Vicinity Views
News, education and insights on investing in public offerings through the Vicinity platform and private early-stage offerings with VentureSouth.
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Turning Passion into Profit
We’re not saying this blog will cure your post-Olympic blues, but we do have something golden for you. This week we chatted with Alek…
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You’re Special… Sort of.
“You’re special, just like everyone else.” Unfortunately, this is as true in business as anywhere. Specialize or die – in a world of investing…
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A Twist on Buffett’s Advice
Today we’re taking a new look at one of Warren Buffett’s most quoted lines: “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” While we…
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Is Real Estate Really “Location, Location, Location”?
At the end of 2020 Chapel ran a successful campaign on Vicinity’s portal to fund a multi-tenant facility in the Poe Mill area. For…
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What Robinhood got wrong (& right) in their Super Bowl commercial
I was about ready to let the whole Robinhood/Gamestop wildness go… and then I saw the commercial. You’ve probably seen it by now –…
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Doubling-down on Democratization
While trust in the gamified giant has become as volatile as a short squeeze on an outdated retail chain, now might be a good…
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What’s the difference between microinvesting and crowdfunding?
While crowdfunding serves a purpose, there are some glaring differences between it and investment crowdfunding, also known as microinvesting.
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An Alternative to Fighting Manipulation with Manipulation
There’s a good chance you’ll come across a BFF or “soul sister” at some point in life, but you’ll have better luck finding good…
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What have you assumed?
Assumptions are all those little (and BIG) things we expect to be true in the future around our business, its market, or the customers…
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5 Questions for the Capital Seeker
There comes a point in nearly every business’s life when getting funding is a necessity. At this fateful moment, there may also be a…
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4 Investor Insights from 4 Years of Reg CF
Four years old… this is the age you can expect recognition of shapes and colors, and a love for rhyming words. Also for some…
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Double Duty Diversified Income
It’s trivia time at Vicinity! Which of the following headlines from the past year are real? Aliens in hiding until mankind is ready, says…
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Exits: Taxes
So, finally! Our preferred shareholder has a distribution. Less than expected by the naïve optimists hearing the headline price, but still it’s nice to…
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Exits: The Last Complications
The pie is so close you can almost taste it. But wait a second! Escrow accounts In most transactions, the buyer will insist that…
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Exits: Dividing the Pie
As we’re close to the bottom of the waterfall, we are now including a third metaphor as we figure out how to “divide the…
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Exits: The First Evaporations
There are a few immediate claims on the water heading into the waterfall; some of these are fairly obvious, others are more complicated or…
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Exits: Waterfalls
Nothing happens in investing without flowery metaphors. When we discuss “exits” we are talking about getting our money back out of an investment. This…
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Exits: waterfalls, holdbacks, escrows, earnouts, and carry – some of the complexities of “an exit”
“Make Money. Have Fun. Do Good.” is the VentureSouth motto. This first part, Make Money, is (we believe) the key point of angel investing…
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Capped participating preferreds: the real impact 2: the grey zone
Following from the last post, there was a range of fairly attractive outcomes where the capped participation had an impact: let’s review the results…
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Capped participation preferreds: the real impact part 1
What does the capped participation preference mean in practice? Time for the promised spreadsheet: this sheet lays out the returns for preferred shareholders in…
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Capped participating preferreds: Are they unusual?
As we asked in the last post, are capped participating preferreds unusual? Well, it is option #3 in the term sheet – people generally…
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Capped participating preferreds: source infomation
Following on from the last post, before we unleash the spreadsheet, though, let’s cover where the idea of capped participating preferreds comes from. The…
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Capped participating preferreds: introduction
On a few VentureSouth investments this fall, we led the round (as we like to do) and agreed a term sheet that included a…
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Non-dilutive funding: wrap up
There are lots of other resources for exploring non-dilutive funding. While this is a bit outside of our remit at VentureSouth, we strongly encourage…