Dear Governor Ducey,
It was a pleasure meeting you this morning, and I was impressed that you didn’t just kick off the Arizona Technology Summit and take off, but listened through the entire panel of visiting venture capitalists.
As a long-time entrepreneur, mentor, advisor, and seed investor in both Arizona and Silicon Valley companies, I’m just sorry that the visiting VCs showed so little knowledge and understanding of what the Phoenix area ecosystem currently has to offer. Some of their suggestions showed that they hadn’t bothered to do any homework. And actually, my major takeaway, as someone who has been involved for more than twenty years, is that we need to do a much better job of marketing ourselves.
So here’s a roundup of talking points about our startup ecosystem that you can use when you speak to people to try to “sell” Arizona.
First, greater Phoenix has more than two dozen incubators and co-working spaces that focus on everything from gaming to biotech to software to fashion. Every one of these incubators has a group of mentors that help the entrepreneurs. Galvanize Phoenix, the latest one to open, occupies most of an entire building in the downtown Warehouse District, and is one of a network of 8 Galvanize locations around the country, including Austin, San Francisco, and Denver. Co+Hoots, in midtown, is home to a junior Startup Weekend, and also to Perch, a mentoring and information initiative for startups in the health related fields.
A single community-minded marketing executive, Greg Head, working as a volunteer, has produced a list of software only (mostly SaaS) companies in the community, and there are over 300. Greg’s List grows every day.
For the past three years, the community has held a very successful Phoenix Startup Week, where thousands of people network, listen to excellent panels, and make mentoring appointments. Sponsored by Chase, Phoenix Startup Week was kicked off by Startup.co but now stands alone.
There’s also a leadership group called StartupAZ, which consists largely of entrepreneurs and angel investors who have pledged 1% of their profits to help other startups. That group holds quarterly dinners to discuss the progress of the community.
And then there is the #yesphx initiative, which defies description. Starting with a hash tag, it has grown into a Facebook group with 969 members and a special group called #yesphx Lady Bosses. #yesphx also has a huge Slack group that informs entrepreneurs in the Valley of funding opportunities, events, success stories, asks, and jobs. It is a very engaged group of people. It’s a vibe, that has caused the community to be known as a generous and helpful place for entrepreneurs.
Every year Venture Madness holds a “tournament” where entrepreneurs pitch to investors and the winner of the finals received $10,000 and a chance to compete for an additional $300,000 pledged by four local angels. This year’s winner was Clean Router. That’s four local angels. Yes, we have those. I was one of them for 35 years.
The Arizona BioIndustry Association holds an expo every year to bring entrepreneurs, investors, and large company strategic partners together.
And I’ve just finished being one of the judges of the Arizona Innovation Challenge, about which I’m sure you already know. The winners are still being chosen, but that initiative is something all these visiting speakers should know about.
I personally (with “a little help from my friends”) have brought to Phoenix Social Media Club, the Phoenix Entrepreneurs Roundtable, and the Women Entrepreneurs Happy Hour. During the first decade of this century, I ran the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference, which brought VCs here from all over Silicon Valley to speak in Arizona. We have local chapters of the ProductHunt meetup, Women in Technology, GirlsWhoCode, and Aging 2.0.
I’m breathless from trying to list all the great things going on in the startup community, and there are tons that I don’t even know about. Of course we aren’t Silicon Valley, but the VCs who came and spoke clearly had no idea how much we already have in place. Time to turn the lights on and reveal Arizona to the world.
