CityState: Business
Goldman Sachs
10,000 Small Businesses
Karina Holyoak Wood, executive director of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Rhode Island
at CCRI, explains how local entrepreneurs can take advantage of the free program. By Jamie Coelho
20 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l
JANUARY 2020
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Minnie Luong of Chi
Kitchen; a CCRI panel discussion with Champe
Spiedel of Persimmon and Karina Holyoak Wood;
Jayne Merner Senecal of Earthcare Farm; Jeshua
Zapata of Xzito Marketing; Ellen McNulty Brown
of Lotuff Leather.
six months after graduating. For example, locally, Minnie Luong
of Chi Kitchen expanded to a larger production facility in Pawtucket;
Ellen McNulty-Brown of Lotuff artisan leather goods in Provi-
dence increased productivity by 135 percent just six months after
graduating; Jayne Merner Senecal of Earth Care Farm in South
County successfully designed a plan to package their organic
compost to sell retail; and Jeshua Zapata of Xzito Marketing in
Johnston has more than doubled his revenue two and a half years
after graduating.
Why does the program focus on
existing businesses and not startups?
The 10KSB program is designed to meet a specific need in the
market — reaching past the start-up phase in order to teach estab-
lished businesses how to recognize profitable opportunities for
growth and then craft and implement a growth plan that will
increase their revenues and spur job creation. The objective is to
invest in Rhode Island’s established small businesses so they can
grow their companies and create jobs in the communities where
they live and work.
BUSINESSES.
What is the Goldman Sachs
10,000 Small Businesses program?
10KSB is an investment to help entrepreneurs create jobs and
economic opportunity by providing access to education, capital
and business support services. The Goldman Sachs Founda-
tion asked Babson College, one of the top entrepreneurial colleges
in the country, to help design a twelve-week curriculum that gives
entrepreneurs the tools they need to grow and scale their busi-
nesses. Small business owners take classes on marketing and
selling, negotiating skills, leadership development, being bankable,
attracting and retaining employees and
more. They also work one-on-one with
a business adviser, join a strong network
of entrepreneurs and create a five-year
growth plan.
What’s the commitment like?
The program is roughly one day a week
for twelve weeks at CCRI’s Warwick campus. There are nine all-
day modules and two half-day clinics. On module days, people
come in at 8 in the morning and it ends at 5:30 p.m. We give them
breakfast, lunch and coffee, and everything is covered; there’s no
cost for food or materials. So far 251 Rhode Island small business
owners have completed the program since we launched in March
of 2016, and there are close to 9,000 10KSB alumni nationwide.
What are the requirements to apply?
This program isn’t for startups, it’s for businesses that are at least
two years past the startup phase, but we also welcome 100-year-
old family businesses. There have been a number of long-term
business participants, like Wright’s Dairy Farm, that wanted to
explore new avenues of growth. We look for growth-minded stable
businesses that have at least two employees, and business revenues
of at least $100,000 in the most recent year. We start with a five-
minute initial application so we can make sure small businesses
meet the requirements for eligibility. In January, we’ll be taking
applications for our summer cohort, and the deadline to apply is
February 1 at 10KSBapply.com. We run three cohorts each year.
Who are some of your successful alumni
who have completed the program?
We track our graduates’ growth and we find our program has
strong impact. Across the U.S., 67 percent of graduates report
increased revenues, and 47 percent report creating new jobs, just