Does Nashville’s location propel (or limit) entrepreneurial success?
There’s something about the pride of either being from Tennessee or coming to Nashville from out of town and living here, in this city, at this particular moment in time. It’s almost unexplainable, but I’d say that some of Nashville’s most notable people are very proud to call Music City home. In fact, John Wark, Nashville Software School founder said “Over 90%, probably over 95%, of our graduates are still living and working in Nashville/Middle Tennessee. That includes an increasing number of students who moved to Nashville specifically to attend NSS and then decided to stay and work locally.”
Yet there’s a stark contrast to location that exists when building a startup. All of a sudden, being in a specific physical location isn’t quite as important as building a product, making revenue, or gaining traction. Or is it? Perhaps location is a factor when raising venture capital or finding talent.
As a continuation of last week’s post “Engineers can’t be CEOs,” I’m leading this week off with a question about location. Last week, Jamie Bailey, founder of Initial State, closed our interview saying“There are certainly many investors in Nashville that are interested in companies ran by technologists and engineers (as evidenced by our investors). What I don’t know is if my experience would have been any different anywhere else.”
Chris Hefley, CEO of LeanKit added that location did play a role in the formation and development of LeanKit, especially when the issue was access to capital.
Chris Hefley: I think where you are located is definitely a factor in how successful you are going to be in raising money. If you find it difficult to find investors that “get” what you’re doing locally, then there are plenty of regional investors, from Columbus to Atlanta to Little Rock, that you should be out there courting. But raising money from one of the big VCs on the coasts is going to be difficult until you show significant traction. We get lots of attention from those firms now, but in the early days it was at best a coin toss whether they would even talk to you at all. And most of the ones that would talk to you wouldn’t really be interested in investing, unless they found something they thought was a major home run waiting to happen.
Thinking about Chris’ response, I thought to myself, “Does Nashville, as a city, provide resources and infrastructure to support opportunities for entrepreneurs? Yes, no question.” There are citizens of Nashville working thanklessly to make sure entrepreneurial types have all the tools they need to succeed. “Should founders limit themselves to the egos and pride of Nashville-focused investors? Probably not.”
This topic is something I need a little help with. In the end, an internet company exists on the internet, right? Does location matter?
If you enjoyed this article, check out the other articles I’ve written about the identity of Nashville technology here.
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