Innovation Ecosystem Summit Closing Remarks

Well, I hope everybody had a wonderful day with us. I am here to bring us home. This is Bailey DeVries again, the associate Administrator in the Office of Investment and innovation at the U.S. small Business Administration. And it's my pleasure and privilege to have been listening and participating in today's panels and fireside chats, and yesterday's as well. I'm surrounded by just an incredible team that put so much thought and intentionality into curating the content for yesterday and today with esos in mind, with all of the wonderful entrepreneurial support organizations in the private sector and the public sector. So that way we could come together and listen and engage in some interesting, interesting dialogue that I hope gives everyone here great hope. I was so encouraged and excited by many similar thoughts that were shared about the importance of our coming together, of giving to each other, of being intentional in our efforts to focus on innovation, to build communities, to build ecosystems and networks, and the messages that were shared by several individuals. Both David Cohen, the co founder and Chairman of techstars, and Adair Morse, who leads the Office of Capital Access at Treasury, both talking about the transition that we are going through, the energy transition and the transition of our industrial base not being a zero sum game and the importance of our all rowing in the same direction and helping one another. And I can't think of a more interesting time for us to be partnering with federal government and private sector coming together. It is such a wonderful and interesting time with all of the resources and support and the wonderful talent that we have in both public and private sector, all interested in supporting the resilience, sustainability and growth of our economy and all seeing the need for us to focus on innovation and innovation in so many different parts of our economy. So with that I'd love to leave you with just a couple things to highlight. We had over 16 or I think it was close to 1600 registrants for this event, so just so delighted that there has been just such broad based interest and participation. Just a wonderful network of ESOs across the country. We had participation from all 50 states as well as a number of territories. So really just so excited about the participation and again gives us great hope for the future ahead of us. And lastly, I will say as our fearless leader, the administrator of the sba, Isabella Guzman, often says that we need to be customer first and technology forward in everything we do. So with that, please reach out to us. If you have questions, if you have requests, if you have ideas, we're here in service of you. So we want to hear and we want to know. And that is how we get better and how we innovate. So with that, I'll just leave you with a big thanks for the investment of time and your contributions yesterday, today and your engagement in this wonderful community. Thank you so much. And I'm going to turn it over to a very brilliant leader on my team who leads ecosystem development, Jennifer Shi. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Bailey, for, you know, for supporting this and creating the ecosystem development ethos here in organization. And it's crazy. Just like that. We are wrapping up after two days, 50 speakers, almost 1600 participants. And wow, there was so much activity in the chat. Jamila, you of course, brought that energy and I greatly appreciate it. And there's just something about all of the passion and interest that everybody who showed up brought joining us here to learn how to better enable each other, lift each other and collaborate. And so thank you. I feel I'm very full of gratitude.

Yes, thank you so much. I just want to again, just convey my gratitude for you being here and sharing your time with us. I'm talking to the audience here and you could be anywhere in the world virtually, but you chose to be here with us and shout out to the people who joined us yesterday and then again today. We hope you received a lot of value. Thank you for participating in the chat. Thank you for all of your giphyse. I hope you had a lot of fun. I hope you learned something too and I hope you walked away with connections that you didn't come in with.

Yeah.

And really, we hope this is just the start of an ongoing conversation with our office, with the Small Business Administration and of course with the federal government as a whole. Really.

Right.

We're, that's what we were talking about, really, this whole time is really, we see ourselves as partners, as collaborators, and we look forward to being part of and strengthening the community here. So it has really been wonderful. And this is not the end. So that's, that's the best part, right? This is not the end that of you seeing us, hopefully. So in the coming days, we're going to be sharing the videos, the resources we've been capturing, the, the links in the chat. We also, of course, want to hear from you. We want to hear your feedback. You took time out of your busy weeks and lives for coming to join us. And we want to know what you appreciated. What do you want to hear more of other thoughts and how we can make use of our convening power to support collaboration and create a valuable good environment in which these partnerships can work. Yes.

And don't forget to visit the americaseed Fund US website and sign up for our monthly SBA Innovation Ecosystem Network call, which I have the pleasure of hosting every single month. That is one of the absolute, just favorite times of the month for me is to host this call with ecosystem builders like yourself. So please sign up on AmericaSeed Fund US and also sign up for our newsletter which will be available on AmericaSeed Fund US website as well those at Any link that you need to join the ecosystem is available on AmericaSeed Fund US.

And if you want to see some of our other incredible leaders like John Williams and Eldon Hawks, make sure you join our New Mexico FAST Federal and State Technology Partners New Mexico Innovation Summit next week. I think you've got a little bit more information about that, maybe. Jamila yes.

So December 14, this New Mexico Innovation Summit is going to bring together small businesses, Federal program managers, defense representatives, experts and support organizations vested in driving innovation across America's seed Fund programs, or you may hear it referred to as SBIR sttr. It's a free event and all you have to do is sign up via the link.

And so you know, we, we called out New Mexico here because they've got an event coming up next week, but Definitely go to sbir.gov events because we have, we have FAST partners in 43 states and Puerto Rico and they're constantly producing all amazing quality content to help those who are new to America's Seed Fund understand how to connect into it. And so we really are looking at how do we support those partnerships between those organizations who already know and are deeply involved and embedded within the SBIR STTR ecosystem with those who aren't. And so that is something putting out there Also for our 2023 Growth Accelerator Fund competition which the administrator announced yesterday and I know many of you have been asking about when is that coming? When are we where, when are we going to see this. So please join us for our webinar next Thursday at. Actually it's it's when we normally would have had our December SBA Innovation Ecosystem Network call so 2pm Eastern next Thursday, December 15th. But it's going to be recorded so you can watch whenever. But this year the Growth Excited Fun competition is going to be stretched out over two phases. So there there's multiple opportunities to get involved and really we're looking at how we can support and enhance and facilitate partnerships among different groups. And so how do we strengthen the Innovation Ecosystem Network so again that ultimately entrepreneur is at the center and wherever they are, wherever they're coming from. Maybe you don't have the right answer for them, but they can find the help they need because you are connected to the network.

Yes. And also I want to bring your attention to an upcoming course that we have, Navigating America Seed Fund. It's going to be an online self paced course designed to educate entrepreneur support organizations like yourself about the SBIR STTR programs. And you can sign up for updates for when the course drops because it hasn't dropped yet. But you can be the first to know if you go to the AmericaSeed Fund US website.

What was the website again?

AmericaSeed Fund US. I feel like that should be etched in your memory now.

And if you're going to be at CES in January in Vegas, make sure you stop by the US Government Innovation booth where SBA will be at Eureka Park. It's part of. We'll be there with the US Patent and Trademark Office and a number of the America's seed fund funders, many agencies who actually invest in startups as. And some of our awardees.

Yeah.

And with that said, I think that's, I think that that might be it, Jennifer. I don't know.

It's never ending, right? There's so much information. But thank you, thank you so much for joining us.

And one more thing, one more thing. I just remembered one more thing. If you are a fast awardee or you're part of the ecosystem and you have an event coming up and we didn't get a chance to shout that out, go ahead and drop that in the chat right now so others can participate and hopefully sign up. And again, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Bye.

See you.