimum velocity needed to escape earth’s gravitational field, mirroring the notion of what it takes for a small business to launch successfully. 

Mach37 was created with a goal “to grow the next generation of cybersecurity [companies],” says Mach37 Executive Director and CEO Jason Chen, who’s also VentureScope’s CEO. And Mach37 has launched more than 70 cybersecurity companies, Chen says, but now, “we’ve opened the aperture,” and have expanded the accelerator’s scope to a more diverse range of tech companies, with more emphasis on artificial intelligence.

Jennifer Addie, Mach37’s chief operating officer and strategy director, says the accelerator has been looking “at what’s going to be on the horizon in space, satellites, deep fakes — things where they wouldn’t think of themselves as a cybersecurity company.”

The accelerator’s 90-day program emphasizes validating product ideas and developing relationships that produce an early customer base and investment capital. “Workshops are meant to fill gaps in skill sets or answer business model questions or develop solutions,” Chen says. “The answers are in the market. We want to give them time to go into the market.”

Mach37 does not charge cash to participate but has an equity fee, which is typical of the venture capital model.

Virtual acceleration

Many business accelerators and incubators are based in large cities, but Haskins notes that the pandemic has expanded the field. With virtual programming proliferating, organizations are increasingly able to reach startups in rural and remote areas, but local organizations also are being proactive by building entrepreneurial ecosystems in small towns and rural localities.

For instance, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund in Staunton offers Startup Shenandoah Valley (S2V), which aids entrepreneurs in the valley region from Winchester to Buena Vista. It’s a largely virtual accelerator but includes some in-person meetups and leadership coaching sessions, says Katie Overfield-Zook, entrepreneurial ecosystem builder for SCCF.

SCCF also has an incubator program in the works, which will be piloted in the second half of this year, says Anika Horn, the fund’s director of marketing and ecosystem building.

Since SCCF launched S2V in 2021, it has had five cohorts, with 40 business owners. Businesses have ranged from a cybersecurity business to a candle manufacturer to a plastic refabrication enterprise. There is a $1,000 fee. Participants work with coaches, mentors and peers.

“Peer-to-peer support is a lot of times their favorite part,” Overfield-Zook adds. “These are other people who have been in the trenches.”

In Abingdon, Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator offers a physical site with 40 rentable office spaces, manufacturing pods, training and conference rooms, says Executive Director Cathy Lowe. About 30 of those spaces are rented by startups, transitioning companies and organizations with a tech focus. Current tenants include a microscope sales and service company, a book publisher, a financial advising group and a Virginia Highlands Community College welding class.

VHSBI also covers a lot of territory through its free Noon Knowledge training video series, which it posts to YouTube. Marketing and accounting trainings are especially popular.

“Social media has changed since 2014, so we have to keep updating classes,” Lowe says. “We keep evolving. If someone has a need, we do it.”  

Chart Updated March 17

Center aims to grow manufacturing

In 2015, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville was attracting manufacturers at a faster pace than it could handle.

The IALR was providing work-ready incubation space where companies could launch their businesses while waiting to build, upgrade or occupy facilities while also helping build a pipeline of workers with the advanced manufacturing skills they’d need. “The institute hosted about eight companies and was filling space as fast as available. It was providing a real growth spurt in the area,” says Linda Green, IALR’s vice president for economic development.

Among those companies was Kyocera SGS Tech Hub, a manufacturer of custom cutting tools such as industrial drills. It hired students who’d gone through the IALR capstone training program, built a network of suppliers in the region, and completed ISO (Internal Organization for Standardization) certification before opening a manufacturing and research hub in Danville’s Cyber Park in 2018.

Kyocera and other manufacturers kept saying what a huge difference IALR’s help made, and IALR’s board and the Danville Regional Foundation decided to do more, Green says. They asked manufacturers what their needs are and what other offerings would be beneficial. They also studied what other places were doing.

The result is the $28.8 million Center for Advanced Manufacturing, which opened Oct. 5 on IALR’s campus. The 51,250-square-foot building provides manufacturing companies looking to move to or expand in the region with space to collaborate and enhance processes, improve quality, and integrate emerging technology and research capabilities. It also has an ISO-certified inspection lab to validate product quality, which can help reduce a new company’s startup phase by eight to 10 months.

“Think of things like additive manufacturing or 3D printing — it’s still relatively new technology that hasn’t been implemented widely. How do companies take advantage of it? That’s a gap the center will fill,” says IALR President Telly Tucker.

The CMA hopes to attract up to 20 new businesses to the region over 10 years, aiming for the creation of 3,600 to 4,200 jobs. The U.S. Navy has already announced it will launch its Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) within the center.

“By providing manufacturers with everything they need to launch and grow, the center will be an important economic development tool. It will grow the portfolio of companies that decide to call our community home, and provide new job opportunities for our citizens,” says Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones.  

AWS boosts women-led startups

Nessle co-founder and CEO Carly Buxton and her chief technology officer have passed up salaries and dipped into their savings to keep the Richmond-based tech business running since its 2019 launch.

The Nessle platform connects new parents with real-time tailored support. To keep Nessle running, Buxton applied for grants and participated in two previous accelerators. Now, she hopes that Nessle’s inclusion in Amazon Web Services’ Impact Accelerator for Women Founders will provide the startup with a needed boost.

Nessle and Alexandria-based Cleare, which started out developing software to consolidate state and local daycare compliance regulations into an interactive dashboard, were among 25 women-led startups announced in September that won spots in the AWS accelerator’s second cohort. More than 1,200 companies applied. The accelerator’s first cohort, announced in June, focused on Black founders; the third cohort, for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs, will be announced in early 2023.

For the second cohort, companies had to be more than 51% women-led, with a CEO and CTO. They must also have a launched or fully developed product, be fewer than 5 years old and have raised no more than $500,000 from investors. Participants receive $125,000 cash and $100,000 in credits for AWS’ cloud computing platform.

The accelerator began Oct. 3 in Seattle with a week of training for CEOs and CTOs on topics including customer growth, product road mapping and storytelling.

It culminates in an investor pitch event Dec. 9 in San Francisco. In between, the cohort participated in remote workshops two to three times a week for up to six hours. Businesses also heard from investors and successful company founders and were matched with technical and business mentors. They also can book time with other experts.

Through the accelerator, Buxton has been able to work on upping Nessle’s game in cybersecurity, branding and social media, and pitching to investors. “We’re [also] really exploring … trying to develop a partnership playbook and what that looks like for us,” Buxton says. 

Cleare co-founder and CEO Tisia X.V. Saffold started her company with the goal of expanding the platform to assist other industries beyond child care. AWS’ accelerator has allowed Cleare to test and build its product. Saffold says it also sharpened her thinking about her customers, their behaviors and her go-to-market strategies.

“It really has just given us a lot of cushion to be able to spread our wings,” Saffold says

Zebox opens U.S. incubator in Arlington

ElectroTempo Inc. CEO and co-founder Ann Xu wants her company’s software to reach 70% of the United States by 2027.

Founded in 2020, Electro Tempo provides analytics and tools to help vehicle fleets, utilities and governments optimize the size and location of electric vehicle-charging infrastructure.

The company took a step toward accomplishing its goal by moving from Herndon into Arlington-based Zebox America, a technology startup incubator and accelerator that launched in late April.

ElectroTempo is one of three startups that have moved into the Zebox accelerator. With room for as many as 20 companies, the incubator also is intended as a space to bring participants together, says Zebox Vice President Charley Dehoney.

Founded in 2018 by Rodolphe Saadé, chairman and CEO of shipping giant CMA CGM Group, which has its U.S. headquarters in Norfolk, Zebox focuses on startups offering solutions for its corporate sponsors, which include the Port of Virginia and major logistics and transportation companies like founding sponsor CMA CGM. Zebox incubators in France and the Caribbean have supported more than 80 companies so far, Dehoney says.

Zebox America is working with 32 startups, a majority of which are remote. Five are Virginia-based.

“We’ve now identified more than 65 problem statements that our corporate partners share,” Dehoney says. “Some of these problems may take two startups to solve. We’ll keep adding them until all of the issues in the supply chain go away.”

Startups don’t have to be focused directly on logistics, transportation or the supply chain, though. Zebox also is concentrating on supporting businesses working on problems that the industries have in common, such as cybersecurity. “Everybody in supply chain and logistics is worried about cybersecurity because there’s so much shared data in the supply chain,” Dehoney says.

While Zebox considered tech hubs such as Boston and San Francisco as sites for the incubator, Zebox chose Arlington because of its proximity to Norfolk. Additional draws included Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2, Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus and 5G “smart city” infrastructure plans for Arlington.

Zebox’s goal is to add 150 jobs to Virginia, Dehoney says. The incubator represents a $4 million investment.

Being part of Zebox has already paid off for ElectroTempo, Xu says. Corporate sponsors have asked her for presentations, she says, realizing the value ElectroTempo might bring. “We are attacking a real-world issue,” she says, “a pain point that’s out there.”