Entrepreneur Mark Haney is launching a funded accelerator that will help early-stage entrepreneurs vet their business ideas with the support of local and international mentors, and which could invest into seed-round stages.
The Sacramento Growth Factory seeks to support local entrepreneurs with access to office space, support services, partners, mentoring and potentially money to develop companies that can attract further outside investment.
Haney, founder of HaneyBiz, has personally invested in more than 50 companies, he said on his podcast show last week.
He said the Growth Factory seeks to increase the number of investible companies in the region, which could, in turn, attract more outside investment to the Sacramento area.
“When Covid hit, we decided to put that on steroids,” he said on his podcast. “I’m going to ignite an entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Monique Brown, co-founder and managing director of the nonprofit Sacramento Growth Factory, said during the podcast that the effort will be industry agnostic, and it will provide founders of entrepreneurial businesses with “access to resources that they would otherwise never have access to.”
For one, the Sacramento Growth Factory is a partner in the Global Accelerator Network, which supports more than 120 accelerators around the world. The Global Accelerator Network can help entrepreneurs to quickly build connections and to get questions answered.
The Sacramento Growth Factory seeks at its outset to help entrepreneurs in three main areas. Firstly, it will help them quickly identify if they have something or if they don’t, Brown said.
Secondly, it will offer access to office space and mentorship, and it will use the information from their validation efforts to build a strategy to attract funding.
And the third part is support and services “to keep the costs low and give you the tools you need,” Brown said.
One of those tools is also supporting founders to help them lead and manage a company.
The concept is that the Sacramento Growth Factory will have an investment fund associated with it, but the founders didn’t say how large that fund may be. Brown didn't immediately respond to emails seeking further information.
Rick Spencer, vice president of community growth with HaneyBiz, said it's vital to bring together a fund with an accelerator in the Sacramento region.
“We always knew there was a capital issue in the region,” Spencer said.
And more than money, the effort needs involvement of mentors and other local businesses to support local startups to “help these founders succeed.”
He said Sacramento’s business community is excited about startups, but “that’s not enough,” adding that others need to get involved as investors, supporters, clients and mentors.
Sacramento has been supportive of the idea of helping startups, Spencer said, but “this ecosystem has been fragmented for many years. … (We need to) create doors into this community.”
The Sacramento Growth Factory has partnerships with Folsom-based venture capital firm Moneta Ventures LLC, the Greater Sacramento Economic Council and the Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at California State University Sacramento, Spencer said. .
“A lot of companies that come out of there may be the ones that we want to invest into,” Lokesh Sikaria, managing partner of Moneta Ventures, told the Business Journal. “It helps the ecosystem.”
He said Moneta will be on the Growth Factory’s advisory board.
Haney said that investing is not a zero-sum game.
“If one entrepreneur wins, it makes an impact on the whole community,” Haney said.
