Downing Capital Group

We're by your side from founding to the finish line, following a blueprint for success to take you further.

• De-risked ideas: We spend 3-4 months vetting each business idea upfront to vastly increase the likelihood of success.
• Operational Backbone: We streamline the back-end operational processes so our startup leaders can focus on building team, product, and a customer base. This enables our companies to have a best-in-class operations stack with vetted vendors and built for scale.
• Accelerate funding: The first fundraising round is often the hardest. We provide a multi-year funding runway without the need for outside capital.
• Network: We are with our executive teams at every step of the journey. Along with our experienced internal teams, we maintain relationships with contractors and consultants to support our leaders where they need it the most.
• Talent: A company is only as strong as its people. Our in-house talent acquisition function supports leaders in building out their teams as they grow.
• Mentorship: Even the most accomplished leaders are on constant journeys of betterment and recognize weaknesses can become strengths with practice and attention. We work to further cultivate great leadership talent in our CEO ranks.
• Community: Our CEOs and portfolio company executives are in frequent contact with one another, serving as sounding boards and thought partners when they have confronted similar challenges.

We ideate, validate, create & scale

• Ideate: We study industries and niches to discern where they are going next and what white space that creates. We then sketch out the business models, innovations, and technologies that are poised for success.
• Validate: We only launch businesses in our highest conviction ideas, developed through extensive discussions with potential customers and intensive study of competitors and incumbents to affirm the business idea.
• Create: Misguided early product decisions can prove disastrous even with a great idea and experienced management team. We work closely with management teams to leverage our industry research and startup experience in MVP and strategy development.
• Scale: Sifting through stacks of vendor proposals and implementing back-end processes is not the best use of a founding management team’s limited time. We streamline these processes so that the founding team can focus on growing its business.

What we do

Catalyzing creativity: equipping our leaders to actualize their visions

• People: The quality of the team ultimately determines whether a new business succeeds or fails. Our experienced in-house talent acquisition function helps structure founding teams, devise talent strategies, and execute on searches.
• Technology: We have relationships with experienced CTOs, software engineers, and technical recruiters to enable portfolio companies to develop products at a lower cost and to help overcome technical challenges that arise.
• Funding: Founders often turn to friends and family to pull together the capital needed to get a business off the ground. We provide portfolio companies with a multi-year funding runway.
• Strategy: Our idea validation process involves customer and competitor interviews, analysis of unit economics, evaluation of ancillary business models, and assessment of go-to-market strategies. We work with management teams to leverage this research in developing an MVP and go-to-market strategy for their company.