At Stoke, we work to cultivate community and support entrepreneurs, both of which tie in neatly with Global Entrepreneurship Week’s goals. (You can check out our original blog on Global Entrepreneurship week, its history, and its themes here linked.) We watched entrepreneurs and community members meet and connect and learned from those experienced in starting their own companies and working in their industries. We hope you made it out to some of the events! You can read a brief summary of each one in this blog post.
1st Annual Denton County SHEpreneur Crowdfund Live
At the SHEpreneur event at Stoke on Monday, women entrepreneurs took the stage to pitch their business ideas and needs to judges and attendees in three minutes. Businesses ranged from an organization that provided nurse advocates during doctor or hospital visits to companies like Dynamize Tools, inventor of tools to make linemen’s jobs safer (think underground transmission lines). Vendors also set up to showcase their companies. The first place winner of the pitch contest was Lisa Smith, CEO of Dynamize Tools (also a Stoke member!), who live demo-ed the Ripjack, a tool that makes the process of stripping URD cable safe and efficient. The cash prize was crowdfunded from ticket sales.
Lunch + Learn: Using Data In Your Marketing Strategy
Stoke mentor and entrepreneur, Patrick Peters, talked about marketing in the context of the data you can acquire from the usual platforms like Facebook and Google Analytics to data providers like LiveRamp.
Patrick discussed concepts such as the frequency of how much a percentage of your target audience needs to see your advertising or promotional material before acting, how attribution can help you identify your customers and hone in on their personas to better serve them (and grow your business), and what’s potentially measurable and actionable from television advertising and digital marketing analytics. During Q&A from the audience, he also addressed the future of advertising and television in the face of popular streaming services, as much of his career has been in the television industry.
Happy Hour + Fireside Chat
At Wednesday’s Fireside Chat at Armadillo Ale Works, we heard from Emily Roden, CEO and co-founder of ReadyRosie, at a live interview lead by Stoke’s director, Heather Gregory. She talked about taking the leap into starting her own company and the offerings of hindsight, discussing expenses and lessons learned from the roles of being an entrepreneur and a parent. The entrepreneurial spirit had been part of Emily’s life in different forms, instilled in her from a young age by her parents. Earlier this year, ReadyRosie was acquired by education technology company Learning Strategies, and Emily compared selling one’s company to sending your child off to college. Bittersweet, but quite an accomplishment.
When asked what she wishes she had known ten years ago, Emily responded with a reflection on a phrase:
“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, build a team.”
You need to have trust and culture, and make sure that you have a team that is aligned in vision and mission. I wish someone would have told me to ask a few more questions in building that team…Think very carefully about how you’re choosing that core team.
The Strong America Tour Comes To Denton!
Chuck Marohn, author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution To Rebuild American Prosperity spoke about how towns came to be built and structured the way that they currently exist, post-Depression era. Chuck described historical development of cities using biological and organic analogies, quoting Charles Darwin to describe city structures and conditions influencing city design. Towns used to be complex and adaptive to needs and growth, with a natural “edge” to which people gathered. Then, development patterns for cities shifted toward machine-like tendencies, instead of organic growth, which became visible in how neighborhoods and town centers were built.
So what can we do about the infrastructure and issues that we see now? Marohn suggests a four step process: walk your town with the '“strong towns” mindset and humility as to what you see, identify what you can do about it, simply and immediately. Do it. Repeat. He also discussed how abandoned or older areas can be revitalized, posing the question "How do we lower the threshold so that the investment you need to [become an entrepreneur] is not so high?” in the context of aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners being able to move into and use previously unused or neglected spaces.
We’re ending the week with Freebie Friday at Stoke, during which coworking is free for anyone who wants to try out the coworking atmosphere and knock out their to-do list before the weekend and before Thanksgiving week!
Thank you to everyone who organized and helped at events and to attendees who joined us to take part in Global Entrepreneurship Week and the great conversations and connections made.
