Interview with Sumeet Chahal Part 1
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Sumeet Chahal, the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of Bunker Labs. Sumeet is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University. The United States military provides a massive network of support for military personnel, but this network is under-utilized when veterans leave the military. Sumeet and Bunker Labs strive to build and leverage a network of veteran entrepreneurs. Veterans leave the military possessing a wide skill set, yet they are 40% less likely to receive traditional bank loans. Sumeet described to me that for many veterans, serving was an act of selflessness, and many shy away from utilizing this network because it felt selfish to ask for help. Bunker is changing this narrative. By connecting veterans throughout the country through entrepreneurship programs that help veterans find resources and scale their businesses or the pre-COVID-19 social gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs. Bunker gives veterans the support to make the necessary connections, whether it be a mentor, a partnership, or a new customer to help veteran-owned businesses scale. Here is the first of two parts of our interview: Carter: Can you give me a bit of background on the beginnings of Bunker Labs, as well as your story in working for Bunker? Sumeet: Bunker Labs was founded six years ago by Todd Connor. In late 2016, I had decided that I wanted to shift my focus towards entrepreneurship. This led me to move to
From Digi.City: 7 Essential Elements of a Smart City Ecosystem
Getting the most out of the capabilities of a Smart City goes beyond the technological infrastructure in place. The people creating and benefiting from the solutions built on top of the technology create an effective ecosystem. Smart City efforts are usually led by one community entity, but the key to success is to get all parties within a community to engage in order to maximize the benefits. You can read up on the 7 fundamentals of a Smart City ecosystem in this great article by Chelsea Collier, our director of Digital Communities and founder of Digi.City.
Stickiness Factor
You can only be successful if people are willing and able to be your customers. They must know about you, and be compelled to act. Malcolm Gladwell asserts in The Tipping Point that “the stickiness factor” is one of three necessary elements for an idea to reach critical mass and tip into the mainstream. Brothers Chip and Dan Heath adopted Gladwell’s term and expounded further on the concept. To be sticky, an idea needs to be: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional, and involve Stories Example: The Power of Stickiness Which statement below resonates more with you? Which are you more likely to remember? Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives. OR We will “put a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade.” One final note: discussed above are ways that you can make your own message resonate with a potential customer or the market. But your company’s success is about far more than making the initial sale. The Cluetrain Manifesto revolutionized marketing with the simple statement that Markets are conversations. The authors further assert that there are three primary categories of activity in any marketplace: transaction, conversation and relationship. Ultimately your customers are people, not “targets,” “market niches” or “demographics.” People want to connect and they want to matter. Especially with the internet and social media, they expect to see behind the curtain. And they talk.
Interview with Emmanuel Tuombe of ABES Engineering
Recently, I got the opportunity to speak with Emmanuel Tuombe, Founder and CEO of ABES Engineering in Memphis. Growing up witnessing the challenges created from a lack of infrastructure in Rwanda, Emmanuel set out to become a civil engineer. He founded ABES Engineering in 2015 with the goal to build a profitable business and to give back locally and around the world in underserved communities. After a successful career working for the largest engineering firm in the world, Bechtel, Emmanuel embarked on the entrepreneurial journey with ABES. Through his involvement in the community and a chat with the city of Memphis Mayor Office through the Office of Business Diversity and Compliance (OBDC), Emmanuel learned about and thought highly of The 800 Initiative, a program with the primary goal of growing existing minority-owned businesses in Memphis. After joining The 800, his business developed quickly. With The 800, ABES was able to learn how to scale his business by partnering with other engineering firms, as well as create a sound strategy to support Emmanuel’s vision and ABES’s growth. Learn more from our interview here. Carter: What work is ABES Engineering currently doing? Emmanuel: “ABES is currently involved with many major infrastructure projects with the City of Memphis, Shelby County Government, the International Port of Memphis, and the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). We partner with other engineering firms, such as the largest in Memphis, Fisher Arnold, to execute our projects. We will soon embark on projects with the Tennessee Department of Transportation. ABES
Entrepreneurship is for Everyone
The Missing Ingredient In our article introducing the Digital City, we mentioned that the key ingredient to activating a Smart City is to incorporate entrepreneurship. In cities that are not considered technological hubs, innovation has been confined to individual efforts and siloed organizations to produce a product, produce a business model, and find funding. Our goal is to create a cultural shift where entrepreneurial principles and open innovation are embraced by all sectors of our community and beyond. At Start Co. we believe that Peter Drucker was right in saying that, “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” For us it means that “Entrepreneurship is for Everyone.” Status Quo United States cities are falling behind in terms of economic and technological growth. Traditional approaches have not succeeded in reversing this trend, but not from a lack of effort. Now more than ever, we need to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit to truly advance and move beyond incremental innovation that isn’t keeping up. This does not mean that everyone needs to begin their own startup, but rather we ought to allow the framework and strategies behind entrepreneurship to direct our future. To embrace entrepreneurship is to shift our guiding question from “how can we stay afloat?” to “what can we accomplish if?” A Community Built on Entrepreneurship “Entrepreneurship is for Everyone” literally means that we invite all of our community members to participate. In Memphis we are blessed with diverse community members. We have known for a very
Crafting or Re-crafting your Sales Process
In our last post supporting existing small and minority businesses we recommended looking at the fundamentals of your existing business. Today we focus on examining your sales process with some thoughts from our President, Andre Fowlkes. . Understanding the Sales Cycle Whether you are in a pandemic or in “normal” times, we must constantly look to become more efficient. Your sales process is a great place to start. We must shorten our sales cycles — the timeline between customer discovery and getting paid by the customer — in order to reduce lost leads and close more deals. To start, prioritize and rank leads to sort out where your time should be spent. The sales cycle should be easily transferable to a business’s financial revenue assumptions — as in match up to your financials historical and prospective (aka budgeting method). It’s the key to the business model. A sales cycle must be planned and managed, which takes time, reflectio, math, and resources which invariably are usually left out of financial projections. As you reflect, here are some activities to consider in regards to managing your sales cycle: Amount of time needed daily to generate leads and how (marketing/prospecting) Amount of time working the leads to increase engagement and interest from clients Amount of time working the pipeline of opportunities Amount of time managing prospects and learning their behavior Amount of time spent gathering data on prospects Amount of time analyzing gathered data Amount of time spent closing and how Amount of
Alumni Spotlight: Surface Medical Solutions
In this edition of the alumni spotlight, we are highlighting Surface Medical Solutions LLC, a minority owned business specializing in the surfacing of surgical implants and instruments with metal finishing, buffing, and glass beading. The vision behind the business came to founder, Kevin Briggs, twelve years ago. After having worked for over 29 years as a medical device technician, Kevin saw that medical manufacturers struggled to meet customer deadlines. Kimberly Briggs, Kevin’s wife and business partner, observed medical products as well from her 16 years of experience as a surgical technician. As a result, Kevin and Kimberly began devising a plan to save money, purchase equipment, and to open for business. After a few attempts in getting their business up and running, the business leveraged Start Co. Programs in 2020 and signed their first customer late last year. We reached out to the founders recently to get some insights. What would you recommend to entrepreneurs beginning their journey? “You must have a plan. Write everything down that you need to begin your business. Surround yourself with knowledgeable people and ask a lot of questions. I wish we would have met Ryan [Ramkhelawan] years ago and to have been a part of the Start Co. program. We could have skipped some of the hardships. There were many things that we didn’t know, including creating business plans and sales pitches or applying for grants or loans.” How do you go about finding talent that fulfills your business’s needs? “First, you should see
An Introduction to Digital Agriculture: Part 2
This two-part blog post provides a basic overview of the emerging digital agriculture segment. Part two summarizes future challenges and frontiers in the segment as the market and technologies progress. Part one introduces the existing technology and concept of digital agriculture. Breaking the connectivity barrier Although data-generating tech is quickly becoming more accessible, there remain critical steps to bringing the full potential of Digital Agriculture to the farm. Complex software must be developed, tested, and demonstrated to successfully aggregate the massive amounts of agricultural data into actionable and user-friendly insights, an area in which entry costs remain high. Development of successful intermediary software requires extensive collaboration and consensus between the various steps in the supply chain, ensuring sufficient usability for the input provider, the farmer, and the distributor. As a result, hard information on the long-term benefits of a fully connected digital agriculture system remains relatively scarce, and the ability of providers to make a strong business case for farmers to surmount entry costs will be constrained until this analytic software is further developed. Just as importantly, a foremost prerequisite for adoption of digital ag technologies is a strong, reliable connection between all network elements, from the fields to the data-collection devices to data analytics centers. Many areas of the country, particularly rural areas, offer little or no high-speed connectivity, and those that do may be subject to signal interruption or loss. Development of economical and effective means to extend network connectivity to all farms is thus a basic prerequisite and
An Introduction to Digital Agriculture: Part 1
This two-part blog post provides a basic overview of the emerging digital agriculture segment. Part one introduces the existing technology and concept of digital agriculture. Part two summarizes future challenges and frontiers in the segment as the market and technologies progress. Overview The digital agriculture sector is developing quickly as each segment of the agricultural supply chain seeks to integrate data-driven insights into its processes. Easier access to existing data-collection technology sees the bar of entry steadily lowering; however, critical aspects of connectivity and software tech require further development. The successful bridging of the connectivity gap for rural areas, and development of reliable network software to link data-collection tech together will be critical steps toward widespread adoption, as well as development of an established market model as to which segments of the agricultural supply chain will make inroads to supply these technologies directly to farmers. The sector is enjoying increasing attention from universities, agribusiness, and other stakeholders, and steadily approaches its potential to bring estimated tens of billions of dollars to the global economy, according to the UN Project Breakthrough, along with substantial improvements in productivity, efficiency, and sustainability in the coming decade. Using data to innovate Traditionally, agricultural practices rely on time-honored systems of rough measurement, experience, and intuition. In the face of global population growth and increasingly resource scarcity, however, data-driven insights and technology can be leveraged to streamline and maximize efficiency, output, and resource conservation. Immense amounts of data are already generated on the farm: decreasing hardware
NBMBAA Demo Day Recap
On Friday, February 26th, Start Co. was happy to host the National Black MBA Association Scale Up Accelerator Virtual Demo Day. Ten Black-owned startups pitched to Start Co. President, Andre Fowlkes and Tim Smith, a venture capitalist with Bee Partners for $15,000 of cash prizes. While the Demo Day handed out some money the main goal was further investment for all businesses, which was supported by a large audience of investors present during the event. The Importance of this Work Paula Fontana, the Vice President of Strategic Programming Initiatives at NBMBAA, kicked things off speaking to the importance of Black-owned businesses in addressing the wealth gap in America. She cited this Demo Day as one method to grow opportunities for Black-owned businesses. Following Paula, Andre Fowlkes spoke to the partnership with NBMBAA facilitating Black business growth by finding the capital and mentorship support to persevere through the necessary failure that startups must endure. Tim Smith is a native Memphian who now lives in California. His company, Bee Partners, is a seed venture capital firm in San Francisco that listens to approximately 2000 pitches a year and works to increase funding exposure to the entrepreneurship scene in California for all businesses. Recently, Tim led an investment into SoundCredit, a black owned and led tech startup in Memphis, TN. 10 Great Startups The panel and the audience heard pitches from 10 great black owned and led startup businesses. They were: RxInteractive Bon AppeSweet InovCares Black Girls Do Engineer Corporation Hair Scout Sympliant