Louisville has been home to me for about six years and I can’t envision that changing anytime soon. I am in love with the place and the people. Whenever I tell people that I live here the first thing that comes to their minds are either the grandeur of the Kentucky Derby, the Louisville Slugger or “what is there to do in Kentucky?”. What a lot of people don’t know is that we are growing a vibrant startup community and some great startups have come out of Kentucky. Furthermore, the UPS world-port is located here, providing opportunities for startups in Logistics to have a competitive and strategic advantage. This is one of the reason I decided to found my startup here, Mailhaven, a smart mailbox to track and secure packages for home owners.
The city is being proactive about increasing the entrepreneurial activity in this region and the new management at EnterpriseCorp (led by very capable women who are changing the ratio) have played a great role in this as well. Now it’s not all a bed of roses, it’s a very challenging environment to raise capital, investors are conservative and diversity in tech is not prominent. In other words there is a lot of room for improvement and Steve’s case (see what I did there) to raise lots of capital in your environment might not be well suited for this audience, every other thing he opines are pretty valid.
Today the Summit of Government Performance & Innovation was held in Louisville, with speakers from all over the country like, AOL co-founder Steve Case and Mark Walsh from the SBA’s Office of Investment and Innovation. Steve spoke about his Third Wave of the internet, which according to his new book “takes you behind the scenes to some of the most consequential and riveting business decisions of our time, and predicts that we’re at the dawn of the next technological revolution unlike anything we’ve seen before — the Third Wave of the internet — that will transform the economy and the way we live our lives.”
How I got to pitch Steve
As part of the entrepreneurial community in Louisville, I am aware of most of the events, but as an early stage founder my time is limited and I can only attend some. However, I had some time this morning and honestly even if I didn’t I still would have made the time to accept an invitation to pitch to Steve in his tour bus. Thanks, David Taliaferro.
That’s me in the picture above giving my pitch, I am glad I got the opportunity to do so. My purpose was not to try to sell my startup, though I mentioned the awesome stuff we are working on and believe me it really is. I talked about the opportunities in Louisville how the location of UPS can be a competitive advantage, how companies like Dave Durand’s Forest Giant and Fabricated Metals are setting an example by incubating startups. This is a model that I would like to see blossom in Louisville, more mature startups/companies should partner with new ones aligned with their interest. Provide them with space, some staff member support, help them grow to overcome our limited access to resources. If we are trying to build an entrepreneurial community this is a proven method as opposed to struggling to raise from Louisville investors at the onset to get these resources on your own.
There is a lot of talk about startups giving back to the community and if you are a growth/mature stage startup in Louisville are you just doing the talking or actually walking? Another example is Alex Frommeyer from Beam Dental, and how he has incubated Jeremiah Chapman’s FreshFry. I don’t know details of the relationship but I know he has helped grow that startup and give a minority founder like Jeremiah a shot. While we celebrate entrepreneurship in the city to our visitors, let’s also reflect, identify those giving back and the models that can help make our great City a vibrant place for entrepreneurs.
Also I’d love to thank the leadership at Enterprise Louisville and their sponsors for putting the events together. I am looking forward to more like this.
