Smart Growth

Tyler spoke to a group of about twenty-five local entrepreneurs Tuesday night during their last business/technology meetup of the year at Fox and Hound.  The group, organized by former business partners Rob May and Todd Earwood, meets regularly to network and share ideas about how to recruit investors and more talented thinkers to Louisville.

Tyler shared his experience as a small business owner for the past fifteen years and set forth a few of his ideas about why Louisville needs to “unleash our potential – not harness it – in order to attract jobs of the future.”

The collection of self-described “a-political” business men and women all agree that Louisville’s next Mayor must work towards attracting investment capital for the startup/tech community.  According to Rob May of Backupify and Coconut Headsets, “Tyler has been very interested in meeting the Louisville startup/tech community and the truth is we need to do a better job of getting our voices heard.  By inviting one candidate, we may be able to get some of the others to turn out to future meetings so that whoever gets elected is at least aware of our presence.”

During our conversations Tuesday we learned about some of the issues facing Louisville's startup/tech community.  One is educating and exposing local venture capital firms and investors to all of these talented software engineers and their ideas.  Historically, investors in Louisville have focused their confidence in health care and biotech start ups.  In order for Louisville to compete for jobs of the future, we have to get VC's to broaden the scope of their portfolios to include local startups.  One idea shared Tuesday would be to have investors and entrepreneurs get together monthly for meaningful conversations about new business ideas and exchange thoughts about the future of the IT community.  This is exactly the kind of relationship the next Mayor has to foster in order to encourage smart growth for Louisville's future.

Evidenced by organizing groups like the one we spoke with last night, the Louisville startup/tech community is working hard to demonstrate a level of credibility in their skill sets, ideas and business ventures to join the likes of Austin, Boston, and Chicago as competitive alternatives to Silicon Valley.

After meeting with the group, Tyler noted that “it really sounds like this group has served a great purpose of connecting like minded people to make serious connections for new business in this city.  I really want to push to unleash entrepreneurial energy all over this region and this group is the poster child for that spirit.”  

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