Grady Vanderhoofven has 28 years of experience in company creation and financing. He has co-founded and invested multiple private investment funds, including Meritus Ventures, the first Rural Business Investment Company (RBIC) in the United States, and Southern Appalachian Fund (SAF), a New Markets Venture Capital Company (NMVCC). Together, these funds raised approximately $53 million and invested equity and debt in 16 companies, which attracted more than $300 million of aggregate investment. The companies are located in rural and/or low-income areas throughout central and southern Appalachia and have created more than 600 jobs to date. In addition to the capital directly invested by Meritus and SAF, the funds provided more than $4 million of technical and operational assistance to portfolio companies.
In 2016, Mr. Vanderhoofven founded Three Roots Capital, a 501(c)(3) certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and as a Community Development Entity (CDE), to make debt and equity investments in companies and projects in predominantly low-income areas of East Tennessee and the broader Appalachian region. Three Roots Capital has raised more than $180 million to date and has deployed and committed more than $160 million to companies and projects in Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina. In addition, Three Roots Capital has been awarded $95 million in two allocations of New Markets Tax Credits.
In 2019, at the culmination of a multi-year, collaborative effort, Mr. Vanderhoofven and his partners launched the TennesSeed Fund as an evergreen, seed-stage, investment fund focused on proof-of-concept opportunities in Tennessee-based companies.
Mr. Vanderhoofven served as a mentor for the Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator from 2022 – 2024, he has been a member of the Innovation Crossroads Leadership Council at Oak Ridge National Laboratory since the inception of the program in 2017, and he was a founding member of the Innov865 Alliance.
Prior to becoming an investor, Mr. Vanderhoofven worked for more than a decade at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he participated in the creation of 12 start-up companies based on technology developed at ORNL. He previously served on the Advisory Council of the Yale University School of Engineering and Applied Science. He received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Yale University and has completed an Executive Education Program in private equity and corporate governance at Harvard Business School.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grady-vanderhoofven-6a53371/
grady@3rootscapital.org
865.220.1714