Cape Fear Ventures

Richard Stroupe serves as Founder and Managing Partner and is the firm's primary decision-maker. He brings more than two decades of serial entrepreneurship and operational leadership in technology, defense, and real estate. Venture partners Matt Gittleman, Justin Edelman, and Thomas Hornall support sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio management but Stroupe's central role suggests a concentrated investment committee structure.

The firm's sourcing model draws on multiple founder-facing surfaces. Richard Stroupe operates the Elevate CEO Retreat and hosts The Amplified CEO Podcast, both vehicles for identifying and attracting early-stage operators. Matt Gittleman's role as a founding partner of VC in DC connects the firm to over 700 investors across the Mid-Atlantic, while Thomas Hornall's journalistic research methods are applied to tracking sector narratives and discovering companies before they enter formal fundraising processes.

Cape Fear Ventures describes its activity as direct early-stage investing, from pre-seed through Series A, in five core sectors. The firm's website and team bios make no mention of fund-of-funds commitments or LP positions in other venture firms. Venture partner Matt Gittleman maintains a separate director role at JHH vc, a DC-based family office venture fund, but this appears to be distinct from Cape Fear Ventures' investment activities.

The firm focuses on enterprise software, data science and AI, defense technology, and space ventures. These five areas represent high-conviction exposure where the team claims deep domain expertise. Cape Fear Ventures does not publicly list sectors it avoids, though its absence from consumer internet, biotech, and hardware beyond defense and space signals a deliberate scope boundary.

Cape Fear Ventures is registered as a private equity asset manager, not a family office. The firm has not disclosed a source of permanent capital or a single-family wealth origin. Its founder, Richard Stroupe, generated wealth through multiple entrepreneurial exits, and the firm invests in external startups rather than managing a single fortune, which aligns with a conventional venture capital manager structure rather than a family office model.

The firm embeds technical and operational support into its engagement model. Justin Edelman works hands-on with leadership teams on AI strategy, technical diligence, and agentic-engineering opportunity assessments. Thomas Hornall leads communications and market narrative development, helping founders translate domain expertise into public positioning. The firm describes this as bringing 'capital, cutting-edge technology strategies, operational expertise, and mentorship' to each investment.

No. As of mid-2026, Cape Fear Ventures has not publicly disclosed AUM, deployment totals, or any specific fund size. Without a regulatory filing or press report to reference, the firm's aggregate capital base remains undisclosed, which is not uncommon among early-stage venture practices operating on discretionary or deal-by-deal capital.