A Model For Driving Economic Development in Younger Demographics

For the past two years Will Robus and I have been trying to determine the best way to approach the topic of entrepreneurship as it pertains to young professionals. As co-chairs of Madison MAGNET's Entrepreneurial Committee, we have explored several different types of events for this unique demographic. The current model is far from where we started, but has grown into a much larger theme for driving economic development through entrepreneurship and much of the reason that Propel WI was started.

When we first began developing events for young entrepreneurs, we focused exclusively on seminars or lectures. The first year was taken up mostly by the Entrepreneurial Toolkit Series, a set lectures that loosely followed the path an entrepreneur would go through when starting a business. We covered a lot of different topics and each of the events were fairly well attended. But we were missing MAGNET's core demographic almost entirely.

Young professionals, for the most part, fall into the categories of either wanting to start a company or having just started a company. While they may be interested in a lecture about entity structure, they may not be interested in intellectual property or business succession planning. We needed a way to target MAGNET's core membership more effectively.

We had held an event or two that first year that we called Meet & Mingles. These were a way to bring in a local entrepreneur, have them tell their story, answer questions, provide networking opportunities, and ideally inspire some of our members. They were the most well attended events we had but at the time I attributed that to the fact that they were in a bar and there was alcohol at the ready. What we didn't realize were that they hit on two things core to what this demographic was looking for; inspiration and networking.

Any entrepreneur will tell you that networking is one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur. We knew this and structured our events accordingly. What we didn't realize was how important it was to young professionals in particular. Networking facilitates everything else. Rather than running an event on intellectual property, we provide a venue where you can meet an IP lawyer. The member gets ten times more from that relationship than from sitting in front of a slide deck.

The next year we did away with the Entrepreneurial Toolkit Series and replaced it with events aimed solely at three target areas: peer support, networking, and inspiration. Three new event types found their way into our offering. The first are Mastermind Groups. These are essentially small support groups where you can present your ideas or roadblocks in front of peers. The second are Office Hours, where we facilitate an informal Q/A sessions at a public venue with experts in a particular field (this idea fell out of the Entrepreneurial Toolkit Series, where the Q/A session afterward was always the most valuable part of the talk). The last are the Meet & Mingles that we had previously done.

In the end, we realized each of these events focused on providing an opportunity for peer interaction rather than top-down seminar-style events where someone is talking at you rather than with you. The feedback has already been fantastic. We didn't realize how many people were on the verge of starting a company and just needed the inspiration to go do it. Or in other cases, someone was caught up on something and didn't know where to go to keep the business moving.

Then, last year, I started talking with Henry Sanders about the entrepreneurial culture in Wisconsin and it all clicked. We realized that providing a service (top-down lectures) would never change the culture of entrepreneurship here. Instead, we wanted to drive the demand for entrepreneurship, turning Wisconsin into a place where you are congratulated for leaving your stable job to start a company, rather than being questioned and criticized. The result is Propel Wisconsin Innovation.

We believe that the best way to change the culture of entrepreneurship in the state is to start young, in middle and high schools. This doesn't happen simply through education but by providing opportunities that engage students in the entrepreneurial process, and ideally bringing in their peers along the way. This has to continue through college life and afterward. The result is a pipeline of entrepreneurship that pushes would-be entrepreneurs down the path until they need the services provided by other organizations. It is a different way of looking at economic development and, if we're successful, will help create a more stable and independent economy here in Wisconsin.