Extending Entrepreneurship Beyond the Cities

The future will require many to work as giggers or entrepreneurs, but today's ecosystem is limited to major cities. We’re extending the entrepreneurial ecosystem outside of cities to help underserved learn tech and entrepreneurship and create successful startups to provides positive socio-economic impact.

Our solution is to establish a suburban innovation center through our 501c3 nonprofit company to provide workspace for entrepreneurs and those people working for and supporting startup companies. The innovation center serves as an incubator and support center to assist underserved suburbanites in order to extend the entrepreneurial ecosystem beyond the cities and reverse a trend where cities are the core areas where innovative companies can thrive and where the promising jobs exist. If we don’t reverse the trend, we will continue to see a divide between the those who are better off and those who are worse off.

A key components missing from the suburban ecosystem is training targeted towards jobs and skills that are needed for startups. To overcome the suburban deficiencies, our solution will provide 2 programs: a business program and a technical program. 

The business program follows Bill Aulet’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship with some additions, such as social media marketing, financial project, management and planning. This program has been run with great success in an academic setting for nearly 6 years at Quincy College and Tufts University by Eric Braun, founder of South Shore Innovation. Additional workshops will supplement the program.

The technical program will be developed further from courses created and conducted by members of the South Shore startup community, including Carmen Ferrara, CTO of 30hands Learning who has developed and taught technical courses for teachers. Topics will include Javascript, JQuery, Bootstrap, Ajax, CSS/HTML, Ruby-on-Rails, iOS, Android and website development using Wordpress, and similar technology.

The intent of the programming is to supplement academic programs with targeted concepts needed by startups. This offers a great opportunity for those living outside the cities and those with less prestigious academic degrees who otherwise may not get good positions within the tech field.

The problem we are solving is that young people living outside the city who have not attended prestigious colleges have fewer opportunities to work in the business and tech areas and fewer opportunities to learn relevant skills. Some of this is due to their location and some is due to financial constraints. Those who grew up in the suburbs and have attended better schools generally move into the city or move away from Boston.

South Shore Innovation began working with startups and supporters in 2010. In 2013, we cofounded an innovation center and ran it for 3 years. We found that suburban startups have a very difficult time finding adequate staff because most resources want to stay in the city or work with companies that are better funded. The lack of resources makes success more challenging for the startups. Through internships, we found we've been able to train young people to successfully support startups. Training on-the-job is a challenge and strain for the startups, which is why we plan on developing these training programs.

The impact of our solution is to help support more startups within a new suburban community. This community is currently disperse, but we will bring the people together. Some community members will learn coding to support other startups, and some will learn entrepreneurship. We will deploy this by establishing an innovation center and implementing our 2 training programs.

Track applications and progress of startups applying - 20+ startups supported in year 1

Track applications and successful completion of training program - 10+ young people + 10+ older people learn entrepreneurship

Track applications and successful completion of training program - 10+ young people + 10+ older people learn coding

Our solution is unique in that it is targeted to underserved young people in the suburbs who are unable to get adequate training or jobs in the tech and startup field due to financial or location constraints. By learning and working in our center outside the city, we are making opportunities possible. To reach more remote people after the program is established, we will add elearning options. While most solutions involve supporting inner-city youth, we believe the suburban underserved community should not be overlooked.

Our solution creates an innovation center as a focal point for the startup ecosystem in the underserved suburbs. When underserved youth are trained on entrepreneurial business and tech skills, they can work for startups in the center and the community. As they learn and grow within their jobs, there is opportunity to start their own companies in the future and mentor and train others. We are creating a cyclical environment that begins and ends with the people. The technology is primarily a process to drive innovation and jobs.

Our focus will be mainly on in-person workshops, workspaces and community interactions (mentoring, coaching, teaching, sharing, collaborating etc.). After the pilot, we will explore online possibilities, but they currently pose obstacles to continued engagement in learning and collaboration.

We are fundraising for initial startup costs, and have received about $20K to date. Once we are underway, our model is sustainable through payments from participants utilizing space and some services. In addition, a portion of the space will be rented out to innovative food and/or other organizations to bring in additional revenue.

The risk factors include the following:

• Inability to negotiate workspace
• Not enough startups joining the community
• Not enough people joining the programs to learn coding and/or entrepreneurship

http://ssinnovation.com

http://twitter.com/SouthShoreInno

We're applying to Solve because we want to begin a process to change the world. We have recognized that cities are becoming elitist and closing out tech, startup and good job opportunities for those in the suburbs and rural areas. Our goal is to reverse this trend and begin the expansion of entrepreneurial ecosystems beyond cities to create a blanket network of ecosystems. The South Shore is the beginning of the vision. We believe our solution will help overcome the divide that has been growing globally, that is excluding the middle class from the benefits of our technological age.

Schlossberg, The Furniture Trust, TRB Design, local South Shore communities, startup companies and entrepreneurs

We look at the ecosystem as a collaborative inclusive community, not a competitive community.