After CEO Michelle Maryns first started her company We Sparkle, in 2018, not many people were familiar with how artificial intelligence could benefit their professional lives. But after ChatGPT hit the mainstream discourse, instead of blank stares, Maryn’s company is now greeted with excitement and curiosity from larger organizations.
We Sparkle’s mission has always been to empower underserved entrepreneurs such as women and people of color through AI tools. Its primary product offering include monthly-based subscriptions to AI administrative and marketing services. It also provides other digital resources such as payment services and entrepreneurship education. We Sparkle currently provides its services to over 715 individual entrepreneurs, but is aiming to soon expand its entrepreneur client list to 1,000.
Maryns is also looking at a new client base to scale its growth. In the past year, We Sparkle has garnered new strategic partnerships and investments, such as Meet Minneapolis and Allianz’ new equity accelerator. It was also selected by the City of Minneapolis for its Business and Technical Assistance Program, which pays for small businesses to get free access to selected organizations.
“People are starting to understand the power of AI,” Maryns said. “We have seen in history that those who have access to resources and tools have more economic power, and AI is the new tool.”
We Sparkle has so far signed on 10 economic development organizations to its client roster, and is looking to expand to 30 within the next year. One way Maryns is intending to get to that number, is expand nationwide.
“There are other tourism boards like Meet Minneapolis across the country,” Maryns said. “There are also many other economic development organizations dedicated to DEI in other states.”
One of Maryn’s additional goals with economic development organizations is to make their educational content more accessible. She said that incorporating AI's language processing abilities can help open up the information these organizations are trying to provide to business founders.
Mayrns first started We Sparkle after interviewing women business owners concerning their main struggles. After finding out that administrative tasks and answering the same questions from customers consistently made saving time harder, Maryns knew that AI had the ability to solve that barrier from her college days. Maryns believes that most of the other artificial intelligence companies don't put their main focus on empowering small business owners, also specifically owned by women and people of color. This is what she believes makes We Sparkle stand out amongst its competitors.
