Plugging In, Starting Up

It’s never easy to get a new business off the ground, but it’s certainly easier when you have West Virginia University behind you.

In November 2024, Plug-In Promotions was trying to expand into the Morgantown market. A startup founded by West Virginia natives Seth McLain and Connor Briggs, it offered a unique value proposition, combining restaurant advertising with phone utilities to create a win-win-win scenario for consumers, advertisers and eateries.

McLain and Briggs had already quit their jobs to focus on Plug-In Promotions around the clock. It was a miracle idea, and they knew it could continue to grow – but they didn't know how much, or how fast.

“We were trying to figure out what we were going to do,” McLain said. “We were excited about expanding and making this this as big as possible, but we had to slow down and get some operations in place.”

Then the two co-founders happened to stop by Ascend West Virginia’s Morgantown office, where Vantage Ventures, an outreach center in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics, was helping entrepreneurs present to potential investors.

There, they watched one of Vantage’s partner startups, Brite, earn $100,000 on the spot.

“That opened up our eyes to the potential and the opportunity that WVU and Vantage Ventures offer to businesses like us,” McLain said.

“Potential” is the key word. West Virginia has it, and Vantage Ventures is working harder than ever to help entrepreneurs break into established markets.

That’s not all, though: it’s also helping the Mountain State break into the national scene and establish itself as a regional startup engine.

Bottom-Up

The first step of any journey is knowing where you are. When it comes to West Virginia’s position in the startup race, Vantage Ventures Director and Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship Ryan Angus doesn’t mince words.

“We are dead last in startups per capita, and we are dead last in venture capital dollars invested in the state,” Angus said. “We rank behind Mississippi, North Dakota, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands.”

But Angus will also be the first to tell you that where there's an obstacle, there’s opportunity: “We have longer to go than anyone, but that makes it easy to make a difference and make an impact. We want to boost those numbers, and we have a lot of ideas about how to do it.”

One of those ideas led to the founding of Vantage Ventures in 2019. Housed in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University, Vantage’s mission is to find and develop business concepts to cultivate entrepreneurship throughout the Mountain State.

It’s the brainchild of the Chambers College's namesake, a Kanawha City native who found success in Silicon Valley as the CEO of Cisco.

“John Chambers is a visionary,” Angus said. “He’s an innovator. He’s a great leader, and he wants us to do things differently. Vantage was founded to further that mission.”

Doing things differently means helping dreamers become doers. Almost everyone has an idea for a business or product – but they may need help building that idea into something they can sell or growing their business to the point where it can become self-sustaining.

To apply, you don’t need a full-fledged product or prototype. You only need one cofounder who’s either a West Virginia resident or a student at a West Virginia-based university. Products range from introvert-focused leadership programs to equestrian gear, from high-tech mouthguards to pollinator habitat protection.

Once you’re in, you enter Vantage’s 13-week startup accelerator – and that’s when the cylinders really start firing.

Assumption Destruction

Every Vantage startup receives $10,000 in technical assistance funding, working space in Reynolds Hall, coworking space with Ascend WV and opportunities to earn six figures in additional funding.

But through the mentorship of Angus and Program Coordinator Elliott Smith, they also get something that doesn't come with a dollar value: a mindset that will help them break into their industry.

“Vantage is all about testing assumptions with your company,” Logan Cuvo said. As the founder of hockey tape manufacturer Best Dam Tape, he joined Vantage’s fall 2024 cohort and started to break down – and through – his own perception of his company and market.

“I began to ask, ‘Are people going to buy this? Are people going to use this?’ I thought I had to undercut the competition, but tape sells for probably $5 a roll. People don’t care about the money – Vantage made me realize that and helped us reach better margins.”

When Plug-In Promotions joined Vantage’s spring 2025 cohort, they experienced a lightbulb moment of their own.

“Going in, we thought, ‘Of course these restaurants will want to work with us,’” McLain said. “Everyone in the program said, ‘You may believe that, but you don’t know it to be true.’ What Vantage Ventures taught us was how to go about testing assumptions with our business.”

Those two words, “testing assumptions,” come up again and again. If Vantage has a single ethos, it’s that assumptions act as barriers to growth.

“My mindset kind of flipped after that,” Cuvo said. “I was just a kid at that point – I just wanted to build something, I didn’t even know what. Vantage really helped me refine my brand and my long-term goals so I can grow my company and scale it to the next level.”

McLain agrees. “We learned so much, and it opened our eyes to all the resources that West Virginia has to offer. Vantage gave us energy, and the opportunity to be around a lot of other entrepreneurs who we could bounce ideas off. We could go and pitch investors who would give us hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s kind of unheard of.”

It’s not so unheard-of anymore, though. Plug-In Promotions received $100,000 of seed funding during their time with Vantage and expanded into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Best Dam Tape secured deals with the Philadelphia Flyers and Arizona State University.

Those are just bonuses, though. The best part of Vantage Ventures is what it’s doing for the Mountain State.

An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

“Startup accelerator models at other universities will invest in alumni no matter where they live,” Angus said. “We don’t do that. We'll only give you money if you’re going to make jobs here, in this state. We want our startup community to just keep growing.”

Entrepreneurship requires an independent streak, but true success comes from collaboration. To that end, Vantage offers something small, something that doesn’t typically make the sales pitch: a weekly dinner where Vantage startups past and present connect with one another.

That may sound like a minor initiative, but according to Angus, it’s perhaps the most important step Vantage has taken.

The weekly dinners don’t just fire up the attendees – they’re key to building the network that will one day fulfill John Chambers’ vision for a community of entrepreneurs in West Virginia. Startup founders get to share ideas and advice, forging relationships throughout the Mountain State.

“We’ll take people from across West Virginia,” Angus said. “People from Huntington, Elkins, Logan County – wherever. We like the underdog stories. This state is the ultimate underdog.”

The Vantage community brought in over 30 new startups from September 2024 to September 2025. That’s over 30 new businesses rooted in West Virginia, several of which have secured six figures in funding from investors, in just one year.

Some people might still think West Virginia isn't a startup state. It's time for them to start testing their assumptions.