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.

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.

Great things are on the horizon for minority-owned and inner city based businesses in Northeast Ohio. And that’s not only good news for those minority and inner city based firms, but it’s good news for the entire region! It’s been well documented how growing larger scale diverse businesses represent an essential component of a broader economic development strategy – particularly the positive impact on job creation given that minority, women and inner city based businesses tend to hire at greater rates from those same underserved communities. I am thrilled to announce an exciting new initiative at JumpStart that will directly address this vital component of our region’s strategy. 

On Thursday, March 25th we will unveil a game changing initiative that is already being touted by some state and federal officials as a platform that should be considered by communities across the country. The new initiative is called Launch100 which represents a five year focused objective to create a pipeline of 100 high potential minority and inner city based businesses across the state of Ohio. The initiative will be piloted in Northeast Ohio for up to 18 months, with plans to roll out the effort across the entire state should the pilot prove successful. Unique to this effort is the unprecedented collaboration with over 15 State funded business assistance organizations, all working together to ensure that Northeast Ohio’s most promising early-stage minority and inner city based firms are receiving the necessary support and resources to enable these firms to achieve their potential. 

Register for the public kick-off of this extraordinary effort to be held on March 25th at Corporate College East, 4400 Richmond Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44128. Governor Ted Strickland, and a host of dignitaries will be present to share their remarks and underscore how vital the success of this initiative is to our region’s and state’s economy. 

To preview the objectives of Launch100, and the minimum criteria to apply, please log on to www.launch100.org for more information. For an example of a recent high potential minority-owned business that received the type of assistance Launch100 firms can expect, (which ultimately led to the company being funded by JumpStart), take a look at Melody Management which has developed a revolutionary online platform for independent artists and musicians across the globe.

As I mentioned previously, great things are on the horizon for our community, so please be sure to save the date of March 25th and register for the launch event to make sure you’re on hand.

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 speakers at last week’s Minority Business Early-Stage Capital Summit (which was amazing, by the way) was Deborah Shufrin from The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC). Her 40 minute presentation was packed with facts about inner city businesses across the nation and as a comparison, those in the Cleveland market. (By definition, inner cities are urban cores with high poverty and unemployment rates, and low median income levels). For everything I thought I knew about this topic, this research blew me away. All marketers love insightful facts, so I thought I’d share the top 5 things that surprised me about revitalizing inner cities through entrepreneurship.

As background, ICIC studied the characteristics of companies located in the largest 100 inner cities which met the following criteria: 1) had at least 10 employees, and 2) had grown from $200,000 in revenues to at least $1 million in revenues in the last 5 years. There were 557 companies included in this study, which covered 10 years of data. (I’ll call them the ICIC 100 below).

1. A small number of early-stage high growth firms in the inner city can create dramatic job growth. The ICIC 100 firms created 63,000 jobs between 1999 and 2007. By comparison, 458,000 firms across all inner cities in the U.S. lost 49,300 jobs.
2. Place matters. It’s actually not true that you can create jobs anywhere and all locations benefit similarly. To create jobs for inner city residents, it is much more efficient to do so with companies located in inner city locations. ICIC’s data shows that to create 100 jobs for inner city residents, you need companies that hire 450 people located in the inner city, whereas you need companies that hire 850 people in the rest of the central city and 1,450 people in the broader region.
3. Entrepreneurs leading these companies are participating to their communities. 70% of the leaders of the ICIC 100 have lived in inner cities at some point in their lives, and 30% are living there now. They recognize the importance of creating businesses, and jobs, directly in these neighborhoods.
4. These entrepreneurs are highly educated! 77% have an advanced degree vs. 23% of U.S. small business owners.

5. These firms have higher productivity and lower turnover than comparable U.S. companies their size. This is perhaps not surprising because on average, they offer higher compensation as well as better benefits (healthcare, bonuses, and retirement plans) compared to U.S. firms overall. They also spend 2x as much on training.

It has made intuitive sense to me that entrepreneurship in urban locations is one way to create jobs for inner city residents, and should be part of the urban agenda for that reason. Here, the facts prove it out. So how can we encourage more entrepreneurship in inner cities in Northeast Ohio? The Summit isn’t just enough, and the JumpStart Inclusion Advisors are here but can’t do it alone. What ideas do you have?

Cathy Belk is the Chief Marketing Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business management. She brings 16+ years of experience in a variety of marketing and business roles, but gets her energy from working daily with entrepreneurs and their growing companies.