Editor’s note: Jim R. Roberts, the Executive Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNC Wilmington, discusses the multiple reasons why the CIE’s efforts are important to the future of the Wilmington economy. The same points can apply to other cities as well.
WILMINGTON, N.C. – The Kauffman Foundation (for entrepreneurship) promotes the figure that 70% of small businesses fail in the first three to five years due to fundamental mistakes and flaws in the earliest days of starting the business. The same foundation claims that 70% of small businesses that go through some business plan programming succeed with programs such as the FasTrac program.
This is why the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at UNC Wilmington could be important to the future of the Wilmington economy. If 70% of small businesses fail, what if we could change those numbers around so more companies can survive and better yet strive and become large employers in our region.
While NextGlass started at almost the same time as the CIE, we are working to ensure they are not the “unicorn” that shows early success of an accelerator tenant, but then similar success with other companies is hard to find. (To be clear, nCino is also a very successful startup with experienced management in Wilmington but was started previous to and outside of the CIE. nCino employs the previous Director of the Entrepreneurship Center, VP of Marketing Jonathon Rowe.)
As I have said many times since moving here in Spring of 2013, I inherited a startup farm but I did not know what had been planted and what was going to come out of the ground. As an outsider, of course I had heard of the homegrown success of PPD. We often talk about the very different needs of entrepreneurs of emerging growth companies and the needs of small business owners that serve the local community. A different set of resources are needed if you are talking to the next Bill Gates to create the next Microsoft that has created over 12,000 millionaires in Seattle or the locally focused mom and pop services business.
If we talk about “Economic Gardening”, was the startup farm going to produce corn, blueberries, apples, carrots or what kind of entrepreneurs were going to come out of the ground? Before the CIE could have a business plan, or a menu, we had to learn what ingredients (what kind of entrepreneurs and small businesses) we had to work with.
Now 15 months later and a ton of hard work, long hours and working weekends, we have a better sense of what we are working with in the fledgling startup community here in Wilmington. And now we have a more complete understanding about what is needed.
We have varying levels of experience within our lineup of aspiring entrepreneurs. Some of our entrepreneurs are still young UNC Wilmington students that our city wants to keep in the region after graduation. Some of our entrepreneurs are military veterans who may also be students. Some of our entrepreneurs are faculty and staff at UNC Wilmington with ideas that can be turned into technology transfer or commercialization, a current topic of interest with Governor McCrory. We also have community based entrepreneurs, not related to the university, who moved here for quality of place.
So with that understanding, we are now working on starting an “Entrepreneur Boot Camp” or a three month process to create a baseline understanding of the business planning and growth process within our entrepreneurs. By using community based mentors and local and regional executives, we can walk the entrepreneurs through the process of scaling up a business and preventing those fundamental mistakes that kill 70% of all startups. The entrepreneurs are paying a minimal fee for this boot camp to make sure they have some skin in the game and see some value in the process. Thanks to the management of Live Oak Bank, the owner of Apple Annie’s Bakery and the owner of Full Scale Solutions who have agreed to cover the costs for a few military veterans for the boot camp and for some of the books they will need to read such as Lean Startup by Eric Reis, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore and others.
We have also started the new High Tide Breakfast Series. This has become a regular Wednesday morning coffee and muffins kind of meeting that allows two local startups to give six minute presentations on their value proposition and a reach out to the community for assistance with potential introductions to potential clients and angel investors. We also invite one mentor per event to discuss their professional experience and how they may be able to play a role within the new startup community. This is similar to the Kauffman Foundation program One Million Cups that happens around the country. We needed the coastal theme and the addition of the mentors, one of the strengths of the Wilmington market is the number of retired business executives.
The CIE will also be working within the Life Sciences industry within the Wilmington market. North Carolina is the third largest state within the Life Sciences/ Biotech industry but the coastal presence is mostly in the Clinical Research industry like PPD, AAI Pharma and Modoc. The Garner Report recently highlighted that life sciences/ marine sciences is one of the potential growth clusters in the Wilmington region. We have arranged for more than a dozen local life sciences startups to participate in the event on the morning of February 26th at the new MARBIONC building at UNC Wilmington. For more life sciences growth, these companies need funding. This funding can come in three forms: grants, clients and investors. With the recent grant funding of Seatox, Wilmington can help more startups understand the SBIR/STTR grant process. With the upcoming CED Life Sciences Conference in Raleigh, we can introduce our startups to potential corporate clients and corporate investors from bigger markets. To find more investors, we have to better prepare our life science startups on what these investors are looking for in the “marriage” of a 10-12 year expensive process of building a successful life sciences company including the regulatory process.
So after the first 15 months of opening the CIE and building on the previous entrepreneur organization’s leadership with Jonathon Rowe and Fran Scarlett, we will continue to build up the resources to have a positive impact on the Wilmington economy. We now have 37 companies and organizations in our facility and we average 85-115 people per event with standing room only crowds. We now have the second highest average attendance at our events of all the entrepreneur organizations in the state. In comparison, the CED organization in Raleigh/Durham has been around for thirty years, in a much larger population center and has three of the top research universities in the country. We also want to continue the Coastal Corridor of relationships we have been building by bringing Raleigh-Durham business leaders to our entrepreneur facility.
In our first year, one of our clients, NextGlass, was chosen by the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive top level business event and became the #1 new app in the Store. After pushing our startups to apply, five Wilmington companies were chosen for the South’s largest and oldest venture capital conference. Three Wilmington startups were selected by the North Carolina Technology Association as Top Ten in the whole state. Two of our tenants were highlighted this year in the Washington Post, Easy Vote Solutions and FaceMyAge.com. The CIE was chosen by the Small Business Administration as one of the top 50 accelerators in the country among over 800 applicants. We also held the only venture capital conference in North Carolina outside of Raleigh/Durham with over 300 attendees and an impressive speaker lineup including the Executive Director of the well-known South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
For proof of the growth of the local startup ecosystem, we are going to allow our CIE tenants to write most of our future Insight articles to make you aware of what they are doing. Of course, you are always welcome to participate in the High Tide Breakfast on Wednesday mornings or to attend our events normally on the third Thursday of the month at 803 S. College Road.
About the author: Jim R. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNC Wilmington. CIE is an accelerator for the startup community to help diversify the local economy with innovative companies that will pay higher wages. CIE is Jim’s fourth entrepreneurship organization within North Carolina and he is a former employee of the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
