1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bill Bice of Verge Fund (Part 5)

Bill Bice: If you have a business and you want help in growing, there are literally thousands of options out there. It’s another way of saying that nobody has gotten great at doing it. That’s the problem that we’re tackling.

We’ve built a marketing automation system that automates whole industries instead of being designed to be implemented in one company at a time. The data advantage that we get from that is really significant. Internally, we’re a SaaS company, but externally, we deliver Marketing-as-a-Service.

Sramana Mitra: It’s the do-it-for-me model.

Bill Bice: Yes. It’s the thing that’s missing in the tremendous amount of the marketing technology that’s being put out there. In our experience, only 7% of small business owners are actually willing to do their own marketing. We’re interested in the other 93%.

Sramana Mitra: Are you focusing on a particular vertical or is it across the board?

Bill Bice: We are vertical oriented. We’ve gotten there by working with a lot of different companies. We tend to specialize in areas where the company is selling high-ticket, high-impact items.

Part of that is because it’s easier to judge that it’s working but also the techniques that we’ve developed around word-of-mouth marketing have worked really well in that area. It’s a lot of B2B. The issues around B2B is the same for any small sales team of five to 20 people. We look at that as a vertical even though it covers a wide range of businesses.

Sramana Mitra: Is there something that I should have asked you in the context of the New Mexico ecosystem and your work as investors in that ecosystem that I haven’t asked you?

Bill Bice: There’s a really great opportunity here because the state of New Mexico has a permanent fund that invests in venture capital funds. A fund that is willing to put in the time and effort to look at deals here has a built-in LP that is very interested in investing in them. Of course, you have to do the hard work of actually investing in companies, but it’s a great opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: How many venture funds like yourselves are operational in the New Mexico area?

Bill Bice: There’re only two or three that are headquartered here, but then there are a number of firms that have gotten investment from the state that put time and effort into the ecosystem.

Sramana Mitra: We would love to see more companies from your geography.

Bill Bice: It’s really good for entrepreneurs to hear and see the very significant community you’ve built of people who are building companies all over the place.

Sramana Mitra: You talked about Utah earlier. We gave Utah companies a lot of coverage. If you go to our entrepreneur journeys series on the blog, you’ll see a lot Utah companies. We know how to put a spotlight on a region and give them some visibility. That helps in making that visible to the community.

It was wonderful talking to you. It’s great to hear of a new ecosystem coming up in a different part of the world where it hasn’t been such a high-activity zone. It sounds like in the next five years, it will become a very active geography.

Bill Bice: We are working hard at it and I appreciate the work that you’re doing to make that happen.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bill Bice of Verge Fund
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