Courtesy of Cortex
Cortex Innovation Community
Square co-founder Jim McKelvey can rattle off a laundry list of reasons the region has become a magnet for startups: affordable office space, great schools, IKEA… “I don’t think I’ve started a company in the last 10 years where we didn’t make an IKEA run,” he says.
In fact, the popular mobile payment company he launched with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey recently opened an office near the new IKEA, in the Cortex technology district. The campus, which sits on 200 acres in the Central West End, has become a hub for startups such as Square.
Business Insider recently proclaimed St. Louis the fastest-growing startup scene in the nation. To some people on the coasts—who’ve mostly heard national news about crime, police shootings, and the Rams’ leaving town—the buzz about the startup scene might come as a surprise. But Cortex CEO Dennis Lower says that what might appear an overnight success was years in the making.
Business Insider recently proclaimed St. Louis the fastest-growing startup scene in the nation.
The site dates back more than 15 years, when leaders of such nearby organizations as Washington University, BJC HealthCare, and the Missouri Botanical Garden convened to discuss how St. Louis—already the home of a thriving bioscience industry—could grow into an innovation hub. Cortex was born in 2002.
Today, a projected $2.1 billion in construction is part of the district’s master plan. “We’re not entirely where we need to be,” Lower says, “but we have come miles in establishing a broad metro technology ecosystem.”
Of course, that ecosystem extends beyond the CWE. The Lawrence Group is planning a nearby $232 million development, simply called East of Cortex. In Creve Coeur, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is nearing completion of a $45 million addition. And downtown is the T-REx technology incubator, where more than 100 startups reside—an ideal place for collaboration and innovation.
Among those tenants is Arch Grants, a nonprofit that provides essential funding to budding entrepreneurs. Its executive director, Ginger Imster, concurs with McKelvey’s assessment of St. Louis as an attractive place for startups—even if we’re not in Silicon Valley.
“Our Midwestern values are one of our greatest assets in term of how we are building the startup community in St. Louis,” she says. “There is a donor community that is anxious to see the headlines about St. Louis change from negative to positive.”
