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Founderville is a $6.6M pre-seed and seed fund based in Greenville, South Carolina, built on the principle of 'Founders Funding Founders.' The fund was raised from 45 Greenville-based founders and C-level executives, and exclusively backs B2B SaaS and application AI startups located within the Upstate SC region. Fund I focuses hyper-locally on companies tied to Greenville, with future funds expected to expand geographically. Founderville's approach is hyper-local, hands-on, and face-to-face. The team writes $300k–$500k checks on rounds in the $700k–$1M range, typically leading the first round and reserving capital for follow-ons. Beyond capital, they help founders discover product-market fit, build teams, navigate operations, and understand capital strategy — describing themselves not as angels or accelerators, but as 'backers.' Their Startup Residence Program guarantees a minimum $100K equity investment to qualifying companies that relocate to Greenville for one year.
Notable quotes
“The founders are the most important aspect of us investing. It's all about the team because the team's going to overcome whatever challenges pop up with the distribution, the sales, marketing, the software, whatever.”
“The thesis of this fund is former Greenville founders funding the next crop of Greenville founders. We have 45 investors from Greenville in the fund. All are founders or C-level executives of other, venture-backed or private equity funds, leaders that are willing to spend time with the investments.”
“When we invest in a company, other money comes with it. In the case of one of our startups, as soon as we invested, two other companies joined in, which tripled the overall investment. It's business feeding business. Everyone wins.”
Team
Shaler (Shay) P. Houser
Co-Founder & General Partner
Tony Nolte
Vice President
Recent investments
| Company | Round | Size | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| WAVS Custom | Pre-seed | $350k | 2023-09-01 |
| Vicinity Capital | Pre-seed | — | 2024-01-01 |
| Pixlmob | Pre-seed | — | 2024-01-01 |
| Digital Site Box | Pre-seed | — | 2024-01-01 |
| Strata Platforms | Pre-seed | — | 2024-01-01 |
| 6AM City | Seed | — | 2024-01-01 |
| Rymedi | Seed | — | 2024-01-01 |
Frequent co-investors
| VC firm | Deals together |
|---|---|
| SC Launch (SCRA) | 2 |
| NEXT (Greenville Entrepreneurial Support Organization) | 2 |
| The Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Furman University) | 1 |
| Flywheel Foundation | 1 |
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