State focuses on small business, entrepreneurship

The Arkansas Economic Development Commission has been retooling several of its programs to streamline services for small businesses and entrepreneurship.

Esperanza Massana-Crane, AEDC’s director of Small Business and Entrepreneurship Development, has been a big part of the agency’s reorganization and new outreach. She sat down with Talk Business & Politics Editor-in-Chief Roby Brock to discuss the different programs in action.

Roby Brock: I want to begin with something called 75Strong. For people who don’t know what this is all about, tell me about 75Strong.

Esperanza Massana-Crane: 75Strong is an exciting initiative that we launched this year in addition to two others. You know, there is a gap in the state when it comes to the availability of resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs. If you think about it, most of them are concentrated largely in Northwest Arkansas and central Arkansas for the most part. This initiative is meant to train and equip community leaders, economic developers around the state in small business and entrepreneurship. The goal is for them to develop startup strategies that work alongside their economic development strategies so that we can grow small businesses and entrepreneurs. For example, there is an organization called the International Economic Development Council, which is highly recognized. This program will be putting about 50 of these applicants into a course so they can get the entrepreneurial development certification, which is wonderful. It’ll be recognized through the organization, and we’re investing in that.

Brock: The Arkansas Resource Hub is another initiative that might not be a household name, although I know you’re working on that. What does that encompass?

Massana-Crane: That is a partnership with the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Arkansas. We have been working on this for a while. You know, resources for entrepreneurs are all over the map, and sometimes it’s very hard to find them. And you have to go to and search them, obviously one by one. This tool, fueled by Eco Map Technologies, puts everything together in one place. So basically you can look for resources, say in for funding or if you’re looking for resources for tech startups, and it’ll pull all the resources in the state in addition to events, which I think is one that is very hard. You have so many events around the state. Through this tool, it’s all confined into one space, and you can see what’s available in your region.

Brock: There’s an accelerator program that you guys, a Fuel Accelerator program. I think this is with Startup Junkie out of Fayetteville, but it’s statewide.

Massana-Crane: This is a program from the state that we fund. The accelerator programs have the objective to work with technology and technology-based companies so that we can help them scale. We can provide mentorship and coaching for these companies. Usually these programs are from eight weeks to 12 weeks. So it’s a very fast-paced program. There will be more to come, but for fiscal year 2025, we will be funding a total of 11 accelerators in a variety of industries that go from tech to supply chain to aerospace and defense to AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning to logistics to finance and banking.

Brock: What happens to the companies that come out of these accelerator programs? What are you tracking to know that the investment you made was one that was beneficial from a taxpayer perspective?

Massana-Crane: Absolutely. The idea is also for these companies to become mentors for companies that come as a result of this accelerator. That’s where ARise comes in as well. ARise is growing this group of subject matter experts. So they are recruiting subject matter experts that some are paid positions, some are not, but the idea is to grow this technology-based sector in the state. A lot of these companies come back and give back in the sense of being a mentor and assisting other early-stage companies.

Brock: You mentioned earlier that central Arkansas and Northwest Arkansas, that’s where we see the most entrepreneurship activity. There are things happening in other places in the state; they may not be as robust as those two corridors that we just mentioned. Is it important to find ways to get entrepreneurship and resources going in other places? Or is it best to focus on the two areas where we see the greatest strength and stay focused in that area?

Massana-Crane: Oh no. We want to grow the whole state. And that’s the reason why ARise has a very strong emphasis in covering the entire state. A recent success story is actually G&H Decoys, which is a company that relocated to Arkansas from Oklahoma to Corning in Clay County. The way it started was through a conversation with ARise. Kris Adams, if you’re familiar with him, he used to lead the Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit, and he’s been a fantastic program director for ARise. He started having conversations, they became clients, and then it transitioned into the chamber of commerce getting involved and the community. But that is one of the goals. 75Strong, that we talked about earlier, the same thing. It stands for the 75 counties in the state. So the reach is the entire state, especially our rural areas.

You can watch an interview with Massana-Crane at this link.