Knoxify

4 Responses to “Is Knoxville a Great Place to Start a Business?”

1. Alex Lavidge 
   March 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

   

   There’s a say­ing in the busi­ness world, “if you want to see inno­va­tion in your com­pany, take a zero out of the budget.”

   Like­wise, if you want to see indi­vid­u­als go from employ­ees to entre­pre­neurs, take away their paycheck.

   His­tor­i­cally, we know that what hap­pens after­wards is always inspir­ing. Ideas and inno­va­tion usu­ally flour­ish in both instances.

   The “entre­pre­neur­ial renais­sance” we’re cur­rently expe­ri­enc­ing will con­tinue to expand in Knoxville. It’s an incred­i­bly excit­ing time to be here.

   But let’s also be hon­est. Regard­less of indus­try, the major­ity of star­tups fail after the first year, regard­less of the tim­ing or mar­ket conditions.

   Addi­tion­ally, after the Depres­sion in the 1930s, there were obvi­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties in man­u­fac­tur­ing, real estate devel­op­ment, and retail just to name a few indus­tries. The “com­mon man” could put their head around how a vari­ety of busi­nesses oper­ated, work hard, and expand.

   But today, we live in one of the most devel­oped economies on earth mean­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties are harder to find when it seems like every­one “has it all” and fran­chises are every­where mak­ing it harder for entre­pre­neurs to get some­thing going from the ground up.

   Yet, the truth is it really is the best time in his­tory to be an entre­pre­neur – and Knoxville can be an even bet­ter place to launch com­pa­nies as long as we put a few more com­po­nents in place.

   Here are some sug­ges­tions for what those com­po­nents might be in my hum­ble opinion:

   1. As a busi­ness com­mu­nity, we need to start focus­ing on for­eign mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties on a micro-enterprise level. This also means that Knoxville needs to, over time, start pub­licly posi­tion­ing itself as more of a cos­mopoli­tan cen­ter. The 1982 World’s Fair doesn’t count any­more. Diver­sity is good for busi­ness. Knoxville is strength­ened the more we export out of the coun­try and we can only do that if we fos­ter the right relationships.

   2. The http://www.greenforall.org cam­paign needs to come to Knoxville and help the main­stream under­stand that the emerg­ing green econ­omy has the poten­tial to com­pletely revi­tal­ize the wan­ing mid­dle class in this coun­try. (Try­ing to still make a for­tune or a viable busi­ness solely on the Web is so 2002 … it’s still pos­si­ble, just harder.)

   Apply­ing the “three Rs” of “reduce, reuse, and recy­cle” is good for the bot­tom line of any busi­ness. It’s this type of think­ing that’s going to cre­ate mil­lions of jobs in clean­tech (e.g., renew­able energy), man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­sult­ing, and design.

   We need host addi­tional con­fer­ences in Knoxville that show­case mar­ket research data illus­trat­ing emerg­ing mar­ket data for both domes­tic and inter­na­tional mar­ket opportunities.

   3. Even though the major­ity of star­tups fail, in some of the top busi­ness incu­ba­tors across the coun­try the suc­cess rate is as high as 92% after three years. This means that busi­nesses that go through a pro­gram in a sup­port­ive com­mu­nity with proven method­olo­gies are more likely to suc­ceed. Cre­at­ing the right envi­ron­ment is cru­cial to suc­cess. (If you haven’t already done so, check out Mal­colm Gladwell’s lat­est book, “Out­liers.”) We need to con­tinue to lobby for addi­tional fund­ing to grow and develop small busi­ness devel­op­ment cen­ters and other com­mu­nity resources that sup­port entre­pre­neur­ship at all levels.

   4. Every­one should join Entre­pre­neurs of Knoxville for free at http://www.eokhq.com — it’s one of the best ways to get con­nected with a vari­ety of entre­pre­neurs at all lev­els in our com­mu­nity. The more peo­ple get con­nected and know each other, the more syn­ergy we’ll have.

   5. Visit Knoxville Over­ground at 1204 Kene­saw from 9am-5pm Mon­day thru Fri­day where mem­bers have a free place to work, col­lab­o­rate, and research your next busi­ness. Also visit 35 Mar­ket Square on March 25 at 7:00pm for a social mixer that will show­case what could be Knoxville’s pre­mier micro-enterprise devel­op­ment cen­ter, mod­eled off of the San Fran­cisco Renais­sance Cen­ter at http://www.rencenter.org. Such a pro­gram can help get more busi­nesses into top busi­ness incu­ba­tors we already have in the area through UT and Inno­va­tion Val­ley. We need to con­tinue to expand the idea that pre-revenue star­tups should receive sub­si­dized office space in a com­mu­nity set­ting that has sta­tis­ti­cally proven for­mu­las and meth­ods to help star­tups grow. No one should ever go at it alone.

   6. We need to inspire more folks to vol­un­teer with Knoxville Over­ground to help spon­sor events in our com­mu­nity that bring together entre­pre­neurs, invest­ment cap­i­tal, and research find­ings. Just as economies grow because there is a rapid exchange of cur­rency, inno­va­tion increases because there is an ongo­ing exchange of ideas. We need to make sure we con­tinue to have those dis­cus­sions online as well.

   7. Knoxville Over­ground is posi­tion­ing itself as an advo­cacy group for sen­si­ble pub­lic pol­icy that ben­e­fits self-employed pro­fes­sion­als and entre­pre­neurs. We all need to con­tinue to dis­cuss what the issues are that should receive the high­est pri­or­ity on both the state and fed­eral lev­els of gov­ern­ment in the blo­gos­phere and in person.

   8. We have some incred­i­ble local brands here in town – from locally baked bread to locally pro­duced cloth­ing. We can do more to encour­age that our dol­lars stay local – for instance remind­ing our friends to shop local is proven to do more than spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars on ad campaigns.

   9. There is a lot of untapped invest­ment cap­i­tal in our com­mu­nity that in turn could be invested in our com­mu­nity. How­ever, a lot of it goes untouched in mutual funds, index funds, and stocks that pay div­i­dends. In other words, it goes to New York.

   There are pri­vate equity com­pa­nies like Angel Cap­i­tal Group (ACG), http://www.angelcapitalgr.com, that help investors iden­tify high-growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in their local com­mu­nity here in Knoxville. Recently ACG helped fund Trak­Lok Cor­po­ra­tion. Trak­Lok has the entre­pre­neur­ial com­mu­nity buzzing with excite­ment over the pos­si­bil­i­ties for inter­na­tional expan­sion with their ship­ping crate secu­rity tech­nol­ogy. We need to con­tinue to get the word out that we have both small and world-class oppor­tu­ni­ties right here in our com­mu­nity that help boost the local econ­omy as well as cre­ate jobs, addi­tional tax rev­enue, and wealth for everyone.

   In con­clu­sion, these are seri­ous times and it’s up to all of us, the peo­ple, to demon­strate focus and strong lead­er­ship at a grass­roots level.

   It’s going to be up to each and every one of us to do our part to posi­tion Knoxville to be more of a self-sufficient, locally owned econ­omy with more vibrant agri­cul­tural base where entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion thrive.

   If each of us focuses on these things, then yes, Knoxville truly will be an even bet­ter place to start a business.

2. Alex Lavidge 
   March 9th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

   

   http://www.knoxvilleoverground.com/2009/03/knoxville-is-a-great-place-to-start-a-business-it-could-be-even-better/

3. bcknoxify 
   March 9th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

   

   @Alex Lavidge: could not agree more.

4. Alex Lavidge 
   March 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

   

   @bcknoxify If you all ever want to chat about it on cam­era, drop me a line!

   Thanks for always doing such an awe­some job with Knox­ify — it’s really a bea­con of opti­mism for our community.

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