Five Years of Emerge and Rise: What Building From the Ground Up Actually Looks Like
By Emerge and Rise | July 15, 2026
Five years. That is long enough to know what you are actually doing and why it matters. It is also long enough to have made mistakes, changed direction, lost sleep over things that did not work out, and kept going anyway.
This is not a highlight reel. It is an honest account of what it takes to build a venture development organization in a city that desperately needs more of them.
Lotus Business Readiness Workshop - Week 8 (2022)
The City We Are Building In
To understand why Emerge and Rise exists, you have to understand San Antonio.
This is a majority-minority city where Hispanic residents represent more than half the population of Bexar County. It is a city with deep cultural roots, a growing national profile, and an economic story that does not always match the press releases. A Small Business Ecosystem Assessment found an unmet annual demand of $8.3 billion in capital for small businesses in Bexar County, a gap that falls disproportionately on businesses owned by people of color.
That number has not been solved. For years, San Antonio's small business ecosystem has faced a core challenge: too many organizations working in isolation, too little coordination, and too little urgency to match the need.
And now, the federal safety net that many small businesses counted on is fraying. The SBA reduced its workforce by 43% in early 2025. The Minority Business Development Agency, which helped minority-owned firms access capital and contracts, has seen significant losses in institutional capacity. CDFI funding, one of the few reliable pipelines of capital into underserved communities, faces ongoing delays and administrative uncertainty.
Tariffs are hitting small business supply chains. Inflation has not fully let go. Roughly 50% of small businesses fail within five years, and cash flow difficulties remain the leading cause of closure for 82% of those that do not make it. In 2025, only 42% of small business credit applicants received the full amount they requested, and 22% received nothing at all.
We started Emerge and Rise in this environment. We are still here in it.
Where We Started and How We Evolved
World Affairs Event
Emerge and Rise launched in 2021 as an incubator and accelerator. That model made sense at the time. But the more we worked alongside entrepreneurs, the more we saw that what they needed was not a cohort program or a demo day. They needed a strategic partner willing to sit with them in the hard parts of building a business, not just the exciting ones.
That led us to evolve into a Venture Development Organization, built around our Owner Independence Framework. Four pillars: Empower, Equip, Educate, and Elevate. Twelve building blocks developed from our own direct work with business owners across San Antonio and beyond. It is not borrowed from a textbook. It was built from the ground up, the same way we ask our entrepreneurs to build their businesses. With zero dollars and donors, we are still here.
What Five Years Has Produced
The International Soft Landing Program extended our reach far beyond Texas. The 12-month program supports international small and midsize businesses entering U.S. markets, anchored by a formal strategic partnership with greater:SATX on International Business Development. We have worked with companies from Papua New Guinea to Ireland, processed hundreds of foreign direct investment leads, and helped international entrepreneurs find real footing in one of the most competitive business markets in the country. This fall, we are joining a San Antonio delegation to the Futura Innovation Conference in Limerick, Ireland.
WINC Circle was built because women in leadership, technology, AI, and investment needed a dedicated space, not another networking event with business cards and small talk. The initiative continues to grow with a custom-built member directory and a community that is invested in each other's outcomes.
Small Business 911 replaced and expanded what began as the Front Porch Program. When we had our physical space, Front Porch was the place where entrepreneurs came in off the street and got real answers to real problems. That work continues through Small Business 911 in a different form, and it remains one of the most community-rooted things we do.
The San Antonio Applied Innovation Council (SAAIC) is one of our newest efforts, building a member-driven organization focused on applied innovation across San Antonio's business community. The first roundtable is scheduled for August at VelocityTX. The response has been clear: this kind of dedicated convening space has been missing.
The San Antonio Business Landing Program brings the same rigor of our international soft landing model to domestic companies relocating or expanding into San Antonio, connecting them to the infrastructure and community they need to operate successfully here.
And then there are the relationships. With greater:SATX. With Pacific NRGies in Papua New Guinea. With Cultural Vistas through the Young Professionals Leadership exchange program. With the international companies and delegations we have met through SelectUSA and beyond. These partnerships were not built through press releases. They were built through follow-through, repeat conversations, and showing up consistently over time.
What We Got Wrong
WINC Circle Event
Five-year anniversaries tend to come with a highlight reel. We would rather be honest.
Last year, we opened a physical space. It was something we had wanted for a long time. A real home for entrepreneurs, a place where programming could happen in person, where community could gather with intention. What we found was that the space became more of an event and gathering venue than the operational hub we had envisioned. Funding to sustain it never came. By the end of the year, we closed it.
That was hard. It still is.
The Entrepreneurship by Acquisition Program and the DCIF Fund are both still in development, waiting on the right funding and the right partners to bring them to life properly. We are not walking away from either. But we are being honest that they are not ready yet, and we would rather wait and build them right than rush and build them wrong.
Not every initiative finds its moment. What matters is that you learn from it and keep building.
Why We Are Still Here
Last year was tough, and this year it’s even tougher! Only 30% of small business owners finished 2025 with profitability above expectations, down from 57% in 2024. The entrepreneurs we work with are not statistics. They are people who took a real risk, usually without a safety net, often without a roadmap, and almost always without enough capital. They deserve real support, not a flyer for a workshop.
San Antonio has a large and growing small business community. It also has a documented, persistent gap between the support that community needs and what is actually available. Five years into this work, we are more convinced than ever that closing that gap requires organizations willing to do the unglamorous, relationship-intensive, long-game work of actually building with entrepreneurs instead of just programming at them.
That is what Emerge and Rise was built for. It is what we will keep doing in year six and beyond.
To every entrepreneur, partner, board member, funder, and community member who has been part of this: we do not take any of it for granted.
Emerge and Rise is a San Antonio-based nonprofit venture development organization. Connect with us at emergeandrise.org.
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