Startup Virginia has officially kicked off the fifth session of its Entrepreneur Certificate Course, a free resource for Richmond community members to gain valuable knowledge on developing a business of their own that has been particularly attractive to marginalized groups.
The course is free and open to Startup Virginia and local residents. This has become a large factor in drawing participants; Sonia O’Malley, program manager at Startup Virginia, even said that 90-100% of course attendees end up being community members rather than established Startup Virginia members. Business experts that are part of the Startup Virginia mentor network teach classes on all aspects of getting your business off the ground, like defining your idea, marketing, sales, legal, finances and pitch decks.
O’Malley and Erica Babcock, marketing and operations manager for Startup Virginia, believe this is mostly because of the low barrier to entry for those who otherwise may not have the means to educate themselves on entrepreneurship. Both women work on the team organizing and promoting the course to members and the community.
"The goal is to make the barrier to entry for education as low as possible and also make sure that it's at a time that is accessible to people,” Babcock said. "Because the course is free, it's low risk to try to pursue a business idea and see whether it's viable, compared to business school or expensive online courses. Having it accessible makes it easier for people, especially minorities and women, to consider entrepreneurship, and that’s really why it's been so successful.”
Of the 308 participants who attended one of the two courses in 2019, 43% were women and 50% were minorities, reflecting an impressive diversity when considering the typical makeup of those usually included in the startup conversation.
"Being a minority business myself, I understand that when people look at the RVA startup ecosystem, there's two things that people usually see,” Richmond business owner Mike King told Inno. “They see male and white. What [Startup Virginia] is doing is so attractive to a large number of minorities and women and it’s making people who are not from here see Richmond in a different way.”
King completed the Entrepreneur Certificate Course in a previous session and says it’s what helped get his media company off the ground.
"I needed to turn my passion into a sustainable business model,” he said. “Between planning, financials, legal; it was all those modules that they offered and taking that with what I was already doing that really helped me define my brand. The lesson of how to run a business has been very helpful.”
After working in advertising for CW Richmond and NBC 12, King decided to turn to telling his own stories of the people who make up the Richmond community through a variety of radio and television shows. After taking the Certificate Course, King felt more confident to put his business ideas out there and create a viable Richmond-based company out of it.
"We have a great entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Babcock said. “There are so many resources that it can be overwhelming for people to know where to begin. If they go through the course and take their business to the next level, then I think it's a success.”
The Richmond-based incubator first began the course when they opened in March 2018 on a path to fulfill their mission of encouraging the launching of high-growth companies in Virginia. The course takes place once a week during a nine week period, with classes lasting from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on class days. Due to schedule shifts, this spring’s session was reduced to only eight weeks and the first two lessons were condensed into one class.
The Entrepreneur Certificate Course has been the jumping off point for several business owners whose businesses are now making waves in the Richmond market, such as Paige Wilson of Naborforce, Harold Frans of APEX and Joshna Seelam of Kilo Medical Solutions.
"Whether you have an existing business and want to explore creating a product within it or if you are in Corporate America and have always had this idea that's been nagging at you and you want to test it out, this course is for you,” O’Malley said.
The various weekly courses are listed on Startup Virginia’s Eventbrite pages and their website, although currently the listings show several upcoming courses as sold out or sales ended. The current session runs until April 28 and, if all goes well, there will be a second session later in the year.
