To increase the self-employment rate of minorities and the performance of early stage minority-led firms in Region 4, Virginia State University’s VSU Center for Entrepreneurship and the Division of Research and Economic Development have created a Minority Small Business Launch Center (SBLC) that provides a comprehensive suite of entrepreneurship-facilitating resources and supportive services including:
Our program would give participants access to business support in key functional areas: marketing-planning, financial statement development, business plan writing, and social media to enable firms to save money on these services and survive their first 1-5 years.
Our program would provide access to two certification programs—(1) “Small Business Launch,” an accredited-college, credit-bearing certification course offered by Virginia State University; and (2) the MBL Entrepreneur Certificate course powered by Start-Up Virginia.
Participants in our program will have access to three sites for co-working space: 1) VSU’s state of the art Center for Entrepreneurship, which will largely serve student, faculty and alumni entrepreneurs, and is open to the public by appointment. 2) MBL’s City Point Innovation Center, a 5000-square foot entrepreneurship resource center launched this year resulting from collaborative efforts with the City of Petersburg, corporate, and government partners to serve entrepreneurs in the southern Richmond MSA and Tri-Cities areas.
VSU will host government agency entrepreneurship resource training sessions where representatives from the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity and the Small Business Administration will train participants on how to access state and federal government resources.
Jordan IP Law will provide entrepreneurs with intellectual property workshops over two years focused on when and how to obtain patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Edmonds Law, PC & Expert Legal will provide entrepreneurs with counseling on business formation over two years to help under-resourced firms overcome costs associated with incorporation or forming LLC’s and enable them to establish structures that better protect entrepreneur assets.
Metrostar will provide innovation internships for high potential VSU student entrepreneurs. VSU’s College of Business will offer small business consultancies through our Small Business Consulting and Global Entrepreneurship Consulting courses for student entrepreneurs through which they will gain hands-on training working with small businesses on core aspects of operations.
VSU will provide summer youth entrepreneurship training for minority high school students with match funds provided by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and partner with Girls for a Change for a Summer Youth “Immersion Lab” where urban youth get hands on experiential learning in entrepreneurship for one week.
Our program will work with regional trade associations and chambers of commerce, including the Metropolitan Business League (MBL), the Central Virginia African American Chamber and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to provide reduced-fee memberships to our program participants for two years.
Training Contact Hours
Entrepreneurs Trained
Certifications Awarded
For a detailed summary of our program, please select the button on the right. You will be able to download a detailed executive summary of the Minority Small Business Launch Center submitted to GO VA.
Fill out the Admissions Form at the link below. Training programs are scheduled to start in the Fall semester of 2021.
THE MINORITY SMALL BUSINESS LAUNCH CENTER
POWERED BY
THE VSU CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Reginald F. Lewis College of Business
Virginia State University
1 Hayden Drive, Singleton Hall
Petersburg, VA 23806
(804) 504-7080