In its 30-year history, the Nashville Business Incubation Center has helped companies like Christie Cookie, Zycron and The Grilled Cheeserie, supporting their growth and evolution into some of Nashville's best-known businesses.
But while the center, a Tennessee State University initiative, has a longer history to draw upon than some other entrepreneurial support institutions in Nashville, it has confronted its share of the same challenges facing startups and small businesses nationwide.
"When I came to the center over 10 years ago, I noticed many women and minorities weren't growing at the same rates as their white counterparts at the center," said Angela Crane-Jones, the center's executive director. "There were more white men compared to minorities leveraging the resources of the center."
Along with her predecessor, Crane-Jones looked for ways to increase diversity and to "make sure everyone had access if they wanted to start a small business."
Today, while the center's clients are still 70 percent male, more than half of its client base is black. In order to sow greater success among minorities and women, Crane-Jones said, the center has taken steps designed to "remove barriers" and "meet clients where they are."
Those steps may provide a road map for others concerned about the lack of diversity among successful startup founders, an oft-discussed topic in Nashville and beyond. For the NBIC, Crane-Jones said, the biggest challenges needing to be overcome have to do with access to both capital and expertise.
"A lot of times what you see with women and minorities, they don’t have access," Jones said. "So we have a revolving loan fund here that we can lend, and that’s not based upon credit, and that helps them … get to the next level.”
Jones has the power to write checks up to $25,000 to businesses in need of a loan — say, for example, they have a big contract opportunity but will need money to cover payroll in the weeks before the client makes a payment. Above that, or if the loan seems riskier, she needs board approval.
"The foundation for the revolving loan fund and being able to do that, is at the minimum, they have to have worked with me for six months," Crane-Jones said. "The loan is based upon character, so if they’re actually working the program and taking advantage of the program, we never say no."
The "program" Jones is referring to helps overcome another issue many nontraditional entrepreneurs face: accountability and expertise. While the NBIC provides office space to its clients, they're also required to go through a five-year structured curriculum that gives them feedback and support which their existing networks may not be able to provide. As part of that program, Jones and her team also keeps an eye on the systems being implemented by the entrepreneurs and makes sure they're taking the right steps to help their businesses thrive.
"I think the most important thing for me, a takeaway for this program, is the accountability piece," Crane-Jones said. "A lot of small businesses, especially women and minorities, they don’t have that circle, or anybody that’s going to hold them accountable. And we’re able to do that.”
