The Regional Chamber's (formerly RCGA) annual budget is $10 million dollars roughly. What was their last success story? Why don't we put 80-90% of their budget into Arch Grants or Cultivation Capital or other start up companies? Clearly, we are not winning the big "poject betas" or whatever the lastest pursuit is with the Chamber- and I know we would win more if we were a Right-to-Work State, which is another debate entirely. We need to instead focus on turning St. Louis into THE start-up capital, or at least attempt to be. What is the SLDC's budget? What do they do exactly? Let's combine all of these budgets and pump that money into start ups. SLDC and the Chamber occupy almost 70,000 square feet combined. Are they just jobs programs or do they actually do anything and have actual success stories? I like the SLDC's comment that "we'll reach out to ADM".. why haven't they been talking to them for years?! At least the SLDC and county economic council have combined..

200 Arch Grants start ups per year for the same amount of money as the Regional Chamber's budget... I wonder what would grow St. Louis faster..

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but you can't expand the Arch Grants and other organizations too quickly. To get a decent ROI, we need to have a plethora of good ideas and good people so that a critical mass of these startups turn into successful businesses. I honestly have no idea what the proper ratio to good ideas/good people to Arch Grants-type funding availability is best, but my hunch is that quadrupling the funding immediately is probably not wise. We still need to invest in programs and infrastructure that are going to attract the best and brightest to our region (and stop our top young talent from leaving) so that we have demand from worthwhile startups for Arch Grant-type programs. RCGA has a role in that (don't confuse them with the Missouri Chamber, which wants us to all be call center employees for Megacorp).

SC, you are correct, but I do think that a good portion of funding from these groups should go to AG. I wouldn't want it to expand too quickly, and going from 20 to 50 to 200 is obviously probably not the smartest. A good solid 50 each year though with the Chamber's support would be awesome.