More than 100 people, including more than 20 mayors from across the state, attended Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola’s first Mayor’s Summit on Entrepreneurship on Friday.
The day-long event, in partnership with the private, nonpartisan Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri, and the Venture Center in Little Rock, included panel sessions on developing entrepreneurial ecosystems and how entrepreneurship can play a role in economic development.
Trey Bowles, founder and CEO of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center and co-founder of the Dallas Innovation Center, was the day’s keynote speaker.
Bowles said entrepreneurs require a physical space where they can collaborate, form a community and meet investors and customers. He said cities large and small could use the Dallas model, which has had 48,000 visitors, contributed 2,500 hours to helping entrepreneurs and held more than 800 events since it opened in 2013.
Bowles said companies within the entrepreneur center had created 955 jobs, raised $115.7 million in capital and generated $90 million in revenue.
He said an entrepreneur, not an economic development group, should run an entrepreneurial center, just as an economic developer should run an economic development group.
He said that while he can’t be an expert on every venture, he was able to create an environment to connect experts in their fields to startups that are trying to break into their industries.
Bowles said all stakeholders — entrepreneurs, investors, academic institutions, elected officials, corporations, media outlets, volunteers, mentors, chambers of commerce — are needed to “build the most robust and comprehensive entrepreneurial ecosystem.” He encouraged the crowd to find leaders in those stakeholder groups.
“The thing an entrepreneur needs most is often what they don’t have, and that’s experience … you can gain it in one of two ways. You can earn it, which takes time, money and wounds. Most of us don’t have enough money to make all the mistakes we’re going to make and still watch our business,” he said. “Or, two, you can learn it.”
That’s where mentors play a role, he said.
Not only has the Dallas Entrepreneur Center created a “vertical” relationship with mentors, but also a “horizontal” one, with co-working entrepreneurs sitting next to each other and borrowing each other’s best practices to improve their own businesses.
‘Smart Cities’
Bowles also touted the public-private partnership that formed the Dallas Innovation Alliance, a “smart city” initiative launched in September.
Being a “smart city” means creating a better place to live, work and play — not just a place with free public Wi-Fi, which is how many people incorrectly define that term, he said.
Bowles said building entrepreneurial centers, incubators like the Dallas Innovation Center, and pursuing the idea of becoming a “smart city” is a way to revitalize the parts of cities that need rebuilt.
Bowles’ keynote address followed a brief introduction to the Venture Center’s VC FinTech Accelerator teams and morning sessions that reinforced many of the points he made.
Stodola said he was pleased with the turnout and that the morning produced a lot of “stimulating” discussion about how entrepreneurship is not just for large cities like Little Rock but for every town.
Forrest City Mayor Larry Bryant said he learned that communities need to be more “inclusive” and “open for business.”
Maumelle Mayor Michael Watson added that he learned one way to do just that would be to create a website connecting entrepreneurs to available resources.
He also said retaining current businesses and embracing homegrown companies can be better than chasing after a large job-creator.
Watson explained that it would be better to have 10 employers responsible for five jobs each than one employer responsible for 50 jobs. One of the 10 closing wouldn’t have the devastating effect that the employer of 50 closing would have, he said.