Through the efforts of the Connecticut Technology Council, DECD, Startup America and many others, I’m sure, the state approved a multi-year $625mil economic development package. You probably heard that already. But what does that mean on a practical level for startups?
Tuesday I hosted a group of entrepreneurs at Higher One to hear more about the details of the plan. (Sorry for the packed house – many more people than expected. We are moving soon to a new building with larger conference rooms.)
Matt Nemerson, Kip Bergstrom and Casey Pickett presented the results of research and a plan for moving forward. See below for the full deck.
The general take-away is that CI is getting $25mil more annually for 5 years. At least $5mil a year is expected to go into building the startup ecosystem and the goal is to make an impact as fast as possible. I heard Kip say he would like to stand up new incubators/accelerators in the next few months. Sounds like there will be an RFP issued for matching funds from the state to support private efforts to do this in Stamford, New Haven, Hartford and New London/Storrs.
If I understand correctly, the Stamford Innovation Center is an example of the type of incubator/accelerator envisioned. And perhaps YEI would be, as well, if open more broadly rather than focusing on Yale. I imagine that the success and buzz around YCominator and Techstars serves as a draw. Plus, my guess is it is easier for the state to support things that are more tangible and physical like a physical incubator space.
Innovation Ecosystem – Startup Connecticut – 10-13-2011 – Version 3 2
While there was generally excitement to have attention to these issues, there were some questions like:
- Will the state be able to execute quickly?
- Will the state’s move crowd out private actors and then not follow through making the situation worse than it would otherwise have been?
- Will the emphasis on scale, buy-in and metrics, bloat the effort until little is achieved?
(It was funny to see the roll reversal. A roomful of entrepreneurs pitched on an idea. They say: “good idea, but can you execute?” Sounds like VCs 
I’d love to see more activity happening. That part excites me. I do want to make sure that efforts make sense and are real solutions to real issues. I have a theory that the choice of venue for a young entrepreneur has more to do with (a) social recognition and (b) having a good social life/quality of life than anyone likes to talk about. People will comment on finding engineers or cost of this or that. Those may be business issues although I think people often overcome them when the social part is there. I wonder if that is being addressed in this plan?
Here’s a simple idea that David Fischer gave me. What if you gave free rent/housing for one year to entrepreneurs to start in New Haven. Rather than focusing on the office, make it easier for people to live here and experience the benefits. If you want you could put encourage them to live close to each other or in the same building. You hold some mixers and networking events and generally make them feel special and welcome. Once they build the social network, momentum will kick in and some percentage will stay.
You could start this almost immediately. Get a panel of judges. Create a one-page application. Require people to raise $25,000 of private money (could be their own). Do as little due diligence as possible so as not to slow down the process or deter good people from joining. Then make a fuss in the social media, online entrepreneurship world that New Haven is paying you to move to town. Maybe even pay the airfare to get here. (I think the closest I’ve heard to this idea is Startup Chile. Do people know much about that program in practice?)
Would love to hear your thoughts on how to most effectively grow the startup ecosystem in New Haven and CT.
