March 2004

Will Dunbar might remind you of that favorite uncle from your youth. He has the relaxed manner and easy smile of the southern gentleman that he is, a product of public schools in Richmond, VA, and Charlotte, NC. Beneath that calm is a very focused man who has managed to combine the service orientation of his college years with a very successful career in high-stakes investing. William Dunbar, a VPP investor and board member, is the cofounder and managing director of Core Capital Partners, a $170 million private equity fund based in Washington, DC, which invests in early- and mid-stage companies with a focus on enterprise software development and communications technology.

For many years, Will has also invested considerable time and energy in a transitional housing organization in Northern Virginia and in the local Boys & Girls Clubs. He says the first seeds of his service orientation were probably planted at Davidson College in North Carolina, where students were encouraged to reach out to others. After college Will began working in technology at a commercial bank that eventually became Bank of America. There, he gained the work experience he needed to get into business school.

He was accepted into Harvard Business School. While there, a friend introduced him to the venture capital industry, which he found intriguing. “All of my colleagues wanted to go to McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. I thought venture capital was more appealing—it was a good blend of strategy and finance, but, unlike consulting or investment banking, you have a long-term interest in the company that goes well beyond the investment transaction,” he said. His VC career began at Venture America in 1986 where he was involved in the initial investments in the Discovery Channel and Digene. Less than two years later, local entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jonathan Ledecky recruited Will to replace him at Allied Capital Corporation, an aggressive private equity firm with deep pockets and two experienced partners. Will led several investment activities at Allied and was president of one of its funds. There he found a mentor in George Williams, the company’s founder and one of the early pioneers in the world of venture capital.

In 1996, Will left Allied to form an angel investment company, Pebble Hill Capital. Through that company Will made what he describes as “easily the most intriguing” investment of his career in webMethods. The story of webMethods (founded by VPP investors Phillip Merrick and Caren Dewitt) is legend. It remains one of the most successful IPOs in history, its stock price skyrocketing from $32 per share to nearly $213 per share in a single day. The company grew from a $10 million new technology start-up to a $10 billion company in less than three years. “In some ways, webMethods personified the bubble,” says Will. “What’s unusual is that the company still has the same core management team it started with, led by Phillip Merrick, which shows that, occasionally, the creative people who start an enterprise also have the skills necessary to take it to scale.”

Will says he can’t imagine himself in any line of work other than starting and running businesses. So, it was quite natural for him and colleague Jonathan Silver to start a new company, Core Capital Partners, in 1999.

Over the years, Will also kept an eye on Mario Morino’s career in the software industry. When Mario started VPP, Will said he liked the idea of bringing the same value-add to nonprofits that VC firms bring to for-profit companies. There are many parallels between the needs of early- stage for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations, Will believes. Both need more than money. They need sustainable sources of funding and assistance developing their management teams and their boards. Additionally, an experienced third party, like Core Capital in the commercial world and VPP in the nonprofit arena, can bring an analytic rigor and perspective to the organization that an entrepreneur or an executive director might not have. He says that it has been rewarding to see how VPP has had an impact on its investment partners. The experience on the VPP board has also expanded Will’s world view. “It’s been broadening and eye-opening to hear the perspectives of the foundation and nonprofit people on the board.”

“Giving back is important,” Will says, explaining his willingness to give so much time and energy to philanthropy and community service. He spent 10 years on the board of Community Lodgings, a transitional housing program that serves the homeless in Alexandria, VA. There Will helped renovate and secure financing for low-income housing. He also taught some of the English and computer classes that the organization offered to clients. And more than 15 years ago, when Will was looking for a way to help children in the region, he joined the board of the Alexandria Boys & Girls Club. He later went on the organization’s parent board, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, which he was drawn to because its size enables it to reach thousands of children in the region. He is an active member of the program committee that sets standards for the organization’s 26 clubs.

Today Will Dunbar’s plate is plenty full. He and his wife Denise, who ran Virginia’s welfare reform program in the 1990s, have three young children. And Will is looking to create the right opportunity for other fathers like himself to get their children involved in giving back at an early age.