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The Collab of the Decade

by Malcolm McDonald on September 1, 2021.

This week we’ve got buildings on the brain. Private real estate investing is hardly a new arena, but the rise of Crowdinvesting has CRE developers and investors feeling a little FOMO. Never fear, the Vicinity team is here to explain where Regulation CF fits into the world. TBH we haven’t been this excited about a collab since Aerosmith &...

Booming Babies and Business Buying

by Malcolm McDonald on August 25, 2021.

The mass exodus of baby boomers from small businesses has been predicted for several years now. While the “tsunami” of boomer biz owners looking for the exit hasn’t happened, we may be in the early stages of that phenomenon. The WSJ reports that the amount of small businesses for sale is at a 6 year high, with...

Evaluating Evaluation

by Malcolm McDonald on August 18, 2021.

Today we’re going mountain climbing. What mountains you say? Well, the small ones of course! Zeb Parsons, one of our recent podcast guests left us with a line we’ve been noodling on: “Climb the small mountains first & the big mountains later.” This got us thinking, as a business owner, how do I know I’m picking the...

Turning Passion into Profit

by Malcolm McDonald on August 11, 2021.

We’re not saying this blog will cure your post-Olympic blues, but we do have something golden for you. This week we chatted with Alek Kocevski, a 20 yr Greenvillian originally from Macedonia, who is bringing an ancient Eastern European art form to life in the US. Golden Butterfly Studios is the only business in the...

You’re Special… Sort of.

by Malcolm McDonald on July 28, 2021.

“You’re special, just like everyone else.” Unfortunately, this is as true in business as anywhere. Specialize or die – in a world of investing options and democratized finance, that’s the challenge Vicinity welcomes “with aaaarms wide oooopen.” So what does make Vicinity special? The local asset class. Haven’t heard of it? That’s ok, we made...

A Twist on Buffett’s Advice

by Malcolm McDonald on June 23, 2021.

Today we’re taking a new look at one of Warren Buffett’s most quoted lines: “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” While we wholeheartedly agree with the Oracle of Omaha, we think there’s a key, misplaced assumption investors make when applying this old adage. The assumption is that what we can “understand” is static and we...

Is Real Estate Really “Location, Location, Location”?

by Kasen Wysong on February 17, 2021.

At the end of 2020 Chapel ran a successful campaign on Vicinity’s portal to fund a multi-tenant facility in the Poe Mill area. For context, Poe Mill is a historically overlooked neighborhood in downtown Greenville. At face value, it might appear this project didn’t check the box for a “location, location, location” real estate deal; however, a closer look reveals the opposite.

What Robinhood got wrong (& right) in their Super Bowl commercial

by Malcolm McDonald on February 10, 2021.

I was about ready to let the whole Robinhood/Gamestop wildness go… and then I saw the commercial. You’ve probably seen it by now – the Robinhood Super Bowl spot featuring an upbeat voiceover narrating scenes of puppies, babies, and emotional zoom calls (yes, really). The TLDR is that “We are all investors.” Maybe it was...

Doubling-down on Democratization

by Joshua Rollins on February 10, 2021.

While trust in the gamified giant has become as volatile as a short squeeze on an outdated retail chain, now might be a good time to look at who this prince of thieves is taking from and whom it is giving to.