Carol Reeves of the University of Arkansas, left, and London-based investor and startup coach Permjot Valia discuss potential funding sources for social entrepreneurs at the 2015 Social Entrepreneurship Boot Camp at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain.
Aspiring social entrepreneurs from Arkansas were paired with mentors at the 2015 Social Entreprenurship Boot Camp held over the weekend at the University of Arkansas Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain.
Twenty-two teams pitched their social enterprise to a panel of mentors representing business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors from Arkansas and as far away as California and England.
The event was a partnership between WRI, the UA’s Clinton School of Public Service, the UA’s Office of Entrepreneurship and the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub. The boot camp opened with a Friday night keynote from Noble Impact founder Steve Clark, who also founded Propak and co-founded Rockfish.
Noble Impact is a Little Rock nonprofit that has developed a cirriculum for elementary, middle- and high-school students that introduces them to social entrepreneurship.
Teams pitched their ideas and ventures before a panel of mentors that included Permjot Valia, a London-based entrepreneur/investor who founded MentorCamp and has become an Arkansas goodwill ambassador.
Valia has invested in several Arkansas tech-based startups, and believes the state is home to several potential “billion-dollar plays.”
Joining him as mentors were:
- Nikolai DiPippa, director of public programs and strategic partnerships at the Clinton School of Public Service;
- Phyl and Jeff Amerine, co-founders of Fayetteville’s Startup Junkie Consulting (Jeff is also an adviser to Innovate Arkansas);
- Carol Reeves, associate vice-provost of entrepreneurship at the UA’s Walton College of Business;
- Cynthia Sides, associate director for the UA Office of Entrepreneurship and director of its IGNITE (Industry Generating New Ideas and Technology through Education) program;
- Trish Flanagan, co-founder of IA client Picasolar and Noble Impact;
- Ben Kaufman, research officer for the Walton Family Foundation;
- John Montgomery, chairman emeritus and senior legal advisor at Montgomery & Hansen LLP in California. Montgomery led a session on benefit corporations, a legal standing for companies so they can be measured by profit growth and social impact.
Also participating were Clinton School Dean Skip Rutherford and WRI Director Marta Loyd, and Shea Halligan of Westrock Coffee provided the students with the story behind a social enterprise success story.
Elston Forte presented for Young Intellectual Active Minds (Y.I.AM) Project, a team that hopes to reduce recidivism and increase positive outcomes for young African-American males.
“The ability to break down and pinpoint the message for our organization was really valuable,” Forte said. “As a result of the boot camp, we’re going back and looking at our five-year business plan to make it a seven-year plan. We want to capitalize on all of the revenue streams we learned about.”
Loyd said the participants’ collective transformation was obvious by the end of the camp.
“We saw that progress from every team, and it speaks directly to their character and perseverance and to the quality of the mentors at the boot camp,” she said.
Reeves, who has been involved in the creation of many successful competitive business-plan teams at the UA (including Picasolar), many of which have gone on to experience real-world business success, said she was energized by the event.
“The participants came in with open minds, a willingness to learn and a strong work ethic, which made it possible for them to accomplish in 48 hours what would normally take months of work,” Reeves said. “All of the participants came in with passion; they left with a much better understanding of what it will take to make their ideas a reality and how to inspire others to join them in their efforts. The world-class mentors were blown away by the progress the participants made during the weekend, and they are anxious to see how these social entrepreneurs will transform the state.”
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