Community Capital Retrospective

On Tuesday evening, April 19, 2022, CBIC and Wefunder co-hosted a Community Round for local startups and businesses to raise capital from the community.

We were particularly excited for this first-of-its-kind event in Charlottesville (and the third in the US). During the event, five local businesses presented their offering of equity to the participants, with no accredited investor restriction. Two of the five were more traditional “lifestyle” companies, with the remaining three being high-growth potential start-ups, which offered software services/products, hardware products, food products and alcoholic beverage products, respectively.

The turnout from all of you, curious Charlottesville community members, was awesome! Also in attendance or registered were several accredited “angel” investors and numerous startup founders (perhaps curious to understand how a future Community Round could grow their business).

Following the event, we’ve learned of friends and colleagues investing in one or more of the businesses, with them encouraging their friends to also invest. We also learned of certain serial angel investors and related angel groups who are now interested in one or more of the businesses that pitched at our event. I am seeing the power of crowdfunding virality in real time – let’s keep the volume of investor interaction and interest up. $20K was invested during the event and about $75K has been invested since the event with more on the way … I’d call this a success.

As an organization that takes chances, convenes people for a common purpose, and enables our members to grow and prosper, this event supported CBIC’s goal — to provide new opportunities for innovation. I am hopeful that we can keep up this momentum and that there will be many more Community Rounds in our town for years to come, with even greater visibility and participation for everyone interested. If you attended or invested — thank you, and I hope to see you again.