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)
Shenandoah Community Capital Fund is hosting a national entrepreneurship organization’s summit in Harrisonburg, marking the first time the bi-annual event has convened in a rural area like the Shenandoah Valley, says Anika Horn, who directs SCCF’s entrepreneurial ecosystem-building efforts. The Startup Champions Network (SCN) Spring Summit runs April 30 through May 2.
Staunton-based SCCF applied to host the conference in October 2023 and got the nod in December.
Horn expects roughly 100 entrepreneurs and supporters, lenders and ecosystem builders from all over the United States. Previously, the conference, which was held in cities like Phoenix and Washington, D.C., has drawn about 80 to 120 attendees. “We are on par right now with our big counterparts,” she says.
The location choice demonstrates how well the Shenandoah Valley’s entrepreneurial culture has developed, says Peirce Macgill, Harrisonburg’s deputy director of economic development: “They’re saying, ‘Let’s go there and learn what they’re doing.’”
Macgill wants to show off efforts such as B-Cubed, a minority-oriented, business growth program funded through grants and private donations, and Launch Harrisonburg, a 10-week class helping entrepreneurs test an idea’s viability before jumping into business.
Conference participants often form lasting relationships, says Chris Cain, chief lending officer at Peoples Advantage Federal Credit Union in Petersburg. Cain, who has forged several professional ties through the SCN summit, met Horn at the 2007 conference in Fargo, North Dakota. She’s still in touch with panel members from across the nation whom she met at past SCN conferences, including a tech investor and other entrepreneurial advocates. “Some of my closest professional relationships have been made through SCN,” she says.
Along with participating in panel discussions, interactive workshops and taking deep dives into problems like access to capital, attendees will go on an “innovation” tour, Horn says, visiting entrepreneurs in Harrisonburg, Waynesboro and Staunton. They’ll call on Virginia Metalcrafters and Commonwealth Crush, a wine incubator for independent growers lacking on-site winemaking equipment. They’ll also check out the Manufactory Collective in Harrisonburg, a new incubator focused on manufacturing startups.
Horn wants conference visitors to experience the valley like a local, she says: “We are hosting dinners with locals, inviting community members to dine with conference attendees in Staunton’s community spaces … [with catering] by local restaurants. We really believe in breaking bread with our participants and building relationships through these types of ‘collisions’ [of ideas and collaboration] we’re creating.”
Debbie Irwin, the former director of the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund, will be the next managing director of Lighthouse Labs, the Richmond accelerator announced Friday. She begins her new role Feb. 26.
Irwin is leaving her role at SCCF, another entrepreneurial support organization based in Staunton, where she served for six years, first as director of education and marketing and then as executive director. Before that, she was director of programs and special events for the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce, according to her LinkedIn page.
At SCCF, Irwin grew the organization’s budget by 10 times and grew its staff to 14, managed small business development efforts and won three major state/federal grants and oversaw its lending portfolio, according to a news release from Lighthouse Labs.
Irwin also founded The Manufactory Collective, a manufacturing-focused coworking and support space in Harrisonburg, and serves on the City of Staunton and Stafford County Joint Industrial Development Authority, which supports the Virginia Municipal League and Virginia Association of Counties municipal programs.
“As Lighthouse Labs focuses on the next 10 years, I’m pleased to have an opportunity to build on past work,” Irwin said in a statement. “Lighthouse’s strong record of accelerating dynamic — and successful — startups while investing in the lives of founders has set the organization up for continued growth.”
Art Espey stepped in to lead Lighthouse Labs last April, after Paul Nolde departed to become managing director of Norfolk-based 757 Angels and 757 Collab. Espey will continue to serve on Lighthouse Labs’ board of directors.
“Debbie brings a wealth of experience in strategic planning and fundraising, both critical to Lighthouse Labs as we progress into our second decade,” Joe Whitchurch, president of the Lighthouse Labs Board of Directors, said in a statement. “Her understanding of founder needs, deep connections across Virginia and growth mindset are skills that impressed the hiring committee. We look forward to welcoming her to the Lighthouse Labs team.”
Lighthouse Labs is an accelerator supporting founders and startups. It has accelerated 119 companies and invested more than $2.2 million since its founding in 2012. Its 11-week program provides founders with support from mentors, industry experts, investors, free office space and $20,000 in equity-free funding. The accelerator announced its spring cohort of eight startups this week.
Debbie Irwin, executive director of the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund, an entrepreneurial support organization based in Staunton, is leaving her role in March, the organization announced Tuesday.
SCCF’s board of directors will begin a national search for her replacement. When Irwin leaves, Ryan Hall, director of growth and revenue, will take over the responsibilities of the executive director.
“It has been an immense pleasure to serve as the executive director of SCCF,” Irwin said in a statement. “I’m so thankful for all the partners, board members, staff and community members who have believed and supported me as we have continued to build the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Shenandoah Valley. I’m extremely confident that the SCCF team will continue to drive the organization forward. Their big thinking, passion for entrepreneurship, and dedication to the Shenandoah Valley will keep SCCF thriving.”
Irwin joined SCCF in October 2017, and under her leadership, the organization invested more than $4 million in state and federal funds into the region and created partnerships within the Shenandoah Valley’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“We are deeply grateful to Debbie for her outstanding contributions and unwavering commitment to the mission of SCCF,” John Gillies, president of the SCCF board, said in a statement. “Her leadership has been instrumental in driving positive change and creating opportunities for economic growth and prosperity in our region.”
Irwin wrote in a LinkedIn post Tuesday that she is excited “to embrace a new opportunity that aligns with my personal and professional goals,” but didn’t name her next step.
SCCF is a Staunton-based nonprofit entrepreneurial support organization that offers startup and small business loans and helps entrepreneurs develop business plans and skills.
UPDATE: Irwin named new managing director of Richmond’s Lighthouse Labs
Talk to those on the front lines of startups — entrepreneurs, investors and those running incubators and accelerators — and one word comes up over and over: pivot.
If an entrepreneur isn’t able or willing to be flexible, chances are poor their business will succeed.
“Those unduly connected to what they started with must understand and address the need to pivot,” says Josh Green, director of the Fairfax-based nonprofit Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP), funded by the Virginia Small Business Development Center. “Otherwise,” he says, “they become a statistic.”
According to a 2021 survey by CB Insights, which tracks business analytics, a lack of need in the market kills off 35% of startups. That’s a failure factor exceeded only by the 38% of startups that ran out of cash or failed to raise new capital.
“You may have a great idea, but you can’t move forward without knowing if anyone will buy it. A startup’s biggest mistake is not responding to what customers want,” says Katie Overfield-Zook, entrepreneurial ecosystem builder for the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund (SCCF), a Staunton-based nonprofit entrepreneurial support organization that offers startup and small business loans and helps entrepreneurs develop business plans and skills.
Celebrating failure
Roanoke entrepreneur Laura Godfrey has founded or co-founded five companies in the past two decades, and she’s had one of those fold.
It was with assistance from the Roanoke-based Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program (RAMP) in 2019 that Godfrey evaluated Point 93, which sought to connect consumers with goods at a price they picked by using a blockchain-based identity wallet. RAMP helped Godfrey decide that the company’s solution was too broad and that blockchain was too decentralized to handle the volume of transactions the company projected.
Godfrey credits the quick identification of Point 93’s problems with helping her pivot around customer personalization and data acquisition, and that led her to co-found Brandpoint Analytics, a software-as-a-service platform that allows consumers to exchange their data for price adjustments. More recently, she’s found success as chief operating officer of Bookelicious, an online resource she co-founded with Lea Anne Borders — the California-based wife of Louis Borders, co-founder of the now-defunct Borders retail book and music store chain.
Bookelicious has attracted $2.2 million in seed money.
The company focuses on increasing literacy rates by helping educators and parents match children with age-appropriate and topic-specific books. Launched about a year and a half ago, it’s in use at 3,500 schools nationwide. In Virginia, Bookelicious’ clients include Prince William County and Roanoke City public schools.
Godfrey, who calls herself an optimist, learned from the experience of folding Point 93. “I think that probably in the future it will make it hopefully easier if I have to make the choice again, because nothing bad happened,” she says.
Lisa Garcia, director of RAMP, the accelerator that helped Godfrey test Point 93, says, “We often don’t celebrate failure, but to learn early that an idea is not viable is a success.” Since its 2017 founding, the nonprofit RAMP has advised and supported 43 companies, including five in its most recent cohort. Of those, at least 79% remain in business.
Given that high success rate, RAMP-supported companies are beating the odds, and by far. The U.S. Small Business Administration says only about half of new businesses survive their first five years.
Brendan Richardson co-founded Charlottesville-based Astraea, a satellite imaging and data analytics company. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
Pivot and persist
“There are lots of ways to fail and just a few to succeed,” says Charlottesville entrepreneur Brendan Richardson, who’s among the fortunate minority to fall into the latter category.
In 2012, Richardson co-founded Everactive Inc., a company that produces semiconductors that wirelessly and continuously transmit data using minuscule amounts of power. The technology has many applications — including wearable, self-powering medical devices — and Everactive has grown into a business with more than 80 employees and a valuation of more than $18 million. But Richardson, a self-described “business guy,” left the company in 2016 because it was time to bring on a CEO with semiconductor experience. Ready for his next venture, Richardson co-founded Astraea, a Charlottesville-based satellite imaging and data analytics firm.
His original idea for applying machine learning to data obtained from satellites was expensive and too broad, so he “pivoted from trying to find the ‘killer app’ for satellite data to building a cloud-based tool,” he says, one that lets the customer decide what data to gather. For example, a solar energy company asked Astraea if it could provide the addresses of every rooftop in six Virginia counties that had the reflective surface that it preferred for installations. Astraea delivered that information in five hours. The tool has also been used in Ukraine to provide land data to the Ukrainian and allied governments and humanitarian organizations amid the Russia-Ukraine war.
Astraea’s website promises “everything you need to leverage geospatial data in one place,” and that formula has attracted enough customers that last summer Astraea raised $6.5 million to scale up its operations.
Richardson credits the company’s success to being willing to abandon an idea that wasn’t working and go where demand existed. “When something goes wrong, use it to pivot in the right direction,” he says. “That’s where persistence comes in.”
Persist and adapt
Carly Buxton’s Richmond-based startup, Nessle, is a smaller-scale business than Astraea, but persistence and adaptability have been central to its survival as well. Buxton’s initial business plan called for a digital help platform for new parents, but it turned out that many parents wouldn’t pay for something they thought they could find for themselves online for free. Meanwhile, Buxton found herself fielding inquiries from doulas, parenting coaches and other family consultants about how they could get their services listed on her platform.
“It all started to click,” she says, leading in an obvious direction for a pivot: Let parents access Nessle for free while charging vendors a listing fee.
That plan had legs. Last year, Amazon Web Services awarded Buxton and her business partner, Michelle Cunningham, $125,000 cash and $100,000 in AWS credits through its Impact Accelerator for Women Founders. The grant gave the partners breathing room to turn their platform into a curated directory of child-centric experts.
John Failla’s story features a plotline similar to Buxton’s. He was a lousy math student and had several tutors, but he didn’t much like any of them. He envisioned a resource for people like himself to find in-person tutors with whom they could relate, and in 2016 he founded edtech startup Trilogy Mentors, which rebranded in 2021
as Pearl.
Five years ago, Failla took his idea to Richmond-based nonprofit incubator and entrepreneurial hub Startup Virginia, which helped him connect with mentors and people in the industry. That eventually led to a rethink of his original business plan and a shift away from being a company developing tutoring software to becoming a cloud-based solution for organizations to launch their own branded, customizable platforms for online tutoring.
“You can’t be overconfident,” Failla says. “Building something that isn’t needed — it’s an expensive lesson to learn in money and time.”
Morgan Evans, Startup Virginia’s communications and program manager, helped Failla avoid that costly mistake. “Before you gamble on an idea, you’ve got to do the necessary work,” Evans says, and for Failla, that work involved conducting customer interviews. Data gathered from those interviews convinced him that his company needed a rebrand.
That turned out to be a smart move. Pearl now has 18 employees and counts the Illinois State Board of Education as a customer. Last year, it was boosted by a $250,000 grant from Accelerate, a national nonprofit initiative supporting increasing access to “high-impact” tutoring in public schools.
Additionally, Pearl has received more than $4 million in backing from organizations including Charlottesville-based CAV Angels and 757 Angels, an investment group based in Hampton Roads. Angel investors usually assist startups and early-stage companies in reaching the next level, and they generally make their money back when companies like Pearl are sold.
“The startup ecosystem is a super risky space,” says 757 Angels Director Monique Adams, adding that many would-be entrepreneurs “fail early and fail often.” But angel investors “love companies that execute pivots successfully in the face of significant customer discovery.”
Since 2015, 757 Angels has invested more than $100 million in 52 companies, which cumulatively have generated 1,500 high-paying jobs, says Adams, who’s leaving the organization in June when 757 Angels will join the VentureSouth network, one of the country’s largest angel investment groups. She will be succeeded by Paul Nolde, former executive director of Lighthouse Labs, a Richmond-based early-stage startup accelerator.
In Northern Virginia, serial entrepreneur Tonio DeSorrento warns that launching a startup can be “so hard, so stressful, with no safety net, no instructions,” he says. “A healthy detachment is a must.”
His latest venture is Fairfax-based GovForce, which helps federal contractors and their subcontractors to comply with government regulations. DeSorrento co-founded GovForce in 2022 and serves as CEO for the company, which early this year snagged $2.5 million in seed money and hired its first seven employees.
But DeSorrento had a harder road with the previous business he headed and co-founded, Arlington County-based Vemo Education, which he left in October 2021 after Vemo’s biggest investor asked him to step down and make way for new leadership.
Established in 2015, Vemo was based on a model of making future income-sharing agreements in exchange for paying tuition for college students. But the National Consumer Law Center and the Student Borrower Protection Center filed a complaint about Vemo with the Federal Trade Commission in June 2020, alleging that the company engaged in deceptive marketing. And in 2021, 47 students filed a lawsuit against Vemo, alleging that Vemo and a coding academy had colluded and engaged in illegal and deceptive business practices. Vemo is no longer in business, according to a 2022 article from education news journal The Hechinger Report.
“It’s honestly not fun to think about how I didn’t hit the home run with that company that maybe people expected me to,” DeSorrento said of the experience in a February interview with Washington Business Journal.
Nevertheless, as a second-time co-founder and CEO of a startup, he is hopeful for a better outcome. Entrepreneurism, after all, requires a certain amount of optimism, as well as a willingness to pivot.
“You have to fall in love with your customers,” DeSorrento says, “not your solution.”
Virginia Business Associate Editor Courtney Mabeus-Brown contributed to this story.
The Shenandoah Valley has long been recognized as fertile ground for agricultural endeavors, but it’s now being seeded to grow an entirely different kind of crop — entrepreneurs.
During the past few years, local and regional governmental bodies, nonprofits, and private and educational organizations in the valley have been coordinating efforts to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem. They aim to provide regional startups with all the training, advice, contacts and access to funding needed to turn kernels of good ideas into successful, home-grown businesses.
As director of technology innovation and economic development at James Madison University, Mary Lou Bourne is intimately involved in this informal system, which she calls “a coalition of the willing.” Bourne also is executive director of James Madison Innovations Inc., a nonprofit corporation for intellectual property management and licensing for inventions developed by JMU researchers.
The university does not lead the regional entrepreneurship effort, she stresses, but plays an “additive” role. However, “additive” hardly does justice to the list of organizations based at JMU that are dedicated to helping fledgling businesses in the valley. Among them are the Shenandoah Small Business Development Center, one of 27 such centers in the commonwealth that provide free professional consulting and training for new and small businesses, and Virginia Is for Entrepreneurs, which helps startups find financing.
JMU also has the Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship, which helps student entrepreneurs develop business concepts into reality. Also on campus is the JMU-affiliated Shenandoah Valley Technology Council, which offers networking opportunities for entrepreneurs, as well as GO Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley regional office.
Outside JMU’s campus, Harrisonburg’s economic development department holds 10-week boot camps several times a year to teach entrepreneurs essential skills such as marketing and bookkeeping. The Harrisonburg-Rockingham Chamber of Commerce and Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance, which promotes businesses in the central city, both offer training classes as well. The agencies collaborate to avoid duplication of services and to eliminate gaps in assistance programs.
“People start a business because it is their passion,” says Harrisonburg Chamber President and CEO Chris Quinn. “This [training] is the back-end stuff.”
This mother-and-daughters team — (L to R) Stephanie Auville Duncan, Chris Auville and Jessica Hall — started Harmony Harvest Farm in Weyers Cave. Photo by Norm Shafer
Elsewhere in the valley, there are plenty of other options for entrepreneurs seeking support. In Staunton, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund hosts a Business Bootcamp three times a year, says Anika Horn, SCCF’s director of marketing and ecosystem building. The eight-week virtual class helps budding entrepreneurs develop business skills and evaluate the viability of their ideas.
Additionally, each year SCCF hosts two or three Techstars Startup Weekends, offering an immersive 54-hour, three-day course that teaches people to become entrepreneurs. This year, SCCF also launched an annual two-day entrepreneurship summit with workshops, panel discussions and networking opportunities. The next summit will be held in October 2023, Horn says.
Nearby Waynesboro offers extensive help for startups, too, mostly online, and the city’s Grow Waynesboro program recently received a $45,000 Community Business Launch grant from the state to expand its efforts. It plans to use some of the funding to hold a business pitch competition next year, with winners receiving grants, marketing support, customized training, mentorships and technical assistance.
Cultivating businesses
Peter Denbigh is an example of someone developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem the valley is trying to nurture. He found success marketing a party game online, and he and his former wife, Alison Denbigh, co-founded a coworking space, Staunton Innovation Hub, in early 2017. The hub offers coworking and meeting spaces and private offices, as well as business programming and other opportunities for networking and sharing experiences that can be so important for budding entrepreneurs, Peter Denbigh says. For example, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund is headquartered in the hub and offers an accelerator program, Startup Shenandoah Valley (S2V).
About 110 companies have office space or are headquartered in the 30,000-square-foot Staunton Innovation Hub. Denbigh is looking to expand the entrepreneurial network he’s building by opening a similar size Harrisonburg Innovation Hub in late 2023.
“Local resources are your tribe,” Denbigh says. “Emotionally, technically and financially, they help you understand that you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Andrea Estep’s Harrisonburg women’s clothing and accessories shop, Charlee Rose Boutique, is another valley entrepreneurship success story. Estep started the business in her garage and now has a downtown storefront. “The community in Harrisonburg is like none other that I’ve experienced,” she says. “The support helped me survive through the pandemic.”
During the pandemic, Kirsten Moore also bucked the odds to start a coworking space in Harrisonburg, the Perch at Magpie. It has about 100 tenants housed in a 7,000-square-foot space atop her other new business, the Magpie Diner restaurant and bakery. “You have all of the right cheerleaders to walk you through the process” of building a business in the area, Moore says. “You can just walk into city hall and get your questions answered.”
Moore was fortunate to find private investors for her ambitious plans, which include a wine bar and retail and event space in a nearby building, but for many startups, securing capital financing is the biggest obstacle to starting and expanding their businesses.
Business loans from banks are sometimes hard to get, unless an entrepreneur has a big nest egg, and the valley’s lack of population density — the very demographic that makes the region appealing to so many would-be entrepreneurs — unfortunately correlates with a lack of available venture capital.
“You don’t have an extensive network like in NoVa,” Denbigh says. “You don’t have people here who go from zero to $100 million in six months.”
Crunching numbers
Only two local agencies (other than banks) offer substantial funding to valley startups.
One is Shenandoah Valley Angel Investors, a network of private funders capable of lending $50,000 to $300,000 to launch new businesses. Since its founding in 2015, facilitated by JMU’s Bourne, the fund, which is independent of the university, has invested $8.1 million in 23 companies.
The other major source of capital in the valley is Shenandoah Community Capital Fund in Staunton. Since it gave out its first loans in 2009, Horn says, the fund has invested $1.6 million to fund 108 businesses and support more than 450 others. That funding has come in the form of loans of $5,000 to $50,000.
Localities — including Waynesboro, Buena Vista and Augusta County — also make loans to small businesses, averaging about $15,000 each. Brian Shull, executive director of Harrisonburg Economic Development, says his agency can offer loans up to $25,000 to help entrepreneurs who are “not quite bankable yet.” So far, his agency has distributed 22 loans, adding up to $450,000.
Some other options have arisen recently to aid minority business owners, who typically have a harder time than white entrepreneurs in securing capital. In the first half of 2021, funding to U.S. Black startup entrepreneurs hit a record $1.8 billion but accounted for only 1.2% of the $147 billion in venture capital invested in all U.S. startups during the same period, according to a report by Crunchbase.
In Harrisonburg and Rockingham, the chamber of commerce’s B-Cubed program provides minority entrepreneurs with advice on crafting business plans and networking, as well as grants. So far, the organization has awarded 17 grants to minority entrepreneurs in amounts ranging from $1,700 to $5,000 since 2020.
In Lexington, the all-volunteer Walker Program was started in 2020 to assist businesses owned by people of color in Buena Vista, Rockbridge County and Lexington.
In addition to its own program teaching the nuts and bolts of doing business and offering advice on issues such as trademarks and patents, Walker has made 15 business grants between $5,000 and $25,000 each, program coordinator Gabrielle J. Cash says. Thanks to Walker funding, three Black-owned businesses now are operating in downtown Lexington, where until recently, there were none.
Photographer Tasha Coleman received a Walker grant of $10,000 to help her secure a studio space in Buena Vista for her business, Tasha Lamar Photography & Films. She is grateful for that assistance, but she still has not been able to get up and running, because she needs more funding for equipment.
“Finding other loans to help furnish the studio has been very difficult,” Coleman says.
“Raising capital in the valley can be hard,” Denbigh says.Organizations there “provide 101- and 201-level resources for entrepreneurs, but we need to get into 301 and 401 upscaling. That will be the tipping point when the money starts coming in.”
That extra push
To help more young businesses reach that tipping point, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund offers its S2V accelerator program, which more than 40 entrepreneurs have attended since it was established in 2020. Stephanie Auville Duncan of Harmony Harvest Farm in Weyers Cave is one of them.
Duncan, her sister, Jessica Hall, and their mother, Chris Auville, have been in the cut-flower business since 2013. The women started out by supplying flowers for weddings and other local events, and a few years later expanded into wholesale shipping to florists. Whole Foods stores up and down the East Coast started stocking their flowers, so business was great. Then, COVID-19 arrived, decreasing the need for flower arrangements, so florists and Whole Foods stopped buying from Harmony Harvest.
But with the help of the accelerator program, plus advice from Virginia Department of Tourism, Augusta County and Shenandoah Valley Partnership, Harmony Harvest was able to make a pandemic pivot and come up with a new business plan focused on shipping directly to customers. In 2020, its online sales increased by 1,600%.
The accelerator program, Duncan says, was “paramount to understanding the best way to grow” the family’s business, which has expanded to include agritourism.
This summer, Harmony Harvest began a pick-your-own-flowers operation and opened a retail store on the farm, a picturesque 20-acre property in Augusta County. Hall’s related business, Floral Genius, operates online and from the farm, too. Its pin- and cup-style flower holders called “flower frogs” got a welcome boost when Martha Stewart used them in a how-to video about flower arranging.
The bottom line, however, is that until more entrepreneurs like Duncan, Auville and Hall find ways to take their enterprises to the next level, finding financing is going to remain a sticking point for small business development in the valley.
The entrepreneurial ecosystem will be there, though, doing it’s dogged best to help them.
Shenandoah Valley at a glance
Shenandoah National Park Photo courtesy Shenandoah National Park
Settled in the 1700s, the approximately 140-mile-long Shenandoah Valley lies between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny mountains. Agriculture remains a key industry for the region, which was known as the breadbasket of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Other notable industries include manufacturing, especially of food and beverages, and logistics. Bridgewater College, James Madison University, Mary Baldwin University, Virginia Military Institute, and Washington and Lee University call the region home.
Population: 373,472
Top employers
James Madison University: 3,887
Sentara Healthcare: 2,600
Augusta Health: 2,300
Cargill Inc.: 2,000*
Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.: 2,000*
Major attractions
The Shenandoah Valley is home to outdoor attractions such as Shenandoah National Park and the George Washington and Jefferson national forests. The region is also known for wineries and breweries, with the Shenandoah Beerwerks Trail and the Shenandoah Spirits Trail. Historical and cultural attractions include Civil War sites like the Virginia Museum of the Civil War and Melrose Caverns, as well as the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse.
Top convention hotels
The Omni Homestead Resort 483 rooms, 72,000 square feet of event space
Hotel 24 South (Staunton)
124 rooms, 8,500 square feet of event space
Best Western Plus Waynesboro
Inn & Suites Conference Center
75 rooms, 5,500 square feet of event space
DoubleTree by Hilton Front Royal
Blue Ridge Shadows
124 rooms, 3,933 square feet of event space
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Blackburn Inn &
Conference Center 49 rooms, 8,400 square feet of event space
The Mimslyn Inn
45 rooms, almost 5,000 square feet of event space
The Gin Hotel 39 rooms
Hotel Laurance 12 rooms
Notable restaurants
Local Chop & Grill House
American,localchops.com
The Butcher Station
American,thebutcherstation.com
Ruth Rau started her business as a hobby. Now, seven years later, her Winchester-based toy company — Mouse Loves Pig — is on track to generate revenue in six figures. The entrepreneur’s toys for babies and young children are sold in more than 250 stores in nine countries, and she’s partnered with a manufacturing company in Turkey that employs women refugees.
Her success has blossomed in part from her participation in Startup Shenandoah Valley (S2V), a business mentorship program that Staunton-based nonprofit Shenandoah Community Capital Fund administers. SCCF has helped 35 entrepreneurs and is set to run its fifth cohort Sept. 5 through Oct. 27.
“Starting a business from scratch is hard, but the tools that S2V helped me develop has made it less hard,” Rau says.
Mentoring is customized to the entrepreneur, says SCCF Executive Director Debbie Irwin. Participants take assessments to pinpoint their businesses’ riskiest aspects, and SCCF matches coaches and mentors with mentees based on their needs.
The mentorship — free to participants — goes beyond the program, during which entrepreneurs spend five to 10 hours a week in peer meetings and coaching sessions.
“We expect to work with them anywhere from nine months to three years,” Irwin says.
Irwin says budding businesses are plentiful in the region.
“We’re changing the way people think about entrepreneurs in rural America,” Irwin says.“Great ideas and great companies exist across the United States, but especially here in the Shenandoah Valley.”
Ventures to date include an organic flower farm, a cybersecurity software firm and an agricultural drone operation to spray pesticides.
Participants have created hundreds of jobs since the nonprofit started the program in 2020. The program is for companies with scalability — the ability to grow.
“I’ve hired help, trusted my manufacturers more and expanded my product line, thanks to the advice and ideas that S2V helped me develop in just those short eight weeks,” Rau says.
The nonprofit receives about 20 applications for a cohort and accepts between seven and 10 entrepreneurs into each.
“Starting a business can be incredibly lonely,” Irwin says. “When you are at the same place or close to the same place as someone else, it’s easier to connect and grow.”
SCCF launched S2V in 2020 with $1.2 million from the state’s GO Virginia economic development initiative. An additional $1.5 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration has aided the mentorship program’s expansion.
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