Entrepreneurial and startup communities are growing everywhere across the United States. The recent everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference event highlighted entrepreneurial communities “everywhere else” outside the major hubs like Silicon Valley and New York.
We’ve recently started up our “Sneaker Strapped Nationwide Startup Road Trip Part Deux”. During our first journey, that started at SXSW 2012, we visited over 60 startup communities across the country. Since going back on the road we’ve visited Atlanta for Startup Georgia’s kick-off, Nashville for Spark Nashville and Arkansas for Think Big Arkansas and the kickoff of Startup Arkansas.
Last month, Katie Rae, the Managing Director at TechStars Boston, spoke at Grid New Haven. Gris is a hub or startup community catalyst, that’s part of Connecticut’s “innovation ecosystem.” They hold several programs including CEO Boot Camp, Startup Weekend New Haven, Launch New Haven and several speaker sessions designed to help entrepreneurs on their journey.
On January 24th Rae spoke at Grid New Haven and offered what she thinks are the four backbones to a great entrepreneurial community. In addition to being the managing director at TechStars Boston (one of their most successful accelerators) she is also a founder of Project 11 a firm that invests in and helps early stage startups.
Check out her video below and add these things to your list of important things for startup communities.