Meagan Turner almost didn't get on the bus.
The Cincinnati native and current University of Louisville J.B. Speed School of Engineering student was struggling with imposter syndrome when she was invited to join a StartupBus traveling from Akron, Ohio, to New Orleans a few years ago. She felt as though she wasn't ready for the five-day, immersive tech bootcamp and pitch competition, which draws hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs from North America and Europe each year.
"I had just learned to code and I was teaching myself... I didn't think I was on the same level as everyone else," Turner said. "I almost didn't join the bus because of how intimidated I was. I didn't know what I could contribute in a bus full of serious hackers."
Now, Turner isn't just riding a StartupBus — she's the lead conductor of the competition's Advancing Black Entrepreneurs (ABE) bus. The coach will be home to 30 Black entrepreneurs for five days as it travels from Cincinnati to Austin, Texas, next month.
Buspreneurs
Turner, who is now working toward a degree in electrical engineering, had recently dropped out of college when she applied to join a StartupBus back in 2019. She was changing career paths, switching from international finance to engineering, and found community in online tech groups, like Hackathon Hackers on Facebook. That's where she first heard about StartupBus.
StartupBus, founded in 2010, brings together some of the top tech talent and idea-stage entrepreneurs from across the country — well, really North America, as there's a regular bus that travels from Mexico City. It's equal parts hackathon, tech bootcamp and pitch competition, and it's been described as "the first year at a startup in a week."
Buspreners, as they're called, start with an idea and then move on to research, building out the tech, getting beta testers and actually selling the product or service in only a few days. It's tough, but StartupBus has put founders on a path to successful business ventures, such as LISNR and Fireside, and more than $2.5 billion in venture capital, according to its website.
After applying, Turner got an interview with the Ohio conductor Jay Oldaker, where she shared her idea for a startup and her technical skills, which was coding in C and C++. He quickly offered her a spot on the bus, and later a scholarship to make it make it possible.
"At the time, I was working multiple jobs just to pay for the classes I was taking in Cincinnati, so I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to afford it," Turner said. "But I'm always the type of person to do things that don't make sense, so even if I wasn't financially ready for it, that's what I did."
Once on the road with her fellow buspreneurs, Turner said she pitched her idea for an application and sensor that would make research labs safer. Everyone teamed up to work on different ideas, and while Turner tried to merger her concept with someone else's, she ultimately decided to pursue it on her own. While there were trade-offs with going it alone, she said, it ended up gave her time to network with the other riders and other buses.
While she wasn't on the ABE bus in 2019, Turner said she was envious of their experiences, which included some cultural stops in addition the regular stops at incubators and tech-focused places. It had social impact startup ideas in the areas of health care and financial literacy as it pertains to the Black community, while some of the other buses' ideas were more focused on business efficiencies and cybersecurity.
When Turner made it to New Orleans for the culmination of the pitch event, she didn't have the money for a flight back to Cincinnati. Instead, she was going to take a Greyhound bus, which prolonged her stay.
That's how Turner got face time with the leadership of StartupBus and past conductors, which put her on the radar as a potential leader for the competition's first in-person experience since the coronavirus pandemic.
"I'm always talking about black people in tech, and so that's probably why my name came up when they were thinking about a conductor for the ABE bus this year," she said.
All aboard
This year, seven StartupBuses with recruits from 11 regions will embark on the journey to Austin on July 27. Turner's bus, the ABE bus, will depart from Cincinnati and will make a stop in Louisville.
She's already raised the $40,000 in sponsorship dollars required for each bus to cover expenses, but she's still recruiting and selecting the 30 Black tech talents that will join her. If you're interested, you can learn more about the ABE bus here.
"I think being in this role where I'm connected to people in the Midwest — my home in Cincinnati, Louisville where I'm in school and live, Indianapolis and the surrounding areas — is helping me feel more comfortable in my home," Turner said. "I'm building a community... Selfishly, I've been wanting this for a really long time, but I think everyone has a hard time connecting."
Turner said she wanted to experience working at a big company and a startup, so she worked at GE Appliances' First Build in Louisville and now she's interning at a tech company in San Francisco. She doesn't know what she wants to do yet after college — she still has a few semesters left at UofL — but she wants it to be something she can call her own.
"I want to do something that combines art and engineering in a beautiful way," she said. "But I really don't know what that looks like for me."
