Entrepreneur Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange, and Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator, discuss the evolving entrepreneurial community in the Charlotte Region. Both share their challenges to get capital investments and opportunities with corporations. Wiggan and Delany explain what they believe is needed in the Region to help the ecosystem grow in an equitable way. Plus, hear what programs are helping entrepreneurs at various levels.
Entrepreneur Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange, and Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator, discuss the evolving entrepreneurial community in the Charlotte Region. Both share their challenges to get capital investments and opportunities with corporations. Wiggan and Delany explain what they believe is needed in the Region to help the ecosystem grow in an equitable way. Plus, hear what programs are helping entrepreneurs at various levels.
CLT Alliance 0:00
Welcome to CLT Alliance Talks, a podcast on business topics, information and tools focused on building an economy for all in the Charlotte Region.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 0:12
Good day everybody. I'm pleased to be here with our special guests Desmond Wiggan, founder and CEO of BatteryXchange, and Brian Delaney, Chairman of EO Accelerator. BatteryXchange is a clean tech IoT company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose mission is to increase connectivity between people, businesses and community. Desmond has been a trailblazer as a minority in the product and IOT space and has been highlighted in the Charlotte Business Journal as a minority tech leader here in Charlotte. Brian Delaney, Chairman of EO Accelerator and co-founder of Skookum, who we know and love. They've been a great success story here in Charlotte, but the EO Accelerator program supports efforts of early stage entrepreneurs, helping their businesses grow faster by providing forums, education and experience. Gentlemen, welcome to CLT Talks today.
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 1:10
Thanks for having us, Frank.
Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange 1:12
Yeah, pleasure to be here.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 1:13
Excellent. Brian, give us an overview on what's going on over there at EO Accelerator.
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 1:19
Sure, our accelerator program is set up as a nonprofit program to help small businesses scale. So we take in companies that do over $250,000 revenue, and help them scale that passed the 1 million revenue mark. And all of our coaches in the program are entrepreneurs that have scaled their businesses past 5 million or more, just giving back their time, and helping other entrepreneurs scale their own businesses. We've found it to be a lonely existence as an entrepreneur. So when we can come together as a community and learn from each other, it becomes beneficial both ways for everyone involved.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 1:57
Excellent. Thank you for that. That's been give us an overview of a BatteryXchance please.
Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange 2:02
Yeah, certainly. So we've pretty much built an on-demand rental platform, similar to how you can rent a scooter or a bike throughout the city of Charlotte. But we do that for portable batteries. So we have kiosks machines that we place that you know, small businesses such as you know, bars and restaurants, and then also as large as stadiums, arenas and universities. And you know, everyday people are able to now automate charging for their mobile devices, and then also charge it on the go, picking it up from one of our locations and dropping it off to another. And then we utilize the data and insights from that user to help businesses and third party advertisers pretty much create better in-person experiences in those physical spaces. So that's currently what we're building at BatteryXchange.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 2:51
Sounds like an exciting venture you have going on over there, Desmond. Desmond, as an entrepreneur building a company here in Charlotte, what's been your experience in the Charlotte ecosystem, and how was your international experience shaped the possibilities here?
Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange 3:05
I feel like my experience has been, you know, really, really good. But I always give context to, you know, how I was able to, you know, build relationships and scale our company, you know, fairly quickly over the last, you know, one and a half, two years. A lot of that had to do with me having such a strong, you know, foundational support within my family, where I came back post MBA studies internationally in China, and was able to just, you know, really focus on building my company. You know, a lot of times I know that that's not the average experience or opportunity that an entrepreneur has to do, you know, they're still many times doing their nine to five, and, you know, not ready to fully just kind of leave that organization and just focus on the company that they're building. But I did have that flexibility. And so for me, I was able to spend a lot of time networking and pitching, you know, various events like pitch breakfast, various Charlotte events. And so, that allowed me to grow pretty robust network and be present in the ecosystem. And I've been able to leverage that in order to further it, whether it be the narrative of my company, and when, you know, partnership opportunities came about and then also investment opportunities. Another thing that I feel like, within my experience is just being able to step in rooms that may, quote unquote, sometimes be stuffy spaces, and, you know, still build relationships through that. And I feel like you know, one of the things that I always try to do is if that individual in that space or environment meets another individual that is coming from where I'm coming from early stage entrepreneur or minority entrepreneur, they have a lasting impression from my experience so that they no longer have to have these preconceived opinions. And so I always try to be intentional in that as I've, you know, matriculated throughout Charlotte and been able to leverage, you know, the relationships to get investment opportunities and things within that. But I think one of the things that I learned on an international level, especially spending a lot of time in Shanghai, which is like top four ecosystems within the startup space. With them being even big, high level financial district, it wasn't all FinTech related. You know, they had so many intentional programs, and resources available for all industries, all startups, all smaller companies. And I believe what this presented is opportunities for large corporations to be able to work with them. It's kind of like you start in your backyard, and you have a really good opportunity to get some really good revenue, and then you you're able to leave here and scale. And I feel like that's one thing that I saw happen in so many different industries within Shanghai, and I wish we had that here in Charlotte as well.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 5:42
Absolutely. You know, your international experience is very unique as an entrepreneur. And I've heard you refer to it before as 'lifting as I climb.' So it's really helpful to hear your perspective on helping other entrepreneurs who are up and coming. And, you know, saying that, Brian, I know, you've been a great resource to entrepreneurs here in the Charlotte Region. Can you tell me what Charlotte can do to help grow and strengthen that community in particular, in an equitable way?
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 6:10
I think that the entrepreneurial community in Charlotte has come a long way since the time I started my company back in 2005. You know, some of the things I think I've seen that I think are really helpful is just the increase of the programs and the support by the cities and other corporate partners. You know, you're seeing an influx of new talent that comes to Charlotte, which, you know, I think, they're coming here anyway because Charlotte is a great city, but it feeds into the Charlotte entrepreneurial ecosystem. Because of those things, I think we've seen some great successes here. We've seen unicorns like Red Ventures and Avid they just rang the bell this month. So that creates significant exits and wealth and opportunity for those entrepreneurs to then become investors that pay it forward in the form of capital. But you know, when you talk about building it forward and making it equitable, while we have done some good things, such as grant programs, things of that nature, I think we really have to think about how do we educate entrepreneurs. How do they learn to take an idea and generate revenue from that? And once they generate revenue, how do they build a team? And once they're the person that is in the business working in it, how do they rise above and work on it to so they can scale and continue to create more opportunities for themselves in their companies? I think another thing we have to do, that we talked about a lot in Charlotte is lack of access to capital. I think that narrative is changing, but one of the things that would be really powerful for us if we found a seamless connection between the entrepreneurial community and the corporate community, so that they become regular buyers of our small businesses. I've said it a lot, but revenue is the cheapest form of capital. So if we can facilitate a way to create that direct pipeline between our small business suppliers to the larger corporations, I think that becomes a more equitable opportunity for everyone involved.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 8:07
Thank you for that. Desmond, reflecting on what Brian has just mentioned, in particular, surrounding revenue challenges, what has been your experience in raising capital here?
Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange 8:18
In my experience, it's been really, really hard. I think it's always hard to raise capital. But I think locally, it's not only just us, I mean, I have found our friends that are fighting the same fight and it's just not no real dollars. You think about the coming from angel investment to like, you know, quote, unquote, VC and angel funds and stuff. And a lot of times what we see is the expectations of you know, quote, unquote, angel funds or early stage investors locally, are you go to another market, and that's like Series A, which is like a later stage investment versus, you know, really taking a risk on the entrepreneur or just seeing a viable business model and just, you know, wanting to help them get to product market fit. And I feel like a lot of it is not as intentional as it could be because I feel like we have some really unique startups. And, you know, I feel like we're building a really unique business, but it's it's difficult. And you know, sometimes if you don't fit that narrative of FinTech, because we're a financial, you know, area, you sometimes get thrown by the wayside. And unfortunately, a lot of companies now have to resort to other ecosystems, you know, in Texas, or New York or Chicago or, you know, West Coast in order to get that capital instead of just being able to get that at home.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 9:33
Thank you for that perspective. I really, really appreciate it. Brian, in reflecting on some of the challenges that Desmond just mentioned, was it the same for you early in your entrepreneurial career?
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 9:44
Yes, it was. Different from Desmond's story, we bootstrapped. So we didn't raise capital, but where we ran into challenges was really about establishing a name for ourselves and building credibility, I guess, here locally which was incredibly challenging and frustrating if I'm, if I'm being honest. The company we built, Skookum, it was positioned as a digital innovation, digital transformation consultancy. So we would go into large companies and help them build and imagine how to create new digital products in spaces that were wide open. You know, we started in 2005, we exited in 2019. So as you can imagine, there was a lot of opportunity around that. We could not get business opportunities here in Charlotte. So we had to knock on the doors out west and, and we landed some big names, and some of the most innovative companies in the world became our clients. And it was only at that point that we landed those clients that were able to come back and use those in our portfolio for some of the local corporations to give us opportunity. And the more you talk to the entrepreneurial community in Charlotte, the more you realize that we weren't the outlier. That is a very common story that is told across the board in Charlotte's entrepreneurial community. There's a lot of people motivated to change that now, and we're seeing some movement in the right direction. But we still have a long way to go.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 11:09
Thank you for that insight. Here at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance as a part of our foundation, we have Scale Up CLT. It is an initiative, EO is a partner, the city of Charlotte is a partner. Do you see this program and other programs like this one, helping the entrepreneurial community?
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 11:28
Absolutely. The types of programs that are going on today, I think are unique in the timeframe I've experienced as an entrepreneur. So you have the Scale Up CLT partnership, which, as you mentioned, were part of. You have Amp Up Charlotte that's run by the city of Charlotte. You have Next CLT. You have Aspire Capital. These are programs that are built to teach entrepreneurs how to run a business, how to get off the ground. There's a very common joke among entrepreneurs that starting a business like flying a plane, you're basically jump off a cliff, you learn how to build a plane on the way down and you hope you don't crash. Well, now that you have these programs in place from the city, now entrepreneurs in the city have somewhere to turn to for those resources. While we do have great corporate community in town, I think sometimes it's more beneficial to learn from entrepreneurs who have risked it all, you know, wondered how they were going to make a salary payment in a couple months or, you know, take a second mortgage down, so they could buy a building for that expansion they're looking at. I think you really need to be able to bounce those experiences off of people who have been there and done that. And now we're starting to see that ecosystem develop in Charlotte. And I think that will continue to help move our entrepreneurial community for.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 12:45
I appreciate that, thank you. Desmond, you have a very experienced guy here with Brian Delaney, who has been leading the charge for entrepreneurs here in Charlotte for a while. What value is this guy to you and other entrepreneurs?
Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange 12:57
Oh, man, he is, you know, I'm blessed to just have him in my network. To be honest, I think one of the struggles of entrepreneurs, you know, building a company now is just like, we don't know what we don't know, you know. And so being surrounded like people like Brian allows, I know, for me on a personal level allows me to ask questions that I haven't even thought about yet. So those type of exposures, you know, you don't take them for granted. And that's what separates my company from scaling and being able to answer questions and anticipating, you know, different things as I build this company versus like another entrepreneur. And I feel like we need more Brians that are success stories, but you also hear about the struggles that he went through. So I feel like there does need to be this strong push towards intentionality around people that have made it successfully like Brian, and some of the entrepreneurs and companies that are the next up, because if not, we're gonna make the same mistakes that quote unquote, Brian could have made instead of just having a few conversations. And so just kind of streamlining into some of the things where Brian talked about some of these programs, really, we do have some pretty solid programs, like the ones that are mentioned, but there also are others that I don't feel like give the best mentoring are the best resources like outside of, you know, the ones that you know, kind of Brian mentioned, and then there's no connectivity within the ecosystem, like for like programs need to understand where they lay, you know, are you early stage entrepreneur, you know, Brian talks about getting entrepreneurs to, you know, $1 million and just really understanding that so that entrepreneurs know where to put their energy in. But just to kind of reiterate, I think, Brian is a gift to Charlotte, and I found a lot of value from our interactions and conversations and I wish all of my founder friends had a Brian in their circle to be able to just really ask these difficult questions and try to figure it out.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 14:49
That's a great endorsement, each one teach one as it is.
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 14:53
Appreciate those kind words, Desmond. I think I will speak on behalf of the entrepreneurs I know. I don't know I have real passion to help accelerate the learning curve for other entrepreneurs. I often joke that we spent five years paying a hefty idiot tax on how to run a business. And so if I can shorten that for other people I want to but you know, a part of the program we've created is attracting those entrepreneurs you mentioned that have scaled, because we have these battle wounds and these scars, and quite frankly, I think our spouses are tired of hearing us tell these stories. So we would love to be able to pass them on to someone that can actually benefit from them. I'm happy to be involved in this city, and hopefully making the entrepreneurial scene more accessible and achievable for the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 15:39
Absolutely. And here at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, we hear entrepreneurs and one of our commitments, well a couple of our commitments, is to be more intentional in connecting entrepreneurs with major employers, in addition to creating online resources to help small businesses. So we hear you and we're working hard over here. We're all on the same team. We're gonna close this out, I just have one question for both of you guys to answer. In looking forward, what are the opportunities specifically for Charlotte? And some of the challenges you both mentioned, what are some of the remedies that come to mind?
Desmond Wiggan Jr., CEO and Co-founder at BatteryXchange 16:13
I mean, this is something that I think about heavily, to be honest. The first thing is that that connectivity within the ecosystem, the right programming, and the right synergy within those programs. So you know, quote, unquote, programs aren't stepping on each other's feet. So building out that that true ecosystem, I think, you know, as we see, quote, unquote, like an acquisition of like, a packer place that was a staple in the entrepreneurial community, like, where's the next space? You know, what are we doing to kind of build that out? So that's something that is interesting to me to see how things kind of manifests over the next few years. I think about, you know, real partnerships, as Brian alluded to, whether it's contracts and resources within that, or, you know, I'd like to see a table or a space where corporations can sit down and listen to these entrepreneurs and see where the synergy aligns. Because I think that there's a lot of opportunity to open up doors for people to come here and say, 'Hey, I was able to work with this big time corporation.' And that's a narrative that attract so many different people as they're looking at building companies in Charlotte, or just coming to Charlotte period, or people that already here that are looking at, you know, hey, there's a way this is a, there's a light at the end of the tunnel because of opportunities like that. And then the last thing is, I always go to just like real capital investments. So whether that's the corporations or communities, or funds, or whatever it is just investing locally. I feel like that is not enough that that's not a narrative that, you know, we see, or we hear enough of. Everybody is going outside of this state or outside of this city to get these investments. But there's a lot of resources here. So how can we kind of connect those two worlds?
Bryan Delaney, Chairman at EO Accelerator 17:54
I would just echo a lot of what Desmond said. You know, Charlotte is a great city. More and more talented people keep flocking here. So that's going to be great for the entrepreneurial scene. We really need to flesh out and define what an ecosystem looks like for entrepreneurs here. Desmond alluded to this earlier. But you know, if you just have an idea and a concept, you know, go talk to these people. But you know, if you're out of the gate, generate some revenue, you should talk to these people. If you're looking to scale to a million, come talk to the EO accelerator. If your 5 million plus, where do you plug in? You know, there's this whole continuum, and where are Charlotte's resources? And how do people plug in? I don't think there's a clear footprint and map for that yet. I think when we think of B2B startups and small businesses, really kind of facilitating that relationship between the corporate and entrepreneurial communities. In my opinion, these two groups are largely separated in Charlotte, but but even going so far as to say, well, you know, somebody spun out of Duke or Bank of America or Lowe's. Well, how could these corporations be their first client or, or help them get started? I think that would be a nice transition forward to where we want to see the community. I would say, let's give entrepreneurs a platform, listen to them. You know, a lot of the programs I've seen her around town are well meaning with the ran by people who've never started a business. The mental, emotional, financial, and even physical toll on entrepreneurship takes on a person is significant. And it's hard to relate to that if you haven't experienced it. And so then a final point I would make to other entrepreneurs here in town who have exited and we're successful, get involved. This city needs entrepreneurs sitting at civic and nonprofit board tables. Entrepreneurs provide a different perspective and energy. So if we really want to see the culture of the city change, I think we all have to raise our hands and choose to be active as change agents.
Frank Nelson, Director, Investor Relations, CLT Alliance 19:48
Brian, Desmond, Thank you. Your insight has been invaluable and we really appreciate you taking the time on CLT Talks. I invite both of you to continue to engage with us at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance and with that we will sign off. Thank you again
CLT Alliance 20:06
Learn more about the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance at Charlotteregion.com