In 2023, Surthrive released its first ever Halftime Report to provide a transparent mid-year snapshot of the highlights, lowlights, and strategic approaches to accomplishing our company’s annual objectives. After achieving some major milestones in 2023, we are excited to share our 2024 Halftime Report that takes a look back at our accomplishments, performance, and areas of improvement for the first half of 2024.
Overview
This Halftime Report highlights the key metrics from the first two quarters of the year that allow us to celebrate small wins, ensure we are on the right track to success, and identify any adjustments needed to achieve our top three annual objectives for 2024.
All activities highlighted in this report reflect the work dedicated to reaching the following objectives:
- Capital: Secure $500K in contract value from strategic partners by December 31, 2024
- Customers: Support 200 small businesses by December 31, 2024
- Capacity: Hire 5 new team members by December 31, 2024
Securing New Strategic Partnerships
Surthrive is a marketing consultancy on a mission to accelerate economic development by partnering with local Economic Development Agencies and Entrepreneurial Support Organizations (ESOs) to provide technical assistance services that help their community of small businesses build capacity to scale.
In Q2, Surthrive secured a new contract with the City of Detroit for their Motor City Match Program to provide marketing technical assistance to underserved small businesses located in the City of Detroit. Our current partners, Invest Atlanta, Our Village United (OVU), and The Russell Center for Entrepreneurship (RICE) all decided to renew or extend our contracts to further our partnerships in supporting socially-disadvantaged business owners across the United States. The combined total contract value from these strategic partners are estimated at $200K.
Currently, Surthrive has 1 pending strategic partnership valued at $1.5M in which we will be notified if we are awarded this contract by Q3.
Supporting More Small Businesses
Through our strategic partnerships, Surthrive has been able to conduct 297 consultation sessions with 92 small businesses who have raised a combined $543K in capital in the first half of 2024. Surthrive has been able to achieve these numbers by deploying our team of consultants to work with a diverse range of small businesses in various entrepreneurial programs run by our partners including:
- ATLinBusiness is a program powered by Invest Atlanta and funded by the American Rescue Plan to support small businesses located in Atlanta’s disadvantaged neighborhoods who were affected by COVID-19 by connecting them with technical assistance providers to grow their business.
- HER PRO BONO is a program operated by Our Village United and funded by Walmart.org offering technical assistance and one-on-one coaching to Black women entrepreneurs primarily in retail-facing businesses.
- ELEVATED CITIES is a program operated by Our Village United and funded by Mastercard that provides wrap-around support to Black-owned solopreneurs and microbusinesses across the country.
- BIG IDEAS is a business learning and development program powered by The Russell Center for Entrepreneurship supporting business owners at each stage of their entrepreneurial journey.
Surthrive also runs its own internal entrepreneurial training program called Square One Startup School. We had the pleasure of working directly with 10 non-traditional tech startup founders via our 10-week virtual pre-accelerator program and celebrated their graduation at our 8th Square One Startup Showcase in Q2.
Lastly, under our Square One Startup School brand, we launched an online membership learning community where early-stage tech startup founders from around the world can access community, courses, and content for FREE. The community has gained over 100 new members in the first half of the year.
Growing Our Team
Compared to the last Halftime Report, the number of small businesses Surthrive has served at the midyear point have tripled, representing a 300% increase from last year. To meet this growing demand, our team plans on building our internal capacity by hiring 2 – 4 new consultants that specialize in digital marketing and business development to work directly with small businesses. To learn more about these role and others visit surthrive.co/careers.
Next Half
Currently, Surthrive is on track to reaching its 2024 annual objectives and moving into the second half of the year here are some areas we can improve on to finish the year strong:
- Submitting more responses to RFPs sent out by economic development agencies. Surthrive submitted a total of 3 proposals in Q1 & Q2 but we would like to submit at least 1 per month.
- Based on the responses from feedback surveys sent to small businesses we worked with in Q1 & Q2, we need to improve our process of providing feedback on assignments and action items given to business owners outside of consultation sessions.
With the additional team members and partners projected for the next two quarters of the year, we believe we will be able to reach our capital, customers, and capacity goals by the end of 2024.
If you are looking to partner with Surthrive please complete our Partnership Form.
