My Life as ‘Practice Coach’ — The Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Part
From venture investor to university venture creation
In mid-2012, eleven years after my first professional disruption — a transition from the classroom to the board room — I was poised for a second round of what’s next?
Having been a modestly successful venture investor devoted to education innovation since the dot-com trough, I began to feel the need to reframe and recalibrate my professional purpose.
As a lifelong coach, I have long tilted to the build + prepare phase of learning, entrepreneurship, and life. Basically, I have always had a teach a person to fish mentality; hopefully you know the rest of that analogy.
After more than a decade of national emphases on education innovation, the venture capital industry and the firm I helped introduce to education technology were in kinetic energy mode when it comes to edtech investing. I was feeling my hometown Baltimore, Washington, DC, and the Chesapeake Region as places and a broader ecosystem where numerous education enterprises had been launched and were thriving either as stand-alone entities or as part of other organizations; certainly this region could and should continue to avail and nurture such enterprises. Combine an industry-focused ecosystem or cluster with the need to adequately parent three children in the K-12 phase of life, and you derive and embrace change. I was in need of another dose of what Whitney Johnson calls ‘disrupt yourself’.
2012 was a milestone year for the Baltimore education ecosystem
In 2012 and early 2013, alongside some hearty but patient Baltimoreans, we turned over, tinkered with, and banged on the idea of a new education technology incubation and acceleration enterprise. We got right up to the goal line on a real estate lease in a very cool spot in Harbor East before pulling the plug on the whole concept.
Something just wasn’t right. The risk-reward ratio seemed off.
A task force was created, chaired by Digital Harbor Foundation (DHF) co-founder and Executive Director Andrew Coy. The Greater Baltimore EdTech Advisory Task Force met several times that year, at DHF, at Venable, at EAGB and in increments and committee in bars, lounges, coffee houses and corporate digs. The most famed of these sites was PayPal in Timonium, afforded by Vince Talbert, co-founder of Bill Me Later and on the tail end of a four year earn-out. Numerous individuals met at this site and opined on the future of Baltimore, as pegged to education innovation and entrepreneurship. But no catalyst evinced itself. Contrary to trendline, no new independent organization was formed. There was no dedicated rudder to steer the ecosystem’s direction.
But there was possibility in an existing incubator platform at Towson University (TU), a higher education institution that, in the 21st century, was stepping out as Baltimore’s anchor institution for workforce, innovation, and opportunity.
Founded in 2004 as a way of congealing some disparate university assets, TU’s Division of Innovation and Applied Research has become the de facto bridge that connects external audiences to resources on campus. Inside this Division, the Towson University Incubator was born in 2007 in partnership with Baltimore County Economic and Workforce Development.
In 2012, the incubator advisory board, prodded by member Vince Talbert, was looking to find a focus for the incubator, one that could be more aligned with the mission and one or more core competencies of the university, one that might differentiate the incubator and place it on a growth trajectory. The idea of a heavy edtech tilt was born; the adjacent goal was to focus on true support of the same. I was introduced to an interim role, which I accepted and where I straddled existing venture duties and ultimately accepted a full-time role, the first director of venture creation.
Towson University is an edtech innovation hub.
There was one edtech member company in the summer of 2013. Four years later, there are close to 30 edtech member companies. These TU Incubator member companies are solving all manner of problems in early childhood, K-12, postsecondary, and workforce education. Per the above image of TU’s Burke Avenue bridge and a September 2017 story by Nibletz’s Robert Morris, “Towson University has become an edtech innovation hub.”
Where do we go from here?
For what Digital Promise calls an education innovation cluster (aka entrepreneurship ecosystem) to thrive and be self-sustaining, there must be a robust, connected triumvirate of 1) people and company support, 2) slow drip and acceleration capital, and 3) access to distribution via product (service) testing (feedback) and customers.
You pull all three of these attributes together and induce some wins, and you have a place, culture, ecosystem that can sustain itself.
Of course, the key to ecosystem or cluster sustainability is people—people who believe in the mission of education innovation, of entrepreneurship as catalyst to outcomes in job creation, capital markets, local economies, social impact, and change when change leads to better not cooler. At the core of education innovation, however, is the impact on education, learning, administration, and on the stakeholders invested in producing improved academic, operational, and financial outcomes.
In summary, my purpose-driven decision to ascend lower in the food chain was the right one. My team is putting a small dent in the universe, a growing and impactful community of company founders where two-thirds are women and/or minorities. As a practice coach, there is nothing more meaningful than knowing that you are a part of a team that is nudging, cajoling, perhaps even catalyzing the next wave of education innovation in the Chesapeake region.
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. — Jim Rohn
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