Downtown Phoenix Voices is an ongoing series of profiles on the many diverse and inspirational voices in the downtown Phoenix community. To read the last installment in the series,
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An exchange of ideas between friends over a bottle of wine could be the new “once upon a time” in the entrepreneurial and business world.
Such was the situation for Courtney Klein Johnson, the co-founder of downtown Phoenix’s Seed Spot, one of the city’s growing entrepreneurial incubator workspaces and an attempt to counteract a “brain drain” of talent.
Johnson, 29, and co-founder Chris Petroff, 32, are Arizona natives, and it’s this background in part that gave them perspective on the exodus of talent.
“Chris and I both grew up here, so we saw firsthand a lot of people moving out of Arizona,” Johnson said. “You look at what keeps young talent in a city, and I think it’s the opportunity to jobs, the opportunity to start their own career paths.”
Seed Spot is nested on the fourteenth floor of a building off Thomas Road and Central Avenue. The airy loft is quiet and focused; music pours from one room while a few of the incubator’s 16 venture company entrepreneurs mill in the main workspace.
Johnson said that at times the room is energized and filled to the brim. It depends on what other commitments and meetings their venturers must attend.
“This is home base for them,” she said.
Those 16 ventures were selected by an 18-person committee under specific conditions. They had to be early and mid-stage companies, have less than half a million in revenue, and be Arizona based. Above all, they had to have a positive impact.
“It has to be doing something good for the world, that provide a product, a service, or a technology that improves people’s lives,” she said.
One of these companies is eMoneyPool, founded by Francisco Cervera and his brother, Luis Cervera.
“We grew up around this cultural practice of money pools,” said Francisco Cervera, 33, who hails from San Diego. “People come together in a really creative way to access capital to start a business, to buy a car, when you can’t walk down the street and apply for a loan or put it on a credit card.”
Known as “Christmas clubs” in America, money pools are an alternative way to raise capital and are popular worldwide. The Cervera brothers are trying to link the concept to banks, credit unions and the Internet.
Cervera applied for Seed Spot in hopes of getting the business experience he and his brother didn’t receive in their science college educations.
“What’s taken us four years to do would have taken a person with a business degree two years to do,” he said. “Their incubator would help us along.”
Johnson and Petroff’s guidance has already connected eMoneyPool to networks and investors, as well as lent them credibility, according to Cervera.
Seed Spot has grown beyond either founder’s expectations.
Twelve other cities have contacted them, hoping to use Seed Spot’s model in their own regions. A filmmaker is planning to release a documentary about the organization in the fall. And Johnson, a popular speaker, is booked at places from Center for the Future of Arizona to universities in Australia, where she’ll be in March.
Johnson started her first organization, New Global Citizens, when she was only 21 years old, immediately applying her bachelor’s degree in nonprofit management from Arizona State University. She would go back to get her master’s in the same subject later.
Currently located in 14 states and 33 countries, New Global Citizens aims to engage and educate youth on global issues. Johnson now serves on the board of directors.
Despite the company’s success, the journey was far from easy.
“Being an entrepreneur is really hard, finding the right resources and the right people and the right mentors and the right access to information and money,” she explained. “We wanted to create an environment where entrepreneurs would have those resources.”
Despite its global perspectives, Johnson is adamant about the benefit of the organization’s Arizonian roots.
“I don’t think I could do what I did with New Global Citizens in another city,” she said. “Phoenix is a good city to start things with. There’s a low barrier of entry. It’s not a hard city to navigate.”
It’s the connections that have been made — between ventures and community leaders, between community members and Johnson and Petroff — that the two founders really value.
“It’s more than the incubator that we are to help grow early-stage companies,” Petroff said. “It’s this community of individuals here in Phoenix and the surrounding areas that want to foster entrepreneurship.”
That community of individuals is the spark for Johnson’s love for the city.
“It’s about the people. What’s kept me here is the people,” she said, recalling mentors such as former ASU President Lattie Coor and Stardust Foundation philanthropist Jerry Bisgrove.
Johnson has gone on to now mentor young people herself, her love for her home giving her the drive to do what she does.
“I do feel an obligation to make it a better city,” she said. “I think we all should, no matter how long you stay here. You should make your home better than when you first entered it.”
Also on the board for Local First Arizona, Johnson loves the several Phoenician coffee shops and restaurants, the “little pockets of uniqueness” in the city.
She is a staunch preservationist, and believes the past has a play in the future, especially in Phoenix.
“New ideas need old cites,” she said. “You’re tearing down historic future, what Arizona could become.”
Johnson said keeping the mindset that puts entrepreneurs first and “embracing our young creative talent” were at the top of her list for Phoenix’s future, dependent and independent of Seed Spot.
“We have a lot of vacant lots and vacant buildings. How do we dream up filling them, and what do we put inside those buildings that retains talent?” Johnson said.
She also wants to see more energy, a hum, in downtown through more festivals and fairs.
“I want to be in a city where you have to choose which cool event to go, as opposed to scouring the Internet for just one that month that you can go to,” she said.
The success with New Global Citizens and Seed Spot, as well as her status as one of Phoenix’s new boosters, has not been easy.
Johnson balances her entrepreneurial efforts with writing a book about her experience with New Global Citizens and training for the upcoming Iron Man triathlon.
“As any community leader or entrepreneur would attest to, it’s hard work,” she said. “A lot of demands are placed on you, and it’s a matter of choosing which ones that feed yourself, that feed your soul, that feed your heart.”
And that’s what it comes down to for Johnson — what feeds her, be it bringing up the next generation in Phoenix and actively inventing the city’s future image, or maybe just spending a day on her yoga mat. It simply must feed her soul.
“As long as I’m doing those things, then it’s easy to handle it all.”
Contact the reporter at ascoville@asu.edu
