Last week, we described five things needed to grow the Lansing startup community and solicited feedback on the health of the startup community. Several people participated in the survey and we received feedback via email and Twitter about how to improve the overall community and ecosystem.
We’ll be diving into those issues over the coming weeks.
However, as it stands, here’s how people rate our startup community/ecosystem:
- Events: C-
- Co-working Space: C
- Angel Investment & Recycled Capital: D-
- Venture Capital: D-
- Mavens & Marketing: C-
Overall Score: C-
Despite what may seem like disheartening results, we’re super optimistic about the potential of the community here. As a comparison, a city like Atlanta with at least a few large exits a year, a dedicated tech village, and a population of 4-5 million people probably gets at best, a B.
In reality, there are a lot of people working really hard on different facets of this scorecard. And the work is/will pay off. In some cases, we may just need to do a better job promoting these efforts. The tour of the incubation network hosted last month, for instance, made a lot of people aware of the different companies and co-working spaces available in the region. Many people had no idea they existed.
In other cases, we may need to do a better job cultivating talent and entrepreneurial vigor, or provide more access to a robust mentor network, or perhaps focus energies on a smaller number of companies that are more likely to scale exponentially.
These are all open questions. And, over the coming weeks, we’ll be diving into them in more detail, as well as continue to provide helpful articles, artifacts, and events for people working on building new companies.
There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of work to be done. But we’re confident that we’ll get there.
How Can You Help?
There are a few simple things you can do to help us grow and improve our community. For instance:
- Attend events and invite your friends to come to. See a gap? Fill it. Then, tell us about it and we’ll promote it.
- Tell us about your startup. We’ll promote it. We’ll also be happy to connect you with a network of mentors who can help you move further, faster.
- Visit one of the incubators and check out what’s happening there. Probably cool stuff.
- Subscribe to our weekly startup digest so that you can stay in the know about what’s happening with the community.
- For real-time updates and easy sharing, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
The only way we grow the community and prosper is together. We’ll see you around!
