“This is my favorite part,” said StartUpNV Director of Marketing Rukshana Hussain.
Outside, the sounds of traffic dominate the sweltering Vegas heat, but inside the Nuwu Art Community Center there’s a silence as rural and Tribal entrepreneurs hang on to Hussain’s every word.
She asks the group for their ideas, their dreams and aspirations for their startups-to-be or, for those already with fledgling startups, their goals for the future.
A hand is raised immediately. The answer?
“I want to save the world.”
It might seem like a longshot, but the desire to foster and support that drive among rural entrepreneurs is what led StartUpNV to apply to USDA Rural Development’s Rural Business Development Grant (RBDG). Tribal and rural entrepreneurs can often struggle with access to relevant and critical resources and support due to Nevada’s vast geographic distances between outlying communities and urban centers. USDA RD’s RBDG program seeks to support technical assistance and training for small rural businesses, fitting StartUpNV’s goal perfectly.
With their $231,949 RBDG grant from USDA RD, StartUpNV set out to create two programs to support those entrepreneurs: the Rural Roadshow and the Tribal Entrepreneurial Development Program.
The Rural Roadshow would visit nine counties across Nevada to share one session workshops with entrepreneurship resources, direct interaction and feedback, and business literature with rural communities. The TED, alternately, would provide a focused, immersive ten-week incubator for rural and tribal entrepreneurs to engage with, discuss, and develop their ideas into an actionable framework.
Some entrepreneurs are already reaping the benefits of StartUpNV’s programs, like Carlos DeSantiago, who attended the ten-week incubator.
Carlos’ proposed startup is a web platform that would provide local and rural residents and politicians a way to interact with each other through to-do lists of actions and initiatives.
“I was thinking of how people who live here in Vegas get educated on who’s running in Vegas,” said Carlos. “I don’t think a lot of people know, I don’t think the common person does, most of my friends don’t know who their local representatives are.”
Carlos hopes that his idea will provide support to politicians and residents focused on important issues who might not otherwise get the attention they deserve.
“This is just a way for people to get engaged with their local politicians,” said Carlos. “Hopefully this will put wind to the backs of people trying to do important things.”
StartUpNV’s hope is much the same. As the incubator session at the Nuwu Arts Community Center wraps up for the week, entrepreneurs hang back to linger and discuss their new bursts of inspiration with each other, talking about all the ways to save the world.
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