Our next guest says his Lowcountry entrepreneurship center is experiencing rapid growth and therefore an increasing demand for their programs. So he was very happy to hear that $250,000 was coming their way thanks to the Lowcountry Impact Fund, a locally led charitable impact investment fund sponsored by Abundance Capital. Mike Switzer interviews Grady Johnson, executive director of the Harbor Entrepreneur Center in Charleston, SC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to another edition of the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. Our next guest says his Lowcountry Entrepreneurship center is experiencing rapid growth and therefore an increasing demand for their programs. So he was very happy to hear that $250,000 was coming their way thanks to the Lowcountry Impact Fund, a locally led charitable investment fund sponsored by Abundance Capital. Grady Johnson is the executive director of the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. He joins us by phone now from his office in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Grady, welcome back to the program.
Johnson: Thanks Mike. Great to be here.
Switzer: Now it's been a while I think since we've talked last. Refresh our listeners on what the Harbor Center is.
Johnson: Sure. The Harbor Entrepreneur Center we're a not for profit 501C3. Our mission is to support entrepreneurs in all stages of their journey, all the way from ideation, which is the, you know, should I quit my day job sort of thought all the way through to exit. And we're supporting them with programming and just a variety of different options of things that we can help them along their way.
Switzer: And how many startups are you working with right now?
Johnson: One of the things that makes us unique is we're in a 64,000 square foot building here in Mount Pleasant which makes us one of the largest entrepreneur centers in the Southeast and frankly one of the largest in the nation. We have over 130 companies under the roof in a variety of stages, anywhere from very young companies, through to companies that are scaling. So if we count those and then the companies that we're helping through our programming, we're touching probably around 200 a year currently.
Switzer: Well congratulations on this new money coming in to help facilitate your growth. Tell us about that.
Johnson: Sure. The Lowcountry Impact Fund is a new fund that's been started here. they came out of Abundance Capital in the Upstate. They've stood up a donor directed fund here to help move projects forward and this is one of their first investments. It's a low interest loan and been super helpful for us to get this kind of support because we could use this to bridge some of the gaps that we've got as we stand up new programming.
Switzer: Well share with us what some of the programs are that entrepreneurs are benefiting from through your center.
Johnson: We think about the building itself as a program, this opportunity to put this many entrepreneurs under one roof and with a large variety of business models it becomes its own program. Then we do programming for different stages of entrepreneurs. We've early stage Workshops. we've got the accelerator program that we've been running here for years where we're helping companies who already have a minimum viable product get into the market and scale that and get ready for follow on investment. And we're adding programming now this year with the help of funding from Low Country Impact Fund and the SCRA, to add a program earlier stage where we can help entrepreneurs who've already got the idea and concept, but help them get from MVP to their first users in beta.
Switzer: What do you suppose it is about your neck of the woods that is making it such a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity?
Johnson: I think Charleston has been entrepreneurial since 1670. I mean those people who came over on those tiny little wooden ships, those were entrepreneurs, right? So it's been in our DNA from the very beginning then I think what's really helped us, the region has never had to work hard to recruit people to live here. And because of cloud computing remote work, AI people can choose now where to start a business in ways that they haven't been able to in the past. I'll call it remote if you will. But by remote I mean you're not, if you're, if you're serving a market, say in the Midwest, you can serve it from Charleston. And Charleston's a really nice place to live. And so it's super attractive for the kinds of people who are thinking about being in entrepreneur. And an entrepreneur, Mike, is a, is a kind of a disease. You never really get over it. So most people that I know who, who started a company and exited a company, they're very few that I know who've done it one time and then, you know, just rode off into the sunset. Most everybody, you know, gets to the point where they, they start another one and another one and another one. Those serial entrepreneurs. That's a, that's a group of people that we, that we see a lot here in the Entrepreneur Center and they just naturally come find other entrepreneurs because they've already been through it once or twice and understand how important it is to have people around you to keep you from making mistakes. basically de risking the endeavor by surrounding yourself with advisors and peers.
Switzer: Well Grady, thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Johnson: My pleasure, Mike.
Switzer: Grady Johnson is executive director of the Harbor Entrepreneur center in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. We will have a link to the center posted at our web page so you can find learn more SouthCarolinaPublicRadio.org just look for our show. With the South Carolina Business Review, This is Mike Switzer.
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