Startup Grind Baton Rouge

Just when you were thinking you could return to some semblance of normality... COVID-19 makes a dramatic reappearance and lays waste to your careful plans.

In the last six weeks, our region has seen an unprecedented rise in cases of COVID-19, hospitalizations, and sadly more deaths. Once again this pandemic is exerting its will, forcing us to adapt even more than we already have. The latest wave has brought on new mandates and rules that will heavily impact businesses.

That is why this is such an important topic - how to make the right decisions for your business while navigating a crisis of any proportion. Developing a resilient organization that has the ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment is critical. You never know what obstacles you may need to face in the future and now is the perfect time to not only create a response to manage serious events, but also develop a plan that will allow you to find growth opportunities in a downturn.

We are very fortunate to have a guest speaker who has seen firsthand the impacts of the pandemic, both from a business and medical perspective.

Dr. Rubin Patel is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Patient Plus Urgent Care. He earned his medical degree from Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana and completed his residency at Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge. His clinics treat less serious conditions that don't warrant a trip to the nearest emergency room.

In this fireside, we want to dig deeper into his responses during the initial lockdowns, but more importantly, how that experience has helped him in tackling the latest wave of cases and what seems to be a more aggressive trajectory than previously witnessed.

Crowdfunding has become a powerful way for organizations to raise funds for their projects or startups. One of the most well-known crowdfunding stories is Oculus, a popular virtual reality headset that was purchased by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. They originally launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the development of the headset. Within 4 hours the campaign exceeded its target and eventually raised $2.4 million!

Sherin Dawud and Raina Vallot, founded Power Pump Girls, Inc. in 2017 with the belief that women are better together. Power Pump Girls, Inc. is a social impact club connecting and mobilizing women to disrupt systems of inequity. ⚡️They set out to create intentional gatherings for women to build relationships that ultimately impacted culture. From hosting social brunches to advocating for women’s rights legislation, the organization’s resumé is as diverse and unconventional as its founders. As the Power Pump Girls sisterhood grew, Sherin and Raina began taking on speaking engagements and hosting opportunities to discuss topics of authenticity, community building, social impact strategy, diversity and inclusion, and more. Now, considered thought leaders and social entrepreneurs, Sherin and Raina continue to challenge the status quo and empower others along the way.

In this fireside, we will explore the role community building plays in running successful crowdfunding campaigns. Join us for some networking, refreshments, and an insightful conversation with Raina and Sherin!

There is one thing most entrepreneurs can agree on – entrepreneurship is hard and building a business is one of the most difficult challenges you will ever take on. How do you manage the seemingly never-ending path of setbacks and roadblocks?

The answer is resilience and a resilient mindset – the ability to adapt in the face of adversity.

Join us for a discussion on resilience and how to weather the inevitable obstacles you will face on your entrepreneurial journey.

Sevetri Wilson is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder of two companies, Solid Ground Innovations (SGI) and, most recently, Resilia, a New Orleans-based technology startup. She bootstrapped her first company, SGI, to seven figures with zero capital, and raised over $3M for her second company, Resilia, which launched to the public in 2016. She is the first Black woman in New Orleans to raise over $1M in venture capital.

In 2010, she was honored with the Nobel Prize for public service, the Jefferson Award and was featured in the Senate report to the White House on volunteerism in America during the Obama administration.

Sevetri has been featured in Forbes, Black Enterprise, Essence, Inc., Entrepreneur, USA Today, CNN and other news outlets for her work in business and technology.

If there is one person who knows about scaling a company and taking it to new heights - it's Chris Meaux. Originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana Chris had success in only one market before he expanded Waitr to Lafayette. In this Fireside there are a few things we will be discussing:

• What it really takes to scale your startup

• Defining the right metrics and executing on those metrics

• Building a sustainable business while continuously innovating

Chris Meaux is an Angel Investor, Entrepreneur, and Founder and Vice Chairman of Waitr Holdings, Inc. Chris founded Waitr in December 2013 and was its CEO until August 2019. Under Chris’ leadership, Waitr went from a business idea in a notebook to nearly $200 million in revenue in just six years. In May 2018 Chris led the sale of Waitr for $308 million to a group led by Tillman J. Fertitta and stayed on as CEO to take the company public in November 2018.

He currently serves on the boards of Waitr Holdings Inc., Picasso Analytics, Relief Telemedicine, BARS Equipment, and Mallard Bay, Inc. and a trustee for the Lafayette Public Innovation Alliance.

Chris has been recognized for numerous awards including the 2019 Ernst and Young Gulf Coast Entrepreneur of the Year, the 2019 ACG Dealmaker of the year, a member of the 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 Silicon Bayou 100, the 2018 ACG Emerging Growth Company award, and the 2017 Jr. Achievement Startup Business of the Year.

Adam Knapp has been president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber (BRAC) since 2008. BRAC is responsible for economic development in the nine-parish Capital Area of Louisiana and is ranked by Site Selection as one of the top 10 regional economic development organizations in the United States. BRAC's team leads business development efforts for the region in collaboration with a network of strategic partners. At the same time, it leads efforts to enhance the region's competitiveness and improve the conditions for additional business investment.

Knapp started his career in the private sector in Chicago and Silicon Valley as a consultant for Accenture, a global management consulting firm. After Accenture, he returned to Louisiana to serve Gov. Mike Foster (R-LA) and Kathleen Blanco (D-LA) as economic development adviser. He worked at Louisiana Economic Development, and, after the 2005 hurricanes, as deputy director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Knapp serves on the boards of Teach for America, the Center for Planning Excellence, New Schools Baton Rouge, and the Mayor's Healthy City Initiative.

A native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Knapp attended Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina, and studied at Julius-Maximillian University in Germany and at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He and his wife, Megan, have three young children, Sadie, Hattie, and Nicholas.

We welcome Mario Lanzarotti, a business mindset coach and transformational speaker. From CEO’s to Olympians and mission-driven entrepreneurs, he helps growth-seekers break through their current limitations to reach the next level of success and fulfilment. After selling his NYC based startup Awl & Sundry in 2019, Mario now travels the world between NYC, Cape Town and Berlin. Dedicated to share his mission to raise the consciousness of humanity his master classes focus on leading with purpose and collective empowerment.

A message from Mario

"I'd love to address the current reality of what's happening in the world and the role that we as entrepreneurs have, meaning that it's on us to be the catalysts of human advancement. I think this will be a very powerful focus point because we can talk about how entrepreneurs can connect with a bigger mission and use that to create sustainable success on a whole new level."

We're going to dive into a workshop style interview where Mario shares his experience in difficult circumstances and how we can find the catalyst of our own success. Here's a hint: it's in YOU! So much of what Mario brings to the table is helping growth seekers realize that the power of change is within themselves. Join us for a talk that will be game-changing.

What you will learn:

1. How meditation and self-reflection can be your first (and most effective) tool for finding focus.

2. What areas in your life deserve your focus and which ones do not.

3. Clarifying your purpose and aligning it with your work to achieve success.

Rob Wise is a self-proclaimed entrepreneur since his early days of washing cars, cutting grass, recycling cans, and setting prices or selling items at garage sales. As a boy, Rob enjoyed doing hard work, leaving something better than he found it, and helping people. As an adult, he manages to find the same fulfillment in business by impacting and inspiring those around him at ITinspired where he is the CEO and co-owner.

In seven years, ITinspired has grown to a staff of twenty people and hit several milestones along the way. Notable achievements include ranking 2,584th on the Inc5000 list in 2018 as one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies, Inc.'s Best Places to Work in 2018 and 2019, the 2019 and 2020 Louisiana Growth Leader Award, and LSU's Top 100 Tiger Led Businesses of 2019.

Rob serves on non-profit boards for Junior League of Baton Rouge, Leadership Baton Rouge Alumni, Manfulness Living, and the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. He's been honored as a member of the LSU L-Club, Baton Rouge Business Report's 2018 Forty Under 40, 2017 Leadership Baton Rouge class, 2019 Leadership Louisiana class, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses graduate & alumni ambassador, and the Young Entrepreneur Academy of BR mentor ambassador.