Venturing to Our Inner Cities, One Startup at a Time

We’ve all heard about great programs for budding entrepreneurs that assist with getting small businesses off the ground. In Boston we have MassChallenge—a global startup competition that nurtures entrepreneurs and provides entrepreneurs with advice, access to capital and myriad networking events. Using a similar model, Excelerate Labs in Chicago harbors 10 startup companies each summer and links them with mentors, capital and connections—in exchange for 6% ownership in the company.  TJust today I read about another program called DailyCandy that hosts a “Start Small, Go Big” contest that pairs burgeoning small businesses (involved in fashion, food, home and beauty) with industry mogul mentors as well as PR, marketing, finance and technology support.

These programs are undeniably important to the startup community and to the economic vitality of our cities. After all, it has been said, time and time again, that small businesses are the #1 driver of economic growth.

What these programs apparently lack, however, is an emphasis on placing entrepreneurs in inner city locations. Companies participate in these programs and then take off to Silicon Valley, New York, Houston, etc. where startup networks are more developed, venture capital seemingly flows endlessly and companies then grow and thrive.

A new program sets out to change all that.

“Venture for America” (VFA) is a new nonprofit that pairs creative, eager entrepreneurs in our nation’s most distressed cities—cities that need excitement, need a fresh new perspective, and need young blood to help revitalize the inner city economies.

Launched last month, VFA is modeled after the famous “Teach for America” program that places top-performing college graduates at schools in distressed areas. Similarly, VFA will recruit top college graduates and place them for two years at startups in cities like Detroit, New Orleans, and Providence. The program is focused on growing companies in the renewable/sustainable energy, green manufacturing, biotech, healthcare, IT and education sectors.

VFA fellows will be paid up to $38k per year, with the top performing fellow (at the end of the 2 years) receiving $100k in seed funding to start his or her own startup venture. One of the overall goals of the program is to groom VFA fellows to the point where they are comfortable starting their own businesses, and hopefully will do so in the same distressed cities they were initially placed.

 Ultimately, VFA seeks to create 100,000 jobs in the US by 2025.

We are incredibly excited to see how this program shakes out. Too often, inner cities are forgotten as a place to start and grow businesses. A few weeks ago, we profiled another organization whose “Sandbox Initiative” also seeks to utilize the assets within our inner cities (think: cheap rent!) in order to generate new small businesses. Simply put, we need more of this. And VFA takes one giant leap in the right direction.

BY Amanda Maher on August 1st, 2011

TAGS: