The city's inaugural Global Entrepreneurship Week, hosted by Innovate Charlotte, has positioned itself to become a long-standing event for the local tech and startup ecosystem.
Global Entrepreneurship Week was launched in 2008 by Global Entrepreneurship Network to help people across the world cultivate their ideas and scale their businesses. It ran earlier this month with more than 40,000 events and impacted millions of entrepreneurs worldwide.
Juan Garzon, executive director of Innovate Charlotte, said the each of the local events throughout the week had solid turnout, both in person and virtually.
"For a lot of people, these events were the first time they’d been out in a while, so they were excited to be out with other ecosystem people," he said.
Garzon said one highlight of the week was the Ignite Pitch Competition during which 10 early-stage underrepresented startup founders presented their companies in front of a panel of local ecosystem leaders. The finalists were chosen out of a pool of about 80 applicants. Four startups — Just Her Rideshare, Coresnatcher, BLKResumes and Seniors in Transition — were selected as the recipients of $5,000 microgrants.
"These aren’t companies that have been part of local accelerators ... So at the beginning of the event, there were a lot of nerves," he said. "Everybody was pretty excited, and they were all very encouraging with each other, which tends to happen when you have early-stage founders together."
Garzon added, "Our panel of judges were very supportive and passionate about helping underrepresented founders, specifically."
Other noteworthy events throughout the week included the Innovation Workshop for Girls, which Garzon said sold out, as well as a Funders and Founders happy hour and the chance to sit in on a Charlotte Angel Fund meeting.
"A lot of it is brining attention to organizations and programs that people might not be aware of," he said. "There were a lot of lessons learned ... We're applying these lessons to all of our Innovate Charlotte events, not just Global Entrepreneurship Week."
Keep scrolling to learn more about the Ignite Pitch Competition winners.
Innovate Charlotte Ignite Grant Pitch Competition
BLKResumes
Founded earlier this year by Quentin DeBerry, BLKResumes is a platform that works to connect Black and Brown professionals with organizations seeking skilled, diverse talent.
DeBerry said the idea behind BLKResumes stems from his experience working as a technical recruiter and seeing a lack of diversity within the ecosystem. The solution, he said, was to eliminate the excuse that Black and Brown talent is scarce by building a platform that would put diverse candidates right in front of hiring managers.
"I hear organizations talk about how diverse teams perform better, but research showed a lot of teams, especially in tech, were not as diverse as they need to be," he said. "My solution was, 'Here is a bucket of resumes of Black talent, and now you can choose if you want to hire them or not.'"
DeBerry said the Ignite Pitch Competition was his first time doing a live pitch event, and being selected for the microgrant will help him scale the startup and prepare for a platform launch in early 2022.
"I think once you get the first one under your belt it gives you confidence. I’ve been watching the playback to learn where I can be cleaner in my delivery," he said. "(Winning) gives that reassurance that your idea means something."
Coresnatcher
Jackie Moss created her startup, Coresnatcher, based on a dream about makeshift abdominal equipment her father built when she was a child.
"I had a dream one night of something my daddy used to do with this device he made from cinder blocks and a rubber tire. He’d lay on the ground and bounce his legs up and down," she said. "The next day I bought some wood and tried to recreate what I remembered. I kept doing it until it made sense."
Coresnatcher, founded in 2017, is an exercise device that is used simply by lying on one's back and bouncing your feet up and down to engage the core. Moss said the Coresnatcher's trampoline effect makes it a low-impact way to exercise one's core, upper and lower body through a variety of different moves.
"My device makes it easier because you’re lying down and not putting pressure on your joints or using the entire weight of your body, but you're working the same muscles as crunches and bicycles," she said.
Moss said though the Ignite competition was her first pitch event, she focused on being prepared instead of feeling nervous.
"I wanted to convey the essence of what my product was, and the only way to do that was by demonstration, so my sons came and demonstrated the product while I gave the pitch," she said. "When they called my name, I was shocked, and I was relieved because it’s well-needed. It’s blessing."
Just Her Rideshare
Just Her Rideshare, founded by Kimberly Evans in 2019, is just that — a rideshare service for women, by women.
Evans said the startup is kicking its driver acquisition push into high gear as the mobile platform is slated to go live in December. The microgrant will go a long way, she said, in helping to make that happen.
"We're starting a marketing campaign to see how many drivers we can get," she said. "I wanted to have the funding to take people through the onboarding process, so that's what we'll use this funding for."
Evans said she hopes to have at least 50 drivers onboarded by next month's soft launch with a goal of about 200 drivers as the platform grows.
"We know the rideshare industry is sustainable, and people are using it," she said. "With everything going on and the fact that we’re a niche market, we have some things we have to prove."
The opportunity to pitch in front of her peers and come out a winner is a game-changer, Evans said.
"It’s impactful because every little bit we get helps to move our needle forward, as a Black, woman founder, in particular," she said. "It helps us to get to that place where that next one can take us to the next level — it all matters no matter how small or large."
Seniors in Transition
Founded in 2019, Seniors in Transition is a mobile application aimed at bridging the communication gap between nurses and family members of patients with cognitive deficiencies.
Penny Campbell founded the startup after her own struggles as a caregiver for her father, who has dementia but lives several hours away in South Carolina. The platform can help schedule and track transportation, provide shopping trips and give family members and health-care providers the ability to chat in real time about anything going on with the patient.
"When I was 26, my dad was diagnosed with dementia ... I'd get off work to drive and take him stuff or sign paperwork. I was the caregiver because my parents were divorced," she said. "I knew there had to be a better way. I knew there had to be more people like me."
Campbell said she plans to use the microgrant to fund a pilot program in partnership with several local assisted-living facilities and hopes to have Seniors in Transition officially launched sometime next year.
"Through the pilot program, we'll be able to reach nurses and caregivers who will hopefully talk about us to the facilities," she said. "In my mind, any amount that doesn’t have to come out of our pocket, I’m grateful for. I hope (Innovate Charlotte) keeps doing this to enable people like me who are just trying to get started."
