Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

That’s the headline finding from five Morehead-Cain Scholars at UNC-Chapel Hill, who spent eight weeks embedded at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center this summer as part of the scholarship’s civic collaboration summer program.

The program places cohorts of rising sophomores with host organizations for a hands-on civic project. This group’s assignment was to figure out how the EC, and Nashville’s broader entrepreneurship scene, can better support minority founders.

The scholar team consisted of Justin Jackson, Ayushi Purohit, Beau Legnon, Ca’von Julissa Bell and Sloane Whalen. Together, they conducted 33 stakeholder interviews and found some main themes currently barring minority-owned entrepreneurship.

To address these barriers, the scholars proposed:

1. Revamp summer accelerators and identity-based founder circles.
2. Deploy a $25,000/year Community Connector Fund to pay local leaders to host founder events.
3. Rebuild the minority-access webpage with minority founder spotlights and an identity-based impact dashboard.
4. Create a monthly cross-organization entrepreneurship roundtable to align calendars and leads.
5. Develop a shared online directory tool as Nashville’s first stop for entrepreneurs. The scholar team already developed this, and it’s live here!
6. Curate an Inter-University Entrepreneurship Group aimed at keeping student talent in Nashville’s founder pipeline post-graduation.

Overall, the team argues that adopting these suggestions will increase the number and visibility of minority-owned businesses. And when tourists spend money in Nashville, a larger share of it naturally will then flow to them.

“Nashville has an intriguing environment for startups considering its culture, history and rapidly growing population,” said Jackson. “With the help of community, we are confident that these recommendations will remove barriers for minority entrepreneurs, stimulate city-wide economic development and revolutionize the ecosystem of founder support.”

For EC CEO Sam Davidson, he’s excited to review these proposals in-depth and get to work.

“We’re incredibly proud of our Morehead-Cain Scholars for the research, curiosity and dedication they brought to the EC this summer,” expressed Davidson. “Their recommendations sparked important conversations, and we hope they continue to inspire action across Nashville’s entrepreneurial community. Now, we are armed with a full report and are excited to start working on these recommendations.”

Review the full report here.

 

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