Suzanne Shep­pard

En­tre­pre­neurs from T&T are among scores from across the re­gion who have al­ready signed on for an on­line ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme due to be launched next month. Called CaribbeanStar­tups, the pro­gramme is aimed at rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the re­gion's busi­ness ecosys­tem and po­si­tion­ing the Caribbean as a cen­tre of in­no­va­tion. It gets go­ing on Ju­ly 11 with the first quar­ter­ly ses­sions for re­gion­al en­tre­pre­neurs.

The train­ing ses­sions will take place over three evenings from 7 pm to 9 pm. So far 89 star­tups have signed up for the in­au­gur­al ses­sion, with just a few days to go be­fore the close of reg­is­tra­tion on June 30. The launch pro­gramme is free for the first 100 star­tups.

The dri­ving force be­hind this ven­ture is Chris­tine Souf­frant, a Hait­ian-Amer­i­can en­tre­pre­neur with more than sev­en years of busi­ness man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence who was is list­ed in the 2016 Forbes 30 Un­der 30 com­pris­ing young in­no­va­tors, en­tre­pre­neurs and lead­ers who are trans­form­ing busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy, fi­nance, me­dia, cul­ture and more.

Cre­ator of Vend­edy, a mo­bile app that has trans­formed the lives of street ven­dors around the world, Souf­frant, 26, is now fo­cus­ing her en­er­gies on con­nect­ing Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs to re­sources and best prac­tices for glob­al reach and suc­cess.

"The goal of CaribbeanStar­tups is to pre­pare Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs for lo­cal im­pact and glob­al in­flu­ence via our quar­ter­ly on­line ac­cel­er­a­tor, demos with in­flu­en­tial in­vestors and part­ners, and re­sources," she said, in a tele­con­fer­ence from New York.

"The Caribbean has a lot of great en­tre­pre­neurs but gen­er­al­ly they don't know how to link with the right in­vestors and pro­grammes."

Souf­frant, who grad­u­at­ed in 2011 from Dart­mouth Col­lege, said, at present, on­ly two per cent of the re­gion has in­cu­ba­tors and ac­cel­er­a­tors to sup­port lo­cal busi­ness­es. Her aim is to bring that num­ber to 100 per cent with­in the next few years by con­nect­ing Caribbean star­tups to glob­al in­vestors and net­works.

Through the ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme, par­tic­i­pants will get train­ing in busi­ness fun­da­men­tals, prod­uct man­age­ment and how to man­age op­por­tu­ni­ties. They will get guid­ance on how to po­si­tion them­selves as Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs.

Com­ment­ing on the chal­lenges most star­tups face, Souf­frant ex­plained: "Gen­er­al­ly peo­ple don't ex­pect ap­pli­cants from the Caribbean. They get re­ject­ed be­cause they don't know how to craft an ap­pli­ca­tion."

At the end of the Ju­ly ac­cel­er­a­tor, the top ten com­pa­nies will be se­lect­ed to pitch to in­vestors.

"The aim is then to fun­nel all of our grad­u­ates to their re­spec­tive coun­try in­cu­ba­tor/ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­grammes. Which means, if we re­ceived 20 star­tups from Ja­maica in our pro­gramme, once they com­plete our ac­cel­er­a­tor, we con­nect them to all in­cu­ba­tors/ac­cel­er­a­tors/pro­grammes in Ja­maica," Souf­frant said.

In ad­di­tion to the quar­ter­ly ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­grammes, CaribbeanStar­tups will al­so be host­ing month­ly round­table meet­ings of the re­gion's in­cu­ba­tor com­mu­ni­ty. The first one is sched­uled for Ju­ly 7 at 10am

"This is a way of link­ing Caribbean in­cu­ba­tors, get­ting them to talk with each oth­er and work to­geth­er," said Souf­frant, who has set a tar­get of 2020 for the cen­tral­is­ing of all the re­sources and in­for­ma­tion of the Caribbean start­up ecosys­tem in one place. This is es­sen­tial, she said, if the re­gion is to be es­tab­lished as a cen­tre of in­no­va­tion.

Born in New York, Souf­frant's en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it was nur­tured dur­ing her child­hood in Haiti. Sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of her fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing her moth­er and grand­moth­er, were street ven­dors. That ex­pe­ri­ence in­spired her to found Vend­edy, a unique net­work that al­lows ven­dors and ar­ti­sans to sell their wares on­line us­ing their mo­bile phones. The ven­dors take 80 per cent of the sale price, paid via text mes­sage once the prod­uct is de­liv­ered. Vend­edy pock­ets 20 per cent, five per cent of which is spent on busi­ness's costs.

The start-up was launched in 2014 while Souf­frant was study­ing for a mas­ter's de­gree in in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness and so­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship at Hult In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness School in Dubai. Glob­al ex­pe­ri­ence gained as a Bill Gates Mil­len­ni­um Schol­ar–she vis­it­ed 22 coun­tries in four years–helped Souf­frant fine tune her plans for Vend­edy.

She said: "It was an amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty. In every coun­try I went, I in­ter­viewed street ven­dors."

She al­so did a term at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in St Au­gus­tine where, she said, for the first time she "got the col­lege ex­pe­ri­ence."

In fact, it was in T&T that Souf­frant got the in­spi­ra­tion for CaribbeanStar­tups while fa­cil­i­tat­ing a work­shop at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

On May 24, she sent out emails invit­ing star­tups to be part of the first ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme. Star­tups al­ready reg­is­tered rep­re­sent a range of sec­tors, from agri­cul­ture to tourism and so­cial me­dia. Souf­frant is ex­cit­ed by the re­spons­es for far.

"My goal is to co-or­di­nate the en­tire Caribbean start­up ecosys­tem."

More in­for­ma­tion on the ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme and round­table meet­ing is avail­able at caribbeanstar­tups.com.

Some of the start­up founders who will be join­ing the Ju­ly ac­cel­er­a­tor are:

�2 Ain Ear­le, of T&T, The Fash­ion Arch, a brand-con­sult­ing en­ti­ty aimed at as­sist­ing de­sign­ers with brand­ing, qual­i­ty con­trol, pro­mo­tions as well as en­sur­ing their work is well-known and ac­cept­ed by clients, buy­ers and re­tail­ers. Fash­ion Arch cu­rates, cre­ates and pro­motes a brand sto­ry that pro­duces a con­nec­tion be­tween each piece/prod­uct/ser­vice and its cus­tomer.

www.the­fash­ionarch.com

�2 Wag­ging Brands Ltd of T&T, is the Caribbean's first pet-care tech­nol­o­gy based com­pa­ny. Its prod­ucts are Wag­ging Box, a pet care sub­scrip­tion box and Wag­ging Pal, a pet adop­tion mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion on An­droid and iOS.

http://wag­ging­brands.com

�2 Ker­ry-Ann Reid-Brown, of Ja­maica, Car­ry On Friends. Us­ing the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy and her voice to uni­fy and in­form the Caribbean di­as­po­ra, Ker­ry-Ann has com­bined her ex­ten­sive knowl­edge, ex­per­tise and life ex­pe­ri­ences, to equip the Caribbean Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty with the re­sources and con­tent that in­forms, in­spires.

www.car­ry­on­friends.com

�2 Re­nee Williams, of Ja­maica, Pzaz Pho­tog­ra­phy a full-fledged, one-stop-shop mo­bile, go-green, cre­ative stu­dio that in­cor­po­rates oth­er cre­ative arts and thrives on in­no­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment.

Face­book.com/pza­zpho­tog­ra­phy In­sta­gram.com/pza­zpho­tog­ra­phy

�2 Pierre Stan­ley Bap­tiste, of Haiti, Ay­isyen Poz­i­tif (Pos­i­tive Haitians), a pub­lish­ing plat­form and month­ly event which trains, mo­ti­vates and in­spirex fu­ture lead­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs in Haiti.The com­pa­ny us­es Hait­ian cre­ole o lever­age con­tent to a larg­er au­di­ence.Guest speak­ers are small busi­ness own­ers who are not well-known, but are very suc­cess­ful. The vi­sion is to de­vel­op an App where young Haitians can ac­cess Hait­ian cre­ole re­sources to help them im­prove as lead­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs. www.ay­isyen­poz­i­tif.com