Shownotes
In this episode of How to Scale a Business, Barbara Jones Brown provides valuable insights on raising funds for your business. She highlights the significance of curating a funding list that aligns with your demographic and social impact goals. Brown advises entrepreneurs to prepare their business thoroughly before pitching to investors and encourages them to explore alternative avenues to maximize equity. She offers practical advice for underrepresented founders, such as building a strong following prior to seeking funding and exploring grants and loans specifically available to women and underrepresented groups.
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 Finding Funding: Grants And Loans For Underrepresented Founders And Women
- 00:02:59 Starting a Business with No Financial Support: The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done
- 00:07:47 Breaking the Mold: How One Entrepreneur Overcame Bias and Raised Millions Despite Initial Rejection
- 00:10:38 Targeted Funding: How Barbra Jones Raised Millions by Focusing on the Right Investors
- 00:13:14 Empowering Underrepresented Founders: Expert Advice from Barbara Jones Brown
- 00:15:13 Curate Your Funding List: How to Find Investors Who Support Your Demographic and Social Impact Goals
- 00:16:58 Three Pieces Of Advice For Getting Funding For Your Business
Links And Resources:
About Barbara:
Barbara Jones is the founder/CEO of Lillii RNB Inc which is doing business as Freeing Returns. Barbara has been in the Retail Technology sector for over 20 years and have been on the founding teams of 2 Retail Technology startups that both exited for close to $100M.
Barbara has created Retail Tech Software that is running in over 4000 stores throughout the US, Canada and Japan. She has been in the roles of POS Architect and Solutions Architect for The Home Depot, LL Bean and Pep Boys and many more solving multi-million dollar issues for them.
Her newest venture has been to transition Lillii RNB Inc from a System Integration consulting company to an Enterprise Solutions company with their Returns Management and Profit Optimization platform, Freeing Returns™ - that helps retailers find the Fraud and Shrink that's HIDING in their Data. We have successfully closed our Seed round, led by Serena Williams' venture fund and Aperture Venture Capital - bringing our total investments to over $4M.
Barbara lives in Lithonia, GA with her husband of 2 years, but is from Austin, TX. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. She is a Gulf War Veteran, an Avid supporter of Women in STEM and hires and trains minorities in the space of Retail Technology.
