Sustainible, a local tech-focused startup that offers a business model assessment tool to entrepreneurs and their startups, announced it entered into a partnership with Bridgeway Capital and microcredit funding platform Kiva Pittsburgh that will supply eligible businesses with Sustainible's tech-driven evaluation tools.
It comes as part of a larger program offering aimed at helping startups from Kiva Pittsburgh, which is celebrating the recent surpassing of $2 million raised on its platform for local businesses that are operating in low-income areas or for those that are owned by people who are in a minority population group.
The partnership marks the first major collaboration for Sustainible since its founding in 2020 by CEO Talpha Harris — a Business Times 30 Under 30 award winner in 2021 — and her husband, K-Andre Harris, who serves as the startup's chief technology officer. Sustainible also employs a team of seven interns for communications, product development and software development roles.
Last fall, Sustainible conducted a pilot program of its tools for PGH Lab and the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh. Now, it'll put its own assessment tool under a more rigorous assessment, offering it to 22 eligible startups selected by Kiva Pittsburgh, which has since opened the application form for former Kiva borrowing businesses to apply to join the cohort.
"I'm really excited about it," Talpha Harris said. "We are assisting from start to finish, from the design of the program to the implementation of the program and then also using our tool to assess the businesses that qualify for the program.
"As soon as the cohort kicks off, everyone will receive a Sustainible assessment; it's an automatic, personalized plan on how they can improve their business, and then we'll work to execute that, to connect them to who they need to be connected to, and measure their progress over the time of the cohort as well," she said. "Showing that (the assessment) works and it being helpful for the startups, that is what excites me the most."
Harris began working full-time on Sustainible in December 2021 after previously running it part-time while working as the entrepreneurship hub manager at Bridgeway Capital. Prior to that role, she served as Bridgeway's business accelerator associate. She graduated with a degree in sustainable development and entrepreneurship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019.
Combining all of those experiences and using them to then run Sustainible only seemed like the next progression to make in her career, she said.
"I was very grateful and blessed for that, basically I'm continuing business development, economic development and the operations that I was just expanding and also being able to partner (with)," Harris said. "I just love what I do, it kind of fit into everything that I was already doing just in a more tech aspect."
