New Discussions: Supporting Entrepreneurship in Rural Ecosystems

Great.

So welcome. My name is Joe Capp and I am the founder of the national center for Resource Development. Today we're going to be talking about rural and rural ecosystems and I am one of the co founders of Rural Rise. I'm super excited to welcome our panelists today who have just a fantastic array of experiences. And I'm going to ask them actually to introduce themselves individually and just their backgrounds a little bit more. We have Christy, who is the executive director of the North Dakota Women's Center. Christy, please say hello and share us a little bit about your background.

Yeah, absolutely. Hey everyone, Christy Dower from joining you from Fargo, North Dakota. And I am the executive director, as Jill mentioned, of the North Dakota Women's Business Center. And we work to support the entrepreneurial community in many ways, including access to resources and economic impact and telling the stories in the collective voice of our rural business owners. So excited to be a part of the panel and excited to meet each of you.

Great. Thank you so much. Christy. Ann McMahon, welcome from SBIR. STTR from Iowa. Tell us a little bit more about your background.

Sure.

Hi there. Good afternoon. Ann McMahon, zooming in from the heartland here in the middle of the country in Des Moines, Iowa, where I like to say we feed and fuel the world. So I run America's seed fund here for the state of Iowa focusing on quality over quantity of applications, kind of all over, all over the space. We do have four kind of area focuses not for sbir, but for kind of the other side of the house where we try to uncover and unlift bio based products within the university. So they're Bio based products, HealthTech, a lot of stuff coming from the University of Iowa Big Ten research facility, vaccines and immunotherapeutics obviously for animals, but we also love and care about humans as well. Then lastly, digital and precision agriculture. So I would just say I'm a people person and a connector and I've been in my role for about five years and I just love connecting good ideas with people to help move the needle for early stage non dilutive federal funding. And happy to be here.

Yeah, great. And thanks for joining us. Super important work, especially with everything that's going on these days. Mark, welcome. Thanks for joining us as well. And you're a partner and fund director of the Greater Colorado Venture Fund. Tell us more about yourself and about the fund. Yeah, you bet.

I guess. I got my start in entrepreneurship as one of the co founders of Startup Weekend and grew that into global and handed that off to techstars about eight years ago now and ended up finding myself in the middle of nowhere in Colorado and falling in love with some of the challenges and opportunities out here and realizing that a lot of our rural communities are microcosms for what's happening on a larger stage across the nation and even all of western society, you could argue. And if we can't figure out how to solve those problems in rural communities and small towns and on a county level, how are we going to do it at a state or a national level, at least some of that dysfunction and that wealth and opportunity gap. And for me, entrepreneurship is the why and the how. And so through that, we've launched Greater Colorado Venture Fund, explicitly focused on companies in rural Colorado. It's a seed fund, average starting checks of 300 to 500. We just wrapped up our first fund of 17 and a half million with 30 investments. We've had five exits in the first four years. And just about a month ago, we closed on our fund two at $25 million.

Wow, that's great. Well, fantastic. And congratulations on all of that. So let's dive into this just a little bit and I'll throw it over to you because you mentioned animals. So rural's a little bit of a different animal, Right. Like when we talk about entrepreneurship and ecosystems of development, maybe share some insights about what your thoughts are with regards to, you know, rural and rural ecosystem and entrepreneurship.

Sure.

So it is a little bit of a different animal, but I still think it starts with infrastructure and people and building communities and then kind of go from there, you know, away kind of is the building. They will come. But if you build alongside with the people and do some customer discovery out in the community to see what they're lacking, where some opportunities are and where you can connect there. But also we're sort of lucky in a way, too, that it's small. Right. Iowa is small and people and connections are just one call or email away. And so I think it's very dynamic that if you are trying to build something or if you're new here, you're trying to get connected, it's pretty small. And people are wonderful and happy. Happy to help.

Yeah, that's great. Christy, what are your thoughts on rural being a little bit of a different animal?

Yeah, certainly in, you know, different forms of going to business, different market strategies, you know, urban versus rural markets. Over 50% of North Dakota's population is considered living in non metro areas, according to a 2020 estimate. So North Dakota has a very large geography, you know, and for us, as a statewide Organization, we have a lot of windshield time. I will say there is a lot of power visiting the places and spaces of, you know, our rural towns and communities. You stop in a coffee shop, they're driving decisions that are being, you know, that are affecting change locally and statewide and sometimes even, you know, throughout the metro. And so there is a lot of power in visiting the places and spaces that business owners are proud of. And so again, just a different market strategy, but certainly leveraging that power of visiting the small.

Mark, I'm gonna throw the question over to you, but before I do, I just want to let people know if they have a question or they want to go ahead and share something. Please feel free to use the chat or the Q and A function. Mark, I'm going to take what they've said now. I'm going to add a little twist to it because you're doing this on the investment side of things and having been in this field for probably close to a decade now, investing in rural is something a little bit more new and it kind of dovetails with my next question. But tell us a little bit more of your take on the rural piece.

I think especially coming from a very global perspective to a very local hyperlocal perspective, the dynamics are completely different. And we always like to say when you come into a rural community, you're guilty until proven innocent, especially as an investor. Right. But it's just a reminder of we're human and business and entrepreneurship is a very human, predicated and even primal thing and it's based on trust and relationships and that's so evident. And you know, that plays out into the impacts that startups can have on their local communities. Right. Because successful companies, startups end up being the ones who sponsor the local, you know, little league team and you know, they're the host of the event and they football jerseys, right. Like, it's just, it's, it's so tangible, so tangible, so human in both a challenging and very beautiful human way.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's really interesting I like to say, you know, along with my, the co founder of Rural Rise, Nathan Oli. If you've been to one rural community, you've been to one rural community. And so, you know, there, there's a lot of independence and having the opportunity to go ahead and teach the entrepreneurship globally, you really begin to see that. You know, let's chat a little bit about funding piece because you know, by and large we've seen a lot of funding and talent resources and startups that's been concentrated in urban centers. And so understanding and how we build out rural ecosystems, sometimes there's a little bit, little bit more of an advantage when it comes to building businesses and supporting that. Christy, I'm going to start with you. Your thoughts on why start a business in a rural community to begin with, you know.

Yeah. Leveraging the speed of trust in a rural community is probably the single most important factor that I've seen as we support rural ecosystems. You know, instead of chasing the big businesses, thinking of it as a spider web into all of the other communities that surround it is something that, you know, I'll often phrase when I work with the developers or, you know, city planners. But, you know, as an entrepreneurial resource center, we have the tough job of how to, you know, encourage not just the attraction, but the retention. You know, what are you doing to empower your youth? We've seen some fun experiences where youth, you know, you get to be a mayor for the day or you get to, you know, join a committee in an engaging that youth to stay involved and then hopefully retain them when they go, you know, go off to college and come back and continue to influence those. And in, specifically in North Dakota, we have a rich collection of, you know, business stories. We have a rural training facility in Devil's Lake that inspires Olympic excellence. We've got trucking and distribution companies that, you know, deliver agricultural goods. And what I found is that the local communities are so willing to connect and be thinking partners along one another's journey. And it's really powerful when you see that community collection come to fruition. And then lastly, when it comes to funding, it's one of those things where who are you asking and leveraging that local community partner. But North Dakota has a lot of different funding options specifically for rural and unique community events to engage and retain their communities and the investment in those communities.

Yeah. And, you know, the SBA makes a whole host of tools available for people who are thinking about starting businesses. And there's even been a renewed focus on rural communities. Ann, I'm curious about your take on this. Why start a business out in a rural community? Especially some of the businesses that you mentioned are really getting to fairly technical pieces. I'm curious, curious about your thoughts on that.

Sure.

So I think it's to leverage the collaboration and the talent. While, you know, talent workforce is kind of sparse everywhere. People that are here are good and are all very connected. So I'd say leverage people in your backyard and your talent as well as collaborating. Right. So especially with vaccines There's a CYVAX lab in ames, which is 40 miles north of us here in Des Moines, that collaborated with Human Vaccinations over in Iowa City. So the collaboration that we see cross state is wonderful. And then tried to help shift the mindset, right, and get, get stories and get good PR about, oh, wow, there are smart people in rural areas doing cool things. And maybe not to get you to necessarily move here, but to consider it and change the narrative and kind of flip, flip the mind shift and culturally too, which is always, always an uphill battle. But those would be my remarks on that.

And one of the things that I'll add, and Mark, I'm going to throw this over to you, is also the ability to be able to access in many regards, you know, people in cities are very busy and the ability to be able to access, you know, people who you might want to get in front of in many regards, in a rural community, it's oftentimes quite a bit easier. And you might be sitting at that, you know, next to them at a baseball game or, you know, in the restaurant, you know, down Main Street. Mark, what are your thoughts on that?

100%. Right. Like we always say, signal to noise. And Signal is so much higher in rural communities. Tends to be. And I think we're fortunate in Colorado where we have some of the tourist hubs, where we have a lot of folks who have second homes and whatever. And so we often talk about the companies get built in the truly rural places, but they can leverage the assets, financial network, intellectual capital that exists in some of those hubs. And so signal can. It's absolutely an advantage.

Yeah. And we saw that, you know, particularly as it relates to Covid and the significant increase in populations and migration to rural communities, in part not just to build a business, but also to be able to have a life and, you know, live a little bit of a more normal entrepreneurial life and a little bit more balance, certainly in rural communities and in some regards, also starting up in a rural community because costs can also also be a lot lower. And so when we talk about costs and money and funding. Mark, I want to go ahead and talk about that piece because that can be a little bit of a challenge. And really just looking at a lot of the. In the past, a lot of the federal funding has probably been a little bit more concentrated in urban centers. What are some ideas, especially with the work that you're doing in Colorado? It's just so fascinating. You guys are doing some really cutting edge, edge work around this talk about the funding that can take place in rural communities and then we'll share it with the other folks as well.

Yeah, on the funding piece specifically, we have a long way to go and I think that was one of the impetuses of getting into this is I was working with a accelerator program, right. Kind of the start of the pre seed kind of launch pad, so to say, and ended up seeing a lot of deals that were at that seed stage level. And. And I think there's kind of this push pull of do you start all the way? Do you really need to. What's more important, Chicken and egg, the pre seed fund, the friends, family, angel networks, or is it the more institutional capital? The answer is we need both. And we have found kind of jumping in and it's harder to organize. It's a little more nebulous when you have angel networks and some of the friends and family type funding programs, even if they're tied to a bunch of. Across Colorado, we've got a bunch of programs that have been tied to like incubators and accelerators. We found that as we created a seed fund, we created kind of a call it downstream poll which we could come in and with a little more institutional lens, kind of set a little bit more clear criteria bar that helped get the earlier stage funding mechanisms a little bit more organized as well. So we've kind of seen again the answer being a push and pull on both sides and the necessity of it and. But the reality is still there's huge swaths of this country across world who don't have access to either of those options.

So yeah, we can do better for sure. Hey Ann, America's seed fund sbir, right? Talk to us about that and like the rural piece because you know, Mark's coming at it from a different angle and the SBIR program is a great program. So please share with us in the SBIR piece.

Absolutely. So can I get a hallelujah for it being reauthorized? Right. So lots of work to do. There's only a thousand things left. So write your congress people and get it going. I say we have to get creative. Right. So we are really successful at usda. And everyone say, oh Ann, that's obvious, you know. But we look not only at usda, you know, small to mid sized farms, we look at rural and community development. So we have a lot of success with education technology, high tech, education technology, medical devices, health tech that has gone virtual inside. What are you bringing and how are you going to bring it to the rural community? So we Have a lot of success there. And I think I would say about 25% of my winners last federal fiscal year for FY22 were from rural areas. So that's also great. But that's also where a lot of my deal flow comes from. And also I think you have to ask right double and it's double edged sword. A lot of the funders say the pipeline's terrible and the deals are terrible. A lot of the entrepreneurs say no one wants to give me money and no one has money for me and my stage. So I think it's both have to kind of get in a room and talk about it and also ask. The entrepreneur has to be more creative and open with asking and I think the angel funder needs to be more understanding or any venture backed funder needs to be more understanding about the entrepreneur in their role too. And kind of what happens on either.

Side just to follow you on that. And you know, like one of the things that we found as a funder is and we try to bring in other funders from call it the Front Range in Colorado, Denver, Boulder for Collins area, the metro area, but we find that their expectations are like startups that are coming out of Boulder. They expect the companies to come with that level of polish, the same vocabulary, what I call the unicorn dance. Right. And the reality is we're finding incredible founders, incredible companies in rural areas. But they don't have the vocabulary, they haven't been exposed to that culture. That doesn't make them any less competent. In fact might be the opposite in most cases. Right. And so it's that where do you engage them and you know, oftentimes describing the difference between debt and equity, even to very sophisticated or later stage entrepreneurs is where we start the conversation.

Yeah. And the vocabulary and where, where people, where you meet people, you know, where they're at and all of those things. I remember, you know, touring a cattle ranch and having conversations about, you know, super, super fascinating innovations that were taking place in a rural community with farmers and ranchers. But the conversations were really different language. And so those pieces I think are super important. Christy, what are your thoughts on this topic?

Yeah, you know, certainly we've got a variety of options to business as it relates to the work that we do specifically is helping build that foundation. And you're right. You know, I think the, the vernacular we use as entrepreneurial support is, you know, you need a whole glossary and I think somebody put in the comments another 400 hours and I couldn't agree more. Just to get familiar with, you know, the due diligence of, you know, investment and what that means and all that stuff. Where we exist as an SBA resource partner is we, we rely on the nex support so we don't have to be experts and everything, but we really have that nexus of support. So where we excel is we actually built a virtual library with using some Covid funding. And what I found was, you know, during the pandemic, we were trying to answer the same question over and over and over again and how do we get that tools and that critical resources out to, you know, the, the small business community across the state in a more efficient manner? We built a custom resource tool and, and then made it free and so put, you know, specific resources to help learn and help understand the challenges that small businesses face and, and then building that strong foundation. Because when you have that strong foundation and you, you know, you know, when you're going to cash flow or you know, when, you know, the opportunities are going to arise or perhaps their scalability or having those informed decision making tools is where our, that's where we exist as a support organization. And so, you know, funding is certainly out there. There are grants out there specific for rural communities. And ours is just more of relying on that nexus of support and building a strong foundation to make those informed decisions. And then again, I just say, you know, just ask because many entrepreneurial support organizations prob have a focus written in, you know, their funding structures of finding those, you know, those hidden gems within the rural communities. And so, you know, just going into those small communities and finding a thinking partner, you know, and building those connections or investment opportunities and just ask. There's a lot of power in that authentic conversation.

And you know, Christy, you raise a point that I think is also super important as well, is that it's not always about the money. A lot of the pieces that are out there are resources to be able to help and that can be technical assistance. For those of you that aren't familiar with technical assistance, that really means like helping you get your arms around the things that you need to do to help your business grow and scale it to the next level. Sometimes it could be assistance with maybe transportation or daycare. In fact, I spoke not too long ago with a community in Canada and one of the things that they offer within their entrepreneurial ecosystem is actually a social worker. Certainly for me, as a serial entrepreneur, you know, going through the mindset piece, you know, half a dozen times in a variety of different ways. And so actually in many regards, particularly in A rural community. It takes a little bit of a village. So I want to switch hats for a second from our entrepreneurs and talk a little bit entrepreneurial ecosystem because there's some new programs and some programs that have existed for a little while with regards to navigation and building ecosystems. Excuse me. And bringing people together from an ecosystem perspective. So Anne, maybe go ahead and jump in on this question about your thoughts about entrepreneurial ecosystems in rural communities.

Yeah, sure. So I think that everyone, stakeholders, right. Everyone needs to have a voice at the table. And I think there's five government, universities, risk capital, the entrepreneur and one other I can't think of right now. Maybe someone else can pop it in. So I think they all. And no one's the center. Right. So some people say the entrepreneur drives it. I don't think that's really typically true. They all have to be doing equal shares depending on the project to get it to move. And so I think it's hard, especially hard because the level of adoption and trying to change the, change the narrative like, oh, if you're an entrepreneur you don't have a job. Well, a farmer is the original entrepreneur. And so if we could leverage farmers and they're smart and they're working with data and agriculture out in the field, albeit with their hands, they are the original epitome. So if we can kind of help build up some of the original entrepreneurs, then there may be a better add in, in adoption to the community, especially the smaller and the more rural about that and building and how everyone needs to have their hand in the pot to help and uplift at the same time.

Yeah, it's a little bit like a good old fashioned barn raising. Right. We're going to go ahead and bring the whole entire community together. Mark, what are your thoughts? Because a lot of what where you're focusing is on the financial side of things. But I am curious. You were shaking your head in agreement with regards to technical capacity building and those sorts of things, which is a lot of what the ecosystems do. What are your thoughts on rural ecosystems?

I mean, just in terms of our role, we view ourselves as a venture fund. We basically operate like an accelerator, a non time bound accelerator. We provide so much of that hands on deep. We do workshops, we do retreats, we do all kinds of stuff that most investors don't, don't do. And part of that is bringing, you know, developing that ecosystem and the skill base across that ecosystem. But one of the things that we found to be most useful is actually startup weeks. I'm super biased given My background having launched those all over the place. But the playbook is exactly the same. And as a vc, we lead the capital track or help lead the capital track at the Startup Week for Western Colorado. And we're starting to see more of those pop up. And again, I think there was a question here about technical tools and I've struggled with this all the way since my Startup Weekend days. But I love all the tools in theory. They're so great. I always come back to the human, especially post Covid. Whatever world we're living in now, we can't get away from the human aspect of entrepreneurship and whether that's in big cities or in rural communities. So the power of events and bringing people together is just, that's never going to go away.

Well, and it's interesting because, and Christy, I'm going to throw this over to you, but, but there was two statistics. One that came out of the Coffin foundation and the other one that came out of the securities and Exchange Commission. And after funding, the biggest challenge that entrepreneurs have is networking and networks, right? And so accessing those networks. And so, you know, the, the importance of the ecosystem. And we talk for those of you that maybe aren't necessarily aware of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It's a gathering of those peoples, those resources, those institutions that help uplift entrepreneurs and help take them to the next level. And part of the role of those is to help ease some of that networking. Christy, I'm sure you have thoughts on this.

Yeah, absolutely. Networking, resourcing, mentorship, you know, is vital because the road goes both ways, right? And, and, and I think there's, there's again, I, you know, I digress. There's power in that authentic conversation. There's power in, you know, growing your business, but also reaching a hand out to those, you know, those businesses that are like minded trying to grow right alongside of you. And so I do believe there's a lot of power in that. And that again, that authentic conversation we had, we have a Microsoft campus here that sponsored a bus. We took the bus to a rural community, Oaks, North Dakota. And it was a Ben Franklin store that transitioned into a growing small towns community resource hub. And we filled the bus and we spent the entire day, we popped in and out of these and heard the stories, heard the relationship. But one theme was really consistent and it was, you know, the continuous connection and driving traffic through those small towns. And so North Dakota as a state has, you know, invested in arts and culture along the highways and how do we, you know, bring those across the State and make that space shorter in between perhaps those small towns. But that, you know, that bus trip and now she's doing it annually. The magic really happened in between those conversations because it would pique your interest, but the community connections. And as a result there were other events popping up in these small towns because there's such a rich story to be told in those small towns. And over a cup of coffee.

Yeah, no, for sure. And for those of you who are listening from an ecosystem perspective, you know, at least the definition that I always had was anybody who shows up and is willing to go ahead and be assistive in a rural ecosystem. And that really runs the gamut. When I was working West Virginia, we had the opportunity to work with the West Virginia National Guard and use their drill hall in order to bring in farmers and growers and ranchers and do an innovation showcase. I collaborated very closely with a local community College, K through 12, schools, churches and religious institutions, 4H clubs, you know, you name it. There's a whole host of folks that can come to the table and really help build out. And part of this is taking the lead to be able to identify the folks that are there within the community because they want to see young people grow businesses and develop new opportunities locally. So I want to take a couple of the questions that I see here in the chat and I don't know if any of you have any thoughts on this. Introducing technology ecosystem solutions for rural communities. I know that we as Rural Rise have host a monthly conference call, video conferences. Actually we've been doing it way before COVID but in order to bring people together on a regular basis, I am curious if you guys have seen any technological solutions that might be assistive in this regard. Any thoughts on that?

So I'll jump in and kind of plug SSTI Science State Technology Innovation. It's a membership based technology based education economic development group that we're involved and have been involved in the last, I don't know, five to seven years. And it's really the quality of people that come and the amount of work they get done. So it's, I know, you know, policy versus politics. There's a lot of policy people that kind of help move the needle in the politics there as well. So SSTI is a great. And you can be involved in many different levels and whatnot. And their conferences are awesome. And they're always in a rural area. I just was in June, I was in Rogers, Arkansas. So, you know, very small, very rural. If you leave northwest Arkansas and go any further south it's adult where the education is, you know, less than third grade, 80% of them at the reading retention as well as try to get your Small Business Development center technology designation. Iowa State University just did. And then they won the FAST Federal and State Technology Award. So another $125,000 because of their technology denotation and they applied instead of us this last year and they won. So try to get the technology denotation with SBDC so that you become sbdtc.

And just a reminder for all of those listening for the vegetable soup, the Small Business Development Centers are located throughout the country and are there actually to do a lot of work. In fact, I had a wonderful opportunity when I was working in West Virginia to work with an SBDC coach and just did amazing job in rural community helping understand and actually it's really unique, particularly SBDC coaches in rural communities because they really understand the landscape and they can help bring, you know, a project along or an entrepreneur along. In that regard. Christy, I'm curious if you have any other thoughts along the technology side? I will add that a good old fashioned Facebook group in a rural community goes a long way. You know, like we don't have to go ahead and get too crazy here. But I'm curious, Christy or Mark, if you guys have any thoughts in this regard.

Yeah, absolutely. You do not have to recreate the wheel. And so a good old. You're right, building that network and leveraging resources perhaps outside of the boundary of your state. You mentioned the SBA Resources partners. So one of them I call SBA the umbrella. And you've got sbdc, you've got VBOC specific resources for veterans. Score. And then Women's Business center, which I represent and we exist in that ecosystem to be that thinking partner. Many of the technology opportunities are out there. You know, I can give a shameless plug for our library. Again that custom built on demand software, but really an array of topics from human resources to government contracting to startup assistance. And you know, due to the grant that we received during COVID it's free so I can pop a link in the chat, but certainly an opportunity to you know, just at least upskill like how are you, how are you upskilling your own working on your business instead of in your business. And there's certainly plenty of resources out there. The way that we got buy in was we reached out to the main street across, across North Dakota and built a roadshow around, you know, just going in and, and you know, looking for those influencers. Every small community has an influencer that's tied to, you know, the other five people and they're generally on Main street and they're generally, you know, owning a small business. So who are those influencers and that you can, you know, network with and, and help build that. So I can drop a link for our on demand resource.

Yeah. Fantastic. And you, the three of you should be shaming me because I didn't mention libraries. You brought up library in a different context, but I see Paul Johnson bringing it up. Rural libraries are a great place to go and I'm not just talking to go through, you know, different books. But man, those librarians, a good friend of ours runs every library, which is a national organization super supportive of entrepreneurship. And let me tell you something, those libraries are great ecosystem builders. They want to be able to help. Mark, what is your thoughts on this technology aspect? Because we also have to be mindful of rural communities and broadband. We're not going to go down that path right now, but we have to be mindful of that as well. What are your thoughts, Mark?

Yeah, I'll be a little bit contrarian to a lot of other folks. I think consistent with like the road, the bus tour that Christy was talking about though. We just launched our second fund. I mentioned we did this for the first one, but we're going to go do a version of the kind of Steve Case Rise of the Wreck, our mini version in rural Colorado here and it's a bunch of in person events. And what do we hope comes out of that? I'm really, you know, we've encouraged people. This was pre Covid when we started but you know, meetups, startup weekends, ignites, TedX's 1 million cups. Right. Like I'm especially in a post Covid era, I think folks are a little allergic to the idea of organizing community and events again. I think we need to figure out how to get past that for the sake of entrepreneurship on some levels. Look, you know, making sure that we're as inclusive as possible because there's plenty of legitimate reasons for not. And so I've seen a lot of the events even go hybrid. But go in person, bring everybody together you can and create the open doors for people to join. And all you need is a Zoom account and I'll echo your Facebook and LinkedIn or sufficient for 80 to 90% of the community organization efforts that we.

And I gotta applaud the SBA folks for putting on this, you know, rural panel because oftentimes when we talk rural, the, you know, the Department of Agriculture, USDA gets a lot of credit and they're doing amazing jobs over there. But I think what happens is not just the sba, but so many different agencies have a focus on rural as well. And so it's really great to see the SBA doing the work to really help support and uplift rural communities. I'm curious if you guys have any more thoughts with regards to the ecosystem building piece we're going to be getting in the last couple minutes here. Any other thoughts on this, Christy or Mark? You know, with the pandemic, there were so many things. One of the things that we saw, you know, getting back to this conversation with regards to technology, there were so many folks in rural communities. There was a lot of education that took place that had to take place in a very short period of time. And I suppose that as we continue to look out, I'm going to ask you guys a little bit off script here, but if you were to look out from your lens, you know, maybe five years from now, maybe a little bit longer, what are some things that people should be thinking about from a rural community? We've heard a lot about the metaverse, virtual reality, augmented reality. What should people in rural communities, maybe in order to get out front of the curve? If you guys have any thoughts on that side of things.

I'll give an angle on that question. But when I kind of look to the future, this is kind of teeing off the last question too. But there's a lot of urban verse, rural when it comes to even ecosystem and community building. So you get, you know, envision building a bunch of silos, trying to connect the silos. But culturally there's been so much of a lot of the folks that we work with too, that kind of default to this us versus them mentality. Sure. Investment, even a hypothesis. We even say our thesis is rural entrepreneurs in rural Colorado are underserved. We think there's value in that. If we're successful 20 years down the road. I actually hope there's no need for any rural focused VC firm.

Right.

We're doing a good job and kind of map to that. Right. It's no longer an underserved community in terms of capital for entrepreneurs. So how do we get there? We need to start building those bridges right away. And so back to the events, making sure we bring people in or we've worked with other groups to sponsor sending a bunch of folks to Denver Startup Week so that they, they can kind of be plugged in and be immersed into that.

So what I'm hearing you say is really this idea that. That in the future you'd like to see a world where there's no urban, rural. It's just entrepreneurship. Right. And there's no real distinction because what's available in one place is available across the board. Is that what I'm hearing?

Exactly. I think that's a really important nuance to keep in mind, because if we keep thinking and constantly doing or building things separately without building bridges at the same time, you know, we might create even more separation.

Sure. Christy or Ann, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, sure. So I think in ecosystem building and trying to recruit and get people to come and jump on your bandwagon, I've thought a lot about trying to go to events where people like me wouldn't go or don't look like me, especially in rural America, or try to find one or two influencers from the other, not the other side, but from different groups and different organizations, and try to. I'm going to come to your event to know what you guys are about. You're always welcome here, and try to extend a hand. In a way, it's a little bit more unique than just, why aren't that pocket of people coming or showing up or why aren't we have any. We have too many men and no females or that sort of thing. But trying to just go to other events that maybe I wouldn't necessarily think about going to or be found or be seen at and trying to open the door and leverage your hand. I'm going to come to your stuff also come to mind. And then we can try to work that angle on opposite ends and try to meet somewhere in the middle.

Yeah. So bringing in diverse groups of audiences and identifying, but also being intentional. Oftentimes when we talk about rural, there can be an idea that there's a particular type of archetype or something like that. And what we know from, you know, research and data and actuality is that, you know, the rural communities have a beautiful array of folks from all different backgrounds and experiences. Christy, any thoughts on that piece?

Yeah. Diversity, power and diversity. And, you know, North Dakota is proud to. I was just visiting with, you know, some of the refugee resettlement programs in North Dakota and how, you know, how they feed into the entrepreneurial ecosystem as well, bringing in, you know, cultural perspectives. But there's power in sitting across from someone that, you know, is a different socioeconomic class, gender, race, ethnicity, et cetera, and just in power and in that diversity and so encourage you to, you know, check those biases and connect with someone outside of the region. And then, you know, secondly, what is the question that you're. We just, we asked our. The tough question for my local community. Just recently in a branding conversation, we asked the tough question about what is the story that we're telling ourselves about our community and, you know, and what does the branding look like of our community and what's the story we tell ourselves versus what is a visitor like? Have you ever just, you know, checked out a, you know, have you sat in a community coffee shop and asked the visitors? And it's pretty telling. And having been born and raised in the same town, you know, I, I had a very different vantage point of what I thought people were coming to our community for. And, and so there is power in just asking those tough questions about your community. And, and then what do you want your community to be known for? And there's a big difference. So, you know, being that welcoming space for diverse populations is something, you know, checking those conversations.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that those, you know, really bringing, you know, an array of people to the table. And in fact, if you look at the data out of the Kauffman foundation, some of the largest groups of entrepreneurs really come out of our immigrant communities. And so the opportunities, you know, if you're willing to give up everything that you knew in order to come, you know, to start a new life, the opportunities to be able to start a business are often quite big. I want to recognize that piece because it's important, you know, when you look across the United States, different rural communities and the fabric, what the compositions are, and also the resources. But one of the things that we pride ourselves on rural rise is really starting with your. What you have already. Oftentimes, rural communities will look, you know, out into the distance, but there's a wonderful array of resources and opportunities that already are existing within the rural communities and understanding how to leverage those opportunities that exist currently. I want to go ahead and ask Mark, I know that you're working and beginning to see at the beginning of our call, you sort of mentioned a little bit more about what you're starting to see. Would you mind just sharing, based on your guys, backgrounds and the funding side of things, just a little bit more about what you guys are kind of starting to see in terms of identifying businesses and those sorts of things.

Yeah, I would say I've been here almost eight years in Colorado and in rural. And I think there was kind of a hypothesis with programs like accelerator programs that funded both state and federal money. I think SBIR programs included for a Number of them and you know, should we keep funding those was a big question in years four and five. And now that we're kind of over that, six, seven in the last three years, we've seen a lot of big wins to the point that I think the state and others are now saying how do we get five more accelerators into even more rural communities? Right. And make sure that they're flavored and appropriate and aligned with what's right for that community. So I think that's a big win because those start to organize some of that earlier stage capital and angel networks. We have something called the Colorado Angel Network that really just launched in the last handful of months, but their effort is to now organize a bunch of different chapters across rural Colorado, each chapter having anywhere between 10 and 100 members based on where they're at. And then I think in terms of seed investment, I mentioned that we've had five exits as well in the first four years of funding. We also have one thing that goes unmentioned by a lot of venture funds. We've only had two write offs. The failure rate is significantly lower than most. I think we talk about grit and ethos and culture and DNA and rural. We see that manifest itself in lower failure rates. But what that does is allows us to build a capital ecosystem that can be predicated on lower failure rates. You know, that's piece of it. But also we're not reliant on the Moneyball strategy or the power law curve of, you know, building the next Facebook to create real, not just perceived success, but economic value and impact in these communities.

Well, listen, I think, I think, I want to make sure, I think we're coming to a close here. I just want to be mindful of our time here. I have one last question. I'm going to, I'm going to take the question mentor networks and the next generation of entrepreneurs in rural areas. Any thoughts on that? Mentor networks or entrepreneurs in rural communities? Next generation students, Student entrepreneurship education and Christy, any thoughts?

Mark?

Sure.

So we've got sort of. It's not my wheelhouse, but I can speak to it. It's an interesting. We're big insurance capital of the world too here in Des Moines and Iowa. So we have the Global Insurance accelerator and their program runs on 100 day accelerator with mentors. So they meet with 100 to 200 mentors. And so they've built out that mentor program. I'm glad, happy to share a connection to those folks and how they've done that and how we can replicate that as well as we've globbed on through the Kauffman foundation, we as in the John Pappajan Entrepreneurial Centers in Ames and then I was leading to the Venture Mentoring Network out of mit. So the pilot just switched. We use the, excuse me, MIT branding to try to get that to be really aggressive on MIT's pilot. And we're doing some changes, but look into that too and I'd be happy to speak with you or connect you to the person who runs that as well for mentoring.

Great, thank you so much, Christy. Mark, any last word?

Yeah, there's, you know, there's quite a few different entrepreneurial resources for youth Lemonade Days or you can different platforms for inspiring those youth to think in different ways. You know, there's some, there's some strategy and some statistics around, you know, the kindergartners of today are going to be accepting jobs in the future that aren't even thought of yet. And, you know, what does AI do to, you know, the little minds of the future? And so I think just having the conversation and continuing that conversation about how do we be inclusive of youth and you know, bringing youth into those leadership opportunities is incredibly important to the success.

Of our communities and keeping them in the rural communities. Mark, last word. Take us home here.

Oh, man. Look, we said this about a lot of the startup communities, whatever, 20 years ago when I was getting started in Seattle and Bradfeld is famous for, you always have to have the 20 year vision and that restarts every single day. And we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can borrow from a lot building networks like this. We've got at least 20 years to go and whatever we're learning today, it's going to be irrelevant in another 10 years and we'll have another 20 years to go. Great.

Well, thank you guys so much and thank you for everybody who joined us today. We really appreciate it. Rural communities, it's where it's at. Mark, thank you. Christy, thank you so much. Sbirsttr, the Women Business Center. We really appreciate it and all the work that you're doing in Colorado. Thank you everybody for joining us and also thank you to the SBA for hosting us today. We really appreciate it. Thanks everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye.