Ventures Beyond Borders

Our philosophy

Select for talent. Then test the idea. Then invest.

Most programs select a business and then evaluate whether the founder can execute it. We start with the founder.

Displacement can make a conventional CV a poor measure of what someone is capable of. So we select for talent first, spend six months testing the business, and invest when both have proven themselves.

Bootcamp100–150

One month, virtual, six modules

Accelerator~30

In-person programming, mentorship, seed grants

InvestmentUp to 8

Equity investments up to $100K

We start by finding exceptional people.

100+ entrepreneurs each year learn the fundamentals of building a startup from leading founders, investors, and operators.

At this stage, we are not judging the business. We are looking for the founder: people who are resourceful, adaptable, ambitious, and able to make progress with what they have.

Traditional signals of founder potential, pedigree, networks, geography, previous startups are particularly noisy for people whose careers have been interrupted by displacement. We look for evidence of ability beyond those signals.

What we select on Resourcefulness, adaptability, learning velocity, and the ability to execute.

A founder working through the bootcamp material on her laptop

Then we put the idea under pressure.

30 exceptional entrepreneurs meet in one of our four accelerator cities: New York, Washington, Berlin, and Toronto. Led by top business school faculty and followed by three months of programming, seed grants, and mentorship.

The work is customer research and market testing. Ideas that do not survive contact with a real customer are supposed to fail here, cheaply, while there is still time to change them.

What we select on Evidence. Did the market answer and did the founder listen when it did?

Two founders working side by side on laptops during accelerator week

Only then do we write a check.

Founders graduate by pitching for equity investments of up to $100,000.

Our six months with a founder are part of our due diligence. We are not underwriting a pitch deck. We are underwriting a founder we have watched test assumptions, respond to setbacks, incorporate feedback, and change course when the evidence demanded it.

What we select on Validation: a tested idea, a founder we know, and a clear use of capital tied to the company's next meaningful milestone.

A founder pitching to the panel at graduation

Investment thesis

Displacement is an underpriced signal of founder potential.

Displacement is an underpriced signal of founder potential.

Refugees start businesses at high rates yet face significant barriers to accessing early-stage capital. We believe the gap between entrepreneurial activity and capital access creates an opportunity to identify exceptional founders the market overlooks.
Barriers, not ability, are often the binding constraint.

Talent is distributed more widely than access to capital, networks, and opportunity. We don't assume that displacement makes someone a better founder. We believe it can make great founders harder for traditional investors to see.
We invest in people we've had time to know.

Before investing, we typically work alongside founders for six months or more. We see how they test assumptions, respond to setbacks, incorporate feedback, and execute with limited resources. That gives us information about founder quality that rarely appears in a pitch deck.
We invest early, small, and with conviction.

We write checks of up to $100K at the point where a validated idea needs its first meaningful capital—often before traditional institutional investors are willing to participate.
We follow founders, not sectors.

Our investments can range from digital health infrastructure to orbital thermal systems to community businesses. We are sector- and geography-agnostic because our advantage is identifying overlooked founders, not predicting a particular industry.
Returns are recycled, not extracted.

VBB is a nonprofit fund. Returns from successful investments are reinvested into training and backing future founders, allowing one entrepreneur's success to create opportunities for the next.