JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

Since joining JumpStart back in 2006 and being charged with identifying strategies to engage more of our region’s minority and women-led businesses, one of my primary objectives has been to encourage our community’s diverse entrepreneurs to increase their level of involvement in regional events and activities. There is terrific information being shared on a regular basis at these events, but unfortunately too few of our region’s diverse entrepreneurs are in attendance to receive this information. Far too often, mainstream events focused on raising angel and venture capital and growing larger scale firms fail to attract a diverse audience of attendees that is more representative of our region’s population. I have written a number of articles, blogs, and newsletters on this topic, but fundamentally nothing will change until our region’s diverse entrepreneurs decide to get engaged. Without question our event planners and community leaders need to make sure that these events are promoted and publicized through a diverse set of media channels and partners, but ultimately the decision rests with the individual to decide to attend or not.

JumpStart has taken some very exciting steps over the past few years in putting on diverse and collaborative events with such leading national organizations as The Marathon Club and The Initiative For A Competitive Inner City (ICIC), and I am thrilled to announce that we are partnering again to ensure that we build on this momentum. Rather than put on a separate event as we have done in the past, the president of the Marathon Club (and now also JumpStart board member), Carmen Ortiz-McGhee, and I are joining forces with the International Economic Development Council and the Ohio Early Stage Capital Summit for two exciting and timely events taking place next month in Columbus. Carmen and I will be leading and facilitating panel discussions at these events focusing on the specific issues that disproportionately impact high growth minority and women entrepreneurs, and it is essential that more of our community’s diverse entrepreneurs are in attendance to get connected. For more information on each conference, please visit the following pages: IEDC Conference Information, Ohio Early Stage Summit Information. I am both thrilled and honored to take part in these events this year, and truly hope to see all of you there.

I would also like to announce an exciting opportunity being put on by another of our national partners, ICIC, which is hosting its 7th annual Inner City Capital Connections Conference (ICCC) this coming November 15-16th in Los Angeles, California. The ICCC is a unique opportunity for inner city based businesses and entrepreneurs to gain direct access to investors and other funding sources that are specifically committed to growing larger scale businesses in the core urban centers of our country to help revitalize our nation’s inner city economies. Entrepreneurs interested in attending and presenting their business to investors at the event should log on to www.icic.org, or contact Hyacinth Vassell at hvassell@icic.org or via phone at 617.297.3120.

The time to get involved is now! Let’s get up, get going, and get engaged in these uniquely designed events that just might be the difference between success or failure in these rapidly and constantly changing economic times. 

Darrin is Chief Economic Inclusion Officer of JumpStart and President of JumpStart Inclusion Advisors. He founded and ran his own strategic planning and management assistance firm and spent 16 years in the commercial banking and finance industry. Darrin has an MBA from Baldwin-Wallace College and an undergraduate degree from Mount Union College. He has led a series of workshops and seminars on matters of economic development and diversity.

One of the more commonly used acronyms in today’s business development arena is the term TBED or “Technology Based Economic Development”. In short, TBED efforts seek to identify and commercialize new technologies that have the potential to become significant new businesses which in turn help to revitalize regional economies, create new jobs, regain our country’s competitive advantage, etc. The challenge with most TBED efforts is that they generally fail to fully engage the broader community – particularly the historically underserved populations of minority groups and women. While I have seen a noticeable increase in the involvement of women (though clearly there is more work to be done) - led by such organizations as Springboard Enterprises, Phenomenelle Angels, and Golden Seeds LLC., to name a few; minority populations remain significantly underrepresented. Given the documented realities of our shifting national population trends which call for ethnic minorities to represent roughly half of our nation’s population over the next 20+ years, we can no longer afford to not fully engage all members of our community in TBED activities.

As significant TBED resources are invested in our nation’s colleges and universities to help commercialize new technologies, a few areas that our academic institutions can consider include:

• Hiring more diverse professors in Science, Chemistry, Biology, etc.
• Working closer with minority and women focused economic development organizations to form more structured partnerships
• Working with minority executive recruiters to identify top management talent for new ventures
• Connecting with such national organizations as:
  • The PhD Project, an organization focused on driving more minority professionals to doctoral programs and business schools - www.phdproject.org
  • National Association of Blacks in Bio - www.nab-bio.org
  • American Association of Blacks in Energy - www.aabe.org
  • Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications Partnership - www.httponline.org
  • New America Alliance – www.naaonline.org
  • TiE, Inc. - www.tie.org

As for the host of other TBED organizations in our regional and national community, we simply must do a better job of engaging and connecting with diverse populations. Information dissemination is critical. To ensure that opportunities are being effectively communicated and reaching non-traditional audiences, TBED organizations must adopt new and creative methods of sharing information through diverse media channels and outlets, forming new collaborations with leading minority and women focused organizations, and investing the necessary time and resources to ensure that the connections actually happen and are sustained.

It’s time for new and innovative collaborations to spring up whereby budding new concepts such as TBED are commonly known and embraced by all citizens in our increasingly diverse community.

Darrin is Chief Economic Inclusion Officer of JumpStart and President of JumpStart Inclusion Advisors. He founded and ran his own strategic planning and management assistance firm and spent 16 years in the commercial banking and finance industry. Darrin has an MBA from Baldwin Wallace College and an undergraduate degree from Mount Union College. He has led a series of workshops and seminars on matters of economic development and diversity.

The challenges of raising investment capital for your business and how to best prepare for an investor have been well documented by many industry experts. Yet having witnessed scores of presentations over the years I find that many entrepreneurs routinely miss a few key areas. And while there are certainly no guarantees or full-proof plans that will automatically result in successfully raising capital, the following suggestions should help you along the journey:

1. Present your business with energy, enthusiasm and confidence –- if you’re not excited about your business endeavor you’ll have a very difficult time getting an investor excited.
2. Know your business and industry cold – take the time to really understand and segment your chosen market. Know the trends, and consider doing a SWOT analysis on your chosen market (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats).
3. Know your competition cold –- don’t make the mistake that so many have in assuming that “No one else is doing this”. If your investor discovers a recognized competitor that you should have discovered, you have instantly damaged your credibility.
4. Consider a comparison chart that demonstrates your unique advantages versus key competitors.
5. Clearly articulate your Value Proposition and what “makes your business so special’, and further explain how your unique competitive advantage represents both a significant barrier for your competition as well as a real benefit to your client.
6. Do your homework on the overall size of your market both domestically and internationally. That includes both consumer and commercial applications if applicable (overall market size or potential should approach $1 billion or better to really get the attention of investors).
7. Explain why you or a designated team member are the best candidate to serve as CEO.
8. Secure or “tee up” a deeply experienced management team. The people you surround yourself with are often the key deciding factor in securing investment capital.
9. Present a clear and “executable” plan to exceed $30 million in annual sales potential within 5 to 7 years. Remember that investors have options; they can choose to invest in any number of opportunities from traditional stocks and bonds to other high growth businesses. If you’re going to convince an investor to support your vision, you have to paint a large enough and clear enough picture that makes choosing your plan worth the risk.
10. Make sure the “assumptions” that drive and support your financial projections have been reviewed by experienced personnel so that such key items as unit sale prices and costs per unit have been thoroughly vetted.

As stated previously, in the journey of raising capital there are no magic bullets or guarantees. By incorporating these 10 tips however, you’ll be well on your way to dramatically improving your chances for success!

Darrin is Chief Economic Inclusion Officer of JumpStart and President of JumpStart Inclusion Advisors. He founded and ran his own strategic planning and management assistance firm and spent 16 years in the commercial banking and finance industry. Darrin has an MBA from Baldwin Wallace College and an undergraduate degree from Mount Union College. He has led a series of workshops and seminars on matters of economic development and diversity.

JumpStart, in collaboration with Governor Ted Strickland, and the State of Ohio Minority Enterprise Division, recently kicked off an exciting new initiative called Launch100 which seeks to create a pipeline of 100 high potential minority and inner city based businesses across Ohio over the next 5 years. If the turnout at the event, which exceeded 250 attendees, as well as the interest that has followed is any indication of the potential of this initiative, we are even more excited about the opportunities for growth and expansion throughout our region.

Much has been written over the past few years about the economic opportunity that exists for our community if we had more of our region’s citizens participating in high growth entrepreneurship. In short, higher growth emerging businesses simply create more jobs. The challenge has been that many of our region’s entrepreneurs, specifically ethnic minority populations and firms based in lower income census tracks commonly referred to as the inner city, have not participated equally in the types of growth opportunities attractive to angel and venture capital investment. Absent this critical component of early-stage funding, these entrepreneurs have been led to the types of businesses that generally did not require much capital which in turn led to a greater propensity of lower growth service oriented businesses. While smaller firms have always been, and will always be a critical component of our economy, even a modest increase in more diverse businesses growing larger scale operations can have a dramatic impact on job creation for all of our region’s citizens.

Launch100 seeks to identify, educate, prepare, and connect these historically underserved entrepreneurs to the types of businesses that can at minimum achieve sales growth in excess of $15 million over the next 3-5 years, create 50 or more jobs, and be operating in or targeting an emerging industry or technology, just to name of few of the criteria.

The initiative received a tremendous surge of adrenaline from the recent kickoff event, and we are confident that at least 12-15 high growth opportunities will be identified in the initial pilot phase over the next 12-18 months. An additional 12 firms tracking to exceed $15 million in annual revenues equates to about $180 million of new revenues over time, and with one new job generally created for every $200,000 of new revenues, that’s another 900 potential jobs for our community. With a successful pilot in Northeast Ohio, the effort will then be rolled out and expanded across the entire state in an effort to reach the targeted pipeline of 100 high potential firms.

Please be sure to check the Launch100 website at www.launch100.org for more information, and to submit your application today!

Darrin is Chief Economic Inclusion Officer of JumpStart and President of JumpStart Inclusion Advisors. He founded and ran his own strategic planning and management assistance firm and spent 16 years in the commercial banking and finance industry. Darrin has an MBA from Baldwin Wallace College and an undergraduate degree from Mount Union College. He has led a series of workshops and seminars on matters of economic development and diversity.