#61 - Launching Homegrown, My New Startup
A very short share on my new company that is tackling a problem I've been thinking deeply about for twenty years.
This one is short, because it’s a wild morning already and these other places detail my thoughts and feelings accurately (see below, after break). My biggest ask is that if you’d like to be a part of the journey with us as a local investor OR as the owner / someone who knows high-performing local business owners, please join our waitlist here.
Media: Hypepotamus Article, My LinkedIn Announcement
“What could have possibly caused you to leave your super high-paying job at Microsoft?” — Answer: life’s too short to not see what’s possible, especially when what you’re building could make the world a fundamentally more vibrant place.
Tl;dr — Homegrown is a marketplace that connects owners of high-performing local businesses with local investors. Owners pay back investors with financing based on their revenue, and investor returns are capped at 2x. Why is this f*cking awesome?
It allows local people to back local businesses they love. #SupportYourNeighborhood
Because financing is based on revenue, it’s flexible for owners. Have a slow month? You’ll pay back less. Have a monstrous, record month? You’ll pay back more.
No personal guarantees (so, no putting up your house or savings as collateral)
For local investors, you can make up to double your money, but no more (as of now)
We carefully vet each business. Quality is of the utmost importance to us, so we take great care to work with the top 10% of local businesses. We diligence companies much like a venture capital firm would before connecting local companies to our investor network
So much more is coming in the future. We’ll be writing at www.joinhomegrown.com and I’ll also be publishing letters every so often detailing an aspect of Homegrown. Exonomist will not be changing focus, really. This newsletter is still going to be about the art of management (of ourselves, our teams, our organizations), but you can probably expect a few more examples that are from the trenches of early-stage company building :).