It’s very hard to believe that it’s nearly November. In what feels like the blink of an eye, I’ve built out the EntrePartners Innovation Center piece by heavy piece in the heart of downtown Iowa City. The podcasting room is completely finished, the white boards and chairs have all been assembled, and all of the tables have been hauled up three flights and put in place. I’ve even hooked up an antenna to the TV in the classroom, positioned so that we can pick up all of the local network affiliates – don’t want to miss football games while I’m working on the weekend.
I’ve done no advertising of the space whatsoever, but I have several tenants already. There’s a major demand for cheap workspace downtown as part of our Coworking + Accountability program. Now that the podcasting space is up and running, I have a few marketing folks to email back – they’ve been asking about the space for months now. All of the physical work is done – now, it’s time to switch into sales and promotion mode. It was nice to spend a few days over the last couple of months doing some physical work and not looking at computer screens.
The only other times these past couple of months that I haven’t spent my time plugging away at the computer were trips to Indianapolis at the end of August for the Rally Conference and just a couple of weeks ago for the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. The great part about the Rally Conference was that I spent the better part of three days honing my messaging for the EntrePartners Innovation Center. Like I say to students, the only way to perfect your pitch is to practice. When I first proposed the center, my messaging was somewhat rambling, mostly because I wasn’t sure what the full focus of the space was going to be. By the time I went to Indianapolis at the end of August, I’d already found the space, signed the lease, and put down the deposit – I had a much clearer idea of what I was going to start building on September 1 when I received the keys. Podcasting space rental downstairs, Coworking + Accountability upstairs.
I had plenty of opportunity to talk with others about what I’m building here in Iowa City during the conference. This was the second year of Rally, and they took a lot of the feedback they received seriously, starting with free coffee stations before you walked into the main convention areas. I had the chance to informally talk with several people over coffee outside the convention halls, but the best addition to Rally this year was the ability to schedule meetings with total strangers within the convention app. I didn’t specifically reach out to anyone, but as the convention drew closer, I noticed people contacting me through the app, wanting to set up meetings just because they’d read my bio and wanted to chat – there was very little meeting just to sell me things. These were great conversations and, while I wanted to see more of the breakout sessions, I feel like this was the best use of my time during the two days at Rally.
Two things that I found a bit lacking as compared to last year’s Rally convention were the keynotes and the “Rally Rave” at the end of the first day. The Alex Rodriguez keynote was probably my favorite of the bunch, and the speaker who kicked off the first day was decent, but I bailed out early on a couple of the keynotes, using the time during one of them to visit a cidery just a few blocks away from downtown Indianapolis. The “rave” wasn’t terribly well attended, and the beverage selection was not great. It didn’t help that it was incredibly hot and humid during the event – so much so that my air conditioner at the hotel was profusely dripping during my entire stay, struggling to cool my top-floor room at times.
All in all, Rally was a great experience once again this year. If they ask me to judge the first round of the pitch competition for a third year, I’d be happy to help again for the price of a free ticket. Going to Rally next year would be a second trip into Indianapolis, since I’ll be attending the Global Entrepreneurship Conference in June. I’ve been asked to be a conference ambassador, as I’m one of the points of contact for Global Entrepreneurship Week here in Iowa. I’m in the middle of scheduling content during that week, November 18-22, including 1 Million Cups visiting the EntrePartners Innovation Center on the morning of November 20 and the center’s open house on the afternoon of November 22. During the rest of the week, we’re going to have speakers during lunch, and I’m in the middle of reaching out to some of the tech meetups in the area about hosting events in the evening, either in the Innovation Center or next door at MERGE. I’m hopeful that everything will be finalized before November 1, so we can get the word out there.
Having the Global Entrepreneurship Conference here in the United States in 2025 will be a nice introduction to the event. I know there will be a few people I know in attendance, but there will be lots of opportunity to connect with others from all corners of the world and learn what they are doing to build their local startup communities and countrywide entrepreneurial ecosystems. By June, I should have some data regarding the effectiveness of Coworking + Accountability and can discuss what’s working here locally with new connections. Also, I’m itching to travel globally again to teach entrepreneurship and see other parts of the world. I wasn’t able to make any international Startup Weekends work this year, but I’m hopeful that in the future, I’ll have the chance to facilitate something abroad.
While all of the ecosystem building stuff is sailing along, I’m still hard at work to get Cider Finder out the door by the end of the year. It’s so close to being done – it’s going to feel so good to get the thing up on the App Store and in the hands of thousands of cider enthusiasts across the country. In order to test some things, I attended this year’s Great American Beer Festival over in Denver, as there was a strong contingent of cider both on the convention floor and in the accompanying competition. I ran into industry friends during the event – I only attended Friday’s tasting session to get a feel for what to expect in future years as a vendor.
The convention floor was enormous – I’d heard stories about how big Great American Beer Festival was in past years, so I was prepared. Before getting in line about an hour before the doors opened, I had the traditional pre-tasting greasy cheeseburger and fries, so the beverages had something to work with in my tract. The couple I ended up next to in line also gave me an extra pretzel necklace they brought along, all for the price of taking some pictures of them in line.
It was physically impossible to try everything during the four hours of the tasting. There were dozens of brewers in each section, so I zeroed in on producers who I’d never heard of previously and producers who had sours and other non-IPA and non-stout styles. While I did have a chance to talk with some cider industry folks, I didn’t end up consuming any cider during my time in Denver. I did, however, have my first Belgian quad and lambic-style beers in about a decade. I still prefer cider, but it’s nice to revisit the classics that were part of my journey to cider.
At this point in the development of Cider Finder, it makes a lot more sense to have the Great American Beer Festival on my calendar rather than Denver Startup Week. If the two are scheduled closer together in future years, I’m going to try to make both events. However, I don’t feel like I missed anything skipping Denver Startup Week this year. Hopefully they restore the week to five days from the three-day schedule they had this year, and I hope they find more interesting keynotes in the future, as they’ve had in the past.
These last couple of months have been a breath of fresh air. I really feel like I’m finally making a dent in the universe, not just fixing something that someone else broke. This isn’t just tied to the EntrePartners Innovation Center, even though that’s taking up most of my time. I’ve also joined the Main Street West Branch Board of Directors as one of four new members. While I don’t live in town, I live close enough to West Branch that I have reaped the benefit of the improvements made over the last few years to the business district through the Main Street Iowa program, and I feel like serving on that board furthers the mission of EntrePartners. I’m getting an opportunity to experience economic development from a grassroots level – something you don’t tend to get in larger cities with professional economic development organizations. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes and how I can use my experience to further improve Main Street.
I have a lot of work to do over the next couple of months to fully fund EntrePartners and to get the Innovation Center to basically run on autopilot. There’s not much left to do beyond the sales and marketing aspect – getting donors to donate, getting people to schedule hours in the podcast studio, and enrolling people in Coworking + Accountability. This is probably the most excited I’ve been about something in a long time, and I’ve been waiting to share what I’ve built with everyone. Some folks have dropped by to get a preview, but things weren’t totally built out then. Our mid-November open house is going to be great, and if you’re in the area, I hope you can drop by that day. Follow EntrePartners on LinkedIn and Facebook for specifics.
Honestly, this is probably the last narrative post before my traditional year-end review in December. With all of the activities planned for the next few weeks, followed by Thanksgiving and the holiday season, there’s really going to be no time to sit down and write. This year has been a crazy ride, and I’m glad you’ve been along for it. We’ll see how the last couple of months of 2024 treat us – I don’t know how things could get any wilder.