urbanSTL

Even though the ideas of Square and Twitter emerged from the minds of St. Louisans, I believe St. Louis will get its homegrown "Squares" and "Twitters" in the future.

Now that there's a lot of attention focused on technology locally, the region has thrown down the gauntlet in so many ways and is determined to be more competitive with the more established tech hubs. There's bound to be another Jack, Jim, Tim (Savvis, Station Digital) and Tony Gauda (Bitcasa) to emerge out of St. Louis.

Simply chalk up Square, Twitter and Bitcasa as losses and learning experiences for the region and move forward. St. Louis's bigger day will come.

In the meantime, support St. Louis-based tech-related and social media ventures whenever possible. For example, I love Station Digital and Lockerdome. Although both have kinks to work out, becoming a member or downloading these social media platforms are a great way to help them along. And..... I actually use Station Digital more than I do Pandora.

Saint Louis may have its first successful life sciences' IPO since 2004 with EndoStim:

http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... a0a25.html

"... A successful offering “can have a ripple effect in building the startup culture in a region,” Rubin says. It would free up capital that can be reinvested in other new companies and should tempt more medical researchers to start businesses.

IPOs have become common events in such medical research centers as Minneapolis, San Diego and San Francisco. St. Louis is long overdue to join the party."

^ I'm glad to see it is the Metropolitan Square... that building has taken a few hits lately, including HOK announcing its move across Market, and we need to get that bad boy as fully occupied as possible. I hope this helps.

Here's an interesting article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about Cleveland's strides and continuing challenges in nurturing start-ups. I think it really puts things in perspective for a city like St. Louis. While we have made huge progress, so have our peer cities. It seems like the recent spin in St. Louis is focusing on our booming tech start-ups, but it's not as if other cities are standing still- we clearly have lots of competition in the quest to become the premier 2nd tier tech start-up hub. And this is just Cleveland- no doubt Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cincinnati and many other cities are aggressively building their scenes too. Is there room for thriving tech economies in all these cities simultaneously, or does one city's success depend upon the failures and shortcomings of another?

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index ... cart_river

^ Well, let's have a drink to that!"

btw, the SixThirty fund for financial tech start-ups announced its four $100,000 winners yesterday as well.... anyone know if those companies also have to move to Saint Louis like the Arch winners?

^ we're talking about the SixThirty award winners....most are located elsewhere presently. do they now have to move here like the Archers?

edit: okay, it looks like they may have to come for at least 16 weeks as part of a development program run out of t-rex and while they'll be encouraged to remain it is not a requirement.... so this appears to be less of a commitment than the Arch program, which I believe is at least a one year commitment to Saint Louis. More here on the first winners from the launch last year:

http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... f8735.html

^ gotcha.... RedOctober and I were discussing that and SixThirty and I see it got a bit confusing. Sorry!

The Startup Spirit Of St Louis - Building A Sustainable And Socially Conscious Tech Community
Silicon Valley Watcher
Posted by Tom Foremski - October 16, 2014

Missouri had a record quarter of venture capital flowing to start-ups, according to this report:
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog ... souri.html

This also doesn't include $$ from certain programs like Capital Innovators. Most of the deals were in Saint Louis but the biggest was in KC which drew $40 million of the total $62 million. And this same report shows Pittsburgh killing it with $104 million.

The dollars were almost double the $54.3 million invested locally during the third quarter of 2013. For the nine-month period, $242.8 million has been raised by 56 young Pittsburgh companies, passing the $130.5 million raised during the entire 12 months of 2013 and passing all full-year totals going back to 2002. In 2001, local companies raised $360.3 million

That's some stiff competition.