Amplify Louisville partners with national organization to provide funding, resources to underrepresented founders

Two years ago, Keionna Baker was a participant in a Louisville cohort sponsored by a national organization now known as Founder Forward.

Now, she’s helping to facilitate the experience for four other businesses under the name of Access Louisville as the main liaison between Founder Forward and Amplify Louisville, where she has served as the organization’s director of community engagement since July 2021. Amplify and Founder Forward have worked together in the past, but this year marks a heightened partnership between the two entities.

In her new role, Baker has been emphasizing the parts that she liked the most about the experience, while finding ways to address the things that needed improvement.

“They tried really hard to make sure that we have access to resources that were outside of our local resources. And that was nice, because it gave us an opportunity to build our network, but also just gives a completely different perspective,” said Baker, when talking about a positive for her cohort.

For example, Founder Forward has had a longstanding relationship with the National Basketball Association (NBA), allowing Baker and her fellow cohort members to have open office hours with a member of the NBA’s marketing team.

“That was really cool, because they’re so high level and for my particular company, they really helped us walk through what marketing strategy and how to set ourselves apart — and how to stay on brand with how we market ourselves,” said Baker, whose startup centers around creating diversity, equity and inclusion discussions/workshops in a variety of settings and mediums.

Receiving local, national support

When it came to what she hoped to help improve, Baker said in particular she had wished there had been more structure to the overall programming.

In addition to the non-dilutive funding, founders are also receiving pro-bono advising services from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“They will be helping the founders mitigate some of the challenges that they have faced or are facing in order to move what they're building forward,” Baker said. “And that can look like a number of different things, depending on the founder.”

Cohort members will also be attending legal-focused workshops being conducted from members of the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, on topics such as minimizing liability and protecting assets and IP.

When Baker took part in the second iteration of the program in 2021 by the name of Louisville Renaissance, she and her fellow co-founder of Elephant in the Room, Cherena Fox, received $4,000 in funding. This year’s participants will receive somewhere in the ballpark of $15,000 each.

Baker credits, in large part, that uptick in funding to a rebranding effort that centered around a social event that took place on July 26 at the Louisville Thoroughbred Society in an event co-run by Louisville-based Network + Chill. At the event, the previous patrons were asked to either donate to the program and/or become a volunteer or mentor.

James Banks, the program manager at Founder Forward based out of New York City, said that similar partnerships have been set up in other U.S. cities such as Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, the Twin Cities, Newark, New Jersey; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Founder Forward was established in 2019 under the name of Reunion as a community platform geared toward Black, Latinx and indigenous founders by providing support and advising resources and increasing access to early-stage capital.

Those who started Reunion began their efforts by going to the 2019 edition of South by Southwest and having discussions with about 85 Black, Latinx and Indigenous founders as well as 20 social movement leaders.

“We had just an open dialogue with diverse founders to ask the question: ‘What are you guys not getting?,’” Banks said. “‘We know capital is the [biggest] point, but what’s another way that we can support you and help grow your businesses?’”

Banks added given how much support cohort members are receiving from their community — both financially and through other means — he hopes the model here can be replicated elsewhere within his organization’s footprint.

“I think our Louisville cohorts are our best example of how our model does work in terms of collaborating and building that inclusive capital for founders, as well as providing them with some out-of-state services,” he said.

From the beginning

This is the third iteration of Founder Forward/Reunion’s involvement in Louisville, a connection that began in the fall of 2021 after the organization had reached out to NBA Cares to form a partnership. Someone at NBA Cares made the connection to Allan Houston, a Louisville native and former NBA standout who had been looking for a similar opportunity to the one being offered by Reunion.

The organization initially formed the first cohort, Louisville Triumphant, in 2020 after teaming forces with Houston’s organization, FISLL (Faith, Integrity, Sacrifice, Leadership and Legacy). Cohort members included Jocari T. Beattie from JoBe Products and Ricky Mason from BrainSTEM University.

In 2021, Louisville Renaissance — along with Baker and Fox — also had Amber Fields at Black UX Labs — one of the honorees at our recent Startups to Watch event on Jan. 31 — and Lecresha Sewell, who was named to our Forty Under 40 list in 2022, with Melanated Healthcare.

The program received a large boost to its mission in 2020 when Bay Area-based Kapor Capital made a six-figure investment (although the exact figure was not disclosed).

To date, the program has served 111 founders, with more than $290,000 of non-dilutive funding awarded and more than $39,000 of pro-bono work through all of its partnerships.

Founder Forward is a part of Envolve USA, a non-profit organization that focuses its efforts on underrepresented founders to promote equity and access in the national entrepreneurship ecosystem, while building a nationwide community in the process.

Access Louisville includes:

The cohort began in January and is scheduled to conclude with a to-be-determined social gathering in late March.

“It will be an opportunity for the community to come and support these founders,” Baker said. “We want the founders to have an opportunity to share what they’re building and where they're going to go from here.”