Photography courtesy of Arch Grants
In only its second year, Arch Grants, a local not-for-profit, has helped bring international attention to St. Louis as an emerging hotbed for startups. Currently in the judging process for its second-annual competition, the organization will award $50,000, along with local office space and services, to 20 worthy startups from more than 700 applicants, a 67 percent increase from last year. And support has been pouring from the community—earlier this week, the St. Louis Cardinals along with Ballpark Village developer Cordish Cos. donated $100,000 to the organization. At the helm of Arch Grants, executive director Sarah Spear is committed to fostering a strong entrepreneurial environment in St. Louis.
What’s your background and involvement in startups? I moved to St. Louis about a year and a half ago, and before that my background was in startups and communications. I co-founded and ran PharmSecure, a mobile health startup in India, and I had a great experience with that.
Why is St. Louis such a great place to start a business? St. Louis has a wealth of resources that really promote and support startups. The local university scene is immense and provides great talent with student interns and access to world-class research facilities. The low cost of living is huge, compared to some of the other more typical innovation hubs—$50,000 goes much further.
Why should people care about startups in St. Louis? We need to cultivate a culture and an attitude that embraces startups. Clearly it’s difficult to attract Fortune 500 companies in St. Louis, but people are realizing that startups provide tremendous opportunities for investment. We’re moving toward a culture that embraces the new entrepreneurs we attract.
What makes Arch Grants unique? There are only two other similar programs in the world—one in Chile and one in Boston. In Chile, they follow a reimbursement model, and in Boston’s Mass Challenge, they use mostly state funding and don’t provide funds immediately like we do. We’ve received some state funding, but it’s really a testament to the culture in St. Louis that we’ve been able to raise so much support from the community.
The winning startups agree to living in St. Louis for a year. Do you expect most of them to stay here beyond that? The vast majority of the first 15 startups, we expect will remain here. None of them have indicated that they plan on leaving. We make strong efforts to connect them to potential clients in addition to a social network. We help them take in the local restaurants and sports scene, help them make friends, and really try to immerse them in local culture so they’ll stay here and build their businesses.
Any themes in the types of startups that applied this year? Similar to last year, there were a large number of tech startups, which is a hot area, because they tend to grow and scale quickly. We had a large uptick in education startups applying. We made a concerted outreach to education organizations this year.
What are some of the major changes you’re making in the competition this year? We’re changing a lot about the judging process. We started the competition much earlier, which gives us the additional time we needed to judge the expected increase in applications. We also cut out the business plan as part of the application materials and replaced it with an executive summary. Most startups are trending away from the traditional business plan. We’re also moving away from presentations and doing a Q&A session with a panel of judges instead. We want to really delve into each startup as a team and focus on their product or service rather than be skewed by a really impressive presentation.
