Started businesses from zero across technology, services, consumer markets, recruiting, HR, energy, and emerging ventures.
Operators who invest
We didn’t learn business from the sidelines.
Tage was built by entrepreneurs and operators who have lived through the decisions we now help others make — starting businesses, investing our own capital, assembling teams, landing customers, scaling companies, navigating transactions, and experiencing exits.
Capital matters. Experience compounds it. Execution determines what happens next.
Why Tage
Built by people who have built businesses.
We’ve sat in the seat.
Our team has started companies from zero, scaled businesses across markets, built and led teams, invested personal capital, created products and service businesses, owned real estate, developed projects, advised founders, negotiated acquisitions and partnerships, and experienced exits.
We’ve sold the vision — and then had to deliver it.
We don’t just know what good looks like. We know what it takes.
- Built from zero
- Regional + national scale
- Multiple successful exits
- Founder + operator + investor experience
- Products + services + real estate
Our Role
The operator is the hero.
We are not the main character in this story. The people building, running, growing, acquiring, and eventually handing off these businesses are.
Our role is to put more capability around them — and help make the next chapter better. See the companies on our portfolio page.
We’d rather be useful than force an outcome.
A transaction is not success simply because it closes. Sometimes the best advice is to grow first. Sometimes it is to bring in leadership. Sometimes it is to buy. Sometimes it is to sell. Sometimes it is to wait.
We want to understand the business well enough to tell the truth.
Track record
Experience we bring to Tage.
Built teams, systems, customer relationships, and operating platforms across regional and national markets.
Put personal capital to work across operating companies, startups, real estate, development opportunities, and other investments.
Negotiated partnerships, financings, acquisitions, strategic transactions, and multiple successful exits.
Tage is new. The experience behind it is not.
A holding company built to compound experience.
Tage Venture Capital owns, operates, builds, invests in, and partners with businesses where our experience and resources can create meaningful long-term value.
Some opportunities begin with an idea. Others begin with an existing company, asset, or owner facing an important decision. The structure changes. The mindset does not — we look for situations where we can contribute more than passive capital.
How we think
We value operators over spectators.
- Get close to the business — The best decisions come from understanding the people, customers, economics, and actual work.
- Put skin in the game — We respect owners because we have invested our own money, time, reputation, and relationships into businesses too.
- Execution over theory — Ideas matter. Follow-through matters more.
- Structure matters — Good opportunities can fail under bad incentives or bad structure. We think carefully about alignment.
- Build something worth owning — We care about durable businesses, strong teams, real cash flow, and long-term enterprise value.
Leadership
The operators behind Tage.
Josh Monroe
Founder & CEO
Builder · Operator · Capital Allocator
Josh Monroe has spent his career at the intersection of people, sales, and growth — experience that now shapes how Tage builds and operates businesses.
His leadership career began in real operating environments at the Hartford City Parks Department and UPS before moving into sales and eventually starting and operating his own mortgage company.
In 2009, Josh joined Robert Half, where he spent nearly nine years in increasingly senior leadership roles across Technology and Finance & Accounting recruiting. While leading the Technology Direct Hire division, his team earned top organizational recognition and established new production records.
Those experiences shaped Josh’s view of business: strong companies need more than a founder with good instincts. They need the right people, clear systems, accountable leadership, disciplined execution, and thoughtful capital allocation.
Today, Josh is Founder of Recruit 619 and Founder & CEO of Tage Venture Capital, where he is building a portfolio designed to grow through strong operators, shared capabilities, disciplined operations, and reinvestment into future ventures and acquisitions.
His goal is not simply to own more companies. It is to build companies worth owning for the long run.
Kelly Hipskind
Chief Operating Officer
Operator · Entrepreneur · Investor · Dealmaker
Kelly Hipskind has founded, scaled, and exited businesses across education technology, renewable energy, and consumer markets — and led innovation from inside a $1B+ enterprise.
He founded Kelly Touch Systems, growing it from an idea to 10,000+ users across 60 school districts before its acquisition by Herff Jones. Following the acquisition, he was promoted to Herff Jones’s President’s leadership team within four months, leading innovation strategy across a 2,000+ employee organization.
He later co-founded Sun FundED, the first company in Indiana to finance school solar projects with no upfront cost to the district — raising $5M+ in equity and structuring up to $100M in project financing, with 40+ schools and universities under letter of intent across multiple states.
Earlier in his career, he built Gifted Custom Art into a 46-state distribution platform with 300+ channel partners as CEO, and today he continues to operate and advise growing companies through Redemptive Advisors and First Fruit Group.
At Tage, Kelly turns opportunity into execution: growth, acquisitions, leadership, strategic relationships, operating systems, real estate and asset-backed opportunities, and pivotal transactions.
He doesn’t advise from the sidelines. He has lived it.
Shared operating DNA
Different backgrounds. Better perspective.
Josh and Kelly came to Tage through different operating paths.
Josh brings deep experience in people, sales, systems, leadership, operating discipline, and capital allocation. Kelly brings experience across growth, entrepreneurship, investing, strategic partnerships, acquisitions, real estate, development, and exits.
Together, that creates a broader lens for evaluating opportunities — and more ways to help once Tage gets involved.
- Builder
- Operator
- Investor
- Dealmaker
Different experience. Shared accountability for the outcome.
Where we sit
Built in Indiana. Thinking beyond it.
Headquartered in Carmel, Indiana, with a Midwest operating mindset and a national opportunity set. We build relationships and pursue opportunities wherever our experience, capital, and operating capabilities can matter.
See what we are building on the portfolio page.