During Global Entrepreneurship Week, the City is highlighting Monique Brown, Managing Director of Growth Factory, a Rocklin-based nonprofit startup accelerator that helps startups and small businesses within the Greater Sacramento region achieve financial success.

“We’re on a mission to build thriving companies here in the region that really supports entrepreneurship as an economic development strategy,” Monique explained. “This helps create a sustainable and thriving economy for the region alongside a culture of innovation.”

In just 16 months since its founding, Growth Factory has deployed 1.5 million dollars in capital across thirty companies in the Sacramento region. They provide mentorship programs to help guide companies through early stage planning and also help pair investors with growing businesses. Monique described their unique acceleration process and how it benefits startups and small businesses.

“There are three key areas we decided to build our practices on: traction, fundability and leadership. We assist our founders in formulating ideas and products that will demonstrate desirability, viability and feasibility. This helps them get connected with people who are willing to put money towards their product. We look at the fundability aspects of the companies we serve, which has a lot of boxes that need to be checked, and work with businesses to ensure that the founders are prepared to demonstrate that their finances are in place.

“The third piece of this puzzle is leadership; we are really excited about all the talented founders in this region, but we also find that many of these people don’t have experience running a company. We have built a program called ‘Founder to CEO’ to help founders with hiring, managing investors and other facets as they grow their businesses.”

City of Rocklin is working with Growth Factory on a new program to help local businesses that were negatively impacted by COVID-19 and provide them with the tools they need to face present and future challenges.

“With this program, we are looking to work with established businesses in Rocklin to use innovative thinking and help them diversify streaming and fuel financial growth. If you’re a business in Rocklin who experienced hardships from the pandemic and are looking for support, we want to hear from you. We are so happy to be supporting business owners and entrepreneurs in the Rocklin area.”

Learn more about Growth Factory here.