On the Blue Ridge
On the Blue Ridge features conversations with people shaping the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hosted by Asheville-based journalist Jon Page, the show explores the ideas, creativity, and vision driving Western North Carolina forward.
Through long-form interviews and on-location storytelling, each episode captures the evolving story of these mountains. The conversations focus on people doing meaningful and inspiring work across the region, from conservation and outdoor recreation to the arts, agriculture, food and beverage, entrepreneurship, and beyond.
On the Blue Ridge
Jeffrey Kaplan on Rethinking How Western North Carolina Grows Businesses
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Jeffrey Kaplan is the Director of Venture Asheville and CEO of Optimist Ventures, where he works to help businesses grow here in Western North Carolina.
Focused on growing the region’s startup community, Venture Asheville is an initiative of the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County and the Asheville Chamber of Commerce. Building on that work, Venture Asheville launched a new effort called Optimist Ventures in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The program is focused on helping Western North Carolina businesses recover and grow at a time when the region is still dealing with the storm’s economic fallout.
Jeffrey joined Venture Asheville in 2018. He earned a master’s degree in entrepreneurship from the University of Florida and has worked with startups from several different angles—as a founder, educator and consultant.
In this episode, Jeffrey shares what fascinates him about entrepreneurs and what he thinks separates the good ones from the rest. We also discuss how Hurricane Helene shaped Optimist Ventures, how an offer from Poppy Popcorn helped inspire its unique funding model, and why Jeffrey believes that model can benefit entrepreneurs, investors and the broader Western North Carolina economy.
Venture Asheville
ventureasheville.com
Follow Venture Asheville on Facebook and Instagram
Follow Jeffrey Kaplan on LinkedIn
Optimist Ventures
optimistventures.co
2026 Optimist Ventures Recipients
Asheville Wellness Tours
Devil’s Foot Beverage Co.
Evolve Early Learning
The Flying Bike
Full Moon Tea Co.
Ginger’s Revenge
Habibi Village
Highlands Hydro Clean
Rockgeist Bikepack USA
Savage Supply
Spice Witch
The Village Potters Clay Center
Theme Music
The song "Goa" was written by Lyndsay Pruett and performed by the Jon Stickley Trio.
Learn more about On the Blue Ridge and sign up for updates at ontheblueridgepod.com.
There's a very strong leaning to building things differently than we did before. So just because we had certain ways of doing business or suppliers or products or customers before, we're encouraging entrepreneurs that they don't have to do things the way they were. We have you have a blank slate. You can go in any direction you want. It's a time to be experimental. We saw this in the pandemic, too. We're telling folks: hey, here's a time to try a crazy product you've always wanted to try. Go for it.
SPEAKER_00Today, on the Blue Ridge, our guest is Jeffrey Kaplan, the director of Venture Asheville and CEO of Optimist Ventures, where he works to help businesses grow here in Western North Carolina. I'm your host, John Page. Let's begin. Focused on growing the region's startup community, Venture Asheville is an initiative of the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville Buncombe County and the Asheville Chamber of Commerce. Building on that work, Venture Asheville launched a new effort called Optimist Ventures in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The program is focused on helping Western North Carolina businesses recover and grow at a time when the region is still dealing with the storm's economic fallout. Participating businesses receive $50,000, half as a grant and half as an investment, along with a 12-week accelerator. And the program is built around a different idea of what successful growth can look like. One that doesn't require building the next billion dollar startup. Some of its participants include Devil's Foot Beverage Company, Ginger's Revenge, and the Village Potters Clay Center. Jeffrey joined Venture Asheville in 2018. He earned a master's degree in entrepreneurship from the University of Florida and has worked with startups from several different angles as a founder, educator, and consultant. In this episode, Jeffrey shares what fascinates him about entrepreneurs and what he thinks separates the good ones from the rest. We also discuss how Hurricane Helene shaped Optimist Ventures, how an offer from Poppy Popcorn helped inspire its unique funding model, and why Jeffrey believes that model can benefit entrepreneurs, investors, and the broader Western North Carolina economy. To start our conversation, I asked Jeffrey why any of this should matter to people who will never start a business or seek an investment, and what a healthy entrepreneurial economy means for the rest of us here in Western North Carolina.
SPEAKER_01The work we do at Venture Asheville and our value proposition is to build entrepreneurs and get startups funded. That's the kind of the what drives us. That's our why. And when you look at the outcomes of an entrepreneurial community, it really comes down to jobs and wages. Most net new job creation in this country is from our micro small businesses, you know, 10, 15 employees and less. And when there's knowledge-based work behind that or tech-enabled employment behind that, whether you're doing online marketing, digital marketing, uh, e-commerce, wholesale, supply chain stuff, logistics, all this knowledge-based work demands a far higher wage than the average county wage is, right? So the average county wage today in Bunkin County is about $55,000. When I started at Venture Ashville eight years ago, the average county wage was $44,000. So we've seen some pretty good increases across the nearly a decade. I've been here. So we've created something like $410, $415 jobs as a result of companies being mentored in our program. That doesn't include the companies we've invested in through Optimists. I mean, even French Broad Pastry is now up to 25 employees. Last year he had like six. So we're seeing these net new job creation at above county average wages. That alone is kind of the economic development metric. It's always about jobs and wages. And when these companies do well, when they bring in outside investment or outside, or even inside our community resting capital that's not being activated in the community, we're able to grow our pie. We're able to increase the fluidity of money through our community, which ripples to every part of it, right? So you're an entrepreneur, you're creating jobs, they're at above county average wages. Those folks are gonna be able to buy houses, buy cars, send their kids to schools, to camps, be involved in the community. That's why we do what we do. The impact we have in the jobs and wages that we're able to facilitate, move the needle, and increase the standard of living for everybody in our community. And what brought you to Asheville? Um, I tell folks that I could move to Asheville because Venture Asheville existed. So Venture Asheville was created in 2014 under the Economic Development Coalition by friend and mentor Josh Dorfman. And uh because it existed, I knew someone like me who came out of grad school who was doing startup sales, uh, creating my own company called Dog Friendly, an app I had that found every dog-friendly location near you, anywhere traveling across the country. You could find a restaurant, park, hotel, beach, hike and trail with you and your dog. I knew that there was an institution in the Asheville community, because it's a the city, the county, the chamber of commerce creates the EDC. The EDC created Venture Asheville. There was that much intentional institutional support for an entrepreneurial ecosystem. I knew that I would be able to create something here or find a job here. And when I was in grad school, um, and after, I worked a lot in accelerators and incubators, uh, our business plan competition. We launched a student incubator. Uh, I worked in our disabled veterans program for three years, done so much in the activating people into entrepreneurship. I knew that's what I wanted to get to. Uh and when I moved here, the plan was not to work at Venture Asheville. I was working at Anthroware, uh, have my own startup on the side. And when this job opened up, it was something I really wanted to do, get back into helping people develop entrepreneurial skills. And so I've been here since 20 uh 2018.
SPEAKER_00Uh at any point in your life, did you consider just being some kind of performer? Because I'm looking around your office. There's these these gold shoes, this gold jacket that I remember seeing you at an event. I've seen you in a hot dog con a hot dog outfit on Instagram lately.
SPEAKER_01Hot dog costume is in my car. Okay. Uh what you can't see behind me is a top hat. There is a flower crown, there is a full green bodysuit, there is a Mad Hatter costume over here. We've got um I got a devil's costume, a cat costume. I like the performance side of it a lot. It's it's a lot of fun for me. Um I went to a phenomenal high school with a great performing arts program. Um, like Josh Gadd came out of my my high school, you know, Olaf from Frozen and quite a few other Spaceballs is coming up. Yeah, I can't wait for that. So he wrote uh the guys who wrote Spaceballs with Josh also went to our high school, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samet. And yeah, we had a phenomenal high school in South Florida with some really great faculty that allowed folks and coached kids to find their voice with confidence on stage. It was a really good program. And I've always enjoyed that. I've always wanted to work in media, never had a media job, but uh you know, we get to do a lot of really fun things in Asheville because we're weird and quirky and different and woo-woo and also serious about business. And I really lean into that, and that's more of a message, not for our community, but other communities. Like you can still be the you can still have a lot of fun in what you do and still take work seriously, but you can have serious fun. Yeah. You know, other communities don't get to lean into the wacky, weird, goofy stuff we get to do. And I think that's one of the greatest benefits of the ecosystem here. Because everyone in Asheville has interests outside of work. You know, whether it's hiking or mountain biking or kayaking or it doesn't matter, or you're being a potter, uh playing music, everyone's got something. And I like to really showcase that in our community. So the more I can do to uh elevate the visibility of the special folks in our community, I'm all for it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Getting back to entrepreneurs, you've you've spent a lot of your careers studying them, mentoring them. What is it that fascinates you about the entrepreneurial mindset?
SPEAKER_01So when I was in going into grad school, I didn't know what I wanted to do so much. My undergrad is in history and education. I like research, I like learning, and I really like teaching. And it I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I was leaving Gainesville. And my wife was in veterinary school, and everyone was like, what are you doing here, man? You've got all this time, you're at this incredible university, University of Florida, get a master's degree, go to law school, do something. Because I didn't really know what I wanted to do, I went into entrepreneurship, thinking this would give me the skills and ability to create value anywhere I go, anywhere I find myself with an entrepreneurial mindset, whether it's in a big company or a small company or here a nonprofit, you will find a way to create value. I remember so clearly an early lecture we had with Mike Morris, who is my grad school mentor and co-author, was the idea that there is no myth. There are no fables around being an entrepreneur. I mean, yeah, we hear a lot of them, but entrepreneurship is a process. Product development is a process. Sales is a process. That means you can break it down into small, repeatable steps. And that to me was like just a light bulb moment. You know, it really took away this idea that to be an entrepreneur, you've got to be a hacker and a hoodie in your parents' basement. In fact, you know, anyone can be an entrepreneur with the right support, sharing the process. And there's so much information out there, some good, some bad, some too generic and cliche, others too tactical and relevant to industries that you're not in. But it's all out there. And I guess the important thing we really want to emphasize is when you unlock that mindset and the training and education in somebody, it opens up incredible independence, financial independence, self-reliance, uh, really kind of our values of pulling yourself up from the bootstraps and being living the life you want to live. And that's what fires me up about entrepreneurship. And when you look at communities that have done really well who have a lot of philanthropy, it's always from entrepreneurship, right? Like always focus on Charlotte and the Levine Children's Hospital and different museums and colleges on campuses and buildings that are named for folks that always come out of entrepreneurship. It's always the business owners that create so much value for a community that they can do philanthropy. And entrepreneurs, you know, business owners become board members of nonprofits, and they become civic leaders and elected officials. So part of what I see our job here is to develop that generation of leadership for our community. And I already know future council people, future philanthropists, current nonprofit board members, they're coming out of our program. And it's it's our responsibility to make sure we're developing these folks with the right mindset.
SPEAKER_00What what are some qualities that make for a good entrepreneur these days?
SPEAKER_01The very cliche one is resilience and grit. And you hear that a ton. Going back to my research in at University of Florida with Mike Morris, we focused on 13 entrepreneurial competencies. So the reason we look at competencies is that it demystifies the process. It's like if you were a dancer and you're in ballet, you know, j just because you got the tights and the shoes and the tutu, you can't you can't do a plie and you can't you can't star in Swan Lake or something yet. It takes repeated practice and competency development to become a superstar, whether you're going to be a heart surgeon, a ballet dancer, or a plumber. You know, it and no shade, no shade to plumbers. I I I love my plumber. We have a lot of old pipes.
SPEAKER_00I hear you.
SPEAKER_01You know, I can't I can't be the one to get in there. Uh so it's competency development, we break it down across 13 different ones in entrepreneurship. I'll say a few, but there's 13 on our website. It's opportunity recognition, opportunity assessment, the ability to focus, yet adapt, tenacity, resilience, uh, building and leveraging entrepreneurial networks, guerrilla skills. So there's not one thing, there's not one Occam's razor to if you were only resilient, you'll make it as an entrepreneur. That's not true. You know, you have to be able to find opportunity, you have to leverage resources, you got to create value, you have to be a creative problem solver. And then you got to figure out how to be a good manager. As you grow and develop as an entrepreneur, it's not just a fun being on stage at one million cups and talking about your business. It's suddenly you got payroll, suddenly you got taxes, and you got to figure out sales tax. And no one likes doing that. And that's the part that bogs folks down. So when we can encourage those folks to hire it out, get a bookkeeper, stay focused on what gives you energy. Um, but really kind of, I guess. All right, if I had to say one thing, I would lean on the definition of entrepreneurship, which is the process of creating value by leveraging resources. That's really kind of the basic definition. And if you have a good eye for that and you can train for a good eye for that, uh, you'll be a successful entrepreneur. So let me share one exercise you can do right now. Under opportunity recognition, uh, we have challenges and exercises for people to develop those skills. One of them is just get bored. Go somewhere, you have to wait in line and think of three ways to make the line move faster while you're standing there. And that just starts that muscle memory and uh uh of seeing a problem and coming up with a solution. I'll tell you that if you keep doing this, you'll become a very dissatisfied person. You will find problems everywhere you go. Uh but that's not such a bad thing. If you can create value and a valuable solution.
SPEAKER_00Well, speaking of problems, uh we've we've gone through in the last six years a pandemic.
SPEAKER_01Remember that. Yeah, yep.
SPEAKER_00And here in in Western North Carolina, Helene hit. So I I think when you think about both of those things happening, you know, what what have you seen happen to entrepreneurs and businesses that you've spent years working with here in this region?
SPEAKER_01You know, there's a mix of reactions and response, and overall, our community is performing better than anticipated. So FEMA comes out right away after the hurricane and says after a disaster like this, a community should anticipate a 43% business closure rate, which is brutal. Do you imagine losing nearly half of our businesses, what it does to not just the wealth of a community, but jobs and stability of a community? It's it's it's terrible. And we looked at Secretary of State filings uh just early this year to see what happened in 2025, and we're really trending about a 20% business close rate, which is not not out of the standard deviation for any community. You know, 20% is pretty average. So that's a testament to how much support has been brought in through grants, uh, through the government, through our city, um, philanthropy through Dogwood. We we've really weathered the aftermath a lot better than anticipated. You know, there's a there's a very strong leaning to building things differently than we did before. So just because we had certain ways of doing business or suppliers or products or customers before, we're encouraging entrepreneurs that they don't have to do things the way they were. We have you have a blank slate. You can go in any direction you want. It's a time to be experimental. We saw this in the pandemic, too. We're telling folks, hey, here's a time to try a crazy product you've always wanted to try. Go for it. You've got like carte blanche to experiment now because the whole world is experimenting. Similarly, now, we don't have to go back to the way things were. There was a lot of problems with our community, um, not major ones, I would say, uh, but this opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And what really came out of it was for us was Optimus Ventures, which is a whole new fund, a whole new uh way to do business, way to invest in companies. It's venture philanthropy, it's it's a groundbreaking, brand new investment vehicle we created. Um, and we can only do that because of Helene, because all bets were off and you could it was the time to experiment and try something new.
SPEAKER_00And it it came right out of Helene, or was it before?
SPEAKER_01So right before Helene, we had been discussing building a very standard uh general partner limited partner fund. So that's where you know people invest into a fund and there's an appointed fund manager to manage investments. It's kind of like if you have a financial advisor. The plan was always to be local and keep it in Western North Carolina. And right after the storm, I got a call from Ginger Frank of Poppy Popcorn saying that she wanted to put $100,000 into a fund. And I was like, Ginger, this is great. What great timing. I'm so glad you're in this position and would love to work with you, but we're doing investments. And she said, No, I want to do grants. I said, I don't know if we can work together. Um I was like, well, I don't you never want to say no to significant capital and a grant. You know, we'll figure out a way to work together. What ended up happening was I went back to my spreadsheets where we were building out potential cap tables and returns and financial models. And we just I discovered that splitting our fund from a million dollars to half a million in investment and half a million in grants ended up with some insane math that worked really, really well for everybody. So let me break that down. So we give companies $50,000, $25 is a grant, $25 is an investment. So they're only paying back on the investment part. But the investment is structured as a shared profit agreement, which we created. We call that the spa note. Uh we thought that'd be clever, like, oh, have a little spa package for you. Come on, pick up your spa package. Anyway, so the spa, you only pay back on net profit on a sliding scale. It's never less than $6,000 a year, never more than $9,000 a year, and it's a six-year term. At that point, all of our contracts with a company cease. So for $25,000, they're going to pay back something like $36. But because they're getting an additional $25,000 as a grant, either through the CDBGDR program administered by the city of Asheville, it's a federal grant program, or through other philanthropy sources we raised, the founders only pay back on that investment side. So they will get an effective negative 10% interest rate. They will get $50,000 up front, a 12-week accelerator, and then over six years pay back $36,000. So that is kind of nuts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then you look at the investor side, because every dollar they put in is matched by a grant, they're kind of getting a two for one here. It it minimizes their risk and uh isolates them from the potential failures in a good amount. The investors are projecting a 13% return over six years, which is crazy to be able to give negative 10% to founders, 13% to investors, again, projected per SEC rules. Gotta be really careful how we say that. Uh and we get to do this full time. We get to we raise grants from philanthropies to allow us to be the fund manager. Therefore, we don't charge our investors a management fee or carried interest. We are all all this, even our for-profit is under the non-profit is a wholly owned subsidiary of our nonprofit here at the chamber. So we're able to keep our jobs. I get to keep my benefits, I get to work with the chamber and all my great colleagues, and and you know, really finally invest in businesses here. We want we wanted to invest in businesses forever. And we've never had a vehicle or the legal entities to do that, and now we do.
SPEAKER_00And it also seems like the businesses like the through the program, like they're getting a lot out of that. And I don't know what kind of value you put on that, but that seems like a very high-value thing, right?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I never thought about that. If we had our accelerator, kind of like a pay-to-play model, what would we charge for that? I don't know. I mean, it's over a decade of my research, you know, and and that's been published and peer-reviewed. And uh we have incredible mentors here in town. So many amazing folks want.
SPEAKER_00And it seems like first of all, it was pretty funny and really well done. But also it it yeah, I mean it seems like it's an everybody wins approach. And then I've also seen uh somewhere where you've talked about like uh it every single one of these doesn't need to be a home run. Like some of these can be singles and doubles, right?
SPEAKER_01So you're talking about the video we did on OptimusVentures.co, our website. That was done with our friends at uh Monkey Budget, which is a comedy first business marketing, video marketing company.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they they knocked it out of the park.
SPEAKER_01We worked with them a lot on different things in the past. They've done our venture 15 for us. They've that was the year we won a gold medal, actually, from the International Economic Development Council for the Venture 15, was the year it was during the pandemic, and those guys from Monkey Budget created a studio here in the office, and we live streamed that event, and it was really special. Uh anyway, yeah, so the the win-win-win, that that idea of that video is you're in a coffee shop and you see me in the back of the line. There's an entrepreneur, an investor, and a philanthropist. And this happens all the time here in town, right? You go to All Day Darling or something, the whole community is out there. And seeing how these folks intersect and can work together. And yeah, the idea is we're moneyballing a fund from that book and movie, the eponymous Moneyball. Typically, venture funds and angel investors use power laws to justify returns. So that means if you make 10 investments, you can expect eight or nine to fail. And that one that hits is going to hit so big, be such a market dominator, that when it's acquired or IPOs, everyone gets made rich off that investment. And it's so big it covers all the losses of the other nine. A couple things about that are not cool with me. So one is as an economic developer and community developer, if I told you I'm working with 10 companies this year and only one's going to make it, you know, you you should tell me to go find another job. That is not the right metric. It's not about the total return. It's about increasing livelihoods for as many people as we can, the standard of living for as many people as we can. So this money ball approach allows us to let companies grow without immense pressure and maximize wins. The repayments are really simple. Again, six to nine thousand a year. It's all capped, it's very predictable. And if a company gets acquired or has an exit or something like that, it accelerates our repayments. So we don't ride along for equity. It's very manageable. And it it's you know, 13% for an investor today is pretty darn good given where real estate and the stock market is. You know, you got to be deep into SpaceX or something on inside trading to hit the 20, 25% returns that the uh VCs are targeting.
SPEAKER_00What are some examples of like those unicorns that have come from Asheville?
SPEAKER_01So unicorns that have come out of Asheville. Unicorn is technically a billion-dollar valuation. Ah. So I don't know if we've had any legit unicorns. I can't say we've had six exits out of Elevate, our mentorship program. You know, Range Urgent Care was a great exit to Novant. Pluridum was acquired by Milliman. Um, who else recently got one? Oh, early days, Craft Peak was acquired by Arrived. And that's typically how an investor gets the return. One more point about why the Moneyball Fund works, especially here, is that for an investor to ever get a return, there has to be an acquisition or an IPO. Look, we've never had an IPO in this town. No one's going from Venture Asheville or Mountain Bizworks, AB Tech onto the stock on publicly traded on the NASDAQ or stock exchange. But that's the main way investors get their money back. So working backwards, what do our companies usually evolve into? And they evolve into tech-enabled lifestyle ventures that pay their founders great, pay employees great, and they grow and they want to stay here for a long time and not give up control. So it's working backwards. If that's the destination our companies are naturally going to, how do we continue to foster what's growing here and growing well? And so the Optimus Ventures Fund is structured in that way to let them keep growing. We're not even on their cap table. We don't even have any equity. It's a shared profit agreement. So they can continue to raise money if they want to. They don't have to. We're not, we're not demanding certain return or you know, demanding excessive returns from them. This is not an adversarial investment relationship. We were really riding along with them and I hope providing immense value, especially with the accelerator, which is 12 weeks of training across those 13 entrepreneurial competencies.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned tech enabled. Can you explain why that is important and part of the Optimist Ventures requirements? Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Our thesis is tech-enabled lifestyle ventures. Uh so what I mean by that is someone like uh French broad pastry, who we invested in, you know, way too small, way too risky, way too uh just kind of like your neighborhood baker, like VCs angels will never look at that. And I guess you know, based on some of his needs and funding needs, you know, banks were not interested. So we find this middle ground of these small companies are trying to grow, don't have enough legitimacy or credibility for banks, or are not going to be the scale for VCs. So that's where our kind of the lifestyle of ventures comes in. What tech enabled means is we want to know you're using technology in your business, not necessarily as a product to sell, but internally for your operations, uh, for e-commerce, for production, internal tools using technology that give you a competitive edge. What that looks like for French broad pastry was he had to buy a van and a $40,000 freezer. I have not seen a $40,000 freezer before until I walked into his uh bakery. That opened up his entire wholesale business. So the technology of a freezer, you know, it doesn't seem like technology, but it was an investment in equipment that allowed him to open up an entire, you know, huge part of his business, his wholesale now. Okay. Um, other examples, Carolina Flowers, you know, they needed greenhouses and a walk-behind tractor and all kinds of equipment for the farm because they were displaced after the storm. Matcha nude got an investment from us right before the global matcha shortage. So it allowed her to uh create new packaging, create a new product called Hojicha, and she's growing her e-commerce as well. E-commerce is really where a lot of our companies end up. Uh in the new cohort, you know, you've got the flying bike, that's Asheville's electric bike tour company, Asheville Wellness Tours, Devil's Foot Beverage, Evolve Early Learning, Full Moon Tea Company, Ginger's Revenge, Hubbi Village, Highlands Hydro Clean, Rock Geist Bike Packs, have three more Savage Supply, Spice Witch, and the Village Potter. So with these folks, we're going to require them to have a signature AI project.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01So how we'll go through some AI training, and we want to know that whether it's an internal, external product, how are they able to be sharper, leaner, get better margins using more technology? That's where GoForTech-enabled businesses.
SPEAKER_00As we're talking, it's a few days before you're going to announce that.
SPEAKER_01This isn't on the Blue Ridge exclusive. No one has seen this list yet. Uh in the show notes, maybe we can list all the companies so folks can do them pretty quickly. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00And I I think the thing is you hear a lot of those names, and um I I recognize a few, there's a few I don't, and I think that's awesome. But but also I think the thing is like none of those scream to me venture capital, and that's I guess the whole point.
SPEAKER_01You know, of the current cohort, the two real ventury-y kind of companies are probably Devil's Foot and Ginger's Revenge because they're in the CPG space, they've been around for a number of years, they've got a great track record, great reputation, great products. Um but yeah, like Habibi Village, this one's awesome, right? Habibi Village, you'll see him at the farmer's market, and it looks like a legit festival booth going down. There's a bunch of people in there, they're making food. They make Sage, which is a flatbread from Lebanon on a Lebanese stove. It's just amazing. What's really cool about it is his signature bread, that flatbread, is gluten-free with 10 grams of protein. It's like a superfood, right? Especially in our market, people want, you know, fitness culture, people want gluten-free and high protein and a delicious, quick, easy to grab flatbread. So with our investment, we're looking at how do we scale that into a consumer packaged good product, a CPG product? How can we bag that up and put it on a shelf so you can buy this Saj at home or in the store? And that is going to take a lot of technology in the supply chain and production to make that a shelf-stable product.
SPEAKER_00Are there any other businesses on there that have like an interesting Helene story?
SPEAKER_01Probably one of the most compelling in this cohort Helene story is probably the Village Potter. Right? So they were in that row right in front of like Marquee in the River Arts District. There was something like 100, 200 artists in that long building right there by the river. And so Village Potter was in, you know, wholesaler supplies, clays, tools, glazes, all kinds of stuff that potters need. Completely washed out during a storm because they were on the river. They finally reopened and moved over to Westgate Plaza. And then they find out like two weeks later that it's being bought by UNC Help. Also, at the same time, their close uh, I don't want to say competition, but like co-opetition, right? Cooperative, collaborative competition with high water clays. High water clays closed after the storm. They were also washed out. They were just on the street from each other. So now Billage Potter is really the only game in town for supplies as clays and glazes on the individual level as well as the kind of uh you know corporate level, where a large pottery company, uh home goods company is a lot of clay. That's a great story. They were able to make it through based on just incredible tenacity. Sarah Wells' role and their founder is unstoppable. She is a pleasure to be around, just so inspiring. And she's also a national educator on potting. Um that's probably the most relevant one. You know, losing everything, starting over, now they may have to start over twice. And that takes a lot. To have a community around them and some cash behind them to make that easier and knowing that they're growing and not going anywhere is really incredible.
SPEAKER_00How do you determine whether or not this whole thing works? Like if we sit down again five years from now, what do you hope you'll be able to say? Or six years, I guess, because that's the Yeah, you got it. Right.
SPEAKER_01Um six years from now, I want to be able to look back and see that all these companies are still kicking butt, and we have generated a positive return for our investors. Philanthropists, donors, they're already happy, right? They've they that's more of an annual thing, right? Where you're doing tax deductions through donations, making impact. You know, I'm also curious where we look 10, 20 years from now. Where are these entrepreneurs and these ventures going to be then? If these ventures still exist, or they merge, or they close. You know, we we require we also require our founders to volunteer in the community. Because again, that's how you build that love of philanthropy and giving back. So gosh, I can't wait to see where these founders go and and who they become and what they're gonna be leading in the future.
SPEAKER_00And in the shorter term, you all are are gonna go to New Orleans soon and pick up some awards, right?
SPEAKER_01In October, we will be receiving a silver medal from the International Economic Development Council in Innovative Finance, uh, which is awesome. It'd be our second year to get an international award for this business model. It does make me wonder who the hell got gold. What I can't so I can't wait to meet them. Uh yeah, our whole team, it's like nine of us going to New Orleans in October to pick up our award. So not only are we picking up a silver medal for innovation and finance, the our economic development coalition is getting a gold medal for economic development organization of the year, which is huge. I mean, we've we've been working so hard. Everybody here is so committed to our community, and the uh you know, the award from the IEDC says a lot. It really shines a great light on our recovery and the optimism for the future.
SPEAKER_00And and that's kind of my last question for you, which is just when you think about everything that this region has been through going back through the pandemic, through Helene. Uh looking ahead, what makes you optimistic?
SPEAKER_01You know, John, I in moments like this, what comes to mind is Vin Diesel's quote from the first episode or first movie of the Fast and Furious franchise.
SPEAKER_00I did not see this coming.
SPEAKER_01He said, I live my life a quarter mile at a time. So I I say that jokingly. Uh I haven't had the capacity to start dreaming long term. Not in a long time. We've been so short-term focused. There's a lot of myopia here, personally. I'm not speaking for the EDC in chamber, I'm speaking for myself. That uh, you know, I'm looking at this, you know, one cohort at a time, one investment at a time. I haven't really had a chance to have the space to dream of what's the next big thing. You know, Optimus took a year and a half to get off the ground, Optimus Ventures. But what I'm looking forward to in the community is well, think about it. After our second cohort, I'm sorry, after our second fund, within you know four years, we'll have 40 tuned up, mentored, invested in, tech enabled lifestyle ventures. That's gonna change a lot of the fabric of our community. And that will filter out, even though we're not investing in every company in town. All the founders know each other. So think about how they're sharing best practices and what worked here and the employees who are gonna move from company to company and bring what they saw working in other companies to the new companies. So I think I'm really optimistic about kind of the tidal shift we're seeing in our economy overall and our country overall. And I think that the best of what works in other communities and here is what's gonna last.
SPEAKER_00That's all for today. Thanks again to Jeffrey Kaplan for joining me. You can learn more about Optimist Ventures at optimistventures.co and Venture Asheville at ventureashville.com, where you can sign up for the organization's newsletter. At the end of our conversation, Jeffrey mentioned that Optimist Ventures will hold a showcase in November, giving its latest group of companies a chance to share what they've been working on. Keep an eye on Venture Asheville for more details as that gets closer. You can also follow Venture Asheville on Facebook and Instagram at VentureAVL. And you can find Jeffrey on LinkedIn. I'll include a link in the show notes. You can find OnTheBlue Ridge on Facebook and Instagram at OnTheBlue Ridge and online at onTheBlueridgepod.com. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen. Consider leaving a rating and a quick review, or share it with a friend, as it really helps more people find the show. Our theme music is the song Goa, written by Lindsay Pruitt and performed by the John Stickley Trio. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on the Blue Ridge.