New venture accelerator program supports entrepreneurs

Ten-week boot camp helps participants develop, expand their businesses

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 4^th, 2023

Since 2018, Tomeka Powell has run a small business called Lollipopa that provides birthday boxes for little girls. For the past several months, Powell has wanted to improve and expand the business but wasn’t sure how to go about it.

Then, this fall, she learned about California State University, Bakersfield’s new venture accelerator program aimed at helping participants develop their own businesses as well as improve and expand existing businesses.

“I wanted to get some more momentum with the business, and this seemed like a great opportunity,” Powell said. “I’m so happy I was able to be a part of this first cohort. This is something I haven’t really seen elsewhere, so it’s very much needed.”

Powell was one of nine people who participated in the 10-week program, which started in September and was offered through the university’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI).

The program featured classes with business experts who met with the participants and gave them advice on their products. It ended in November with a pitch competition, during which they were able to present their final pitches for their businesses.

CEI Faculty Director and Associate Professor of Management Dr. Jeremy Woods said he was very pleased with how this first cohort turned out.

“It’s great to have the opportunity to really roll up our sleeves and make progress on improving the participants’ businesses,” he said. “All nine have made important progress in filing business registration paperwork, analyzing existing customer demographics as well as acquiring new customers, key partners and key resources. There’s no doubt that some of these ventures are going to create multiple new jobs in the Bakersfield area over the next year.”

For Powell, the venture accelerator provided much-needed clarity on how to move forward with her business, which she started for her daughter, Savannah Frye, when she was 4 years old.

Powell is a former president of the Kern County Black Chamber of Commerce. In 2016, she attended an empowerment conference for girls that the chamber sponsored. It inspired her to start a business project with her daughter.

“When she would be named a star student in school, she would get to pick out a lollipop, and she called it ‘lollipopa.’ We took the name and came up with this birthday box idea,” she said. “It’s been great working with her. I have a love and passion for business, and I saw that in her too.”

The mother and daughter team, with assistance from Powell’s husband and two other children, were able to keep the small business going smoothly until COVID-19 hit, after which it started to become difficult to source product for the boxes.

“We were getting stuff that just didn’t work, so I stopped business for a little bit because I got frustrated,” she said. “I wanted to do the accelerator program because I was hoping it could help me find a place where I could get consistent product so the boxes can get more traction.”

Finding a source for quality product was a major priority for Powell because she wanted to start a subscription model for Lollipopa that would change up the product every quarter. In the past, the business has relied on single-box purchases.

However, Powell was unsure how to manage some of the logistics of doing subscriptions. She said she was impressed by how much the venture accelerator program was able to serve her specific needs.

“I loved it because it was very customized to what I needed. It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach,” she said. “It was a lot of networking and connecting for what I needed, and that’s what I appreciate the most. Now I have a better idea of what to do.”

With the help of the venture accelerator program, Powell was able to connect with a company in China to provide product the Lollipopa boxes. Powell and her family have also started work on implementing a subscription model for the business.

“I feel like I have a lot that I’ve taken away from the program that I’m implementing. I have a firmer plan now.”

CSUB student Phillip Roberts was one of the participants in the first cohort of the university's new venture accelerator program this fall.

Making connections

When he first came to CSUB, senior Phillip Roberts always planned to pursue a degree and career in business.

“I didn’t really like working for anyone else and I didn’t like working on a set schedule,” he said. “I wanted to create my own opportunity and create opportunities for other people.”

However, he wasn’t expecting to start one as soon as he did. After COVID-19 shut the campus down in spring 2020, Roberts found himself with a lot of free time, which he partly filled by washing his car every day.

His neighbors noticed, asking Roberts if he could also wash their vehicles, as car washes were shut down at that time due to the pandemic.

Once COVID-19 started to ease up a bit, Roberts expected to see a decline in customers, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it was the opposite. Now, what started as a one-man operation has turned into a team of people, including a new business partner.

The business, called Mobile Car Wash Bako, uses a truck to make stops at people’s residences all over town to wash and detail their cars and other vehicles.

“It started as a side-hustle but now it’s turned into a fully established business,” Roberts said.

While he has seen success in a short amount of time, Roberts was looking for ways to grow the business further. Then, when Dr. Woods told him about the new venture accelerator program, he knew this was a great opportunity.

“I thought it was a good way to learn more about business and how to grow my business,” he said. “My biggest goal was trying to figure out my customer base and demographics, who our target audience is.”

Roberts said he learned about marketing and the legal issues that small businesses face and received advice on how to manage a business.

“I’ve learned that if you want to grow the business, you need to step away from working IN the business and start working ON it,” he said. “For the last couple months, I’ve found myself not physically washing cars as much and being more focused on retaining customers and getting new ones.”

A 'valuable' experience

Roberts said he was also able to make good connections with other participants in the venture accelerator program, one of whom was Jace Dooley. Dooley is a CSUB alum who graduated from the university with a degree in business administration in 2020.

Dooley is in the process of creating a parking app aimed at increasing parking efficiency on campus. The intention of the app is to match up students based on what parking lot they’re trying to get in or out of. The student who is leaving the parking spot will connect with the person they’re matched with so that student can take their spot.

The app is also expected to include heat maps of CSUB parking lots to give users a general idea of how full they are.

“I always struggled with finding a spot on campus,” Dooley said. “I would have to leave my house an hour early to make sure I had ample time to find a spot near my classes, and that always frustrated me. Some days you would find a spot really quick and other days it could take 30 to 40 minutes. I thought ‘there has to be a more efficient way to do this.’”

Dooley, who has been working on the app since 2020, was looking for coders to program the app when he learned about the venture accelerator program. He thought it would be a good way to make those connections.

Dooley also wanted to get some opinions on the project from business experts to see what improvements could be made.

“I wanted to talk to people who had started successful ventures and see what they did, what their skill sets are, to see what I could get out of learning from them,” he said. “The fact that we had people coming in to speak with us and share their experience was extremely valuable.”

Through the venture accelerator program, Dooley was able to bring on three dedicated coders for the app, all of whom are CSUB students who are working on it as part of a class project. Another student is working on creating a website for the app.

Being in the program also helped facilitate conversations with the university about the app. Dooley said the plan is to fully integrate it with CSUB so that the university would operate it themselves.

This is, in part, to avoid security and privacy issues regarding the app using student data. He said CSUB is supportive of the project.

Dooley plans to roll out the app at CSUB sometime during the spring semester. However, he hopes CSUB will just be the start of something bigger. He intends to bring the app to other universities once he sees how this trial run goes.

Dooley said the app wouldn’t be in the place it is today if he hadn’t gone through the venture accelerator program.

“I gained a tremendous amount of value out of it,” he said. “It’s great that the university wants to encourage entrepreneurship. I can definitely see this becoming a program that’s here to stay.”

Roberts agrees that it will be a great resource for people who participate in future years.

“I think it’s great that CSUB provides something like this,” he said. “It’s going to be great for future students and future entrepreneurs to have a chance to go through the program.”