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Building a successful startup requires access to resources and talent – a luxury not all founders have depending on where they’re building. At Bronze Valley, we’re trying to change that. There are incredible investors, connectors, and builders all across the country and our mission is to ensure geography is not an impediment.
Since the pandemic’s shift to remote work and dispersed teams, the need for technology entrepreneurs to live in a major tech hub has become nonessential, making way for new emerging hubs like our headquarters, Birmingham, Alabama. In 2023, the Biden-Harris administration recognized the Birmingham Biotechnology Hub as one of 31 Tech Hubs across the country that are “primed for technological innovation and job creation,” and the city was also later awarded $44 million in grants
Despite the rise of new tech hubs, the latest Crunchbase data revealed that half of the US VC funding in 2024 went to Silicon Valley startups, largely attributed to massive AI rounds from startups like OpenAI, Databricks, and others. With it being just the beginning of the AI boom, we may not see a major change to that number anytime soon.
But what we can continue to do is unlock new opportunities and access for founders in under-resourced communities and cities, to level the playing field. Ninety-six percent of all of Bronze Valley’s investments have been made outside of traditional tech hubs – across Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, and other overlooked markets – and this remains a core focus.
What has served as a catalyst in fulfilling this mission is our alignment with key partners who are also committed to rolling their sleeves up and investing time, energy, and resources into overlooked, often dismissed, markets. One of those partners is gener8tor, a nationally-acclaimed startup accelerator program, who also boasts a 91% investment rate outside of major tech hubs. With gener8tor’s support, we launched the inaugural cohort of the Bronze Valley Investment Accelerator in 2023 and have since supported 15 companies through that program – startups like Pye who has partnered with Dunkin’, Productions.com who has collaborated with Live Nation, and Botco.ai who was recognized as a Google for Startups winner for transforming Conversational AI.
While we have deep roots in Birmingham, Alabama, we work across several other markets. In 2023 we expanded our services to the Mid-Atlantic region with new Bronze Valley VentureLab programming in Delaware, including the development of a partnership with Delaware State University to provide innovation-focused programming to its students and affiliates.
It’s important for us to show founders outside of traditional innovation hubs that there are investors who believe in them and who will give them a chance. It’s not about competing with Silicon Valley, Boston, or New York – it’s about creating opportunities outside of these cities – to make an entrepreneur’s success rate less dependent on where their company gets its start and more focused on the true innovation and opportunities they’re unlocking.
