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11/01/12 | Uncategorized

Accelerating The Growth Of Women-Owned Businesses Like Revolution Foods With Inner City Advisors

Revolution Foods joined the ICA Portfolio in 2005 with six employees operating out of a 1,000 square foot facility.
By Abby Bobé (Dual MBA & CS Candidate, Mills College)

With a track record of scaling businesses like Revolution Foods, Blue Bottle Company and Back to the Roots to well-known national organizations, Inner City Advisors is going “All Out” to convene 1000 of the Bay Area’s brightest entrepreneurial, philanthropic, and community-driven minds to solve the challenges that help Bay Area businesses scale up.
The first 10 female entrepreneurs to tweet @ICAdvisors will receive a free ticket to the November 8, 2012 event held in San Francisco, CA.

Whether you are in the midst of creating your pitch deck or are already in business and developing tactics to scale your business to the next level, you can gain from the expertise that Inner City Advisors (ICA) delivers.

Take Revolution Foods for example – once a small pilot program co-founded by graduate business students Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey in Berkeley, California, Revolution Foods is now considered the second largest second fastest growing inner city business in the country.

How did they scale up from a graduate school idea to an organization generating over $18 million in revenue?

Revolution Foods joined the ICA Portfolio in 2005 with six employees operating out of a 1,000 square foot facility. Through the guidance of several ICA Advisors, Richmond and Tobey gained access to capital that helped scale their product and service offerings, plus the financial management assistance to ensure the best use of that capital.

Along the way, Richmond and Tobey developed a proficiency in managing complex operations, building public/private partnerships, and attracting the right people to get things done.

From their humble beginnings, they’ve grown to headquarter their operations in a 17,500 square foot facility in Oakland, CA, create 770+ good local jobs and serve over 40 million healthy meals to date since their engagement with ICA.

ICA’s Dedication To Creating 25,000 Jobs & Scaling Women-Owned Businesses

Inner City Advisors (ICA) is a local non-profit with a nationally recognized business-accelerating model that provides entrepreneurship education, management consulting, quality advice, and investment capital to socially responsible entrepreneurs. With more than a decade of experience, ICA has created thousands of good jobs by helping to scale local startups such as Revolution Foods, Blue Bottle Coffee, Back to the Roots, 479 Popcorn, Prather Ranch Meat Co., and Premier Organics, among other socially responsible entrepreneurs.

60% of the businesses they serve are owned by people of color and 73% are owned by women. And while there are many successful programs that help people become entrepreneurs, the challenge is to achieve greater scale — helping existing small businesses grow so that they can generate more jobs for the people who need them most.

All entrepreneurs, regardless of their socioeconomic background, gender or ethnicity, deserve the high-quality services and resource-rich networks necessary to bring their innovations to scale.

Going “All Out 2012”

In the effort to help more organizations achieve this growth, ICA is hosting “All Out 2012”, a mini make-a-thon to problem-solve how we can help more locally owned businesses scale up to create 25,000 good jobs. Taking place on November 8, 2012 at 6pm at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco, the event will convene 1000 of the Bay Area’s brightest entrepreneurial, philanthropic, and community-driven minds to solve the challenges that help Bay Area small businesses scale up.

Networking will merge with problem-solving to inspire big thinking, cross-sector collaboration and deliver results – not rhetoric – for entrepreneurs. All of this will take place in a vibrant, intergenerational and celebratory atmosphere with delicious food and beverages from the region’s finest artisans. Join us!

How to Get a Free Ticket?

Tweet: “Hey @ICAdvisors I can’t wait to go #AllOut2012 with you! http://tinyurl.com/ICAwomen2”

The first 10 people to tweet to @ICAdvisors will receive a special code for a free general admission ticket. This will be a great opportunity to join a powerful network of passionate experts who are committed to accelerating the growth of local women-owned small businesses.

About “All Out 2012”

ALL OUT 2012 is presented by Inner City Advisors (ICA), a nationally recognized nonprofit leading the charge to create good jobs for inner city residents by selecting, managing, and investing in the right high-impact Bay Area entrepreneurs. All proceeds from the ICA’s All Out 2012 go to further ICA’s Mission. Together, we can continue to grow this investment and scale our impact of creating and retaining good jobs for all Bay Area inner city residents.

Women 2.0 readers: How have you accelerated the growth of your women-led business? Let us know in the comments!

About the guest blogger: Abby Bobé is a dual MBA and Computer Science candidate at Mills College. She is passionate about technology, everything marketing and economic development. As the current Marketing Lead for BlackGirlsCODE, she is using her passion in business to increase social impact and empower young girls of color to be the future tech leaders and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Follow her on Twitter at @AbbyBobe.

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