Last Wednesday at the Yard in Herald Square, an intimate group of founders and ecosystem builders gathered for an Ugly Talk: Building a Team that Scales Beyond $500k. The event was more than a panel discussion, but a great example of what’s possible when pieces of an entrepreneurial ecosystem come together with intention.
At Founder Forward, we believe that thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems aren’t built in silos, but through partnership. The Ugly Talk event brought together four distinct ecosystem players:
- Founder Forward. We served as the entrepreneurial support organization and our mission is to provide funding and investment readiness programming to help diverse founders scale.
- Founder Network. We had founders from our network, Tinia Pina and Jie Feng, who are industry leaders, share their journeys. Their willingness to share their mistakes, pivots, and best practices, exemplifies what we mean by founder-first ecosystem building.
- Ugly Talk. Our co-host served as the convener, by providing space for founders to share knowledge. Their support with marketing and community activation helped us reach founders who needed to hear these stories.
- The Yard. Served as our physical space. Their partnership gave us a home for this conversation. Given the topic, being in a co-working space was a reminder of the importance of physical spaces to serve entrepreneurs who don’t yet have the funds or team size for brick-and-mortar offices.
When pieces of entrepreneurial ecosystems come together, we create something more powerful than any single organization could achieve alone. We amplify each other’s messages, we facilitate knowledge transfer, and we build networks.
This is a reciprocal relationship that transforms a network from transactional to transformational and can withstand external disruptions.
What We Learned: The Reality of Building Teams That Scale
The evening began with networking, then we dove into the heart of the matter: the hiring decisions that determine whether a business stays stuck or scales beyond $500K.
The conversation was honest and the panelists shared that in the early days, sometimes it really is the founder who needs to be making the sales calls, ensuring product delivery, or personally handling customer service. There’s no shortcut during the early stages of building a startup.
But building a team that scales means knowing when to transition from operator to strategic leader. It means searching for talent that isn’t just skilled, but motivated enough to push through the startup phase.
Tinia and Jie both emphasized that it often takes building one or two companies or products before getting the formula right. Scaling past $500K isn’t just about having the right business model, it’s also about having the right people, the right systems, and the right mindset.
Perhaps most importantly, they reminded the room that profitability cannot come at the expense of team and founder mental health. Taking care of yourself isn’t optional, it’s essential to building something sustainable.
Building the Future Together
Since 2016, Founder Forward has provided pro bono advisory support and networking opportunities to over 500 founders. We’ve awarded more than $860K in unrestricted funding to 125 founders. And our founder network maintains an 85% survival rate, which far exceeds the national average.
But our work is far from finished. Our mission is to transform the entrepreneurial ecosystem one partnership at a time.
As we approach the end of the year, we’re reflecting on what’s possible when ecosystems work together. Events like Ugly Talk: Building a Team that Scales Beyond $500k don’t happen without the collective commitment of organizations, founders, and individuals who believe that diverse founders deserve access to the resources, networks, and capital they need to thrive.
Your support makes this work possible. Whether it’s $25 or $2,500, every contribution helps us continue building the partnerships, programs, and platforms that support founders in emerging U.S. markets.
Give today and help us keep moving forward in building stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Because when we invest in founders, we’re not just investing in individual businesses, we are investing in the possibilities of a community-centered future.
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