The First 250: Grady Johnson and Pete Sniderman on Funding Lowcountry Founders

That's awesome.

Grady, I got to ask.

So what does this investment mean for you guys? I mean, you're, you're a big successful center.

What are you going to do with this amazing investment?

Well, think about it like, like the way we are, Bill, this is, this is like fertilizer.

Right.

And, and you, you know, uh, the, the investment that, uh, that the low country impact fund made, uh, you know, under, under Pete's Pete's guidance, um, we can take, we can take that investment and, and we can help hundreds of entrepreneurs who, who will, um, you know, many of them, we, like I said a minute ago, trying to, we, what we do is we, we do whatever we can to de-risk their, uh, you know, their launch of a company or whatever stage they're in.

And so many of them are going to become successful and they in turn are going to come back around and support the community.

If you look at the hospitals around the Lowcountry or colleges and universities and you look at the names on those buildings, those are local entrepreneurs.

Right.

And and so entrepreneurs come back around.

They get involved in the community.

They they coach soccer teams.

They they you know, they help the high schools.

They help the universities.

These are these are local people who have deep ties to their community in a way that may be a large corporation here that is important.

from international or whatever, even though they do a lot of work around town, they don't have the kinds of pies that these local entrepreneurs do.

And so this investment, not only are we able to, their belief in us give them a decent return on that investment, but also it's fertilizer for building this community because these entrepreneurs are not gonna forget that we helped them.

They're gonna go, okay, I'm going to pay it forward and they'll come back as, as mentors to other entrepreneurs, or like I said, you know, help build another hospital wing or the college or

the

Citadel or, you know, Charleston Southern anywhere.

I mean, they'll, they'll, they'll sponsor a building.

I mean, that's, that's, that's what this is all about is growing this economy.

They'll, they'll become employers.

Right.