blended finance appraoch
A $15 Million
Regional Investment Strategy
Overview
Every business needs capital to start, grow, and succeed.
The average entrepreneur needs a minimum of $25,000 to get started and 43% of them needed additional funding to grow their business. While ultimate success depends upon value proposition, 82% of failed startups cite cashflow issues as a condition for closure.
At the root of this problem are systemic and institutional barriers to traditional financing, which make capital elusive for most entrepreneurs.
When Access Ventures launched Render Capital in February 2020, the goal was clear: to build momentum for entrepreneurs by deploying capital aggressively. While we recognized that these efforts would take time to bear fruit, this early approach became known as the Louisville Community Fund of Render Capital. Meanwhile, the team at Render Capital pursued, and successfully secured, a more traditional venture strategy which ultimately was the first institutionally backed venture fund in Kentucky.
One of the key challenges we aimed to address was the lack of access to risk capital—a critical barrier to fostering a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem capable of attracting and retaining innovative, scalable companies.
Our vision for the region is simple: to see a regional economy where entrepreneurs see Louisville and Southern Indiana as places where they can find the appropriate risk capital necessary for them to start, grow, and succeed in their businesses. Period.
We believed that by meeting entrepreneurs where they were with first-mover, risk-tolerant capital, we would see momentum grow and density increase. We understand that entrepreneurs will always need mentors and advisors. But if capital is inaccessible, they will not survive and will be faced with shutting down or leaving the region.
Each part of the regional investment strategy boosted economic opportunity for the regional startup ecosystem. This blended finance strategy was a catalyst impact and unlocked millions of dollars for regional founders.
“We know entrepreneurs from many diverse backgrounds face weighty barriers. These barriers impose a high cost to the U.S. economy, in terms of job creation and innovation.”
— Victor Hwang, Founder/CEO of RightToStart.org
Envisioning a world where opportunities outweigh obstacles
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![Render Capital Competition]()
Competition
The Render Competition was established to attract and retain high-growth startups to expand the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We did this by investing $100,000 into each company will to make Louisville home.
Over five years, we invested over $4M into 40 companies.
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First Dollar Initiative
More than 80% of startup capital comes from entrepreneurs and their network of relationships, which acts as a systemic barrier for low-to-medium income households experiencing severe credit constraint and historic wealth inequality. Women and minority entrepreneurs face additional challenges such as discriminatory bias from capital providers. We partnered with several local community organizations that support black and brown founders and provided $5,000 grants to over 200 businesses.
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Community Round Match Fund
We created the nation's first community round match fund to inspire adoption of new technology platforms that expands community participation in a company's fundraise. We matched over $1M as a part of over $7M in capital raised by 35+ businesses alongside over 2000+ community micro-angel investors.
To learn more, download our Community Round Match Fund Playbook.
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Angel Network
To see the region thrive beyond our initial investment of $15M, we needed to educate, train and inspire the next generation of early-stage investors. We launched an angel network, in partnership with the Angel Capital Association and sought to educate more people on the opportunity for them in venture investing.
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Investments
Whether venture, debt, or alternatives to equity, we knew founders would need creative partners to realize their dreams. Only 1% of companies raise venture capital so it was important to pursue a blended strategy. We made operating capital loans and desired to inspire traditional banks to lend closer to startups in the region.
We also anchored Render Capital's Venture Fund and helped unlock an institutional partner in raising a traditional $15M venture fund.
