by Natasha K. Hale, Manager, Native American Business Incubator Network
There’s no word in our language for "entrepreneur." In fact, the Economist has dubbed the Navajo Nation the last frontier for entrepreneurship. Basic start-up necessities like small business loans, office space, and high-speed internet connections are hard to come by and sometimes it feels like you need an MBA just to navigate the bureaucratic red tape.
But smart, creative people with ideas for new ventures, from Navajo language apps to film production companies? The Navajo Nation has those in droves.
Whether it’s launching an app or setting up a mutton stand, following your passion and starting a business can feel pretty lonely at the beginning, especially in a place as vast and remote as the Navajo reservation, where transportation and communication are challenging: only 18 percent of roads are paved and cell service is spotty or nonexistent. Fewer than 10 percent of homes on tribal lands have an internet connection.
Change Labs, the brainchild of born and raised Navajo tribal member Heather Fleming of Catapult Labs, brings together movers and shakers in the tech industry, from Silicon Valley to MIT, to network, brainstorm, share ideas, and help Native entrepreneurs acquire the tools they need to make their businesses take off.
Last year, the Native American Business Incubator Network partnered with Catapult Labs to drive the first Change Labs on the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, NM. It was a huge success and brought together a whole host of people.
“We want to get Native entrepreneurs in front of mentors, doers, in front of makers and role-models,” Fleming says.
Our partnership with Catapult Labs has been a perfect fit. The Native American Business Incubator Network team strongly believes in the power of connections. We have been focused on providing intense incubation to select business owners, driving new conversations and strategies around entrepreneurship, and mobilizing entrepreneurs and connecting them with professionals who can help them succeed.
Our team believes in the power of making connections that can drive social change in our tribal communities. We believe we can create robust and thriving economies that parallel the values of our communities by creating a network that supports creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
Register for Change Labs 2.0
Now Change Labs 2.0 is coming to Gallup, New Mexico on October 2, 2015. Native American students, local business owners and social entrepreneurs will convene for a packed day of workshops led by successful Native business owners and top Silicon Valley start-up talents with practical, hands-on activities to help build and sustain businesses on the reservation.
And you bet that we’ll have Native entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs there. It will be an amazing day of conversations that will spark new ideas of how we can begin creating the kind of communities we want on tribal lands.
Don’t miss your chance to network with representatives from Etsy, MIT Media Lab, Samsung, and others, and meet leaders in the finance, web development, interface design, and mobile industries.
A glimpse of last year’s event:
Held all over the developing world, from India to Rwanda, Change Labs made its Navajo Nation debut in Shiprock, New Mexico in 2014. Change Labs 2.0 builds on the momentum of that event—which brought Native entrepreneurs face-to-face with Google and Facebook.
The Navajo reservation, slightly larger than West Virginia, is home to only 400 businesses, but we know that’s not the whole story.
“Mostly what entrepreneurs need are people to cheer them on,” Fleming says. “They need to persevere through the bureaucratic nonsense.”
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"Don’t miss your chance to network with representatives from Etsy, MIT Media Lab, Samsung, and others, and meet leaders in the finance, web development, interface design, and mobile industries."