The Joy of Entrepreneurship | Episode 3

When are you going to do your own thing? And I was like, “You know what, when am I going to do my own thing?”

Imagine you have an idea. You're passionate about it. You know it can be a success. Maybe it's an invention. 

Hussein: The hijab was the most important part of the active wear that they would need.  

Maybe it's a service. 

Karanja: I'm giving people the opportunity to build more inclusive work environments.

Maybe it's a long-held dream.

Scott: Knowing very clearly that I wanted to be the CEO of my own company. 

This is the Lunar Startups podcast and I'm your host, Twila Dang. 

Do you see yourselves as entrepreneurs? 

Heyman: I absolutely see myself as an entrepreneur in a variety of senses. 

But, Lunar Startups is a start-up itself and Lunar Services is a start-up within Lunar Startups. So absolutely.

Every company has an origin story. We’ll get into the Lunar cohort story soon. But even before that, every entrepreneur has an experience that defines them or redefines them as an entrepreneur. 

This is Caroline Karanja from 26 Letters. 

Did you always see yourself as an entrepreneur? 

Karanja: I don't think that's the word that I used but I always saw myself as doing something like this. Even when I was really, really small—like first grade [or] second grade type of level. But I didn't know that this was where I was going to land by the end of the day—even when I was doing it. I didn't realize that that was sort of what was going on. 

What word did you use? 

Karanja: I don't know. So when I was really young, I was really into just reading a whole bunch of things and really reading out of my reading level often times and would need some people to just help me figure out how to say certain words. One of the words that I did learn was a ‘renaissance man’, right? 

And so I loved that idea of having the freedom to do things in a number of different categories and not really being bound by a job description or title or a sector or a company even before I really knew what that meant. And so that idea of, kind of, being able to have a skill set—a wide set of skills—that you could use to make the world a better place or to impact the lives of people. It was closer to that word and closer to that idea than entrepreneurship. 

It has been said that entrepreneurs are a different breed—equal parts fearless, naive, and normal. Sometimes that gets lost in all of our discussions of entrepreneurship. Businesses are started every single day by normal, average, everyday people—people who dream of making their mark on the world or making the world better. 

Why do you love entrepreneurship? 

Karanja: It's a complicated relationship. I think the thing about entrepreneurship is that it ends up being an opportunity to pursue something that you love or something that you're good at. The other part of it that we don't often hear about is that you're doing it all in the context of other people, right? So I hear often times people want to be entrepreneurs because they want to work for themselves. I say every single client I have is my boss. 

And so there's there's a joy in that because then you get to make many people in many sectors happy with the work that you're producing, but it also means that you have an opportunity to get a whole lot of input and feedback around you and your work from a number of different voices. If you get really good about which ones are the ones that are actually going to impact the work that you do then it's great. You get tons of feedback. Basically, It's like having a bunch of mentors that pay you to be your mentor and that's how I really see it—just an opportunity to learn and to grow with multiple perspectives adding their input...and really what that could look like.

The individual path to building a business is always unique. No two stories are alike, but one thing seems to ring true for all and that's ‘joy’. It's the moment when you decide to take a risk, to leave that terrible job, to share your idea with a trusted person, to write that check to purchase raw materials. There's an energy that surrounds this first big step—a combination of nerves, nausea, and euphoria not unlike the minutes preceding a first date. You're hopeful, but a bit cautious. You’re excited, but somewhat realistic. 

But you already know that you love it. You love this feeling—the act of taking control of your career and forging a new path. Manifest destiny. That feeling is joy. 

This is Jamie Glover from Asiya Modest Sportswear.

Why do you love entrepreneurship? 

Glover: I have found that entrepreneurship provides a chance to try all sorts of new things. I love being able to quickly test something and quickly pivot and not be restrained by corporation and precedent and everything else that comes with your typical role in a typical job. So, I've really come to love the breadth of things that you get to do and get to try and the people that I've been able to meet. I had no idea how deep the entrepreneurial community is here in Minneapolis—St. Paul—and the type of people that have come out of the woodwork to support what we're doing.

Experts will tell you that building a business requires hard work. We would all like to believe that your best effort is enough. Work hard, make a quality product, share it with the world, and Success! 

But the reality can be vastly different. Entrepreneurship is often a maze of financial literacy, business acumen, and legal finesse. Not to mention that most entrepreneurs are not members of the super elite. They're just everyday people with an idea and a desire to build something. And that reality can be even tougher if you come from an underrepresented group. Women overall only two percent of investor funding and often start their businesses with half the capital of their male counterparts. People of color receive less than one percent of venture funding and face systemic barriers to securing alternate forms of capital. 

Steer: My name is Danielle Steer and I'm Managing Director at Lunar Startups. 

Anyone who’s talked me knows that I'm completely obsessed with engineering social capital and looking at ‘how do we think about the human assets we have at the center of these programs in really robust ecosystems like Minneapolis, Saint Paul whose entrepreneurial ecosystem is rapidly, rapidly changing and accelerating and becoming stronger across the board?’ Yet we have just a core group of gatekeepers and individuals who, kind of, hold those social capital keys and that's (a) a really heavy responsibility and (b) it's totally inaccessible to a huge percentage of people. So to rethink, ‘What does it mean to be a gatekeeper?’ or ‘What does it mean to have social capital and how can we make sure to spread that opportunity more broadly?’ I think is a big hope for me.

Over and over again, we have seen that it is not enough for women and people of color to have a great idea. It is not enough to work hard. It is not enough to be the best at what you do. Quite simply, women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color are left out. They are denied the opportunity to gain access to networks, investors, and capital needed to build successful businesses. How do you combat this? What can be done to make the playing field fair for all entrepreneurs? 

That's where Lunar Startups comes in. Lunar Startups began as part of a mission to strengthen local communities. Danielle Steer, Lunar Startups’ Managing Director explains it further.

Steer: Lunar Startups is important because there are community members here locally in St. Paul, in the Twin Cities, and more broadly across the nation that have amazing solutions to real problems that our communities are facing. They don't necessarily have the same networks or access to service providers or visibility to help them grow and scale and solve more people's problems. 

And so our main role here in the ecosystem is helping those people get access to those networks and visibility so that they can grow and scale at a rate that is more comparable to their counterparts who went to Ivy League schools or who have an uncle who's a lawyer or who have family capital that can help launch their companies. 

We’ll be right back after the break. 

Music plays. 

Welcome back to the Lunar Startups Podcast. The six companies chosen for the inaugural cohort reflect a cross-section of entrepreneurship in the Twin Cities. There are women, men, [and] people of color [from] diverse cultures, religions, and experience levels. The cohort members are well aware of what their inclusion in an accelerator like Lunar Startups can do for their businesses. 

When we asked the cohort about the impact of being chosen for Lunar Startups, the answer was clear. 

These are the founders of Monicat Data.

Kurt Bloomberg: My name is Kurt. 

Cassie Utt: My name is Cassie. 

Jasmine Russel: My name is Jasmine. 

Did your acceptance into Lunar change the way you thought about yourself and your business?

Bloomberg: I would say so because it's a form of validation. It's also an opportunity to grow and to deepen our understanding in not only marketing or business. And then also figuring out how do then we take ourselves to that next level or next step and find that direction in terms of what our team wants and then also what's possible? 

Utt: Yeah, I think that recognition from someone else in the community—I mean, we've been working in the community with various organizations and people and speaking about what we're doing, but to be accepted into the program alongside, you know, a cohort of really great other startups and to have this experience is really...validating to what we're doing and how far we've come as a team.

Beyond the obvious pride that comes from being recognized for your hard work and potential and the good old-fashioned feeling of joy that comes from being chosen, there's also a sense of relief that comes from knowing you will now have helped to grow your business. 

This is Muhammad Abdurrahman, Founder of ClutchSOS. 

Abdurrahman: You know, we straddle a special line. So we're a tech company, but we also have a social mission. There's a goal that we have in helping those who usually would not be a part of the conversation, right? Getting into Lunar was a validation that, yeah, that actually makes sense. That's not completely crazy—that we could be in a place where we could get the knowledge and the skills around that. Because frankly, I don't have a lot of experience doing a for-profit business that also has that kind of social mission. I've done a non-profit. Trying to figure out how to blend those metrics together was kind of weird. 

Free: I think that’s something we're still figuring out.

Abdurahman: Exactly. 

Free: But yeah, I think this is the right place to figure that out. 

Abdurahman: Exactly, exactly. 

Sometimes entrepreneurship isn't the obvious path until someone else points it out to you. This is Jasmine Russell, Co-founder of Monicat Data. 

Russel: My name is Jasmine Russell. I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Monicat Data. 

What did it take, or maybe who did it take for Jasmine to realize she should take the leap into entrepreneurship?

Russel: So for me, it was something that was questioned. There was one person—I was working with him in community and he basically said, ‘You know I think you're doing a lot and that's great, but when are you going to do your own thing?’ And I was like, ‘You know what, when am I gonna do my own thing? So that's when I really started thinking seriously [that] I should probably really look into entrepreneurship because I'm already doing it in some ways, but not fully committed.

Sometimes your path to entrepreneurship is bigger than what it will do just for you. It's not what you already have, but what you're missing. That holds true for Caroline Karanja of 26 Letters. 

Karanja: My name is Caroline Karanja and my company's name is 26 Letters. 

I encourage a lot of young folks of color and a lot of women to enter tech, whether it's through being a ux designer or being a software developer—doing all these other things. We know that the retention rate for those folks in tech is very, very low. So one day I would like to know that whenever I advise someone to get into this industry, that they have a very good opportunity to be able to stay in it if they want to stay in it. That's really my driving force. If I'm going to keep encouraging people to explore their dreams in this way, then I feel responsible in also helping facilitate work environments that will help them thrive as well. 

Caroline's business was born out of an awareness of what her industry was lacking and the discovery of her passion to help others like herself. 

Karanja cont’d: I started the company after having a couple of experiences in the workforce where I was often the only, if not one of the very few women of color in the mostly tech spaces that I was in, or tech departments. Given a number of different experiences, I realized that I was really passionate about giving people the opportunity to build more inclusive work environments. That's not really what I called it at the time, but that's what I realized that it was by the end of the day. 

Caroline is not only building a dream for herself, but for others like her that want to work in tech as well. 

Karanja cont’d: One day I would like to know that whenever I advise someone to get into this industry, that they have a very good opportunity to be able to stay in it if they want to stay in it. That's really my driving force. If I'm going to keep encouraging people to explore their dreams in this way, then I feel responsible in also helping facilitate work environments that will help them thrive as well.

In many ways, being an entrepreneur is about aspiring to make the world better—to use your talents and skills to solve problems or create connections.

Conor O’Phelan’s approach is through his company, Dojour. 

O’Phelan: My name is Connor O’Phelan and I'm co-founder of Dojour. I think I've always been somebody who sees the world as it could be [instead of] maybe as it is. So it's always about problem solving. In this particular case, I'm really excited. Both my brother and I, who’s a co-founder with me are really excited about getting people out doing things. We're kind of stuck in this digital culture of apps, watching TV, too much Netflix. But [there’s] not enough of getting out and actually seeing live music [and] going to see art. So if we can impact the world in that way—that's what I'm excited about. What drives me to grow and be successful is probably—there's a little bit of an innate desire to want to challenge myself and learn new things. 

But it's more personal for Connor as well.

O’phelan cont’d: And also being a new dad, I want to be grown and successful. [I want to] watch my son and any future children that come out to have a good role model and be proud of what I'm doing and providing more for my family.

The founders of Asiya Modest Activewear saw an opportunity to help Muslim girls and women. This is Jamie Glover, the company's co-founder. 

Glover: I am Jamie Glover, co-founder of Asiya Modest Activewear. 

It's natural to be afraid of risk. Even those who resist starting their own businesses can find themselves motivated under the right circumstances. Jamie never wanted to start her own business, but something changed. 

Glover: I actually never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I went to school to get my MBA and my first couple months in the program [I] was talking to several people about different forms of business and kind of where I wanted to go next. I talked to some people who had started their own business and they were like ‘Jamie, is this what you wanted to do?’ And I was like ‘No, it's way too risky’. It is not where I wanted to go. But turns out, when you come across the right idea and the right partner, it can change how you think about that and that's what happened to me. 

So I've totally transitioned from a prior mindset around entrepreneurship to wanting to give it a try because of the idea that I loved. I'm so glad I did because it is way more rewarding than I expected. The shift to say that I'm an entrepreneur was probably a couple months after we started the business and it felt like it was real. We were having traction and people in the world were valuing and appreciating something that we made and a movement that we were creating. Getting that positive feedback made it feel like ‘okay, this is happening--we're doing the right thing’. We're making progress. I felt like I could finally say that I was kind of an entrepreneur at that point. Leading up to that, I felt like I was just testing and running around trying different things and exploring. It wasn't really a reality until we knew that what we were creating was really of value.

Lunar Startups is being built upon these stories. Lunar’s giving entrepreneurs a chance to not only grow, but grow together. 

Glover: I've had a blast these first couple months with Lunar. I've gotten a ton of value out of the programs that we've been doing together and been exposed to and the people that they've brought in to help us out and to guide us and to teach us and the connection with the other entrepreneurs has been wonderful. I was previously working out of coffee shops or out of my home and it was very, very isolating. So it's been just so refreshing to have other people to experience this with and go through all the highs and the lows together. 

Thank you for listening to this podcast. 

If you'd like to learn more about Lunar Startups or apply for an upcoming cohort, check out the website at lunarstartups.org. 

We'd like to extend a special thank you to the Glen Nelson Center at American Public Media, Knight Foundation, and Osborn370 for their continued support of Lunar Startups.

 This podcast is a Matriarch Digital Media production. Executive Producers: Twila Dang, Brittany Arneson, and Josette Elieff.