Grady Johnson, Executive Director, The Harbor Entrepreneur Center

In an interview with Invest:, Grady Johnson, executive director of The Harbor Entrepreneur Center, discussed the center’s expansion, founder support, industry diversity, access to capital, and priorities for the next several years. “Office doors are open, people walk around, and they know resources are down the hall,” Johnson said.

What changes over the past year had the greatest impact on the center?

The big news for us at The Harbor Entrepreneur Center is that we continue to expand. We now occupy 64,000 square feet.

We have more than 130 companies under our roof. That makes us one of the three largest entrepreneur centers in the Southeast and one of the 10 largest in the nation in terms of size and number of companies under one roof. We benchmark ourselves against independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit entrepreneur centers that are not associated with government or universities.

How has expansion changed your capacity to support founders?

We are not focused on any one industry vertical. We are eclectic in our view of the companies we want to support and agnostic about the business model. We are not a technology center, and companies do not have to be in medical technology or another particular sector. We are focused on the entrepreneurs and founders themselves.

The expansion has given us more space for more of what we were already doing. When we talk about the building, it is not a real estate deal for us. It is a program.

We do not call the companies here tenants; they are residents. We support them so they do not have to worry about real estate while they are at an earlier stage. We offer flexible terms rather than tying anyone to a long-term lease, and the pricing is below market.

Getting everybody together under one roof creates an atmosphere of peer-to-peer advising. The building contains a significant sample of the ecosystem under one roof, so we can provide all kinds of peer relationships and advisers simply through proximity.

If you have a question, there is a good chance your neighbor has an answer. In a normal commercial real estate setting, it might be strange to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask what the company does. Here, it is encouraged. Office doors are open, people walk around, and they know resources are down the hall. That is a unique result of treating the space as a program instead of a commercial real estate deal.

Which industries and business models are generating the most momentum?

We surveyed our residents, and I had a vision of displaying the industries in a pie chart. When we received the survey results, the chart looked like a kaleidoscope. It was useless because there were so many businesses and business models here.

In years past, you could classify a company as technology. Now everybody is technology. It does not matter what business you are in; technology is generally so embedded in the business model that trying to subdivide all of those categories becomes ridiculous.

An interesting trend is that AI allows nontechnical founders to vibe-code minimum viable products. An MVP used to be a huge barrier. Years ago, we saw nontechnical founders make the cardinal mistake of spending five or six figures on a digital platform that had not been market-tested. That was the death of them.

Now it is relatively easy to vibe-code something and take it to market for testing. That has changed how rapidly someone can enter the technology side of a business, whatever the company’s niche. It could still be a service business but become much more technology-enabled. A vibe-coded product will not scale without a next step, but it can be market-tested much more easily. Entrepreneurs are becoming more nimble as a result.

How is the capital environment affecting entrepreneurs?

Good deals and good companies are going to find capital. The continuing trend is that larger funds are becoming more conservative. A decade ago, they were much less risk-averse.

As funds grow, they add more members and larger investments to their pools. More members mean more questions that fund managers must answer if things go wrong. The nature of that is making the people who make investment decisions more conservative. They are going to find and invest in the top layer of companies.

Another interesting development is that more family offices and small boutique funds are appearing. They tend to be more like entrepreneurs. They take more risk and provide seed capital at earlier stages, although the company still has to be good at what it does.

The company must have everything buttoned up and be ready to receive investment. The state’s capital landscape is becoming more diverse, with the Upstate and coastal areas, particularly Charleston, attracting the most attention. Investment can be harder to find in the middle of the state because the smaller funds are located elsewhere. A small fund often wants an investment nearby so its people can see and talk with the company. That comfort allows it to take more risk than a large, arm’s-length fund.

How is the Truist Foundation grant expanding opportunities for founders?

The Truist Foundation grant allowed us to expand, add more programming, and build on what we do here. Along with strong support from Charleston County Economic Development, the Town of Mount Pleasant, the CRDA and a grant from the SCRA , we are extending our programming to support founders at all stages of growth.

In the past, we focused mainly on founders who already had a minimum viable product and were taking it to market. That was our sweet spot for many years. Now we are adding programming at the beginning of the funnel, when someone is at the ideation stage, to help that person move from an idea to a minimum viable product.

That is a much larger group of founders than the number who already have an MVP and are trying to take it to market and scale. We should be able to serve three or four times the number of founders because the largest pool consists of people trying to figure out how to move from the kitchen table to the market.

It is important to give them support. It is also important to help people decide that they are not ready yet.

Entrepreneurs are often willing to take risks and plunge into things. If they plunge too soon, it could be the only plunge they take. Our experience can help people decide whether they are ready, should wait, or should return to a day job. That de-risks the launch of companies.

What are your key goals for the next three to five years?

We want to continue serving entrepreneurs at all stages of their journey. We will continue honing our ability to understand where founders are in the process, from having an idea all the way to exiting the company.

When founders come to us seeking help, we want to qualify where they are in the journey and be more precise in the support we provide. As we identify the various stages and understand the steps within each stage, we can provide more focused programming.

This cannot simply be an online class. Entrepreneurship is a contact sport. We need to surround founders with mentors and other experts on a one-to-one basis because every company and every founder is different.

It is not one-size-fits-all. There is a huge difference between someone trying to commercialize medical technology and someone vibe-coding an app. Understanding how to help each type of company and becoming more precise with our assistance is what we are looking at.

Being in the Charleston region, we are extraordinarily fortunate. We do not have to spend time recruiting people to the area.

People come for a visit or vacation, fall in love with Charleston, and return later to stay. Many exited entrepreneurs move here and then look for something meaningful to do. Volunteering at the center or another organization that supports entrepreneurs can be extraordinarily satisfying for them.

We can take advantage of talent coming from other places and create one-to-one mentoring relationships with young companies. Entrepreneurs rarely do this only once. They often start another business or help other entrepreneurs, so mentoring gives experienced founders a way to help young companies grow.