DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we redesign financial relationships to dignify historically underrepresented entrepreneurs?
Finance is Exclusionary
Traditionally, financial systems and incentives provide capital to the most “creditworthy” and deny capital at affordable rates to others. Will new technologies (Defi, crypto, Web3.0) be a renaissance or more of the same?
Climate Change and the COVID Pandemic highlight the burdens of natural disasters and economic disruption piled on the most vulnerable people, businesses and communities. Finance now has an existential task: to mitigate risks and build resiliency into every entrepreneur and every community.
Students developed new options for how finance and corporate resources might work better for entrepreneurs of diversity. Through storytelling, journey mapping and other design abilities, students interviewed key stakeholders to diversify who gets financed. This year includes support from Apple, Silicon Valley Bank, and Stanford Community College.
STUDENT DESIGN WORK
Four student teams embarked on the design challenge in the Spring of 2022. 45 individuals collaborated regularly with our Redesigning Finance students to focus on real-world systemic issues or improving the contributions that BHID&URs can make as the innovation assets and creative people they and their firms represent.
The objective was not to deliver something finished, but rather insights for where to start. Below you will find their work and we welcome you to build on their insight and/or follow up with the students and teaching team directly.
TEAM 1
D.E.Incubator
D.E.Incubator is a non-profit incubator supporting minority founders funded by the DE&I budgets of corporations looking to make a real impact. According to Mckinsey, about $8 billion is spent on diversity training in the United States alone. As DE&I spending grows, we foresee that these funds could be utilized more efficiently by connecting corporations directly with…
Invoice Based Financing: Automating Trust
TEAM 2
Invoice based companies–consulting, media production, construction, publishing, etc.–deal with particularly acute working capital constraints. Industry standard is currently set at net-30, net-45, and net-90 day payment terms, a relic from trade financing meant to give buyers time to sell the manufactured goods purchased in order to pay suppliers…
TEAM 3
The capital commitments made by leading corporations toward DEI initiatives have been substantial and undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but there is more that can be done. The pervasive challenges faced by minority entrepreneurs are consequences of deeply-rooted structural barriers to access: access to financing, access to…
Redesigning Corporate DEI Initiatives
TEAM 4
Performance AI
When we think about redesigning finance, it is essential to take into consideration the problems that minority entrepreneurs face. These are hard working people that are looking to build meaningful businesses, while helping their communities thrive. With our team, we did a lot of research about the story of these entrepreneurs and how they are trying…
PRINCIPAL PARTNERS
Apple Inc.
Partnering with Corporate Supply Chain
Stanford d.school students explored and discovered realistic options for diversifying corporate procurement and banking activities by interacting directly with key executives whose corporate decisions can include non-traditional entrepreneurs in their supply chains.
The course enjoyed the support of Apple, and leaders from various lines of business at Apple to let students interview key leaders there, including Apple App Store, BEATS by Dr. Dre, Competitive Intelligence, Market Research, Marketing Communications, Supply Chains, and TV+.
Stanford Community College
Partnering with the Community
Redesigning Finance joined forces with Community College to not only teach Stanford University d.School students the design genius and historical impact of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Disabled, & Under-represented entrepreneurs (BHID&URs) of the past … but to bring contemporary hidden figures from local communities of color into the classroom for a bidirectional exchange of ideas that would add necessary cultural contexts to our approach in solving
complex design challenges for our banking and technology industry stakeholders.
Community College is a global collective of 1,000+ diverse entrepreneurs, engineers, executives, artists, athletes, designers, and students who have a passion not only for building great things … but for sharing their resources and experiences with the people for the benefit of the people.
Each one, teach one.
Silicon Valley Bank
Partnering with Bankers & Lenders
This year, the students worked directly bankers from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). As the premier bank for the innovation economy, SVB’s vantage across the entrepreneurship and funding ecosystem proved to be immensely appropriate for student learning and ideating.
Through this partnership, students learned the current financing paradigms that banks are legally beholden to and that entrepreneurs are subject to. Some student groups even generated, tested, and iterated ideas with bankers so that their ideas could better resonate with real life constraints.
Special thanks to the following guest speakers and thought partners:
Gerald Baker, Head of Trust & Fiduciary Services and Co-Head of Center for Wealth Planning Excellence
Kevin Conway, Product Manager of Lending Innovation
Noah Curhan, Product Manager of Lending Innovation
Daniel Dehrey, Managing Director of Venture Capital Relationship Management
Jack Garza, Managing Director of Enterprise Software
Ashraf Hebela, Head of SVB Startup Banking
Gagan Kanjlia, Chief Product Officer
Jim Marshall, Head of Emerging Manager Practice
Rachel Phillips, Head of Associate Development Program
DeMarcus Williams, Managing Director of Startup Banking
