Tenacity.
It’s the trait every entrepreneur needs to build a successful business, especially in the face of the current health and economic crises.
It’s also what brought together three local leaders for a recent panel discussion about the state of the region’s innovation economy: Kate Goodall, co-founder and CEO of Halcyon; Marcus Bullock, founder and CEO of FlikShop; and Seth Goldman, founder of Honest Tea and, now, Eat the Change and PLNT Burger.
That doggedness and constant ability to adapt, they agree, is what has positioned founders across the region to persevere in the face of the pandemic. They also know that firsthand.
The trio sat down last week for a virtual conversation that I recently moderated as part of DC Inno’s 2020 Inno on Fire awards celebration. The three honorees were among 50 winners and nine "Blazers" representing nine industry categories. They shared their thoughts about the current D.C.-area startup landscape, their biggest advice to entrepreneurs, how their experiences prepared them to navigate this moment and what’s needed to foster equity and promote access to capital.
“Ultimately if you’re a woman or you’re Black or just from any marginalized group and you’re trying to start a business, it’s going to cost you more in energy and time and money to get to the same place,” Goodall said. “There’s lots of things that we can all do. And I think the good news is that now, more people see that — more people accept it. … There’s no way people can, en masse, ignore that anymore, so I’m really confident that that is going to hopefully start to head in the right direction.”
The panelists discussed the need for all founders to reexamine their business plans, think creatively, make changes and pivot. For FlikShop, Bullock said, that meant hiring up and quickly building a “duct-taped version” of enterprise software it had originally planned for January 2021, in addition to its direct-to-consumer product — an app for incarcerated individuals to connect with family members through postcards.
For Goldman's Eat the Change, it meant holding off on launching a new food brand and instead focusing on activism while laying the groundwork to hit the market early next year. And for Halcyon, an organization that relies heavily on in-person interaction with its community, that meant figuring out how to produce high-quality virtual programming while supporting founders in its residency fellowships and incubator.
Coronavirus has required executives at every stage, including the panelists, to continue rethinking how they engage with their audiences remotely. That especially applies while building a new brand from scratch, in Goldman's case. “We have to think about: How do we still create and how do we communicate authentic passion for what we’re doing without that traditional tool?”
Read about this year's Inno on Fire winners here and watch the full discussion with Bullock, Goldman and Goodall here.
