Building 757 Angels: Monique Adams on Startup Investing in Hampton Roads

Organized startup capital has been one of the biggest challenges for cities across the country.

For years, Hampton Roads struggled with it too.

Founders had ideas. Entrepreneurs were building companies. But there were few structured pathways connecting startups with local investors willing to take early-stage risks.

That began to change in 2015 when Monique Adams helped launch 757 Angels, helping create one of the region’s first organized angel investment networks focused on backing high-growth startups and entrepreneurs.

Since then, more than $100 million in startup capital has been invested through the broader momentum and infrastructure groups like 757 Angels helped create.

But long before Adams became associated with startup investing in Hampton Roads, pressure had already shaped nearly every chapter of her life.

“My parents came over here with no money,” Adams said on The Fervent Four Show.

Her parents were European immigrants shaped by the realities of World War II, survival, discipline, and hard work. Adams described growing up in a household built around milestones, expectations, and structure.

“I had a checklist before I was allowed to go out and play,” she said.

That pressure eventually followed her into New York City, where she entered one of Wall Street’s elite investment banking training programs.

The experience was brutal.

“If you failed the test, you were fired,” Adams recalled.

The program demanded relentless performance. Sleep was limited. Expectations were constant. The pressure never seemed to stop.

Every night around 3 a.m., Adams would take a car service home exhausted, wondering how long she could sustain the pace.

At one point, she had lost nearly 30 pounds and had so little money that workers at a yogurt shop near her apartment began letting her eat what was left in the machines when they cleaned them at night.

“That was my food,” she said.

But surviving environments like that also taught her something else: resilience.

“I’m gonna overcome this,” Adams remembered telling herself. “I’m gonna figure out how to do this and I’m gonna figure out how to do it well.”

Years later, that mindset would become critical when an opportunity emerged in Hampton Roads.

At the time, organized startup investing in the region was still in its infancy.

There was no established roadmap. No mature startup pipeline. No proven regional model showing how angel investing could consistently work locally.

At first, Adams was hesitant about the opportunity. Building an organized angel investment network in a region where startup investing was still developing came with enormous uncertainty, and she was not convinced she was the right person for the role.

Then came a lunch meeting in Virginia Beach that changed everything. As Adams walked out of the meeting still questioning whether she was the right fit, Anne Conner, who was at the lunch meeting, stopped her and said, “The only person doubting you is you.”

That moment became one of the emotional turning points of the conversation.

Because while Adams was not building a traditional startup herself, much of the experience mirrored what founders go through every day. There was uncertainty, skepticism, resource constraints, and the constant challenge of trying to build something that did not fully exist yet. The work required convincing investors, entrepreneurs, and the broader community that organized startup investing could become a real part of the region’s future.

“There’s no way this is part time,” Adams joked while reflecting on the early days of building 757 Angels.

The work quickly became larger than simply coordinating investors. 757 Angels had to help educate people on startup risk, build relationships between founders and investors, create systems and processes, establish credibility, and develop consistent deal flow.

In many ways, the organization itself became part of the startup infrastructure Hampton Roads had long been missing.

“Hampton Roads was just starting,” Adams said.

That created additional tension.

Angel investing depends heavily on scale. More founders. More startups. More opportunities. More investor participation.

But in emerging startup ecosystems, those systems are still being built in real time.

That meant 757 Angels was not only evaluating startups. It was also helping shape the environment around them.

Much of the pressure came from knowing the region needed this to work. Founders needed capital, investors needed confidence in the process, and Hampton Roads was still trying to prove it could support a real startup ecosystem.

The pressure of that responsibility became part of Adams’ identity. For much of her life, she believed pressure itself was tied directly to success.

“I think high pressure is what defined my life,” she said.

Adams described constantly running toward intensity, pace, ambition, and high-performance environments because that was what success looked like to her. The ability to survive difficult environments became something that separated her from other people, and over time she embraced that identity.

But eventually, perspective began to shift.

After stepping away from the nonstop pace of building and operating, Adams said she realized she no longer needed to push so hard.

Now, she believes something different.

“The power is in the pause,” she said.

The statement lands differently coming from someone whose life had been defined by motion.

For Adams, reflection became just as valuable as pressure.

She said she now believes slowing down, breathing, and creating space to think may have helped her learn even more during some of the most demanding periods of her career.

That realization eventually became one of the central lessons she hopes founders and leaders take away from her story.

“Take a moment,” she said. “Breathe. Reflect. Move on.”

Today, 757 Angels has become one of the most recognized startup investment organizations in the region and one of the most active angel groups in the country.

But Adams’ story is ultimately bigger than startup investing.

It is a story about resilience.

About self doubt.

About surviving pressure.

About building systems where none existed before.

And about realizing that sometimes the hardest thing to overcome is not the market, the capital, or the environment.

Sometimes it is yourself.