One-on-one with Alice Loy

Ask Alice Loy about entrepreneurship, and she’ll take you back in history. Way back. As in Neanderthal times.

“It’s what got human beings out of caves,” says Loy, the CEO and co-founder of Creative Startups. “The idea that there was somebody around the fire who said, ‘Guys, this cave sucks.’ And somehow from that, the entrepreneur rallied the tribe to get out of the cave and live a new way.”

“That is fundamentally a creative process, and it’s the most exciting human process there’s ever been.”

The 16-year old Creative Startups has helped launch and has worked with over 640 companies around the world. It was the first investor in Meow Wolf, the wildly successful arts production company.

Creative Startups has been operating business accelerator programs since 2014, with about 60 alumni companies in the Middle East. And this summer, Loy and partner Kelly Holmes, a Native American entrepreneur, started Skoden Ventures. The fund is focused on helping startups founded by owners who are Black, Indigenous and people of color.

Loy first became interested in entrepreneurship while working with indigenous Costa Ricans and migrant farmworkers in Florida. She was, she says, inspired by the creative innovations those populations were pursuing.

Entrepreneurship, particularly in the creative fields, “is what makes us different than my two dogs,” Loy says. “And so celebrating that in other people, that’s my life’s work.”

What was it about your experiences in Costa Rica and Florida that inspired you?

“I came across people who were, what I now understand to be, entrepreneurs. They had a vision, they had community. They really didn’t have other resources, and, in fact, were operating in a system that was not welcoming to their innovations. In this case, the innovation was social justice. In Central America, the innovation was new ways of managing old-growth rainforest that were beneficial for the indigenous people more than the outsiders. Either way, those were innovations. All entrepreneurs face a path of putting an innovative practice into a market and getting people to understand and back them.”

Are there any startups you’re particularly proud of?

“There’s a woman-led company in Amman, Jordan, that has just been killing it. She has a platform, a little like Airbnb Experiences, but better because she connects tourists directly with women who are doing in-house cooking classes or hiking tours or something all across the Middle East. And now she’s in Europe, as well. In this way, many women increase their livelihoods through offering cultural/creative experiences.”

What was your first paid job?

“I worked at a family-owned stationery store. And I learned that I love doing sales. I could upsell anybody on anything. I had gotten kicked out of high school. I was a hellraiser. My mother said, ‘Well, you’re not sitting around all day, so you better find something to do.’ There was a unique (school) program where you would go in twice a week, and you had a mentor teacher and it was all sort of independent study and then you got a regular diploma. But I love working. That was a much better track for me.”

What’s an indulgence for you?

“Ice cream. Mint chip. Are there other flavors?”

What makes you laugh?

“Practically everything. I love laughing. I love making other people laugh, I think life is hilarious. We are all just buckets of mess running around. And not to make light of things … but otherwise, you can be wrapped up in anger because there’s so much going wrong, and I think that’s exhausting. At some point, you just have to kind of make a joke and say, ‘This is all so crazy.’ Like in the cosmic scope of things.”

What has been a professional disappointment?

“I continue to be frustrated by how difficult it is for people of color to start businesses. They have no margin. We do a lot of work with grassroots organizations led by people of color, and I just feel there is a consistent level of barriers that people from my background don’t have to face. To be frank, I do these programs all over the world, and the level of talent and ambition is mind-blowing when you go around the world. And it leaves me feeling like (in) America, we’re leaving talent on the sidelines, and we really can’t afford to anymore. We have to be more creative and inventive than ever.”

What’s a hard lesson that you’ve had to learn?

“I have a voice in my head that’s been going off now that says, ‘Stop talking. You’ve said enough.’ I love talking with people, but sometimes I keep talking when it’s their turn. And I don’t want to do that. So I had a difficult thing I had to learn, which was literally, ‘Stop talking. Your turn is over.’ And I have to say that to myself.”

Please explain what a “creative startup” is. Is there a guiding principle behind Creative Startups?

“We help other people knock down barriers so we can progress forward, but also asking fundamentally the question of who are we backing? Because you reap what you sow. And we have got to start investing in entrepreneurs who are building community pride, vibrancy and thriving opportunities instead of entrepreneurs who are OK building with extraordinary, maybe egregious, amounts of resources for the very few.”

What were you like as a kid?

“My mother would say I was challenging. I think it’s important for girls, especially, to be a little difficult because meek women don’t fare well. And that’s not a statement about meek women. That’s a statement about overbearing male-driven culture that doesn’t make room for people being who they want to be. My husband says I’m the only person he’s ever known who really doesn’t care what people think about me, which I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”