Abaca: Ben Franklin + Village Capital

Ben Franklin and Village Capital pilot new tools to benchmark growth

Wherever you reside across the Philadelphia region, the Abaca tool helps you and your trusted advisors prepare your company for growth and for investment.

Village Capital’s “Venture Investment Readiness and Awareness Level” — VIRAL for short — benchmarks your progress across eight categories (team, market, business model, etc.). Using your VIRAL level, you can self-assess where you should focus to prepare for investment, and then connect you with the people best positioned to help you.

As use of this tool grows in its application across the region, we can improve the ways that you connect with the right investors and support organizations. As we begin, it is a new habit for Ben Franklin as our team engages with individual founders and with accelerators across the region. This tool is intended to be used for your own self-assessment, and also as a conversation-starter for you and your potential investors.

We welcome other entrepreneurial support organizations and investors to join us in adding transparency to investment decision-making and getting wiser about how we best help companies grow.

Entrepreneurs, get started with a diagnostic to determine your investment readiness level and be in touch with Ben Franklin for a consult: kate@sep.benfranklin.org

Note: When you create an account your results will be shared with Ben Franklin Technology Partners SEP.

Sponsoring Partners

Participating Partners

Ben Franklin and Village Capital have partnered in work to support the founders of tech-driven companies since 2016, leading a VilCap Communities program (100 hours of classroom time) for fintech companies in 2016 and a VilCap Pathways program, supported by UBS, which prioritized work with women and African American and Latino entrepreneurs.

About Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania
Ben Franklin is the most active early stage capital provider for the region’s technology sectors. Ben Franklin combines best practices of venture capital with a public-spirited purpose: leading the region’s technology community to new heights, creating jobs and changing lives for the better. To learn more, go to www.sep.benfranklin.org. You can also connect with Ben Franklin on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About Village Capital
Village Capital is a global venture capital firm that discovers, develops, and invests in entrepreneurs solving real-world problems. Since 2009 we have invested over 70 ventures across 15 countries and supported hundreds more through our collaborative investment-readiness programs. visit www.vilcap.com and follow @villagecapital on Twitter.

Contact

Kate Srinivasan
kate@sep.benfranklin.org