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April 5, 2010 LOCAL INSIGHT

HYPE Group Offers Aid To Area's Entrepreneurs

Over 2,200 young professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs in the Greater Hartford area have found a lifeline in the four-year-old business networking organization, HYPE.

And the group, a project of the MetroHartford Alliance, is working on making its program even stronger as it moves into Year 5.

Last Thursday, HYPE hosted the second of its entrepreneurial focus groups aimed at finding out what young business owners have liked, and disliked, about its efforts thus far. Attendees ranged from an entrepreneur who recently started a theater nonprofit to an engineer trying to grow a real estate business with his brother.

One of the things they all agreed on was the need for a stronger, more easily accessible support network that allows them to find other entrepreneurs facing similar issues, such as how to get around state red tape or where to turn after the first year when initial business excitement sometimes fades. Since many entrepreneurs are small fish, they say they don’t have the resources available to them that larger corporations do. That’s why a group like HYPE is important. Attendees stressed the need for events that go beyond happy hours.

Ed Sawyer, 33, has been on the HYPE Entrepreneur Committee for two years. He used HYPE as a resource to launch his mobile executive search firm business — Sawyer & Associates, LLC — last August. HYPE is one of several networking groups he belongs to that have helped him to get his business off the ground and land leads. He also recommends taking full advantage of free social media networking sites such as Linked-In.

HYPE program manager Julie Daly says she will be launching a “HYPE version of Facebook” over the next month that she hopes will better connect HYPE members. HYPE already offers members a free entrepreneur’s database that is searchable by company name and industry, but Daly says it’s not as expansive a resource as it could be.

According to Daly, HYPE members include a mix of corporate professionals and individuals who join on their own. She says “it’s impossible” to track how many of its members are entrepreneurs, especially since so many corporate employees start businesses on the side. She also notes because HYPE is compromised of so many members and functions solely as a networking resource, it is not responsible for doing background checks into any one person or his or her business. Any entrepreneur who is willing to buy an individual, year-long membership for $100 can join HYPE.

HYPE offers business mentoring and counseling services for its members free of charge. It works with SCORE and the Small Business Development Center to help members with licensing, regulations, financing and marketing, assistance with business plans, or even connecting members to a confidential advisor.

Recently, HYPE hosted a “Start-up 101 Series” of workshops aimed at working with aspiring business owners to evaluate if entrepreneurship is the right choice for them. The series emphasized the sacrifices, and rewards, of the path to business ownership.

Up to six times a year, the HYPE entrepreneur’s network also hosts a series of seminars free to members. According to the HYPE website, past speakers have included Kevin Bouley of NERAC; Eric Rosow, CEO of Premise Corp., and Jack Hughes, chairman of Top Coder.

Daley says these question-and-answer events are key because they allow successful entrepreneurs to come in and give an informal talk in a small venue, so participants are able to personally connect with them following the lecture. A recent HYPE talk featuring Our Piece of the Pie president and CEO Bob Rath proved beneficial for one nonprofit entrepreneur who was able to set up a meeting with Rath, she said.

 

 

Joanna Smiley, a Hartford area freelancer, writes the weekly Local Interest column for The Hartford Business Journal.

 

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