Day 2 of Manos Accelerator

Today was the second day of the Manos Accelerator. Darlene Crane, Executive Director at the Alliance for Community Development talked to us about their program. Their mission is to increase access to capital for companies with diverse leadership.

She talked about the Bay Area Capital Connections Conference series. Their next conference, Investing in an inclusive economy will be held in Oakland on October 3rd. Program highlights include learning about market opportunities in an economy with a diverse majority; angels, VCs, crowdfunding: know your financing options; how to scale with keynote speaker Julie Corbett, CEO of Ecologic; and a select group of entrepreneurs will present their companies to a panel of investors.

Rudy Garcia, a SVP & Manager from Community Bank of the Bay spoke about the differences between lenders and venture funding.

Hilda Ramirez from Got2BSocial came in and encouraged us to use our networks in new ways. Our teams need to network and connect with every contact we meet. To engage with everyone who uses our products. To make a brand for our company and for ourselves.

Derek Beckmann, a partner at NL Ventures visited and held an informal Q&A session. I learned about Series A and Series B funding, which WILL (not may!!!!) be useful in the coming months (wink).

We headed up to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to see the venue where tomorrow night’s program will take place. We did a few practice runs and finished the night having dinner at Google.