The Venture for America Accelerator is a 3-month program designed to support and catalyze the launch of our Fellow-founded companies. Based in Philadelphia, the Fellows and their teams are provided coworking space at First Round Capital, weekly programming, and access to VFA’s network of mentors, advisors, and investors. This year, five teams have hit the ground running in Philly, continuing to develop their businesses and preparing to become full-time founders at the conclusion of their Fellowship this summer.
Mike Wilner and Taylor Sundali founded Compass in July of 2014 to help small business owners build an affordable and effective online presence. The issue is one that hits close to home for both of them- each of their parents are small business owners, and Mike and Taylor witnessed firsthand the time, effort, and energy that building a great website can suck up. Mike, a Baltimore native, graduated from Washington & Lee University with degrees in Math and Business and spent his VFA Fellowship working at SocialProof in Detroit. When he’s not helping small business owners, he can often be found playing pickup basketball or co-hosting his podcast, “In Over Our Heads,” with VFA Fellow Shilpi Kumar. Taylor hails from a small Idaho town and graduated with an Economics degree from Middlebury College, where he was a part of both the Cross Country Skiing and Running teams. After braving the cold in Detroit, where he spent his Fellowship at Rock Ventures, Taylor can usually be found embracing the spring weather.
The newest member of the Compass team is Matt Fulton, who initially joined the VFA Accelerator as the founder of Melville, a web annotation tool, but eventually decided to open source his project and join Compass to work on building out their internal software and processes. Matt is a Colorado kid through and through- he grew up in Boulder before graduating from CU-Boulder with a degree in Finance. He spent his VFA Fellowship as the Lead Growth Engineer at Roadtrippers in Cincinnati and is happy to be in Philadelphia, where his favorite restaurant, Chipotle, is never more than a few blocks away.
At the VFA Accelerator, the Compass team has been focused on two specific areas: acquiring customers and improving their onboarding process. They’ve reached thousands of small businesses across the country since their launch and have even built a proprietary software tool (referred to as the ‘pizza tracker’) that helps track and manage their various client projects.
Learn more about Mike, Taylor, and Matt’s journey building Compass and what they’ve been up to here in Philadelphia:
https://vimeo.com/133764680