Seed Fund Application Process

The Fund's Criteria

We accept applications throughout the year free of charge. Companies need to meet the following profile to be considered for an investment:

  • You must be able to grow and locate part of the operations to the Danville region (includes – Danville, Virginia, Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina) for a period of three years.
  • Your business must create a minimum of 5 jobs with salaries equal or greater than $50,000 within a 3 year period.
  • The Founder or CEO must have made a full-time commitment to the business.
  • Your business model needs to demonstrate you can scale in a capital efficient way.
  • We prefer that your company be engaged in any one of these industries: IT, software, engineering and electronic related products, bio-materials, medical device, healthcare products and green energy.
  • We would like you to have a beta product or service developed with validation or first customers.
  • You must have a business plan or executive summary that projects your market position, capital strategy, management team development, and risk factors for taking products/services to market and growing your company.

 

Application Process

  1. Submit your business plan or executive summary via this website. You should hear back from us within ten business days.
  2. For those applications that pass the initial screening, we will set up a phone call to gather additional information about your business. We will inform you within two weeks whether or not we have further investment interest in your company. For companies that are close but not quite ready for investment, we will refer you to other services of The Launch Place to strengthen your business plan if you wish to resubmit.
  3. We will set up an interview with your company in Danville, where you will present your business plan and respond to the issues we have discovered in our due diligence.
  4. Our next step, if a company is selected to move forward in the process, is to complete “deep due diligence” which will consists of on-site visits by one or more of us to meet you, requests for various information, and assistance with your pitch and funding strategy.
  5. If an investment is recommended by our team, you and your team will present to the Fund’s board. After your presentation to the Fund’s board and their review of our due diligence information, they will vote on the recommendation.

Once the investment is made, The Launch Place will work with you to build your business, providing you with a full menu of services, training and support, or just those services you specifically need. We also will help with additional capital, customer or strategic partner introductions, and employee recruitment.