If you are a minority business owner, or a minority who would like to become a business owner, the Bio Entrepreneur Development Program wants you.
“We are trying to introduce minorities to the concept of participating as a supplier and provider of goods and services to emerging businesses in the biosciences,” said James Webb, president and CEO of the Minority Business Council, a partner in the initiative.
An Informational Meeting about the program will be held 4-5 p.m. Tuesday, February 1 at Center for Emerging Technologies, 4041 Forest Park Ave., followed by a networking reception.
“There is a great need for business creation that we do not have today and for existing minority-owned companies to get deeply involved in this emerging industry in St. Louis,” Webb said.
“Many of our folks need to understand the industry a little bit more. Many of our existing companies need to be trained, and new companies can be developed. The market is there. Some of the capital is there. This is a great opportunity.”
The program will consist of a 10-week training course dealing with topics appropriate for creating and managing a bioscience company, with ongoing coaching and mentoring, connections to business and technical resources – particularly funding sources – and advice on strategic planning issues.
Those interested in the program will need to go through a selection process and commit to attend the training course sessions, which are free.
Marcia Mellitz, vice president for Business Development of the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences, a partner in the program, says it responds to real needs in the local business community.
“We really have a shortage of entrepreneurs who can run bioscience companies, and we also have a shortage of minority business owners involved in the bioscience space,” Mellitz said.
She listed exampled of “the bioscience space”: developers and manufacturers of drugs, medical therapeutics, medical instruments, medical devices; the plant sciences; bio-energy, biofuels; and health care information technology.
“We are looking for people who are seriously interested in starting a company, or who have started a company but are in the early stages in the bioscience space, or who are interested to learn enough about the industry so they can provide services or products to that industry,” Mellitz said.
She said the initiative is the outgrowth of meetings instigated by the NAACP. It also was inspired by the large numbers of layoffs in the biosciences in St. Louis in the last couple of years. She estimated that 3,000 people in the St. Louis area have been laid off by large companies in this field in the past couple of years.
“We want to find a way to retain that talent in the region,” she said. “If people can’t find jobs, they going to leave. A lot of people have left. There aren’t enough jobs. By creating new companies, we hope we can find places for people to work.”
Mellitz insisted that anyone who is interested should attend the information session on February 1, even if they have no idea how they would fit in.
“We really trying to find a way to to engage people, to find receptive people just wanting to get more information,” she said.
“We also want business owners to tell us about the kinds of services they have. Just like a lot of those business owners don’t know about bioscience, we don’t necessarily know what services are out there that they could provide. So it’s a two-way street.”
The Bio Entrepreneur Development Program is funded by the Missouri Technology Corp., Pfizer, Anheuser-Busch and Savvis and is free to participants. It is being managed by Harlee Sorkin. Questions may be addressed to him at 314-615-6916 or hsorkin@emergingtech.org.
Anyone interested in attending the February 1 meeting should RSVP to hsorkin@emergingtech.org.
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