Will McGuire is the Founder and CEO of Incolo, whose founder community has raised $13M-plus of capital with over 55% coming via investment crowdfunding. Incolo is on a mission to create a world where the rewards of capitalism are accessible to all and has a goal to help 1,000 founders fund and scale through the crowd by 2030. Will also serves as head of partnerships at North Cove Leisure Club, which is part of Incolo Spaces.
Since 2016, Will has gone from being an investor in one startup to being an investor-advisor in 90-plus private companies, ranging from corporate real estate, to main street, to high-growth technology businesses. He started Incolo to create a world where his children and others could fund and build companies together with anyone.
Will graduated from NC State with a degree in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronautical/space engineering.
1.) What is in your pockets?
Right now, I have my wallet, car keys, and a pacifier in my pockets. I have a two-year-old, so I always have to make sure I’ve got a pacifier somewhere.
2.) What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
For me, my wife and I got to go to see Wrexham A.F.C. play. It was the second game of the year that they won, and we were sitting two rows back behind the goal. The final score was three to zero, and we got to see all three goals scored. We got to go onto the turf after the game and meet some of the locals; it was a lot of fun!
At Incolo, we are a group of founders who teach other founders how to capital stack with anybody who is friendly to growth, from the $100 check writer to the $250,000-plus check writer.
What’s exciting about my organization is that we have founders—in every single industry we’ve worked with—make valuable connections that have led to over a million dollars in sales, or multimillion-dollar sales pipelines, or more partnerships that can lead to that, from investors that wrote checks as small as $100 or $1,000. Just because they didn’t put a lot of money in the round doesn’t mean their investment can’t be valuable.
The Regulation Crowdfunding rules were initially very restrictive, but over time they’ve evolved to increase the amount of money one can raise and combined Regulation Crowdfunding offerings for non-accredited investors with Rule 506 offerings for accredited investors.
The combined changes now allow bigger and smaller investors to fund companies together—grow companies together. That’s a very exciting world. It has literally never been possible before. Combined with the influence and capability we have now, where somebody can talk to somebody across the globe instantly, and we can only imagine the possibilities.
3.) What is your favorite coffee spot?
I’m a big fan of chai at The Oak House Durham. That’s one of my favorite cups of chai ever. I’ve also come to love a little spot in the Glenwood [South] area in Raleigh that I take people to called Iris Coffee Lab.
4.) What keeps you up at night?
Currently, it’s the crisis going on in western North Carolina and other areas. I’ve become a coordinator between 50-plus organizations of people helping people save lives. This includes grassroots groups as well as the Special Forces Charitable Trust, and through our contacts in the National Guard and with senators and others. The part that keeps me up at night is knowing how many people have still not been reached. There are still some remote areas that have not been touched.
5.) What is your favorite restaurant or happy hour?
I live in Holly Springs, so OSHA Thai Kitchen and Sushi is one of my favorite places to go for food. I really like a good chicken pad thai; especially with extra peanuts. One of my current favorite happy hour places, especially for a date night, is a new rooftop bar that just opened in Holly Springs called Nightingale.
6.) What is next for you or your organization?
From an overall perspective, and working with other players in the space, there’s a lot of movement toward funds into which “ordinary people” can invest. How cool would it be if well-known fund managers could allow non-accredited investors to invest in their funds, without a cap on the number of investors? This would allow the community to invest alongside accredited investors, for as little as $1,000, if they wanted to. So it’s exciting to seeing a push in that direction.
I love what’s happening in the Southeast. It doesn’t really matter what industry people are in; we have this melting pot of collaboration and energy that’s lifting all those people affected by the storms. We recently saw this play out at a founder-to-founder meeting. We had somebody that ran a restaurant and somebody that was in defense, and they just got together solve problems. These meetings are just for founders to hang out; these individuals had mutual connections to help their companies grow. They never would have interacted if it hadn’t been for this melting pot that we have in this backyard, built upon the desire for access to collaboration between founders.
I love the various groups I’m seeing that are doing that. I think that the future, in this ecosystem, is collaboration and co-investment across all different industries and all different people.
