The Jackson Ward Collective, a network of Richmond-area Black business owners, is launching a new business accelerator program aimed at boosting early-stage entrepreneurs, beginning in September.
The Community Business Academy is a 12-week program licensed to the collective from Jersey City, New Jersey-based Rising Tide Capital. The collective’s co-founders, Melody Short, Rasheeda Creighton and Kelli Lemon, are bringing the accelerator academy to Richmond to fill a gap in existing small business development resources in the region.
“A lot of the [existing] programming is about identifying your market and then moving fairly quickly to finding funding. What was missing was how to actually run a business,” Creighton said. “You know, what is a P&L, how do you think about financials, how do you think about credit, how does your personal credit impact your business credit, how do you build operations, how do you think about staffing — all of those nuanced pieces that are the foundation…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
