Day 6: Process, Process, Process

At 9am, we all knew this was going to be a long day. We already had a day’s worth of solid work behind us and felt confident we were moving towards consensus on the retail space allocation. When we met at 3pm, most of our questions from the previous night had been answered. We would never have all the information, but we were beginning to feel comfortable with each business. See photo for precise feeling rating :)

Jack at the whiteboard

Four number-crunching hours later, the vote was decidedly in favor of Phillina, the hair stylist. The group had arrived at its first decision of the night.

The funding decision remained and another round of deliberations ensued after a sumptuous Thai dinner that could not have come at a better time. The financing story had the twists and turns of a mild thriller but quickly turned into a lopsided $25,000 commitment to the hair salon when Tim threw out the possibility of financing the men’s formal wear business outside the N. Galvez. What was left were a bunch of contingency funds - $12,000 to Connie Jacobs of Unlimited Communications, conditional to her opening a store in the Upper 9th Ward & $35,000 to Rosalind Larkins of Next Level LLC provided that the grant would be matched by another philanthropic organization. We were now comfortably over our second major decision of the night.

The climax, though, had not yet played out. The uses for the remaining $28,000 were yet to be determined. Street lights, neighborhood beautification, bus stop benches were quickly shot down. IV was about Entrepreneurship. We decided not to stray from the cause.

Coincidentally, the hair salon team had determined that the cost of acquiring the parking lot adjacent to the building would be $28,000. Perhaps some saw that to be a sign. Others felt “parking” was not a cause they wanted to fund. Would the Stanford GSB students return claiming that they had funded a parking lot and one other business? IV was not prepared to fund the parking lot either. They had already injected $500,000 into the building and did not see fit to match Stanford’s bid to “buy” the parking lot. Miji and Darren assured us that they could work on several options including cobbling together a deal with Eldridge (possibly renting a few spots from him). Yet would this arrangement support the 8 hair stylists, their 8 customers, and technology center staff? Most doubted the sustainability of such measures but felt disinclined to commit a sum of money before all possibilities had been explored. $28,000 was eventually set aside as a contingency fund for parking and other entrepreneurial activities.

At 1am, we closed deliberations on our final decision. The final presentation team ploughed on, putting together a slide deck for the board advisory committee while the others put the finishing touches to the entrepreneur-facing deliverables. A tiring day in all, but one well spent.

- Anupama Sharma