New StarterStudio CEO Dawn Haynes aims to give Orlando entrepreneurs the help she wasn’t able to get

In 2008, the startup co-founded by Dawn Haynes had $75,000 in early funding and was a winner of the Crummer Venture Plan Competition at Rollins College.

However, it did not survive the economic downturn and subsequent drop-off in startup investment. Haynes wonders if that would have been different had Orlando-based startup accelerator Starter Studio existed.

"In retrospect, I look back now and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, where was StarterStudio when I was doing this?'" Haynes told Orlando Inno. "I really feel that had I had the opportunity to get engaged with a StarterStudio and some of the later-stage programs that we now offer, that would have enabled StarterStudio to introduce me to VCs."

Now, Haynes has the opportunity to ensure emerging tech companies in Central Florida get access to the resources and connections she wasn't able to get five years before StarterStudio was founded. Haynes started as CEO and executive director of StarterStudio in April, replacing Interim Executive Director Lilian Myers.

Haynes brings with her more than 30 years of career experience at organizations big and small, including The Walt Disney Co., British Airways and nearly 20 years running her own consulting firm. Most recently, she was CEO of local nonprofit Community Resource Network from 2017 to April 2022.

Here, Haynes shares more about her background and what's next for StarterStudio, which grew its startup education programs by 200% during the Covid-19 pandemic.

What entrepreneurial experience from your career do you bring to this role? I’ve always had an entrepreneurial bent in everything I've done. Even when I've worked with large, global, well-known organizations, I've always been involved in innovation or an intrapreneurial initiative within the business. I had my own consulting company for a number of years, and so much of what I did there was to help the development of startups or early-stage businesses and work with established organizations to really think about how to scale their business and grow their assets.   

You also previously launched a tech-focused startup in Central Florida. What put you on that path? I did my MBA at Crummer from 2005-2007. In our second year of the program, we did the entrepreneurship class. The idea was that we would come up with an idea for a business and develop the business model and plan. I came up with a business as a result of the experience I had over the preceding six months. I got divorced in the middle of my MBA program. Although I was a businesswoman, a career person and I considered myself to be unbelievably organized and capable, handling the sale of our family home, buying a new home for my 15-year-old daughter and me, and moving during the six-week summer break of the MBA, I felt like I’d been hit by a freight train. It was like, “Where do I start?” Then as I started having conversations with other people, other women going through divorce, I realized there were people who were far worse off than I was in terms of having the knowledge and resources to handle the impact. I was talking to college-educated women who were telling me they never had their own credit history. They’d never had their own credit card. I thought about how I could help people in those situations access all of the different products, services and people who would be support systems. When women go through divorce, quite often there's a loss of trust. Who can I trust? Who can I go to? Who will understand what I’m going through? 

What was the business? My idea was a tech-based business, an online community that would have relevant, valuable content and blog posts to address all the pieces of a life turned upside down. In addition, there would be businesses we would be able to review, explore, evaluate whether they really did understand what a woman was going through in that whole process, and then provide these as recommended resources so we would create a really great online community where that trust and relationship would be built in both directions.

What happened to that business? It was fully developed through our entrepreneurship class. I found my co-founder, who was one of my classmates. We created the business and the beta version of the website. We raised the first $75,000 from people we knew and our own investment. We won the Rollins Venture Plan Competition — sadly, there was no money for winning back in 2007. We were invited to go to the Sunshine State competition and won that — again, no monetary prize. That gave me the ability to go to the Florida Venture Forum in early 2008, where we presented to a bunch of VCs. I did that right as the economy collapsed and there was little appetite for investment in the pretty new concept of online communities. Myspace was the major player; Facebook was in its infancy. We weren’t in a position to develop the business further without major funding.

Do you have any ideas of the direction you want to see StarterStudio take under your leadership? I'm only just beginning to understand the depth and the breadth of the tech ecosystem here in Central Florida. As it’s early days in my new role, the way I can answer that is the accelerator programs for startup and early-stage businesses will be, has to be, the core of what we do. I also feel StarterStudio has the opportunity to be an important, valuable connector within the tech ecosystem here. Many of our startup entrepreneurs do not know who's part of that ecosystem and where to find the resources they need to be successful... By understanding the ecosystem, we have the ability to refer them and connect them to the other resources throughout that ecosystem for each stage of their entrepreneurial journey.

Where’s your favorite place to kayak? The Winter Park Chain of Lakes is one of my favorites. Or the Wekiva River. 

Dawn Haynes, CEO, StarterStudio

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