Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Leightner Collider Foundation.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Collider Foundation is a nonprofit in Rochester, MN. Our work centers on early stage entrepreneurs in the community, especially those who are the most under served.
Collider’s always been a very grassroots organization, with deep ties to the community. We actually got started as a for profit coworking space in 2016, when the community told us they wanted a space for creative, innovation minded people to “connect and collide” to spark new ideas. We built that coworking community step by step for the next three year. But over the time frame, we found that a lot of what was needed, such as connections to resources, entrepreneurial events, and business education, didn’t really fit under the coworking model and was a better fit for a nonprofit. So in 2019, we became a 501(c)3 nonprofit and have just kept moving forward ever since!
It’s been a long road, but over the past 5 years, we’ve grown from a team of 1 to 4 full time staff members, all centered on the mission to reduce barriers to entrepreneurship in Rochester, MN. However, we have stayed very true to our grassroots connections, and with each phase or iteration of Collider, we listen very deeply to the needs of the community and evolve in ways to continue to solve problems our early stage entrepreneurs are facing in our community.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely has not always been a smooth road! The pandemic was a pretty rough time for us, especially since most of our revenue at the time was still coming from coworking memberships, from a coworking space that no one could be in! Since then, we’ve learned to think about coworking very differently and have had to really adapt that part of our work to meet current needs. We’ve always worked really hard to have different revenue sources as a nonprofit to protect ourselves as much as possible from external factors and allow our work to continue to those we serve.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We offer four different services to remove or reduce barriers to entrepreneurship, all at low or no cost. This includes a community-centered coworking space, entrepreneurial storytelling, startup support, and business education cohorts.
We specialize in helping entrepreneurs develop their business model. This includes helping people dig deep into understanding their customer, develop a go to market strategy, and really sit down and figure out financially how (and if) their business is going to work. We really specialize in helping people to start small with resources they have available to them and bring the customer into their work early, giving them the best chance to create a long term sustainable business in the community.
We are also well known for our coworking space, which I would say is the most recognized coworking option in Rochester.
We are most proud of the long term business success of our education program graduates. One of our education cohorts, called CO.STARTERS at Collider, has a 73% 1 year startup survival rate. That means for every 10 people completing the program, at least 7 of them will still have an operating business 1 year after graduating from our cohort. That is an incredible stat.
What sets us apart from others is our deep grassroots ties to the community. Plus, all of our staff currently run or have been involved in starting their own early stage business. So we don’t just understand business development from an academic sense. We all have lived or are living this journey, which allows us to deeply emphasize with those we are serving.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson we’ve learned is to listen to your customer, the people you are serving, and just ask them what they want. And then do it, but start in a small way that you can test and iterate on so you can really get the solution right.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.collider.mn
- Instagram: collider_mn
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/collidermn
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/collidermn/
