Aspiring entrepreneurs get training at library programs
Accelerator conducts boot camps for new firms in creative fields
Nearly two dozen aspiring entrepreneurs around New Mexico are getting hands-on training at public libraries through Creative Startups’ new Libraries as Launchpads program.
The Albuquerque-based business accelerator, which helps people in the creative fields build and grow new businesses, launched its first four-week, online boot camp recently for 19 potential startups at libraries in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Raton and Zuni.
The program provides hands-on training for prospective companies in the prelaunch, or recently-launched stages to gain the business skills needed to turn great ideas into marketable products and services. It’s based on a four-week boot camp curriculum the accelerator started in Albuquerque last year, but unlike that fee-based program, Libraries as Launchpads is free.
The $120,000 cost is covered through grants and in-kind donations from partnering organizations, including the New Mexico State Library and the State Library Foundation, the Department of Cultural Affairs, New Mexico State University and the Santa Fe startup Fab Lab Hub.
“We converted our in-person, fourweek boot camp into an online format to reach more entrepreneurs around New Mexico, especially in rural communities,” said Creative Startups program manager Julia Youngs. “We partnered with Cultural Affairs and state libraries to implant the program in the local library system to turn those places into community hubs for entrepreneurial development.”
The program will expand to at least 20 libraries next year.
This year’s participants range from a local pet care and product company in Albuquerque to a new screen-printing business in Raton.
“It’s a diverse group,” Youngs said. “These are people in the idea stage who are just getting started.”
That’s different from the accelerator’s intensive, eight-week program, which helps early-stage startups raise investment and scale their businesses. That program, which began in 2014, has graduated 85 companies through training camps in Albuquerque and North Carolina, and in Kuwait and Malaysia, where the first two non-U.S. cohorts just graduated. An initial cohort also just launched in Baltimore.
Accelerator graduates report a combined $20 million in revenue since 2014, plus $44 million in investments and 426 jobs, including 353 full-time and 73 parttime, said Creative Startups co-founder Alice Loy. Much of that is in New Mexico, thanks to accelerator graduate Meow Wolf, which employs 300 people at its interactive art exhibit in Santa Fe and related businesses.
“We’re helping change how people see the creative economy,” Loy said. “Instead of thinking about it as a nice, optional add-on to economic development, people are now seeing it as a key piston in an economic engine that’s inclusive and that builds vibrant communities.”