Bull City Venture Partners announced on Tuesday that it is expanding its team and moving into a new office location.
The team expansion consists of two new members—Carly Connell and Joseph Dougherty—who will double the firm’s headcount from two to four.
Carly Connell, who joins BCVP as a principal, comes from Deloitte’s Emerging Growth Company practice, where, per release, she “advised venture-backed startups on audit, tax, and strategic finance.” She is also a co-founder of the Agora Initiative, which supports women founders in the Washington, D.C. area.
BCVP General Partner Jason Caplain noted that Connell has already collaborated closely with several of the firm’s portfolio companies, “helping them navigate growth, complexity, and critical inflection points.” He added that beyond her judgment, skill, and pragmatic perspective, Connell brings “an incredible network of founders, operators, and ecosystem leaders.
“These are connections that founders can tap into for advice, talent, and opportunities,” Caplain said. “Founders trust her quickly because she meets them where they are and focuses on what actually moves the business forward.”
Joseph Dougherty will join BCVP as an investor having previously founded The Lion, a newsletter connecting startups raising pre-seed and Series A capital with investors. He also led a team out of UNC in building a deal-flow outsourcing program (and competed in both tennis and rowing at the collegiate level).
“He’s built his own view of the early-stage market and has shown initiative in creating tools and processes to support deal flow,” Caplain said of Dougherty. “He has strong instincts and a genuine interest in helping founders, not just evaluating them.”
Why now?
Bull City Venture Partners has primarily operated as a two-person team over the years, which naturally begs the question: Why expand now?
“It really was a gradual realization rather than a single triggering event,” Caplain said. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen both the Triangle ecosystem and our own portfolio mature in meaningful ways. We’re spending more time with founders earlier, staying involved longer, and increasingly being asked to help across a broader set of challenges.”
At some point in that process, he explained, the team decided that it needed “more capacity and more complementary perspectives” if it was to continue to meet its own (and founders’) standard.
The decision to expand the BVCP team led to a steady incoming flow of résumés. In addition to reviewing these, however, Caplain and Co-Founder and General Partner David Jones focused on conversations in and about the ecosystem.
“We spent a lot of time talking with people across the ecosystem, listening and learning about who consistently added value to founders and companies,” Caplain said. Connell and Dougherty, both of whom have long been known to the BCVP team, “surfaced organically” in these conversations.
What about that new office?
Alongside the news that it would be doubling its headcount, Bull City Venture Partners announced on Tuesday that it would be moving to a new office. The firm will be staying in Durham—something Caplain stressed was core to the BCVP identity—but leaving Downtown in favor of a Meridian Parkway location not far from Research Triangle Park.
Caplain described the new office as being “more open, more functional, and better suited for hosting founders and other visitors.”
Will BCVP’s approach change?
In a word, no. BCVP is expanding its capacity with the changes outlined above but is not altering its approach to business.
“Our principles and approach are unchanged,” Caplain said. “We’re still focused on being disciplined, early, and founder-first.”
Within that focus, the expanded team will enable BCVP to enjoy more time with founders and more capacity to “engage meaningfully” across its portfolio.
