#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Tiffanie Stanard, Founder & CEO, Stimulus
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Empowering Supplier Relationships through Relationship Intelligence
Tiffanie Stanard, the Founder and CEO of Stimulus, brings a wealth of experience from her corporate background in vendor management and diverse purchasing then becoming a consultant in the same industry before founding Stimulus. Having worked with companies like Sunoco, McDonald's, Paramount Pictures, Salesforce, and Comcast/NBCUniversal, she recognized the importance of strong supplier relationships as a competitive advantage for businesses. We sat down with her for a conversation about her success and challenges securing funding for her company and how policymakers can better fuel supplier diversity.
Tell us about your background. What led you to founding Stimulus?
My journey began with helping corporations manage their vendors and connect with local, diverse suppliers. As I delved deeper into the process, I began seeing some gaps of folks not tracking their B2B relationships—a key component of business scaling. There were questions businesses should have known about their suppliers: How did you meet that company? Are they a customer of yours? Are they eligible to be a vendor? How many different teams are they working with? What is their experience? Stimulus was created to really streamline the process of how a company searches, evaluates, and selects suppliers. I also wanted to build something that was vendor friendly to help them market their products/services and track their different corporate relationships.
What does Stimulus do?
Stimulus is a relationship intelligence platform that combines data insights, relationship-building tools, and a proprietary score to help companies make the best purchasing decisions, while optimizing, nurturing, and growing their supplier ecosystems. Our platform is unique because it provides visibility to enable teams to analyze supplier data and view actionable insights—helping companies build honest, transparent relationships that lead to better business outcomes. Stimulus makes it more efficient for companies to choose the right suppliers, fulfill business objectives including location-based and DEI criteria by easily comparing suppliers using relevant metrics and data points, and quickly matching them to available contract opportunities. This gives decision-makers the ability to make the best purchasing decision to build an ecosystem that their organization can depend on at all times.
You’ve founded multiple companies at this point. What’s been your experience as a Black woman serial entrepreneur?
I didn’t have to raise money for my previous companies—since they were services, we were funded through customer revenue, partnerships, and self-funding. Then, I founded Stimulus and jumped into the world of building software and going after venture capital. Like many women and people of color, I’ve faced challenges accessing capital, but also encountered challenges based on our industry. Prior to COVID we had some small angel investors and a few VC funds that believed in me, my leadership, and my experience right away. However, it wasn't until COVID—where people were not receiving the products and services they needed in a timely fashion—that investors understood the importance of supply chain because they or their other portfolio companies were personally impacted. Once people started to understand supply chain, it became a slightly easier conversation to have with investors when it came to pre-seed and seed funding. There are still difficulties that underrepresented founders like me continue to face in this space, but it has been a little easier now that people understand the critical problem we’re solving at Stimulus.
The federal government has committed to supporting supply chain ecosystems. What has your experience been accessing those programs and resources, and how can the government use tools like Stimulus to contract with small- and minority-owned businesses?
We did get a PPP loan during COVID, and since then, we’ve been trying to take advantage of different grants and funding opportunities, especially those included within the infrastructure bill. There are folks trying to make sure that money goes towards people of color, women, and local businesses to repair and bring local supply chains in the U.S. We would love for the government to bring better awareness to existing grant and government contracting opportunities that people could access.
It’s really difficult to get government contracts—it takes years, and small businesses and entrepreneurs of color have long been excluded from those opportunities. But if you do manage to obtain one, it's normally a multi-year, guaranteed income that myself and others would love to take advantage of. A percentage of government contract funds are supposed to be set aside for minority companies, but most cities are barely meeting their quotas each year, and there’s no accountability. Our platform solves this by allowing governments to easily compare suppliers using relevant metrics and data points and quickly matching businesses to available contract opportunities real time. So the government definitely should be using a platform like Stimulus to help make better purchasing decisions while also allowing businesses to achieve their different government contract goals.
What has been your experience navigating the legal landscape around data privacy and security?
We are a data-driven platform so security is really important to us. Thankfully we don’t take personal data like SSNs, but we do manage companies' EINs and addresses. We made sure that we built our platform to reflect any data that’s private remains private to the account holder, and any data that is public can remain public and available. Rigorous security measures, penetration tests, and other industry best practices have been integral from the start. All of these security measures are expensive, it can take what seems like a whole round of funding just for security and data protection compliance. A uniform regulatory environment with clear expectations and funding or other programs tailored to support startups in achieving compliance without compromising their financial stability would be incredibly helpful. These measures would alleviate some of the compliance burdens, allowing businesses like ours to focus on growth rather than navigating the complexities of varying regulations.
Are there any other issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
It is important that policymakers address issues related to supplier diversity, to ensure that mandates they set forward are being followed and that companies have an equitable opportunity to work with the government. Usually, it is a question of awareness, and in addition to some of the issues I highlighted earlier—the way the government often looks for suppliers doesn’t work well in practice. Say someone wanted to find Stimulus based on North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes. Stimulus is a relationship intelligence platform for sourcing and supplier relationships, but you could never look that up in NAICS. We are classified as software publishers which might be technically correct, but the description is nothing close to what we do. Thus, companies are not properly identified which can prevent them from showing up in a search, which can limit opportunities.
What are your goals for Stimulus moving forward?
Looking ahead, our goal is to strengthen our relationships with private companies and expand our presence in the government sector. I envision Stimulus being part of the conversations surrounding the infrastructure bill, collaborating with both corporations and local governments to promote supplier diversity and efficiency. We aim to make a lasting impact by empowering companies to make better supplier decisions and work towards achieving greater supplier diversity in both the private and government sectors.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
