Uptima Entrepreneur Cooperative

Uptima Entrepreneur Cooperative provides holistic and culturally relevant education, advising, and community to support diverse entrepreneurs in creating thriving businesses in service to their communities. Our programs support entrepreneurs throughout their journey of starting, planning, growing, funding, leading, and keeping their businesses in their communities.

We are an innovative cooperatively owned business support organization. Our cooperative structure makes us different from other business support organizations. As a cooperative, the entrepreneurs and workers in Uptima have the opportunity to become owners of the organization. This structure provides a means for entrepreneurs to compound the wealth building activities of their businesses. Not only do our cooperative members own their businesses, but they own a piece of Uptima. And through that, they are literally investing in past, present, and future businesses in their community.

We started in Oakland in 2014. Since then, we have been a leader in business support in our communities of Oakland, San Francisco, and more recently Boston. We have supported 750+ individuals in starting, planning, growing, funding, and keeping their businesses in their communities. Around 75% of these entrepreneurs are people of color and 80% are women. Collectively, they have raised $5.7 million in funding and created nearly 700 jobs in their communities. And since March 2020, we’ve supported 450+ entrepreneurs in stabilizing finances, accessing relief funds, pivoting business models, and re-imagining what is possible.