About
Built by someone who never got the help.
ECF exists because its creator knows firsthand what it costs an entrepreneur when the right help doesn't show up at the right time.
Origin Story
From entrepreneur to system builder.
Derrick A. Parson has been an entrepreneur since 2010 — teaching himself what he needed, founding a technology company, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars without a roadmap. In 2020, Buffalo's leadership asked him to stay and help entrepreneurs who, like him, had never received structured support. Over the next six years he built an ESO, an incubator, and a coworking space, raised over $7.5 million, and created a structured, scalable, outcome-driven framework for delivering expert support at the point of need. That framework is ECF.
Where It Started
One of the first entrepreneurs The Exchange worked with was a man named John, who wanted to revive a former car wash and add a food operation. He thought he needed capital. What he actually needed first was clarity — there was no business model a bank could underwrite.
That realization became the foundation of ECF: the right help, in the right sequence, at the right moment, changes the trajectory of a business.
Proven in Practice
800+
entrepreneurs engaged
1,300+
entrepreneur pipeline
$7.5M+
raised to build the model
Power 100
Buffalo Business First honoree
"I built the framework I wished had existed when I was starting out. Now I am offering it to every organization willing to use it — so the next dreamer with a building and a vision and no roadmap never has to figure it out alone."
— Derrick A. Parson