129: Top 20 Countdown

Top 20 Countdown: Week 9

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s episode is the ninth of several highlight shows where we are taking a look back at our top 20 favorite interviews and conversations of all time. Today’s featured guest is Rebecca Fishman Lipsey, Founder & CEO of Radical Partners Radical Partners is an accelerator for social-impact ventures based in Miami, FL.

Some key points from Rebecca at Radical Partners:

• Looking at the current issues Miami is facing
  • Sea level rise
  • Housing affordability
  • Educational equity
• Starting Radical Partners as a way to start social change
• Looking for ways to leverage a collective voice of the community
• Helping new ventures get off the ground and grow to scale
• The 2 major problems Radical Partners has set out to solve:
  • Helping the leaders get their ideas to fruition
  • Helping the community get engaged in a meaningful and constructive way
• Projects that Rebecca loves:
  • 100 Great Ideas
    • The community shares their opinion about the best way to solve a pressing community issue. They synthesize the top 100 ideas to present to decision-makers in the community who have the ability to implement them.
  • Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
    • Along with a cohort of 10-12 local social impact leaders, the bootcamp assists in accelerating the impact of new ventures with a focus on sustainability and growth.
• Creating a trusting environment within the bootcamp to help entrepreneurs feel less alone
• The scarcity mindset in Miami
  • People feeling as though there is not enough funding and resources to go around
• Getting people to work together to tackle issues rather than having just one entity at a time working on an issue
• Trying to remove the scarcity mindset in Miami through reassurance and support
  • Working on creating a cohort of people who are all working on the same problem
  • Showing evidence of success through working together on issues
• Big ideas take multiple people to work on them…not just one person/entity
• Listen or watch Rebecca full episode here