Like the entrepreneurs it helps, TEDCO spent time collecting feedback over the last year. And it wasn’t always pretty.
Maryland’s quasi-public organization, which helps early-stage companies grow and create jobs in the state, brought in an outside group to look at how TEDCO operated. One piece of data that stuck out was the fact that African Americans weren’t applying for TEDCO funding in the same numbers as other demographic groups, even though those who did apply received funding at the same rate, said McKeever Conwell, who was hired by TEDCO last year as a deal-team coordinator. So the organization convened listening sessions at Morgan State and Bowie State to find out why.
One message that was delivered concerned the earliest stages of funding for a startup.
“The thing that comes up anytime you talk to African American entrepreneurs is, ‘We don’t have access to friends and family capital,’” Conwell, who is known as Mac around the Baltimore startup community, said last week at Invested Impact’s Investing in Urban Innovators Summit at Impact Hub.
@MacConwell speaks on @MDTEDCO‘s local partnership w/ The Harbor Bank of Maryland, a CDFI looking to impact entrepreneurs of color #UrbInn17
— Invested Impact (@InvestedImpact) February 15, 2017
To address this gap, TEDCO is launching a $400,000 fund. It’s a partnership with Harbor Bank CDC, the Baltimore-based, Black-owned bank that’s also making a push to help provide capital for African-American entrepreneurs (and is in the process of developing a coworking space).
TEDCO’s Minority Business Pre-Seed Fund is seeking to help 10 Maryland entrepreneurs who are in the idea phase.
Conwell, who is leading the fund, said it starts accepting applications on March 1, and TEDCO is planning a pair of info sessions on Feb. 22 at TEDCO headquarters in Columbia and on March 1 at Harbor Bank in Baltimore. The fund is considered a…