This Seems Like a “Jay Thing”

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I’ve managed to find a brief moment during this busy time to collect my thoughts and reflect on all of the entrepreneurial activities of which I’ve been a part recently. This is probably the last break in the action I’ll have until the end of May. A week from now, I’ll be on the road to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition, or GLINTCAP. After serving as a steward during the competition and enjoying the rest of Grand Rapids Cider Week, I’ll turn back west and travel back to Des Moines for Monetery to connect with entrepreneurial leaders, startup founders and funders. Then, I’ll return home and face the onslaught of dance recitals, the end of the school year, the start of summer entrepreneurial mentorship, the final push toward Startup Weekend Iowa City, and (hopefully) putting the finishing touches on several projects.

Just after my last post, I set out on the road to the Des Moines Tech Crawl. I had a couple of different objectives for the Tech Crawl. First, I wanted to see how the event functioned, and the flow between the different locations. I took part in something similar during a visit to Denver, moving between different startups which were relatively highly concentrated in the LoDo neighborhood. The stops on the Des Moines Tech Crawl were all on Locust Street downtown, but were spread over a roughly 9-block stretch, with one of the stops most easily accessed through the skywalk system. Luckily, there were enough people on the crawl who knew where all of the different offices were, so the group didn’t end up getting lost. In addition, the food and drink at each of the stops was top notch.

The second objective was to make some new connections with people and businesses located in Des Moines. As I’ve said before, we don’t have a great deal of cross-talk between the different startup communities in Iowa. The largest companies and organizations break through most of the time, but the smaller players sometimes get lost in the shuffle. By attending events elsewhere in the state, I’m hoping to gain best practices from people and organizations operating away from home, while being able to share what we’re doing in Iowa City. I was able to connect with dozens of people during the event, and walked away with a fair number of contacts for the future of ecosystem building.

If you put those two objectives together – the flow and feel of the event and gaining best practices from others to improve our own entrepreneurial ecosystem – you arrive that the third and main reason for wanting to attend the Des Moines Tech Crawl: I want to adapt the idea to the entrepreneurial community here. I’m still thinking through how things would look here in Iowa City, but an event like a Tech Crawl could be a signature part of a much longer event featuring designers, developers, and entrepreneurs of all stripes. I don’t want to release too many details just yet, but I’m in the middle of putting together a potential team to create an event to celebrate entrepreneurship and innovation in Johnson County – including not just Iowa City, but the other major communities in the county as well. In the next few months, I’m hoping that we can have planning far enough along that I’m able to release more details.

I consider the Des Moines Tech Crawl a success. I walked away from the event with a bunch of new contacts, a pint glass souvenir, and the feeling that I was part of something big for entrepreneurs in Iowa. We had access to some amazing offices that the public normally cannot visit, and I got to see the new Gravitate space. Geoff and the rest of the group at Gravitate were able to pull things together in their new space just in time for the event, and it was fantastic to see in person the progress they’ve made over the last few months that I’ve been watching unfold online. I’m hoping to stop in there again this month, when I’m in town for Monetery.

The following afternoon, I made the trip north to Ames for the Young Entrepreneur Convention. This was the convention’s fourth year overall, and the first year that the organizers have held the event in Ames – the previous three years were held in Des Moines. With the move came a shift in the focus of the convention’s programming, from a heavier emphasis on personal branding, marketing, and social media, to this year’s focus on entrepreneurial development, growth, and support. I think that the shift in programming helps the convention actually live up to its name – providing support for newer (“young”) entrepreneurs who may not have been through many of the hurdles necessary to create or sustain a high-growth startup.

Overall, I felt that the presentations this year were a more open and honest discussion on entrepreneurship than in years past. Presentations in the other three years felt more like they were trying to motivate and stay on the positive side of the surface. In contrast, this year’s presentations went much deeper and felt as though they had significantly more substance below the surface. The presenters focused on their own personal stories, and how much they had struggled at times – believe it or not, entrepreneurship isn’t all victories all the time. Entrepreneurship involves a lot of late nights, early mornings, and not-so-great feelings founders usually have to keep to themselves.

I wish there had been more representation from eastern Iowa in attendance at both the Des Moines Tech Crawl and the Young Entrepreneur Convention this year. I wasn’t alone at either event – one of my regulars from Iowa City Open Coffee made the trip over for the Tech Crawl, and some of the friends from Cedar Rapids attended the Young Entrepreneur Convention – the coworking space formerly known as Yoimono had a table as an event sponsor. In 2020, I’d like to see a large contingent of eastern Iowans make the trip west for these events, to show our support for a statewide entrepreneurial ecosystem that can compete with larger ecosystems across the country for talent and resources. We have the companies and the startups – can we build a cohesive network between them?

I’m truly filled with excitement for my trip to Grand Rapids next week. I received the email this week that I’ve been waiting for over the last couple of months – I’m officially a steward at this year’s GLINTCAP. I didn’t want to judge this year, because I don’t yet feel qualified for that position, but I wanted to be a part of the action of the competition. It should be a great way to see the inner workings of the largest cider and perry competition in the country, featuring over 1500 entries between several different style categories. I may apply to judge in the future, but I want to have the Certified Cider Professional credential under my belt before I even consider it.

On top of GLINTCAP, next week is Grand Rapids Cider Week. I’ve already signed up for a cidery bus tour on Wednesday morning, and to attend an outdoor cider festival on Saturday afternoon. Also, within walking distance of my AirBnB, there are a number of restaurants that are featuring cider or are pairing cider with their food during the week. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m really hoping to both reconnect with folks I met during CiderCon and make new connections during GLINTCAP.

So, here I go!