GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Andrea Wallace knows what it’s like to be the only Black woman in the room.
As the CEO of Opnr, an online platform designed to connect concert promoters with independent musicians, she’s navigated the startup and venture capital community in Grand Rapids and beyond to raise money and grow her business.
It hasn’t been the easiest world to break into.
RELATED: 10 years after damning Forbes report, has Grand Rapids improved for Black residents?
“There are plenty of people in Grand Rapids who are super helpful,” said Wallace, 41, who has toured as a professional DJ. “But getting into that network is not easy. So, until you have somebody walk you directly into that network — not just help out or make an intro, but truly advocate for you —it can be really, really difficult.”
After years of work, she’s made big strides.
Wallace, who grew up near South Haven and earned a business degree from Grand Valley State University, has landed $40,000 from Start Garden, $150,000 from the New Community Transformation Fund, and is now working to raise $1 million for Opnr.
A decade after Forbes.com ranked the Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area as the second worst large U.S. metro for Black prosperity, Wallace is one example of an entrepreneur who has gotten a big boost from local groups working to strengthen minority-owned businesses.
“We’ve got pretty good traction,” said Wallace, whose company was founded in 2018 to bridge the gap between concert promoters and local musicians. “We’ve got almost 12,000 musicians on the platform. We’ve got about 800 organizers on the platform.”
Locally, a host of venues, promoters and musicians have used the platform. That includes The Intersection, which, over the past year, used Opnr to book acts such as Gunnar & The Grizzly Boys, Hollywood Makeout, Cold Leather Seats, and more.
In Grand Rapids, organizations working to empower entrepreneurs of color include Start Garden, the New Community Transformation, Spring GR, Spartan Innovations, Rende Progress Capital and more. Together, they provide coaching, networking, loans, and opportunities to raise money through grants or business pitch competitions.
For Wallace, the support was a big help.
As a self-described introvert, one of the most valuable lessons she received was learning not only how to pitch her business to investors, but how to pitch herself too.
“Early stage, your company kind of matters, but really it’s you that they’re essentially investing in,” said Wallace, whose company has also received an investment from Grand Rapids-based Opportunity Ventures. “So, learning how to pitch yourself as well as learning how to pitch your company is a huge piece of it.”
RELATED:5 key findings on Black economic prosperity in metro Grand Rapids
In addition to a $150,000 investment, the New Community Transformation Fund has agreed to provide Opnr another $250,000 if the company meets performance milestones such as revenue and user growth.
While Wallace has found success, she knows her experience isn’t universal.
Many Black entrepreneurs struggle to find the capital they need to start to grow their businesses, she says, a fact that is born out by the numbers.
In 2021, the most recent year data was available, 0.8% of businesses in the five-county Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area with more than one employee were Black-owned, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey.
That was the lowest rate among the 50 biggest metros.
“Accessing capital would be a lot easier for a lot of these entrepreneurs if they didn’t start out with so many things weighing them down to begin with,” Wallace said, referring to challenges such as a lack of generational wealth in the Black community.
“That’s why I think stuff like grant funding, non-dilutive capital, capital that’s not chipping away at the equity of your company, is really where it’s at.”
Paul Moore, one of four directors who oversees Start Garden, agrees.
“We’re hitting the limitations of what you can do with $5,000 and $20,000,” he said, referring to Start Garden’s grants for entrepreneurs. “It’s a multi-decade project, and it really requires capital providers, lenders, investors from the whole community to really dig in and try to close that.”
As the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Start Garden, Wallace frequently sees the challenge access to capital has on entrepreneurs.
Early on, if entrepreneurs starting a company can’t turn to friends or family for help, they must divert their attention from crafting a business plan to fundraising, she said. Accessing such funding can be especially challenging for entrepreneurs of color who often have fewer financial resources, she said.
“That is already putting you behind the eight ball,” Wallace said. “Like you already have cement shoes on now because you don’t have access to that kind of capital, that kind of institutional wealth that you can tap easily.”
Wallace faced that challenge herself.
Without investments from friends or family, she set her sights on resources not only in Michigan but throughout the country. She’s participated in business pitch competitions in New York, Chicago and Miami, and has connections in Detroit.
She also participated in programs hosted by Spartan Innovations and Techstars.
Those resources “are great,” Wallace said. But they divert an entrepreneur’s focus from working on their business plan, and they “exhaust you,” she said.
A lack of early stage capital for Black-owned businesses creates other challenges, too.
The New Community Transformation Fund launched in early 2020 with the goal of investing in mid-stage businesses owned by people of color. The fund is focused on businesses in the financial technology, health care, advanced manufacturing and information technology industries.
Since its launch, it’s invested in at least seven companies.
Only one, Opnr, is Black-owned and based in Grand Rapids.
“I would say that what we found is we didn’t have many organizations that were ready to scale,” said Skot Welch, co-founder and managing partner of the New Community Transformation Fund. “Now we have some. But again, those are still slim pickings.”
While the fund has only invested in one Black-owned business in Grand Rapids, it has supported businesses owned by people of color in Detroit and other states, Welch said. The goal is for those businesses to establish a presence in Grand Rapids.
Thus far, two have done so: Chicago-based RiseKit and California-based Zil Money, Welch said.
And, while not Black-owned, the fund has invested in at least one other local, minority-owned business: BAMF Health. The company’s founder and CEO, Anthony Chang, is a native of Taiwan.
Birgit Klohs, the co-founder and executive chair of the New Community Transformation Fund, said she and her colleagues are now starting to see a bigger pipeline of minority- and Black-owned businesses in the region.
“But it’s slow,” she said.
Looking forward, Wallace said she recognizes the challenges Grand Rapids faces in growing Black-owned businesses. But, after spending several years in Detroit and moving back to Grand Rapids, she says the climate here has improved.
“It’s so much better than it was when I left,” Wallace said. “Start Garden was here, but outside of that, for a company like mine, that was pretty much the only thing that was really available.”
Want more Grand Rapids-area news? Bookmark the local Grand Rapids news page or sign up for the free “3@3 Grand Rapids” daily newsletter.
