Global Entrepreneur Product Training

We are committed to alleviating poverty by helping young, diamond-in-the-rough global entrepreneurs create successful product-led businesses. The products themselves will bring value to the kids/families that use them. And the businesses will provide employment and increased economy in areas that desperately need it. We are empowering these global entrepreneurs through a 60-day, online training that helps them take the next step with their product idea and gives them the foundation of a sustainable business model. We have only been running this program for one year and have already helped over 40 global entrepreneurs. We want to work with early stage entrepreneurs who are just getting started with their world-changing idea. If we could scale, we could help out hundreds more entrepreneurs bring their amazing product ideas to market and lift up their communities with valuable products, solid employment, and increased economy.  

We are trying to solve the problem of lack of opportunity to pursue, realize, and capitalize on a really good idea for an innovative small product. It is tough enough in a developed economy to create a product from an idea.  The difficulty is compounded when you try to pursue an idea in a developing country often without access to the right education, networking, training, expertise, and funding.  In our short time the past 10 years working with our own product in countries around the world, we have heard countless anecdotal feedback about how hard it is to make an idea a reality - and then even harder to turn that realized product into a sustainable business.  The SDG's point to several issues around employment, industry, innovation, work, education, and many other indirect factors that limit the ability to create a new product and business. The difficulty to pursue a product idea and create a business becomes even more difficult for younger people, women, and minorities.  With so many obstacles, the easiest option can often be to simply give up.

Our solution is a simple incubator for young global entrepreneurs with ideas for small products that can make a difference.  The incubator mainly provides a 60-day online training to help early stage entrepreneurs get to the next step with their idea.  The curriculum, resources, and coaching in the training is very personal and encouraging.  We want to both empower the entrepreneur to reach their full potential and position their idea to be as successful as possible.  After the training, we provide further value as entrepreneurs are included in the incubator alumni program and have access to additional training, coaching, networking, and opportunites.  We have worked with over 40 entrepreneurs in the short time we have been running the incubator.  It is fairly low-cost as we rely on mostly online platforms (Teachable, social media, digital communication) and volunteers.

We aim to work with younger entrepreneurs (ages 18-30) living in developing countries who are attempting to make a product idea into a reality. We mainly focus on entrepreneurs in Africa, but we do not limit our incubator to one area (continent, country, etc.).  We also mostly work with female entrepreneurs; but, again, we do not limit the incubator to just females.  Throughout the early days of this program, we are learning more and more about the entrepreneurs we seek to serve.  We love our personal and relational culture for our incubator.  Each entrepreneur in our training cohorts gets to work closely with their coach and speak to them each week.  This one-on-one coaching yields amazing results on both the confidence of the entrepreneur and the progression of their idea.  We are committed to filling in the gaps that exist for young entrepreneurs with product ideas.  We admit we don't know everything about them right now.  But we have felt a close bond to the entrepreneurs we have worked with so far because we (our team, our coaches, our volunteers) have been entrepreneurs ourselves.

We might come at this challenge from a different direction. While there is obviously great benefit to the use of technology in entrepreneurship, business, and jobs - we remain a little bit old school. Our incubator focuses on physical products that have limited or no technology (digital, electronic, etc.).  But we think our incubator program aligns well with the challenge because we are working with people who just want an opportunity to pursue their idea.  They want a chance to succeed with a product idea they are passionate about. And we don't want to see any good idea be wasted.

Our solution (Pursuit Incubator) is innovative because we are focusing on supporting entrepreneurs in a niche that others typically overlook or avoid.  There are many, many incubators and accelerators.  There are even a lot of incubators, accelerators, and trainings that focus on social enterprises.  But many of these focus on a few key areas: heavy on technology, prioritizing entrepreneurs who have experience/success, working with startups that are already profitable, and providing funding only in exchange for equity.
For our solution, we are staying true to ourselves and working in areas that others might bypass.  We ourselves have created a physical product, designed it, manufactured it, and sold it.  We aren't perfect at it, but we have learned a lot.  So that is the lane we stay in.  We also are not interested in getting any equity for our support of these entrepreneurs.  So are we the first or the best incubator?  Not at all.  But do we provide an innovative incubator that fits a niche?  I believe so.
Pursuit Incubator works with early stage entrepreneurs who do not need to have shown success yet.  They could just have an idea on the back of a napkin.  We want to work with the diamond-in-the-rough entrepreneurs.  We only work with product ideas.  And we work with global entrepreneurs (or ideas that are global) who want to make a difference.  We feel our incubator is unique, and we have been thrilled at the demand we have seen from hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world.

Our technology is very simple.  We use an online platform called Teachable to host our cohort of entrepreneurs.  We utilize WhatsApp and Skype to do our weekly coaching calls.  In many ways, we are using very straightforward, common technology to accomplish our trainings.
But we are providing an opportunity for our young entrepreneurs to be empowered to pursue their innovative ideas.  They are bringing into the world these amazing products that will make a difference for people.  We use our training cohorts (Teachable platform with coaching calls through WhatsApp or Skype) to put them in a better position to succeed.

We utilize widely used technologies to administer our Pursuit Incubator.  Teachable is an online platform used by many, many people.  WhatsApp and Skype are also platforms that are used by millions of people.  These technologies help facilitate our training.  

The problem we are trying to solve is extreme poverty.  There are over 700 million people still living in extreme poverty. Our theory of change begins with capitalism, business, and employment.  The creation of sustainable businesses brings additional jobs into an economy.  Our avenue is to help young global entrepreneurs create sustainable businesses and employment around a small product.  
Our activities for our Pursuit Incubator involve training young entrepreneurs on the basics of designing, manufacturing, launching, and selling a product.  Our training, coaching, and mentoring provides a fantastic opportunity for young entrepreneurs to make their ideas into a reality.
The immediate outputs are the products that are being created, businesses that are being launched, and businesses that are finding ways to be more sustainable. 
The long-term outcomes revolve around impactful products that are bringing value to people.  It also includes strong businesses that are employing dozens of people and bringing increased economy to the community.  
One of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty is to provide opportunities for empowerment so entrepreneurs can create products and businesses.  Our Pursuit Incubator is finding diamond-in-the-rough entrepreneurs and helping them create their products and launch their businesses.

The current number of entrepreneurs in our Spring Cohort is 10.
We will have a Fall Cohort that will also have 10 entrepreneurs.  This brings our total entrepreneurs served for 2020 to 20.
As our program grows each year in the coming five years - we anticipate training 250 entrepreneurs in our Pursuit Incubator in the next five years.

Our goal for our Pursuit Incubator in 2020 is to complete our Spring Cohort (10 entrepreneurs) and Fall Cohort (10 entrepreneurs) successfully.  We want to continue to refine our curriculum, coaching, and mentoring.  We also want to progress with the funding that we have available for this program.  With increased funding, we can plug more entrepreneurs into this program.
Our goals for the next five years are to scale up our Pursuit Incubator.  We have the start of a really good thing, and we want to take it as far as we can.  We want to increase the capacity of our training cohorts so that we are training dozens of entrepreneurs in each cohort.  We want to rally support from coaches and mentors to connect with our entrepreneurs.  We want to build up our alumni network so that entrepreneurs who have gone through our training will have additional opportunities for learning, funding, and more.  
In five years, our goal is to provide opportunities for empowerment for hundreds of entrepreneurs through our training, coaching, mentoring, and alum opportunities.

One of the barriers is financial.  We have incredible demand from young entrepreneurs who need help making their product idea a reality.  We have a good solution in our Pursuit Incubator.  We just have very limited funding and capacity at this point.  But with increased funding, we can easily raise our capacity and work with many, many more entrepreneurs.
We also will need more volunteers to help with coaching and mentoring.  We love being "hands-on" by providing weekly coaching calls and mentoring relationships.  This brings such great value to the entrepreneurs.  But it takes a lot of time and energy.  We want to tap into all the amazing business people in the USA and world to volunteer their time and talent to serve as coaches and mentors.  I know people would love to do it.  We just need to create a plan and have capacity to recruit, train, and deploy these volunteers.

We are rallying support from our donors.  We have key donors who love our Pursuit Incubator and are generously helping us get this started.  We are also applying to many foundations to raise support.
We have already begun our volunteer coaching and mentoring program.  We have an excellent initial group of volunteers.  And we know that we can tap into our network and form partnerships to bring more volunteers.  But we have not jumped in to do that full-speed because we don't have the current capacity/infrastructure to handle more volunteers.

We have 15 people on our team at Because International.  Twelve work full-time and 3 are paid interns. 
But we have two people specifically who are working on the Pursuit Incubator.  Both of these staff members have other responsibilities and are stretched thin.  This is why we have to limit the number of entrepreneurs in our cohorts to just 10. 

Our team is uniquely positioned to deliver this solution because we have lived it ourselves.  We spent six years working on the design for a small product.  We bootstrapped to launch the product.  We have been selling it and hustling to find support for the past five years.  We have gone through the design process, manufacturing process, inventory, cash flow, etc.  We know what it is like to be an entrepreneur working on a product-based venture.
So we love helping these young global entrepreneurs as they work on their ideas.  We know what they are going through (for the most part).  We aren't perfect at this stuff, but we have good understanding and experience.  I think this is the greatest strength we bring to help these entrepreneurs.

Pursuit Incubator just started in 2019.  We are excited about building our partnership base.  Right now, we partner with Africa Nazarene University.  We help them host an "Impact Week" where 100 students learn about design thinking as they work in groups to validate an idea for a product that could make a difference. 
We also partner with an organization called Impaction.  We offer a design competition with them and have had over 200 entrepreneurs apply with their idea for a product that makes a difference.

We provide a training that focuses specifically on young global entrepreneurs who are working on an idea for a product that can make a difference.  Our model is to provide this training online.  It is an 8 week training that helps them get to the next step with their idea.

Our path to financial sustainability comes through a few different avenues of revenue.  The first is that we have our entrepreneur students pay on a sliding scale for the training.  The second is that we rally our donors to help cover the costs of the program and help scholarship the entrepreneurs.  Third, we are hopeful to receive grant funding to help us take the program to another level.  
Truth be told, we are just getting started with this program and do not have a full plan for how to make it financially sustainable.