GOT A GREAT IDEA?
■ Event showcases Memphis’ dedication to entrepreneurship
A daylong program will include a Speed Pitch, when budding entrepreneurs can get feedback from professionals.
Ted Townsend, greater Memphis regional director of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, sat at a table in Minglewood Hall on Friday checking some notes while a couple seats away, his ECD colleague Joann Massey pecked furiously on her smartphone.
“Joann’s tweeting updates about what’s going on in Memphis today,” Townsend said. “We wanted to be here to support the strategies that have made Tennessee the top state in the nation for Global Entrepreneurship Week.”
Added Massey between tweets, “There’s a great entrepreneurial synergy here. You can actually feel it.”
The two joined dozens of other entrepreneurs and their supporters at the first-ever Risk City encampment, a daylong program at Minglewood that featured food trucks, live entertainment, remote work stations and activities to connect fledgling entrepreneurs with experienced business mentors and promote risk acceptance as a path toward entrepreneurial achievement.
The event was one of nearly 100 officially sanctioned GEW programs held across the state to commemorate the annual international movement that was first held in 2008.
And for the third year in a row, Tennessee boasted the most GEW events of any state in the nation.
“People around the world are realizing this week, again, that Tennessee is a leader in entrepreneurial innovation,” said Andrew Hogin, director of outreach for the LaunchTN public/private partnership designed to boost entrepreneurship across the state. “Risk City is fun way to showcase entrepreneurship and it’s a model I think other cities will be
implementing next year.”
Presented by leaders at LaunchYourCity, the schedule featured a dizzying array of activities spread out over the course of about 15 hours. From early morning structured programs to an after-hours networking mixer, Friday’s Risk City offered an entrepreneurial smorgasbord.
For example, there was a contest pitting three startup teams against each other and the clock to see which group could complete the most tasks — amassing Twitter followers, pitching their concepts before total strangers, performing customer discovery exercises — in hopes of winning $10,000 in cash and in-kind accounting, legal and marketing services.
And then there was a Speed Pitch round, a sort of “Musical Chairs” exercise in which creatives like James Aiken got two minutes to present startup ideas before judges. After three minutes of critical evaluation and suggestions, participants moved to different seats before different judges and started the process anew.
“It’s a great, immediate way to get a lot of feedback in a short amount of time,” said Aiken, founder of The Study, a local tutoring service that opened a month ago. “I’m thinking about adding a nonprofit component to my company and this format allowed me to get some valuable insight on different ways to do that.”
One person soaking up the buzzing atmosphere was Jonathan McCarver, a developer at Lokion, who spent the day in front of his laptop and away from his office, working on a project while supporting the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Another was University of Memphis professor Dr. Carrie Brown-Smith, who brought a group of journalism students to check out the scene.
“It’s a good way to teach entrepreneurial journalism outside the classroom and in real time,” BrownSmith said. “The people here are all about turning ideas into realities and that’s what my students will do when they get jobs where they develop story ideas into published articles.”
Global Entrepreneurship Week wraps up on Sunday. For a list of participants and winners of the Risk City competition and a schedule of upcoming events, visit launchyourcity.com.