First look: BizGrow Central, a hub for underserved entrepreneurs, to open downtown
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A rendering shows the BizGrow Central office in downtown Boston. Image: Courtesy of Lawyers for Civil Rights
The nonprofit Lawyers for Civil Rights plans to open a brick-and-mortar resource center for historically underrepresented entrepreneurs across from the Boston Common in October.
Why it matters: BizGrow has supported people of color, immigrants, women and low-income residents as they break into historically wealthy, white and male industries for a quarter century.
- Now they have a physical space downtown, alongside financial services giants and other power players in Boston.
State of play: BizGrow Central is set to open Oct. 19 in second-floor office space on Tremont Street.
- It will be a hub for BizGrow's free services, which include legal workshops, one-on-one meetings with attorneys, technical help and now coworking and meeting spaces.
The latest: BizGrow Central plans to launch with roughly 50 members representing various industries and scale up to 200 in six months, says Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, LCR's executive director.
- The organization has heard from nearly 100 businesses since applications opened last week.
- It's also planning in-person and virtual programming to serve over 2,000 entrepreneurs in its first year.
What they're saying: "Our small businesses don't have the luxury and privilege of relying on an affluent circle of friends and family members to launch," Espinoza-Madrigal tells Axios.
- "They are often coming to BizGrow with a powerful revenue-generating idea, but without the support and infrastructure to be able to take that idea to the next level."
Zoom out: BizGrow Central is a plan years in the making and comes as downtown Boston struggles to fill commercial real estate and generate business post-pandemic.
By the numbers: A four-person team will lead BizGrow Central, with a network for volunteer attorneys across 40 law firms and in-house legal teams.
- The BizGrow Central team will include an entrepreneur-in-residence, who gets a $25,000 stipend, per BizGrow's pitch deck.
- There are also plans for an artist-in-residence.
Yes, but: The team hasn't secured all the funding yet.
- BizGrow set its first-year budget at $1 million to account for startup costs and operations.
- It has raised funding for programming from Bain Capital, Eastern Bank, The Boston Foundation and the Barr Foundation.
What's next: BizGrow and LCR are in fundraising mode, Espinoza-Madrigal says.
- In the meantime, he says, they're still taking membership applications.