Dan’s first thought in our conversation is that entrepreneurship has an incredible power to accomplish social change.  He described how entrepreneurs try to address important problems that arise from their personal experience.   In neighborhoods that are in distress, they create impact by simply being present – by filling empty storefronts and serving as community gathering spaces.  This inspires others.  There are ripple effects that emanate from the reoccupation of main streets that are important locally.   Entrepreneurs are part of the rebuilding of trust in urban areas.  They can change experiences fundamentally.

Dan then described how Building From Within supports entrepreneurs.  We focused on Detroit as our first context.    He talked about the model of building entrepreneurial capabilities through business training, technical assistance, innovative financing, and real-estate activities.  These resources have been denied for years to members of many of the communities that have become devastated by inequities.   A prevailing lending model has seven characteristics that are really quite conventional.  This approach builds in an inherent discrimination and privilege, Dan notes, by assuming that the prospective borrower has had the opportunity to build a credit score and acquire a credit history and build capital.   So Build From Within has created an alternative way to assess lending risk that focuses on a person’s ideas, community orientation, and interest in achievement.  Is the person participating in business classes and accessing technical assistance?   The BFW approach is oriented around helping with people who might be below the lowest rung on a ladder of traditional financing.  How do we help people get on that first run?   How can we show established lenders that they are missing out on opportunities to access very important models.

As people are successful in this model, do you see others benefitting too?   What’s the accumulating effect?  BFW takes the accumulating effect of success as its theory of change.   Formerly vacant storefronts start drawing people in.  They create safety.  They draw in more interest.    Dan gives the example of Baobab Fare restaurant, which recently won a James Beard Award in Detroit.    The capacity for excellence and for doing new things drives investment across corridors once it gets going.  By bringing energy into communities, you can change things fundamentally.

Dan pointed to the complex system that exists around entrepreneurship.   He talked about how success can emanate over time.  You want to make sure to preserve neighborhoods for existing residents as you invite in investment and activity.  Gentrification is a real challenge.  How do we drive success while preserving neighborhoods, culture and local residents.

I asked Dan about the roughness of retail and restaurants as ways of building a life.  It’s hard to serve people.  Sometimes people don’t share values or intentions.  How do we avoid locking people into crummy entry-level entrepreneurial jobs?   Even if these are better than other alternatives at the outset, these jobs are not the types of opportunities that our students at the University of Toronto aspire to compared to manufacturing, financing, and other professional-service jobs.

Dan talked about the Neighborhood Development Center in St. Paul that is seeking to build a cybertech sector in the city.   The goal is to support the equitable access to capital to spark growth.  The resources exist in abundance, but they are not made accessible to a broad community.    BFW is trying to address that.   These are building blocks.  BFW is a small operation in 16 cities built on trust.  The goal is to shine on a spotlight on what’s possible.   The goal is to create greater access.

What about cities like Toronto where the downtown core hasn’t gone through the same kinds of challenges as in Detroit but there’s a lot of opportunity to improve the lives of recent immigrants?  Dan distinguished what he called “cold market” cities like Detroit from “hot market” cities like Miami and Houston and Philadelphia and Toronto.   The challenge in cold markets is revitalization of commercial corridors, while in hot markets you are trying to preserve clusters of culture and prevent gentrification.  In Miami, for example, you try to stop escalation in the cost of housing.   The cultural reality in hot-market cities is that it can be lost with gentrification.   There’s all this investment coming in.  How do we not have the displacing forces take over.    We need to make a quick policy connection to prevent displacement and preserve community in a place like Toronto.

What makes Dan optimistic?   [28:00]   What gives Dan hope is the individual entrepreneur.   In an incredibly inspiring final comment, he talks about how, in all the systems that we create as humans, the root is the kernel of excitement in every individual to solve a problem or pursue an opportunity or learn.   Curiosity.  He sees his work as reigniting that kernel – as supporting individuals at getting back to that kernel of excitement.  

Dan’s approach and energy were so thoughtful that he left me optimistic too.