Startup Community Alchemy: Building A Startup Community

Startup Community Alchemy (Sioux Falls Deck, October 2012)

This presentation was prepared for the South Dakota Innovation Expo 2012 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA on October 23-24, 2012. This deck builds upon a presentation developed for The Startup America Partnership and adds key insight from Boulder, Colorado, based on the indispensable work and insight of Brad Feld (tip: buy his book).

This is a short presentation on some of the learning derived from research in New Orleans, Omaha and Cedar Rapids/Iowa City, on how to catalyze and begin to build a connected network/ecosystem for entrepreneurs in a city not traditionally known for a strong entrepreneurial culture. This presentation is not intended to present a comprehensive solution, but rather some key principles and a common theoretical model that has emerged in the research. This is certainly a work in progress and your feedback is welcome

Andy Stoll is the co-founder of Startup Iowa and Iowa-based Seed Here Studio, a social good startup working to catalyze a more connected community of entrepreneurs, creatives and the people that support them in Cedar Rapids/Iowa City, Iowa and across The Silicon Prairie.

Additional Links

Referenced in the above presentations:

Startup Revolution: Startup Communities Blog by Brad Feld
Startup Communities Book by Brad Feld (Amazon | Public Library)
Building An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Lessons from Omaha, paper by Tom Chapman (abridged version). 7 page PDF
Building An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Lesson from Omaha, paper by Tom Chapman (full version), 28 page PDF
Seed Here (Cedar Rapids) (Seed Here Facebook Page)
ICCreatives.us: An online community hub for the entrepreneurial and creative community in Cedar Rapids/Iowa City.
Thinc Iowa Conference (Des Moines)
Big Omaha Conference (Omaha)
Silicon Prairie News (Omaha/Des Moines)
Idea Village (New Orleans) (non-profit ecosystem building organization at the heart of New Orleans
LaunchPad (New Orleans) (coworking space)
New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week
Chris Schultz’s blog, New Orleans community-builder and entrepreneurship advocate.
Listen to Tim Williamson, CEO and co-founder of Idea Village, in an interview on where their ecosystem got its start. Listen to the podcast here.