This last Friday, Kevin Koym, Tech Ranch® CEO, had the opportunity to speak at the Jacksonville Community of Entrepreneurs (JaxCoE)’s Innovation Connection Conference in Jacksonville, Fla. and share his vision of a world cleansed of many of its problems. Kevin’s vision of an entrepreneurial heaven, in which the ability to find the “100,000 solutions to the world’s problems”, has begun to manifest itself in Austin, and Tech Ranch® hopes to foster this entrepreneurial mission in ecosystems across the U.S. and the world.
Tech Ranch® is pleased to share that JaxCoE’s founder, Kate Stewart, was a former Venture Forth program participant and has taken Tech Ranch’s community building mission to Florida. JaxCoE has formed many of it’s ecosystem development philosophies after Tech Ranch®, and for Kevin to travel to Jacksonville himself and meet its thriving community of forward thinking entrepreneurs, investors and students was a chance to see the future.
The Innovation Connection Conference hosted over 60 speakers, including Kevin, and over 400 entrepreneurs. The day focused around panels and small group meetings, with several national startup ecosystem leaders gathered to share their knowledge of the start up world. The importance of fostering a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem was a primary focus of the conference. Kevin spoke on the featured panel, “National Startup Ecosystem Leaders”, along with Adam Arrendondo CEO and Co-Founder of Local Ruckus and co-leader of Kansas City Startup Village, Ron Stocknopf Ben-Zeev, Adam Greenspan of the University City Science Center in Philadelphia, Jane Muir of the Florida Innovation Hub at UF and Gabriela Perez, a successful business products entrepreneur and educator.
As Kevin explained, Austin hasn’t always been a hub of technology and start-ups, in fact 21 years ago “Austin wasn’t Austin” and it was “very difficult to get technology startups started” but because of the growing standard of “entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs” Austin has grown as a startup hot spot. Kevin urged the Jacksonville community to stand up and say, “We’re going to actually do this. We’re going to create a collaborative environment to support entrepreneurs.”
With this foundation of community, Kevin motivated the room to “do what we need to do in the next 20 years to solve all the world’s problems.” Please take a minute to listen to his panel closing audio below.