The New Startup South
By: Bloomberg Businessweek
June 21, 2018
But Greenville’s culture of risk-taking and its network of investors who fund early stage businesses are within the reach of places like Danville, Va., where tobacco warehouses and textile mills—some abandoned—attest to the difficulties the city faces in transcending its economic past.
“We are trying to do two hard things simultaneously: We are trying to create a new economy and create a new culture,” says Karl Stauber, CEO of the Danville Regional Foundation. The foundation was created in 2005 with proceeds from the sale of a local health-care system. It has a $230 million endowment and has given $96 million in grants since 2006.
