Local entrepreneurial hub Innovate Charlotte has launched a microgrant program to help early-stage, minority- or women-founded startups.
Juan Garzon, Innovate Charlotte executive director, said Jabian gave the organization $20,000 through its Project Amplify program. The Ignite Grant will provide four underrepresented founders with $5,000 each. Applications are open through Oct. 25, and finalists will be announced Nov. 1 and have the opportunity to pitch to a panel of judges during Global Entrepreneurship Week on Nov. 8.
Project Amplify, whose mission is supporting minority and women entrepreneurs in local communities also helped fund Innovate Charlotte's first CO.STARTERS accelerator cohort, which wrapped up in June. The inaugural class was made up of 56% women and 100% people of color. CO.STARTERS' second cohort, which will be all women founders, kicks off in November.
"This stems from some of the work we’ve done really seeing early-stage founders struggle with getting a little bit of funding to help with customer discovery or early product development," Garzon said. "These are companies that are way too early to go to an angel or (venture capital investor), not to mention they tend to not have as many of the connections or networks in that community because they’re underrepresented."
To qualify for the Ignite Grant, founders must have the majority of their operations in the greater Charlotte area, be in the pre-seed or early seed growth stage of growth, have an established product or service with the ability to scale and annual revenues of less than $100,000.
Garzon said Innovate Charlotte decided to hold a pitch competition for the finalists instead of a more traditional submission to give the founders more exposure to peers and potential investors.
"What’s a value to companies at this stage are connections ... If you do want to grow a scalable business, you have to be a professional networker, and that's harder to do now," he said. "A lot of our events are a mix of (in-person and virtual), so we decided on a pitch event to really give people the opportunity to meet the others in the room."
Garzon added, "The goal is to have other founders and investors in the room listening to these companies; one of the biggest factors is going to be the impact the grant makes on this business, so we want them to explain that impact."
