In January 2022, mHUB launched a pilot program to drive equitable access for underrepresented founders. Early support from Bank of America, Christopher Family Foundation, and Wintrust gave mHUB the seed funding needed to test the model. This first pilot of the larger mPOWER program was focused on women founders. The vision is to scale to other marginalized groups of business owners, including Black founders, Latine founders, and others. This program is part of the larger Catalyze initiative that mHUB is actively resourcing. Catalyze will support 4 programs for 5 years at a total level of $8.6 million. Like everything the team does here at mHUB, it’s aiming high to drive real impact.
The Vision
Catalyze includes four programs to rebalance opportunity in manufacturing entrepreneurship, including granted partnerships with community-based organizations to collaborate on stronger pipelines; two pre-accelerator programs (mPOWER and Landis Family Fellowship), which include stipends and microgrants for founders and engineers to de-risk the initial steps to business ownership; and an innovation scholarship fund to support commercialization for underrepresented business owners through grants and access. This multi-pronged approach reaches into different areas of the ecosystem, meeting entrepreneurs where they are by providing the specific resources they need at the right time.
Impact Today
Since 2022, mHUB has piloted and scaled many programs that aim to decrease the barriers for underrepresented identities within the HardTech ecosystem.
After the launch of the mPOWER Women Founders, mHUB has supported 3 mPOWER Women Founders cohorts and the inaugural mPOWER Black Founders cohort, in partnership with the National Society of Black Engineers Chicago Professionals Chapter. mPOWER participants receive sponsored membership to mHUB, a monthly stipend, and a microgrant to support their business, totaling $9,800 in non-dilutive funding per founder. To date, mPOWER has supported 39 founders.
The Catalyze Initiative has also supported multiple cohorts through the Landis Family Fellowship to develop talent for product development and R&D projects. The program works to power the pursuit of business ownership and extend runways plugging founders into the gig economy at mHUB for supplemental income and extending networks. Across the program, Fellows have earned $42,300 in supplemental income.
The Catalyze Initiative also launched the Equity in Innovation Program (EISP) in 2023. This program exists to lower the barriers to access at mHUB for Hardtech founders who are historically underrepresented in tech. Through the Equity in Innovation Scholarship program, founders joined mHUB through underwritten membership. This scholarship provides 3-month Shared Workspace membership and to date, has supported 35 Hardtech founders.
In addition to underwritten membership scholarships, EISP also provides access to grant opportunities to underwrite some product development costs to pre-series A companies. Through this program, mHUB awarded six HardTech companies up to $30,000 to support prototyping and physical product development.
In the first quarter of 2023, $250,000 in non-dilutive funding has been issued through the Equity in Innovation Program and more than $440,000 underneath the Catalyze initiative overall.
Knowledge Gained
This has been an incredible 2 years collaborating, learning, and growing with these programs and pilots. I’m encouraged by both the things that were reaffirmed and the new things learned from these programs.
Things we knew but were blown away by in impact:
- Community is everything because entrepreneurship is isolating. Fostering brave spaces encourages founders to be vulnerable and ultimately become more resilient through shared support in the community.
- Separate is not equal. Marginalized groups need and deserve safe spaces; those can and should exist within existing innovation communities. The value of this peer network has consistently been rated by founders as one of the most important elements of the program.
- Access to workshops, the Startup Roadmap, and other educational resources at mHUB are critical to accelerating and derisking in the earliest stages.
- Group learning remains impactful in providing resources, strengthening shared knowledge, and furthering the growth of startups.
- While there is capital included within the program, more capital is needed to ultimately get through critical prototyping stages and launch a product.
New learnings being implemented in these initiatives and across other programs:
- There is real value in cohort-based programs and identity-based groups. Community building is so integral to building confidence that we’re implementing identity-based, community-generated groups within the larger community.
- Access to workshops is pivotal, and we’ve seen real growth, learning, and progress in providing workshop series, which allows founders more in-depth training and resources. We’re implementing this learning across general workshops.
What’s Next?
mHUB continues to fundraise to support the full scale of Catalyze. In the meantime, applications are currently open for the mPOWER Black Founders program, in Partnership with the National Society of Black Engineers Chicago Professionals Chapter.
Interested in getting involved in the Catalyze initiative? Contact Shannon to start a conversation.
