How is our state doing so far in 2016 in attracting startups?
As we cross the halfway point of 2016, it’s the perfect time to take a brief look back at the state of our area’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and assess our competitiveness in attracting and supporting high-impact startups.
Ten years ago, there was very little happening on this front beyond the original Innoventure Conference and a handful of community leaders meeting to try and kick start an entrepreneurial movement here. In early 2006, a handful of local entrepreneurs launched NEXT with little fanfare as a part-time program of the Greenville Chamber to champion the entrepreneur’s cause and begin the long, sustained process of building critical ecosystem elements like facilities and capital required to build companies here that would have a global impact.
Today, we find a landscape that is beginning to flourish and starting to produce the results envisioned when the effort first began. This should encourage us as we move into a second decade of leveraging high-impact entrepreneurship as a core approach to economic development. Here are just a few examples from the first six months of this year that reflect our area’s growing entrepreneurial momentum.
Facilities
Building on the success of the award-winning NEXT Innovation Center opened in 2009 and the addition last year of NEXT on Main downtown, a new entrepreneur-centric facility called NEXT Manufacturing opened in March of this year focused uniquely on entrepreneurial manufacturing businesses. The new space on Birnie Street near downtown Greenville was developed by the property owners, Braasch Building Group, and is being built in two phases with phase I being completed earlier this year and phase II scheduled to begin soon.
Other entities have launched new entrepreneur spaces in 2016. Notably, Joe Erwin, founder and former CEO of Erwin Penland, created Endeavor, which caters specifically to creatives in marketing, graphic design and similar fields.
Capital
Just last week, the leadership of the Upstate Carolina Angel Network announced VentureSouth, a new early-stage investment firm that manages angel groups and funds across South Carolina and western North Carolina. This new effort pulls together accredited investors across a broader geography than any other capital group in our state, thus increasing the investment pool available to fuel the growth of area startups.
This milestone announcement is on top of the continued work by UCAN to coalesce Upstate investors, resulting in more than $14 million invested in 47 ventures since launching in 2008.
Talent
At the NEXT Innovation Summit several years ago, the lack of a sustainable entrepreneur-mentoring program was identified as a critical ecosystem gap worth addressing. Following two years of research and successfully landing a grant from the S.C. Department of Commerce to start such a program, the NEXT Venture Mentoring Service in partnership with MIT was created with a “soft launch” in early 2015.
Today, the effort has reached several important milestones, including reaching a total of 22 mentors providing guidance to 17 ventures in our area. Also, the total mentor time volunteered to date just surpassed 1,100 hours in June, while the quality of the mentoring remains high, scoring an average 4.5/5.0 by entrepreneurs in the program.
Company news
Perhaps the most encouraging front during the first half of 2016 is the stream of exciting headlines coming from a broad spectrum of early-stage companies headquartered here. Here are several that come to mind.
- The Iron Yard continued its impressive growth, expanding its code school business to a total of 16 locations and announcing a hospitality accelerator this fall in Las Vegas.
- Cycling innovator Boyd Cycling moved into its new headquarters location on Welborn Street along the Swamp Rabbit Trail, where they now design and build high-performance bike wheels for top cyclists around the globe.
- Local biotech venture Kiyatec recently made international waves when they announced a strategic partnership with the world-renowned Mayo Clinic to fight ovarian cancer by leveraging their patented 3-D cell culture platform.
“There is certainly a flywheel effect happening in the Upstate entrepreneurial ecosystem as success in one arena drives more success in another.”
–John Moore, president, NEXT
If you followed area news this spring, you will certainly be aware of the medtech startup ChartSpan, who disclosed in April the closing of $3.2 million in new investment and the planned addition of 300 new full-time staff positions in Greenville over the next 12 months. Their news combined with that of their peers made the first half of 2016 the most exciting six months since NEXT was founded, and it sets the stage for an even brighter future.
There is certainly a flywheel effect happening in the Upstate entrepreneurial ecosystem as success in one arena drives more success in another. Our entrepreneurs and the companies they founded are producing greater and greater operating results here, and the community is starting to take notice.
While we’re proud of the growing successes and the changes seen over the last 10 years, there is much work to do if we are to make this area nationally recognized for entrepreneurial success. Today, it is critical that we recognize the decade of effort required to generate today’s momentum and recommit ourselves to another even greater decade ahead.
