Pictured above: Rock It! Lab is a partnership between Advancing Black Entrepreneurship and the Central Arkansas Library System. (Photos provided)
About 20 percent of businesses fail in their first year, and by the five-year mark, 50 percent are likely to have closed, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics research.
Those sobering numbers can be chalked up to a few main factors and common pitfalls, which can be avoided if entrepreneurs utilize support networks and resources set aside for them. In Arkansas, some of those resources include The Venture Center in Little Rock, Rock It! Lab in Little Rock, The Conductor in Conway, Fayetteville-based Startup Junkie and the Little Rock Technology Park.
The organizations work to connect entrepreneurs with other founders at the same stage of business development, as well as mentors and consultants, to help show the entrepreneurs how to grow and sustainably scale their ventures.
At Rock It! Lab, a partnership between Advancing Black Entrepreneurship and the Central Arkansas Library System, under-resourced entrepreneurs are offered free training, one-on-one guidance, tools and a twice-annual incubator program to help their businesses grow.
“In addition to being support, [the Rock It! Lab staff] each have our own lived experiences being a business owner, so being able to help entrepreneurs is a very personal endeavor,” said Rock It! Lab coordinator Leah Patterson.
Leah Patterson
Patterson owns a makeup business and also ran a salsa dancing studio.
“Someone that has traveled the road before you can help you navigate some of the terrain,” she said.
Viktoria Capek, communications and engagement manager at The Venture Center, said mentorship opportunities and accelerator programs at the center help entrepreneurs feel less alone on their journeys.
Viktoria Capek
“Being a founder, being an entrepreneur is one of the most isolating things that can happen out there,” she said.
Many programs at The Venture Center focus on different demographics, such as the Veteran-Owned Small Business Accelerator and AAPI Achieve, which focuses on Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs.
“You have to remember an entrepreneur or founder is not one size fits all,” she said. “[These events] put people in the room together who understand the same hurdles that they might jump through, and it removes this additional level of loneliness that they might feel.
“We as humans are designed to find our communities. There are people like you and there are people like you in Arkansas, as unlikely as it may seem.”
Patterson said especially with recent cuts to some funding for diversity programming, it has been even more important to support the Rock It! Lab entrepreneurs. This past year, Patterson focused a lot of programming on the mental resilience it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
Many programs at The Venture Center focus on different demographics, such as the Veteran-Owned Small Business Accelerator and AAPI Achieve.
“In various aspects of life, [these entrepreneurs] are receiving the message that they don’t deserve, that it’s not available, that they can’t access something, so being able to access [Rock It! Lab] can actually help propel not just themselves but can help create generational wealth,” Patterson said.
Patterson said creating generational wealth in a community causes a “ripple effect.”
“It’s a feel-good social issue, but it also absolutely supports the bottom line and the economic stability and growth of our state,” Patterson said.
Capek also talked about how supporting one founder can support a whole community.
“Getting rid of loneliness is going to allow for more innovation and economic growth in our state for individuals and for anyone who could feel a ripple effect from any of those things,” she said.
Startup Junkie also connects innovators with resources such as consulting, workshops and accelerator programs depending on what stage of the business process the entrepreneur is in.
“We do about 200-plus events over the course of a year,” said Caleb Talley, executive director at the Startup Junkie Foundation. “Those are intended to build community, educate and inspire. Entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, and so through this portfolio of events, we’re giving entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to get out of that a little bit and see that there are other folks in the trenches with them,” he said.
Caleb Talley
The vast majority of the businesses Startup Junkie serves are still at the idea stage, Talley said.
“We try to help illuminate that path and help guide them to that conclusion or that realization or that resource in an effort to help them best succeed and, at the end of the day, eliminate the barriers that would trip up someone on their path,” he said.
Startup Junkie asks entrepreneurs to interview random people about the problem they want to solve and come to a conclusion about their ideas.
Talley noted a key to helping startups is making sure that they have ideas that are marketable.
“The No. 1 reason a startup fails is not funding, but it is because no one wants what they’re selling,” he said.
Jeff Standridge
Jeff Standridge, managing director at The Conductor, said it this way:
“We tell them, ‘Fall in love with the problem, not the solution,’” he said.
To help businesses that are at the idea stage, Standridge said The Conductor essentially gives them “homework” to do.
The Conductor is located inside the Arnold Innovative Center in downtown Conway.
Talley said Startup Junkie’s leaders ask entrepreneurs to interview random people about the problem they want to solve and come to a conclusion about their ideas that way. He said sometimes if entrepreneurs get feedback that an idea is not a good idea, they will go back to the drawing board or, other times, move on entirely.
“Don’t be discouraged because think about all the time and money you just saved not trying to deploy some product or service,” Talley said. “One notion we lean into is to fail faster. Failure is always the best teacher. Folks that are able to fail faster and move and go with the flow to the next thing, they are going to be more successful.”
Many of the startup resources also give the entrepreneurs somewhere to work physically.
Rock It Lab! offers a makerspace in its basement complete with a T-shirt press, a 3D printer and sewing machines.
The Little Rock Tech Park provides entrepreneurs with space to work for a flexible price.
The Little Rock Technology Park, in which the Venture Center is located, provides entrepreneurs with space to work for a flexible price.
“The ability to be around like-minded individuals to collaborate and learn from one another is also a key feature of the space,” said Brent Birch, Little Rock Tech Park’s executive director.
Brent Birch
Roughly 100 tech-focused workers across 30 companies are in the space currently, he said.
“The saying goes that your city is only as strong as your downtown, and our project is proud to catalyze some of the redevelopment downtown,” Birch said.
The Conductor operates in and also offers space for rent within the Arnold Innovation Center.
Once entrepreneurs have a network, a viable idea and a space, then it is about getting the money to support the idea.
The Conductor and Startup Junkie use a platform called Kiva, which works similar to Kickstarter, where people can choose to fund an idea or product. The entrepreneur can get up to a $15,000 loan with zero interest funded from Kiva.
“It can really be the difference between some entrepreneurs getting their ideas off the ground or not,” Standridge said.
Rock It! Lab can also help connect entrepreneurs who are ready with something called the Imani Fund, which uses the underwriting process that values an individual’s character and the business model’s potential rather than credit score. The fund provides loans between $5,000 and $25,000 to businesses.
Despite there being many of these resources and programs in the state, Tally said there is no competition between the organizations who serve entrepreneurs, nor does he often see it between entrepreneurs themselves.
“There’s enough opportunity for everybody, and I think most people embody that,” he said.
With the myriad obstacles to starting a business, these organizations are important to the entrepreneurs they serve and to the future growth of Arkansas.
“I think Arkansas, on so many levels, is underestimated,” Capek said. “People in Arkansas deserve to know that their ideas are strong and that their ideas are not far out of reach. There are resources here that can help make their ideas a reality and not just succeed but really thrive in the state and across the country and world.”
