William Leonard
Welcome to the Virginia Startup Podcast. This is a platform where we’ll dive into the pulse of the Virginia startup ecosystem. We’ll have conversations with founders, investors, limited partners, accelerators, and other key members of the ecosystem and covering the sector’s resources and opportunities that are fueling innovation across the Commonwealth. So in today’s episode, we’ll speak with two early stage, Virginia investors Gene Riechers, who is the former operator and current venture partner at Sands Capital Management, and Seda Goff, who is the founder and general partner at Flintlock Capital. Hope you all enjoy today’s episode. Seda and Gene, it’s great to have you on this morning.
Gene Riechers
Great to be here.
Seda Goff
Thank you. Thank you for having us.
William Leonard
Of course. I am excited to kick off this series because the Valor team is really excited to be backed now by the state of Virginia through the VIPC corporation partnership and this is an exciting time for not only Valor but also the state of Virginia and the ecosystem that’s unfolding there. Seda, I would love to start with you and just talk a little bit more about Flintlock Capital, your focus, and in your journey from from the founder to the funder.
Seda Goff
Flintlock Capital, we are a venture capital firm, focused on fintech. And as we look at FinTech, we look at it more as a horizontal versus vertical. So any type of technology that touches the financial sector, whether it’s through financial institutions as a customer or their members, customers and clients, to interact with money and to make financial decisions. While I’ve been in the venture capital space for some time, this being my third fund as GP first under our new banner, Flintlock Capital, I started my journey as a tech founder back in, I was just doing the math, 13/14 years ago, in the DC space. DC definitely looks different from both sides of the table. But it’s also evolved significantly over that period of time. I really believe that not only the DC ecosystem that I built as a founder but also the perspective of seeing a lot of companies in this area, just a lot of companies in general has afforded us our position and perspective for Flintlock Capital.
William Leonard
I love it. Gene, I’ll turn it over to you now to share a little bit more about your background and the story of Sands Capital.
Gene Riechers
My background firstly, I moved to the DC area right out of college a very long time ago, and pretty quickly got involved with technology companies. I had a variety of roles in startups and as a CFO, I’ve run international sales. I’ve been a manager of a database products division of a larger company. Most of my experience has been in the software industry, some in the telecommunications industry. I was fortunate to join a number of very successful companies and in a variety of roles. I learned a lot along the way. About 25-plus years ago, I got involved in the venture industry and helped start two different venture venture capital firms and invested out of four funds totaling about $600 million. I took a few years off from all that to be a high school lacrosse coach of all things and then got back in the venture industry. In 2019, I joined Sands Capital. Sands is a large public equity asset manager in Arlington, Virginia but they also have three very important private strategies. I’m part of the early-stage technology team. I will tell you more later about what we do. We also have a life sciences investment group and a later-stage tech investment group. In our group, we invest in AI, machine learning, healthcare IT, and data infrastructure, which is a broad label for how you make all this stuff work underneath databases, management systems for cloud computing, and so on. We’re investing right now with a $200 million fund.
William Leonard
Nice. Gene, I want to come back to you with this next question and it’s very relevant to what you just outlined. You’ve been operationally entrenched in the Virginia startup ecosystem for decades now from holding operational roles with several startups from Reston into Arlington to Leesburg. I would love your viewpoint and perspective on how you’ve seen the Virginia startup ecosystem evolve over recent years, let’s call it in the last five to seven years or so. Maybe you can highlight a couple of the driving factors and forces of this growth that you’ve seen.
Gene Riechers
Sure. Virginia ecosystem is sort of an affiliate, if you will, of the greater DC ecosystem. There are five and a half million people in the DC area, there are eight and a half million in the state of Virginia, those numbers overlap a little bit, of course. But the point of those numbers is there’s a lot of talent in the region. It’s easy for people outside the region, to the bucket, this is a federal government-oriented environment, but the federal government is a really important part of it and it’s important in part in building the technology community. But that’s not all that’s going on here. There are great universities in the state of Virginia, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and now also in Arlington, Virginia where Virginia Tech has built a new campus, George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. All of these are great resources, but I think the larger story is that the tech community of Virginia, and really Northern Virginia, dates back the way before I got here, which is in the 1960s. There were tech companies that grew up somewhat related to the federal government, but other use cases. The effect of that is, is there have been a couple of generations of management teams and executives produced. Just the sheer volume of talent in the area that’s come out of all those companies, over many years, has allowed for the growth of new and better companies. I think that’s a key part of the story.
William Leonard
I’ll pose the same question to you, but maybe from a slightly different lens, maybe from the founder-to-funder perspective. You mentioned you’ve been a founder, starting back 13/14 years ago, where you’ve now switched to the other side of the table funding companies. Curious to hear your thoughts on how you’ve seen the ecosystem evolve from the founder and now the funder perspective as well.
Seda Goff
I think that it’s more than just evolved. I think it’s almost different phases to the ecosystem. It’s funny, I had coffee with a friend of mine, from this ecosystem from 20 years ago. He started his company based out of here in DC, and then moved out to the Bay Area, and recently sold it to Meta or Facebook, and now is in the VC world. He’s also founder to funder and we were talking about just how things have changed. We have this very tight cohort of ecosystem and friends from that time where you saw companies like LivingSocial and some of these companies grew really big during that period of time. Everybody kept in touch in that space. As the ecosystem has grown significantly, it’s not as tight-knit, but it’s a lot bigger. When I talk to new founders or new funders, in this geographic area, I talk about how you need to find kind of your niche, you need to find your people, you need to find your room, and that will serve you across the board. Whether you’re raising money as a founder or you’re trying to recruit to your company, you are looking for customers, that comes from that ecosystem, your people. And then on the funders side, I think one of the amazing things that I get to take advantage of is this kind of 20 years of being in the space, deal flow comes from friends, the deal flow comes from other investors, deal flow comes from other previous portfolio company, and that is kind of the highest tier of that like the deal flow pyramid. The top tier is always, your other investor friends, people that you trust, that you value their opinion, and you have like views on companies and also people who have worked with you in the past then you have that bottom of that pyramid of the cold calls. Those people don’t have those linked relationships with the people in their ecosystem and I think Virginia is doing a good job through their university program. While students are in school as well as Alumni Programs and postgraduate type of stuff. I think that that’s what people need to find more of, the pond has gotten bigger so it’s now time to find your rooms within that.
William Leonard
I love those perspectives. One thing that you both hit on the common thread was talent, right? The state of Virginia has an incredible and robust university ecosystem, UVA, Virginia Tech, BCU, George Mason, I’m certainly missing many others. But how do Virginia startups address the challenges of, let’s call it attracting and retaining top talent, especially with the proximity and competitiveness to New York City, Boston, what’s the quality of homegrown talent from the state? But also, what are some ways that the quality of this talent can stay here in the Commonwealth of Virginia? I’ll pose that question to Gene first.
Gene Riechers
Sure. Well, I’ve got a few thoughts on that. First of all, I touched on this before. But I think the role of the federal government is actually an important part of the story. A lot of people think tech ecosystems grow up around universities and they’re certainly great examples of that around MIT and Stanford, the two obvious ones, but the federal government, if you think about what university does, attracts talent from elsewhere, it has laboratories that have smart people engaging and interacting, and does research. The federal government, there’s so much more of that than Stanford or MIT or whatever, those are great institutions, the federal government may not be quite as efficient, but they are a lot larger. And the effect of that is, there’s a lot of people that came here from other parts of the country and other parts of the world for work in this geographic area. And then they go off and start their own company. It’s based on the scientific research they did, the ideas, they develop, the experiences they had, the medicines they developed, whatever it may be. And a lot of the needs of the federal government are really cutting-edge, frontier-type needs; managing gigantic amounts of data, and developing pharmaceuticals. It’s unbelievable the amount of research is going on in this area. So a starting point is, is we have a lot of people who are in this geographic area because of that, and that then allows them to do things like think about how to build large scale, distributed complex, ultra-reliable systems, because that’s what the federal government needs in a lot of use cases. And that, so in terms of attracting people, and keeping them here, and Seda had a story about somebody who moved out to the valley and obviously was successful there. I think those ecosystems, New York or Silicon Valley are terrific places. There will never be another Silicon Valley, that’s a special place in a remarkable place but it has its own problems. It is unbelievably expensive to live there. Northern Virginia looks expensive until you consider New York and Silicon Valley. They are far more expensive. Silicon Valley has earthquakes. We don’t have earthquakes to speak of, usually. California has public school quality issues. There are workforce loyalty issues in Silicon Valley. I’m not saying that you can’t be successful in New York and Silicon Valley, but Northern Virginia and all of Virginia is the place to live at on a relative basis, lower costs, and there’s all the talent here to build most kinds of companies. I’d say the one kind of company that I can think of where the talent isn’t here is semiconductor design. That’s not here. It’s not New York, it’s in California.
William Leonard
Seda, I’ll pose the same question to you just curious to hear your thoughts on maybe some of Gene’s thoughts as well in terms of the role of federal government, but also just the quality of life and the things that you can get living in the Commonwealth of Virginia versus New York City, San Francisco, LA.
Seda Goff
It’s funny. No longer is the persona of a startup founder, that kid in his parents basement with his hoodie on, coding like that. That’s no longer the typical persona. I feel like in general, there probably are statistics around this somewhere that you’re looking at late mid to late 30s that started a company. And to Gene’s point, they have a family. They’re probably married with young kids and that’s a different quality of life that they’re looking for. It’s a different thing that is like that baseline that they need to meet as they grow a business. In this area, also, you’re looking at a lot of dual-income families, where the spouse is equal in their financial contribution to the home, which allows for opportunities and entrepreneurship across the board, whether it’s VC backable businesses or small businesses, that gives that family those baseline needs met, whether it be education, house, cars, vacations, to be able to have the right mindset, to go after being a founder, or an entrepreneur. Again, VC backable or small business. Starting a business is like playing a sport, which by the way, lacrosse is my sport, too. I’m sitting in front of a huge pile of lacrosse medals because I just I have to do that for my daughter’s lacrosse team that I coach for the end of the season. Apparently, lacrosse is the sport for VCs. You’re going out to play a sport, you need to be mentally ready, physically ready. It’s a grind. If you’re constantly worrying about things in your head, or you’re out on this limb by yourself, it’s hard and it gets harder. When we look at companies, we’re in the Series A, earlier stage company, we’re evaluating the founder as much as we are evaluating the widget or the market that they’re going after because they could have the best idea in the world and they are going after the best market in the world, but I’m sure Gene can attest to this, too. How many times have you seen something where you’re like, you’re the wrong person to do this. Because they’re either burned out, they’re stressed, they’re whatever is going on in their life affects their ability to be successful. We have all of our seasons here, right? We get this more holistic life here. To Gene’s point, it’s a little bit easier than being in New York and Silicon Valley, but how quickly can we get up to New York, if we need to? It’s a train ride away. As a firm, we’re in the Silicon Valley area and the Bay Area almost on a quarterly basis, if not both of them in the same quarter on a regular basis. And just because it’s easy. We get the best of both worlds. And then on the federal government side, what I found was really interesting, as I’ve gone to different Chicago being another or Boston, our level of understanding of our federal resources for startup and how to evaluate them as a VC or how to take advantage of them as a founder is well beyond most of the time what other people have an understanding of. Whether it be understanding SBIR and STTR, or even knowing what that means as a VC, that’s not revenue, my friend. I’m telling everybody who’s listening, but those are very valuable assets. And then as a founder, when is the right time to go after those assets and how to get them? You know, it’s not just I raised my hand, and I get them, there’s a process and being able to understand that and be able to have the resources and the help around you. I know Virginia and the VIPC program do a really good job of a lot of webinars and resources to help founders and startups with those types of programs. And then also, if you are going to go after the federal government as a client, that’s a whole nother ballgame to really understand. Going back to network people that is just as much network as getting any customer. How are you going to get kind of your sponsoring champion? Do you understand the contracting process? Do you understand what contracting officers are looking for? And are there resources where partners that are in your backyard, primes that you can partner with to get into contract that, hey, they’re looking for my widget to put on a contract, and I can come in as a subcontractor, or there might be some type of opportunity for me with the large prime. Virginia does a very good job of this of the small, disabled, veteran-owned businesses, and being able to show what are the pathways for growth in there, especially in health IT. NIH is in our backyard. We have tons of federal contracts that are based here. Even if the execution of it might be in different locations, around the country, most contracts are based here. I’ve always said this, depending on your widget, depending on your market, you pick a part of the country that makes the most sense. Parts of Alabama that make sense. There’s Chicago that makes sense. There’s Boston, but DC has kind of a little bit of everything. And all those big companies and it’s kind of the last point I’ll make, all those big companies, whether it be Google, Facebook, all that Silicon Valley, tend to have offices in the DC area as well. They have government relations offices, they have staff here. There are ways to get that network as well, by just being here.
William Leonard
I think we could have a whole podcast episode just around resources, programming, go to market, and targeting customers in the Virginia, DC, and Maryland area as a whole. But I really appreciate the context and insight that you both shared there. Gene, I’ll pose this next question to you, which is a little bit more startup-oriented, right? It wouldn’t be a podcast around startups in 2024 without talking about AI. So you know what to get your thoughts around what sectors amongst the Virginia startups do you think will see the fastest growth in scale as a result of this AI platform shift? I mean, there’s a lot of healthcare, there’s a lot of defense tech, aviation, dual-use, FinTech. Curious to hear maybe some of the segments and areas that you in the Sands Capital team are focused on, relative to AI.
Gene Riechers
Sure. We have made, I think, eight or nine AI investments. We made, I think, seven before ChatGPT arrived. We’ve been at this for a while relatively, and the things that we’ve learned over time are in other national if not international trends, but they’re also trends for the region, is that for a startup company, people aren’t gonna go out and raise the kind of money that openAI has raised and sort of other names. What we’ve got to do is, and it goes to a point that Seda made earlier, you got to go find your particular niche your area to focus on. We see our solutions that are specifically targeted towards it could be a horizontal need, like AI governance, or it could be a vertical need, like focusing on crime and theft and financial institutions. There are many more examples, but you have to find something to focus on and odds are good that you are more likely to succeed. And that in my mind, if you come at it as an expert in that industry, not necessarily an expert in AI, or a generalist AI expert then chooses to focus on a complex industry. I think we have a challenge in figuring it out and recruiting enough talent to build a company around it. I think it’s better to build generalist AI skills to apply them to a very specific industry or horizontal solution. I know that’s happening in Virginia. As a specific example I touched on earlier, Amazon several years ago chose Arlington, Virginia as what they call HQ2 for their second headquarters in the US. And one of the things that happened as a result of that was Virginia Tech built another campus basically across the street, for the purpose of primarily producing computer science grads who are focused initially on graduate degrees in computer science. But that’s an example where there’s a lot of AI talent being developed that helped build companies and upstart companies.
William Leonard
I think you hit on an interesting point there. And it’s something that we’re certainly thinking about as a fund. Valor’s just around a domain-specific founder, building an AI application on top of their domain expertise and knowledge, and bringing in maybe an AI-driven CTO, COO, or partner to help scale that company. I think that’s a whole nother conversation in itself around your building teams today in the modern world of AI. Seda, curious to hear your thoughts there as well. You’re specifically in the world of fintech. You mentioned you all see FinTech as a horizontal lens, instead of a vertical lens. Curious to hear how you all are thinking about AI technologies relative to FinTech and also Virginia startups building those companies.
Seda Goff
Pulling it back, a startup is a company that’s formed to solve a problem that has a high pain point for a specific set of people who have that problem. Customers, people, not companies, people that have that problem. These companies build a solution to solve that high pain point problem that costs less than somebody is willing to pay for it. There are a lot of people willing to pay for that solution. Now, that is a startup, that is a company. Now, if AI is the best way to build the solution that solves that pain point, then that’s great. There’s a kind of force multiplier, in being able to churn data to look at multiple data sets in a very quick period of time, it’s the delivery of that product. But if that initial pain point does not exist, then it’s almost a solution in search of a problem. The way people look at AI, and it’s not usually the funders, it’s usually the founders is, oh, I’ve got this really cool thing that I can do with AI so I’m going to be an AI tech founder. But if no customers stay up late at night, be like, oh, my gosh, I wish I had AI. I’m gonna get fired if I don’t figure out how to get AI in my company. Nobody does that there. They might be sitting up late at night worried about compliance for their financial institution like theft or something, that’s what they stay up late at night worrying about, or the number of patients that are coming through a healthcare system, and the number of let’s say, X-rays that need to get reviewed on a day to day basis. Is there an AI solution that can that can help that quicker? Yeah, there are but nobody says, oh, my gosh, I need AI to review my X-rays. They say, I have a backlog of patients and not enough staff to be able to get to all of them, not enough radiology techs, or whatever. When we’re looking at AI, I think that there are a lot of applications but what sometimes I see are the AI companies, that end up being more of a spot solution as opposed to something that’s going to grow to the scale of being truly venture-backed. Usually, the companies that are truly venture backable are solving a pain point or a problem that then has a cascading network effect, to then be able to you solve that, that very tight pain, and then you’re like, and I can do this for you, and I can do that, and I can bring this in and it creates that network effect of a single entry point and then growing from there. I looked at AI as not necessarily the end all be all. We love AI companies, don’t get me wrong, but it’s more is the problem you’re solving is such a high pain point that your customer acquisition cost is low, and your time to close per contract is low. You have the ability to grow your market over multiple industries or a segment as it moves through, that’s really where some of these AI and machine learning, I mean, none of this is really new per se. Companies have gotten more elegant and streamlined in being able to include this as part of their solution to have the most robust offerings to solve the problems of their customers. I think that there are a ton of different applications and I think, also, as the regulatory side starts to get figured out, we’re seeing a lot of the ChatGPTs and all these different companies that are at the forefront of creating these AI systems and algorithms. They’re getting combed through. I’m not gonna say they’re getting slammed, they’re getting combed through, and something’s going to shake out of that. It’s funny that I would even say, that another benefit of being in this area, is I grew up here. I’ve lived in this area. I mean, I went away to college and then came back for grad school. I have had so many friends and people in my world work on the Hill, run for Congress, and work in different aspects of the government. So this is a great place to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on by just talking to your neighbors and your friends. And nowhere else, I mean, sometimes you go out to different parts of the country, and they don’t even know what’s going on, not that I have CSPAN on, don’t get me wrong unless it’s super interesting. I don’t sit there and watch it all day, but I have a better understanding from being from here, and growing up here, both as a career as well as throughout my life.
Gene Riechers
I want to add something about AI. It is changing so crazy fast that you can fall in love with a particular investment concept, company, person, whatever, and four weeks later, they’re obsolete. They were all embedded for weeks before that. It’s really crazy, how fast things are changing and so you got to be aware of that and be thoughtful about that as you think about hiring a person investing in a company joining a company, whatever it is because you’ve got to figure out whether or not this is a reasonable chance of being a winner or it’s this roadkill in a month. It usually takes longer than that.
William Leonard
Gene, that’s a great point.
Seda Goff
Can I make one additional point to that, because basically related to Fintech. There are a lot of different companies out there that are looking at payment platforms, loan origination systems, those types of loan side FinTech, and with the financial institutions in the market, most financial institutions are capital concentrated against loans given what was happening in 2021, 2022, and end of 2023. There’s a bit of a pause on loan. These brake technologies are great today, but they’re not going to get the customer penetration that they need because the pain point doesn’t exist. The loan world is going to open back up but by the time that happens, will that one company be able to weather this and continue to develop and get better during this lull period? Or Will somebody come and leapfrog right over them with the next big tech? As a VC, I encourage folks to keep track of what’s going on but make sure that you’re never on the APR, like you’re always ahead of the APR on everything, even when you’re in a low.
William Leonard
Those are great points. I think a recent example of this instance of a technology may be being DOA is Google and perplexity with Google now announcing its own AI-generated search results. I think it’s an interesting example to see how capital gets stuffed into a company and it’s called the Google killer or whatever it may be. But you know, Google already has the resources to come in and they’re probably already building what this company is building, they’re sitting back watching, using the product, understanding the corners and angles that they can be better, more product-delivery standpoint. I think, Gene, you hit on the point that talent is out scoping careers at these AI companies, you really have to assess the founding team and their vision for building a product and how quickly are they shipping the product. How quickly are they iterating? How quickly are they able to build new products, deliver them, and continue to grow their value as an AI platform, because things are so dynamic and changing on a daily basis. Seda, you hit the nail on the head there, and it’s about staying up to date and staying abreast of what’s happening in AI. Not only staying up to date but seeing around corners. That’s the way that you can outpace whatever your competition may be doing. Those are all great and awesome talking points there for us. As we wrap up this conversation, just from a macro perspective, Gene, I’ll ask you first. How can Virginia startups today best position themselves to go out and fundraise in this market? I think the market is improving. I think the volume is down but round sizes are holding steady across the early stage for the most part, how can founders best position themselves to raise capital in this constrained environment today?
Gene Riechers
To take a step back, if somebody’s listening to this, and they’re new to the idea of raising venture capital, you should understand that we, as we’ve alluded to, are a sort of a, to put a nice word to it, on a lull where VCs are less interested and less capable of funding companies, that doesn’t mean they’ll fund any and obviously a lot of money it’s been pouring into AI specifically. But there’s a variety of structural reasons related to who are the limited partners, meaning the investors in the venture funds and how venture funds are allocating your capital. There are a lot of forces that we won’t spend time on here today but it’s a harder time to raise money. There are a couple of pieces of advice. One is if you are going to go raise money, get advice from people who’ve done it before, get them to review your presentation, review your business plan, how you talk about your business, and so on. Secondly, to say this earlier point, get introductions to funding sources. We as VCs, get contacted by a lot of people, and we are most likely to respond. We do respond to people that we know who send us deals and opportunities because we want them to keep sending us those. And if we don’t respond, they won’t. That’s how our little ecosystem works in part. So get introductions, as opposed to a cold call or email to a venture capital investor. The best advice I can give somebody right now sounds counterproductive, but don’t raise money, meaning can you make more progress on your own, or with a very small amount of money that you might raise from family or friends to make a little more progress than somebody might have done a few years ago to raise venture capital. You have more proof points that will make it easier to raise money if you are I’ve invested in a number of zero-revenue companies in my life. I’m comfortable with that, a lot of VCs aren’t. They’ll have thresholds. We want to see at least a million in revenues or whatever. If you have more proof points, a handful of customers, a few 100,000 to a few million in revenues, and so on, you will be better off in the process of raising money because there are just fewer VCs investing fewer dollars right now, that will change and it may change by later this year or next year. But at this moment, if you can avoid raising money, I’d avoid raising money. One way to avoid raising money is to get your customers to pay for it. You have a relationship with one company that could give you some money upfront and on a contract basis to build something that you can turn into a product subsequently. That’s an example.
William Leonard
We’ve seen founders do that and get creative with how you’re you’re invoicing customers to help your revenue, and your journey instead of going out and spending time fundraising. Seda, I’ll pose the same question to you.
Seda Goff
I agree with everything Gene said. I’m not going to say it again. The only thing that I will add is kind even on the front end of that, most companies are not venture-backed. And that’s okay. We have a very specific model and we need companies that feed into our business model. So if your company doesn’t have triple, triple double, double, like double, triple whatever I’ve heard a thousand different ways of saying that of revenue, and when we look at companies, we’re like, okay, do you have a pathway to $100 million in revenue? What is that pathway? Where are you most likely to exit, even before you get to that point? And what is it going to take money, resources, and time-wise to get there? Sometimes it’s a thought experiment. I’ve had founders say, sometimes I feel I’m just making stuff up, and I’m like, you are, that’s the point. But your value as a founder is how close you’re making stuff up to the real thing and that’s where we’re evaluating whether your ability, whether from past experience network, or you’re a serial founder, your ability to kind of do those things. If you’re not venture-backable, again, that’s okay. There are loan programs, SBA loan programs, there’s friends and family raises, there’s a lot of ways to get what you need, whether through revenue or through loans, or whatnot to get to a point, and you can have a very successful life, and have a lot of wealth by having a large, small business. The way that the US government defines the small business is pretty broad in terms of the number of employees and revenue and whatnot. Venture backable is just a subset of all of the businesses. One thing that I always leave with is that Gene and I are sitting here all day, every day, learning the business model of every company that comes in and pitches us. We sit there, we figure it out, and we understand it. I encourage founders, to take one second and understand our business model. Learn how we make money because we are a business as well. We don’t do this out of the kindness of our hearts and philanthropy. It feeds into our business. There are great resources out there and great books. One that I like the most is Secrets of Sandhill Road, probably have it somewhere by Scott Kupor. It goes through the map and if you understand what we’re looking for, to make our map work, you will be able to present to us your value as a company to our business model. You get to only learn one business model. We have to sit there and learn 20 to 30 a day. So it doesn’t take one second to learn the VC business model. Also, you’ll understand quickly if this is a fit for you or not, and a fit for your company.
Gene Riechers
I think those are two great observations, Seda. And just to emphasize the first one, about 99 point-something percent of businesses, startups do not raise venture capital. And that’s fine. I know lots of people, oh, you wind up owning 100% of a company. That’s probably okay. I think that can be a great path to success. I don’t know if this statistic is still true, but a book came out several years ago that analyzes how Americans accumulated wealth in their lives. The industry that produced the most millionaires in America, at least at that moment was drycleaning. Not something anybody would guess. There are a lot of ways to make money, but drycleaning has produced more millionaires than technology or anything else.
William Leonard
Well, Gene and Seda, this has been an incredible conversation for our audience. I think this is a great place to wrap. I really appreciate your time sharing more about Sands Capital and Flintlock Capital, and giving the founders who are listening, tactical advice on how to grow and think about building their companies specifically in Virginia. So really appreciate your time today.
Seda Goff
Thank you for having us.
This is the Virginia Startup Podcast, a resource for the founders and the investors who call Virginia home. The Virginia Startup Podcast is produced thanks to Valor Ventures. Valor leads seed rounds in transformational software companies headquartered in the South. If you’re a Virginia founder, please reach out to us at valor.vc. And if you’re raising your first pre seed capital, consider applying for a free grant through our Startup Runway Foundation program. You can find out more at startuprunway.org