After the 4thEst8 article about Venture Cafe St. Louis ceasing operations went live Friday Board Chair Whitney Kenter responded to an earlier request for an interview with an email that contained a picture of what appears to be a tweet from another VenCafSTL board member confirming an end to operations, and dangling hope of some kind of re-emergence. Appeared to originate from Venture Cafe St. Louis board member Angela Masching (with whom the 4thEst8 had earlier requested an interview). It read:
“Dear Innovation Community,
In October 2014, Venture Cafe St. Louis launched its first Thursday Gathering, creating serendipitous collisions. Seven years later, it is time to close this chapter. Effective immediately, the VCSTL programming you know is on pause — but this isn’t the end.
Stay tuned in coming days to hear more from the Venture Cafe Global organization and CIC about the next chapter for Venture Cafe in St. Louis.
Gratefully,
Venture Cafe St. Louis”
Here’s a screen shot of what the Venture Cafe site looked like on Thursday and Friday: 
It was one page, with a logo and the email to the organizations general mail box.
Today the site looks like this:
Much nicer look! But if you take a minute to drill down, it’s a (mostly) empty suit. There’s very little local content.
- Under Connect, the Event Calendar and Event Listing are both empty.
- ‘Thursday Gathering’ has a generic blurb, but no date, location etc.
- The Learn tab connects to an empty Blog page and Socials
- LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook icons connect to pages Venture Cafe Philadelphia
- The Stories tab does have two entrepreneur stories — both from Philadelphia
- The Media tab has links to pages for Videos, Podcasts and Gallery — all empty
- The Share tab has the following links:
- Speaker: this page mentions St. Louis and has relevant content!
- Ambassador: starts off with relevant content, then a note “Need to add Ambassadors to profiles” and a profile of Cor van Drieberge, a business owner from Rotterdam
- Partner: this page mentions St. Louis and has relevant content!
- Mentor: this page mentions St. Louis, has relevant content, has a form to apply to be a mentor, but ends with a picture of Professor Minerva McGonagall from the Harry Potter movie franchise. (see below)
- The About tab has three pages that all mention St. Louis and have relevant content.
Professor Minerva McGonagall
The 4thEst8 reached out to CEO Tyler Matthews and board chair Whitney Kenter for comment. Neither responded in a timely manner.
Links:
On the 4thEst8:
Venture Cafe St. Louis goes quiet
Caught Schmoozing at Venture Cafe St. Louis
