A Benevolent Community
OUR MENTOR-INVESTORS
As we shared in Our Origin Story, we were inspired to build Benevolent Capital Group through our close work with mentors of Ted’s entrepreneurship program at Lorenzo Walker Technical College.
For an hour each week during the school year, our mentors would come in to lend their guidance to the teenaged business founders of the program. With their coaching, accountability, and (most importantly) friendship, the students built profitable businesses from scratch, won numerous local pitch competitions and twice earned spots at the International High School Pitch Championships in Chicago.
As we all know, Naples isn’t just another town. Some of the world’s most accomplished entrepreneurs and Fortune 100 executives make Naples their home. Many of these all-stars of the business world chose to speak once a year to Ted’s students, and several gave of their time each month or each week.
When we were forming the idea of Benevolent, these mentors naturally dominated our thoughts. It’s wonderful how they helped teens explore their first business venture. Surely some of those students, after graduating from a four-year college, might benefit from further help – help in the form of guidance and in capital investment, too.
And what about all those other hardworking members of the local business community, including some who employed other Lorenzo graduates in their first jobs outside school?
It seemed like there was a natural fit here. So we started talking to some of these friends. They invest on Wall Street and often Silicon Valley, but most don’t have a direct avenue to invest right here at home, in Naples.
More importantly than the money, though, would be their business wisdom. So, for our first fund, we set out some simple parameters to describe who it is we’re inviting to participate in our Benevolent community and guide our founders.
The opportunity to work with our founders is strictly voluntary, an opt-in. Generally we’re adverse to coercion but doubly so with our friends. We’re going to refer to you as mentor-investors regardless.
All mentor-investors will be introduced to all our founders – of course! We’re all local, and our deep bench of business experts are more of a draw for our founders than cash.
Some mentor-investors may choose to speak to the entire founder cohort once a year, as many of the guests to Ted’s classroom have done over the years.
Some may decide to work more in-depth with one company at a time. There’s a very good chance that one founder will need close advice for three months, for instance. Then the mentor and founder can maintain ties while the founder works with another specialist in another area of focus, and then another. This worked very well for Ted’s student businesses, which benefited from multiple light-touch mentors rather than one an all-or-nothing one-on-one relationship.
Mentor-investors contributions are intentionally capped for this first fund so that no investor has more sway than any other, in alignment with our Investment Thesis. We don’t expect to use most of the funds right away, so investors have the option of funding their commitment in four annual installments rather than all up front. We set the stake smaller than many annual golf club dues on purpose. With our friends, we’re inventing a new way of helping hardworking founders scale. Our mentor-investors are friends and mentors first, investors only after.
Interested in becoming a mentor-investor? Email us to join our waitlist!