Want to get inside the mind of an investor?
The inaugural Southeast VC Pulse Survey, conducted by North Carolina-based Front Porch Venture Partners, can get you pretty close. The survey, conducted over the course of April 2025, gathered detailed thoughts and information from General Partners and Principals at venture capital firms based in the Southeast region of the United States.
The survey was also used to put together the first Southeast VC Confidence Index, which indicates how investors are feeling about the year ahead.
ABOUT THE SURVEY
No survey can capture everything in the ecosystem, but with the right respondents and the right questions, they can provide an important snapshot in time into what a community is feeling.
Front Porch Venture Partners’ Southeast VC Pulse Survey asked investors across ten states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (including Washington, DC). The 18 questions asked about recent deal opportunities and dug into how investors are generally feeling about this moment in time. The survey received 47 responses from investors who understand what deal flow looks like right now for startups and growth-stage scaleups at different stages of growth.
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE SURVEY?
Joe Mancini, Front Porch’s co-founder and general partner, gave Hypepotamus a sneak peak at the survey results. He told us that his main takeaways from the inaugural survey are that:
- Investors are “Cautiously optimistic overall” and more optimistic when it comes to looking specifically at the startup environment
- Early-stage investors are the most optimistic, driven largely by software and AI investors
- The “Bullish response” he sees from from non-enterprise software investors is “encouraging for the long term”
But, of course, market volatility, tariffs, and uncertain exit multiples all came up as things that are worrying investors in the near-to-medium term.
But there is indeed positive news spread throughout the results. The survey found that 85% of investors have seen their investment pace “remain the same or increase” over the last six months, despite overall macroeconomic uncertainties that have hurt the technology sector overall. And pre-seed investors looking at software deals are feeling pretty bullish about the future. That could point to positive things for the future of Southeast startups.
The complete Pulse Survey…along with the Southeast VC Confidence Index number…can be found on Front Porch Venture Partner’s substack or directly on this link.
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Featured photo from Unsplash