Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

What does it actually mean to build an economic ecosystem and centered around entrepreneurship?

Kauffman Foundation released the Ecosystem Building Playbook.

And one of the ways that they define an ecosystem is the network of organizations.

I'm sorry, the network of collaborators supporting entrepreneurs and the degree of trust that exists among them.

Ewing Kaufman.

I worked at the Kaufman Foundation for a little while in Kansas City.

Same thing.

And his death created pretty much the largest foundation in the Midwest as a result of his passing.

An entrepreneur, a venture investor, an attorney, economic growth expert.

And he previously served as vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, where he led initiatives reaching more than 200,000 entrepreneurs across 200 cities and has helped hundreds of communities and organizations around the world build stronger entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems.

So your organization is called Right to Start.

So let's talk about the meaning of that and why that name, Right to Start.

Entrepreneurship is the single greatest job creation engine in the world.

If you look at the United States, some of the research that was done by the Kauffman Foundation actually indicates that since the mid-1980s, every net new job in the United States is the result of venture-backed enterprises.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

If you think about all of the job losses because of automation, because of mechanization, because of offshoring, all of the things that have removed jobs from the US economy, the venture-backed companies have created enough jobs to offset all of those losses and create the growth that we have seen.

And at the time, there was a heavy push in Kansas City for the venture capital world.

The Kauffman Foundation was very actively involved.

It was one of the leaders in that space.

Kauffman Foundation had probably just taken over Pipeline at that point.

Yes.

So that's kind of the, yeah.

And the other thing is, like, as you think about the families that you're talking about that are members, I mean, there is part of it that is, so much of it is, it's multifaceted, right? There is the speculative aspect.

Some of these things that you invest a little bit in, you're going to get a 10x or whatever, 20x return.

In a previous life, I was involved.

I was at the Kauffman Foundation when we were advising NSF

on the

creation of the I-Corps program.

You, you go, you drive into the street and say, "Hey, hey, you know the mud hut?" "Oh, yeah, yeah." Everyone knows, right? Um, but so it's not replicable, [laughs] and but that got us to the world stage, that kind of absolute commitment.

By that time, we, we prototyped the number of m- like 17 different prototypes and, uh, the impact was absolutely amazing because, uh, I found mentors, uh, funding, like, like, uh, for example, Kauffman Foundation gave us 100K, um, pretty much on the spot, things like that.

Um, if you talk about, you know, major development budgets, we never had them, and now I think that's where it's starting with where we c- can actually make 100K now ourselves with one house, right? So things are getting better, but, but it was, um, the, yeah, the TED Talk was absolutely major, major boost, I mean, getting featured in all the right social proof media, you know, all of that.

So yeah, it w- it was absolute breakthrough.

Dr. Jenna Matthews.

She worked for the Kauffman Foundation and I just found out she, she went to heaven and she moved to Australia.

And she ran a couple of, you know, organizations.

She was all about entrepreneurs.

And she was the, I called her Mama Jana, but she's Dr. Jana Matthews.

And Leading at the Speed of Growth is a great book.

And she used to be with the Kauffman Foundation.

And for every leader, I think that's a fantastic book to read.

Here's another piece that most people miss.

The Kauffman Foundation studied successful entrepreneurs and found that most of them failed two or three times before their breakthrough.

But here's what separated.

The ones who eventually succeeded, they spent about an hour every day analyzing what went wrong in their previous attempts.