The Regional Business Council has matched fifteen member organizations with fifteen entrepreneurs for a year of mentoring and guidance. This year the Entrepreneur Connector Initiative has teamed up with Arch Grants, Brazen St. Louis, and Cultivation Capital to assist with identifying and hand-picking promising start-up leaders.
“The Regional Business Council is a consortium of 100’s of CEOs of large companies, and what we want to do is really help the entrepreneurial sector,” said President and CEO at Regional Business Council Kathy Osborn. “So what we’ve done today is brought some of our CEO’s together with a group of our entrepreneurs that are matched and they are going to be working together over the next year.”
To kick off the second year of the program, selected participants and their mentor counterparts gathered for the Initiative’s Opening Reception at Washington University’s Knight Center on June 21, from 3 to 5 pm. Participating entrepreneurs benefit not only from direct coaching with CEOs but also from the chance to grow their professional networks among RBC’s business community.
“What we hope is to help to encourage the new entrepreneurs,” Osborn said. “Also, if there are some skills that we have that we might be able to impart we certainly want to do that and learn more about these companies and hope to help them grow.”
The Regional Business Council, founded in 2000, is a consortium of 100 presidents and chief executive officers of mid- to large-sized companies in St. Louis. These companies are leaders in the region, employing over 120,000 people and generating over $65 billion in revenue annually.
The mission of the RBC is to unite and engage members to act on high-impact business, civic and philanthropic affairs for the betterment of the St. Louis region. With the Entrepreneur Connector Initiative, the RBC encourages the healthy growth of new businesses and supports the future of St. Louis’s new economy.
“Kathy and I were discussing how can the RBC help startup communities,” said Founder of the Initiative and CEO of its partner Cultivation Capital Brian Matthews. “We thought a mentorship program where we connect the larger companies to these earlier stage companies to help them grow their business, and make business decision by introducing them to other companies, customers, or potential employees.”
Arch Grants and Cultivation Capital both invest in the futures of St. Louis start-ups. Arch Grants offers a $50,000, highly-competitive equity-free grant and other professional support to early-stage entrepreneurs.
“For us the key to that is making sure the entrepreneurial community and the established business communities are not only interacting and know each other, but they are actively working to build one another and particularly for the business community to help to build the startups and the new companies that are coming here,” said Emily Lohse-Busch, Executive Director at Arch Grants.
Cultivation Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in accelerator programs and establishes seed funds for start-ups, like the Spirit of St. Louis Fund 1, which they helped establish in 2017.
“It’s a very serendipitous thing,” Matthews said. “You never know when that introduction or that advice that seems so normal to a person with grey hair could change the trajectory of a company.”
The Initiative’s partners have selected a variety of start-ups, ranging from new clean-energy technologies to fashionable swimwear designers. For example, Shayba Muhammad is the designer and founder of Mahnal Jewelry. She recently won the Brazen pitch competition and was recommended for the program through the partner.
“I’m just hoping I can make some valuable connections and learn a lot and take it with me to grow and scale my business, but also everything that I learn will fall back into the makers program and offering it back to other people,” Muhammad said.
For more information on the Regional Business Council and their initiatives you can visit http://stlrbc.org, email rbcadmin@stlrbc.org, or call 314-225-2100.