We took the clickbait Columbus
It seems at least once a year the “Ohio/Columbus is the next Silicon Valley” story circulates from Inc. or Forbes. I understand the pride and flattery we all feel when our city is promoted through these national publications. Nothing wrong with some feel-good self promotion…. but these stories are written about every city outside of NYC and Silicon Valley because these publications know they will be shared like crazy by passionate residents. The image below is of two, legit, back to back stories on the next best startup community, etc., etc., etc.
I don’t want you to think I am the scrooge taking away from our chest pumping. You won’t find a bigger promoter of Columbus, Ohio, or the ‘fly over’s’ than me. I don’t know if there is a measurable impact from the PR benefit of having stories published about our companies and communities, but I don’t believe it hurts.
My frustration is that, if we have a common goal of making Columbus an awesome Entrepreneurial Community, then we have to a.) define what that looks like as a community and b.) measure our progress to hold ourselves and each other accountable. Looking back almost 10 years to 2008 it’s hard to point to real data that shows how the various investments in evolving TechColumbus, WakeupStartup, Startup Weekend and more, have actually produced a better Startup Community in Columbus. Do I feel like we’ve made progress? Yes. Has it really changed though? I’m not sure. The Small Business Administration reports a meaningful drop in Ohio small companies (1 to 499 employees) from 208,741 in 2000 to 181,533 in 2014. These articles focus more on the venture backed style of companies, which represent an incredibly tiny part of even the small business makeup.
We can point to the great work of our local investors and new VC’s, like Drive, and make a good case that we are making real progress. No doubt wins like the CoverMyMeds acquisition will provide a boost to the community. I still find it hard to point to longer term data showing the efforts have made more than an incremental difference. For now I am ok with not knowing, but I would challenge Columbus to be the first entrepreneurial ecosystem to really try to quantify its success.
I’m a fan and believer in Brad Feld’s Building Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, in which he outlines these 4 Key Principles of Entrepreneurial Communities
— led by entrepreneurs
— 20 year view from today
— engage the entire entrepreneurial stack
— continually get fresh blood into the system
We can measure based on jobs, funded startups, etc., but I think it’s more about how entrepreneurs feel. Can we measure over 5, 10, 20 years whether or not entrepreneurs feel like it’s easier, more valuable, more meaningful to start in Columbus? I am bullish, but I want to make it happen, for us, not for anyone else.
