Building an Effective Startup City

Our project, titled Sustainable Finance Lab: Finance Models for Small Businesses and Success Factors for Startups in the city, aims to identify opportunities to strengthen an island city’s position as both a hub for urban regeneration and a gateway for international entrepreneurship. 

This post provides an overview of the project scope, work plan, planned actions, team collaboration, communication strategies, and my motivation for applying to SIRI, and how each element supports the achievement of the project's objectives.

Project scope: 

The project is a collaboration between two entities, a research firm and a consulting company, in affiliation with an academic institute. The entities are jointly engaging to gain insights into small business financing and the entry for an international startup. Understanding the potential for circular sustainable ventures, the scope includes researching regenerative startups. 

Our deliverables include actionable recommendations on policy, program design, and financial frameworks to promote the startup eco-system and develop the city as a smart start-up hub. The client intends to leverage our deliverables to recommend policy improvements to governing bodies to promote startup participation.

We began by assessing project requirements with the clients, focusing on deliverables and their specific expectations from this collaborative project. During the first week, we researched the city and preparing an overview of the preliminary scope, prior to meeting the client. 

Our first meeting with the client was an introductory call where we gained a brief understanding about the city, explored client’s ideas for the project, and discussed the project scope. To ensure smooth communication with the client, we scheduled fixed timings for recurring meetings. In our second call, we focused on clearly defining the final scope and deliverables within agreed timelines. We explained our planned approach for delivering the outcomes and reviewed the evaluation criteria.

Work plan: 

Within our team, we have created a detailed work plan to breakdown deliverables and tasks and established an internal framework with clear timelines. 

We have systematically organized the project into 4 phases: 

Phase 1: Research the city and analyze case studies of four comparable start-up cities. The goal is to identify unique factors in the policy, environment, infrastructure, financial resources, priority focus industries, technology support, and socio-cultural areas that could potentially grow the existing city and add value to attracting new businesses. 

Phase 2: Conduct primary research by interviewing stakeholders to identify gaps. The stakeholders include VC’s, start-ups, small businesses, private equity, CEO’s, incubators, and credit funds.

Phase 3: Create a matrix by mapping assets, stakeholders (investors, entrepreneurs, institutions), financial instruments, policy, and ESG frameworks.

Phase 4: The final stage is integrating our work across the phases to provide tailored, realistic, and implementable recommendations for the client. 

We are currently at Phase 1 of the project. In the coming weeks, we are going to conduct secondary research on the client’s city and choose a comparable city to research the successes, failures, opportunities, and challenges (including SWOT analysis). We plan to evaluate each city’s approach and identify the factors worth incorporating in the client’s city. We the intend to consolidate the data and present the findings to the client. 

Personal connection:

This is an exciting opportunity for me, as it aligns with my professional experience with sustainable ventures. I ran a start-up for five years, creating markets for products from regional communities, and I participated in start-up incubators and accelerator programs. These have enabled me to understand the grassroot challenges of new ventures focused on leveraging local resources. With my career pathway tailored to working at venture capital firms, this project would be a steppingstone for building a strong foundation in the industry. 

With my academic background in finance, I have exposure to financial reporting and modelling. In this project, I am eager to work on integrating the cash-flows, and ESG for start-up asset mapping. This experience will not only be a learning curve but also help advance my professional career. 

Team collaboration and communication:

Our team comprises of four members from diverse backgrounds. (finance and mathematics, consulting & project management, policy, and VC & start-up) This makes it a perfect mix of talent to meet the project requirements. 

During our initial meetings, we discussed our working styles, interests in the projects, and communication styles, creating a supportive environment to work in. We have scheduled weekly meetings to discuss next steps in the project and assign tasks based on our strengths. For instance, one of the team members know the local language of the client, and we all think it is best for her to be the point of contact with the client. One of the members is appointed as the point of contact with the professor regarding project updates. To ensure everyone on the team has an equal opportunity to take lead on the project and lessen the burden on any one individual, we have decided to rotate our roles. I have decided to take the lead on the financing and cash flow mapping avenues. 

Initially, defining the scope and narrowing the focus of the client’s needs required a few meetings. Through this process, I learnt the art of communication, particularly in clarifying information and committing to what is realistically achievable. I realized that it is important to clearly articulate and define terminologies during the initial meetings to ensure you are on the same page as the client. We also scheduled weekly meetings with the clients to update them on progress and to proceed with clarity at every stage. 

So far, I have gained valuable insights into effective communication, teamwork, outlining project, and planning milestones. I have also gained knowledge about the client’s city, and I look forward to discovering what could truly add value to attract startups to a city.