Moore Impact: The Darla Moore School of Business Podcast

The Founder Mentality in Caroline Crowder’s Start Up Experience

Episode Summary

In this episode, Caroline Crowder takes us through her journey from double Moore School alumna through non-profit Executive Director. She's building the Columbia, S.C. entrepreneurial ecosystem one program, one founder, one day at a time.

Episode Notes

The Founder Mentality in Caroline Crowder’s Start Up Experience

• Host
  • Kasie Whitener, Clinical Assistant Professor
• Guest
  • Caroline Crowder, Moore School alumna and Director of the Boyd Innovation Center powered by GrowCo

If you’re doing entrepreneurship in Columbia, you’re going to hear Caroline Crowder’s name. She’s been hanging around startups since undergrad and after achieving her graduate degree and gaining hands-on experience in Singapore, she was tapped to lead the Boyd Foundation’s investment in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Columbia.

Topics include:

• Undergrad at the Moore School, never intended to work with startups
• The Boyd Center doesn’t pick favorites, the incubator model isn’t what we’re doing at BIC
• Being mission driven as a non profit participant is amazing
• Masters in International business - how do we affect tech startups and scale them globally
• The BIC introduced its government and university agnostic model in Columbia
• Founder mentality for Caroline’s career path
• Third Thursday - blending the tech and arts community together for these collaborative events,our creative minds bring balance to the community
• Tulsa, OK - a comparable city to Columbia and while different, also quite similar in demographics and economic indicators; what was the recipe they used to produce a strong investment community
• Start up communities are complex ecosystems, new ideas and connections and insights are great but we can’t just replicate those things here
• We’ve tried a bunch of things that have failed and that’s okay
• The vision for Columbia: we support tech start ups with scalable growth potential
• What we’re really trying to do here is inspire new founders  we have a ramps and pathways to bring people into founderhood, make the possibility look realizable
• We support researchers, inventors, everybody who has a new idea has the opportunity to participate in our programming

To learn more about the “BIC” and its upcoming events, click here.

To learn more about Caroline Crowder, click here.

To learn more about the Moore School, click here.

This has been Moore Impact. When you learn more, you know more, and when you know more, you do more. Thanks for listening.