Fourth Water
Fourth Water Social Business Accelerator + Coworking Space
Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic
January 2013-March 2015
About this project.
In Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic we saw a need for world class business training for local entrepreneurs and micro-business owners, inspiring events, classes, and skillshares, and inspiring space to cultivate collaboration and foster innovation within our developing community. Fourth Water was the solution we crafted to bring these three elements to the local business community and help develop the area economically.
Our Team.
Dan LeMoine — Co-Founder
Chadley Wallace — Co-Founder
Joe Atkinson — Co-Founder
Samuel Luna — Advisor
José Roberto Hernandez — Advisor
Miguel & Jenny Morel — employees/volunteers
Darrell Vasquez — coffee roaster, entrepreneur in resident
Josh Marx — Consulting Intern
Emery — Intern
Ines — Intern (from Germany)
Florian Richter — Intern (from Germany)
Successes.
Fourth Water 8 Week Business Acceleration Program—
Built and piloted 8 week business acceleration program focusing on weekly intensives coaching clients on:
- Defining Your Ideal Target Market, their problem(s), and framing your unique solution(s)
- Understanding and empathising deeply with your ideal target market and how to reach them effectively
- Business Development and Administration
- Finance & Money
- Sales & Building a Referral Engine
- Branding & Marketing
- Building & Managing an Effective Team
- Demo Day & Very Next Steps
The goals was to strike a balance between the top-level business strategies and thought leadership while providing hands on tactics, homework, and next steps that directly helped build and accelerate Fourth Water's clients' businesses.
Monthly Business Lunch—
An open-invite coffee and light lunch where local business leaders and entrepreneurs came together to discuss their goals, struggles, and successes in the building of their businesses. The big idea was to get a group of entrepreneurs with diverse levels of business building experience (in both the local and international markets) to share best practices and knowledge, and help cultivate trust and a win-win culture among local business owners.
Co-Working Space—
Renovated and restored coworking space with the following members:
- Local Coffee Roaster
- Mocano Restaurant
- Handmade sign company
- Local eco-tourism cluster offices
- Location independent solo-preneur
- Water filtration franchise
International Change-Maker Summit (April 2011)
The big idea with the Int'l Change-Maker Summit was two-fold: 1) Get like-minded people looking to do things that matter in the beautiful setting, doing excillerating activities, hearing inspiring keynotes in hopes that ideas would be sparked, collaborations would be conceived, and lasting change would be made; 2) increase awareness of, and interest in, the economic development work Fourth Water was doing in the world.
See below the Summit Itinerary.
"Failures"
After nearly 18 months of work and about 12 months with doors officially open, we decided to shut down Fourth Water.
Related Post: 12 Reasons Why We Failed (and Why I've Reframed as Smashing Success)
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