Our investment philosophy is relatively straightforward. We partner with outstanding entrepreneurs who are looking for both an equity capital and a trusted business partner. This page provides more insight into what an entrepreneurial partner could expect working with Virginia Capital.

Shared Decision-making

We have considerable financial, legal, tax and strategic insights and prefer to play a key role in these complex decisions. Basically if the decision involves a commitment of financial resources or hiring key human capital, then, as business partners, we expect to have a role in key decisions. Otherwise, we like to be advised on the operations but leave the day-to-day decision making to management. The low turnover of our portfolio company executives is testament to our "hands-off" approach. After more than three dozen investments over fifteen years, turnover among our portfolio CEOs is virtually zero and among senior executives is de minimas.

Reasonable Reporting Requirements

What information do we like to know about our companies? We always suggest that our CEOs imagine that they were the investment partner—we would like to understand the same issues that the CEO would if the roles were reversed. Typically this includes regular financial reports with short summary of operational performance metrics.

Home Cooking

Someone on our payroll does all of the work with our portfolio companies. We believe this provides us with better insight and makes us better partners. We don't use outside accounting, legal or investment banking advisors. This also preserves confidentiality.

Local Mentality

We prefer to invest close to home because that is where our connections are. We are better business partners because we can provide meaningful access to a broad array of contacts through fifteen years and three dozen other portfolio companies. We frequently think of an investment partnership like a "financial marriage" -- but unlike a typical marriage, business partners can't get a "no fault divorce". We use our diligence process as a courtship to build meaningful personal relationships with our management partners and to provide them plenty of time to "check us out."

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Debt Aversion

We rely on growth of our portfolio companies to drive our investment returns. We are conservative and are largely debt averse. In most instances our companies borrow to fund fixed assets with committed long term debt from stable financial institutions.

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