Most people start a business for the same reason: to make money. John Roberts started a business to give money away.
John and his business partner, Mickal Adler, would certainly like to end up making money at some point – that is the end goal of their company, Boot 64 Ventures.
John Roberts, Managing Partner at Boot64 Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in Louiaiana startups. They know they;re going to lose money on some ventures but they’re in the frog-kissing business, hoping for that one magic “grand slam”
It’s the word “venture” that’s the key to what’s going on here. Boot 64 is a venture capital company. The money they’re giving away as investments is partly privately raised capital, but it’s also funds that come from a federally created program called SSBCI, which stands for State Small Business Credit Initiative.
We’ll get into the nuts and bolts of how this all works, but the general requirement for the fund is that businesses have to boost the state’s economy. Boot 64 Ventures is investing in diverse sectors that include AI, energy, food, tech, and healthcare.
And now the story of another John who set out to make an investment. This John is John Stubbs.
John Stubbs, Managing Partner of Jewel of the South. With no background in hospitality, since 2020 John has helped steer the business to meteoric success, garnering a coveted James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar and 3 years in a row the bar and restaurant have been named Best Bar In The South
John started out life in Lafayette Louisiana and found himself spending 30-plus years in Washington DC, working in international trade and public health.
John and his wife bought a house in New Orleans so they could spend some time here. John also made an investment in a restaurant here, called Jewel of the South. It took a long time, a lot of effort, and too much money to get the place open – which they accomplished just in time to get closed down by the Covid pandemic.
When the restaurant re-opened, John decided for better or worse, with no restaurant experience, he was not going to be a passive investor, he was going to be an active owner. How did that work out? Well, if you live in New Orleans you might know it worked out pretty well. And if you live anywhere else in the US, you might know that too. In a prestigious and much-respected ranking of North America’s 50 best Bars, Jewel of the South was named Best Bar In The South for 3 straight years.
In 2024, Jewel of the South won a James Beard Award for “Outstanding Bar.”
Peter Ricchiuti, John Roberts, Yazmine Parker, and John Stubbs, Out to Lunch at The Columns Hotel in Uptown New Orleans
If there was a simple formula for success, we’d all know it by now. The reality is, everybody’s path to success is different. There are so many bars in New Orleans, you can’t even get an accurate total number. One normally reliable source says there are 265. Another normally equally reliable source says there are 800. Whatever the actual number, if there’s one thing New Orleans didn’t need when John Stubbs opened Jewel of the South, it’s another bar. But it’s not just one of the greatest bars in the city, but one of the greatest in the country.
Over the next decade there are going to be a whole bunch of success stories of unique local businesses who have done something amazing, and Boot 64 Ventures might just be the reason for their very existence.
Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. Photos by Jill Lafleur.
