OTEF

Entrepreneurship skills are not, as Silicon Valley would have you believe, always glamorous. In fact they are almost the opposite. They are survival skills. And they are becoming more necessary every year as we face a future in which many jobs from radiologist and dermatologist to truck driver and accountant may vanish because of automation or artificial intelligence or both.

That’s why we at OTEF remain deeply committed to providing entrepreneurship training to our community. This year, we served one young man, a divorced father of two, who is in the middle of a plumbing apprenticeship program. His wages are not enough to provide for himself and his share of the children’s expenses. We helped him establish a “side hustle” of buying and trading or bartering merchandise on sites like Facebook Marketplace and Offer Up to give him the extra cash he needs.

In another case, we helped SySTEM Schools survive the transition from a founder-led institution to a professional Head of School. We had had a relationship with the founder, providing her with community resources, marketing help, and leadership training. A change in her family situation forced her to leave her “baby” the school to be closer to ailing parents, and we helped her identify and train a successor. We also helped her enlarge the board for the new Head of School, which will bring the school new resources.

Academically, SySTEM Schools hopes to provide  STEM middle school education to inner city youth, mostly minorities. Realistically,  the school provides remediation, family services, free breakfast and lunch in addition, which was a major challenge for the founder and will continue to be for her successor.

We have  also completed the second year of our very successful Women Entrepreneur’s Happy Hour, a monthly get together for female founders to help them get the resources they need to succeed. We have about 40 participants at each happy hour, and an active Facebook group with almost 500 members.

Our third program, the Phoenix Entrepreneurship Roundtable, met for 18 months before a lack of participation forced us to  stop meeting. Lunch is no longer a time when people can leave their jobs (if they have them).

This has been our best year so far in terms of the number of entrepreneurs reached and helped. A huge vote of thanks to Phillip Blackerby and our donors who make this possible.

This summer, we once again partnered with the West Mesa Community Development Corporation to help low income people in downtown Mesa put themselves in business. As usual, we had wonderful cooperation from the participants, who ranged in interests from neighborhood advocacy to online marketing to wildlife management.

The work of OTEF is almost entirely funded by the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conferences.

The keynote speaker this year is Robert Scoble of Rackspace, renowned tech evangelist, blogger, and champion of entrepreneurs. He will be joined at the conference by Bill Reichert, Managing Partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Local entrepreneurial heavyweights Matthew Pittinsky, CEO of Parchment, Jeff Pruitt (Tallwave), Mark Rukavina (iMemories), Alex Brigham (Corpedia), Clate Mask (Infusionsoft), Jan Ziff (Heckerty), Bart Steiner (Bulbstorm) and many others will also share insights.

And we will bring you the latest updates on Crowdfunding!

The conferences always sell out,  so sign up early and save your spot.

What are we doing? This year, OTEF has begin a series of new initiatives to help disadvantaged entrepreneurs. We worked with the Halle Foundation to help a domestic violence victim ramp up her business.

We are working with a new not-for-profit that teaches art to the autistic, and we are still doing individual counseling and mentoring for disadvantaged would-be entrepreneurs through Gangplank.