September 18, 2023
Contact: Charles Ross, President and CEO, InBIA
239-402-4450
Community Huddle: Rural Ecosystems
Huddle occurred on September 8, 2023 with 65 registrants
InBIA’s quarterly community huddle happened on September 8th with a focus on Rural Ecosystems. Our members focused on the struggle to help entrepreneurs get the funding they need and discussed 1) what would it look like if there were many sources of funding available to entrepreneurs in their regions? 2) What types of funding are most likely to emerge? and 3) How can we ensure that such funding is sustainable and accessible to all entrepreneurs? Another significant challenge addressed was the lack of serial entrepreneurs in rural regions and we discussed 1) What does it look like to have a robust community of serial entrepreneurs? and 2) What aspects of ecosystems are most likely to attract such entrepreneurs? Lastly, we discussed What does it look like to scale all aspects of entrepreneurial support in rural regions? and What aspects are most challenging to scale?
From these discussion, several takeaways were identified:
- We saw that across the globe we have people talking about the same challenges.
- We also heard how different communities can have different personalities, and how you can lean into those personalities to bring members in.
- The benefit of providing mindset services as well.
- Letting the community know why you are able to provide the things that you can.
- The importance of identifying community leaders and forming those relationships in order to bring more entrepreneurs in.
- Another program is using USDA grant dollars to start working with other groups such as libraries, chambers, etc to go out into these rural areas to scale the support.
To continue the discussion on Rural Ecosystem please consider attending eBuilders23 October 2nd and 3rd in Bethlehem PA.
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About InBIA: InBIA is a global nonprofit with over 1,200 members that lead entrepreneurship centers in 32 countries. For over 30 years, InBIA has provided industry best practices through education while enabling collaboration, mentorship, peer-based learning and the sharing of innovative ideas for entrepreneurs across the globe. InBIA is the premier organization for business incubators, accelerators, coworking spaces and other entrepreneurship centers.
For more information contact Charles Ross, President and CEO, InBIA at 678-431-1300 or visit us at www.InBIA.org