Area innovators called on to be more inclusive of minorities and women

that diversity improves innovation, especially on the front end of product development, where startups – and their advisors – focus their time and energy.

“I’d certainly like to see Cintrifuse embrace the notion that we’re going to have a stronger innovation ecosystem if we bring in minority-owned and women-owned companies,” Rigaud said. “I was on the CBC task force (that led to the creation of Cintrifuse). I made the point that it didn’t look inclusive and we needed to take special steps to make it inclusive.

“Everyone nodded their heads,’’ he added, “But in the final report, as I recall, I don’t think there was specific language on making it inclusive.”

Startup community defends its diversity

Cintrifuse CEO Jeff Weedman said the regional hub for startups has demonstrated a commitment to inclusion by hiring women and minorities to run the organization and signing Lisnr, a startup founded by African-American entrepreneur Rodney Williams, as its first tenant.

“If actions speak louder than words then quit quoting me,” he said. “I have more women working for me than men. I didn’t set out to deliberately to do that. I set out to get the best people. I like my team. My team is pretty diverse.”

Brandery co-founder Dave Knox said 11 of the accelerator’s 26 graduates were women- or minority-owned companies, including five of 11 who attended the Over-the-Rhine program in 2012.

“Our entire startup community is at the beginning stages and that means we need to support anyone and everyone who wants to be an entrepreneur,” Knox said.

CincyTech President Bob Coy said Rigaud is “absolutely correct” that “diversity of perspectives is important to startups.”

CincyTech is a seed-stage investment fund whose 36 active portfolio companies include 11 that are women- or minority-owned. The group includes four African-American entrepreneurs, four of Asian ancestry and three female-owned companies.

Rod Robinson is one of them. His online supplier diversity service, called connXus, got a $40,000 grant from CincyTech in early 2011 that helped build on the company’s beta site. CincyTech has since invested a total of $350,000 in the company.

“We definitely wouldn’t be where we are now without that,” Robinson said. “We’ve been able to hire employees – a development team, an operations team – to first build a product and be able to deliver a product.”

But Robinson recognizes his company isn’t typical. And he thinks that’s partly a cultural difference.

When he left a good paying job as a CPA at Deloitte years ago to get his MBA at the prestigious Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania – a move he considers his first step in becoming an entrepreneur – his parents didn’t react with pride or excitement.

“My family had never done that,” he said. “It was: ‘You’re leaving a good job? You’re not guaranteed a good job when you get out!’”

Robinson thinks that kind of caution is more common in black families than in white families. And, he said, raising money for a new company has been hard. But Robinson said he doesn’t think it’s been any harder for him than anyone else.

“At the end of the day, I think it’s all about relationships,” he said. “If you build relationships, and you’re in front of the right people, people are all about making money. If you’ve got a great idea and a great team to execute, they will invest in you.”

Work is beginning

Swope’s job now is to make sure more of the region’s aspiring minority entrepreneurs build those relationships and learn that resources and support is available to help them create new companies. He’s working with a number of local organizations through the Cincinnati Minority Business Collaborative . And he’s reaching out to minority technical associations related to medicine and engineering to spread the word to their members, too.

The work is critical, he said, to ensure that the region’s fast-growing industries include minority-owned businesses.

“As we look at the diversity of those companies now, there are very few minority-owned companies in those spaces,” he said. “So if that represents the economy of the future, and it’s not very diverse today, that means in the future there’s going to be even less diversity in the fastest-growing, job-creating industries.”

And that, he said, is why it’s so important to make sure there are minority-owned start-ups that can be nurtured and grown.

Coy said CincyTech chooses companies with the most growth potential, regardless of race or gender. But he also thinks Rigaud’s comments will resonate in the startup community and elsewhere.

“There were a heck of a lot of very influential people in that room,” Coy said.  “Ed’s speech was very impactful and I don’t think it will be forgotten. I don’t know how, but it will probably have an impact in many small ways that collectively add to a big impact on the region.”