Fostering A Culture Of Entrepreneurship

Black Tech Week brought one of its networking events for entrepreneurs, investors, tech talent, and creatives to Detroit for the first time last fall for a weekend of learning and camaraderie.

The conference also highlighted an overlooked strategy in workforce development. The industry often focuses on people working for established companies, investing in recruitment and retention strategies to fulfill short-term gaps in local economies. But entrepreneurs are “talent” too, as sources for new ideas, goods and services that lead to job creation and economic growth. Most entrepreneurs start small—as owner-operators, co-founders or micro-businesses (10 employees or fewer). These small businesses have generated nearly 13 million net new jobs over the past 25 years, accounting for two of every three jobs added to the U.S. economy.

Governments have an important role in fostering entrepreneurship and creating an environment that supports and encourages it. The need is urgent because by many measures the 2010s was one of the least entrepreneurial periods in the country’s recent history, according to the Economic Innovation Group.

The bipartisan public policy organization arrived at its conclusion after analyzing the U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Dynamic Statistics, which provides annual measures of firm startups and shutdowns and job creation for the economy. It found that the country’s startup rate stood at 8.2% in 2019, essentially unchanged since 2010, and well below the 10.1% rate in 2006, before the 2007-2008 global financial crisis.

One of the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs is access to capital. Startups founded by women and people of color tend to struggle even more for funding. In 2020, just 1% of venture-backed startups in the U.S. have Black founders, according to a report by RateMyInvestor, a website where founders review venture firms.

Cincinnati-based Lightship Foundation is trying to change that. A year ago, the foundation, which aims to drive growth within the minority innovation economy, acquired Black Tech Week, which had built a minority tech ecosystem by hosting a festival in Miami since 2013.

Black Tech Week is about inclusion, building community and pulling in diverse perspectives. One of the co-founders compared the inclusive approach to eating from a garden, rather than getting a piece of the pie, as is often talked about in business. The pie will ultimately run out, she said, but the garden lends itself to growing through seeds planted for others.

Lightship moved Black Tech Week to Cincinnati because they wanted to give Black techies throughout the Midwest a chance to attend, said Candice Matthews Brackeen, CEO and founder of the foundation. Black Tech Week is also establishing a presence in other mid-sized cities like Detroit because, she says, the venture industry has long overlooked underrepresented founders in the Midwest.

Cincinnati is building on the success of Black Tech Week to create an innovation ecosystem, with clusters of corporations, startups and academics driving new developments and job creation. Brackeen recently announced that Cincinnati will remain the host city for the conference for the next three years.

Even before Black Tech Week came to Detroit, a community-led movement had started to increase Black tech representation in the metro area, led by entrepreneurs Johnnie and Alexa Turnage. Earlier this year, the Detroit couple met with a few other Black tech founders. What started as a group of about five people has turned into a weekly gathering of hundreds that has become known as Black Tech Saturdays. The opportunity this creates for Black tech founders is being noticed nationwide, and Black Tech Saturdays is expanding its model to cities as diverse as Baltimore and Miami.

The popularity indicates that Black and Brown entrepreneurs are eager to see themselves and their distinct needs better represented in the existing entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Turnages invite guest speakers, host workshops and connect people to mentors. This growing ecosystem of Black founders in Detroit and the greater Midwest is seeing results in securing funding. For example, JustAir Solutions received $33,000 from the Michigan Central Scale Fund, a public-private partnership. JustAir is installing air-quality monitors in the Detroit metro area to track pollution and provide real-time data to residents.

State and local leaders in government and business should pay attention to these community-based movements if they want to grow entrepreneurial activity in their cities. They give entrepreneurs structure with the consistency of weekly or monthly meetups and the mutual support and networks they create are the building blocks of successful businesses.