How Jenny Poon and HUUB are redefining access — and reshaping the future of small business growth in Arizona.
Jenny Poon saw the pattern before anyone named it. Inside Co+Hoots, a co-working space in Arizona, she watched entrepreneurs move through their days carrying the weight of their businesses alone — answering emails, managing finances, solving problems in real time. Wearing 50 different hats.
They weren’t lacking ambition. They were lacking access. Again and again, she saw the same divide: founders with the right connections moved faster, solved problems quicker, and scaled with confidence. Those without them stalled — not because they weren’t capable, but because they didn’t know who to trust, where to go, or how to find the help they needed.
For Jenny, it was personal.
“My parents were refugees. They didn’t know who to go to for accounting or how to scale their marketing. They were working just as hard — but growing much slower,” she says. “The difference was access.”
That gap — between effort and opportunity — became the foundation for HUUB.
Not Just Resources — The Right Ones
The idea had been forming for years. But it wasn’t until the pandemic forced Co+Hoots to close that Jenny and her team had the space to build it. What emerged wasn’t just a platform. It was a system designed to solve a specific, persistent problem:
Small business owners don’t need more information. They need the right information — at the right time — from the right people.
HUUB brings together vetted experts across legal, finance, marketing, and technology, then routes them to the businesses that need them most. It surfaces funding opportunities — grants, loans, venture capital — and maps the broader ecosystem of support, from chambers of commerce to specialized programs. But more importantly, it filters. It recommends. It understands context.
“We’re not just giving business owners resources,” Jenny explains. “We’re helping them find what’s actually right for them — without them having to dig through everything themselves.”
For founders already stretched thin, that difference is everything.
When the Right Connection Changes Everything
In Mesa, a small business owner was on the brink. He was navigating a co-founder separation while locked out of his storefront during the pandemic — still responsible for rent, with no clear path forward.
“I didn’t even know where to start,” he recalls. Through HUUB, he was connected to an attorney who helped structure a separation agreement and negotiate rent relief with his landlord.
The business survived. Another founder, a coffee shop owner, faced a different challenge. Her first location was successful — but growth felt out of reach. Hiring, operations, scaling — each step came with uncertainty. Through HUUB’s support programs, she built the systems she needed to expand. Today, she operates multiple locations and employs teams across the Valley.
The difference in both cases wasn’t effort. It was access — at the exact moment it mattered.
Infrastructure for an Entire Ecosystem
What began as a founder solution has become something larger: infrastructure. HUUB is funded by municipalities and economic development agencies, making it free for small business owners. For governments, it solves a challenge that has existed for decades: how to support thousands of small businesses at scale. Because the reality is simple — and often overlooked:
It’s far easier to measure the impact of one large corporation than hundreds of small businesses. A single company can report jobs created and boxes checked. But how do you track impact across independent coffee shops, boutique retailers, and service providers spread across a city? Before HUUB, you couldn’t — not without enormous time and resources. Now, you can.
HUUB tracks connections, monitors engagement, and measures outcomes: job creation, revenue growth, cost reduction. It even identifies businesses at risk, using sentiment and behavioral signals to intervene before it’s too late.
For governments operating with limited staff and growing demands, that visibility creates something critical: capacity.
A Shift in How We Build Economies
At its core, HUUB reflects a broader shift already underway. For decades, economic development centered on attracting large corporations — a strategy built on scale, but also risk. Companies can relocate. Incentives expire. Impact can vanish. What’s emerging now is different.
Supporting 100 small businesses isn’t just more resilient — it’s more powerful.
Across Arizona, that philosophy is taking hold. Governments, banks, universities, and support organizations are aligning around a shared goal: strengthening the small businesses that form the backbone of their communities. The pandemic didn’t create this shift — but it made it impossible to ignore.
The Future Is Connected
HUUB’s vision extends beyond Arizona’s urban centers into rural communities, where access has historically been limited — and the potential for impact is even greater. With digital incubation, real-time data, and intelligent matchmaking, the platform is building a future where geography no longer determines opportunity. “We’re creating a world where every business owner — no matter where they are — can access the right support at the right time,” says Jenny.
Because in the end, the equation is simple: When you give founders the right connections,
they build stronger businesses.
