The Change Makers

Making Their Mark

Arizona native Bianca Buliga deeply appreciates the diversity of the Phoenix community. A first-generation American, though Bianca’s family hails from Romania, she can wholeheartedly confirm — Arizona is home.

The entrepreneur community in Phoenix is flourishing, and with more young adults wanting to get their ideas heard and seen, SEED SPOT is stepping up to help. As an early-stage impact incubator, SEED SPOT invests in entrepreneurs to provide initial support, guidance, community connections, and capital resources. Founder and CEO Courtney Klein originally started an endeavor in college called New Global Citizens, with the same goal to embed a global perspective and awareness in middle and high schools. After college, Courtney continued to grow New Global Citizens for several years before founding SEED SPOT to create more opportunity for entrepreneurs outside of the university setting.

With SEED SPOT, Courtney and her team’s dedication empowers people who have a dream and helps them achieve their goals.

A Greater Social Impact

With over 421 entrepreneurs supported and more than 1,050 jobs created, they are making waves in the community. In six short years, SEED SPOT Ventures have collectively raised over $10 million in capital. SEED SPOT empowers diverse impact-driven entrepreneurs of all backgrounds that are creating market-based solutions to social problems. To date, 49% of SEED SPOT ventures are female-founded and 45% are minority-founded. They strive to educate communities and schools, providing seminars and courses to help those new to business start on the right path. SEED SPOT offers two-day launch camps, essentially a crash course in how to start a business. This action-packed program equips early-stage entrepreneurs with the resources needed to grow their ideas for change.

It also offers a more intensive 8-week impact accelerator program. This rigorous course covers in detail what you need to know about starting a business, provides training materials, and hosts experts from different industries. SEED SPOT provides leadership training to community members, access to mentoring networks, connections to content experts, extensive local resources, and business events to facilitate professional relationships.

All Dreamers Welcome

With all of SEED SPOT’s success, we asked Bianca what challenges they face as they continue to grow. “It’s important we stay true to ethics and our core values,” she says. “We’re welcoming all dreamers. Empowering them to be change makers is number one to us.”

Ensuring their product is high quality is a concern for any business owner, but essential to SEED SPOT. The educational material and resources they provide to their entrepreneurs’ help make dreams a reality, so making sure they are helping to produce change is crucial.

Arizona is rich with dreamers and creators, and it’s one of Bianca’s favorite things about living here. With so much diversity, both ecologically and demographically, it’s easy to be taken in by all Arizona has to offer. Bianca also speaks warmly of the community, immediately resonating with one of our five Cs. SEED SPOT has been overwhelmed with support from their community. From the start, donors, mentors, and investors have stepped up to help where they could. In the first year, SEED SPOT had their first demo to showcase new entrepreneurs. The team was overwhelmed when over 600 people from the community came to show their support. It’s this kind of incredible social engagement that has help shape SEED SPOT.

SEED SPOT’s willingness to step out and knock on doors to find partners and ventures and investments has played an enormous part in their incredible success. They are investing time and energy into creating and fostering connections, educating individuals, and giving meaning to ideas big and small. Bianca added compassion to our list of five Cs, believing that our community is one built on love, acceptance, and a willingness to support and encourage one another. SEED SPOT will continue to foster promising entrepreneurs, believing in the small ideas, big ideas, and everything in between.