Cliff Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, was a guest on the Nine Network’s public television program Stay Tuned on Nov. 20 along with Ed Domain of Techli.com, Travis Sheridan of Venture Cafe, journalists, and entrepreneurs including Tom Cohen co-founder of Nanopore Diagnostics (winner of this week’s StartUp Connection, the 2014 Olin Cup and Arch Grants). Watch the discussion about the thriving startup ecosystem in St. Louis here.
Wash U senior Jolijt Tamanaha is reporting from the Web Summit in Dublin this week for St. Louis-based Techli.com. Read her reports on Techli as she navigates through the who’s who of the startup world, tech innovation, VCs, and journalists.
Farmlicipty co-founders Joljit Tamanaha and Drew Koch
Jolijt cofounded her first startup, Farmplicity, during her freshman year and exited last year. She is currently working on building a new company, Champio, a social media content generator.
No, not that kind of bouncer…the Skandalaris Center is looking for IDEA bouncers. The next Ideabounce® event is this Friday, Nov. 7 at 4 p.m. If you’ve got an idea for a startup, this is your chance to bounce your idea off a team of judges and a live audience who will give you feedback. Give it a shot – you get two minutes to pitch your idea. What have you got to lose? Registration is open until noon, Tuesday, Nov. 4.
If you wish to pitch at the event please post your idea and email the Skandalaris Center: sces@wustl.edu. At every IdeaBounce® there is an open mic portion, and for this week’s event there will also be an award of $100 to the best open mic pitch.
The Rise of the Rest Road Tour makes its last stop in St. Louis Friday, Oct. 10, at 10 a.m. with a public event in the Frick Forum. Be a part of the conversation with Steve Case co-founder of AOL Inc. and CEO of Revolution, an investment firm focused on building disruptive, innovative companies that benefit consumers. The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons will also take part.
Rise of the Rest is a five-city, five-day bus tour spotlighting emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Midwest. Other stops on the tour include Madison, Wis., Minneapolis, Des Moines, Ia., and Kansas City, Mo.
After the event at Washington University, the tour will head to downtown startup hub T-Rex for a pitch competition, where ten of St. Louis’ startups will compete for a $100,000 investment from Case and a trip to the 2015 SXSW Startup Village, where they will vie for additional funding.
Steve Case
Competition judges in St. Louis will include Case, Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea, Maxine Clark, co-founder of Build-a-Bear, Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, and Robb Heineman, CEO of Sporting Club on his judges panel. They’ll hear pitches from the following St. Louis-based startups:
SYNEK: Any beer tapped fresh on your counter
Material Mix: Material Mix commoditizes industrial trash with an open exchange platform.
myEDmatch: myEDmatch is like online dating for teaching jobs to lower teacher turnover
BetaVersity: BetaVersity brings physical and virtual learning-by-doing to students.
Eateria: Digital loyalty marketing tool for the restaurant industry
Need/Want: Need/Want makes consumer products that solve problems.
MeterGenius: MeterGenius helps users engage with and lower their electricity usage.
Tunespeak2014: Tunespeak is a loyalty platform for musicians.
Better Weekdays: A Job-Matching Platform based on Compatibility and Culture Fit.
Dabble: Online Peer-to-Peer Marketplace for Classes in the Community
For more information, visit riseoftherest.com.
As any entrepreneur will tell you, it takes a village to raise a startup. But what does it take to create a nurturing ecosystem where new businesses can thrive? A new study by researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Kauffman Foundation takes a deeper look at the notion that entrepreneurial hubs emerge and succeed when they are surrounded by favorable support systems.
The paper, titled “Examining the Connections within the Startup Ecosystem,” is based on a case study of the St. Louis region, which has not been widely known as an entrepreneurial hub, but has seen a recent, substantial transformation of its local entrepreneurship ecosystem.
“Entrepreneurs clearly learn best from interacting with other entrepreneurs,” said Karren K. Watkins, Olin MBA’13, a research associate at the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University.
“A strength of the St. Louis startup ecosystem is the extent to which entrepreneurs are connected with others – both peers in similar industries and stages of growth, as well as experienced entrepreneurs who can serve as mentors.”
The study explores key relationships among entrepreneurs, support organizations and miscellaneous connections to learn how different players interact with one another and how an ecosystem evolves in order to make public- and private-sector behavior more effective. It also analyzes how successful ecosystems have developed over time, particularly how they got started, to identify potential policy implications.
“Many regions would like to replicate the enviable culture that Silicon Valley and a few other areas of the country have created,” said study co-author Yasuyuki Motoyama, PhD, senior scholar in research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation. “This study points to the most effective infrastructure being one that allows startup company founders to learn from their peers and from experienced entrepreneurs within a highly evolved and interconnected system of support organizations.”
Among the findings, the report indicates that cooperation among support organizations has played a key role in the evolution of the ecosystem by connecting entrepreneurs at the right stage of a startup’s development with the right type of support, particularly from other entrepreneurs with specific expertise or experience.
The full study is available online here.
By Julie Hail Flory, WUSTL Newsroom
Media coverage of the research: Forbes.com, Inc.com
Image: Kauffman Foundation research
The Wall Street Journal, “The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make” features Prof. Cliff Holekamp on lessons he learned as an entrepreneur and founder of Foot Healers.
