Symone Graham
Jul 19, 2023
Dan Roselli, founder and managing director of RevTech Labs, has been named VentureSouth's new director in Charlotte.
VentureSouth, a regional venture capital and private equity firm, has tapped a seasoned leader in Charlotte's entrepreneurial ecosystem as the new director of its local operations.
Dan Roselli, who has played a key role in Charlotte's startup community, began the new job on July 1. He co-founded Packard Place, a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation; co-founded Queen City Fintech; and currently serves as managing director and co-founder of RevTech Labs, a Charlotte-based accelerator. He will continue to hold his position at RevTech Labs.
As director of VentureSouth-Charlotte, Roselli will be responsible for growing the firm's investor count in the local region and bolstering connections between venture capitalists and founders.
"The goal is to make Charlotte's VentureSouth community one of the biggest in the network," said Roselli, who has previously served as an active member and investor of the VC firm. "Because we're one of the larger metro areas where VentureSouth has a chapter, we should have more local founders going through the VentureSouth investment review process."
He also told CBJ that, through his new role, Charlotte founders could see a "noticeable difference" in access to capital — which many local startups have been struggling to obtain.
Paul Clark, co-founder and managing director at VentureSouth, said connecting investors and startups can be challenging in any region, but it's been much harder than he imagined in Charlotte given its size.
"It's always hard to do investing activity in Charlotte, and if anybody can make that work, Dan is the guy that can," he told CBJ. "I think it gives us another person on the ground in Charlotte that really understands the startups that are there, but mostly the entrepreneurs there."
Charlie Banks, also a managing director of VentureSouth, said in a statement, “Dan’s extensive experience as an investor, and his deep involvement in the startup community, makes him an exceptional choice for this position. We are excited to engage his strategic vision and leadership to drive impactful investments and further empower the local entrepreneurial ecosystem."
VentureSouth’s local operations were previously led by Charlotte entrepreneur Mac Lackey, with support from Juan Garzon, managing director of Innovate Charlotte, over the recent years. They will remain active members of the firm.
Headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, VentureSouth was founded in 2014 and has more than 600 members and 64 active portfolio companies. The angel network, which expanded to Charlotte in 2016, has invested more than $75 million into over 100 Southeast startups since its inception.
VentureSouth's members are based majority in its 20 markets across the Southeast, but it has investors in other parts of the U.S. as well. The company has been recognized several times as a top 10 angel group in North America by the Angel Capital Association.
The firm isn't set on growing too far outside of the the Southeast, with plans to expand investment activity especially in the Carolinas, Clark said.
"We don't want to grow too much further, geographically speaking," he said. "So our goal is to double the size of VentureSouth in the next two or three years by finding people in Charlotte, and other Carolinas cities that want to participate in what we do."
Roselli said he's looking forward to solely working with Charlotte-area founders. At RevTech Labs, the accelerator focuses majority on fintech and insurance technology startups nationwide.
"Having someone locally, who is a prominent leader and really plugged into that local community, that's what I'm providing for them as that local presence and vantage point," he said.