urbanSTL

Entrepreneur support group MOSourceLink calculates that Missouri startups — defined as firms less than a year old with fewer than 20 employees — created an astonishing 44,355 jobs last year. That number was no fluke either: Between 2014 and 2018, the state’s startups created an average of 40,797 jobs per year.  For perspective, last year’s number amounts to 78 percent of all new jobs created in Missouri. We’re talking about gross job creation, without accounting for companies that close or shrink.

Every year sees a lot of churn at both young and established firms, and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Missouri had a net gain of just 11,200 jobs last year. Without a vibrant startup scene, we probably would have been in negative territory.

While state officials are trying to put together a $50 million incentive package to support General Motors’ plant in Wentzville, their support for startups has been spotty. The budget of the Missouri Technology Corp., which invests in early-stage companies and funds many support groups, including MOSourcelink, was slashed 90 percent in fiscal 2018.  “I hope this raises awareness among our legislators and economic development organizations across the state,” Phyllis Ellison, a vice president at the Cortex Innovation Community in St. Louis, said of the job-creation study. “The startup community doesn’t really get the same support that our larger corporations do.”

A new partnership between St. Louis’ IT Entrepreneur Network (ITEN) and Saint Louis University will target acceleration of local startups by providing programming focused on customer discovery and market fit.  The new partnership is between ITEN and SLU’s research innovation group, part of the university’s office of the vice president for research. The collaboration between the two organizations will include ITEN startups participating in the SLUStart I-Corps program, which is managed by the research innovation group.  The SLUStart I-Corps program helps startups, entrepreneurs and researchers through the customer development process by providing instruction and mentoring. The program includes work sessions as well as fieldwork to conduct customer discovery interviews.

“The idea is to really get out of the building and engage with potential customers, potential key partners, other key players to identify what a viable business model is,” said Malcolm Townes, SLUStart I-Corps program manager and associate director for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship.  SLU’s I-Corps program is provided at no cost and is funded by the National Science Foundation. The program focuses on accelerating intellectual property from SLU researchers as well as business ideas from local entrepreneurs.  Mary Louise Helbig, executive director of ITEN, said participation in the program will provide an opportunity for startups to fine tune their strategy and help avoid commercializing their products too quickly.

“Research has shown that a lot of them of them fail, like over 40% fail, because they haven’t effectively validated the market need or the market fit. They’re not spending the time that they need to on really doing that customer validation and customer discovery research,” she said.  ITEN supports tech entrepreneurs and helps them launch new companies through educational programs, events, mentoring and partnerships. The organization typically onboards about 70 companies per year, and Helbig said about half of its companies are at a stage where the SLUStart I-Corps program could be beneficial.  “We’re going to strongly suggest that segment of our startups really consider applying to participate in the I-Corps program,” said Helbig. “We should probably have maybe anywhere from 25 to 30 viable candidates for the I-corps program every year.”

While Helbig said ITEN will currently focus on the SLUStart I-Corps program as part of its new partnership, she added she sees other ways to work with the university.
“There’s definitely other opportunities we think to collaborate with Saint Louis University, whether that’s potentially helping them commercialize some of their innovation or even working with our corporate innovation partners on exploring opportunities around new innovation,” she said.  ITEN, founded in 2008, onboarded 94 companies in 2018. Its companies added more than 260 jobs last year and the organization’s graduate companies have raised more than $190 million since 2009, according to ITEN’s annual report.