Nadyli Nuñez got her first taste of entrepreneurship in sixth grade.
Her class was divided into two groups, each of which had to come up with a product and compete to bring in the most money.
The opposing team designed a whiteboard for lockers. Ms. Nuñez’s team came up with a customized dog tag.
The team’s selling point? Similar whiteboards were available at Target, but this dog tag came with an exclusive engraving of a monkey, and students could only get it from one class of entrepreneurs.
Ms. Nuñez doesn’t remember who won the competition, but she likes to imagine it was her team.
Now the executive director of East Liberty startup incubator Ascender, Ms. Nuñez, 28, still sees her role as helping entrepreneurs fine-tune their product and their pitch to turn an idea into a sustainable business. She talked with the Post-Gazette about Pittsburgh’s tech ecosystem, making space for different types of businesses and founders, and the “entrepreneurial spirit.”
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
What can you tell me about the inner workings of Ascender? How do you make decisions about founders?
Founders are really different, but for us, at its core, we think about a few things. One, are they resourceful? So when you’re an entrepreneur, you won’t have a lot to work with, you’re creating something out of nothing many times, and so you need to be resourceful because we can’t hold your hand the whole entire time. When someone comes in with an idea, it needs to be a researched idea.
[In no particular order, second,] are they in love? Is this founder in love with their product, or are they in love with the problem? That really impacts the success of a company. When we’re coaching a founder and they just don’t want the product to change ... that’s going to limit them a lot.
The other thing that we look into is, obviously, coachability. If you aren’t coachable, go do your thing, then you don’t need us.
[And] self-awareness ... so I like to think that I’m a better leader after I’ve worked through a lot of my own stuff, and that impacts the way I’m able to approach difficult conversations with a team member, with a stakeholder, difficult decisions, difficult situations — and an entrepreneur is going to face all of that all the time.
The way you interact or manage those times are a reflection of your own biases, your own traumas, your own belief of your value system. An entrepreneur who is very self-aware is able to better navigate the complexities of relationships in business and the decisions that creating a startup involves.
And then lastly, the one thing that you really can’t teach is that entrepreneurial spirit. And it’s hard to really describe. It’s like love — you know it when you see it. You can’t really describe it. It’s just that person who when they’re talking about what they’re doing in a product, you know, like there’s just something in them.
Is that spirit contagious? Do you feel like you caught it?
Will I start a startup? You know, I have to fall in love with the problem first. I’ve got to figure out which problem I’m willing to talk about 24/7. That’s what happens with an entrepreneur — you’re selling that problem 24/7.
Are there any common missteps that can get in the way of an entrepreneur being successful?
So, a few things: One is a founder who creates something that no one actually buys. ... The nuance in there too is are people willing to buy it at a price point that can lead to a sustainable business? There’s Five Below, there’s the Dollar Store, but can your company thrive and live off of that?
For us, we don’t define success as being a global brand or needing to make millions of billions of dollars. For us it’s how do you define success? Do you want to be a global company? All right, we’ll help you with that. Do you want to be a regional store? All right, we’ll help you with that. Our minimum is this is a business that you can live off of, solely.
The other thing that we notice a lot is that someone wants the product to be perfect before even piloting it or having someone else use it. And it’s never going to be perfect. You know why? Because you’re not piloting it, you’re not letting other people use it. You need that kind of feedback.
What have you noticed about Pittsburgh’s ecosystem? How has it changed since you’ve been involved?
There are a lot of organizations that have existed, but they’re also new [ones] that are popping up. I think the new ones that are popping up tell me that there’s something we’re missing. Either it’s a group, it’s a way we’re approaching entrepreneurship, there’s something that was not embedded by other organizations.
I think there should be a lot of different programs because by having different programs, every organization has a different personality, a different way to approach things. It’s dating; it’s a personality fit. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs have gone to multiple of these because anyone you meet that tells you this is how you do entrepreneurship, don’t listen to them. It’s about showing the suggestions.
I think there are people who maybe didn’t find room for themselves in the current ecosystem have created their own table, and they’ve done a good job.
Recently, there was a cohort of entrepreneurs that went to Detroit. And one thing I heard about the entrepreneurship scene there is that people who are looking to make a bakery business are pitching in the same way that someone’s doing an SaaS software company, and it’s expanding what entrepreneurship means.
And that’s at least what I’m trying to do at Ascender, where entrepreneurship does take many forms, and it includes all kinds of people and all kinds of businesses.
I think we’re starting to expand what we’re thinking. ... There are people speaking up to say, “OK we’ve done this, we can do better. We do way better.”
My whole job is about seeing potential — in the founder, in the possibility of this company to grow. And so I asked myself, what is Pittsburgh’s potential and is it possible? Is there a product market fit?
What is that potential and how do we get there?
I don’t have a map. I don’t think anyone has a map. One of the important things is what are we trying to get to.
[Such as, looking at that] report — Pittsburgh is listed as one of the most diverse tech hubs — and I get weary of celebrating that kind of listing because the bar is very low. I’m not impressed.
On top of that, when we celebrate these kinds of listings I don’t want it to encourage complacency. Like, oh we’re good, we’re at the top. [But] is the scorecard even right? And historically it hasn’t been.
I think we can do a better job of centering some of the voices that we’re trying to elevate and thinking about whether it’s women, people who are differently abled, people in the LGBTQ community, the Black community, minority community. It’s not just inviting them into the room. Do they feel belonging? I think we can do a better job of trying to step out of our own comfort zones.
[One example,] for me, even on YouTube, I listen to content creators who are unlike me. How are they seeing the world? What words do they use? What are they thinking about? What’s on their mind?
Now that you’ve been involved in the startup world for a few years, do you see startup ideas everywhere you go?
So I recently was cleaning out my home office, found this mini moleskin that I had purchased after I started my first entrepreneurship class at CMU ... and I had gotten it where I started to write ideas — no, I would notice problems or inefficiencies, and I would think, OK, a service or product that would help. Nine times out of 10, probably 10 times out of 10, it already existed. But I’m always looking to optimize, automate and improve.
What I love about it most is the people. That’s what I think about all the time. It’s people and their personality and their growth. I mean, my favorite part is when I’m working with entrepreneurs at the beginning of a program, especially if I’m coaching them on a weekly basis, and at the end I see their pitch presentation differently ... and even the way they carried themselves is different, and that it’s truly the most fulfilling part. They don’t realize how much they can grow, what they can accomplish, and they just need that push.
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1565.
First Published: August 9, 2021, 10:15 a.m.
Updated: August 9, 2021, 12:03 p.m.
