Blog

Startup Champions Network Wrap-up Durham, NC

From April 4-6, members of the HSC Next team attended the Startup Champions Network conference in Durham, NC. This group convenes twice a year to collaborate on this burgeoning career field of entrepreneurial ecosystem building as an economic development strategy.  At this Summit, the content was focused heavily on DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion). The Durham, NC, entrepreneurial ecosystem has done an incredible job supporting DEI initiatives. The leading ecosystem resource organizations are all bought in on the concept and it defines their approach to economic development and ecosystem building. It is baked into their approach from the start as opposed to...

The Age of the SHE-cosystem!

Have you ever heard the term “women rule the world”?  Of course you have, and if not, tadaaahhh, today is your day!  What an awesome time to be a woman!  As we look at the landscape and how the professional scope is changing, it is important for us to know and understand how we fit into the fold of what some may call….The SHE-cosystem.  As life evolves and the landscape of the workplace changes, taking on additional tasks, assuming higher positions and taking on life’s everyday challenges can become a bit overwhelming at times.  As tradition would have it, women tend...

Women and Mentorship

Mentoring is widely considered critical to career advancement as well as success as an entrepreneur. This is even more true for female business owners and professionals. Mentoring is a key element that when utilized more frequently, we would advance more women in the workplace and help more women take their businesses to the next level.   There are stereotypes about women competing and rivaling each other as professionals. However, according to the  Women as Mentors: Does She or Doesn’t She?, A Global Study of Businesswomen and Mentoring, the number one reason cited for why women mentor is because they want to be...

4 Most Asked Entrepreneur Questions

Launching and growing a business is one of the most difficult things a person can do. Every entrepreneur needs help at some stage and many of the questions they ask revolve around similar topics. Here we provide four of the most asked questions and responses that will help save you time and headaches.

5 Things to Know About the New Techstars Accelerator in Fort Worth

As you may have seen in the news recently, Fort Worth is now the home of a Techstars accelerator program that will bring startup companies to Fort Worth to help them grow and bring innovations in physical healthcare. This is big news for Fort Worth as our city was the largest city in the country that did not have an accelerator program like this, which invests directly in the companies and recruits the best of the best companies from around the world. But, accelerator programs are not well-known in our area. And, Techstars has not had much of a presence in...

GEW Fort Worth 2021 Overview

For the second year in a row, GEW Fort Worth was the largest GEW chapter in the USA with 135 sessions and over 4,700 attendees. After going fully virtual in 2020, our organizing team took the pulse of our community and determined that there was an appetite for both in-person and virtual events in 2021.

Innovators of Fort Worth: Black History Month

Fort Worth is a city that, at its core, is a mix of cultural identities. Fort Worth would not be the city it is today without our diverse communities that contribute to local innovation. In honor of Black History Month, we are celebrating Black innovators who are making Fort Worth a more exciting and accessible place through entrepreneurship. Black entrepreneurs face unique challenges in starting and growing companies, like lack of access to capital, bias and accessing other resources and programs that support entrepreneurs.   The entrepreneurs listed below (and countless others) are thriving despite the odds and adding to an...