Building Infrastructure

1. Meetups with local entrepreneurs. They don’t have to be big, elaborate affairs. Never forget that the focus in the beginning should just be on getting everyone in the “same room.” Like any other sweeping change, everything begins at home.

2. Education. If you have a college/university/chamber of commerce in your area, work with them to set up education programs for entrepreneurs who want to work on the web. Start a class, hold a seminar, do something. The biggest thing is to encourage students and blossoming entrepreneurs to actively participate and to get excited about your local tech culture.


Tech Culture

3. Once you clean up your front yard, it’s time to look at regional conferences.

Start contacting speakers in the major tech centers (California / New York / Colorado) and begin importing some outside perspective. Once again it comes back to education. If you want to be recognized as a technology hub, you need to “show your region off” to the major voices in the field.

4. Collaboration.

Many towns have engineers, many towns have business people, many towns have venture capitalists — the big money is in finding a way to bringing them all to the table at the same time. It’s absolutely crucial that you find a way to encourage idea sharing and casual conversation.

5. Contests / Promotions.

Especially in the beginning, this is a great way to promote the creation of marketable web technologies.

6. Technology Portal.

A site that highlights and promotes technologies coming out of the area. It can also act as a hub for events and a communication vehicle for all local entrepreneurs. Information and communication are your bread and butter. You need to have some place where someone completely new to area entrepreneurship can go to find out everything they would need to start an area business.

7. Demo Days.

They need to involve the engineers, service providers and interested VCs / Angels. It’s about making it easy for “two guys in a garage” to come out to an event and get their product in front of someone who could potentially fund them.

8. References.

A concrete directory, available online, of local and regional institutional investors as well as public Angels.

9. The Final Word.

Last but not least — money, money, money, money, money to fund it all.

I love discussing this subject, if you are trying to raise technology awareness in your own area feel free to email me.

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