How to Build a Rural Startup Community
WHAT IT TAKES TO CREATE A VIBRANT STARTUP COMMUNITY IN RURAL
Startups are born out of chic coffee shops in busy downtowns, where fortuitous encounters between future-billionaire-cofounders happen daily. Right?
Startup culture is urban culture. Right?
Wrong.
Entrepreneurship is part of the rural DNA. Anyone who lives in a small town has experienced this. What cities have in convenience and abundance, small towns make up for in ingenuity and self-sufficiency. Though today’s small towns are composed of all types of work, the ethos remains. If the equipment breaks, the field still has to get tended to. Fixes are invented constantly and unceremoniously.
So why do rural communities trail their urban counterparts in key economic opportunity metrics? Over a decade after the Great Recession, rural employment rates had still not recovered and 9/10 jobs created went to cities.
While the think tanks ponder the “why” of these questions, Startup Colorado has been busy focusing on “what” to do.
THE RESEARCH IS CLEAR
- Entrepreneurship is responsible for all net job creation
- Local businesses play an outsized role in local economic health in rural areas
- The rural community’s role in supporting these businesses is even more vital
The answer lies in building local, rural startup communities. The activity is known as ecosystem building. In Rural Colorado, communities across the state are developing vibrant startup scenes featuring businesses across all industries, from scaleable tech to brick-and-mortar retail.
This is where Startup Colorado’s expertise comes in handy. Whether you’re in an oil town, ranching town, farm town, mining town, ski town, or river town, there is an entrepreneurial ecosystem waiting to get activated.
Unlike traditional economic development, often pointed tactics for job creation or retention, ecosystem building is about cultivating a community’s existing assets, with an eye toward entrepreneurship. It underpins and amplifies all other economic growth. True to the metaphor, it is about nurturing the soil so that the community feels empowered to plant its own seeds for a vibrant, prosperous future.
So how do you start ecosystem building in your Rural Colorado hometown?
AN EMERGENT PHENOMENA
A startup community is a collection of citizens who, together, create a culture that fosters innovation and business creation amongst each other. Traditional economic development methods, such as business recruitment or tax incentives, may play a role in the startup community, but they are a subset of the broader community movement, which includes any and all forms of pro-startup activity.
This can mean happy hours, coworking, pitch events, online forums, and every other initiative no matter the size or format. There is no hierarchy to hand down a directive, scope of work to agree upon, nor method to quantify success. Rather, a startup community emerges through the collective enrollment and actions of its members. It is a culture.
The task of kickstarting a leaderless community can sound daunting.
Luckily, Startup Colorado has helped countless communities kickstart their communities. We have collaborated with mayor’s offices, economic development organizations, nonprofits, and lone leaders alike. Since everyone is part of the local culture, everyone is qualified and capable of putting our ecosystem-building playbook to work.
CULTURE BREEDS DENSITY; DENSITY BREEDS CULTURE
Where does culture come from?
People.
This leads us to the most obvious small-town startup community hiccup – there are fewer people in small towns. No way around that.
As a leader, the key is to simply embrace the local, pre-existing culture. It doesn’t always look like the stereotypical t-shirt and sticker-clad, tech-fanatic startup culture. In fact, it shouldn’t. In your hometown, the startup culture should be a function of the local culture that your community already prides itself on.
What brings people together already?
Across Colorado’s wide array of communities, we have seen a myriad of local cultures which became the kernel for a local startup community. Whether your hometown has famous green chiles, a world-renowned theatre, or a fervent adventure race culture, the local startup ecosystem can embrace and grow from it.
A STARTUP CULTURE "DRIVEN BY NATURE"
Grandiose peaks rise from the valley floor of Chaffee County, while the Arkansas River cuts a windy, rapid-filled path through canyons and city centers. There are smelly running shoes and muddy bikes on front porches and rafts, SUPs, and kayaks around back. It is an outdoor sports paradise. While nobody is thinking of local wages, unemployment, and industry diversification while they are on the water or trail, that is what made for fertile soil for the now budding local startup community.
In 2019, a community inventory workshop in Chaffee County did not yet reveal a thriving ecosystem.
The overwhelming theme was a myriad of assets, but no fabric for collaboration. Successful and retired homeowners were looking to support the next generation of local businesses. The outdoor recreation community was well identified as a business force within tourism, but not yet as a business creation asset. So how did its startup ecosystem emerge?
Just look at PT Wood. He first came to be a raft guide–a strategic angle to recognize the opportunity to start a local distillery. He now owns Wood’s Distillery alongside six other Chaffee County breweries. It turns out outdoor enthusiasts love their local spirits too. This is a perfect example of the adjacent possibilities that open up when you start with your local culture.
There’s one other nugget from PT’s story–he became the mayor. His role as a local business owner gave him the connections and credibility to become a leader. While many of his governmental roles include top-down directives, a key role of having this local business leader in charge is the tone he sets. It says, “We align around our founders.”
This founder-centric culture has proven to be fertile soil for other founders and community members.
Come 2021, Jake Rishavy recognized this fertile soil when he became the Executive Director of the Chaffee County Economic Development Corporation. His cornerstone initiative is Central Mountain Entrepreneurs (CME), found at DrivenByNature.co. Even the language of the initiative exemplifies the emergent nature of the initiative. While Jake’s EDC may own the website, the initiative encapsulates the efforts of numerous entities.
It carries forward the work of his predecessor Wendell Pryor, whom Startup Colorado first collaborated with for the 2019 workshop. It also lends itself to Jamie Billesbach, Director of the Central Mountain Small Business Development Center and leader behind the Outdoor Industry Summit and Power of WE speaker series. It even makes space for the up-and-coming music scene of Buena Vista, led by local bands such as Rapidgrass (note the outdoorsy name). Driven By Nature is everyone’s initiative.
And it worked. In just two years, the Ascent accelerator, one of many programs headed by the Chaffee County EDC, has supported twenty different companies with curriculum, mentors, funding opportunities, and more.
None of this was planned when PT Woods first left raft guiding to start distilling whiskey. Rather, he set the tone as a founder. This prompted an unpredictable domino effect of activities that led to today’s palpable spirit of entrepreneurship and optimism across Chaffee County.
DISCOVER CHAFFEE COUNTY
Down river from Chaffee County, where tight canyons give way to the great plains, lies Fremont County with the towns of Florence and Cañon City.
Despite its dramatic red rock canyons, rumbling river corridor, and quick access to mountains, it is not known as an outdoor sports hub (yet). In fact, most outsiders only know Fremont County for its primary industry – prisons. This does not lend itself to adjacent business creation quite as naturally. Nonetheless, another rural Colorado startup community is emerging here.
How?
Remember, entrepreneurs are the critical