business

A Month of Entrepreneurial Stories

Posted on by Case Foundation

Our Inclusive Entrepreneurship work at the Case Foundation is built upon the core value that we must change the way we all talk about entrepreneurship, expanding who we lift up as success stories and busting myths that hold entrepreneurs back. National Entrepreneurship Month gave us a great opportunity to dive into the subject again and to celebrate entrepreneurs from a wide variety of backgrounds. It also gave us a chance to provide an honest look at some of the challenges of entrepreneurship.

We focus our work in Inclusive Entrepreneurship on challenges across race, place and gender, driven by the stark statistics that show the disparities faced by diverse entrepreneurs. Just looking at venture capital distribution reveals that only 10 percent of venture-backed companies have a female founder and only one percent have an African American founder. And just 75 percent of all venture capital is being distributed to just three states; California, New York and Massachusetts. Talent is everywhere; opportunity is not. And many of these elements are central to the stories that were at the core of our National Entrepreneurship Month blogs.

November 1st was both the first day of National Entrepreneurship Month and National Stress Awareness Day, so we kicked off our series with an examination of the role stamina and support plays in becoming an entrepreneur. We asked our #FacesofFounders entrepreneurs how they manage the stress of launching and running a business. See what they said in Confronting the Dark Side of Entrepreneurship.

On Veteran’s Day, we shined a spotlight on veterans in entrepreneurship and ways to support them. Our friends at Bunker Labs took to #FacesofFounders to share how the organization is working to build an ecosystem to support veteran entrepreneurs. Read what CEO Todd Connor had to say in How Bunker Labs Is Building an Inclusive Ecosystem for Veteran Entrepreneurs.

Then we looked back at the Essence Festival panel our senior vice president, Sheila Herrling, moderated with a group of entrepreneurial changemakers. Herrling shares some of the top takeaways from the informative and action-inspiring conversation in Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship.

Finally, to celebrate Small Business Saturday and #Giving Tuesday we focused on some of the many ways individuals can support entrepreneurs running businesses of all sizes. Not every entrepreneur has the same financial and social resources, and in Keeping Entrepreneurship at the Heart of the American Experience, we highlighted the many ways that individuals can support entrepreneurs in their daily lives and with the purchasing decisions they make.

We hope these stories has given you a chance to learn more about entrepreneurs, their valuable contributions and how you can support them. To learn more and to access a list of resources on these subjects, visit our website, follow our Medium publication #FacesofFounders and subscribe to Breaking Good, the Case Foundation’s weekly newsletter, to see more from us on entrepreneurship, race, place and gender.

There is much more work to be done and while Entrepreneurship Month may be over, we will continue to champion building onramps to entrepreneurship for all with the goal of everyone having an equal chance at unlocking the American Dream. We hope you will join us.

Keeping Entrepreneurship at the Heart of the American Experience

Posted on by Case Foundation

Entrepreneurs are vital members of our communities. The products and services they provide, innovation they spur and jobs they create are critical to the economic wellbeing of a community and a core part of the American Experience. As we have seen in the growth of the Impact Investing movement over the past ten years, entrepreneurs are also increasingly focusing part, if not all, of their efforts on addressing social and environmental problems that other stakeholders have been somewhat ineffective at solving.

While we know that the idea of entrepreneurs toiling away by themselves alone in a garage is a myth, while bringing forward these innovative new ideas, many entrepreneurs do spend a significant amount of time working by themselves or in small teams before their business gets to scale. It takes a village to get a startup off the ground, but building the community needed to succeed can be challenging. For example, 48 percent of women founders cite a lack of available mentors as a barrier to success and the average cost to launch a startup is around $30,000 with reports claiming that 80 percent of funding for new businesses comes from personal savings, friends and family. This creates additional roadblocks for entrepreneurs without wealthy friends and families.

We believe that entrepreneurs are only as strong as the community around them — investors, ecosystem builders, their team, supportive policy and you! As we approach Small Business Saturday and #GivingTuesday, we have rounded up some of the ways that anyone, anywhere can help entrepreneurs succeed.

Head to #FacesofFounders to read more about how you can support the entrepreneurship ecosystem…

Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship

Posted on by Case Foundation

At the core of the Case Foundation’s Inclusive Entrepreneurship work is finding solutions that allow all innovators, specifically women and people of color, to explore and participate in the entrepreneurship arena and all it has to offer.

As a part of the 2017 Summer Essence Festival, I had the pleasure to host an engaging panel discussion with Kristen Sonday, Co-Founder of Paladin (and a #FacesofFounders winner!), Kathryn Finney, Founder of digitalundivided and Brian Brackeen, CEO and Founder of Kairos. These changemakers are disrupting the image of who is and can be an entrepreneur and are part of a movement to seize the opportunity that inclusive entrepreneurship provides and dramatically change the distribution of capital required to make that happen.

On the Essence Festival stage, we had thoughtful and action-oriented conversation trying to unbundle what’s at play behind the following set of stats: If women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, particularly black women, women-led businesses are outperforming their male peers in many VC portfolios and racially-diverse companies are outperforming industry norms by 35 percent, why does so little capital go their way? For context, less than 10 percent of venture-backed companies have a female founder; less than one percent have a black founder; less than one percent have a Latinx founder, and; a mere 0.2 percent have a black female founder.

These statistics make up the backdrop to the great conversation we had on stage. Key themes we covered are:

  • Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not.
  • It’s not just about the financial capital; social capital is hugely important.
  • He (because it’s largely men) who make the decisions matters
  • Media plays a big role in setting default narrative and images of who is an can be an entrepreneur.

I hope you’ll watch and share your feedback on social media using  #FacesofFounders!

Breaking Down the Barriers for Women Entrepreneurs

Posted on by Case Foundation

This post was contributed by Aaron Coleman, intern at the Case Foundation.

When she was only 22 years old, U.S. Marine Ramona Pierson was hit by drunk driver. The accident put her into a coma for 18 months. When she awoke, she weighed 64 pounds was bald, blind and couldn’t move nor speak. Through her grit and determination, Pierson fought her way back–learning once again how to breathe, walk and talk. Her journey of learning how to live again inspired her to found the personal learning tech startup Declara. In only three years, Declara has grown to 65 employees, attracted $32.5 million in funding and even impressed the President of the United States.

Pierson’s story runs against many of the implicit biases women entrepreneurs face. “They are unambitious, they are afraid of risk, they bring in less returns.”  These are words we hear echoing in conversations around the world and they reflect an implicit bias against women as entrepreneurs—who in reality are just as ambitious, eager and creative as their male counterparts. As the recent Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Policy Digest report succinctly states, “research shows that women make great entrepreneurs.” The Kauffman Foundation’s report follows both the disparities and the opportunities surrounding women entrepreneurs, concluding, that while they “remain underrepresented among the ranks of entrepreneurs” the facts show that “women entrepreneurs are key to accelerating growth.”

Here at the Case Foundation we too believe in the power and potential of women in business, and are committed to leveling the playing field for underrepresented communities. We are inspired by Pierson’s story and the prospect of so many more like her. To help organizations get involved with supporting women entrepreneurs, we have included Kauffman’s top five policy recommendations below.

 

Top Five Policy Recommendations to Support Women Entrepreneurs

  1. Develop and Report Metrics for Entrepreneurship Programs and Initiatives: To understand how entrepreneurship programming serves women, attendance, participation, drop off rates and entrepreneurial outcomes should be collected and reported by gender. Armed with this information, program coordinators and funders can make adjustments to better assist women entrepreneurs.
  1. Increase the Number of Women Represented in Entrepreneurship Programs: When women are leaders at organizations that support entrepreneurs, they can help develop gender inclusive events that attract women entrepreneurs, as well as use their networks to help women entrepreneurs access mentors and financial capital. And in order to level the playing field for women, they need to be included and have equal representation in successful on-ramps for entrepreneurs.
  1. Increase Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Funding to Women-owned Businesses: In 2012, only 15 percent of SBIR awards went to women-owned businesses. Federal agencies should continue to increase awareness of the availability of these awards by partnering with women’s professional organizations and unifying outreach efforts to women entrepreneurs.
  1. Celebrate Successful Women Entrepreneurs: Stories of entrepreneurial success tend to be male-dominated. Government leaders can help deconstruct the false narrative that only men are successful entrepreneurs by lifting up stories of successful women entrepreneurs.
  1. Decrease the Risk of Becoming an Entrepreneur: Explore how various policies can help alleviate pressures and risks facing women, particularly those with young families, that can deter them from entrepreneurial ventures. For example, policymakers should examine whether subsidized child care or preschool could create a stronger environment for entrepreneurship.

 

Want to learn more about how to support women entrepreneurs? Read the Kauffman Foundation study in its entirety and join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #Ent4All.

 

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