Not only the giants, but the elves also have stories to tell…
The internship at Beacon Fund and the Social Impact Fellow Program come together as a revelation to me that the business world is more complicated than it seems to be.
Business has long been in my area of interest since I was still a high-school student. I was always in awe of thought leaders pitching their outstanding business ideas, winning million-dollar deals from the investors and growing explosively both in terms of revenue and reputation. For me, “doing business” means to follow the perfect “hockey stick growth” by creating a ground-breaking product, then having a scalable business model— the typical journey of a business. Therefore, to excel at “doing business”, the strategy is to connect with and learn from the people who are taking or have completed that journey, who are CEO and founders from multibillion corporations or highly potential start-ups. It is the community that has inspired and shaped my perspectives about business since the first time I know what it is.
However, working at Beacon Fund shows me how that community does not necessarily reflect the whole business world. The company’s mission for women-owned small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) pushes me to understand female entrepreneurs’ needs, to listen wholeheartedly to the stories behind each business and to figure out how we can best serve them. I realize that the business world is much more diverse, in which no journey can be a typical pathway, in which fast-growing is just a choice, not the next level of a business. While the stories of big giants and unicorns are so attractive, those of SMEs are no less inspiring in their own sense of business. They are the moderate but sustainable growth companies, which serve as the foundation of the market. And because the “exit strategy” is not in their vocabulary, their self-determination in decision-making to grow their business makes their stories become so unique. Overall, I have had the chance to expose to different viewpoints about “doing business”, therefore understand that there is always more than one pathway of growing a business, and more than one community that I can be a part of.
Given the diversity of the market, the commitment to a more inclusive system for underserved communities is so inspirational. While we heard big deals made to start-ups on a weekly basis, the community of female-owned SMEs are still facing acute difficulty in accessing to capital, either because of gender biases or because of the investor’s interests. Therefore, Beacon Fund comes with the mission to change the system to fit women-owned SMEs instead of changing them to fit the system. Although such a big mission should take a long way to go, for me, it is unapologetic to bring about boundaries-breaking products for sustainable growth companies and to promote women empowerment.
At the end of the day, for a business-passionate freshman, learning all the protocols needed to run a business is important but not enough. Setting our intention in doing business is critical to help us navigate ourselves in the business world while embracing the diversity of others’.
Setting our intention in doing business is critical to help us navigate ourselves in the business world while embracing the diversity of others’.
