Voyage Savannah highlights Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship
Today we’d like to introduce you to Ande Noktes.
Ande, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started my first business over 20 years ago with $9 in my bank account and a $100 gift card to my name. I had three kids under the age of two (twins if you’re counting!), but looking around the world of education, I noticed that there was a huge gap between what we know the brain needs to learn and what was happening in our schools and classrooms. I couldn’t imagine a world where I didn’t do something to try to fix it. So I took my very meager resources and started my first school. Fifteen years later I had started three schools, all solving different parts of the problem with our educational system. But I wasn’t an educational administrator, I was a builder, and decided to leave that world to start an entrepreneurship center, helping people who see problems in their world fix them with entrepreneurship. I moved to the Georgia coast in 2022 to start the Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship, and we serve over 300 entrepreneurs every year through our no-cost coaching and programming.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I definitely live a life of no regrets, but that doesn’t mean everything has been easy. As a woman founder in the early 2000s, access to capital was impossible. Even today, women-owned small businesses make up 45% of all of the entrepreneurial activity in the US but have access to less than 4% of all available capital. The positive side of that is that every challenge brings an opportunity, and I love supporting women who have big ambitious goals think about growing and scaling their businesses in creative ways, when outside capital isn’t an option.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship believes in the power of entrepreneurship to solve the biggest problems facing our communities and world. We believe that every human is a creative problem solver, and that entrepreneurship is the most impactful vehicle for economic empowerment.
We support people who have ideas but don’t know where to start, startups and side hustles and volunteer-run nonprofits, and business owners and nonprofit leaders who have big goals and aren’t sure how to get there. In short, the Lucas Center works with the people at the center of entrepreneurial activity to help them get unstuck and find their next move.
Our programs include the award-winning Idea Bootcamp, taking people from idea to startup plan in a single day; 6SEED, a 6-week course for startups, side hustles, and volunteer-run nonprofits to go from being a part time thing to hiring their first full-time employee; and ACCELER8, an 8-week course for existing businesses and nonprofits to help them reach their growth goals. 6SEED and ACCELER8 culminate in a pitch competition and the Lucas Center awards over $60,000 each year in prize funds.
Voyage Savannah: https://voyagesavannah.com/interview/hidden-gems-meet-ande-noktes-of-lucas-center-for-entrepreneurship
About the Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship The Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Brunswick, Georgia, dedicated to creating economic opportunity through entrepreneurship education and resources. The Lucas Center connects founders with the mentors, tools, capital, and networks they need to build thriving businesses on the Georgia coast and beyond. To learn more or connect with the Lucas Center, visit www.lucascenter.com.
Contact: Ande Noktes, CEO at ande@lucascenter.com | (912) 254-7340
