Twenty aspiring entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds will get the chance this spring to pursue a business idea through a free eight-week education program at the University of North Florida’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
This is the second consecutive year that the Swisher Start-Up Cohort for Underrepresented Entrepreneurs — sponsored by the Jacksonville-based international tobacco company — has been offered to aspiring entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds. According to Entrepreneurship Director Karen Bowling, the majority of the cohort’s members are Black women.
“The whole idea [of the Swisher cohorts] is just to kind of level the playing field and create opportunities,” she said.
The incoming cohort, which will start classes on March 2, were picked out of a pool of 58 applicants.
“It’s really based not on who’s going to be the most successful, but who we think we can help the most,” said Kara Barber, assistant director for the CEI.
Barber said ideas within certain industries were especially popular with this cohort, including for products serving cooking or cosmetic purposes.
A pitch competition on May 4 — at which 10 cohort members will pitch their business idea to a panel of judges — will result in three cash prizes: third place will win $2,000, second place will win $3,000, and first place will win $5,000, all double last year’s prizes.
A second cohort of 20 entrepreneurs will join a related program in the fall. That program is designed for early-stage companies that are already generating revenue.
According to Alexandria Deal, manager of inclusion, diversity and transformation at Swisher, funding for this year’s cohorts is part of Swisher’s inclusion, diversity and transformation initiative, launched in July 2020. Deal’s position was created as part of that initiative.
“We wanted to support companies and entrepreneurs in Northeast Florida and also work with UNF with their Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, since they already do that for their program,” Deal said. “So it just reinforces our commitment to our inclusion and diversity strategy.”
The Swisher-funded programs are a reflection of the way the UNF center, now in its third year, is changing — specifically by organizing shorter and more specialized cohorts. While the first UNF program was a year long, the center has since shortened it so that entrepreneurs who want to get started on their business don’t have to wait. They’ve also specialized the cohorts by industry — holding a medically focused cohort, for instance — because it’s easier to find relevant speakers for the whole group and for cohort members to bond.
Looking back on the nearly 70 founders they’ve worked with, Bowling added, the CEI is also looking to check back in on the companies they’ve helped foster — how much revenue is being brought in, how many employees hired, and so forth — in order to best calibrate its programming going forward.
“Our hope is that anybody who wants to start a business or needs help, if they walk in any of our doors, that we try to get them to the right place at a time where they can get some help,” Bowling said.
