• Foster relationships with entrepreneurs and engage local startups in your community
• Opportunity to coach and mentor startup presenters
• Grow your skills in community organizing through the 1MC Organizer Playbook and hands-on experience
• Plug in to a global entrepreneurial network and national resources
• Connect entrepreneurs with your community
• Attend summits with organizers around the nation
• Network with the community and build your personal brand with growing companies
• Opportunity to manage digital resources, including web, mobile and social

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What is 1 Million Cups?

Our mission is to help aspiring or current entrepreneurs succeed in their endeavors by establishing a supportive space where they can test, tweak, or simply validate their idea, while connecting them to similarly diverse, driven members of their communities.

To ensure that any entrepreneur (or "wannapreneur") will have at least one clearly defined path to access education and resources in their community.

What is the Core Program Format?

Use the following as a structure while you start, continue, or join a 1MC chapter:

WHO

We reach aspiring entrepreneurs, experienced entrepreneurs, and those who actively support and engage with their local community and new businesses. Together, they are:

Organizers – Committed volunteers who build communities at the local level. Our support is crucial to them, but ultimately, they know what will resonate with their communities best.
Presenters – Those who boldly share their business concepts, challenges, and successes with their local 1MC community.
Attendees – Community-minded individuals, business enthusiasts, and active entrepreneurs who serve as an audience for 1MC presenters each week, providing feedback that reflects their expertise or opinion.

WHAT

Each event should feature two presentations by founders – each six minutes long – that end with the question: "What can we as a community do to help?"

There should be 20 minutes of Q&A to allow for feedback, questions, and advice.

WHEN

Every Wednesday from 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

HOW

Always free and open to the public with plenty of complementary coffee, events must apply the pillars to the core program format. By utilizing technology, tools, and brand consistency, chapters will run a weekly event that collaborates on a nationwide level. Organizers should have enough ownership that they are able to hyper-localize the nationwide collaboration experience to what their community needs.

1MC Key Pillars:

Presentation – Connection – Run by the Community, for the Community

Presentation: Replacing the concept of pitch with presentation.

Presenters are not there to sell, invest, or gain exposure. 1MC presenters are there to present by sharing their business, journey, milestones, and most importantly – their obstacles and barriers to success.

Connection: Replacing the concept of networking with connection.

When connection is allowed to flow freely without the restraints of networking, everyone involved show up as their most authentic self, showcasing all of their abilities as a whole individual versus focusing on one aspect of their skills.

Run by the Community, for the Community

No one group, organization, agenda, or individual has ownership of 1MC.

Because we are led by volunteers, a powerful mixture of entrepreneurs, leaders, freelancers, and creative thinkers can come together with a common purpose in mind that simultaneously evolves as the needs of the group evolves. By avoiding an unhealthy sense of ownership, the group is able to flourish through passion, excitement, and inclusivity.

Radically and intentionally inclusive, the organizing team should always look to bring in leaders outside of their typical network with a variety of diverse backgrounds, races, genders, and thoughts. By allowing anyone with a company that is less than five years old to present, 1MC opens the floor for young organizations to get help and spread their knowledge at the same time. Members should always think and act inclusively towards each other by starting conversations with, "What can I do to help you?"