Recently, NEXT Greenville faced a conundrum.
For years, the Greenville-based entrepreneur-support organization had been connecting small-business owners with the resources, mentorship and investors to help bring the seedlings of great ideas to full growth.
But when the organization launched its accelerator program earlier this year — essentially a crash course in how to start a successful tech company — it faced the same challenge as its small-business mentees: how to get started?
“We created this system and put everything together and at a certain point we realized that we just had to run water through the pipes to see how it worked,” said Eric Weissmann, executive director of NEXT.
The result?
“The established curriculum went very well, after all,” Weissmann said.
Now NEXT is gearing up for its second cohort of companies, which will launch later this summer.
For now, here’s a look at the inaugural class
NEXT’s first-ever accelerator program, which launched March 6, recently graduated its first class of 11 companies from its new 10-week curriculum.
The program drew upon NEXT’s reservoir of entrepreneurial talent, utilizing the skills, expertise and practical lessons of small-business founders who have passed through NEXT’s orbit over the last two decades.
The program serves to condense every lesson NEXT has learned in its history.
“We saw a gap in the ecosystem and decided to develop this program to coach and lead in the specific areas where we know founders need the most help,” said Scott Millwood, cofounder of an early-stage seed fund in Greenville and a two-time startup founder himself.
The 11 companies that took part in NEXT’s first cohort are:
- Bottle Titan
- Custom Donations
- Mapsheet
- North 7th
- RAAMP
- Ruffian Software
- Safe Helipad
- Skillsgapp
- TestedHQ
- Vicinity Capital
- WAVS Custom
The program was focused on leadership development, team building, business planning and funding — the last one in particular being especially pertinent for companies looking to grow.
Molly Inclán, NEXT program manager, said the goal of the program and future rounds is to bridge a gap between founders and investors.
“We can’t wait to see where these companies end up in a few years,” Inclán said. “We’re going to look back at this and know it was the beginning of something huge.”
