Five companies — including three from Jacksonville — will face off in a pitch competition taking place in conjunction with the arrival on the First Coast of an early stage venture fund that has bolstered investment and company growth across the Southeast.
The competition will be the culmination of a two-day event that begins Tuesday.
Greenville, South Carolina-based VentureSouth is hosting the Jacksonville Venture Competition, which is also sponsored by the Jacksonville Jaguars, Jacksonville University, JTA, Chang Industrial and others. The Business Journal, which is also a sponsor, will stream the event on its website.
Those competing include three Jacksonville-based companies:
- Blue Vigil, which makes tethered drone power systems
- Archer First Response, a medical transportation company
- Operade, which produces a preoperative beverage
Also competing is Greenville-based 6AM City, a digital media company that provides hyper-local news and events coverage in six Southeastern cities, and Chattanooga-based Iconic Moments, which helps cultural organizations use Web3 technology.
The goal of the two-day event — which will feature speakers from JU, a panel on women in venture capital, and other presentations in addition to the competition — is to help create a more robust and dynamic startup scene on the First Coast, said Matthew Chang, the CEO of Chang Industrial and a VentureSouth member who has been working since 2021 to bring the organization here.
"For a city as big and developed as we are," he said, "the start-up scene is not as mature as it should be."
Earlier, VentureSouth Managing Director Charlie Banks said the First Coast has a “huge amount of pent-up demand” that the investing group is looking to tap into.
Jacksonville will be the 20th city the investing group has a chapter in, after opening in Atlanta and Chattanooga last year.
Founded in 2008, VentureSouth’s membership includes over 400 investors and has deployed over $80 million in more than 80 companies, according to its LinkedIn page. Members of each of the company’s chapters hold monthly meetings, and the fund only invests in companies located where they have a geographical footprint.
The organization already has a few members on the First Coast, Banks said; setting up an official chapter here is a way to bring in more individual and corporate investors.
As well as connecting investors and startups, the organization also focuses on training investors, with a curriculum that covers everything from term sheets to exit strategies.
That education, Banks said, has a long-term impact on a market.
“We tell folks often that we are conditioning the local investor base,” he said. “If they make money, they know what questions to ask, they know what type of companies are investable.”
While the fund has been expanding, this week's public pitch competition is atypical for a chapter launch. It’s something Chang thought would help in a market like the First Coast, which is geographically spread out and doesn’t have a large-scale incubator that already brings startups together.
"We're trying to have people meet each other here," he said. "With Venture South as a catalyst, there's going to be more of a community."
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