Building Partnerships Across the Innovation Ecosystem: SBA's Growth Accelerator Fund Competition

Much. Welcome to Building partnerships across the Innovation Ecosystem. I'm super excited to be here with three of our 2023 Growth Accelerator Fund competition stage two winners. We are expecting one more to join us and show she'll catch up when she gets here, I'm sure. But we're going to focus today on discussing how each of you has created new partnerships and expanded access to resources in your innovation ecosystem through the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition, which I will now call gassi, as we are all used to calling it. But the acronyms take a little bit to get used to. So I'm Maura Shanker. I'm an impact fellow at SBA's Office of Investment and Innovation in the Ecosystem Development Division. And today I'm joined by John Sellop from AgTech Innovation Alliance, AgStart, Scott Mosley from Starting Block Madison, and Daniel Kleiman from Seaworthy Collective. So all across the country and I'm going to take a few minutes to allow each of you to introduce yourselves and give us a brief interview of your organization, your mission and why you're here. John, I'll let you start.

Greetings. Thank you Maura for allowing me to participate. My name is John Sellip. I'm the co founder and president of the AgTech Innovation alliance, or AgStart as we call it. We operate an incubation program in California's Central Valley region focused on agri food tech entrepreneurs working on solutions and challenges in agriculture, food and health technology. Our program has been active for 11 years. Our current structure has been in place for about six years. We have a shared resources model including a sizable wet lab and food lab facility that provide physical facilities to entrepreneurs in agri food tech. We dramatically lower the capital costs for those entrepreneurs to commercialize science based solutions to transforming, improving the effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability of our global food system.

Thank you Scott.

Thanks Mark. Good afternoon everybody. Or at least for everybody east of Madison. My name is Scott Moseley. I am the Executive Director of Starting Block Madison which is a 501C3 located in Madison, Wisconsin. We are a 50,000 square foot incubator accelerator co working space. We have been in existence since 2018. The good news is we survived the pandemic and came out maybe not swinging, but we were at least on our feet. And so the past year we have been fortunate enough to receive funding from several federal funding agencies around programmatic activity which we are dramatically expanding kind of post Covid. And yeah, the program that we put in for the GAFC award this year was to launch a hard tech Accelerator which aligns with our regional strengths in both both manufacturing and agriculture. And so we are, you know, kind of in the throes of getting that thing started. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that as the as the panel continues.

Thanks for inviting me.

Thanks Scott. Daniel.

Hi there, I'm Daniel Kleinman. I'm the founder and CEO of Seaworthy Collective. We're a Miami based entrepreneur, support organization and community serving founders in ocean and climate impact. Our mission is to make BlueTech or Ocean and climate impact innovation accessible and inclusive. And since 2020 we've supported 26 startups from all over the world and most importantly really saw this opportunity to embrace our bottom up approach that we like to take at Seaworthy in alignment with what we saw at gapsee. And so we shared our vision in phase one and we're so glad to see how it all aligned. Now we'll get to how we're building it all out. But most importantly it's really this two prong approach of how we build and educate the community to build our local ecosystem here in South Florida so that we can lead them to the tangible opportunity of co creating growing startups.

Happy to be here and we're happy to have you. And Sulee, your timing is absolutely perfect. We were just going around and introducing so. Hello everybody, I'd love for you to meet Susan Suling Walker from the North Carolina Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce in Durham, North Carolina. So Suling, would you take a minute, introduce yourself, give us a brief overview of your organization and mission.

Hi everyone, my name is Suling Walker. I am the Board Vice president of the Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce. We are a free base membership chamber. That means that all our members are welcome to join our programs completely free. And this is thanks to all the collaborations we have through the Small Business Administration and as well some of our sponsors that understand already the challenges that the Hispanic Latino community have. We have two centers, our small business and entrepreneurship center and our education center that supports small business owners and entrepreneurs to continue to educate themselves and to stray their business. And of course we collaborate, you know, for professional opportunities. And as well that transition we have a lot of Hispanic Latino community that is coming internally from different states, right? Not only from Latin America but as well from other states to come here to the beautiful state of North Carolina. So we do have a corporate program that helps them to transition smoothly here.

Thank you. I know everybody's excited to hear more from, from all of you, so let's just go right into it. Daniel I would love to hear what made you think that the GAFC, the 2023 Growth Accelerator Competition was right for Seaworthy Collective. What did you hope to accomplish?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, the bottom up approach is really foundational to what we do. And you know, my background is in design and systems thinking. There aren't many opportunities that let me fully go existential and big picture on the change we want to make. And immediately I saw GAPSI was really an opportunity for us to leverage all this thought leadership that we had previously in driving the systems change that we want to see in the ocean and climate impact space and make it more accessible. And it really allowed us the space to not only take that big picture vision and make it really granular and actionable, but really create something that to the point of the program was enabling us to develop some really fundamental partnerships for building what's next for us. So it was both this combination of getting to humor our idealism, I would say, and really embrace the vision that we have, but also, most importantly, help to bring that to reality and find that tangible pathway to do that via ecosystem partnerships.

You know, I think that not everybody who may be watching this knows exactly how the Growth Accelerator works. So maybe I'll take a step back and just explain that. The Growth Accelerator Fund competition is an innovation ecosystem building competition. It's four esos. It's a two stage competition around building partnerships and then taking that partnership and offering something that was missing from your ecosystem before. So it allows you to really examine what your unique ecosystem needs, needs, who the disadvantaged, overlooked or underserved populations in your ecosystem are, because that differs all over the country. We are a big, big place and a melting pot. And so we also want to be able to share best practices and build out a national network. And so by having you can see from North Carolina, from Florida to California represented here is. And so that's what we're talking about is really collaboration and partnership, relationship building among ESOs. So Scott, what was appealing to you and Starting Block Madison, about the Gatsi?

Yeah, so, Maura, I mean, I think a couple of things. You know, as a starting point, as we came out of the pandemic, we had some leadership transitions here at Starting Block. And one of the fundamental changes that we made and our board made was a lot of the programming had been outsourced to third parties. So we were very much, you know, kind of in the co working space. And so the strategic decision was made to bring programming in house. And so, you know, we started looking for Collaboration opportunities and had some pre existing obligations to the state of Wisconsin. So we, you know, began to look at how we could leverage those to think about a broader reach, both in our, you know, kind of MSA area, but, you know, broader across the entire state. And so, you know, as we begin to look at federal funding opportunities and those that align with both our internal vision and the vision of where we wanted to go and with, you know, broader partnerships, GAFC really made sense to us. And I think, you know, we tried to move from this idea of kind of a contractor based partnership where we had people, you know, we're paying to come in and run programming, to actual true partnership. So people that were engaged in the, the collaborative ideation phase and then kind of co wrote the application to both phase one and phase two of the GAFC program with us so that when we produce the outcome of what we applied for, the funding for, that it would truly be a collaborative process all the way through and then hopefully that results in the outcomes that we're seeking to find.

And John, for AgStart, what brought you to GAFC?

We participated in GAFC the competition the first time this year. We had previously been working with a number of partners around our California region to build a collaborative network of incubators supporting ag and food technology startups. But we realized there are innovation hubs across the country, in North Carolina, where sealing is in St. Louis, with the Danforth Plant Science center in other places as well. And so we saw GAFC as a way to kind of engage those other partners and create a national network of incubators. Agriculture is relatively unique. There are 400 different crop types in California alone. There are many different growing regions with different crop types and different crop focuses around the country. And the food system is really a global food system. So innovators are entrepreneurs that have a specific technology advantage. They may want to commercialize that here in California, may actually be working on things that are appropriate to crop types like corn or soy in the Midwest or, you know, other crop types around, around the country and around the world. And yet they need access to mentors, partners, you know, subject matter experts in those other regions. They may not even realize that their innovation that might work in a specific crop type might also be applicable to other crop types as well. So having broad sets of relationships and mentors that they could reach out to would be very beneficial to them. But entrepreneurs have very little time and so it would not make sense for a single entrepreneur to try to build a national network of collaborative relationships and mentorships and everything else. But just as we found with our incubator model, where we have shared facilities and that many entrepreneurs can benefit from it, as an eso, we can build those national relationships, and many entrepreneurs in our local cohort can benefit from that. But we also discovered in our work in our California network that there is a network effect. The more ESOs that participate, we get value. And we can add more value to our local entrepreneurs by giving them referrals to a broader community of esos for every additional ESO that is added to that network. But each of those ESOs that are added to the network also gain tremendous value because they have access to, to all the other participating ESOs. And so the network becomes more valuable the more ESOs come in. And our experience was recruiting entrepreneur support organizations in St. Louis and North Carolina and North Dakota, Nebraska and elsewhere. They were eager to join because they could see the benefit to their entrepreneurs from participating. And GAFC was the trigger. It was the spur that allowed us to go out and recruit them and say, there's funding for us to work together. Let's. Let's collaborate and make advantages.

That's great. Just what, just what we love to hear.

We're very grateful for the funding.

Well, I think for us, it was our community that brought us to gafti. And I love to see questions as guarded because those type of questions was actually the reason that brought us to the program. Right. We have a lot of our members that were asking, we are interested in joining, joining this program, but we need some cpa, you know, that have some experience on this that can guide us to the right direction. So being part of the program is just building capacity for our members to join the program in the more efficient way, but at the same time, having access to the information in both languages, Spanish and English. I think for us, we're extremely proud to not only serve community that is entrepreneur by nature, but at the same time a community that is bilingual. So when we. This is the first time that we're getting the opportunity to be part of gabc, and it's helping us tremendously to build better relationships with our subcontractors like CPAs, lawyers, consultants that can provide that information to grow their business or to start their business, to get access to the program of the SBRT and the sttr. Yes.

Well done. All right, now, so we have an idea of what you wanted to do. How's it going so far? Scott, I'm going to put you on the hot seat first. How's it working out for you?

Yeah.

Wow. I mean it's, your timing's good. We just had our quarterly board meeting and annual approvals of budgets and stuff. And so, you know, here we are the last two weeks of December, which is hard to believe and wow, now we're trying to execute. So you know, I think the, the phasing, the phased funding approach that GAFC utilizes has allowed us to be able to spread that work over the better part of seven months. And so, you know, the initial prize that we won allowed us to do a fair bit of, of research and development that included visiting other ESOs across the country that, you know, we had identified as high performing organizations. It allowed us to look at software acquisition and some other things that we think we need to bring in. So a lot of that legwork was done early as preparation for our phase two application. And so now as we move to phase two, what we have, what we're going to go do next year is to launch a hard tech accelerator. But I think, you know, in terms of localization, one of the questions we've been trying to think about are how do we move from ideation phase to hardware prototyping? We've in that process realized that locally we don't have a good ideation program. So we're going to launch one of those as a precursor program to the GAFC funded hardtack accelerator. So part of what we're doing right now is we're training teaching teams, we located a learning management system, we have a kind of a set curricular thing. And now with our seven ecosystem partners that we went on the application together, we are training up our content delivery teaching team. And so then those folks will be ready to launch our five new six week modules that are kind of the ideation program in preparation for a summer launch of our 22 week hard tech accelerator. So to answer your question, it's going good, but man, we're busy.

I love it. And it sounds like, you know, you're building internal capacity which is only going to benefit your ecosystem.

Right. And not just our own internal capacity. I mean, I just want to emphasize that, that you know, we've reached across that ecosystem, not just locally here in Madison, but across the state of Wisconsin. And we're, you know, including folks like that into our capacity building pipeline. And it's a great thing, you know, frankly, to be able to walk in the door to somebody and say, hey, look, I've got money, do you want it? And people usually say yes.

Yeah, go figure. People are not crazy. Well, they might Be. But they're, they're smart.

Crazy, but smart, right?

Yeah, crazy like a fox.

Yeah.

John, how's it going for you?

It's going well. We launched our partner, we call it AgTech Nation, this national network. We had initially eight regional partners that were entrepreneurship organizations. We felt similar to us and we also had some specific resources that are going to provide materials for SBIR STTR training and specific underrepresented groups. Our original concept was that we had these eight peer level organizations that were, we thought, initially doing similar things to us but in different regions. And what we discovered as we got into our organizational calls and kind of the self discovery of each of the partners was that we're actually doing very unique things. Some of us, like our Ag Start incubator, are focusing on early stage bench level commercialization to support the entrepreneurs in that early stage. But others like Pete Nelson at AG Launch, who was just on the previous session earlier this morning doing great work in the Memphis, Tennessee area, they're focusing on kind of later stage field trials with growers, which is a natural progression from early stage to late stage. So it's more than we even expected. So the discovery of who our partners really are and the assets they bring to the table has really been good. We're excited. Our original plan was to have this partnership kind of funded, sponsored for two years using the GAFC funds. And our expectation is that we'll find others that see this kind of national network or platform as being beneficial to them. We'd love to recruit additional partners. I'll reach out to Scott after the call and see what their plans might be in the ag tech space. But we've, we've had some good success. It's a lot of work and we're realizing just the mechanics of, you know, getting a cooperation agreement or, you know, funding to various entities that are providing services to us is, is a bit of work, but it's all good.

Meaningful work.

Meaningful work.

It is. It's hard, but it's.

And we're having some success. We were already seeing referrals of entrepreneurs from one ESO to another. I mentioned AG Launch is more later stage, you know, field trial level. And they identified in terms of their call for folks for their accelerator that some folks are kind of earlier stage, not yet ready for field trials and might need more, you know, bench level refinement and formulation and those kinds of things. And so they're referring them out to other esos who, you know, provide the services. We didn't have those networks before. Now we do.

Suling, how's it going for you?

Well, I think for us has been just an incredible experience. And from the first stage, we thought that we were going to see ourselves very lonely in this whole new program we call our program hispanicrenorship Program. And we went from believing we're going to have only five partners to now have over 20 partners. So it's just incredible to see how much people is willing to support our community, understand that it's not just about doing training, but at the same time giving the actual technical assistance they need. Right now we have an incredible partnership with community colleges where they are even allowing our applicants to participate in 3D printing if needed and develop all of these great, you know, things with technology for our team. It's been busy, busy, busy and busy because one of the things that we noticed not only for this program, but for the majority of the programs that we try to expand and try our community to engage with, they don't know about it. They don't know about it because we deal a lot with first and second generations and we know that if you that were not born and raised here, this is all new information for you. Right? So we are on the various specific category and I think it's underserved communities and I am so proud that we are under that category because it couldn't explain better the challenges that we're facing to continue growing this program because it's, it's a community that has a lot of willingness to grow and a lot of interest in the program, but they simply do not know about it. So it is an honor for us to be the person that delivers the good news, but also the ones that are providing the resources and that can also provide the support they need to continue growing. This second stage is being very, very busy. We're trying to put things in place because we at the same time are trying to do surveys every time we can just to improve since this is the first time that we are handling with the program and hopefully we have a successful report for the SBA tomorrow and continue growing and expanding this program in the future.

That's great. And Daniel, last but not least, how's it going?

It's good. We are in full build mode right now. I've been saying we had basically kind of two pronged proposal or two partners rather that we're working with. So the first of which is Miami Dade College, which if you don't know, they are one of the largest colleges in the country and also the most diverse with over 70% of their students coming from underrepresented background and basically for us being in the ocean impact space, they don't have an oceanographic research institution associated with their school. And so things like coast resilience aren't even a term that's known by a lot of the students there because there's no opportunity to study it. And so we've done a series of workshops prototyping a formal program we'll be rolling out next year, already this year to help them just even prototype what would it look like to start an ocean and climate impact startup. And from a one hour workshop and 15 minutes to ideate, these students were coming up with ideas that already current startups are doing and even some really unique ideas as well. And to me, it was kind of this aha moment of, you know, proving on a very small scale what level of change we can create. Because a huge part of what needs to change in the ocean impact space is that it's not just marine scientists and PhDs doing this work, but it's very interdisciplinary. So we can get a more entrepreneurial culture in the space. But at the same time, the other partner we're working with is helping us to create this infrastructure, I've been liking to call it, that is enabling us to better serve our entrepreneurs and even create new spinoff programming that really democratizes access to all of our different resources. My biggest frustration in the past three years has been everything having to go through formal programming and three month commitments. And we want to find ways to support startups without all those barriers. We're right now in the middle of building all of that out. I literally finished mapping our network very deeply on Monday. So we are thick of it and hoping to roll it out in 2024. But at the same time, with Miami Dade College, we'll be rolling out a formal fellowship program. So the whole idea is we're prototyping the components of that right now through these workshops. And then our goal is to launch a fellowship program next summer and then most importantly, have for the first time, founders from Miami Dade College as part of our fall startup studio and incubator cohort. So we've got our full year plan ahead of us and we are definitely in the thick of building it all out, but it's all really exciting. And yeah, this whole opportunity has just helped us get all of these ducks in a row.

That's great to hear. And while I've got you unmuted, Daniel, I'm going to ask you, how have you dovetailed your work for the Growth Accelerator Fund into additional opportunities. Because it sounds like you've got big plans and huge ambitions.

Thank you. Well, I'll just say it's been kind of this series of strategically aligned opportunities and I think we started the year, I won't say where, but with another grant that kind of was not necessarily as aligned. So we've learned what we aren't, but now we really have a good focus on what we are and where we're going. And so there's this NOAA Ocean Ocean based Climate Resilience Accelerators grant. We are anxious, anxiously waiting on word of, but basically because of all the infrastructure we already built in our proposal and now we're actually building as we deliver on it from the SBA side, we are now going to build a whole new accelerator model on top of it that is going to be part of our hopeful NOAA Climate Resilience Accelerators grant. And so I think it's this, when I take a step back and look at what this opportunity has been for us, it's a lot of the foundations for what we've wanted to build in the future, but now it creates all this kind of blank space that we get to play with of how do we bring in even more partners and build on top of the infrastructure we built through Galaxy. So all additive and really, really just getting us to where we wanted to be after three years in business. So grateful as always.

Amazing. Scott, you've only been at Starting Block Madison for one year. When you accepted the position, how did you think about partnerships and collaboration?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question, Maura. I think, you know, one of the things that, that we have tried to embrace here at Starting Block is that we lead with yes. So it really doesn't matter what the question is. Chances are the answer is going to be yes. You know, if we can figure out a way to do it, we want to do it. And I think that in a lot of ways has helped reduce a lot of systemic barriers that, you know, oftentimes, you know, middle aged white guys like me and Patagonia Bests, you know, haven't always had the best, you know, reception to people that have different ideas and different ways of thinking and, you know, come from very different backgrounds. And so, you know, we've tried to be transparent about, you know, our motivations and we have tried to be, you know, willing to step forward and say we have money, we have time, we have energy and we want to, we want to be in the mix. And so whatever your your ask Is, you know, we may end up getting to know. But assume when you walk in the door that the answer is probably going to be yes, if we can figure it out. And so, you know, in terms of trying to build partnerships, that's gone a long way to, you know, disarming a lot of historically, you know, contentious relationships. So, yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of where the place we're coming from.

John, GAFC this year, I know that first time you apply, but this year is different than when it started in 2014. And we have a two stage competition process. What would you like to share about your experiences with this two stage process?

We've had experience with other grant awards or grant applications in the past where when you reach out to another peer level organization, you know, there's this tension between competition and collaboration. Each of the organizations are thinking, it's an interesting idea, perhaps I should apply for that grant award ourselves. And so there's this tension. What I found with the GAFC process being a two stage process, the phase one was really a contest of ideas and whoever came up with the best ideas won the stage one award and was then eligible to apply for stage two. When we reached out to partners, peers across the country in stage two, some of whom frankly were more mature and larger entities than ourselves, they were not in a position where they could compete for the same award. And the question was just, do they see value in collaborating and universally, 100%, they said they were eager to join and collaborate. We actually had the privilege or the position of being selective about is some of these partners programs mature enough to be part of our initial cohort? Because we want to be able to launch our, our national network with significant, meaningful heft and we could kind of pick and choose who we wanted to engage for our initial phase of the AgTech Nation collaboration. So I think the two stage process really separated that competition phase in the first phase and then it was just all about recruiting partners. And again, everyone saw the benefit of collaborating, this network effect, they could become part of this national group. So we found that very successful for us.

And I love that phrase, agtech Nation collaboration. I think we need to put that on a T shirt somewhere. Okay, I expect to get one in the mail. Suling, regarding the Hispanic Latino business community, what specific challenges or opportunities do you think exist there and how can GHAFC be tailored to better address unique needs of that community, especially within a broader national ecosystem?

And before I answer that question, I know there are some people on the chat that want to connect with our organization. So I'm going to leave the email. You can contact us directly in case you want, you know, to know and learn more about the Hispanic Partnership program. I think that I don't like to say this too much because I believe that if that was the primary issue we will see, we wouldn't see the Hispanic Latino community where it is right now. But language, I think, is one of the challenges that sometimes we see. And not because they don't know English, because if that were an issue, I think that he's filing. The Hispanic Latino community wouldn't be known as entrepreneurs by nature, but it's not the same to get access to the information in your own language, right? And we notice that when it comes to very specific industries, such as the STEM industry, the research and development industry, getting that information one on one with someone that understands the process, you know, and how you can engage the programs as SBTR and the GAPSI program, it makes it a little more. A little bit more simple. Another challenge that we see is just access to professional support, right? CPAs, lawyers, they're expensive. So we have great researchers, we have great business owners. But sometimes they come and right now they're like, I need support with my numbers, you know, to be able to connect better with other investors. So just having this program available to them to ask a professional those questions help them tremendously as well. Have a safe space, you know, they can come and just know and learn about the program is also another thing that we find very useful. We are offering Office day every Monday to our participants because we don't want them to break the bank, you know, when they start their business or when they're growing their business. So this program is helping us to. If they need to have a client or they need to have an important meeting, or they just want to work on their business and have their office experience, this program is also helping us to bring them to our office and have a space every Monday if needed. And that also is something that they really appreciate. But again, you know, what we're trying to do right now is spread the word what the program is about and how this program can be connected with other ones as the SBIR and the SB dtr. My spelling in English is horrible.

I know.

And to invite them to spread the word, right? One of the things that we notice in the Hispanic Latino community is that we can publish in Univision, we can publish in our local newsletter, but our community likes to learn more about what is going on with their community leaders, with their churches, with their neighbors, with their family. So we're doing that as well right now. Thankfully, we're having more applicants that are expected. Over a thousand people applied to our program. We couldn't believe it. We had to extend our applications to December 15th. And right now, starting January, we're going to start reviewing applications and see who is going to be joining the program next year as well. And we're super excited. We couldn't, like to be honest. We're so blessed to have this program in our organization and hope that we can continue growing the program in the future.

More than a thousand applicants, I can't even imagine.

Yes, we couldn't imagine that either. And then we did a rigorous screening just to make sure that we have applicants that understand what was the program about. But we noticed that. And I don't know if you know this, but North Carolina is booming in STEM right now and is growing exponentially. We have broke records last year in this year of new businesses in our state. So it's really impressive. Other things you should know, you don't need to be Hispanic Latino to be part of our organization. So we partner with other organizations that maybe they're not Hispanic Latino, but they're Asian. Right. They're immigrants as well. So we open our doors to everyone that is willing to get the information and get the resources in our programs.

That's how you build relationships and community.

Yes.

So I'd like to encourage anyone in the audience to go ahead and drop questions into the comments, the chat. And while we wait for some questions to come in, I want to offer all of each and all of our panelists an opportunity for any last words of wisdom or to make a last point, discuss something that we haven't been able to discuss about the Growth Accelerator Fund competition or your work or your partnerships and collaborations. This is, is your chance to take on the mic and do what you want to do. Oh, we got a question for Daniel. So we'll take the question the pillars of your fellowship. What are the pillars of your fellowship that make it particularly effective for supporting young innovators from underrepresented communities to contribute to solving global climate issues?

Yeah. So I'll start with saying, you know, the key term is interdisciplinary collaboration. Right. We understand that these, these innovators don't necessarily have access to the scientific expertise at their, at their schools, but we have the network and we have the partnerships with other leading institutions to help connect them with that talent. Right. I always lament the issue in the marine sciences is really this lack of entrepreneurial culture. It's a lot of research for the sake of research. And so the whole point is bringing these underrepresented students into the fold helps bring that not only culture, but really drive and talent help complement that. And so for us, it's really this intentional alignment of, you know, different student populations and, you know, even beyond students. Right. And at the same time, you know, really it's just showing people and the very basic thing we do is showing people that it is an opportunity they can pursue and just get them thinking in that mindset. Because it's a lot of preconceived notions and mental models that we have to basically rewire of reasons people say they can't do this work. And the reality is entrepreneurship is 90% resourcefulness anyway. So we help them get over that hump and no matter what, have the resources to be able to access that. Great.

Scott, do you have any last words of wisdom?

Well, I think the thing that I would encourage people to do that are that are listening to the call is, you know, get ready for the, for the funding notice for 24, because it's coming, and make the application, you know, put your name in the hat. The application process is dead simple. I mean, if, you know, a lot of these grants from NSF and DOE and nih, I mean, you gotta hire a grant writer. You got to go through all this kind of stuff. And I think, Maura, correct me if I'm wrong, but the initial application was 10 slides.

And I wish it was that simple, Scott, but It was actually 12 slides.

12 slides. Sorry.

It was, you know, 20% and a 90 second video.

Right, exactly. And so like you sit down in front of Canva or PowerPoint or whatever you use and you just bang them out and they're totally scripted. The slides are super dead simple. It takes a couple of weeks of some thought. But make the application because one, it'll improve your own thinking about what you're doing and two, it's. The prize is, how should we say, Maura comes with few strings, limited strings.

The juice is worth the squeeze here.

I'm telling you.

That was my AG reference, which is my lead into John, what do you think? Did I do it okay?

Doing great. You know, AG touches everything. Each of us participate in our, you know, global food system at least three times a day, if not, if we're not snacking in between. And we're very interconnected. We just speaking to Daniel here a couple points. You know, we recently incubated a kelp based startup that was looking At Ocean kelp which you know, absorbed carbon dioxide from the ocean and they're turning it into feedstocks for, you know, chemical processes because there's a lot of cellulose and a lot of other, you know, interesting bioactive components in kelp and you know, recycles carbon dioxide from the ocean. They would have been a great candidate for the Seaworthy collective, but they found.

Us, they're making applications right now and.

They graduated from our incubator, they're now in their own scale up facility and they're off and running. So yeah, we touch on climate tech, we touch on food tech, we touch on human health. So we're excited at the opportunity to build this national collaborative and I get my juice is seeing all these interesting ideas that our startups come up with. You know, they're deeply knowledgeable in their own spaces and it's fun to see the inventiveness and innovation that's going on.

Last words of wisdom or advice for anybody out there?

I think my advice is have a plan, right? Because once you both, both, both sides, right? If you're interested to pursue the GAS C program, have a plan because there is a lot of great opportunities to develop your Hispanic, your entrepreneurship and small business community. So have a clear plan of what you're going to. But if you are a person who is interested to connect to the AGAFC program as an applicant, I think that do your research before because right now before we open applications and before we do everything, we sit down and try to make a clear pre screening process so people know what is the program about and really benefit from the program. For us it's extremely important that people know how they can benefit from the program. To continue presenting our program well to the SBA but to grow also the economic development impact report in our state. So if you are seeking a program as gasp read before what is the program about and try to understand how you can benefit and how you can grow your small business through the program.

Well said. I think understanding how GAFC works.

Yes.

And as I mentioned in the beginning, we've definitely made some major changes to the program for the 2023 and I've heard so much great, so many great stories here and from our other stage two winners, I'm very excited the SBA is keeping the same format for 2024. The application is not live. We don't call it a NOFO because this is not a cooperative agreement or a grant, it is a prize. And by making that distinction it allows the SBA a lot of flexibility in all of the administrative mechanisms that can be such a heavy lift and I'd love to encourage encourage people from nascent organizations, smaller organizations. When you look at like the, you know, common federal NOFOs and funding opportunities and your eyes cross the Growth Accelerator Fund is an excellent starting point into the wonderful wide world of federal funding because it is a much lighter lift. The Stage 1 application 12 slides and a 90 second video and only Stage 1 winners are eligible to apply for Stage 2, which is a 20 slide deck and in an interview. So at no point do you have to fill out an SF424 budget form and there's no quarterly reporting and and you get to be part of a great cohort. I we have quarterly meetings and I it's a pleasure to see the interactions of all of our catalysts. We call our GAPS winners catalysts because they're making amazing things happen in their ecosystems and beyond. So I would love to field any other questions in the chat or.

And can I just say something really quick in regards to chat? I saw someone, I think someone asked who can help you to create a business or to start a business. The SBA have an amazing website that you can go and just input your zip code and you will be referred to your closest small business center or partner. So I think her I don't remember the name of the person. It was Karen who wants to, you know, know how she can start a business. So just go to the SBA website, input your SIPs code.

Right. I think I appreciate the shout out for all of the SBA resource partners. Having been a director of a small business development center, I can tell you this. The SBDCs cover every county and territory in the US so no matter where you are, there's at least an SBDC and probably so many other resources. And there are historic investments being made by this administration in entrepreneurship, especially equitable entrepreneurship nationally.

So I can answer one of the questions and maybe incorporate the wisdom piece and do a two for one if that's cool.

Please.

So I would say so first off, just on general for Ghost, you know, I think the two things that really stand out to me as first piece of advice which is having a focused vision. Right. Like they can. They are. The second piece is they're amazing partners. I don't even consider it a prize as much of a partnership. Right. Because we're we've worked side by side with more on our team and they have been as collaborative and agency as we've come across. Cannot say better things but Bottom line, you know, I really think having that focused vision and understanding of what you actually want to achieve and again, part of it for phase one is really just outlining that and then how you get there is a lot more of the phase two really building it, improving it and as a prototyping mindset, I love that. But at the same time, you know, to Mario's question about, you know, a grants that are available for startups that help other startups, I really found this to be one of the best opportunities because this really, you know, we, we were at that stage as a startup and this was really one of the first opportunities that not only bet on us but also really strategically aligned with where we wanted to go because we have had to bend over backwards for other grants that were not strategically won. So it's been really nice to get to work with Mara and the team and yeah, it's the best opportunity we've come across.

I see a couple of questions in the chat that I'm going to go ahead and answer. Linda, is the SBA open to 2024 applicants partnering with 2023 winners? Yes, we are. Let's keep the momentum going. Let's build on it. I love that. Tina. Non profit small businesses are eligible even for profit small businesses, basically, if you're over 18, a citizen of the US and not working for the government, you are eligible. So universities, education, I mean this is your entry point into federal funding and then we will help you move on from here. There are other funding programs in OII like the Regional Innovation Clusters, there are other funding programs across federal agencies and we are working very hard on interagency collaboration so that we can help our esos move from programs like Gassy and Rick's and into, you know, the build back better challenges and the recompetes and the, you know, some of the millions and millions and millions, the tech hubs of, of the US So it all builds its momentum and I think that's, you know, one of the things I've heard a lot about is, you know, you, you get it started and then it builds on itself. You get the momentum going and you find more collaborators, you find more partners, you find more businesses that you can help and more people who are in need of your support. And yeah, you find more funding and, and it just, it all magically comes together and you make it work. No, it's hard work and I think we all heard I, all of you say that you were all working hard and very busy. But that is not just because of gafc or any kind of onerous GAFC reporting requirements. That's not it. They're working hard because they're doing great, meaningful work and they're helping lots and lots of people and they're building lots of relationships. Any last questions or last words? I think we're approaching the end of our session.

No, just more than if you know any Hispanic, Latino small business entrepreneur in North Carolina, send them our way. We will be happy to support them in their entrepreneurship journey and visit our website please. You help us tremendously.

Yes. Last chance to put your websites, all of our panelists in the chat. I'm sure that the SBA will be sending out rap and follow up and I am encouraging you to go back to the main stage now. I am being gently prompted by our behind the scenes don't look behind the green curtain that the audience must navigate back to the main stage. And I'm actually over time. I thought this went till 3:30 but it turns out it went till 3:25. So thank you so much for hanging in there as we went over time and very grateful to the panel. John Scott, Dan Sulig, thank you so much. You guys are great and I love Gabsy. So if you need us, maura.shankersba.gov that's how easy it is. You now have my email address us. Thank you so much. Bye to the main stage.