I hate opinions from journalists. Even my own. If you subscribe to bizblip you know I avoid op-ed, investigations, analysis… and leave that to my legacy media colleagues as much as I can. That doesn’t mean that I am disinterested or unaffected… I absolutely want to improve the startup scene of Missouri.
To that end I hold open office hours every Thursday at the Venture Cafe, from 4pm to 5pm. Here’s the disturbing trend: I get approached from long-time ecosystem types and they say something like “There used to be so many more people here… I miss that.”
These are good people, and nearly all are service providers who… frankly… are in the room to drum up business. Nothing wrong with that, but here’s the thing… simple quantitative analysis fails to reveal the qualitative value to early stage founders (and others) that the VenCaf redux is absolutely kicking ass at right now!
I was overjoyed this morning when early stage founder Gavin Pringle made THIS LinkedIn post pointing out a direct tie between last nights programming and a connection to other startups that his company’s technology directly addresses — all with the goal of accelerating growth, jobs and business in our area. His post supports my proposition that in our post lockdown world we must tear down our institutions, find what the true value is, and rebuild them with NO regard to the past. Op-ed over. Paul Riat, bizblip publisher
Caught Schmoozing:
- Hayley Johnston, SLU; Leah Johnson, LTRG Solutions Plus; John E. Foley, Accenture
- Andy Limbaugh, entrepreneur; Ed Bayham, EXPLOR Bioventures; Keith Berman, Bayer
- Christian Savage, VenCaf-STL; JP Johnson, VenCaf-STL
- Zakkiyya West, student; Ann Shady, student
- Alex Juarez, software developer, Mark Wheeler, Fairways For Health; Robbie Beyer, WashU
- Brendon Owens, Claim Academy; Nife Hassan, Claim Accademy
- Carlin Box, Country Financial; Joan Lipkin, DanceTheVote.org
- LinkedIn Post by Gavin Pringle