Checking in on our technology and startup ecosystem
It’s been a busy spring and summer in Chattanooga’s technology and startup ecosystem. First of all AOL Founder Steve Case rolled into town with his Rise of the Rest bus tour, showering eight startups in publicity and investing in FreightWaves.
Then the Jump Fund, one of our indigenous venture capital funds, raised $5.2 million in a second round of funding to invest in women-led startups.
The Enterprise Center released its Innovation District Framework to guide development in those key blocks downtown.
And after taking a year off from summer accelerators, CO.LAB came back strong with, not one, but two accelerators: Gig Tank for high-growth potential companies exploiting Chattanooga’s Big Bandwidth and adding a consumer goods accelerator for things like beer, coffee and energy bars.
(Hmm. Startups seem to consume lots of that stuff. Maybe the two accelerators are more connected than they thought.)
So now seems like a good time to check in with the startup ecosystem, maybe take a snapshot of the growing little ones to share with relatives.
But snapshots—even digital selfies—are so last year. Even with the world’s widest wide-angle lens, it would be impossible to get everything into the frame.
Every snapshot is deceptive. At best, the photo is like an image of a flowing water: It might be beautiful, but the reality will never again look like that. At worst, it’s like a still life: a handful of pieces assembled to make a point or just an interesting visual.
But the real problem—at the conceptual level where everything important begins—is that a snapshot is the wrong metaphor. So I’m disrupting it with a new one: welcome to the miscellany.
Instead of snapping a metaphorical photo, I talked to five people who represent a sampling of the miscellany that makes up Chattanooga’s technology/startup ecosystem. Let me explain.
A few years ago, the keynote speaker at Chattanooga’s Startup Week was David Weinberger, an early Internet observer who was one of the coauthors of the book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”, an attempt in 2000 to help the rest of us not just get one clue, but board the clue train about this web thingy. Since then, Weinberger has dug progressively deeper into the mystery in a series of books with titles that are just as iceberg-tip-ish as they sound: “Small Pieces Loosely Joined,” then “Everything is Miscellaneous,” then “Too Big to Know.”
All three titles could double as descriptions of Chattanooga’s community renaissance and tech ecosystem. But “Everything Is Miscellaneous” is the one that went off like a bombshell in my head.Chattanooga’s tech ecosystem—like the urban design renaissance that preceded and paved the way for it—is absolutely miscellaneous.
It’s like a database that tells a different story depending on how you query it. It’s like the complex adaptive systems modeled by chaos mathematics in which easily understood components give rise to emergent effects that are complex and unanticipated.
It’s a bubbling stew that has more ingredients than you can get in one spoonful and keeps on cooking while you wait for your bowlful to cool. And that spoonful is just like a snapshot.
So this is a not-particularly-random sampling from the Chattanooga miscellany, both a spoonful of the tech/startup stew and a sampling of what these five people told me.
Why these people?
Like Chattanooga, they and their projects all are in the midst of change—product, company, or career—and each of them has a long personal perspective on Chattanooga and its multiple ecosystems. They are not the usual suspects. None of them work for agencies responsible for growing the startup ecosystem like CoLab or the Enterprise Center. I asked them all what they are working on, what excites them, and what they see in Chattanooga’s future.
Electronics and Biotech and 3-D Printing, Oh My
Mike Harrison, co-founder of Ring-u telephone provider, is by far the technologist of the group. Mike is a serious geek with a tech resume a mile long, including starting Chattanooga’s first Internet service provider in 1994.
When he talks tech, the atmosphere can get pretty thick, but what he really wanted to talk about was manufacturing.
“Part of me thinks that electronics and software are now just about polish,” he said. “The next new wave is going to be biotech: gene splicing, gene hacking, CRISPR.”
That’s an arena in which he says Chattanooga is not particularly well suited to play. On the other hand, he’s bullish about advanced manufacturing, where Chattanooga is at the bleeding edge, thanks to 3D printing companies like Collider and Branch Technology.
“Whether its 3D printing or subtractive manufacturing, CNC machining or whatever, it’s changing the typical “Model A Ford” style of making thousands of the same thing over and over again to ‘I’m going to make 20 of these, push a button and make 50 of these, push a button and make 200 of those. Then repeat the whole cycle if you run out of inventory.”
One Word: Specialize
Chris Cummings is also bullish on technology but he’s more excited about the potential of social impact companies like his.
Cummings founded digital storytelling company Pass It Down three years ago primarily as a “digital biographer” that anyone could use.
This year, the company made a major shift, expanding its focus to include licensing the technology platform it developed to libraries, museums, universities, and cities.
“The reason I love platform technology is every client makes your technology better and more efficient and cheaper to run,” he said. “You build one thing that every day gets a little bit better. You get to see your baby grow up.”
He is excited about the growth potential of specializing.
“I think specialization is the wave of the future for communities,” he said. “We have some of the world’s best 3D printing companies here. I don’t think any small to mid-size city will be able to say ‘we’re Silicon Valley.’ But I do think you could say ‘We’re the best in the world at these three things.’”
People First
Scott Rix also had 3D printing on his mind, but for a different reason.
Rix is a serial entrepreneur who’s worked in startups and for established companies, including PlayCore and EPB. Now he’s consulting for companies ranging from startup to $100 million in revenue. He helps established companies use data to find efficiencies and improve quality and helps entrepreneurs find the right resources to help them grow their businesses.
Rix thinks people are more important than technology and cites former CO.LAB executive director Mike Bradshaw’s role in encouraging 3D printing startups as an example of how to grow an industry by cultivating people.
“What the next technology idea is I don’t know, but I’m sure there are some really creative people sitting somewhere—around a campfire, a boardroom, lunch, pizza, whatever it is—coming up with some crazy idea that we’re all going to laugh at,” he said. “We have to be smart enough to listen and look to the future and see how those ideas can be turned into life-changing businesses.”
Innovating for Impact
Stefanie Crowe is a former banker turned financial advisor and a partner in the Jump Fund, which is an impact investor, both because it invests in women-led companies and because of the social impact of the work those companies do. She wants more investing for social good and sees an opportunity for Chattanooga to shine.
“As Chattanooga focuses on innovation, we need to make sure we don’t leave sections of the population behind and make sure we are seeking innovation for the right impacts—not just for the sake of something sexy—something that really enhances well-being and economic stability of people and families and children,” she said. “I feel that Chattanooga can differentiate itself, not by becoming another Silicon Valley, but by becoming something so entrepreneurial and so innovative that also creates an unusual amount of economic, social, and environmental improvement.”
Investing in Infrastructure
After helping to grow Rock Creek into one of the largest outdoor retailers on the web, Mark McKnight did a personal pivot to become chief marketing officer for Roots Rated, then helped it execute two pivots of its own: first from publishing outdoor stories on the web to providing content marketing to outdoor companies, then to becoming a pure software company marketing the content management platform it developed.
Aside from his newest professional challenge—working to make the 60-plus year old, 317-acre Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center a mainstay of the community again as executive director—what most engages him in the Chattanooga stew pot of bubbling entrepreneurial miscellany is the city itself.
“I like to watch this city become a city,” he said, citing how much more livable M.L. King Boulevard has become with the addition of bike lanes and traffic calming. “When I look 5, 10 years down the road, I hope I can say that Chattanooga made the infrastructure investments that all these neighborhoods deserve, these historic neighborhoods that are walkable and convenient to downtown and that make this a vibrant city.”
Rich Bailey has been an student of Chattanooga’s changes—especially technology and urban design—since the Tennessee Aquarium and the Internet were new ideas.