#StartupsEverywhere profile: Aaron Saunders, CEO, Inclusive Innovation Incubator
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Supporting Black and Underrepresented Entrepreneurs in the District
The Inclusive Innovation Incubator (In3) is the first ecosystem builder focused on cultivating and supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs in the nation’s capital. Launched three years ago to improve diversity and inclusion in D.C.’s emerging tech space, In3 has held hundreds of events and supported more than 1,500 entrepreneurs looking to launch new businesses. We recently spoke with Aaron Saunders, In3’s CEO, to learn more about the nonprofit’s programs, how the tech sector can better support and engage with underrepresented entrepreneurs, and the steps that policymakers can take to support Black small business owners—particularly those affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
What in your background made you interested in transforming the startup community for underrepresented entrepreneurs?
Besides running the Inclusive Innovation Incubator (In3), I manage my own software development firm called Clearly Innovative. And I ran into a set of challenges just starting my company that really affected my perspective. I bootstrapped my company and I came from this place of privilege—a good education, a good background, multiple years of experience, and an MBA from a top business school—but I still struggled to get a small services firm up and running.
My firm builds websites and mobile apps for large and small companies. Our largest client now is the African American History Museum, but we also work with a lot of small companies—specifically, black-owned firms. And one of the first things we recognized is that a lot of them have gaps in their understanding of how to effectively launch a small business. They just assumed “I need to build a website,” without taking a lot of the other steps you normally would go through before building a business. Whether it’s a business plan or defining your customers, I was seeing these gaps in knowledge. They had a lot of passion and a lot of energy and were willing to make the commitment, but they didn’t have the baseline knowledge to help them be successful. And I taught at Howard University for two years in the business school and the computer science school, so that gave me some insights into the challenges. We initially started incorporating that into the work we were doing, and that’s how we got into the ‘helping entrepreneurs’ space.
For five years now we’ve also been running after-school, in-school, and summer STEM and entrepreneurship programs for middle and high school kids. Through our youth education work, we won a $100,000 grant from JP Morgan Chase. Our goal was to find a physical location and try to spin off our educational entrepreneurship program separate from the software development firm. At the time, the D.C. mayor’s office made a commitment with Howard University to open a space specifically focused on diversity and inclusion in tech. I was strongly encouraged to respond to that proposal. Our goal was to take a bunch of our ideas about addressing diversity and inclusion in tech, and then apply them in a space that was intensely focused on it—and that’s how we ended up with In3.
Tell us about the Inclusive Innovation Incubator (In3) and how the space is working to support Black and underrepresented entrepreneurs.
We focus on folks at the ideation stage and help prep them to go to the next level. The analogy that I use is we’re like the development league in professional sports. Our goal is to identify and cultivate high-potential talent, and then put them on a pathway to success.
We do a lot of that through branded programming. We have a program called Futures Written in Code, which offers free technology training courses to increase technical capital in the community. One of the things we identified early on is that there’s simply a lack of technical capital in Black and underrepresented communities. Someone can have a good idea, but there are often limited or no resources within their network to help them build it out. So the program is there to help address that lack of technical knowledge. And Grow and Glow is our women’s-focused entrepreneurship program. A lot of the attendees in our programs are women, so we created this branded program to offer workshops and events for women entrepreneurs.
In3 Labs is our tech-enabled business bootcamp, and we’re about to end our second cohort. Our focus there is to take the traditional business bootcamp model, and then focus on these technical capital issues with our target audience. We basically work with entrepreneurs as their virtual CTO as they go through this process. When they’re done with the program, our hope is that they not only understand what their business concept is, but have some ideas for how to implement it and the technologies supporting it.
In our three years of existence, we’ve built out a 6,500 person mailing list, supported over 1,500 entrepreneurs through our programs, and held approximately 300-400 different events. And that’s when we were just figuring it all out.
Entrepreneurs of color and women founders often experience additional barriers when launching startups. What can the startup community do to better support the ideas and businesses of these underrepresented founders?
I think the problem is there’s this assumption that people should just fund entrepreneurs. But if there’s no local ecosystem to support them, then their likelihood of success is diminished. It’s great that there are grants or small business loans for entrepreneurs, and it is important to invest in entrepreneurs of color and women. Without the programming or infrastructure needed to support them, however, the impact will not be measurable. For a successful outcome, in addition to providing financial support to entrepreneurs, the funding for economic development should include programming and support to fund the ecosystem builders, like In3.
If you’re a tech company, you also need to demonstrate a commitment to the community. Coming in and funding a local summer bootcamp, and then leaving, doesn’t change anything. And if you’re not hiring people who look like me anyway, then why should I bother taking any of your courses? Until there’s a consistent commitment to these programs—not just a weekend program or a summer program—you’re not going to have lasting change in the local ecosystem.
You begin the process of addressing the problem through relationships, not through transactions. A lot of tech companies seem to treat the problem as transactional. You need to build a relationship, you need to make an investment, and you need to cultivate that relationship. We’re right next to Howard University, and the feedback I get from students is that companies treat these relationships as transactional. Their diversity and recruitment teams will fly into town and give out t-shirts and talk about the company, and then they’ll ghost until next year. That’s not building a relationship.
Are there any steps that District and federal policymakers could take to better support the District’s entrepreneurs of color?
Unfortunately the only funding we’ve received was from the D.C. government. The model was that the government would provide some funding to backstop us and demonstrate their commitment, and then the private sector would step in to offer additional support, but that’s just not happened yet.
I think foundations who are in the community should help support ecosystem builders like In3, and then state and local funding can also come down to support them. But there are studies that show that foundations and nonprofits run by people of color receive less funding, and most of these nonprofits don’t have the same infrastructure in place to play the grant-chasing game that’s required to get funding. So there are systemic problems that exist that need to be addressed.
I think the proper model includes Opportunity Zone development, where developers can get tax breaks to come into underserved communities and build new usable spaces. And while there’s this focus on social justice now, there’s still economic justice that needs to be addressed. People still need quality jobs and they still need a quality education.
So policymakers can’t start patting yourselves on the back yet until they look at some of these other problems in our society that were exposed by the COVID outbreak . When the smoke settles from the outbreak, it will mostly be Black-owned small businesses that will be gone. There needs to be something done now to address that. A lot of companies simply aren’t going to survive, and then those people will go back on to the unemployment rolls.
The government put out a lot of information on PPP loans to support businesses affected by COVID. I have an experienced COO and CFO, so we had the ability to go through all of the paperwork, read through it, get the forms filled out, and apply. But there are a tremendous number of Black-owned businesses that simply don’t have that infrastructure in place to even know where to start.
So it’s great the government provided funding, but they also need to provide support to organizations in these communities that can assist people with their loan applications. It’s one thing to say there’s access to funding, but it’s another to say you can secure the funding. And that’s the problem. If I don’t have the skill, infrastructure, or the expertise to actually get the funding, then who cares how much there is?
What is your goal for In3 moving forward?
Pre-COVID, we were working on expanding In3 beyond our physical location. We’re working on a software platform called In3 Nation, and the idea is that we’ll leverage the online platform to build out our brand on a national level. We were also working on expanding to multiple locations, and we hope we’ll be able to reach more entrepreneurs and build relationships in more communities to get a better understanding of their needs. We moved all of our in-person programming online as soon as COVID happened, and we’re aggressively working toward getting the online program up and identifying more resources to get online.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email edward@engine.is.
