HUUB, a free small business support platform, has launched in Tempe, one of eight U.S. cities to be chosen. On Oct. 6, HUUB became available to qualified Tempe businesses and entrepreneurial communities. Tempe joins Mesa, Gilbert, Phoenix, Goodyear, Avondale, Scottsdale, and Colorado Springs, Colo., as the only HUUB city hosts.
HUUB desires to be “A one-stop, central hub for your city that brings incubation, education, and resources to small businesses. Freeing up your city’s resources and helping economic development teams re-envision technical assistance programs.”
CO+HOOTS serves as the parent company to HUUB sharing ideals and the same underlying value, allowing underrepresented entrepreneurs to access resources to grow their businesses or brand.
HUUB’s services are free to the eight selected cities. Christine Marin, a historian at Tempe History, is stunned.
“It’s too good to be true,” said Marin.
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Jenny Poon, founder and CEO of CO+HOOTS, reinforces this foundation of HUUB.
“We make HUUB free for all business owners. The government pays for it. The government white labels and takes our platform and uses it to essentially deliver more wraparounds and support to business owners,” Poon said.
“It’s really important for us to make it free because that’s how a lot of these business owners that have been struggling through the pandemic or just struggling because they’re small business owners or have been marginalized. It’s important to us that we can help as many people as we can,” said Poon.
Meg Zemlicka, marketing director at HUUB, expanded on the importance HUUB offers.
“The ultimate goal of HUUB is something that is very admirable. There’s notoriously so many tools and so many resources available that local business owners don’t know about.”
The motivation behind the creation of HUUB is very admirable. Poon is the daughter of two immigrant parents from Vietnam. She emphasized the importance of enriching oneself with small business and entrepreneurs wisdom, something she wishes her parents were afforded.
“My parents were refugees from Vietnam, and they started a small restaurant when I was born. In that time, I really saw how difficult it was for them to find the right people to help them with their business but also find resources, loans, funding, or even training to run a business,” Poon said.
Poon’s personal story fuels HUUB and allows those in her family’s prior situation to make the best of it.
“All of those things were all new to them, and they didn’t really ever get the support that they needed. And I was along that journey with them,” said Poon.
To learn more about HUUB, visit joinhuub.com.
