The National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) partners with a wide variety of organizations to provide services to LGBT-owned businesses. One of these outstanding platforms is Hello Alice, which works to provide customized business paths and content recommendations to business owners at no cost. Shruti Shah, entrepreneur and Program Manager at Hello Alice, stopped by NGLCC’s Webinar Wednesday program to tell viewers a bit more about the platform and how business owners can use it to their advantage, especially in an increasingly digital world.
Hello Alice is a digital platform that helps small business owners strategize around and build aspects of their businesses that they may need help with. It offers data insights and personalized user experience to participants as they make their way further into the platform’s programming. It also offers a wide variety of online communities for business owners to directly interact with each other, get their business questions answered quickly, and collaborate. This programming is accomplished through a series of content partnerships with numerous field experts and partners that can help entrepreneurs continue to build. Some of these partners include Salesforce, Bumble, Chase, and many more.
Additionally, Hello Alice is the leading author of new reports on the intersection of identity and COVID-19 recovery for small businesses. NGLCC is proud to partner with Hello Alice in deepening their research with elements of our America’s LGBT Economy Report.
According to Shruti, Hello Alice welcomes a multitude of diverse business owners as well. It has over 8,700 registered LGBTQ+ business owners, which accounts for about 8% of the total number of platform users. The program also works to highlight entrepreneurs and business owners that come from marginalized communities through blogs, columns, and resource sharing that is specific to the identity of the business owner. What makes the program’s online communities especially beneficial and appealing is shown in the research the company has conducted with its users. Many business owners cite the same challenges as the largest obstacles to building their business – these mainly include operating their business, acquiring customers, raising capital, and more. To add, the majority of Hello Alice users saw reduced sales and/or had to pivot their business as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the new hardships many small business owners continue to face daily, having a support group and technological resource such as Hello Alice has proven to be helpful.
Shruti says some additional highlights of working with Hello Alice are specific to the vast resources they offer directly to business owners. They compile and share information about the industries each of their businesses operate in, and provide them directly to each respective business. They also add new resources to the platform daily! One comprehensive area of resources available to users on Hello Alice focuses on funding opportunities and offers guidance on debt financing, crowdfunding, angel investing, venture capital, revenue-based financing, and more.
As for Shruti, she wants to change the conversation around what an entrepreneur looks like. She says that finding allies and a support group have helped her to feel seen and heard throughout her impressive entrepreneurial journey, especially as a member of a marginalized community.
You can sign up for FREE at helloalice.com! Click here to read our conversation with the co-founder of Hello Alice, Elizabeth Gore.
Click here to view the full webinar.
