Successful Tactics for Growing Your Support for an Inclusive Community

So welcome everyone to today's discussion. Successful tactics for growing your support for an inclusive community we're going to start the conversation by getting some insights into some of the obstacles faced by underserved founders, and from there we'll discuss opportunities and specific tactics for supporting more founders and being part of the $4 billion available via America's Seed Fund and other resources. After a few questions to get the ball rolling, we'd love to open up the conversation to our attendees. Feel free to post your questions or comments in the chat. We welcome your insights and your experiences on this topic as well. But of course, before we dive in, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Kiana Stewart, CEO and principal consultants of Global Force Tech Consulting, which is a tech consulting and software development company, and I'm also a PhD student at Howard University, and my research agenda focuses on academic entrepreneurship and tech transfer and commercialization at HBCUs. I'm excited to be the moderator for this panel today. Thank you all for having me. Joining me today, we have an insightful and experienced group of community leaders to our earlier conversation who volunteered their time to share their wisdom and experiences in supporting inclusive entrepreneurial communities. First up, let me welcome Dominique Aubrey. Dominique is the founder of Growth Founder, an IT solutions firm shaping innovation for the future of technology. She is a firm believer in building strong, diverse teams in order to unlock the highest potential of each member and has a career that highlights this work. So welcome Dominique. Up next, we have Lean Beniot. Lean is the Chief of Staff for Business Development at Generator in Chicago, Illinois. She is an advocate and development specialist who is passionate about helping organizations dedicated to social justice, community development, and international affairs. Welcome Lee Last but certainly not least, please welcome Dr. Almisha Campbell. Dr. Campbell is the Assistant Vice President for Research and Economic Development at Jackson State University and is the Chair Elect of the association of University Technology Managers. Autumn is a nonprofit organization focused on efforts to educate, promote and inspire professionals throughout their careers in support of the development of academic research that changes the world. Please welcome our esteemed panelists to get us started. As I mentioned in the introduction, I'd love to sort of set the stage a little bit. Last year around this time during the IDEA Summit, I had an opportunity to moderate this similar panel with diverse entrepreneurs who had experiences with SBIRs, and they shared their experiences. They talked about sort of the ebbs and flows of entrepreneurship. So I'd love if you could give us some of your insight and perspectives as entrepreneurial support organization representatives. Talk to us a little bit about Some of the challenges that you all experience in support of diverse founders and if you would, Dr. Campbell, if you.

Could kick us off, thank you so much, Dominique. I mean Kian. It's good to be on this panel with Dominique and Lynn and thank you so much for having me today. Very good question. There's a lot of things that, you know, I find can be challenging sometimes. But let me start with the good things. The good things are that we get to see entrepreneurs who become successful, but before that, we also get to see those that really want to put in the work to get this done. Right. Because we understand that there's a lot of work that goes into entrepreneurship and those that tend to want to go through those processes and put in the hard work tend to be successful. And so that's a good thing. Some of the challenges though is working within communities that are lacking resources, that are historically underrepresented in this space and then trying to help them. Sometimes we have to go at the very nascent stage, teaching about maybe just simple things as a terminology, where to find the resources, where to find the funding and mentorship is one of those challenges that underrepresented communities often face. Right. So while I'm at a University of Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, we service the community surrounding us and even expanding beyond that, they reach out to the university for support. One they think we have more resources than they do, but it's oftentimes what I learned is that when you are on the resources, when you become your most creative. So that's the type of mindset I try to put in our students, the faculty as well as the community at large so they understand that they can participate in this space. There's some things that they really need to do first to understand processes that are engaging the process and how do you collaborate as well as some of the things that I find they have challenges with. And so we're here to provide the type of resource for them.

Awesome. Dominique Lean, would you like to weigh in on that challenges that you all experience in your work or highlighting resources? Dominique?

Sure, I am happy to share. So I have a small community where I work with actually mostly venture backed black led company startups, helping them get from not zero to one, but really one to five. So you've gotten some investment. How do you get to successful ipo, merger, acquisition, exit sustainability? And that's really because there's a lot of things happening at the 0 to 1 space, which is still a super important space to be in. It still needs tons of support but we just knew that we had an issue on the whole journey and wanted to support from there, I think maybe the top line and pass it to lean. Here is the biggest challenge that every stage of growth you need to build a new infrastructure of support that has understanding and visibility of that stage of the business at that moment. And the metric that you had maybe when you were starting two years ago, though, a great person might not be the right mentor for you in the future. And so rebuilding that infrastructure tends to be one of the harder things for founders to do and can slow you down or even trip you up in the journey of growth. Because every business needs a community to thrive and you have to kind of rebuild it at every stage. So that I think is one of the fundamental harder challenges of building a company, period. And of course, certain boundaries have what more of a challenge doing that simply because of the ecosystem that they are part of, from kind of their lifestyle, upbringing, location and so on. So I think that mentorship, I think is a broad term for that experience of ecosystem building for your business. But there it's a really hard thing to kind of consistently level up your network to match the business growth. I think that's a really challenging area for folks.

Great, great points.

Yeah, thank you. Dominique and Alemisha. So I work for Generator. We're a national venture capital firm and startup accelerator. And one of the challenges that we're currently looking at and tackling is the disparity between underrepresented founders and white founders in access to capital to kind of help set the stage further. I'd love to kind of rattle off just a few quick statistics here that really exemplify why this is such a prevalent issue in the United States. States, diversity led businesses are the most likely to address the needs of our diverse consumers. Yet over the past two decades, just 25% of funding rounds were raised by teams with at least one diverse founder. When we look at average venture capital statistics across the US we see about 2.6% of venture capital is going to startups with a founder of color, 2% of that is going to Latino founders, and 4% is going to black founders. We know that more than 80% of venture capital firms do not have a single black Investor. And just 1% of venture funded startup founders are black as reported by the organization Black vc. Excuse me, Black vc. In addition, we know that black women are the fastest growing of all women entrepreneurs. Based on projections from recent U.S. census data, however, black women receive less than 1% of venture capital as analyzed by nonprofit Organization project, Diane and the last statistic or the last fact I'll share here is that in particular, black founders often report that they are over mentored and under invested, thus emphasizing the need for evidence based accelerator programs and resources that are really increasing the access to capital for these founders. As we think about federal funding, specifically SBIR grants and so on and so forth. One of the I find that a lot of founders of color and underrepresented founders have concerns about pursuing federal funding. Some of the challenges that they think about are it takes a long the time that it takes me to write an SBIR grant. I could have X number of investor meetings or they're concerned about the reporting and compliance associated with receiving government funding. So a lot of times it's disposal some of those myths, but more so ensuring that they have the adequate resources and capacity to actually fulfill and pursue that federal funding. And that's kind of where Generator is hoping to help provide some services.

Thank you for the statistics. And I see a question in the chat where there's a request to sort of talk a little bit more about perhaps the percentages specific to Asians and Native Americans in that population. So if you have those, please share them. But I want to sort of piggyback on your comment about sort of the overall broader challenges and talk more specifically about the federal side of it. Right. Can you give us a little bit more information about how each of you approach inclusivity? Right. So how do you bring an understanding to founders that may be skeptical about utilizing sort of federal funds to help them build their businesses? Is there any insight that you can share there about or recommendations that you can share to entrepreneurs who are really looking to diversify where they get and seek funding from.

This only because I was part of the research study that SBA recently did that came out in the summer. And so I was doing research, you know, interviews with founders, but I also said, let me reach out to a couple esos and see kind of how. And this was a range. This was everything from the predominantly, you know, white, you know, large, that we all know their names all the way down to the smaller guys. And I kind of talked to a bunch of folks and what I learned in that, particularly with the underrepresented groups, was that the ecosystem leader, so in a lot of accelerators, the managing directors have sold, build, raise money for their business. And a lot of the unrepresented groups, those programs, ecosystem networks, partnerships, communities, programs, the folks that run those programs have not done that same activity. So you're talking to folks who maybe are not business builders teaching people how to build business. So when that you can bring in speakers and panelists, but do you have the ear and the experience to understand the nuance of the work? And so what we found was that for most ecosystem leaders, they didn't have connections to the federal government, they didn't have access to tech transfer offices, so they couldn't pipeline their community into those resources if they wanted to, because they had just as little information as the founders did themselves. So it's not a founder specific issue. And I bring that up because in cases where founders do successfully access federal grants, they're doing it through universities, through different principal investigators and so on. So they have a community that brings them into the government. It's not just a cold, usually outreach. So we're missing that linkage. So I think that's just kind of an important thing to call out in that journey. And then the second thing I call out, we were working on a project and still are around cleaning up the language of federal grants so that they were understandable to kind of, in layman's terms. And what we find is that even folks within the government, if you're working with someone to apply for a grant, and maybe it's a colleague or a friend or whatever, they don't even know if the thing that you're applying for is the right fit for you because the language is so complex that they might think this is a great fit for you, but actually find out, oh, you actually have to be tied to a CDC for this. I had no idea. It wasn't clear in the grant writing. So there's a lot of mismatch on even the application side. So I think there's a lot of layers before it becomes a, you don't know, kind of the business component or what resources really mean. And I think you've got to be real specific about that. It's not just general business knowledge. That's one category of resource, but there's another, which is like understanding the institution of the federal government, how it works when it comes to the sbir or specific departments and how they operate. And that is something that we have not unlocked access to. So I just want to kind of separate those into different buckets. I think they're just different problem areas, maybe to solve for.

Great points.

Lean, did you have something you wanted to add to that OR. Dr. Campbell?

Yeah, Dominique, thank you so much. I think that one of the pieces I really appreciated you calling out was kind of the accessibility component of federal Funding and kind of, you know, just the jargon and the terminology that we use sometimes the number one barrier to federal funding that our founders routinely shared with us was that it's a time consuming process when they're simultaneously trying to run an emerging or established business. And you know, this is, you know, and we could say this for a variety of different things. So it's really, you know, re emphasizing I think sometimes too with we so often focus on dilutive funding and meeting with investors. And I think that that same level of weight and importance needs to be placed on non dilutive funding as well. And I think that the tech transfer offices and the academic institutions do a pretty good job of educating entrepreneurs about that. But we're missing a huge group of entrepreneurs that are not within the higher education sector system for a variety of reasons. And we know that higher education is not accessible for many reasons as well. So how are we capturing those entrepreneurs and making sure that they have access to grant writers that are either low cost or free, that they can meet with different consultants? A lot of them don't know that there are local, even local offices and so on and so forth that they can meet with. But I agree with you, Dominique, in that as an entrepreneurial support organization, we often need to look inward and figure out how we can better, one, recruit these founders, two, ensure. And before we even do that, and I know this is a question we'll touch on here, but really looking deeply at your own organization and ensuring that do I have the right expertise, capacity, representation within my organization to start serving this community? Because you're going to immediately run into challenges and people will know if you're not being intentional or genuine in your approach. I could say more, but I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, not quite much to add to that because both my colleagues are absolutely correct, the universities tend to be that connector in most of these cases to the federal funding. And that can become so overwhelming for people in my position, which we're still, you know, we still don't have enough people supporting internally. And then we have a community that reaches out to us as well for that type of support support. We don't turn them down, we include them in the process. And so one of the things that we did about two and a half years ago is apply for Women Business center. And we utilize that to say some of the support that a lot of people are reaching out to me for, I tend to just, you know, drive them to the Women Business center and the SBDC by saying, here's some opportunities that you can help now, I'll support you on the technical side of it. So. So if you have any, you know, IP that's deep tech or anything, I can help you a little bit further with that. But here's some other resources that can support you that are here on our campus, but are designed to support the community. Right. The thing is, though, a lot of times that you have to put in extra work to support some of these entities. In terms of writing the proposal, we recently wrote a Grant, I think, two years ago for the SBA Catalyst Project program and basically to design an SBIR readiness program for HBCUs. So we thought, okay, we're going to get HBCUs, we're going to get them ready, you know, just having the conversation about what they should look like and what process you need to go through. And we found a lot of community people saw the advertisement to our faculty and signed up.

Right.

And so we began to see some of those things. Some of the data we're hearing, some of the challenges that we're hearing today, some the.

Of.

Some of that rose its head in those conversations that we were having with some of the founders. And so we realized that there was clearly some missing link. Language, huge barrier. Technical terms, huge barrier. Them also. How do you demystify some of these things for these communities that you're trying to serve? Right. I'm telling you, it's a lot of work. But there are people like the team here and others who are dedicated to ensuring that this, you know, this continuum occurs and that people in these communities also receive the support they need so they too can be successful. But, you know, it would be remiss of me if I don't tell you it's a lot of work because it's not a lot of us in the community willing to help. It's not a lot of us in the community with the expertise to help. It's not a lot of us in the community with the time even we want to do it, it's just not enough time. So if there are people out there who are willing to learn how to do this, who are willing to support the communities in which you serve, you know, find ways of how to learn how to do this, how to be successful and have a genuine care and an intentional effort in how to support our communities, because they do really need, you know, the support.

Thank you for those insights. I want to go off script a little bit because I think there's a. There's a topic that's sort of bubbling up That I think be well served to kind of talk about. And that is the sort of tension between university and the community. And how do you, each of you sort of think about in the areas of your work? Dr. Campbell, you mentioned trying to figure out a way to sort of upskill and to train folks in the community. But what are some of the guidances or the best practices path to doing that?

Right.

Considering there are these areas where there's gaps in knowledge, gaps in understanding and gaps in access, are there any insights that you can share either in the work that you do or aspirationally that you can think more about how we bridge the divide between our higher education institutions and the communities in which they're situated.

So here's my thought, right? And this comes from the last two years of working with high school and middle school students. Start there. If you start infusing this information, this knowledge into those communities at an early age, I think it would be better in the, in the long run. Right? It might not be as long term as you think. We see in our Innovate Young Innovators program in the summer where a lot of the students are coming in and we say, okay, even if we say we're gonna, we're gonna teach you coding. And then the two days later say, oh, I know what, what business I want to create. And they all, they already thinking these things because you' them the resources, you're providing them, the one on one mentorship when they come into these programs. I think those programs, those summer programs, the bridge programs, the after school programs that we have gotten away from, need to come back because we're missing quite a few people. We can't expect that the change can occur with the way we are doing things now because they already way back, way behind in the learning curve of how to do entrepreneurship, in how to be successful, successful in how to go after federal funding. So while we're still teaching them, if we reach back and look at those younger generation that are coming in now, I think it'd be easier for us to see the type of inclusive, you know, ecosystem that we are trying to get. We often forget those students. I've talked to a few federal agencies about some things that I'm doing and they say, oh yeah, a few years ago, even some companies actually that says, oh yeah, we used to have a K12 program, but we don't do it anymore because it was time consuming. Right. Because what I find is that people are looking for the easy wins. They're looking for, hey, Dr. Campbell. Hey, you Know Dominique Haley, send me your founders. So they want to see a level of success already, unfortunately, in these communities that we are talking about, they need help from even ideation stage and there's little or no support in those areas. And I think, you know, for me, I'm invested in making sure in the K12 system, at least high school and middle school are already getting some of those lessons. They already, by the time they come to college, they already have it by time to get out, graduate, they become our community partners who now are successful because they've already had the training. Right. I'm not saying not to do what we're doing now, I'm saying doing it, but also thinking about reaching back to the high school and middle school students. It's a lot of work. So it has to be people who really dedicated. It has to be intentional. It has to be collaborative in nature, which means you can't do it alone. You have to partner with different entities to get this done.

Dominique Lean, any additional insights there?

I think she really said it all there. I think in terms of the partnership component, entrepreneur entrepreneurship is really messy. It's a messy, it's a super messy journey and there's no right answer to how to do it. And I think there is a, there's a business skill that you can learn that's the science of it. But the entrepreneurship is the art. And no one can really tell you your risk appetite, the right timing for what you're doing. You have to learn by doing many times. And for most humans on earth, we have to learn through the pain of doing like we have to kind of hit, hit the wall before we really kind of pivot necessarily. And so we have to go through that individual journey. I think that's just part of it and that's probably part of the beauty of it when it comes. I think the thing that is important maybe just to call out is there is a, and it's not necessarily like a look because if you look across black founders or other different types of founders, separate of race and gender, you'll see a lot of common eyes about their, their lifestyle, the schools they went to, the kinds of tech that they are building. There are a lot of other things and that's because of the venture, what venture is driving. And you know, I have a different opinion about venture simply because you're talking about individuals, private capital that they're deploying into the market. And it's really hard to tell someone with their money what to do with their money. Now if you look at Banks. And you look at that's a government institution for the people. And you say, well, why did banks stop lending and become a broker of capital versus a lender of capital? There's a lot more. You can apply more pressure to banks and government than you can to venture capital because those institutions are made to serve the populace. Venture capital is not necessarily so. We're arguing for small dollars. And in the venture pool of money, even that 1 or 2 or up to 10% maybe of consumer tech that they're investing in, most of it is going into biotech, large pharmaceutical. So it's not the pie that even we're talking about within the venture pie is quite small. And so there's other places to get capital. I think that's just the misnomer of the conversation in general. And nothing replaces a customer. And I think that's also a misnomer in the narrative of what people need access to. So I think there's a couple of things. I think that in terms of access and connecting with universities and kind of finding your way through this thing to get to a place of success. And I think my recommendation just in general would be look at where you are right now, look at the resources you have available to you in this moment, maximize what you have in front of you to get the next opportunity in front of you, versus trying to jump five steps ahead when you're not really prepared for that opportunity. And apprentice. The majority of business owners in the United States knew someone had a family member, someone else who was in business too. That's actually how they mostly learned a lot of the ideas and techniques they weren't learning. Lean startup, even though I do a lot of lean startup training, they weren't learning that, but that's what their parent was doing when they had a bakery and they were learning how to pivot to respond to their audience in the community. That's what they were doing. So I would just recommend maybe looking at things differently. And side note to all of that, having some intention about what you want to create and when you're having conversations, having what you believe is the right conversation versus what you've been told is the right conversation to have. A lot of people read the Google articles on the first page, but they're not reading the books, they're listening to the podcast, but they're not actually having the one on one copy for the conversation. And I'd really recommend getting closer to the problem and closer to the solution and having a little bit more space for your time to solve the Business problem for trying to get there as soon as possible. A lot of the friction with the universities and the community is that the community's coming saying, we want this thing right now, and we're saying, you're not structured for us to give it to you. And so. And then that's the end of the conversation. It's like how to both come together to be more honest about what the reality is and what is possible to bridge and what is not, so that founders can make real decisions with the reality that they're facing versus what they hope to be facing, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, I think you're elevating that. There's sort of this bi directional relationship that has to occur.

Right.

And it has to be mutually beneficial. So from the community side and also from the higher education perspective, the middle part is really where the negotiation happens. And I love this idea of really trying to help entrepreneurs understand their why and really seeking to elevate the why in the process of developing the what. Right. So thank you for sharing that. I want to pivot a little bit and talk about, you know, staying on the topic of the community. We know that to your point, entrepreneurship is messy and it can be extremely isolating. I'd love if you could each sort of share some insights about how you all provide encouragement for a founder. So basically building off of what you said, Dominique, about really trying to help entrepreneurs understand the process, like, how do you help them through that isolation? That sort of, I'm doing something that's so different than maybe my friends or my family or I'm using a roadmap that I've never even knew was possible to try to build something that I'm really passionate about. What are some advice or guidance that you have for entrepreneurs in this sort of isolated, messy ecosystem?

Flow, not force. I mean, like, we laugh about intuition. If you look at some of the probably iconic founders in the world, in the history, they trusted and they, they knew their gut. When they made mistakes, they really cultivated a sense of intuition about what they were doing. And when it comes to community, the thing is, we all have communities and not everyone is going to love what you are doing, but you have to love yourself regardless. You know, like, a lot of times, most parents are not going to approve. I don't care if you're 50 years old or you're 20 years old. Right. They're kind of not going to approve. This is a new era where parents are more excited about entrepreneurship, but most historically have not been.

Right.

So, like, you're not going to get that much support. Okay, so now that you know that, right, what do you do? You have to find the strength within because at the end of the day, you're responsible for you and you are accountable to you. And I think that is something that we're always looking for, the reasons why we can make a not an excuse, but just our logical reason for why we're failing or struggling. And I think sometimes it's not that it's not true, but does it serve you? And I think that's the biggest thing with entrepreneurship when it comes to community. If you're in a homogenous city, if you're in a city that maybe doesn't have as many folks that are doing what you're doing, it can be harder. And I think from there you think about how you can engage with other communities who might not be doing what you're doing, but help heal and support other parts of your identity that make you feel connected. And you don't have to have everyone agree with every single thing for you to be supported. So that might be also a pathway to feeling more grounded in a really to your point unclear journey.

Lean, any thoughts on this topic?

You know, as an entrepreneurial support organization, I think it's our job and our responsibility to help create spaces that allow entrepreneurs to be their full selves and to show up as who they are. You know, in some cases that might be providing, you know, affinity groups or creating demographic specific programs and allowing them to have a space that they feel ownership over. I think it can be really valuable. You know, one of the things that one of our accelerator managing directors did was we had all of these applicants to our an accelerator program in Peoria, Illinois. And you know, we had to turn away, you know, we only had five spots. So we're turning away hundreds of entrepreneurs who are desperate and looking for, you know, that mentorship that support those resources, that access to capital. And what he did is he started to generate networking sessions for all of the founders that weren't originally accepted into our program. This allowed them to one, they got insight and feedback on why they weren't selected for the program. They had the opportunity. We brought in other incubators, other accelerators, other resources to be there to also offer their support. And so again, just trying to create spaces that don't exist for founders, I think is a really important thing for our esos. And, and then, you know, I'll be, you know, completely transparent, you know, generator. We're not, we're not where we need to Be by any means. And I think we have a lot of progress to make internally as an organization. But we recognize and one thing that we're working towards is understanding that if we're welcoming entrepreneurs into a room, we need to make sure that they're welcomed by people that they can relate to that share lived experience that have, you know, the capacity to empathetically and meaningfully support them. And so being transparent on our end about, you know, I think that we really try to be transparent about where we are and we're not and we want to be authentic. We don't want to, you know, if we're not the right person or the right organization to support a particular founder, then it's our responsibility to direct them to the right resources. So that's something that's always been top of mind for me as I'm. As an entrepreneurial support organization that wants to do more but recognizing that we still have work to do ourselves.

Can I add something in here real quick? Just because I, I love what you're saying and I, I have and this is a. I don't think it's contrarian, but you'll let me know. I. It's just something I've been. What you've been saying just trigger something in my mind about this topic. So we have our caucus friends and family who are building, doing whatever with all their natural networks and natural capital and access and whatever. And then we're building massive infrastructure and systems that elongate our path to success. And it starts with this assumption that says you are lacking X, go to this program to find Y. And then so now I'm applying to all these programs to get redundant information, maybe even redundant network, whatever. I don't get in and I feel like, oh, I can't get to where I want to go. I think about this in the context of hiring right now there's all these tools to make hiring simple. But what it's actually created is a lot of barrier people looking for jobs. Because now I need to pay for a special person to get executive coaching. I need to pay. So I've created all these layers in between me and the thing I want that now I have to manage my emotions through. Am I good enough at every single state? All in the name of making it easier and better and more accessible. And I wonder sometimes if we're doing ourselves a disservice by over creating that. We have to solve for every part of the human experience for them to be successful. I think for black people who particularly feel that in general, and I think it happens in school. We see this with social, emotional, learning and meet people where they are and these things are. There's still truth in these things. They're not bad things to do. But are we over complicating or over solving for a problem that is quite clearly we kind of know what the problem is. We kind of know why the problem exists, we know why the problem persists. So I always wonder, is it, is it. Should we be shifting it to not like more or less probably programming per se, but a different conversation around it, which is you might be in a room and not feel, and not feel like there's anyone to connect with you. And you know what? That's a struggle we're going to have to get through versus oh, they didn't have anyone I could connect to, so therefore I didn't do X. And I wonder if we're creating a little bit of that now in the community where I don't have the thing I need versus everything. You already, you already had everything you needed. It was already within you and now you're just deploying it. And that's something that I see a lot of ESOs in the ecosystem doing all that support community work. But if I want to woosaw, go get burnt with my friends and get a drink, I don't know if I need to go to a program to woosaw with other people that I already know in my community at home. And this is something instead of talking about the thing I don't know how to do, which is build an actual business. And I really wonder about that. I'm just throwing that out there. Nothing against anyone's work that they're doing, but it's something that I've been struggling with as I'm building ESO around. What's the right mix of tactical. Let's help you solve the business challenge and some of the more emotional support components to help you heal through the journey so you can be more successful over time. And I don't know if that's something anyone else is struggling with, trying to find the right mix of content and programming for folks, but that's something that I've been working through as well.

Yeah, I'd love to bring you into the discussion considering you grapple with this work at an hbcu.

Right.

And sort of how do you encourage the students to really leverage their individual identities while they're in these higher education spaces while also, you know, doing the hard work to build the business? I'd love to get Your insights?

Yes, Dominic, I think you're right on target about that. We often. But at the same time, we often try to do so much because we, like you said, we're trying to solve this thing that we consider the problem and we're trying to do everything we can to help. And a lot of times we need to go back to the fundamental stuff and say, you know, talk to these individuals about who they are, what they can contribute. So oftentimes we go and we just, for our first couple of sessions, just have them talk about where they are, what their passion, you know, what their passion is, what they're trying to accomplish. Sometimes where you came from? Because a lot of times, especially when I look at student entrepreneurs, they come from background where they've never seen anyone like them outside of the community doing anything other than being in a barbershop, you know, having a small boutique, you know, having the little mom and pops, you know, grocery store or the little restaurant. So they have not seen anything in the tech area, and they're thinking this is not for them because they've never seen it. Right. And so you start having those conversations, you start peeling back the layers. And once you realize you. You already an entrepreneur, you already have that mindset, you already have a winner sponsor. These are the tools that you need to get there. Programming. In terms of how we set up these programs, quite frankly, we could put everything that we want. The problem I'm having is that we don't have the capacity, meaning we don't have enough people who are willing to put in the time that's needed to run these programs to support the type of community that we have. Right. It's a lot of, like I said, I'll be very honest. It's a lot of work. You have to be passionate about it. You have to show up every day knowing that it's not about you. It's about the economic impact. It's about generational wealth within the community. It's not the community I grew up in, but it's a community in which I work. It's a community in which the students that I support, the faculty I support, that's where they live. And so you have to be intentional about what is it I'm trying to accomplish. Right. And you start mapping that out and said, what is it? What is it I can do with the resources that I have and the time that I have, and who are the key people that I can partner with in order to expand this program? There's some founders, some entrepreneurs who wants the Step by step, who wants to come in and do the readiness program or the enrich programs? Just getting the basic pre accelerator stuff. And they say, okay, now I got this. Now I'm ready for a full accelerator. And then they say, okay, then I'm ready for this. There's some like that. There's some who are ready to just go all the way, right? And so you have to be. You have to know who they are. So your intake process will have to include questions that provides you the answer to those questions. What level of readiness are these individuals at? You know, what. What have they been exposed to prior to reaching out to this program? And then you, then you have to pivot and create those opportunities for them to do that. I think we touched on mentorship a little bit. I want to talk about the mentorship part. I'm more talking about the subject matter experts that you're needed. Because by no means do I consider myself any subject matter expert in anything, not even in myself. But if we tap into those. Those networks of people that we have, and we all have broad networks, if we could tap into it and say, hey, I have an entrepreneur. He is awesome, but here's his challenge. Can you help me? Guide me working with them. So you don't remove yourself from the process, because whenever you rem yourself from the process, you're infusing another fear in that young entrepreneur who is already fearing success or failure. Right. I have one, and this is at another institution, and it's at a large institution who has great programming. But I just happen to be a mentor for this person to a particular program. And the student was just not listening to the, you know, the mentorship. He. He just was doing his own thing. And I stopped and I said, can we go sidebar and have about a 15 minute conversation? And. And I asked, what is going on? He said, Dr. Campbell, if this business does not fail, my parents are going to just cut me off. I said, what do you mean? He said, they're paying my tuition. They're telling me they're paying for me to go to this Ivy League school. And if I'm not successful, they, you know, they're going to really cut me off because I'm wasting time trying to be an entrepreneur. And I said, because you have that prayer, you need to remove that pressure, you know, from you. And you got to say, okay, I'm going to do my schoolwork. But this thing that I'm trying to do and be an entrepreneur at the same time, how can I do this with less stress as possible. How can I do it without having to be dependent upon my parents? And so you may not need to go all this step. You may need to start at the basic level and do certain things to get there. Right. And several months ago, this was two years ago, the student called me and said, guess what? I've made my first. You know, I got my first sale, I did my first this, and my parents are happy now. Hadn't I pulled him aside to figure out why he wasn't listening to the guidance provided, I wouldn't have known that he was facing that pressure. So we have to think about that in our intake process, making sure that we remove some of those barriers, demystify some of the processes that we have, look at how we're conversing with the people, the terminologies, we're using, the examples that we're giving them because we can't always give them the most successful. We got to tell them about the people who started and who failed, but came back a few years later and did something different. We have to show them those different things so they can see that there are different opportunities out there for them.

I love the sentiment that you have to take the time, right. There is not enough time in the day to really tackle all the challenges that underserved entrepreneurs or underserved communities or minoritized communities face. But the one thing that we can do is to devote the time that we do have to ensuring that they have what they need in that time.

Right?

And really being a mentor or a guide, a resource like we as resources, can help to sort of make the transition from, you know, the barriers and the myths that exist about underserved entrepreneurs to really help move the needle and to realize the gains that we want to see. So thank you for sharing that lean. I think I cut you off earlier. I'd love to get you in. Just Any final thoughts on this topic?

Yeah. One just wanted to just call out and appreciate Dominique's feedback. And it just made me think about the earlier conversation about these institutional and systemic issues and access to federal funding for underrepresented founders. And I think a lot of the times, entrepreneurial support organizations, we're constantly thinking about, okay, how do we overcome these barriers, but not always thinking about how do we remove those barriers. And I know that, you know, I'm fortunate that, you know, I work at, for an organization that has a public affairs team that is talking to our legislators, that is meeting with different government officials to talk about things like the startup visa and how that's really influential to support immigrant founders in our country, for example, and I would love and hope to see more of that from different esos across the US as well.

Awesome.

So in the final minutes, I'd love if each of you could share any final thoughts, pieces of advice, things that have worked well for you as you're sort of developing and providing support in the entrepreneurial support organization space. Any final thoughts?

Dr. Campbell, I guess you said if you don't volunteer, you'll call us out.

Keep the conversation flowing.

Yeah, for me, it's just something very simple. I would just say just encourage each, you know, budding entrepreneur that you see, you know, encouraging. Encourage them, you know, to stay the course and to explore different opportunities, different avenues of how they can get support, and definitely to reach out to support organizations, starting with your SBDCs and your women Business Centers and then accelerators, so they can get a clear understanding how it is and understand that it takes some time, you know, and that this doesn't happen overnight. So set realistic expectations, providing them some sort of roadmap and guidance in terms of timeline of what to expect, because this does not happen overnight for most of us.

Right. Awesome. Dominique Lean, any final thoughts? Yeah.

Thank you, Dominique.

Sorry.

Well, first of all, thank you, Kiana, for moderating this panel. Really appreciate it. And to my fellow panelists, you both are amazing. I look forward to connect further. You know, the last thing you know, I'll leave you all with is one, be authentic. If you don't know, say you don't know, be honest. People will always, always appreciate that from you. I would reiterate what Dr. Campbell says. I mean, the number one thing our founders tell us is that just having somebody believe in them unwaveringly along the way makes a huge impact. And, you know, as an eso, I think that it's also, you know, very important to be transparent and, you know, to really understand the messaging that you're delivering to the community. I had another thought, but it escaped me, so I will leave it at that and just again, really appreciate you all for having me in this space and happy to connect further.

Awesome.

I think what everyone said was, yes, I second all the things that were already said. And then I think other than that, if you're an ESO leader. Yeah, you know, take, give, take the advice you give to founders. You know, slow down, be more intentional. If you run your accelerator, like a VC fund, where you push a bunch of people through, and then to get the numbers for the grant, that says you have to have this many participants, but the Outpac, the impact on the other side is only maybe one person succeeds at building a 10 person company or 20 person company, then you're running a VC model, which is actually kind of. Not that it's an important part of the overall economic model because you need to have scale to have jobs, but just be thoughtful about how you're running your actual programming. And the second thing I'd say is know enough to be dangerous. If you have speakers coming in, look at their pitch, look at their decks before they present to your community, read them, see how you feel about it, check the information, see how accurate, see what the bounds of what they should be saying or not be saying. One of the issues founders are dealing with right now is over information and misinformation. So we got to be more kind of thoughtful about what we're sharing and we got to understand our value as an eso. The third thing I would say is, you know, be the example that, you know, be the example that you want them to follow in a sense. So, meaning if you want them to go and get clients, you go get clients. If you want them to build financial models, you show them your financial model if you, you know, like do the thing because then you understand how hard it is to do the thing right. And that's really important. You want to be like brothers in arms with your founders. Like, you have to kind of sometimes like kind of show them what you're also working with. Because it's a learning journey for everyone for most ESO leaders at this stage in our overall growth of supporting founders that are from different backgrounds toward their success. So maybe those are some things I'd add on, around on the tactical side of executing better for everyone.

Great insights. I'm looking at the chat. The participants are appreciative of this discussion. We only scratch the surface. So thank you all for being with us today and have a great day and enjoy the rest of the summit.