STL Startup Week
The second annual STL Startup Week begins November 9, but, much like everything else, has seen some adjustments due to COVID-19. The now-virtual—and free—conference is the perfect way for entrepreneurs to learn better business practices, find resources, make new connections, and get some exposure.
Phyllis Ellison, the vice president of partnerships and program development at Cortex, says that she and her conference-planning counterparts focused more on educational content than last year. Entrepreneurs can attend sessions like “Funding and Financial Strategies for Startups,” “How to Become a Software Engineer Without a Computer Science Degree,” and “Raising Public Venture Capital.” A full schedule of sessions is available on the Startup Week website. “We really encourage people to step out because there's an amazing richness of resources here in St. Louis to help entrepreneurs in all these different industries,” Ellison says.
Ellison recommends, much like any conference, not attending every session, but looking at the calendar and pick the track that interests you most. “So you’re focusing in on probably attending four to eight courses over the week, not sitting through all 50 sessions.”
With the ongoing development of the Next NGA West facility, geospatial intelligence is a topic in the public eye. Luckily, STL Startup Week will be helping entrepreneurs to understand the ins and outs of geospatial with sessions like “Accessing Military Grade Technologies for your Startup (and over $1M in funding),” “Women Leading Geospatial Tech,” and “Geosaurus Unleashed: Impact of Machine Learning on Human Learning & GEOINT.”
And, following the revival of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer, equity is on the mind as well. STL Startup Week made sure to reflect the desire for more diversity in tech and business with a diverse group of presenters and hosts for the week. “We were more concerned with the overall arch of the week to consider equity across all the 50 sessions,” Ellison says.
Ellison also mentioned that they found that more women and entrepreneurs of color are building businesses based around products “and so we’re making sure we’re offering workshops that apply to those sectors as well,” Ellison says. The Entrepreneurship 101 program does just this.
There are available sessions focused specifically on growing women’s businesses and encouraging women founders with sessions like “Find Your Voice: Communication & Negotiation Skills,” “Building Wealth Like a Woman,” and “Women Leading Women: Mentorship.”
Rikki Henry, the Program Manager for the Center for Emerging Technologies at Cortex, runs a support program for new entrepreneurs, Square One, and does her best to be an advocate for women and entrepreneurs of color. “I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs just not receiving the same resources than their white counterparts, particularly because entrepreneurship is mostly pale and male,” Henry says.
Henry has been encouraging the entrepreneurs in her program to attend the conference for the past few weeks. Last year, a few of Henry’s program attendees were featured in Startup Connection—the conference’s resource fair. “It was a chance for them to showcase their companies and showcase who they were,” Henry says. “It’s a great opportunity to get some exposure and do some organic networking.”
Despite the many challenges that COVID-19 has brought to the public, and business owners, in particular, Ellison says that a few good things have resulted from the switch to a virtual conference. One benefit is the ActInSpace event. Once referred to as the Hackathon, the event has a group of technologically savvy individuals compete on solving space-related problems. This year, instead of the event being STL-only, participants will be competing on the national level, meaning the winner will go on to compete at the global event next year. The virtual delivery of the conference also allowed for West Coast organization TechLink Center to join and teach about geospatial intelligence.
“It really has opened up some different possibilities to bring in some new speakers and access to some new contacts that we wouldn’t have had normally,” Ellison says.
More information can be found on STL Startup Week’s website.
