Fast Company: Why You Should Start a Company in New Orleans

Fast Company interviewed me for part 8 of their series “Why you should start a company in….” where they have been profiling the best startup cities around the country.  It was a privilege to speak on behalf of so many great entrepreneurs in New Orleans.

If you haven’t seen it, why not give it a read.  Here are my thoughts on “Why New Orleans is different or better than other cities?”

In a lot of ways, New Orleans is the city for our times, it fits the post-financial-crisis world. We dealt with our knockout blow in 2005 and the people here literally have rebuilt and re-imagined the city. We are ahead of the rest of the country that is just now dealing with the financial crisis. We’re already well into recovery and growth mode, so it’s an exciting time.  There’s something kind of magical that’s going on right now and it’s that gelling at the very beginning of an uprising where things really become a movement.

This really is a great time to start a business in New Orleans.  Here are a few places to dig a little deeper:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes New Orleans such a great place to start a company right now.

Startup School Workshop One Wrapup

Thanks to everyone who came out to the first night of Startup School last Thursday. It was a great event and I think everyone is pretty jazzed about the 504ward competition and the enthusiasm of the participants who are all going to be entering great biz plans in it.

We had a great lineup of speakers: Me, John Laurie from UNO, Richard Montgomery from VCE Capital, Chris Reade from Carrollton Technology Partners, and the inimitable local film auteur Ben Reece from Deltree.

Some highlights:

  • My presentation is embedded below, but I focused on finding and communicating the reason your business needs to be in New Orleans.
  • John emphasized the need not to work backwards. You really should have your whole plan done before you write your exec summary. Bios, not resumes. Financial highlights, but not full pro-forma for the exec summary.
  • Richard spoke to the difference between what he views as a fundable company, and the goals of 504ward. He is looking for high-growth companies that can do $50 mil in sales in 10 years. While those companies are a fit for 504ward, so are sustainable “lifestyle” companies, that generally aren’t able to attract VC capital.
  • Chris got everyone fired up with turning their plan into reality. He spoke of the pitfalls of expensive office space and friends as partners. He also recommended an LLC for most companies and talked about filing online through the Secretary of State’s website. He recommended having a good lawyer to make sure you have a good operating agreement if you have partners.
  • Ben got people thinking about their video submission. It was agreed that everyone should do one because its an opportunity to forge an emotional connection with the panel of judges.

We’ve prepared an extensive collection of business plan resources and added them to our wiki.

On Friday, Jessica White of the Idea Village invited me to join her and Leslie Jacobs who is behind 504ward on the Garland Robinette show to talk about the entreprenuerial community here in New Orleans. You can listen to the podcast of the interview online on the WWL site.

Idea Village asked me to emphasize the following points with regards to what they are looking for in 504ward submissions. I wanted to post them here for anyone who wasn’t able to be there:

  • You must be a sustainable business
  • You must prove how you retain the 23 – 34 year old demographic
  • The competition is not about attracting new people but about the retain the people currently in New Orleans

So, thanks to everyone for making it such a great event. The second part of the workshop series is this Saturday, Nov 22 9am-noon. We’ll be doing “speed dating” work-shopping of business plans. More details on the wiki. If you’re not registered yet, sign up and attend.

Startup School

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

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