Brad Feld’s 5 Components of a Sustainable Startup Ecosystem

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Brad Feld speak several times in the last year, most recently at Launch Fest.   One of the things driving our work right now is building a sustainable startup ecosystem in New Orleans and Louisiana.  Brad set forth his premise about the five components required for a successful, sustainable ecosystem at the TechStars Network conference in May. Here’s my summary of his talk.

While small business is vital to communities, the vast majority of new job creation comes from high growth entrepreneurship, and that is what we are focused on in the startup ecosystem.  While there is much focus on ecosystems like Silicon Valley, Brad believes that there are 100 cities in us that can support vibrant long term entrepreneurial communities.  His premise is informed by from his work in and the growth of the Boulder startup community.

Working towards the goal of creating long term sustainable entrepreneurial communities, we need:

  1. Long View – a 20 year timeline – stakeholders must be committed to the community for long term.
  2. Entrepreneurial Leaders – it must be led by entrepreneurs – cannot be led by government, non-profits, big companies, VCs, lawyers, accountants, economic development, universities.  All of those stakeholders need to be engaged, but entrepreneurs must drive it.
  3. Fresh Meat - need new talent all the time – college graduates & people moving in.
  4. Engaging Activities – engage the entrepreneurial community from top to bottom – startup to serial entrepreneurs – get all involved – you need a thing that engages all those people. You want really active engagement for a moderate period of time because its impossible to maintain a high level activity by someone on something that is not core focus.
  5. Repeat – must have a rhythm with for a long time.  Must have a beat that last through economic cycles. The only way to build a community is to move beyond boom and bust and build something over extended periods of time.

Thanks to Brad for all the support he’s provided us through the TechStars Network.  I’d love to hear what you think is important to the ecosystem.