A new local venture studio is launching with a community-first focus — and taking over an established meetup for startup founders that it says fits perfectly into its mission.
Venture studio United Effects (UE) Ventures launched today with plans to build startups from the idea stage by taking part in the process, growing the team and contributing early funding, according to cofounder and managing partner Frank Shultz. It plans to work with early-stage companies as well as studio-originated ideas, with a focus on early-stage B2B SaaS startups.
A key part of UE Ventures’ mission is to increase community building in the Philadelphia startup ecosystem, which hasn’t completely bounced back post-pandemic, Shultz told Technical.ly. Taking over the founder meetup Welcome Wagon provides an in-person way to foster connections. Altogether, those efforts will hopefully lead to stronger companies and more investor interest in the region, he said.
“[We] are really focused on the Philly community and bringing back the in-person, entrepreneur focus,” he said. “Let’s not talk about being founders of businesses, and that’s it. But how do we talk about what it really means to be running a business and where people want to get to?”
The goal is to provide tangible resources for founders to grow their companies with programs like its startup development platform and a mentorship program, said UE Ventures cofounder and managing partner Bo Motlagh. As a part of that, UE Ventures is launching a venture fund, called UEV Origination Venture Fund I, to invest in its portfolio companies.
UE Ventures takes over Welcome Wagon from Startup Leaders
One way UE Ventures plans to strengthen the startup ecosystem is by running the well-established meetup group Welcome Wagon.
Entrepreneur resource organization Philly Startup Leaders launched Welcome Wagon in 2021, aiming to create a space for community members to gather and network. Its offloading of the meetup coincides with a rebrand as the nonprofit takes a more national approach to its efforts under the name Startup Leaders.
Taking over Welcome Wagon made sense for UE Ventures as a space for founders to bounce their ideas off each other and get feedback, Motlagh said.
The plan is to bring expert speakers in to do formal presentations on topics like product market fit and go-to-market strategy, but also maintain the casual networking atmosphere of the event, Shultz said. The cofounders are also considering expanding the event series to the suburbs.
The handoff will be official on June 1, and then Shultz and Motlagh want to gather feedback from the community about the programming they want to see, they said.
“What I’ve always loved about Welcome Wagon over the years is that there’s room for people to come to that meeting, talk about what they’re thinking and get feedback,” Motlagh said. “That’s really a big part of what we want to be able to support.”
A founder-focused approach to building a startup
Community gathering is just one way that UE Ventures plans to support founders, according to Shultz and Motlagh.
Both cofounders drew from their own founder experience while developing UE Ventures. Shultz founded the local software company Infinite Blue, which was acquired by Massachusetts-based company Everbridge in 2024.
“When you’re starting up a business, there [are] a lot of questions you have, and sometimes you feel like you’re on an island and you feel like no one else gets you,” Shultz said.
Motlagh is an enterprise technologist, but he pivoted to start his own company full-time in 2021. He looked to organizations like PACT and Startup Leaders to help navigate the experience.
His experience with other orgs connected him to people with similar experiences, but he wasn’t getting a lot of tangible advice that could help him grow his business, he said. He partnered with Shultz and they started working on the venture studio in January 2025.
“It’s not about founder hype or academic coursework,” Motlagh said. “It’s about, let’s build the business and get you to that next step that actually achieves what you’re trying to do, which we assume is build a startup that generates revenue and traction.”
Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
Philly Startup Leaders
