Comstock's magazine 0620 - June June 2020 | Page 23

How does the Carlsen Center help
create innovation and entrepreneurship
in the region?
Our mission is to make innovation and
entrepreneurship pervasive throughout
the greater Sacramento region, and our
vision is to be the hub of innovation and
entrepreneurship. ...
We’ve broken down our activities
into three main categories, which we call
Discover, Build and Launch. Discover
is, at an early stage, providing access
and accessibility to the entrepreneurial
journey. These programs (include) Global
Entrepreneurship Week, which we just received
a $1 million funding in November
(from Western Health Advantage) to endow
… from here on out. (The program)
is a full week of events, meaning conversations
around what entrepreneurship
looks like to different disciplines, as well
as elevating the conversation of what’s
taking place in terms of innovation and
entrepreneurship.
We held a state of the union (in) which
we talked about what does the funding
landscape look like for early stage entrepreneurs.
We brought in (City of Sacramento’s
Chief Innovation Officer) Louis
Stewart to talk about the Sacramento
Urban Technology Lab and the role
the city’s playing, as well as (Chief Grid
Strategy and Operations Officer) Paul Lau
from SMUD to talk about the California
Mobility Center. And so (we’re) really
trying to elevate what’s going on and how
people can plug into this growing ecosystem
that we have.
Another type of program that we have
is the entrepreneurship speaker series.
We partnered with one of our advisory
board members, (HaneyBiz CEO) Mark
Haney, who’s very active in the entrepreneurial
ecosystem, and we’re bringing in
people to talk about their entrepreneurial
journey and what successes they’ve seen,
as well as what challenges and failures
they’ve seen and how they overcame
I think one of the things that
this pandemic has really turned
out in terms of an opportunity is it’s
forced us to think differently about
our programming. What we’ve seen
is that, through the virtual setting,
we’re able to reach more people,
because there’s not the physical
constraint of someone having to
drive to the Carlsen Center or be
physically present.
them. And this is really to empower students
to see themselves in this space, as
well as to provide a resource for budding
entrepreneurs to learn about how they
can grow and scale their companies. …
We (also) work across colleges on campus
to provide a pitch competition … creating
a creative outlet to explore (students’)
ideas as well as map those ideas onto a
business model.
And then we have our (Build category)
programs, which have been a little bit
disrupted by COVID-19. We have a Lean
Startup Bootcamp, which is a two-day
crash course around basically the Lean
Startup methodology … (and) ultimately
results in individuals coming out of
it with a clearer picture of what their
business idea is, as well as that they can
start to tell their stories, whether that’s to
customers or to investors. It really helps
them map that idea out at an early stage.
We have a Venture School program
which is a seven-week-long program
where we take a cohort of entrepreneurs
through programming to help them to
achieve these milestones in their business.
And then we were going to do an
June 2020 | comstocksmag.com 23