VC Firm, Village Capital Reaches Landmark 100th Investment in Eight Years

After just 8 years of operation, Global Venture Capital firm Village Capital announced that it has made investments in 100 companies globally. The firm made this known through a post on medium. According to the post, the benefiting companies have provided innovative solutions to big problems facing society and the environment.

Stats for @VilCapInvest: 100 investments, 44% female-led companies, 26% founders of color, 85% outside the Bay Area, Boston, and NYC https://t.co/GfnZVrTFmU

— Village Capital (@villagecapital) October 23, 2018

Innovative solutions to several problems with the potential of being scalable keep springing up every now and then around the world. But not many of these solutions get access to the funding and support which is vital to their growth.

The eradication of this problem faced by entrepreneurs is what Village Capital has been aiming towards. According to the VC:

“For the past eight years at Village Capital we’ve been working toward a single goal: how can we get more people solving big global problems through entrepreneurship? Our model has been about making sure anyone with a big idea has a chance to try to turn that idea into a business.”

Village Capital has been achieving its aim by training and investing in early-stage ventures solving major global problems in agriculture, education, energy, financial inclusion and health. As such, Village Capital, adopts an inclusive approach in its  investments, with 44% of its capital deployed in female-led companies, 26% in companies led by Latins and African-American founders. 85% of its investments is outside of the concentrated markets of the Bay Area, Boston, and New York City that receive the vast majority of venture funds.

.⁦@villagecapital⁩ hits 💯! 🌱🎉📈The next time someone tells you homogeneity in early stage venture is a #pipelineproblem: 44% of $ to female-led companies, 26% to founders of color, and 85% to founders outside SF, BOS, NYC. Companies are there. 👀 https://t.co/SIxfC9HwPv

— Victoria Fram (@vefram) October 23, 2018

Since its launch, 100 entrepreneurs have been accepted into its portfolio and participated in a Village Capital investment-readiness program. These list of companies also includes 3 Nigerian startups: YouVerify – The startup providing an API for address and identity verification in Africa; Lekki Peninsula Affordable Schools –  a low-cost private school chain in Nigeria with an all-inclusive fee structure and flexible payment system; and PiggyBank.ng – a Fintech service that works directly with financial institutions to enable Nigerian debit card holders save little amounts of money frequently.

Village Capital’s latest Investment (its 100th) is in a US based Internet-of-Things startup, Wexus Technologies, focused on energy and water efficiency for agriculture.

Each of its portfolio companies are part of a global group of over 900 Village Capital alumni. These hundreds of innovators are working in sectors that people rely on a day to day basis: health, food and agriculture, education, energy, and financial services. Moving forward, Village Capital aims to help these portfolio companies “scale to match the size of the problems they’re solving.”