Project DEEP
Disrupting the status quo in entrepreneurship and investing to unlock equitable wealth creation
01 Demystifying Entrepreneurship
With Kimmy Paluch
In this course, Kimmy Paluch, a venture capitalist, computer scientist, and experienced entrepreneur, teaches the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. She covers how to create a culture of experimentation, build a business model and team, refine your product and marketing, and strengthen your product-market fit. Kimmy emphasizes the grit and persistence underrepresented founders demonstrate and shares her own story of breaking down barriers as an entrepreneur and investor. Throughout this course, Kimmy will show you how to short cut your learning to focus on the most pivotal aspects of building a business.
02 Funding for Growth
With Christina Taylor
Christina Taylor, founder of TaylorMade Experience, an event management and fundraising consulting firm, teaches how to fund your business to grow. Christina learned financial literacy at a young age from her IRS-employed parents, and she has employed this skill throughout her career in event management and entrepreneurship. With people of color being more likely to report financial challenges and with women accounting for less than 5% of capital lent to small companies, this course will hopefully serve to help diverse owners access the right capital. In this course, Christina will teach you foundational financial practices, your landscape of funding options, and how they can accelerate your business growth while sharing the story of her own business and that of other experts. We hope this course grants you an understanding of the funding landscape and confidence in pursuing funding for your business.
03 Scaling through Systems
With Raquel Wilson
In this course, Raquel Wilson, founder and former CEO of Peachtree Versatile Assistants (PVA), teaches the importance of leveraging systems in building a business. As a social worker and entrepreneur focused on helping other business owners solve operational problems, Raquel has spent thousands of hours defining and removing obstacles for innovators. In this course, Raquel will share her proven strategies for identifying the need for systems in your business, categorizing your challenges, and creating strong systems through documentation, technology, and people. This course will help you identify and fix key pain points in your business and create systems to scale.
04 Women Investing for Change
With Rose Maizner
In this course, investor Rose Maizner teaches the fundamentals of investing in entrepreneurs and why more women are needed in influential investing roles. As an entrepreneur and professional investor, Rose’s mission is to accelerate the success of underserved entrepreneurs by diversifying the investing landscape and equipping more women to lead out in investing. In this course, she covers key investing concepts such as risk vs reward, equity vs debt, understanding diversification, and financing stages of startups. Rose also covers four distinct types of early-stage investing - crowdfunding, friends and family investing, angel investing, and fund investing - and leads conversations with women investors experienced in each of these spaces. This course will equip you with the understanding you need to get started in investing for change.
05 Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Building
With Dell Gines
In this course, Dr. Dell Gines teaches inclusive, entrepreneurial economic development. Through close examination of the advantages of entrepreneurial development to rural and communities of color, Dell highlights the opportunity for eliminating economic disparities and building sustainable, equitable ecosystems. You will learn how to build support and offer resources so that entrepreneurs can successfully operate within today’s shifting ecosystem in a way which promotes inclusivity and community and creates stronger, more resilient economies. Dell has spent his career working to change the disparities between white communities and communities of color through building thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems and believes that by prioritizing and investing in entrepreneurship, we can drive economic growth.
06 Designing Economies for People and Planet
With SecondMuse
In this course, Todd Khozein, CEO and Co-Founder of SecondMuse, joins other SecondMuse project leaders to discuss their efforts to mold just and inclusive economic systems. With pressing issues like climate change and gender inequality impacting communities globally, SecondMuse works to connect changemakers, power holders, and the ecosystems that surround them to innovate on new economic models. In this course, you’ll meet five different SecondMuse programs - all at different scales and in different sectors - to understand how to build values into processes and center the people closest to the challenges as experts. This course will give you practical examples and leadership paradigms on how to retool economic systems for a more equitable world.
Project DEEP is hosted by the Sorenson Impact Institute, a social impact consultancy based at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, and generously funded by the Economic Development Administration, JPMorgan Chase, and the Sorenson Impact Foundation.