This “year in review” post marks the fifth year where I’ve taken the time at the end of the year to look back over my accomplishments and examine both successes and failures from the past twelve months. This review, along with predictions for the coming year, are my favorite pair of posts each year. It’s fun to see how far I’ve come, and to compare what happened during the year, and compare that with the predictions I made a year ago. I encourage all of you to take the time this week to examine your successes and failures from 2019 – it’s a great way to refocus for the coming year, to make better goals for yourself and your business, and to determine how you can take those failures and turn them into successes over the next 12 months.
As I’d planned at the beginning of the year, Cider Finder was going to be my top priority for 2019. What I didn’t expect while building the app and recruiting a user base was how much I’d learn about the cider industry this year. The learning was spread between three major cider events spanning the length of the year – CiderCon in Chicago back in February, the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition in Michigan in May, and Franklin County Cider Days in New England just last month. Each of these events offered both “classroom”-type learning and hands-on experience through tasting, pairings, and a few facility visits.
CiderCon was the first major experience I’d had interacting with the cider industry. My favorite parts of the event were the comparative tasting sessions and the pairing session, which paired four different types of food with four different varieties of cider. In each of the tasting sessions, four different ciders of a certain type were compared side-by-side, so we could see the variations on that particular style. GLINTCAP, just a few months later, was in a way an enormous tasting experience, allowing those of us in the steward room the opportunity to try dozens of ciders among all cider categories – sweet, dry, fruited, modern, heritage, barrel aged, and iced. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to try some of the world’s best ciders, and a few unfortunate entries which helped us improve our tasting abilities. Franklin County Cider Days offered both educational sessions and a great number of tasting and pairing experiences, featuring many ciders that just aren’t available beyond New England – this alone was worth the trip.
During my cider industry crash course this year, I was able to make a bunch of new friends in the industry from across the United States and Canada, and was able to focus the scope of Cider Finder based off of the feedback I received from cider makers and enthusiasts alike. Once the beta test launches, I will start receiving amazing feedback from users, and hope nothing major breaks (fingers firmly crossed!) We’ll see how the app continues to hold up as we move from closed beta testing, to an open beta, all the way to the full launch next year. Also, as I’ll discuss in the second half of this post, there are going to be a number of fun cider-related adventures coming up during 2020, including returning to CiderCon, GLINTCAP, and Franklin County Cider Days.
While developing Cider Finder has taken the front seat over the last twelve months, I’ve continued to build out client work on the Freelance Media Producer side and continued developing projects for the eastern Iowa entrepreneurial ecosystem. I’m not sure what the tipping point was over the past year, but I’ve had the opportunity to onboard more clients and create more formal partnerships in 2019 than I have in the four previous years combined. The work has consisted of a nice mix between Web, audio, video, and some business project consulting in there for good measure – not something I’ve had the opportunity to take on previously. I’ve taken on enough new clients and completed enough new work to make updating my Web site worthwhile, to better reflect what Jay Cooper: Freelance Media Producer is all about – look for this update early next year.
My work in the eastern Iowa entrepreneurial ecosystem continues, leading Startup Weekend Iowa City for another year and taking over at the lead emcee each week at 1 Million Cups Iowa City. Our attendance across events continues to grow, with nearly 30 people participating in Startup Weekend Iowa City, a couple dozen joining us for Iowa City Open Coffee each Wednesday morning, and 30-40 people in attendance each week at 1 Million Cups. For the most part, we’ve kept the 1MCIC format almost completely matching the core pillars and guides that the folks at 1MCHQ at the Kauffman Foundation request of local chapters, positioning us as “the gold standard” for 1MC in Iowa. I had the opportunity to attend the 1 Million Cups Organizers Summit in Kansas City back in September, and I was pleased that we were as close as we were to hitting the mark and the milestones that the folks at headquarters want.
I am proud of the panel discussions that we were able to put together during the year at 1MCIC, even though it deviates from the core pillars of 1MC as discussed at the Organizers Summit. We ran two panels this year – one in April on entrepreneurial events in the state of Iowa, and the other in September on resources available for beginning entrepreneurs. The great thing about the panel discussions was that our attendees were able to gain a lot of information from presenters who wouldn’t have been able to fill an entire hour by themselves, but were complementary to other presenters. The questions our attendees asked were phenomenal, and I’m hoping to do three or four panel discussions next year – aiming for once a quarter isn’t a bad goal. We also ran a “town hall” at our final 1MC for the year earlier this month, so that we could get feedback from the group about how we’ve been doing, and what we can do better in the coming year. I’m hoping that we are able to make this a tradition each year, before we send everyone off for the holidays.
While we are continuing to grow our ecosystem, there have still been a few frustrating bumps in the road along the way. Startup Weekend Iowa City was a fantastic event, and was larger than last year, but we still struggle to bring in people from across the state to participate in the event. I send out information about SWIC to coworking spaces across the state, but don’t seem to get much response. We seem to have allies in the Quad Cities at CoworkQC and in Cedar Rapids at The Space, but it’s especially frustrating that we don’t have more participation from the other coworking spaces within 30-60 minutes of downtown Iowa City. Our goal for SWIC 2020 is 50 participants, with 10-12 teams pitching on Sunday afternoon in front of the judges. This will only happen if more people attend from other communities across the state, or if we’re able to tap into diverse communities here in eastern Iowa who may not consider themselves “entrepreneurs,” but have great ideas that could become viable businesses in the long run.
On the topic of entrepreneurial ecosystem events, I was able to make it to several great events in Iowa and beyond this year. The Young Entrepreneur Convention was back for year 4, holding the event in Ames this year rather than Des Moines. The YEC organizing team is based in Ames, and with the birth of their own 1MC chapter in Ames, they have a burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem trying to separate itself from the shadow of Des Moines’ much larger, more established ecosystem., so YEC is positioning itself as a way to show off Ames to the larger statewide ecosystem – this is what I’m hoping the move meant. I think it’s great for the convention, and we’ll see how it plays out as time progresses. As Ames tries to find its own identity separate from Des Moines’ ecosystem, they need to find ways to highlight their strengths in agriculture, biotech, and engineering sectors, as opposed to the financial, insurance, and larger industrial players that dominate Des Moines.
Down the road in Des Moines and a month later, I had a chance to attend Monetery, put together by the folks at Dwolla. It focused on the tech and startup ecosystem, and discussed everything from indicators of startup success, funding opportunities, team-building, and bringing different segments of the ecosystem together to work toward a common goal. I had the opportunity to rub shoulders with other startup founders, funders, and ecosystem builders from all over the Midwest. I chose not to meet with individual investors on the second day of the conference, since Cider Finder wasn’t far enough along at that point to warrant any sort of pitch deck meeting. If the opportunity is available in 2020, I am considering putting together a deck and applying for meetings, just to see if there would be any traction with investors.
There were two different “startup crawls” in Iowa this year – Des Moines had one in April, the day before the Young Entrepreneur Convention, and Cedar Rapids had one in September, the day after I returned from the 1 Million Cups Organizers Summit. Each of the crawls had five stops, and I met a bunch of fantastic folks during both events. I talked a little bit with the organizers of both events, and they are looking for other startup communities in which to hold events like this in the future. Iowa City, specifically the Ped Mall, would be a fantastic place to hold one of these things in 2020. In the second half of this post, I’ll talk more about what I have in the works for next summer that will bring together entrepreneurs, creatives, and small business owners to celebrate what we’re accomplishing in Iowa City and Johnson County.
To round out this year’s entrepreneurial event calendar, I attended my third Denver Startup Week back in September. It was a very full week of learning, fun, and meeting a bunch of energetic, motivated people who are building some fantastic things in a vibrant location. I try to get to most of the “big events,” like the kickoff and closing parties, some of the big name speakers, and anything that allows me to connect with makers and creatives in that community. I also attempt to learn at least a couple of new things each day. This year, I jammed my schedule a little bit too full – possibly making up for not having a full enough schedule last year. In 2020, the trip to Denver in September is going to take a little bit different path, which I will explain in the second half of the post. I’m going to at least get to a day or two of Denver Startup Week, but there are other places I need to visit while I’m in that part of the country next year.
As in past years, I’ve taken the opportunity to mentor students through the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at The University of Iowa, both during the summer Hawkeye Student Accelerator and during both spring and fall Iowa Startup Games events. I think there’s a benefit both for the students who I mentor, and for the local entrepreneurial community. Until recently, I feel like students have had a difficult time connecting with the “adults” in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. When you’re 19, it’s tough to walk up to someone 20-30 years your senior and try to work your way into their company. I feel that as one of the major players holding open the “front door of the ecosystem” through organizing SWIC, 1MCIC, and Open Coffee, it’s my responsibility to help the students feel as though they are welcome in the larger community, to help break down some of the “siloing” that occurs between the university and the town. It seems like some of these “silos” are starting to break down, and students seem freer to attend our events and become part of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. As we move into 2020, I’m hoping that the walls between town and gown continue to disappear.
The discussion of 2019 isn’t complete without talking about BondingBox. David MK and I are still putting work into making BondingBox a resource for couples, but we’re changing things up a bit as we move into 2020. Instead of merely focusing on the activities in the boxes, we’re moving toward becoming a “relationship hub” or a “date night clearinghouse.” People tend not to have the time or energy to devise a date night, but they don’t necessary want to have the date night at home. We’re refocusing on helping create the date night ideas based on the information couples give us, and then they can pick from a list of ideas to purchase from us. We’ll be partnering with other businesses to bring this idea to life over the next year, and we brought on an intern this past summer to help us move this idea forward. Once we have everything figured out, it should be fun to relaunch BondingBox as a hub for relationships, rather than just a date night subscription service.
So, it’s been quite the year. I’ve visited three time zones, seen multiple mountain chains, tasted more cider than I care to admit, met dozens of amazing entrepreneurs across the country, and it’s only the beginning. It’s already looking like 2020 is going to be a blast. I invite you to continue on to the second half of this post to read what I have in store for the next 12 months. You’ll see many familiar things on the list for next year, but there are plenty of new ideas and projects that will start coming together next year that I’m looking forward to sharing with all of you.
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