FORT WORTH STARTUP WHITE PAPER
TITLE: Building a Startup Metropolis in Fort Worth
SUMMER 2021
AUTHORS: Local Startup Community
1: Problem
2: Data
3: Actions
2: THE DATA
JOBS CREATED BY STARTUPS: OVER 25,000 PER YEAR IN TARRANT COUNTY
Source: Data represents companies less than one year old, Sparkyard 2020 Fall Job Creation Report
JOBS CREATED BY STARTUPS: 2018
Source:Data represents companies less than one year old, Sparkyard 2020 Fall Job Creation Report
NEW COMPANY FORMATION: 2015 – 2019
Source: Texas Secretary of State Office, Companies registered with specific city addresses.
AVG EARLY STAGE CAPITAL RAISED (PER YEAR): 2015 – 2020
Source: Pitchbook, Data includes Seed, Angel, and Early Stage VC
FORT WORTH RANKINGS: TOTAL CAPITAL RAISED 2015 – 2020
3: ACTION ITEMS
THE CITY OF FORT WORTH
- Make city government more innovative
- Hire a Chief Innovation Officer (CIO)
- Hire one of the nation’s first Chief Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Officer (CEEO).
- Re-invigorate and better promote Fort Worth’s smart cities initiative
- Make Fort Worth a Code for America city
- Create a customer service culture
- Improve and innovate the City permitting/inspection process
- Hire Startup Companies
- Dedicate 5% of government procurement dollars to businesses less than 5 years old
- Drive support for new startup initiatives
- Learn about the Near Southside’s initiative to bring an arts incubator to Fort Worth
- Learn about the initiative to bring a Techstars accelerator program to Fort Worth
- Form a public/private partnership to form an Eastside Entrepreneurship Center
- Start new programs & end unproductive programs
- Earmark a percentage of the economic development budget to create a modest startup initiative grants program.
- Sunset the BAC Education Foundation/Accelerate DFW
Community Poll
Poll results will be displayed after you vote
THE COMMUNITY
- Chambers cannot be expected to do it all
- Chambers can be great for main street startups, but that does not encompass all the startups being formed in Fort Worth.
- Fort Worth needs to diversify the number of organizations supporting entrepreneurs.
- Establish a center for new firm formation
- Start a seed accelerator program in Fort Worth
- Form an advocacy organization that focuses on supporting and advocating for new companies
- Advocate for Fort Worth to have an identity around our entrepreneurial community
- Inspire additional philanthropy in the area of innovation, entrepreneurship, research and education
- Start a matching (or sidecar) fund for investments in local startups
- Start a mentoring program for entrepreneurs and aspiring startup founders
Community Poll
Poll results will be displayed after you vote
EDUCATION
- Help Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) Fort Worth become the SXSW for our city.
- Get involved
- Show up
- Spread the word
- Host an event in your district
- Provide increased startup educational opportunities in under-served neighborhoods.
- Bring the Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac program back to Fort Worth
- Create an informal coalition of researchers to continue current data gathering and analysis of the health of our local startup community.
Community Poll
Poll results will be displayed after you vote
Updates
*From July 23rd 2021 to August 2nd 2021 this list and attached document was updated several times to reflect small changes suggested by community members and organizations as initial feedback was provided.
**For details on each of the above action items please reference the full report. (Download Report)
SUPPORT THE CAUSE
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Build a Startup Metropolis
If you change your mind later;
Please remove my name from the Startup Fort Worth initiative.
Signatures
Organizations that support this initiative
What do you think about the above points?
It’s almost as if you fail to give credit to our local chambers of commerce! The Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber, The Hispanic Chamber, and Fort Worth Chamber does a tremendous amount of work improving economic development. FWMBCC provides more resources and hands on assistance to new businesses than I’ve ever seen.
The conversation should be about equity and adequate financial resources for minority entrepreneurs. The city has much potential for growth.
Having lived in 10 cities (including Dallas, Austin, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and San Antonio) and being a working professional, I agree wholeheartedly that Fort Worth currently lags behind other major cities when it comes to the scale and volume of entrepreneurial/small business growth and establishment—but I also believe that FW has amazing potential to sustainably grow whilst maintaining its unique culture.
Having lived in some cities that are known for strong startup communities, do you have any thoughts on things for Fort Worth to replicate and maybe more importantly things Fort Worth should NOT replicate?
Having the infrastructure to support startups and entrepreneurs has been an ongoing need since I started my company in 2010. A few individuals in the city have put in tireless work and effort to improve our entrepreneurial ecosystem, and things are better. But a concerted public/private effort is needed to take us to the next level, and to become a city of innovation and forward thinking, and a true economic powerhouse.
There seems to be some consensus around four types of companies that need various types of help in their journey. They are a main street business, a micro-enterprise AKA: side hustle, an innovation-based company & (not necessarily a startup at all) a company that has reached a second stage of exponential growth. Do we have what each of these types need? Do we need to re-think these types all together and classify a different way?
We agree, and we believe a solution is the http://www.EcoPlex.US. The EcoPlex – aka InterNational Environmental Complex – is a focused solution, promoting incubation, innovation, and acceleration of technology. Over five times more R&D is spent in California than Texas. Texas needs to decide whether it will be a “smart” state. We must capture economic opportunity and promote innovation that secures our social and economic resilience. The EcoPlex documented the need for planning for a pandemic and raising concerns about the vulnerability of the GRID. The power of the EcoPlex lies in its FIVE PILLARS: (1) an innovation center, which can be supported internally (as opposed to searching for investors); (2) a museum that acts as an accelerator to showcase and promote innovation with commercial utility (most innovators fail because they can’t showcase or market to scale); (3) a collaborator to join and house NGOs and industry (our biggest failure is thinking someone else will fix things); (4) a global center for industrial and social resilience (and for national security); and (5) a leaders institute (which will have youth on the board – it is their future). Rather than competing, we will promote what industry and NGOs are doing. Rather than misinforming, we will promote real solutions for real problems. We will de-politicize sustainability by taking the issues out of Washington, D.C. Sustainability will be a $67 Trillion industry by 2030. What are we doing to capture that market? Join us.
I agree that Fort Worth is behind compared to other major cities. But I believe that the city has the potential to effectively grow while keeping its cowtown culture.
I agree 100%! The talent and the passion of the people in this city is amazing.
We need to invest in people! The local economy of our communities is changing daily. Fort Worth needs to work in making entrepreneurship accessible, funded, and supported. We need to build a community where everyone is welcome with ideas to be able to navigate everyone through the entrepreneurship ecosystem. The traditional economic development forums don’t work for an economy that is changing everyday. We need to introduce new ways to support the people and business of Fort Worth.
More seed accelerators, hackatons.
Attract more young tech people .
All great startup communities are built around Universities not cities.
Any updates on this initiative?
Update May 25th, 2022:
(1) Fort Worth has started a pilot program in Bitcoin mining using some of its real estate and access to lower electricity pricing. The longer-term goal is that any monies made after expenses would go to fund economic development activity in the city of Fort Worth.
(2) Fort Worth has a New Accelerator program that funds startups in the physical therapy space. It is a cohort structure, the initial cohort will start soon as the application period just closed. Both big wins for the startup community here in Fort Worth.