For Marty Brown, giving back to the University of Tennessee (UT) is personal. Both Brown and his wife, Ann, attended UT Knoxville (UTK), and during his freshman year, the loss of his father meant balancing school with working 40 hours a week. He credits his professors with providing the encouragement and guidance that helped keep him on course.
“When the opportunity arose to give back, I wanted to do that because they actively supported me during a difficult time,” Brown said.
After graduating in 1985, Brown built a career in accounting and business, including serving in active leadership roles on numerous entrepreneurial initiatives at PYA where he saw firsthand both the opportunities and challenges of building companies. His experience with start-up companies and his active involvement in the community resulted in him being asked to become one of five co-founders and General Partners at Market Square Ventures (MSV), a first-generation venture capital firm based in Knoxville, TN. Recognizing a shortage of access to capital in the region and seeing promising companies leave Tennessee in search of funding, caused him to accept the role with MSV.
At the time of this writing, MSV has 30 portfolio companies in at least 7 different industry segments. Brown has also served as the key supporter and advisor to PYA’s Teknovation newsletter, which has been covering the entrepreneurial community since 2012, and boasts a loyal following and readership for both founders and ‘funders.’
All of this experience made UT Ventures a natural fit.
“It was an encouragement to me to be involved with it,” Brown said. “It’s not quite venture capital. It’s a network of angels. But now you get to really give back to companies that have true University of Tennessee ties.”
For Brown, the potential impact extends beyond individual investments. He likes the idea that successful companies can generate returns for investors while ultimately creating an opportunity to give back to the University.
Brown also sees value in the opportunity to learn from fellow members and share his own experience. “We learned from our failures,” he said of his earlier entrepreneurial experiences. “Sometimes it was the timing wasn’t right on the idea, or the leadership selected was not a good fit, or whatever it may be. But we learned from that.”
For Brown, the combination of investing, learning and giving back is what makes UT Ventures especially meaningful.