Tag: Kauffman Foundation

An Entrepreneurial Learning Curve

Posted on by robbie

As an art student, Pauly Ramirez didn’t see herself in the business world –– but that didn’t stop her from becoming an entrepreneur. After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2016, Ramirez co-founded Hermit, a platform that uses a unique algorithm to match artists with buyers looking to commission original work.
But Ramirez’s journey as a 24-year-old business owner hasn’t always been smooth sailing. “It was extremely difficult, not because I didn’t think I could do it, but because I thought I didn’t have the skill set,” she says.
Ramirez, who came to the United States from Mexico at age 6, is the youngest of five children and the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree. It took time for her to build confidence as an entrepreneur.
“It was learning from zero,” Ramirez says. “I had to find my mentors.”
While attending SAIC, Ramirez became an entrepreneur-in-residence, where she received support to get Hermit off the ground.
Ramirez and her co-founders have been bootstrapping the platform, currently in the beta-testing phase, with plans to launch it publicly in the coming months.
Watch the video above to see how Ramirez overcame her insecurities and grew into the entrepreneur she is today.  

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This content was paid for and produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which works in entrepreneurship and education to create opportunities and connect people to the tools they need to achieve success, change their futures and give back to their communities.

A Startup With Eyes on the (Tiny) Prize

Posted on by robbie

Akili Kelly and his wife, Ashlee, know a thing or two about new beginnings. The Jackson, Mississippi, couple recently welcomed their daughter, Alex, into the world. They also launched a startup: TinyJXN (pronounced “Tiny Jackson”), which plans to develop the city’s first tiny-house community. The process, so far, has taken over a year.
The Kellys met as grad students at Jackson State University and have put down roots in the city. As recent graduates with debt, they understand that Jackson’s difficulties in retaining an educated workforce is largely due to the lack of affordable housing options. So they started to explore the concept of tiny homes, which eventually blossomed into their side business.
“I was interested to see how you could squeeze everything you need into a smaller space, which is also more economical,” Akili says. “We want this to be a housing option that people in this community could benefit from.”
Sarah Stripp is TinyJXN’s first client. As tiny homes are a new concept for the city, Stripp’s challenges with homeownership and TinyJXN’s challenges with operating a startup have often been one and the same. The Kellys spent months working with Stripp to secure a loan and break ground on her tiny home. Banks weren’t accustomed to issuing such a modest construction loan, and local institutions didn’t always immediately grasp the concept.
But now, the Kellys have applied for a building permit and expect to begin construction on Stripp’s new home next month.
Like many neighborhoods throughout Jackson, whose population has been declining for decades, the area where Stripp’s tiny home will be built is pockmarked with empty lots. But where others might see blight, the Kellys see an opportunity to improve their city in a way that benefits both aspiring homeowners and longtime locals.
As Akili says, “You have to be able to see beyond what’s currently there.”
Watch the video above to see how Akili and Ashlee Kelly are turning their entrepreneurial dream into a reality, while fulfilling a need in the city they call home.

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This content was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which works in entrepreneurship and education to create opportunities and connect people to the tools they need to achieve success, change their futures and give back to their communities.

Manufacturing Chainmaille in the Rural Midwest

Posted on by robbie

For Edie Ramstad, retirement didn’t exactly go as planned. In 2011, she moved to the tiny city of Ada, Minnesota (population: 1,700), to settle down, but she quickly got bored. So she started a side business, called Weave Got Maille, that manufactures supplies for chainmaille, small metal rings that are woven together to create jewelry and are often seen in Renaissance costumes.
“I’ve always loved chainmaille,” Ramstad says. “Even though I made more high-end jewelry as a profession, it was chainmaille that I did as a hobby.”
Though her hobby-turned-business venture proved a hit, Ramstad faced challenges as it expanded. “It just took off,” she said. “It had a mind of its own, and it just kept growing.”
Weave got Maille was the first non-agricultural manufacturing business in the county. “We’re a very small farming community, and I was an internet company in a town that only had dial-up internet,” Ramstad says.
In 2013, Ramstad was so overwhelmed she decided to close the business. Seeking support, she drove an hour to Fargo, North Dakota, and attended 1 Million Cups –– a free program developed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to connect entrepreneurs and provide resources for new business owners.
“It was life-changing,” Ramstad says about meeting other entrepreneurs. “I realized I wasn’t alone.”
With help from 1 Million Cups, Ramstad was able to manage her company’s growth challenges and keep the business going. Weave got Maille’s products are now sold in 76 countries and can be seen on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
Watch the video above to learn more about how a novel networking community helped Ramstad and her business thrive.

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This content was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which works in entrepreneurship and education to create opportunities and connect people to the tools they need to achieve success, change their futures and give back to their communities.

There’s Always Something to Do in Brownsville

Posted on by robbie

“There’s nothing to do in Brownsville.” It was a constant refrain when Eva Garcia was growing up in the midsize Texas city, situated just across the border from Mexico. After college, most of her friends moved away to Austin or other cities perceived as more dynamic and interesting. But Garcia stayed, got a job in city government, and is now part of an initiative to transform her community and neighboring cities. “I want to make Brownsville a place where people want to stay,” she says.
As an employee of the city’s department of planning and development, Garcia is taking an active role in doing just that, helping to organize programs and funding for a network of 17 miles of new multiuse trails in and around Brownsville. She’s also been lobbying to attract new businesses to open alongside these new biking, hiking and paddling trails. She recently attended the Kauffman Foundation’s inaugural ESHIP Summit to connect with other people working to build thriving small business communities and get new ideas for how to improve her own.
The goals of Brownsville’s recent outdoorsy development are nothing less than ambitious: Boost the local economy, improve health outcomes, rescue precious natural resources and encourage the growth of a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. Those are big problems to solve, and Brownsville is trying to tackle them all at once. But the city is aiming to prove that all at once is the best way to take on big issues.
“There’s never enough money to do what you want,” Garcia says. “We’re leveraging resources to attack multiple problems.” For Garcia, the ESHIP Summit was a chance to better understand and imagine the end goal of the development happening in Brownsville. “What I’ve learned is the characteristics of highly functioning systems,” she says, “and how collaboration is essential.”
Turning around an entire community’s idea of itself isn’t exactly easy. Brownsville is behind the curve in developing as a tourist destination, Garcia says. “Right now the challenge seems to be changing the perception of what’s successful, or what could be successful.” Some people believe that in a relatively poor community, building nature trails is a waste of taxpayer money that could be better spent improving public transportation or other services.
But Garcia sees the potential to make her community much stronger — and healthier too. The progress happening today is a steep departure from her experience growing up in Brownsville, which as recently as 2012 was the poorest city in America, with a median income of less than $30,000 a year. The majority of residents are Hispanic, and a CDC study found that the rates of obesity and diabetes were among the highest in the country. Almost 40 percent of residents lack health insurance, according to the most recent census data available. Growing up, Garcia says she had no idea that the health disparities and poverty levels were so severe.
After graduating from the University of Texas at Brownsville (now the University of Texas Rio Grande) with a degree in environmental science, Garcia got an internship with the city and started to learn more about her own community. “I felt like my eyes were opened,” she says. “I started becoming aware of what the issues really were here, and why there were challenges to development.” The city had already started to work on some initiatives to reduce poverty and improve health outcomes, and Garcia decided she wanted to be involved.
Today, Garcia’s department is partnering with Rails to Trails Conservancy to connect 10 local communities with new pathways. The UT School of Public Health in Brownsville has provided grant funding to help promote the new trails and healthy living in general. And the city is taking advantage of a local utility program to dredge and restore tributaries of the Rio Grande that have filled with sediment, organizing new trails around these resacas. The university’s architecture program is designing birding blinds (small shelters that help observers watch birds without startling them) to line the new trails. “Everyone has a role to play,” Garcia says.
That includes entrepreneurs, who are key to making the “active tourism” initiative a success. The city is looking for ways to incentivize small businesses to take advantage of the new walking and biking pathways. “You cannot be active without the [proper] gear,” Garcia says. “Even to go fishing, you need poles and lines, and people to take you out on boats to show you where things are.”
More businesses are needed, she says, to showcase the city’s assets — new companies like outdoor tour operators or kayak and paddleboard rental shops will help market the community as a fun, dynamic place.
“There are constantly things to do now,” Garcia says.

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This content was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which works in entrepreneurship and education to create opportunities and connect people to the tools they need to achieve success, change their futures and give back to their communities. In June 2017, the foundation hosted its inaugural ESHIP Sumit, convening 435 leaders fighting to help break down barriers for entrepreneurs across the country.
 

10 Ways to Break Down Barriers for Entrepreneurs in Your Community

Posted on by robbie

How do you build a thriving community of entrepreneurs? At a time when the doors of economic opportunity seem to be shutting out so many people, entrepreneurship is crucial to local neighborhoods. The Kauffman Foundation’s inaugural ESHIP Summit brought together more than 400 diverse entrepreneurial community leaders from all over the country to answer this question.
Below, these entrepreneurial ecosystem builders — people who build communities to support entrepreneurs — share their top tips for energizing entrepreneurship in their communities, no matter where in the world that is.

1. Find Common Ground . . .

Participants came to the ESHIP Summit from 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 10 countries, each facing their own challenges. But as attendee Alistair Brett of Rainforest Strategies in Washington, D.C., says, “What works in one place may not work in another, but the core of this kind of work is the same for everyone.”

2. . . . But Don’t Copy Silicon Valley 

Despite its huge concentration of high-tech startups and venture capitalists,the Silicon Valley model has its weaknesses, particularly when it comes to diversity and inclusion, says Kate Stewart, the executive director of JAXCoE, a network of entrepreneurs and supporters in Jacksonville, Fla. “The more inclusive a company or an ecosystem is, the more robust it is,” she adds. Philip Gaskin, the director of entrepreneurial communities for the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., agrees: “As the demographics in the nation are changing, you need equal representation in your businesses, in your leadership and on your boards to reach your customers and understand their needs.”

3. Unearth Potential 

“The capital of economic development is no longer businesses moving from place to place; it’s talent moving from place to place,” Sly James, the mayor of Kansas City, Mo., told the Summit. Many communities also have massive untapped potential in populations that haven’t previously had access to the resources needed to start new businesses. “Women in our state are just now beginning to find their footing” and connect to the support they need, as are minority entrepreneurs, says Shannon Roberts, program manager at the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center.

4. Get Ideas Out of the Lab

Professors and students are conducting cutting-edge research and generating innovative ideas. But the town-gown gap can be hard to bridge. The key is understanding how the motivations of academics differ from those of traditional entrepreneurs, says Lydia McClure, vice president of scientific partnerships at the Translational Research Institute in D.C. Researchers tend to be driven by the impact they can have and aren’t necessarily as interested in creating the next big startup. Everyone involved should be asking themselves, “What do I have to offer?” McClure says.

5. Challenge Stereotypes 

What does the typical entrepreneur look like? Accion, an organization that provides microloans to small business owners, often works with low-income minorities who are opening businesses to provide for their families. But no matter the scale of a business, “entrepreneurship is a source of income, job creation, asset generation, and products and services that create value for the community,” says Anne Haines Yatskowitz, Accion New Mexico’s CEO. And with their tenacity, resourcefulness and perseverance, she says, “entrepreneurs can be incredible role models.”
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6. Reach More People 

Preston James, the CEO of DivInc, a startup pre-accelerator that supports entrepreneurship among people of color and women, is trying to solve a problem he sees in the otherwise thriving startup ecosystem in Austin, Texas. “What we’re doing in Austin is expanding the ecosystem by being more inclusive of a broader audience,” James says. DivInc connects underrepresented entrepreneurs with mentors, educational opportunities, domain experts and other resources that help lay the foundation for successful new companies. “Some of the other hubs that are up and coming, the sooner they can do that, the more successful they will be — faster.”

7. Consider Your Impact 

“I have a fundamental belief that business’s role on the planet is to make life better for people,’’ says Kim Coupounas, the director of B Lab, an organization with offices around the country that supports businesses aiming to be a force for good. Coupounas believes companies should think about their social impact from the beginning. “A huge source of innovation is when companies really consider how they impact their stakeholders,” she says. Ecosystem builders should be thinking about how they’re affecting the world around them too, she says. “It’s not just about creating jobs; it’s about creating good jobs.”

8. Keep It Simple

One successful company can jump-start an entire entrepreneurial ecosystem, and just one connection can help information flow more freely through it. “If one tiny connection fails in your computer, it won’t work,” says Alistair Brett. “But if you make that one tiny connection, it’s back to working.” Adds Wayne Sutton, cofounder of Change Catalyst in the Bay Area, “It’s not rocket science. We’re not talking about going to Mars; we’re basically talking about working with people. You just have to put in the work.

9. Forge Connections — and Friendships

“Entrepreneurship is a lonely experience without community,” says Scott Phillips of Civic Ninjas in Tulsa, Okla., a nonprofit whose network of coders strives to solve societal ills through technology. So is trying to support entrepreneurs, particularly underrepresented ones who are up against real economic, political and cultural barriers in their attempts to access to opportunities. “It’s very isolating sometimes to fight something that seems as big as this is,” adds Geraud Staton, founder of the Helius Foundation, which mentors and coaches entrepreneurs in Durham, N.C. The power of connecting with other people doing similar work can’t be underestimated.

10. Focus on the Future 

“Entrepreneurship, to me, signals taking responsibility for how the future develops,” says David Witzel of RASA, an organization in Oakland, Calif., devoted to regenerative agriculture. Keeping an eye on the future makes this work meaningful. “I have two young grandchildren,” says John Bost, the president of the Clemmons Community Foundation in Clemmons, N.C. “They need a future they can grow into, and it won’t be the past I’ve lived out of.”

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This content was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which works in entrepreneurship and education to create opportunities and connect people to the tools they need to achieve success, change their futures and give back to their communities. In June 2017, the foundation hosted its inaugural ESHIP Summit, convening 435 leaders fighting to break down barriers for entrepreneurs across the country.