Two Greenville entrepreneurs, joined by Mayor Knox White, announced the creation of a multi-million dollar early-stage fund with commitments from dozens of investors in the Greenville area.

The NEXT Founders Fund will be run by General Partners Scott Millwood and Shay Houser, co-founders of Deal Strategies. Both are entrepreneurs who have successfully founded/co-founded and exited high-growth companies in Greenville.

“The fund will address gaps in the ecosystem by providing financial and business resources to scaling startup companies,” Millwood said. “Shay and I have grown multiple successful companies here in Greenville so we know it can be done. We have some great founder talent here but they often face a daunting challenge of searching far and wide for funding and guidance. This gap is pretty big here in Greenville at the moment. The NEXT Founders Fund was built to bridge that gap,” he said. “What I found is with helipads, landing zones and heliports there is very little technology and knowledge-sharing being applied. That creates risk. We created SafeHelipad to address that and we’re doing it from right here in Greenville, SC”

The City of Greenville and Greenville Chamber are primary investors in NEXT as part of the area’s economic development strategy to attract and grow high-impact, knowledge-based companies. NEXT identifies, engages and provides support for high-growth entrepreneurs and companies through programming, connections and support.

Millwood says, “As current board chair and a co-founder of NEXT, I’ve had a front row seat at the growth of our ecosystem. The NEXT Founders Fund addresses a gap I’ve seen where scaling companies need more than just money to hit the next stage.”