The second annual Roadmap to Entrepreneurship conference, held Monday, June 12 at the Danforth Plant Science Center, was a “boot camp” for local entrepreneurs, to help them find the skills, connections, and – critically – investors they need to succeed. Thirty-six local investors and approximately 350 entrepreneurs joined the conference.
Sorin Vaduva, a fellow with the St. Louis Mosaic project and of Missouri Venture Forum, founded the conference. Vaduva has been mentoring start-up companies since 2006. He sees hundreds of them each year, so he channeled those mentorship skills into the conference. He believes that a conference such as this is necessary because many people want to be entrepreneurs, and the need for entrepreneurs is great in the St. Louis community, but those who might wish to start a small business often have no idea where to start.
“What happens is, people come in with their own expectations, their own expertise in one aspect of business or another, and they don’t realize there’s so much else that needs to be done,” said Vaduva. “So out of that frustration I lifted my list of ‘to-dos’ of things that people need to know.”
“You had men and women there but from a cultural background standpoint, it was not as diverse as it could be.” – Cheryl Watkins-Moore
He found that he had enough “to-dos” to make into a full conference. The schedule was packed with six panels that “cover all the issues that someone needs to be aware of and know how to juggle,” he said, and then a town hall meeting with the investors.
This last point was of particular interest because it allowed the entrepreneurs time to ask questions of investors, and even make connections with people who might provide funding for their own businesses.
Vaduva hoped businesspeople would have some specific takeaways from the conference.
“I want them to leave from each of the panels with four things: what it is they need to know from that specific panel, whom do they need to know so they can actually go and ask for support, what kind of resources they need to invest in, and what kind of expertise they need,” he said.
“If they have the answers to those four questions, they know what their limits are, and whom do they need to talk with, and what kind of questions they should ask.”
Michael Holmes, executive director of the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment (SLATE), was one of the panelists on the Assets Protection, Taxes, and Credits panel.
The panel was “really interactive with the crowd,” Holmes said. It was also well-balanced. “I was from government, someone else was from private business, someone was from a law firm, all talking about what we can do to help small business.”
“There’s a lot of resources out there,” he said. “You just have to reach for them.” Those resources, such as the employment talent pool provided by SLATE, were shared with the entrepreneurs at the panel.
Cheryl Watkins-Moore was one of the entrepreneurs who attended the conference. As director of the Bioscience and Entrepreneurial Inclusion Initiative at the bioscience group BioSTL, she attended one panel hoping to gain insight on available resources in the St. Louis area for entrepreneurs.
“It was very good,” Watkins-Moore said. “This [panel] was on the resources that were available. The panel discussion was healthy, and some good insights were shared.”
However, as leader of an initiative for diversity and inclusion, Watkins-Moore said the conference left something to be desired. “You had men and women there,” she said, “but from a cultural background standpoint, it was not as diverse as it could be.”
Vaduva said he hopes to help all kinds of entrepreneurs move their businesses forward, and continue to diversify conference attendees in the future.
“Be that a large company, or something that will become a family business that’s going to be passed along from generation to generation, I could care less,” he said. “And I know by having more businesses be successful, we can actually employ more people in the region, and I can pass on the spirit of entrepreneurship to other people much faster.”
For more information on the Missouri Venture Forum, visit http://www.mvfstl.org.
