A first-ever event in downtown Boston aimed at helping Asian business owners obtain access to money needed to grow their businesses kicked off Wednesday at Suffolk University Law School.
The inaugural AAPI Capital Summit was organized by the Asian Business Empowerment Council at the Boston Foundation. It provided Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs with tools to secure capital.
“We’re really here to demystify what access to capital means, but in a way that’s really accessible, plain and simple,” said QJ Shi, senior director of the Asian Business Empowerment Council.
More than 100 local entrepreneurs and business leaders attended the event, which organizers intend to be held annually. The purpose of the event was to help entrepreneurs create direct relationships with banks, CDFIs and public sector partners, and explain how capital works across institutions.
Asian-owned businesses have nearly tripled in Massachusetts over the last two decades, growing 187%, according to a 2024 report from the Asian Business Empowerment Council. The report found that Asian-owned businesses contribute $4 billion in payroll to the state’s economy each year.
Shi said that while AAPI business owners are responsible for a significant portion of the state’s growth, many doors remain closed for them.
Forty percent of the Asian-owned businesses surveyed by the Asian Business Empowerment Council said they self-finance their small businesses. Another 24% said they rely on friends and family for financial support.
“It works for some businesses. It doesn’t work if you’re thinking about growing and scaling,” Shi said. “That’s why this event is so important.”
Susu Wong is the founder and owner of Tomo360, a Lowell-based marketing agency. She said she’s been involved with the Asian Business Empowerment Council for years. As both an Asian and a woman in business, she said the bar for competition is high.
That’s why events like the summit — helping put local entrepreneurs in front of business leaders and the gatekeepers of capital — are important, she said.
“It’s not like you can just [knock on the door] of businesses. You need to have the relationship,” Wong said.
Paul W. Lee is a member of the advisory board of the Asian Business Empowerment Council. He said that these numbers indicate the large potential for Asian-owned businesses.
But hurdles ranging from education to language stand in the way of access to capital. The fact that many Asian small business owners also happen to be immigrants makes the path toward capital even more challenging in today’s climate.
“Immigrants are under siege right now, so they’re going to be reluctant to apply to the government program because they want to stay off the radar,” Lee said. “So private sources of capital, like banks, I think is very important.”
Ruomo Wu, a 23-year-old recent graduate from UMass Boston, said he was excited to take in the wisdom available at the summit.
Wu, who plans to start his own advisory firm, said that he wants to “hear what everyone has to say, take in every single bit of advice. Even if it’s the harshest criticism, it’s still very much beneficial to me.”
Eric Paley, the state’s secretary of economic development, said that these are difficult times for small business owners and immigrant communities.
“What ABEC (Asian Business Empowerment Council) does, it’s really powerful in terms of helping a community rise together and making investments in small business entrepreneurship,” Paley said.
