 Entrepreneurship is problem-solving, right, and when you're diverse and inclusive with your entrepreneurial community, you start solving problems that you didn't even know existed. That is where your innovation lies and that is actually where we find the influence within the country. With women and communities on the margins, they must be in the room. They must be a part of answering what is needed and what the future looks like. The Walton Family Foundation is focused on supporting initiatives that foster a culture of entrepreneurship and office outcomes. We know that entrepreneurs at Vibrancy, they create jobs and they bring innovative ideas and concepts to the region. When you look at what entrepreneurs are and let's go at small business owners, that is the lifeblood of America. So that is where you're going to find your job creation. We want to create a thriving ecosystem, a thriving economy, which means that we need more successful small businesses. Essentially, what we're trying to create here at Venture Noire is an ecosystem for success. Venture Noire is focused on the co-creation of innovation and partnership to allow them to invest in those innovative solutions led by female founders and founders of color. So the station is a community space for adolescents, a space where they can come in and meet people who are all interested in creating something, all interested in art, all interested in music, interested in entrepreneurship, and interested in making a difference in their community. I get the question a lot like, what do we do at the Innovation Club? At our core, we provide access. The focus of the work is to build impassioned entrepreneurs and impassioned makers. No matter your demographic makeup, your geographic location, your background, your experience, your connections, we want to provide access to the tools, skills, resources necessary for you to be successful. It can happen. It's possible. I believe that a different future is possible and I have a role as agency in creating a new future. Starting a business is incredibly hard for a multitude of reasons. I think there's inherent fear and I think there's a lot of just self-doubt. Less than 20% of the venture capital is directed at the heartland. In addition to these geographic disparities, less than 10% of all capital is invested in female and other underrepresented founders. There is a fear factor there that I'm going to fail if I try or there's not enough resources to support me as a minority or a woman. Having community that has your back is really important. There are a lot of shared resources that can come by way of mentorship and having the right conversation with the right person who has a little bit more knowledge or access or a network that can amplify what you're doing. When you look at a place like Northwest Arkansas, it is an institution of success. Real success comes from your 100-year plan and thinking about the future and that is the job of an entrepreneur is to think about a world that does not exist. We're looking to shape the region and lead the country and the world for years and decades and generations to come. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to all who are joining us today in this session of investing in entrepreneurial ecosystems. In this session, we are going to learn about how philanthropy can play a role in fostering entrepreneurial ecosystems. As you may already be aware, entrepreneurship is key for any economy. Entrepreneurs and startups add vibrancy to communities. They create jobs. They are contributors to innovation because they bring new ideas and concepts to the table. When we think about philanthropic funding, entrepreneurship does not immediately come to mind. A little introduction about myself. I am Elin Lai. I'm a senior program officer overseeing economic development initiatives at the Watson Family Foundation. At the Foundation, we tackle social and environmental problems with a long-term approach to create access to opportunity for people and communities. The program area I'm working on focuses on Northwest Arkansas. And my goal is to build vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, as part of advancing the region's economic and cultural vibrancy. Fostering entrepreneurship, I believe, is really important during these times, as the world continues to battle the devastation that's caused by the pandemic. With me today, I'm really pleased to have a distinguished panel of leaders from the entrepreneurs of organizations that I've worked with to advance entrepreneurship. Let me get started by getting them to introduce themselves and the organizations they are representing. Next, with the ladies. Marta, why don't you start us off? Hello, Elin. Thank you for asking me to be on this today. I'm excited to talk about Kiva Loans for Entrepreneurs, as we like to say they are loans that change lives. So I'm based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and my official title is the Capital Access Manager for the Northwest Arkansas Kiva Hub. Kiva itself is an international nonprofit, crowd-funded online lender, and it brings over 1.9 million lenders onto a fabulous platform to make loans to entrepreneurs throughout the world. Kiva US is a program of Kiva that came out a little bit later after Kiva was founded in 2005. And so our Kiva loans in the US are just for small business owners. And so my personal background is as a public school educator and as a business and banking attorney. And then I came into the Kiva role when I went to work for the Startup Junkie Foundation in Fayetteville, Arkansas. So all our services are provided free of charge to the Northwest Arkansas home region. And I assist borrowers with the Kiva application process. So anyone can apply for a Kiva loan, but we have data that shows they are typically much less likely to drop off and give up, and they are more successful when they have someone who has some experience with the online application and gathering documents and things like that. The main focus of Kiva is that the loans are to improve the lives of those who have been historically and systematically discriminated against in the lending industry in the United States of America. So approximately 75% to 80% of all Kiva loans go to women. Our target service is to serve not only women, but minorities, those with felony background records, the LBGTQIA community, veterans, persons with personal disabilities, and those who, due to a very low income status, have been historically disadvantaged in the lending arena. Thanks very much, Marta. I'm a fan of Kiva. And I think Kiva, it's great at facilitating access to capital for entrepreneurs. Now, how about you, Janem? Great, thanks, Elan. So my name's Janem Arcann. I'm the managing director of Endeavor, Northwest Arkansas, and Tulsa. We support entrepreneurs all around the world because we fundamentally believe that there are people who can change their economies and transform their countries and regions, but they just don't have the same access to mentorship, to inspiration, to capital, to structural support. So I work with companies in Northwest Arkansas and Tulsa, but my colleagues all around the world work in 40 markets, so everything from Nigeria to Egypt to Brazil, and we support entrepreneurship. We do that through access to capital. So Endeavor has a venture fund. Fund three is $140 million, where we have fund four being raised in Q1 of next year. We do that through access to mentorship, and that's both peer-to-peer mentorship, so a fantastic gaming company in Cairo can talk about their problem scaling and the issues that they're having with a fantastic gaming company out of Detroit. And we do that through access to, and so we sort of think about that as talent, right? Sort of mentorship and talent. So access to mentorship, peer-to-peer, and sort of senior leadership, helping you guide your business the way they may not have had access to guide their business. And then talent all around, how do you become a better leader? How do you hire the right people? How do you think about the key change makers in your own company? So we do that across 40 markets, and we do that because we believe that entrepreneurship and people who wanna disrupt and change our world live everywhere, but they don't all have access to the same resources. Oh, and I guess I'll give a little background. So I grew up in finance. I'm originally from Turkey and I lived in New York and moved to Northwest Arkansas about eight years ago. And I saw something in this region that I think anybody who comes here will see, which is that there's so much potential to make a difference for people that live here and wanna change the world in biking or change the world in entrepreneurship or in restaurants or in education. There's just opportunity here a lot from the Support of the Walton Family Foundation. But I moved here about eight years ago and I'm so excited to be part of this community. That's wonderful, Jinem. I think Endeavor is doing really important work because like a lot of the, there's a lot of potential in this heartland, but then a lot of the capital and even the mentors are kind of like concentrated on the coast. And so Endeavor is bringing this and making it accessible for the entrepreneurs that's not in the coast, not at the coast. That's wonderful. Kenan, how about you? Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having us, Yulin. I appreciate this and excited to be on with two amazing leaders that we have going on today. So I'm Kenan Beasley. I'm the founder of Venture Noir. We're a national nonprofit focused simply put on improving black quality of life through entrepreneurship. We're based in Bentonville. I think if I say it in a less fancy way, we're about job creation, right? So when we look at a lot of the issues that have been plaguing the black community and causing a lot of the disadvantages that have been happening today is through the great flight of what's happened with fleeing jobs. And so our mission has been really rooted in how do we use entrepreneurship as a way of creating sustainable jobs and what is that next industrial revolution that can positively impact the black community? Just by background for me, I am a serial entrepreneur but I started as a corporate guy coming out of West Point. I ended up at Procter & Gamble. That's how I fell in love with Arkansas being on the amazing Walmart team down there but then went on to be a vice president at L'Oreal before starting my own entrepreneurial endeavors. I came off two exits and really felt extremely isolated in my entrepreneurial journey. And I felt that there was a desire to create what is the next Silicon Valley and to create that kind of robust ecosystem for entrepreneurs of color. In order to do that, we had to come to a region where one, there was incredible talent but incredible resources and I think the willingness from a philanthropic community looking to solve something that has been a tremendous issue that's plagued this country for quite a while. That led us to Bentville and talking with amazing leaders like Elon. So happy to be here and excited to learn from everyone but contribute everything I can. It's great to have you, Kenan. You might find Kenan familiar because he was featured in the video that was played prior to the discussion. So I'm gonna get the discussion going and I'm gonna start off with a very simple question. I'm sure you all are doing what you're doing right now because you believe it's important. So why do you think that entrepreneurship is important? I'm gonna switch it around and ask Kenan to start us off. You know, I think it's important because when I really look at the state of the country and just thinking overall in the US and where we are economically, we have a couple of things that are hurting us and this was sped up through obviously the pandemic and it is what is the future of workforce? We're at a point now where industries have been disrupted. We've seen a lot of jobs have left the country and I think we have an extremely populated talent pool that is being underutilized. And I think entrepreneurship is naturally an environment and the type of people that look to disrupt but also to reimagine what can be possible and what exists. And if I think about America being a leader economically in the world, we have to look at what is one of our greatest assets and one of our greatest resources. And that has been black influence and creativity. We've seen that through music, we've seen that through art, we've seen that through invention, we've seen that through a number of industries and right now we're still sitting with 9.7% unemployment rate. So I'm looking at entrepreneurship to solve and close that gap. I think there's about three million jobs that we can create quickly that can positively impact both the country and the black community as a whole. Yeah, I think that's a great point. What about Eugene then, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, Keenan first of all, I think your comments around especially our underserved community is how the pandemic has impacted them and the need for entrepreneurship is so spot on and I love that you made that point but entrepreneurship is global. So when I think about what's gonna change our world and not just our communities or our towns, it's global impact in healthcare, it's global impact in how we think about our homes, right? We literally shifted as an entire, the entire globe shifted the way we worked in three months back in March of 2020. And the way we were able to do that is through entrepreneurship, through people developing programs for us to be able to work from homes through the internet of things, through changing the way we think about commuting and how that applies to our own sense of wellbeing and health. So everything we do is impacted by entrepreneurship and the disruption that entrepreneurs create. And I think without that, without that global impact, we're gonna all suffer and that's just a really broad way of thinking about it. I'm bringing it home, the income inequality in the United States certainly has grown tremendously and I think one way to battle that is through entrepreneurship, to create not just the generation of entrepreneurs today, but to create a generation of entrepreneurs who wanna give back. So that's really a key pillar of endeavor is to help support entrepreneurs who recognize the impact that they have and then wanna reinvest that, not just in terms of capital, but also in terms of time and mentorship and in terms of serving as inspiration. So creating that virtual cycle, entrepreneurship can do that. And so we wanna support, we believe in entrepreneurship because it's not just supporting jobs today, but jobs tomorrow. That's a wonderful way of putting it, Jinem. I do also think that entrepreneurs play an important role in a community because they are creative. And like in times of like during the pandemic, I know of two entrepreneurs who are generating like great ideas and putting them into action to help with the effects of the pandemic. And so like we have one entrepreneur that's coming up with like grocery shopping stores because people are not going into grocery store to do their shopping. And then we have another one that's coming up with another idea on helping electronic platform for restaurants and storefronts to have their businesses online and selling gift cards just so to sustain themselves. So entrepreneurs can't, it's not only thinking about for-profit ideas, but sometimes they can be really creative and nonprofit ideas to help with the community. Now, Maka, how about you? What are your thoughts on entrepreneurship? Well, with the Kiva program specifically, we start with even allowing disadvantaged borrowers to have the dream of having a business. It is a true grassroots. Kiva loans are only a thousand to $15,000. And I meet with people who have never known someone in their family or on their street or in their section of town that owned their own business. And so they may have an idea or something they're good at that they want to do, but they need just that small piece of capital, that small loan to buy a piece of equipment or take that idea and build a website because they're not technologically savvy. They need just that seed funding to take what's truly, with many of my Kiva borrowers, a dream, a complete dream. They, as we know historically in the United States, people of color, women, people with felony backgrounds have been denied access, not only to employment industries, but just to the idea of ownership. And those ideas have been dashed or they haven't seen someone. So for me, the Kiva loans truly change not only the life of that individual and give them that confidence and ability to see themselves as a business owner, but then their children, their nieces, their nephews, their neighbors, the people on their street see someone who looks like them or who has their background barriers and challenges own a business. And that's by with Kiva hubs, unless you get into the Kiva hubs in Los Angeles or New York or in the Chicago area, you're not gonna see massive amounts of loans. You might have, Kiva only requires a hub to exist if it does 10 loans a year. But what we talk about is if 10 people in a Hispanic community, in a black community, 10 people or five of those 10 who have old felony records for minor drug convictions that they wouldn't have even had a felony if they'd had a decent lawyer. When people see them start a business, the impact of those 10 people a year or 20 people a year doing that in a community, the word spreads. And it helps truly a community to see that business ownership and entrepreneurship is for everyone. It's not just a dream if you're poor. It's not just a dream if you're black. It's not just a dream if you're gay and scared for the community to know that you're a gay business owner. It's something that can truly happen and make a community completely open to all for entrepreneurship. And it is a very small scale. But to me, that's, you know, people say, oh, they're only 10, $15,000 loans. I'm like, let me tell you some stories about what I've done for people helping them to get access to a $3,000 loan. Let me tell you, those are real stories and they're extremely impactful. Yeah, that's a great point and it leads us to the next question, right? Which is, I think there is like a spectrum of entrepreneurship. And, you know, according to this article from Heartland Forward, they have categorized entrepreneurship into two broad types. One is what is called the knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. And these are young firms that offer more professional, technical, scientific type of offerings. And they have a higher propensity to go after non-local markets. And then there is this main street entrepreneurship which are mostly in the service sector and sometimes they are family-based and they tend to target local markets. And the article states that regardless of which type of entrepreneurship, they are important for any ecosystem and they have data that shows that if there are a higher young firm share of employment in that particular region, which means that any firms that are five years younger, they are measuring their employment in this type of firms. If they are higher, it shows that the regional economic growth is faster. So they have data showing that. So regardless of any type of entrepreneurship, both are important, right? So even if it's, I know the media often highlights the unicorn type of startups and knowledge-intensive, but still the main street entrepreneurship, it's also key to any economic growth. So, and I would like to learn about your work if you do focus on like a particular type of entrepreneurship. Is there one particular type that you are focused on fostering? And if so, is there a unique approach to fostering that type of entrepreneurship? Or you might be focused on both, but then you might have unique approaches to fostering each type of entrepreneurship. So Junem, maybe we start with Endeavor. Yeah, and I love that you say because we believe that there's a place for both to, specifically Endeavor focuses on that scaling company as opposed to a main street company. And we do that because as a nonprofit, resources are limited and so we need, when we think about our mission, it's to support high growth entrepreneurs. So, we've done maps and Endeavor maps and I'm happy to share with any of the viewers today if they ask during the chat and the chat box, but we've done mappings of how companies grow over time and how they impact the development, economic development in their regions. So, when you look at a company's growth cycle, it's not just that they're growing and then the employees and the board of directors and the C-suite are growing and scaling, it's that those people, as people leave that organization and start their own businesses, the impact that can have that where companies can serve as inspiration or where companies can serve as investors in spin-out companies or spin-off companies. So we really think that that's where we can be supportive where we have the most expertise and those are the kinds of companies we support. I was pulling up just as you were saying, Asilin, but we look at Endeavor Catalyst, which is Endeavor's Venture Fund and I'd mentioned we are about to finish the investment round of fund three and we'll be launching fund for next year in January. When we look at the number of billion dollar value companies, these are, none of those companies are based in San Francisco or New York. They're based all around the world from Flutterwave in Nigeria to Kavok in Mexico and hopefully soon, very soon, a Northwest Arkansas company. So, we think that there's ways to support entrepreneurship within the same bucket of sort of fast growth, having a tech-enabled sort of focus in any vertical. So you could be in food and beverage or you could be in enterprise SaaS or you could be in healthcare, but really having that is where we think our sweet spot is and where we think we can have the most impact as an organization. But again, that's not to say that the work that Martha's doing with Kiva isn't incredibly valuable and necessary and specifically the work that Venture Noir is doing to support underserved founders who've had very little access to any of that capital or support. So that's really where we focus our energy and we think we have the most impact and I'm happy to share some of our reports on that. That's awesome. And so is there any specific needs of these companies that you're looking to address? Do they usually come to you for capital? Do they come to you for networks? Could you elaborate on that? Yeah, the capital question is really interesting because what we find is that entrepreneurs and some of our markets can access capital. It's just very unfavorable terms. And what happens is it misaligns the incentives between the founder and the capital provider because they're not keeping enough of their company so that any future growth is basically out of their hands, keeping enough of their equity or keeping enough of their decision-making power. So we like to say that Endeavor helps bring smart capital and not just because of our own fund but really because of our access to partners who we think are fantastic capital providers who really have a long-term vision for how our company should grow. So really thinking about how much their equity, how much equity they're providing, how much of the company they should own and why their interests are aligned. So capital is a big part of it but I'll tell you, Elin, the biggest aspect of our support comes from very radical feedback. We've had companies come to us and say, I had an option to exit and I talked to three or four Endeavor mentors and they all told me to stick in there to push forward because we were on the precipice of something big. And that decision changed the lives of not just the founder but all the employees and really the town and the region that they were in across the world. So it's peer-to-peer radical feedback and really sort of senior leadership radical feedback because so many founders we find get advice from their cousin or best friend or parent or somebody who's their neighbor and all that advice is sort of, there's a lot of similar think. There's a lot of exogenous forces that influence those founders. So there's not a lot of ways for them to creatively talk to others about their problems who don't have a vested interest in them. Their board obviously has a certain point of view, their employees have a point of view, their neighbors and family members have a point of view. So we're able to give them really external uninterested or disinterested advice meaning the people providing this advice are purely doing it out of their belief in entrepreneurship and not because they have any stake in the success of the company. So they really just wanna give their honest radical demand-driven feedback. So that's really what we focus on. Those two are the biggest part of I think where we have impact with these kinds of companies. Yeah, that's a great point because I've heard from many entrepreneurs how lonely being an entrepreneur could be. And because they are the owner and there isn't anyone telling them what to do, right? So it's great to have endeavor. We have with a network of fellow entrepreneurs who can share their expertise. Now, Keenan, let's move to you. What does venture nor do like, is there any particular type of entrepreneurship you're focused on? Yeah, I think for us, I think the beauty of it is I don't have to focus on the type of entrepreneur rather than the demographic and focus on underserved and black entrepreneurs. You know, I think when you have a nonprofit like venture nor and understanding that you're going towards economic impact, it is also with a social good cause, right? In a layer that is first and foremost. So I don't approach entrepreneurship as a purely capitalist. I have to approach it in terms of how do we impact positively the black communities that I'm focused on serving through this vehicle. In order to do that, I think what we're looking at is how do we work with corporate partners to scale that impact, right? And I think we've seen a lot of commitments over the last couple of years, particularly since the incidents that happened with George Floyd. We've seen a lot of commitments from the venture capital community. A lot of these have fallen short, right? We're still seeing that the wealth gap is wider than ever today. We still see black entrepreneurs and black communities on a glide path to zero actual wealth by 2053. So these vehicles that are traditional that we're seeing today have not been effective, right? And I think venture nor's challenge right now is how do we use these known markets, right? These known vehicles to actually advance and accelerate. I'll give you a perfect example of that. Coming out of our cohorts right now, we have about 25 entrepreneurs that are coming out of our cohort, industry agnostic. The main work for us was not just the training on how to take an entrepreneur from idea to first dollar, first dollar to first million, but also now like what is at the end of that rainbow, right, of the cohort? What's the pot of gold and how do we measure that impact? How many jobs are created? How much revenue is generated? It can't purely be about how much money we raise them because that doesn't lead necessarily to improving quality of life for the black community. I have to be a little bit more specific in how we do that. So if I take an entrepreneur that has a beauty business that goes through our cohort, how can I get him shelf placement or her shelf placement at Walmart, right? Or at Sam's, what does that look like? Because that now is revenue. That revenue means there are jobs that are created to scale that business. That means we've positively changed that community of where that business is based. So our approach is very much both short-term and long-term of how we stay with entrepreneurs through the life cycle of them and not purely through investment, but also through research support and ecosystem development. That's great. So you're kind of facilitating market access for your entrepreneurs as well, which is an important thing for them to sustain themselves. Would you say they're in the cohort of entrepreneurs you're helping? Would they be the ones that are mainstream entrepreneurs or are you targeting the ones that have a higher propensity to scale? Yeah, I think both groups have the higher propensity to scale. I think when you actually dig down into the black communities, they're actually not sure. The first layer that you have to overcome is actually the confidence barrier. Because a lot of the entrepreneurs are doing things because they've been undervalued or out of just actual survival. So you sometimes don't know where they actually are until you complete an eight-week process, at which point then you're selecting what capital sources is right for them. If they are fast, high, super high growth, we connect them with groups like Endeavor and funds that are available in the ecosystem. That makes sense. But many are actually doing service-based businesses like my first company, where they're going to create 48 jobs and over 10 million in revenue, but they'll never be venture-backed. And those are also great entrepreneurs because that accomplishes our mission. So we have to go through the process to understand that. I'll say in our first two cohorts, it was probably about 60-40, 60% being Main Street. Yeah, and that's really a good point because they could start off thinking they are just targeting at the local markets. But after going through that programming, the ambition may grow, and they might have the propensity to become something that could scale. Correct. Well, thank you, Kenan. How about you, Mato? What do you think? Well, yeah. I mean, for Kiva, I mean, you know, and I've gone through the process, you know, there's lots of terms for small businesses. You know, typically, you talk a lot about mom and pop businesses. The Main Street term gives me a chill a little bit because I think we kind of need to get rid of that term. Because when I think of Main Street, I think of middle-aged white men with brick-and-mortar businesses. And I just, you know, lately I've been using the term CB's community businesses because my entrepreneurs, you know, they're doing service businesses out of their garage in their neighborhood. They're out in rural areas making businesses out of their kitchens. And so I like to talk a lot about community businesses because I also want my entrepreneurs to feel that they can start this very small business in their kitchen, in their garage, with their kids at their brother's garage, and they can grow it in their community. And I want them to do that. I don't want them in the middle of downtown on Main Street where their community doesn't go very much and doesn't see them. And so I work a lot with them just about how helping them to see. I love, love, love when they see and we share things from venture noir and fabulous opportunities that happen because everybody's got to have that higher level dream, right? Nobody starts a, you know, cake company thinking I'm just going to make cakes in my house and go to the farmers market the rest of my life. We need that image. We need to see those scaling companies. But I work with people. I will tell you one of the things that Kiva really, really likes to see, it's not an absolute requirement, but we really want, is for them to have at least a business checking account, even if it's a DBA account or it's an account set up with their LLC. And I work with entrepreneurs who when I say we need to set up a bank account, I can see their face. They have had terrible experiences. I have to build a level of trust for them to say, I got overdrawn checking accounts at two banks in this town. And so we start and I'm like, tell me which banks. I know loan officers there. I know people. I get them to build a trust and understand that a lot of times if we can just go in and take care of that old account or if I can find them another bank that won't look that up and doesn't care that they have those. And I get them appointments with people I know. And I'm like, you go down and see Miss Crystal. She's there these hours, these days. She knows you're coming and she's my friend and she's going to treat you with respect and help you open this account. Sometimes it takes them a month to save up that hundred bucks to do it. But it's building that experience in the business arena to often people. I am a sixth generation small business owner. My family's been in Northwest Arkansas since 1852 and they've all owned on small businesses, mostly because they can't get along with other people. So they had to start their own businesses. So that's where I come from. So I have to help them understand that history. They don't have that. Their mom worked at a department store. Their dad drove a truck for a trucking company. They've never seen that model. So for what I do, I really start with the base education, understanding what their experience is first and then asking them, can I help you understand the ladders we need to go up? And that's what we do with Keeble. We build a capital ladder. The first thing is getting some sort of documentation. The business exists and then a bank account. And I can tell you, I see changes in their faces. I see changes in how they hold themselves. They begin to see themselves as not somebody just selling something, getting some money as a business owner. And that mental attitude is what they need to do anything with small business. Anytime, whether we call it a community business or a main street business or a venture business, they have to see themselves as that. And so working with these very early stage entrepreneurs, and I like to educate them about the word entrepreneur and make them own that and feel it. And so some of these very basic things that people are like, well, sure everybody does that. If no one in your family or at your school or in your community has taught you that, you have to be able to see that vision. And it can be those simple steps. So a lot of times with my Keeble borrowers, that's where we may begin. And I have Keeble borrowers who've had business for two or three years and they're a brick and mortar and they want the Keeble loan because it's a 0% interest. It's a great promotion and it's a good deal for their business because they're smart business people and they care about supporting other business owners, people of color, women-owned businesses, businesses that are owned by gay and lesbian persons. So it's all different types. There is no one type of Keeble borrower. Yeah, I love this. I mean, I think the takeaways from this talk, that this conversation that we are having is that there is different types of entrepreneurs and they have different needs, but you don't want to pigeonhole yourself into just being a main street entrepreneur because I think everybody has the potential. They just need the right resources to scale. Now, as you talk about all this amazing work that you all are doing to foster entrepreneurship, how would you know if you have made a difference? And how do you know if you have succeed in your work? Is there any one particular impact story that you can share that you have experienced or one that you are particularly proud of? So maybe Matta, let's start with you. Sure. One that has just always impacted me and made me feel really proud of the Keeble program is, and with Keeble we only use towns and first names. We had a borrower named Shane. He identifies as a Hispanic U.S. citizen and he worked for a large national franchise company and he had worked as an employee for them and drove one of their trucks and they had a special promotion, which that's great. Normally the buy-in for that franchise and to get your truck is $30,000. They thankfully finally realized that his business was based in Springdale, Arkansas, which is now 36% Hispanic and they had never had any person of color ever or females ever own one of their franchises. So they offered him a special deal, $10,000. If he could come up with $10,000, he could buy his truck and his franchise. Unfortunately, he wasted about two weeks going to banks because of his credit score, which is usually the biggest barrier as a former banker I will tell you to people even getting to fill out an application. Most banks in our area want at least a 750 credit score. They really want a 700. So by the time he got to me we only had five weeks left and so we worked up his application. I got him connected to an accountant who set up an LLC very quickly. We got him online and in five weeks he fully funded and he is the first owner of this national franchise in Northwest Arkansas who is a person of color. And he has six children. He lives in a neighborhood with many of his friends and family who are also Hispanic and he's in Springdale, which is an incredible Hispanic Latin X entrepreneur community that has never gotten the attention it should and so that thrills me that Kiva was able to fill that huge vacuum of this person who had a track record of being the reason they offered to him was he was their most successful driver and salesperson but just that $10,000 enabled that and the impact that's going to have on his children, on his community, on his church, on everyone who sees him as the owner with that truck and that national franchise. So that's one of my favorite Kiva stories that we have in Northwest Arkansas. Yeah, thank you Matar. It's true though. I've seen data from Brookings Institution on the approver by banks on small business loans and according to the data, the large banks approve approximately 60% of loans sought by white small business owners but only 50% of Hispanic small business owners and only 29% of black small business owners and so this start disparity in access to capital, I think it's a primary factor to why entrepreneurs of colors own less than 20% of businesses with paid employees despite making nearly 40% of the nation's population. So I want to continue with a question so maybe Janem, how about you? Is there a favorite impact story that you can share? Yeah, and I like to say, we think about impact generally the way I'm sure all of us do, which is we measure, we have MPS and we measure revenues generated and we measure jobs created so endeavor entrepreneurs have created over 4 million jobs and we look at that across our region but I think what's really exciting and what we think that virtuous cycle of entrepreneurship that I spoke about so we think a great measure of success is the fact that our endeavor entrepreneurs who have gone through a lengthy selection process who may or may not have gotten capital from endeavor it's certainly not necessary and a lot of our entrepreneurs do bootstrap. They then have their successful moment either it's a liquidation event or a growth or an acquisition, something that enables them to have a little bit more time than a crazed founder who's in the thick of it but they then join our board. So that's really what I think about we're only a two and a half year old office but our offices in Argentina and Brazil and Chile which are almost 25 years old their success stories is that half their boards are made up of endeavor entrepreneurs who've scaled and now are giving back to the next generation so that's really how we think about success and hopefully that's where we'll be in at least by year 10 forward but another way we think about it is a great story so Brian Brackeen who is on the endeavor Louisville board he was actually selected as an endeavor entrepreneur in Miami for out of our endeavor Miami office relocated and he and his wife started Lightship Capital and Lightship Foundation. Brian Brackeen is on the board of endeavor Louisville so stayed not only within the endeavor family but switched offices in terms of support based on his life and then his wife Candace Brackeen is joining my board because of their work in Northwest Arkansas and well Tulsa and hopefully Northwest Arkansas soon so there's a whole network is able to support itself and hopefully you know we'll be able to have a few of our earlier endeavor entrepreneurs join our board in the next few years. That's wonderful endeavor is like a platform for like entrepreneurs to come back and give back the expertise to the community. Yeah. Oh yeah. Kenan back to you. Yeah I was dreading this question and I was I was I hate that I have to answer because it's like picking you know some of your your favorite children at times but you know I think all of us have gone so close to the entrepreneurs that that I think we serve right that that ultimately we work for and so to say you know some of my favorites it's tough but you know I think I love the answers that were just provided in terms of you know what impact looks like so to answer off on that I think we're all looking at some similar things right what is you know revenue per employee what is payroll per employee because then you can truly measure the the economic impact obviously in those communities that we're serving but I think one of the more soft metrics that isn't always talked about is just the spark you know and just the the light bulb going off of confidence and I think when when I look at you know black entrepreneurs and people of color there is so much talent and yet a lot of insecurity because I call it the trauma of generational poverty right a lot of times there's almost self-sabotage when you don't think that you can achieve things it's it's why I wear a hat that says normalize black excellence you know almost every day because we need to normalize that right we need to believe it and historically we can prove it now we need to make sure that we have resources provided right in education there to enable that going forward but if I was to give two examples I think two that I'm extremely proud of you know one is Camille Martin with ceasefire just a PhD student unbelievable have come up with you know an amazing active that's going to change the landscape of beauty care especially with protection from visible light but has never built a brand right didn't know exactly what she was doing you know a pure student right I mean she is what I call extremely book smart and what she's done right from a research standpoint but how does she commercialize it you know we took her through our program called in the black adventure noir and out of that we were able to get her a partnership with both a mass you know contract manufacturer that can be a buyer of her ingredient revenue we have a brand that is developed and now looking at distribution with two major retailers so over the course of ten weeks she is completely transformed from being an amazing student and an innovator to now a business woman who is going to impact the lives of a lot of people I think there's another one that I I just personally love because I love the stories of the founders but that was a group called sober sidekick and you know the I think many of us on this call alone have been introduced to these founders and they're just some incredible entrepreneurs I think they have a founder story that is rooted in their battle with addiction and their pathway to sobriety but I think not again seasoned entrepreneurs in terms of how they're looking at where their impact is they were focused on revenue and not understanding that they were scaling community and I think we were able to take them both yes we can improve their revenue and go from 20,000 monthly reoccurring revenue to 60,000 but now positioning themselves to receive term sheets that are in the two to five million range coming through a program so when I look at those individuals great entrepreneurs with a passion but focused on revenue which would make them more mainstream to now turning them into high growth entrepreneurs which I would not be surprised if they're unicorn entrepreneurs and companies here in the not too distant future you are for that those wonderful stories and Keena and I like your attitude creators for Ventrenor I did wow maybe you should like that selling them on your we're entrepreneurs we sell everything that's wonderful yeah so let's shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about the gaps that you continue to see as you work on the ground with the entrepreneurs I know you are working to improve the ecosystem and I'm curious if you observe any of you know existing herders that will hinder entrepreneurship so let's start with you Keenan I think hurdles you know look again when you're focusing on black entrepreneurship it is now become popular right I think everyone wants to say they have an impact organization impact fund but yet haven't done an actual theory of change right and can't describe what that impact means and how their efforts are so I think one of the hurdles that we're having is moving the conversation on you know just how do you fundraise and take advantage of this heightened sense of awareness but focus the energy and on achieving true impact so you know part of our work is oftentimes you know showcasing our point of difference from the 700 other organizations that have impact somewhere within their mission statement or name but I think other than that it's bringing real solutions to corporate partners to show how the economic impact that we're creating for the communities we serve also is driving profitability for some of these larger organizations who have the challenge with scaling so what we're doing now is actively taking impact and moving it on to the scorecard of a lot of these corporations right so that now their employees are incentivized to work properly with groups and organizations like the three of ours that are on here today that are impacting some of these underserved communities so I would say that's one of the hurdles that we face but that's why we all are here doing the work that we're doing so I think I'm optimistic and extremely confident that it won't be a hurdle for too long that's great to hear that it won't be a hurdle for too long is there any particular when working with entrepreneurs do you see any particular barriers that they face right now aside from what you mentioned yeah it's mental right I mean entrepreneurship let's be clear all of us have organizations that are helping entrepreneurs but many of us may have been entrepreneurs that didn't take advantage of any of these and were successful I am one of them I launched a company, my first company and didn't take in any capital and was able to scale that but I think what was different about me than some of the entrepreneurs and I think a lot of this when we talk about entrepreneurship it's the battle within yourself it is a game of confidence and it's extremely extremely challenging when you come from a community that has been overlooked and over mentored and under resourced for so long there have been empty promises that have been made to the black community for decades so our first step is just getting over that hurdle within them understanding that they have everything they need to be successful within themselves that was God given and I think now it is about connecting those dots once they have the confidence showing them now a glide path and connecting them with resources that weren't existing within their communities and I am glad Venture Norris here to help reduce some of the barriers faced by these entrepreneurs how about you Marta do you see any specific gaps in the ecosystem that you would like to see plugged I mean my dream panacea is for someone to fund me to have a non-profit where I go all over the United States into poor school districts and educate children about what a credit score is and how to start protecting their credit score from the age of 14 because so many of our communities people are not we're not privileged enough to grow up in families to understand how the credit world works how it really matters that you pay the electric bill on time and not a week later even though you've paid your bill that you understand how the credit card industry works how you understand how saving to invest and to buy real estate and things like that and of course the reason that history exists is because we've had intentional systemic discrimination barring people of color from purchasing homes or purchase and once the banks kind of opened up and on the surface got all you know equality then we still couldn't buy in certain neighborhoods so we have this huge gap of systemic discrimination which has multi generations of people who have not benefited from the privilege of ownership and equity building and collateral attainment so that their families could be educated so to me a way to do that is the youth of this country especially youth of color youth and families who have one or more parents inside in prison youth in foster homes youth in low income areas need to understand from a very early age about what the capital world looks like and how important their credit score is. Another thing is my entrepreneurs do not have access to technology they go to schools that don't have good technology in them they go to poor inner city schools so they don't have the skills even though we have sites that you can kind of set up your own website they don't have that comfort level with electronics or they don't own a piece of electronics to gain that comfort level and so they can't have a website and I tell my clients all the time not having a website for a business in 2020-21 is like not having a telephone for a business in 1975 okay it's that vital so that's an area and then lastly I would say some of it is also societal attitude that we have toward the service industry to people and toward those working in the food industry specifically like the restaurant and food truck industry not seeing them as professionals and so if society doesn't treat them as professional then obviously our children don't see us have the proper attitude toward them and see that as business owners you know business owners in the community to be respected whether it be a long care business a house cleaning business a home a business and so to me that's also another thing is raising that and one of the things that I hope comes from you know there are a lot of horrible things that have had a bright light shown on them due to the pandemic and I hope that bright light continues to show on the struggles of our black community and the systemic discrimination a bright light shown on the horror of working in a restaurant for less than minimum wage that whole world has got to change and so as we begin to see those people in those industries as business professionals hopefully the generations behind them the children will grow up with that attitude and see that those are worthy jobs that can also give them education and training to become owners of restaurants and owners of landscape businesses and owners of home health care businesses or beauty sports thanks Matta I do also agree with you that you know access to financial literacy education technology is really key and right now it's not equal amongst everyone in the communities and so we need to do more to level the playing field we are nearing the end of the session so I would like to hear from Jinem what she thinks about the ecosystem before we end yeah I'll go quickly but I think Keenan raised an interesting point about over mentored undercapitalized I think that's so true in the United States for our BIPOC founders and I think Martha touched on a really different kind of systemic issue that we have in the United States but I'll put on the global hat for a second it's hard for us as an organization to have a US centric point of view because we have in fact most of our entrepreneurs from a Hispanic or Latinx point of view and fact about underserved founders for us is very hard because we have Brazilian founders and all of them are Brazilian and their underserved communities are actually very different than ours in the United States same with Nigeria, same in the Middle East so from a global perspective it's hard to normalize those concerns but what I will say what we find as a gap is really access to tech talent in our underserved markets and I'll say this specifically about Northwest Arkansas and other fast growing companies here be it Acre Trader for example which is fantastic you guys should check them out all the way to now diagnostics or field agent they're all hiring and they're all hiring but don't have access to talent and the Northwest Arkansas Council and the Walton Family Foundation are doing some amazing work with things like the LifeWorks Here program I'm really excited for that because not only are they bringing in tech talent but they're bringing in a very much needed lens to make Northwest Arkansas inclusive how do we make our communities feel included here everything from artists to outdoor recreation people to tech talent but talent is a huge problem in all of our global endeavor communities hiring people being able to compete with people who are paying much higher wages in our bigger companies and it's hard to compete with that and so that's a big area for us and how we think about that and how we work with our communities so we have to work with our foundations and our university systems in order to create develop and produce the future tech talent generation and that includes our founders of color that includes overlooked founders that Martha may work with who have who never had access to sort of that tech training that could excel in those fields had they been given a chance so I'll end it with talent because I think we touched on some of the other ones but yeah big gap but I think we're all working to fill it that's wonderful observation I mean they are wonderful about traveling so as you can see we still have a lot of work to do to help advance entrepreneurship not only do we have the level of the playing field for capital that's also technology access internet and you know tech talent and so I'm really glad to have you all here in Northwest Arkansas working with us to help improve the ecosystem in this region I think this is a great and productive discussion and I would like to thank all of you that's wonderful panelists for their insightful participation it has been an amazing learning session for me and I hope for all of our audience as well thank you for being this part of this conversation and I hope you would enjoy our next video that showcases our entrepreneurial work in Northwest Arkansas would you say it's pretty easy to start a business heck no an entrepreneur is someone who sees new ways of doing things and is bound and determined not to rest until he or she achieves the goals