Chapman University uses state grants to support the next generation of entrepreneurs
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The Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics, located near the southwest corner of Chapman University’s campus, looks like an old red warehouse.
That’s exactly what it is, explained Leatherby Center director Cynthia West, but orange is another very relevant color in the 7,000-square-foot space.
This makes sense once one learns that Charles Chapman, the school’s namesake and the first mayor of the city of Fullerton, was an innovator in the citrus industry in the early 1900s.
“He was a citrus entrepreneur,” said West, fully aware that the university also resides in the city of Orange. “This is all a citrus packing district. We’ve got a lot of orange themes here.”
Chapman would appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit that appears to be bubbling over at the Leatherby Center. It was full of students and community members even on Wednesday, days before the spring semester starts.
“This is an awesome place for us entrepreneurs from Orange County,” said Irvine resident Oscar Garcia, who created an app called Need 2 Say designed to remove language barriers in the construction industry. “We’ve been coming here for more than a month now. They give us this office space that we badly need that we need to grow and scale our business. Also, they have a lot of events, a lot of support.”
The center, part of Chapman’s Argyros College of Business and Economics, got some exciting news recently as it was renewed for a second round of funding from the California Office of the Small Business Advocate.
The $1-million grant will be awarded over four years through the Accelerate California: Inclusive Innovation Hubs program. The goal is to enable the center to continue to support entrepreneurship as a path for economic empowerment in underserved communities.
As the only Inclusive Innovation Hub in Orange County, the Leatherby Center also received an additional $500,000 innovation grant to be used as seed money for its startup clients.
“Anybody who’s a client can vie for these dollars, anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000,” West said. “Maybe you come from a poorer background and you don’t have friends and family who can lend you $10,000. These funds are designed to help you get to that next level.”
Jen Chiou, an Irvine resident, said she will be applying for a part of the grant. She is also part of a women’s entrepreneur group that meets regularly at the Leatherby Center.
As a woman and an Asian American, Chiou faces both gender and race biases, said West, whose background was in technology startups before joining the Leatherby Center in 2023. Women only get 3% of all venture capital dollars, West said, and people of color receive less than 2%.
“It’s a problem that everybody knows about in this little space of entrepreneurship, and it’s something that this grant is designed to help fix,” West said.
Chiou, who co-founded an online role-playing game for elementary- and middle-school students called Quest Craft with her 10-year-old son, completed a hyper-accelerated version of the Leatherby Center’s startup incubator program last summer.
“We just started launching into schools,” Chiou said. “Companies who have been through the program are really excited to put our name in the hat [for grant dollars] and try to get that additional support.”
Kevin Meredith is co-founder of Orange-based 4th Sector Innovations, which is contracted through Chapman to run the incubator program as well as the accelerator program, for entrepreneurs a bit further along in the journey of their business.
Meredith said that participants in the programs don’t have to pay out of pocket. Additionally, the CalOSBA funding is non-dilutive, meaning that it won’t cost the entrepreneurs any ownership or equity in the company.
“We’re talking about early-stage ventures that don’t become unicorns, statistically, certainly in a short period of time,” Meredith said. “So why would we want to impair the startups by doing that? Let’s give the founders as many as options as possible to grow, instead of handicapping them.”
Payal and Kajal Vitha, sisters who co-founded the Sonu Company jewelry business, were at Chapman while they took the accelerator program on Fridays last year.
Payal, 30, is a Chapman alumna who majored in business and minored in entrepreneurship. She has found success in the industry with her younger sister Kajal, 27. Third-generation jewelers, they operate their engagement ring business out of the corner of their parents’ shop in Artesia.
They made the engagement ring for Season 3 of the Netflix show “Indian Matching.” The Vitha sisters are Indian Americans.
“We got connected with Kevin and we were able to get a feel for what it could offer us,” said Payal Vitha, who lives in Orange. “We were already in business, so it was ‘How do we grow, how do we scale, how do we pitch? How do we go and ask for money?’ because that was something that we were not familiar with at all. If you’ve never had to raise money before, that entire process is very intimidating.
“It was great to have people to bounce those ideas off, or folks to vent to. Having that community of other women founders has been really helpful.”
The sisters recently branched out into fine jewelry more broadly and are now considering getting their own space.
West said Chapman currently has nearly 700 students who are minoring in entrepreneurship, and the program offers about 100 mentors. A Chapman Entrepreneurship Organization club, started by two students in September 2023, is up to about 130 members.
West said with a smile that the building is the coolest space on Chapman’s campus, in her humble opinion.
“This was kind of a startup when I got here, just because the pandemic had taken the wind out of the sails of a lot of things,” she said. “We’re getting some life back into the place.”
The Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics is currently accepting rolling applications for the innovation grant seed funding, with the first round scheduled for March 30 and the second round of funding on June 30. Qualified startups that have participated in a Leatherby Center program are eligible to apply.
For eligibility details and an application form, contact [email protected].
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