Seventeen startup business teams from Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi—all part of the Delta Regional Authority’s Delta I-Fund program—converged on the Innovation Hub in downtown Jackson for their Opening Weekend on June 9th and 10th.
Sponsored by Innovate Mississippi, with support from TeamJXN and Coalesce Coworking, the Opening Weekend event saw founders of these companies trained in the “lean canvas” model, learning to fill out and work from a business canvas that offers a visual roadmap to their business, and performed customer validation interviews to learn more about whether customers would buy their proposed product and how those customers should be marketed to.
The business teams come from throughout the region that is served by the Delta Regional Authority: Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, parts of Alabama and Louisiana.
Businesses from Arkansas received $50,000 in startup funding toward their businesses; those from outside of Arkansas receive a $5,000 grant aimed at technical assistance in their business operations.
The program is meant to spur economic growth throughout the Mississippi Delta region, encouraging entrepreneurship and startup businesses, while also education those business founders on some of the planning and customer validation that can help them succeed through the early stages of a startup.
The program continues through the summer with the businesses continuing to interview customers, check in with their mentors and move toward an MVP—minimum viable product—that they can bring to market.
“The Delta I-Fund is a unique program in that it can reach entrepreneurs where they currently reside in the Delta Regional Authority territory,” said Amy Hopper, program manager. “After opening weekend, the program’s resources, training, mentorship and funding, can all be accessed virtually. This allows entrepreneurs to plant roots and create jobs in their own communities.”
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