Entrepreneurship is a pathway for founders with disabilities to address wealth and employment gaps

Disabled founders often start businesses out of necessity. Entrepreneurship provides an important pathway to shrinking the wealth and employment gaps for our community. It’s also the focus of my organization, 2Gether-International. We’re the leading accelerator in the world for entrepreneurs with disabilities. We’ve supported nearly 60 high-growth, high-impact companies so far, which have generated more than $40 million in revenue and acquisitions. This December, we celebrate our 10 year anniversary.

Our quarterly pitch competitions, which have been supported by the Kauffman Foundation, bring hundreds of people together to showcase the value and ingenuity that disabled people bring to the table. We’re also building the entrepreneur funnel by creating a venture lab to support startups pre-accelerator. Our plan is to grow a model that will one day support close to 3,000 founders a year. Our next virtual competition, for our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Cohort accelerator, in support with Comcast, will take place on December 13.

People need to see the unrealized potential of our underestimated community. Every entrepreneur faces fire drills and is going to stumble at some point. The real determinant of whether somebody will be successful is how quickly they can recalibrate and learn from mistakes. We, as disabled individuals, face a hundred fires a day just by the nature of our lived experiences navigating a world that wasn’t built for us. We know we are resilient and innovative enough to succeed because we already have to be.

A massive obstacle disabled founders face is access to capital, as is the case for all underestimated entrepreneurs. Women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs each receive less than 3% of venture capital funding. That’s part of why new funding models are so important. However, when it comes to disabled entrepreneurs, the data on funding doesn’t even exist. Prior to 2Gether-International’s work, there wasn’t even a single fund focused exclusively on founders with disabilities.

Funding entrepreneurs with disabilities isn’t an act of charity or just a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) best practice – it’s an economic imperative. A study done in 2000 for the World Bank estimated that between $1.37 and $1.94 trillion in global GDP is lost each year because of the limited of involvement of disabled people in our economy. With one in four U.S. adults identifying as having a disability, the economic and societal benefits of a disability-inclusive approach to development and workforces would be staggering. The cost of exclusion truly impacts us all. Since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed 32 years ago, the employment rate for the disability community has barely budged. Today, only 19% of people with disabilities in our country are employed – compared with more than 63% of the nondisabled population – and the unemployment rate is more than 10%. Fortunately, organizations like the Kauffman Foundation are championing a vision for inclusive entrepreneurship that includes all founders.

Yet, people with disabilities face a poverty trap. Many of us receive Medicaid and/or Medicare benefits to manage our needs, however, there’s a cap on how much income you can make before you risk losing those benefits. A lot of people choose to intentionally keep their businesses small to keep from making more than the limit. Entrepreneurship is hard enough without having to intentionally restrict your own business’s growth.

Additionally, policymakers need to accept what they don’t know. The disability community often says, “Nothing about us without us.” Rather than local governments supporting another job placement program, they should focus on directing funding toward programs and accelerators that support entrepreneurs with disabilities or directly fund the businesses themselves. We, as disabled individuals, are in the best position to address our community’s needs.

Disability Employment Awareness Month is a good time to reflect on the progress that’s been made and consider what each of us can do to help make entrepreneurship and economic participation truly inclusive. I had the honor and privilege of going to the White House last month for the anniversary of the ADA. Hearing the president of the United States acknowledge the wage and unemployment issues and recognize our community’s value and identity was empowering. It filled me with optimism that a culture of acceptance and appreciation is spreading. The more we fuel entrepreneurs with disabilities, the better our communities and world become for everybody.

Diego Mariscal is the founder and CEO of 2Gether-International and a proud member of the disability community. Since founding the organization in 2015, Diego has collaborated with multinational organizations, been recognized internationally for his work with the disability community, and attended global summits to advocate for entrepreneurs with disabilities.