Welcome Address - Day 2

Good morning and welcome to the second day of the 2022 Innovation Ecosystem Summit. I'm Mark Madrid, Associate Administrator for the Office of Entrepreneurial Development here at the sba. I am thrilled to be here with my colleagues from the Office of Investment and Innovation, Associate Administrator Bailey DeVries, Director of Innovation and Technology, John Williams, Director of Ecosystem Development Jennifer Shi and Investment Officer Ricky O'Reilly Jones. And I am grateful for the great work that they do, they and the team that they do every day to help our nation's innovative entrepreneurs find the capital and resources they need to fulfill their American dreams of small business ownership. I am excited for the wonderful lineup of discussions we have for you today. Get ready. Our panelists will be talking about topics near and dear to us here at SBA as we work hard for small business owners and to meet the mission of our remarkable administrator, SBA Isabella Casillas Guzman, to be more customer centric, technology forward and advancing equity. She calls our small businesses the giants of our economy. And we at the SBA totally agree with our administrator. And our administrator, the voice of 33 million small businesses and innovative startups, has the honor, and she does it extremely well, of advocating for these small businesses. And of course she's a member of of President Biden's Cabinet. Today you'll hear from our wonderful teams and colleagues on a number of important topics. You'll hear about their work to help innovators across the country and across the world frankly, start making their dreams into reality not only by giving them access to capital, but also by providing a growing ecosystem of mentors and collaborators to help accelerate startups to success. You'll also hear from many of our friends and state governments on how they match small business innovation and research awards, also known as SBIR awards, or use their own programs to advance technology commercialization and address business development needs that can't be quite supported by federal funds. So it's all about collaboration, breaking silos and working together. And you'll hear about efforts from federal agencies, venture capital firms, angel investors and other foundations across the nation to tackle the important issue of underrepresentation and and capital access Their work, creating actionable pathways to fund initiatives, curate programs and directly invest in a way to close gaps and create an inclusive economy for all of our nascent entrepreneurs, our innovators, our startup companies is truly inspiring all of us. This fantastic work across the private and public sectors is appreciated here by all of us at the SBA and across many of our federal agencies who you will get to hear from later today as well, as our administrator Guzman likes to remind us, we endeavor to be as entrepreneurial here as our small business customers, and we are energized in helping wherever we can to make your dreams a reality here at the Office of Entrepreneurial Development, oed. We love our acronyms. Here at the sba, we work to help startups and innovators start and grow their businesses through a whole array of SBA resource partners. Our resource partners include our Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers, and SCORE Mentor chapters across the country, each empowered to offer advice, direction and guidance, from creating a business or financial plan to seeking capital or other resources, to training and counseling programs that can help innovators succeed in business. Also, we are excited about the work being done by our Community navigators across the country. The Community Navigator Pilot program requires celebrating our first year of operation, and all that's doing is making sure that small business owners who didn't have awareness before the SBA have it today. And we're energized about our renovated Thrive Emerging Leaders program through our Office of entrepreneurship education, OEE and SBA's district offices, which can help innovators who have been able to succeed in building a company take the next steps of expanding and growing their business. All of these services from us and our fantastic collaborators are offered across the country. Regardless of where you are or what type of business or technology you're starting, the bottom line is we want to help you succeed. Thank you again for taking the time out of your busy and important day to join us. I am thrilled for the discussions and content you'll receive during today's exciting presentations and and I hope your takeaway and the lessons learned today will help you with your particular situation succeed in today's environment. Best success to all. It's an honor to be with you.

Hello, I'm Jennifer Shi, Director of Ecosystem Development with the SBA Office of Investment and Innovation. Welcome and thank you to all of you joining us for day two of the SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. And of course, thank you to Associate Administrator Mark Madrid for his warm and energetic SBA welcome. If you were with us yesterday, you'll have heard some common themes about collaboration, partnership, breaking silos across the public and private sector, as well as across and even within federal agencies. My wonderful co emcee Jamila, over to you.

Thank you, Jennifer. I'm excited to see some of you back here today for the second day of this SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. But if this is your first day, welcome. I'm Jamilah Corbett, engagement Director at Established on behalf of the SBA, I'm hailing from the Washington D.C. area. Just like yesterday, we're going to kick things off with the roll call. So where are you checking in from? Earlier I saw Richard from New Mexico, another Richard from New York City, Kelly from Pennsylvania, latanya from Tennessee, Alden from North Carolina, Francisco from Puerto Rico, and many others. I wish I could shout all of you out, but I just don't have the time. But anyways, just let me know where you are in the chat and then I'll come back and give your comment a thumbs up to let you know that I read it. Okay? While you do that, similar to day one, I have to go over some housekeeping to ensure we all have a pleasant experience today. If you have a question, stay simply put it in the chat. We will do our best to get you an answer. So there are two ways to chat with us on your screen. There's the event chat, but we're all in the other chat, which is the stage chat. So look on your screen, find stage, click that and then start chatting with us. Hang out with us. Also, closed captions are available. Just click the CC button at the bottom of your screen if you need it. If for some reason you're experiencing technical difficulties, maybe you can't see us or or hear us first, try refreshing your screen. Usually that takes care of the problem. If you're still experiencing those difficulties, please email us supportst us and we'll do our best to troubleshoot with you. We also encourage you to share your learnings today with us using the hashtag you're going to see this a lot. This is the hashtag symbol, hashtag eso22 and if you're on Twitter, tag us at sbirgov. Also, because we're in a virtual environment, I think it's important to find alternative ways to express ourselves as audience members. Because we can't see each other's body language, Non verbal communication makes up over 50% of all communication. So we're going to get creative today to compensate just a little bit. Being in this virtual medium right now, I'm going to teach you how to do it. Giphy and Hopping. So this is going to be fun. Giphys are a fun way to visually express how you're feeling. Maybe you hear something today today from a speaker or you have a light bulb moment or you're like, yes, I feel you. We want to experience that feeling with you. So let's try this together in the message box right now. You're going to click on that icon that looks like a lightning bolt. Okay. Then select giphy. Now type the word happy, then press the send button. Don't worry, it's not going to send after you do that. Your giphy isn't live yet, but you can either click Cancel Shuffle or Send. If you. If you like to change the giphy, click Shuffle until you find a giphy that you like and then press Send. Try it out right now. In the future, you don't have to use the word happy. You can replace it with whatever you're feeling. Okay. I love that. Okay, some of you may have some trouble using the chat. Okay.

Using the giphy feature.

Oh, more. I like that show. Hey, we're good with that said, have fun with it. But. But our team is monitoring the chat very closely to ensure this space remains a safe environment for you to express yourself. We're all professionals here, and the expectation is that we conduct ourselves as such. That means no inappropriate language emojis, giphys, no link spamming, no hate speech. Okay? Okay. Now that we got that out the way, we're going to have some fun today. I don't know if you caught that, but that did rhyme. I'm going to hand things back to Jennifer to introduce our speakers.

Thank you very much for the virtual mic, and it is now my great pleasure and honor to introduce our next two leaders from the sba. Jackson Brasi serves as the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Native American Affairs. Before joining the sba, Jackson served as Executive Director for both the Native CDFI Network and the Navajo Nation Washington Office. An advocate of access to capital and technical assistance for native entrepreneurs, Mr. Brasi also serves on the board of Prosperity Now, Change Labs and the Federal Reserve Bank's center for the Indian Country Development Leadership Council. He's an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and attended Stanford University and Harvard University. Then I'll introduce John Williams, who serves as the Director of Innovation and Technology for the Office of Investment and Innovation, where he leads Federal Policy, Implementation and programmatic oversight of America's Seed Fund, the Small Business Innovation Research, and Small Business technology transfer, or SBIR and STTR programs across all 11 participating agencies. He's devoted more than 35 years to public service, including 15 years leading the Navy's SBIR and STTR, as well as their Technology Transfer Program offices. And of course, my connection is he's the one that actually brought me to the sba. So major gratitude there to John. But first, I would like to welcome Jackson Brasi to the stage. Welcome Jackson.

I welcome you in the formal Danette Navajo way and it's formal as well as respectful with the intent of sharing a bit about my background, where I'm from, my community, and to create connections between myself and you all so that we can work together and move forward. Also, if you understand Navajo, I explained how to get a third round of the paycheck protection program. Only for people that understand Navajo though that's a joke you can do Giphy laugh in there, chat in all serious note seriousness. It's my pleasure to join you here in the Innovation Economic Ecosystem Summit and talk about Native American owned small businesses. And I'm here to share this message that there has never been a better time to invest in Native American entrepreneurs than right now. Whether you're an entrepreneur support organization, a federal partner, an entrepreneur yourself or an investor, now is a great time, really as great time as ever to support, mentor and ultimately grow Native American small businesses. I care deeply about improving opportunities for entrepreneurs that are often overlooked in particular Native American entrepreneurs like the ones I grew up with. I'm a member of the Navajo Nation and I may be biased, but it a beautiful part of the world with natural structures such as Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, Bears Ears and the picture behind me is outside of Lukatukai, Arizona where my grandmother and my family live. It's also a place that's rich in culture and language with many of our people who speak the language fluently. However, despite these riches, many of our people were not rich with respect to money. We had and still have a very high poverty rate when I was a kid is about 40%. In my home community there are very few business options and I thought that was frankly unacceptable. We shouldn't have to drive 60 miles to go get groceries. And obviously speaking with a group like this, you know that the ecosystems matter, investment matters, and small businesses matter for opportunities and livelihood of of not only individuals but broader families. So obviously Native American communities face significant economic headwinds. I'm proud to say that the SBA is working to fight these headwinds. Last week, SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman announced an expanded Interagency Access to Capital initiative where we are partnering with federal agencies including Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, the USDA to look critically at existing access to capital programs, see what is working well, what is not, and see what we can improve. We'll be rolling out a number of different initiatives related to this, including an rfi, a clearinghouse, and some eventually some.

Policy.

Proposals and policy changes that will ensure that if you're a Native American, that you have access to capital that everybody else has in this country. Additionally, the SBA has been making progress on fighting headwinds by increasing the amount of our Native American partner organizations by five times. Just this past year, we have partnered with a number of different organizations thanks to the Community Navigators program under the leadership of Associate Administrator Mark Madrid. And now we have technical assistance organizations, business incubators and CDFIs that provide access to capital ranging from Penobscot, Maine to Cheyenne River, South Dakota to Waianae, Hawaii to Utavik, Alaska, which is the very tip top of Alaska. We also have two great partners that provide training and technical assistance across the country. Sister Sky, I encourage you to look up Sister sky who does online training as as in person trainings and Redwin consulting. Finally, I mentioned the PPP earlier, but in all seriousness, in 2021, the SBA provided unprecedented support for Native American businesses to the tune of $2.28 billion. That went to American Indian, Alaska, Native and Native Hawaiian owned businesses. That was about 7,000 businesses. 7,500. But despite these promising innovations, changes and actions that we're taking, we need an all hands on deck approach to really make a difference. Just as we've partnered with our federal partners on the Access to Capital initiative, we need more private, more nonprofit and more other government partners. There are approximately 9.7 million Native Americans according to the last census. And there are 574 federally recognized tribes across 35 different states. And that in addition to there obviously are Native Americans in every single state. And the majority of Native Americans actually live off of reservation land. But to put that 9.7 million population in perspective, it's slightly larger than the population of Virginia. So. And according to the census, we've got about 26,000 Native American owned small businesses nationwide and they bring in about 44.9 billion in receipts and pay an estimated 10.3 billion in annual payroll. This does not count tribal, tribally owned entities and that's those are focused on individually owned. As you can see, the Native American community has made a tremendous positive impact on the economy, but we have so much more room to grow. I think that out of 9.7 million people, if we only have 26,000 businesses, we have a long way to grow again. I think we need all hands on deck. I had and still have a strong belief that everyone in this great and prosperous country should have access to small business opportunities, regardless of where they're from and who they are and who their parents are. I'm fortunate that my colleagues at the SBA share this belief and really that's why they're here. And I think that's probably why we're all here. The sba, we mean business, and we definitely mean tribal and res business. So last month was Native American Heritage Month, but in our office, it's always Native American Heritage Month. Our message last month, which is still relevant this year and this month, is that Native American people are diverse, growing sophisticated and engaged in small business development. We have been here, we are here, and we will always be here. And especially for this group, I want to say now is the best time to invest in Native American communities. I want to say big thanks to Bailey Devries and Jennifer Shi and all your team. It's great to work with you and I wish everybody a great day and a productive summit. Now hand it over to John Williams.

Thanks a lot, Jackson. I appreciate it. You do great work over there and appreciate you being part of this event. So thank you all for coming to this virtual event, this ecosystem support network, our second event. You guys are critical to really the part of the team that really helps us give access to those advanced technology firms, which is a big priority for our office. The Office of Investment and Innovation focuses on that. We make sure and want to make sure that you guys have the needs and the support because you're the ones on the front line working with the tech entrepreneur. So a lot of our role is to focus on what are those things and how can we help increase stem entrepreneur from underserved communities, get access to federal R and D. Critical goal of the administration. And it's a main mission of SBA and why I came to sba. We can't do that without you guys. You guys are the ones on that front line, like I say, working with the entrepreneur. And so events like this really kind of help us provide some insight to you guys, but also sharing of what you do best and how we can work that. It's, as you all know, that you know, what the tech entrepreneur needs as far as helping them advance advanced technologies is very different than a Main street company. Many of them can't get access to loans because they aren't generating revenue. And so very different challenges and it needs different assistance. And so our goal in my office is really to build out. How does that assistance? What does that look like? How do we provide that? Right now we, you know, main sources have been fast and growth accelerator been great. That fast has increased from 4 million to 6 million for 2021 to 2022 growth accelerators, from 2 million to 3 million. But personally, I don't think that's enough. And we all need to kind of push to get more and do more. As you heard yesterday, I'm pretty excited about this, the relaunch of the growth accelerator program and really trying to tweak that in ways that addresses what you guys need. We want to see more education across the ESO community to help bring more new accelerators, new players in this space along so they can have the tools, the resources, the networks that they need to help their entrepreneurs in that space. We also know that as helping a tech entrepreneur is different than a Main street company helping different types of underserved, someone from rural or a woman, different types of minorities all have and need unique experiences and unique help. And so really leveraging your knowledge across to others that are trying to develop that expertise is really what makes it work. And what I've been so excited for, that we've really been working over the last five years to kind of build out that support of the ESO community. When I came just even three years ago, I've been here six years now, but three years, three years ago, we only had 24 FAST awardees. Now we're up to 44. We then, you know, kind of. Brittany Sickler was the one that started the monthly ESO calls that now we have over a thousand people. Jennifer, she runs that now and does an amazing job. We've been growing that. We started the CSO Conference last year for the first time. This is the second annual. So these are all tools we're trying to develop, but really looking for your input to what works, how does it work, Bringing on established. They've been a big help in kind of helping us figure this out and working with you and providing the needs to make you guys successful. So excited, as I said, about this new growth accelerator competition as we transition that and try to figure out the best ways to provide that valuable support you need. And I've been just really lucky to be in this office to work on programs that means so much to me. Work with the community. I work more with the ecosystem support side than I do with the small businesses. I did work directly with the small businesses back in Navy. I'll be honest, I do miss a lot of that. But really, I love working with the ecosystem support side. How can we kind of help do this across the country and make things move in the right direction? Another side of my Office is the SBIR and STTR, as many of you know, that provides over 4 billion in annual non diluted funding to the tech firms. I see. We see that, you know, and why we work on both of these that the ESO community doesn't work well when it focus on the tech side without the SBIR and the SBIR and STTR funding doesn't work well without you guys. And so you're kind of tied to the hip. Really important for both programs to be strong and healthy. It was an interesting go getting reauthorization. The most challenging I've seen in the last 35 years. But good news is it's been passed and so we now have a three year extension on that program or on both programs. Both SBIR and STTR there were some modifications made in the reauthorization. The main issues basically were addressing multi award winners and increasing the expectation of transitions from phase one to phase two percentages and also from phase two to phase three. And most of that's posted and that's pretty straightforward. The other side of it was increased due diligence and disclosure to understand and monitor and protect against foreign influence in the companies that US is funding through the SBIR and STTR program. So we're working with the agencies closely to kind of implement those programs. As the lead at SBA and a coordinator of those across the 11 federal agencies will be reaching out through the ESO calls to provide that information to you so that you can provide the awareness, the training and the understanding of what those changes mean to the small business. So you'll see that coming in the future. ESO monthly calls and it'll be on our website and things like that. We have launched a new website that we've taken a lot of input from the community on how to best have a website that's user friendly, user provides the information you want. We're trying to get more real time data up there. We know we still have a lot of things to work on that we, you know, again love to have endless resources to do more. But we're working in the right direction. I'm proud of the team and I'm proud of what we're doing but really, you know, want to thank you all. Without what you guys do, we wouldn't be able to to reach all the individual entrepreneurs and and spend the tens of hours, it takes hundreds of hours with each of these companies and helping them develop, be educated, understand what they need to know about it. Which shouldn't be a real complex program, but it is a complex program because each agency does things differently and even within the DoD and even when I was at Navy, things were done differently across the services. So kind of having that expert on the ground we know is really, really important to kind of bring that individual along to make it worthwhile for them to submit an application to know where to submit an application to know what to expect, to know maybe where to find partners at a university or mentors that other small businesses or other financiers. That's really, really important. This is a private public partnership. I'm a big believer in that. And so without that and without us working together, we're not going to get that success in the small businesses that we've had over the last 40 years. Program has been incredibly successful. We want to make sure we continue to do that because that's critical for the US Economy to grow and be as strong as it is in the future. So thank you. So with that looking at time, yep, we're pretty close. So we're at 12:30. My boss, Ms. Bailey DeVries, is going to be speaking next. She's going to have a Fireside Chat. She is the associate administrator for the Office of Investment and Innovation. So she leads the agency portfolio and private investment partnerships, Innovation Funding. So that means a lot of acronyms here. Sbic, sbir, sttr, Fast and Growth Accelerators. You don't know what all those mean. You will soon and most of you probably do, but look them up. Those are the programs that are kind of run within her portfolio. She comes to SBA after a private sector career and in asset management and defense industries and is such a strong supporter of the work that the ESO community does. So Bailey, I want to thank her for all the work she's done to help entrepreneurs, the ESOs, the SBICS, and the work I do and everything across SBA. She's been an awesome boss to help in that way. So she'll be leading a Fireside Chat that will start at 12:30. With that, thank you for your time and thank you for showing up today. Appreciate it.

Sat.