Founders create solutions to problems that affect their loved ones, their community, or their own lived experience. As it turns out, so do investors.
I live in a small town about 40 minutes outside downtown Cincinnati. People commute both north and south, and there's a healthy small business community. Our downtown is a mix of places locals love and patron alongside tourist staples like the holiday-themed train, historic hotel & restaurant, and antique shops.
When my husband and I moved here, about 50% of the folks we met said it's a nice place to live, "But there's no Applebee's." There is still no Applebee's.
But there are a couple local taverns, a few dive bars, small chinese restaurants and a donut shop that was awesome before it transitioned ownership. (That's a case study for another update) We even have a vegan/paleo friendly cafe that has maintained business for more than seven years and seen a successful ownership transition. Nail salons, auto repair, screenprinter? Check, check, check.
The merchants and hospitality owners in town face the realities of a few property owners dictating commercial rent and annual sales dependent on the few summer festivals. It can be tough out there.
But, the car dealerships are competitive with giant conglomerates in the metro area; we have enough health care providers (and orthodontists) in town to have a choice in care. Small manufacturers are between downtown and the interstate, making them accessible for local and neighboring workers. The national chains (mostly franchised) are mixed in — the Dairy Queen manager lives across the street from me. The corporates are regional names like Skyline and Kroger alongside Walmart and Home Depot.
This is where I live (really, we live within walking distance of downtown), and I can't help but think that if I lived in cookie-cutter suburban sprawl our investing thesis would be different. Because the owners and operators of these businesses are literally my neighbors, sit on the same sidelines at soccer games, and make living here an overall really great experience.
I spend most of my commutes to/from Fireroad's office thinking: "this work at Fireroad has to matter for my town."
By investing in startups that make it possible for owner/operators to do business in a place like this, I am investing for the future of my community. Life together is certainly dependent on more than financial and business behavior, so I don't want to over-inflate our work at Fireroad, but there is no denying that a vibrant local economy is essential to our collective quality of life!
You've probably heard me talk about youth baseball. Here's a video that pans the fences of one of our local fields. You can see the exact businesses I've mentioned … car dealer, orthodontist, restaurant, screen printer, mechanic … these businesses were profitable enough to take some of their earned revenue and donate it to support a youth sports organization.
Their donation to this volunteer-run local organization is what we're talking about when we talk about the 'economic multiplier effects' of local business. Research shows roughly 50 cents of every dollar spent at an independent business recirculates back into the community — through wages, local vendors, donations, and rent to local property owners. The dollar doesn't just get spent once.[1] Those banners were all printed by a local company. The uniforms are ordered through a local provider. The fields are owned and managed by the city, creating a healthy revenue line for the city.
Multiplier effects are not just economic. It's relationship multiplication — coaches to kids, kids to kids, families to families. It's character multiplication — so much has been documented about how team sports contribute to character development, so I'll leave it there.
"Roughly 50 cents of every dollar spent at an independent business recirculates back into the community."
— American Independent Business Alliance
There is a temptation to reduce conversations about venture capital and AI to combative postures and fatalistic predictions for the middle class, but I believe the economic value of generational technology like AI is not a zero sum game and it is not a foredrawn conclusion. It's not 'major-tech-hubs-take-all,' and it's not us vs them.
At Fireroad, we want to be a bridge between the incredible innovation characterized by 'Silicon Valley' and the daily life of operating a small business. Our portfolio already is making a difference for businesses like the ones with banners on the baseball fences. Expanding their revenue opportunities (DifferentKind), decreasing downtime (Murray Mentor), enabling their workers to do a great job (Palli) … this is why it matters!
And operators are ready. The US Chamber of Commerce found that 58% of small businesses now use generative AI — more than double the rate from two years ago. And here's what's so awesome about that same study: 82% of those businesses grew their workforce (!!). In a local, SMB context, the right technology doesn't replace the people doing the work. It makes room for more of them.[2]
Our thesis — to invest in startups that help SMBs succeed in the age of AI — can only be executed well in proximity to these businesses. And that proximity isn't a footnote to our strategy, it's the engine of it.
Being embedded in a community like this means the operators our portfolio serves aren't abstractions. They're the people we see at the grocery store, at church, at the soccer fields. The network that comes from being here is a feature of that rootedness. It's the friend of a college friend who runs a manufacturing operation and tells us exactly where the pain is. It's the LP who owns a service business and pushes back on our assumptions in ways that make us sharper. It's the local founders who find us because we're genuinely part of this ecosystem, not parachuting into it. Many of you, our LPs who own and operate local businesses, have lent your lived experience to our work openly. Thank you!
That kind of trust takes time and presence to earn — and it's not something you can replicate from the outside or pontificate on from Wall Street or Sand Hill Road (though many are trying, just take a scroll through VC Substack).
When we are fundraising, we come across LPs who are looking for exposure to additional markets and so consider investing with funds from the middle of the country. Some think our thesis is smart industry diversification while most of VC spends on enterprise AI products. Those benefits are both real.
Proximity isn't a footnote to our strategy. It's the engine of it.
But, Fireroad Ventures does not exist to capture some industry or geographic arbitrage. This is our home and our why.
References
[1] The Local Multiplier Effect — American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA)
[2] Empowering Small Business: The Impact of Technology on U.S. Small Business (2025) — U.S. Chamber of Commerce