Goizueta’s Start:ME Accelerator kicked off it’s 2025 cohort last month, welcoming its largest cohort of entrepreneurs yet. This year, more than 300 entrepreneurs applied to be part of the program. Of that pool, the program accepted 77 ventures. These microbusinesses operate in four Atlanta communities—Clarkston, Atlanta’s Southside, East Lake, and, for the first time, Northwest Atlanta. The companies represent a diverse range of industries, including food and beverage, education, and arts and culture. Many of these businesses are home based, some are part time, and others full time.
Since 2013, the Start:ME program has helped more than 500 entrepreneurs in underserved communities in Metro Atlanta start and grow resilient microbusinesses by providing business knowledge, mentorship, and access to capital. Collectively, previous Start:ME businesses will generate more than $20 million in annual revenue this year.
“The Start:ME program grew out of the hypothesis that talented businesses are everywhere but the access to supportive knowledge, networks, and capital is not,” explains Erin Igleheart, program director of the Start:ME Accelerator.
These businesses are oftentimes overlooked in their critical importance in both creating an opportunity for income generation and wealth accumulation, as well as their collective cumulative impact on job creation and creating welcoming community spaces.
Erin Igleheart, Start:ME Accelerator Program Director
Over the course of the 14-week program, which began in January, more than 100 mentors will guide the entrepreneurs through topics such as business planning, pitching and storytelling, market research, and financials. These mentors also provide the microentrepreneurs with business insights, advice on how to start and grow their businesses, and help connect the entrepreneurs to supportive networks.
Additionally, each community has a grant pool of $15,000 to invest in a select number of this year’s businesses through a per-review process. To date (not including the 2025 program), Start:ME has provided $420,000 in peer-selected capital to 149 ventures., furthering its mission to strengthen small businesses and the communities they serve.
Anchored in Partnerships
The Start:ME Accelerator program is delivered by Goizueta Business School’s Business & Society Institute, in partnership with community-led nonprofit organizations including the East Lake Foundation, Focused Community Strategies, Friends of Refugees, Grove Park Foundation, and Purpose Built Schools Atlanta. Bank of America, Emory University, Goizueta Business School, Regions Foundation, Target Corporation, and Truist Foundation are among the organizations that support the program.
“Truist Foundation is proud to be a longtime partner of the Start:ME program,” says Katie Saez, Truist’s regional president for Georgia. “We have watched this program grow from its inception and it’s exciting to see it expand this year into Northwest Atlanta. Supporting the small business ecosystem is especially important in underserved neighborhoods and helps foster economic mobility.” A longtime partner of the Start:ME program, Truist Foundation served as the program’s inaugural external seed funder, issuing the first grant to the Start:ME program’s Clarkston cohort in 2013.
Northwest Atlanta Launches New Cohort
Several years ago, Ciara Mokeme, Head of Strategy, Adaobi Group, joined Start:ME as a mentor for the Southside community. This year, Mokeme became the program lead for the new Northwest Atlanta cohort. “Northwest Atlanta is going through a transformation right now,” Mokeme says. “The leaders in the community are really putting their foot down to promote economic development and to put together the foundational pieces that small business owners will be able to reap the benefits of beyond our 14-week program.”
I have no doubt that the business owners and the entrepreneurs that are in this first cohort are going to make changes in their operations. They’re going to provide more jobs. They’re really going to show up and show out in serving their community and their constituents. And I’m really excited to see it.
Ciara Mokeme, Start:ME Norwest Atlanta Program Lead
A serial entrepreneur herself, Mokeme’s involvement in Start:ME is, in part, an effort to pay it forward. “I’ve been there,” she says. If it weren’t for the people who gave Mokeme a chance and looked out for her, she “wouldn’t be where I am today,” she explains. “I think it’s important that we all recognize that we have a collective responsibility to one another.”
All About Microentrepreneurs
While business knowledge anchors the program, Igleheart underscores the importance of the individual entrepreneurs themselves. “They bring the ideas. They bring the solutions. They bring the passion. They bring a lot of the lived experience that they share with entrepreneurs of other backgrounds,” says Igleheart.
What oftentimes is the most valuable is those relationships with other small business owners who may be in a totally different stage or maybe going down a slightly different path, but they’re sharing that knowledge and experience with one another.
Erin Igleheart
Meagan Naraine, executive director, Culturally Relevant Science (CRsci), an inclusive K-12 STEM education non-profit, calls the fellow entrepreneurs and mentors in her 2024 Start:ME cohort “a huge family.”
Before taking part in the Start:ME program, Naraine had applied twice for a Camelback Fellowship without being selected. The fellowship is comprised of a 16-week program and a $40,000 grant. After going through the Start:ME program in 2024, Naraine reapplied for the fellowship. This time, she got it. “When I got the Camelback, the Start:ME people were the first people I wanted to tell—and to thank them for everything they gave me,” says Naraine, whose day job is as a science instructional coach for Atlanta Public Schools. She credits Start:ME for getting her financials in order and for helping her interpret the data she’d been collecting. “They were all knowledgeable in stuff I had no clue about. That’s what I really needed, whether it came to financial advising or revenue streams—all that technical stuff that a teacher with an education background doesn’t have much experience in,” she explains.
Not only were you learning things, you were doing the things that they were talking about. You walked away with tangible products.
Meagan Naraine, 2024 Start:ME graduate
CRsci’s YouTube channel and curriculum subscriptions are beginning to generate revenue. And in an effort to scale the business, Naraine is looking to develop a digital platform so that CRsci can get its courses into more schools as well as protect its content.
New for Start:ME
Earlier this year, the Start:ME Accelerator Program received a nomination for Emory’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award, which honors individuals and agencies from the university and Atlanta communities “who have led with love and peace while advocating for justice for all,” according to a press release announcing the award. The award ceremony will take place later this month.
The Start:ME Accelerator program recently launched a new website that includes an online store where visitors can purchase products and services from businesses that have gone through the program.
On May 1st, the 2025 Start:ME program will conclude with an in-person graduation at Goizueta Business School.
Learn more about the Start:ME Accelerator program and its impact on Atlanta’s small business community.
Learn more about Goizueta Business School’s Business & Society Institute and its programs supporting entrepreneurs and inclusive economic development.
