NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

By Anne Field

Allie Burns is CEO of Village Capital, which has run early-stage startup accelerators and boot camps for social enterprises since its founding in 2009. Its mission: to drive more investment to entrepreneurs who aren’t the usual suspects (young, white, male). Perhaps its best-known innovation is a peer-selected, collective investment system for determining which cohort members should receive funding, inspired by the village banking approach typically used in microfinance. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the biases that often lead investors to choose enterprises run by founders who look like them, with similar experiences.

In 2015, Village Capital launched VilCap Investments, an $18 million fund that invested in 110 startups before turning all its attention to its existing portfolio. More recently, the organization switched its focus to a “family of funds”, which will invest in startups involved with Village Capital.

Photo courtesy of Sudipto Sarkar.