No surprises to anyone who frequents the list, I'm a very big proponent of bootstrapping<http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2011/09/how-to-fund-your-coworking-space/> .
I ran a conference on bootstrapping here in Philadelphia with one of my longtime friends and community members: http://baconbiz.com (videos are free!) Yesterday, I got to sit on a panel at the International Economic Development Corporations conference in Philadelphia. I was the only person representing the bootstrapping mentality, and shared a lot of the perspective that we've been acting on while growing Indy Hall (written here http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2010/12/on-economic-development-centers-and-coworking/ ). To re-emphasize and agree with the key points that I'm reading here,* *one of the other panelists who represented one of the longest running regional EDCs (who I'm friendly with on a personal level, by the way), said *"Economic development used to be punctuated with a ribbon cutting for a company that would bring 100+ jobs. It just doesn't happen that way anymore, and it hasn't in a while."* * * I think where coworking fits into the equation here is that we're helping create jobs in a different way than has been historically counted: *we're helping people create and maintain jobs for themselves. * Whenever someone asks me how many jobs Indy Hall has created, I tell them *"I don't know exactly, but I do know that there are 250+ people here that made money last month...they're making money this month...and they're very likely to be still making money next month. I think that's more than you can say about the job security of many "created" jobs."* I tend to get a lot of somber nods from the EDC folks when they hear that out loud. -Alex -- /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Kevin Koym <[email protected]>wrote: > Brydon > My company Tech Ranch <http://techranchaustin.com/> (that we > bootstrapped up ourselves to a 10k sq food facility) has > programs<http://techranchaustin.com/programs/>that are focused on helping > entrepreneurs (many that bootstrap their > ventures) off the ground. We have a program called Venture > Forth<http://techranchaustin.com/programs/venture-forth/>that helps at this > stage. As well, as one of the leaders of Bootstrap > Austin <http://www.bootstrapaustin.org> we built a substrate of > bootstrappers helping bootstrappers. My work in Tech Ranch has been to > develop this model- further. > > I am working on a book about the model, and have replicated parts of it in > Chile, as well as are talking with a couple of other locations about > partnering with them using our programs. I studied 36 models of > entrepreneur support in building our model- and am personally passionate > about helping as many entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground as > possible. > > Although its early for a lot of conversations (we're really building the > infrastructure for growing this) I wanted to respond to your email and let > you know of pointers to some of the work that we've done- I do believe that > traditional economic development thought misses the massive opportunity for > helping early stage entrepreneurs- especially bootstrappers- that are not > as flashy / well funded but a very important part of the entrepreneurial > ecosystem. > > I hope this helps- just now really getting onto the Coworking google > group, and thought I'd weigh in on this topic. > Thanks, > Kevin > > > On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:06 AM, Brydon Gilliss <[email protected]>wrote: > >> I wrote a blog >> post<http://threefortynine.com/2013/10/support-for-bootstrappers/>yesterday >> about the concept of economic development supporting the >> sweat-it-out bootstrapper. I figured I'd share it here in case others know >> of real programs out there already doing variations of this? >> >> thanks, >> >> -- >> Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Coworking" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > > > > -- > Kevin Koym > [email protected] > @kkoym > > http://techranchaustin.com > Accelerating Entrepreneur Success > > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
