Shaler Houser and Scott Millwood are founders first and venture capitalists second.
Wanting to help financially support Greenville’s technology-startup community, the two formed Founderville, a Greenville-focused venture fund, in the fall of 2022.
As a business-to-business, software-as-a-service fund, the company exclusively invests in startups located in Greenville that build software for other businesses. Houser said they decided to focus on software startups due to his and Millwood’s past experience starting similar companies.
“We can add a lot of value through our experience. It’s really about helping them not step in the same potholes that we stepped in,” Houser said.
From September to December 2022, $6.6 million was raised to start the fund from investments by 50 founders and CEOs located in Greenville. Houser said it was important to have former founders invest in supporting the next crop of founders in the area.
“We want to build something special in Greenville that makes Greenville’s technology community, the startup community, as big as Greenville’s tourism community has become over the last 10 years,” Houser said. “We think there’s a great opportunity to do that.”
The leaders at Founderville take a “hands-on and face-to-face approach” to help build relationships with the startup’s founders and offer guidance.
“The founders are the most important aspect of us investing,” Houser said. “It’s all about the team because the team’s going to overcome whatever challenges pop up with the distribution, the sales, marketing, the software, whatever.”
So far, Founderville has invested $350,000 into local music-technology startup Wavs Custom. Houser said they fully intend to provide additional capital in the future.
With the help of Tony Nolte, the fund’s vice president, the leadership team at Founderville expects to invest in five local startups by the end of the year.
Houser said the plan is to use the fund’s money over a two-year period and hopefully raise another fund in the future.
“We’re not trying to do this sort of one and done; this is what Scott and I and Tony want to do from now on. This is my long-term game plan,” Houser said. “It may eventually spread across the state or the Upstate, but certainly we are focused on Greenville, and we want to do something special here.”
Who’s who?
Shaler Houser has co-founded eight companies: Seruus Ventures, Nuvox Communications, UCI Communications, YouTurn Health, Green Cloud Defense, Deal Strategies, Founderville Fund and the NEXT Founders Fund.
Scott Millwood, who currently serves as board chairman of NEXT, has co-founded five companies: Customer Effective, Yesflow, Deal Strategies, Founderville Fund and the NEXT Founders Fund.
Tony Nolte has more than 30 years of financial and legal experience working with various businesses and serves as the vice president of the Founderville Fund and Deal Strategies.
