All of a sudden, St. Louis is a more nurturing place for entrepreneurs

[Arch City]

See article below.

Joining domestic regions such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston and international cities London, Paris, Toronto and Amsterdam, St. Louis has opened the 22nd global chapter and the 12th U.S. chapter of the Founder Institute, which is a global network of startups and mentors that helps entrepreneurs launch meaningful and enduring technology companies.

According The Founder Institute's website, "St. Louis is on the ups for early stage entrepreneurship. In the past 6 months alone, a new seed fund making 10 investments of $50,000 per year, and a new business grant program making 10 grants of $50,000 per year, have been launched. The Founder Institute in St. Louis is ideally positioned to prepare entrepreneurs to take advantage of these and other new sources of seed capital."

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All of a sudden, St. Louis is a more nurturing place for entrepreneurs
BY DAVID NICKLAUS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
01/27/12

St. Louis may finally be ready to shake its reputation as a tough place to start a business.

Working mostly independently of one another, groups of St. Louisans have organized at least a half-dozen efforts to provide capital and advice to startup businesses, all of which seem to be bearing fruit at the same time.

Starting tonight, as many as 100 would-be entrepreneurs will gather downtown for a three-day boot camp called Startup Weekend. This week also saw the launch of a startup competition called Arch Grants and a celebration for eight life-sciences companies benefiting from a pair of federal grants.

Next week, other entrepreneurs plan to launch a Missouri chapter of Startup America, a networking and training partnership. And Capital Innovators, a venture capital fund that brings its portfolio companies together in a common space downtown, is scheduled to announce its next five investments.

Later in February, St. Louis will join a worldwide network called the Founder Institute, and the local FinServe Tech Angels investor group will listen to pitches from entrepreneurs who need money.

In short, an area that's often criticized for its lack of an entrepreneurial culture suddenly has a calendar filled with start dates for groups assisting startups.

This flurry of activity hasn't been coordinated by any one organization. "What you're seeing is a lot of people got frustrated about the same things at the same time," says Jerome Katz, a professor of entrepreneurship at St. Louis University.

Their common thought was that, after a severe recession, the best way to rebuild the local economy was to support energetic new businesses with good ideas.

Many of those ideas are in the technology sector, where the evolution of computing has made it possible to start, say, a social-media or mobile app company just about anywhere.

"It's part serendipity and part market-driven," says Jay DeLong, a vice president of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association and a coordinator of Startup Weekend. "There is a groundswell of budding entrepreneurs, and there's a large market opportunity that they're seeking."

Related Links:
St. Louis Startup Weekend
Startup Missouri
BioGenerator
Arch Grants
Capital Innovators
FinServe Tech Angels

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[mhays]

Good to see some scale in these efforts. Creating a new "reputation" requires a lot to go right at once. Of course it's also a lengthy process, where you need more than just new programs and investments but also a more widespread culture of successful new businesses that have ramped up to maturity (providing visibility and also helping spin off or do business with other companies), local capital, talent availability, etc. St. Louis has some built-in advantages for ratcheting up on all this.

[599GTO]

No it's not.

Originally Posted by 599GTO

No it's not.

if you have some sort of adult argument then give it, otherwise stop being a d*ck and go post some lists or something.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by 599GTO

No it's not.

Yeah, those business grants for entrepreneurs specified in the article must just be a figment of all our imaginations!

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by 599GTO

No it's not.

You have always been lazy like that.

[Arch City]

Originally Posted by mhays

Good to see some scale in these efforts. Creating a new "reputation" requires a lot to go right at once. Of course it's also a lengthy process, where you need more than just new programs and investments but also a more widespread culture of successful new businesses that have ramped up to maturity (providing visibility and also helping spin off or do business with other companies), local capital, talent availability, etc. St. Louis has some built-in advantages for ratcheting up on all this.

Although the current economy, although improving, isn't helping much, I think St. Louis is really trying unlike any time in recent memory to expand businesses of all kinds - especially new economy type jobs. As you eluded, there's a lot to build on in St. Louis especially with the scientific and institutional foundation that's in the region.

Then it needs to put a face, like St. Louis-native Jack Dorsey (Founder of Twitter and Square), on the St. Louis IT sector to lure entrepreneurs and startup firms. He can stay in Cali, but his endorsement of St. Louis as an alternative region and personal influence could be helpful to the region's startup efforts. Of course capital needs to be accessible too.

Warning: Soapbox Ahead: I think a major downside to St. Louis is its inferiority complex, which has to shift in order to better compete. Naysayers come a dime a dozen. It has to believe that it can compete with coastal cities. It did before, mind you. And the region needs to tap into what made St. Louis special and competitive in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. I'm not talking about Judy Garland, Meet Me In St. Louis and the 1904 World's Fair either (Yawn!).

I'm suggesting that leaders and stakeholders explore the mindsets of the local leaders from those eras. How did St. Louis land the first Olympics outside of Europe? How did it become such a great railroad, riverport and manufacturing hub even to this day? How did it build such a strong corporate presence? Transfer some of that spirit to today instead of believing St. Louis is "fly over" country because it doesn't have a beach or big mountains.