Ecosystems across the country were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. As we all faced the reality of what life would be like with social distancing and public gathering restrictions, entrepreneurs across the country had to take a hard look at their business strategy. With businesses struggling to find answers and keep their doors open, coordinated responses from economic development teams and governments have been playing out in different ways. But in Peoria, Illinois, the response to the pandemic was a little different thanks to a strong network of entrepreneurial ecosystem builders.
“When COVID hit, our region sprang into action. Local leadership moved pretty quickly to put together a strategy for dealing with all aspects of the pandemic. They [government officials] used FEMA natural disaster guidelines as a starting point, but adapted them to deal with the pandemic shortly after our stay at home orders were put in place. One component of that modified strategy was reviewing policy and considering long-term economic recovery from the beginning. While we didn’t know when or how or what that would look like, a cross-section of policymakers were at least thinking about the long-term aspect of economic recovery early on,” says Jake Hamann of the Peoria Innovation Alliance.
Jake has had an important role in shaping and growing the ecosystem in Peoria. He was part of the Startup America Partnership and is a founding member of Startup Champions Network. He actually created our logo! Back in 2013, after reading Brad Feld’s book, Startup Communities, and believing in the strong entrepreneurial spirit that already existed in Peoria, he founded Startup Peoria with fellow ecosystem builder Amy Lambert. The organization (now run by the Greater Peoria EDC) was created to bring the community together and stop the migration of talent to other tech cities. Startup Peoria grew exponentially and so did the ecosystem. They were the 11th city to establish a 1 Million Cups program, ran several Startup Weekends, and began to establish Peoria as a global hub not only business and manufacturing, but also innovation and entrepreneurship.
Peoria has long been known as the town where Caterpillar is headquartered. But there’s so much more history around technology, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing in the region. That’s why, in 2019 after a brief stint in the Dallas, Texas area, Jake returned to Peoria and founded The Peoria Innovation Alliance. PIA’s focus was initially one of storytelling and “changing the narrative” of the region to one of inclusion, optimism, and progress through the support and celebration of innovation. In their first few months of existence Jake and the Board of PIA also helped establish an Innovation District in Downtown Peoria, and launched the Peoria Made brand and retail storefront.
All that to say, the Peoria-area ecosystem was growing and the region was really making a name for itself as a startup hub with a rich history of innovation and entrepreneurship. And then….COVID.
Return to normal?
In late March/early April, Peoria’s government officials and economic development agencies came together to start the planning process for a comprehensive COVID response to help Peoria businesses. And while the conversations were mostly around helping existing businesses survive and get back to some resemblance of normal, Jake had an idea to take it a step further.
“A lot of the early conversations around COVID relief were around local, state, and federal programs such as PPP, EIDL, local and state grants, etc. – all of which were good and absolutely necessary. But having been part of America’s New Business Plan from The Kauffman Foundation in late 2019 and Victor Hwang’s Right to Start in early 2020, I knew this was an opportunity to explore how we could emerge from this pandemic with a stronger focus on new business creation and entrepreneurship,” says Jake.
“Having knowledge of national statistics and metrics around the lack of growth in new business creation coupled with our region’s long-standing struggles with equity and inclusion, we felt the approach laid out by these two initiatives was in alignment with where we currently were and where we needed to go as a community.”
By the time COVID had gripped the nation, the Peoria Innovation Alliance had already been awarded a grant from the Kauffman Foundation for hosting an America’s New Business Plan Town Hall in early 2020. Thanks to that resource, and the groundwork already laid by PIA, Jake already had a solid strategy to work from which led to the creation of an economic recovery sub-group called LTCR ESI (Long-Term Community Recovery: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Innovation.
“There were eight of us from various community organizations and entrepreneur service organizations who initially signed up. We took components from America’s New Business Plan, Victor Hwang’s Right to Start movement, and came up with a list of challenge statements in the area that we had been trying to tackle before COVID hit. Our group included representatives from our regional Economic Development Council, the Small Business Development Center at Bradley University, ArtsPartners (an local arts awareness organization), a regional Chamber of Commerce… we were well represented in terms of stakeholders and voices in the community. We took those components and put them in a matrix to determine what we were already doing, what we could do immediately, and what initiatives we could tackle in the short and long term,” explains Jake.
Some initiatives in America’s New Business Plan were already underway in Peoria, like the creation of a Peoria Made, a local brand and retail storefront created by the Peoria Innovation Alliance. Additionally, the Mayor of Peoria focused much of his annual State of the City address on entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation that had transpired over the past year.
However, there were other things they hadn’t done: Policy changes to help entrepreneurs get started, early stage investment funds, a streamlined system for new entrepreneurs, and solid entrepreneurship education. The group also discussed creating a collection of problem/challenge statements for the community.
“You don’t have to have a brand new idea to be an entrepreneur or start a business. There are existing challenges that need innovative thinking and need entrepreneurs to step up and solve them. There are resources being gathered already around those problems. Why not pick one of them and build a new business around that?” says Jake.
Return to Better
After meeting weekly for months to discuss ideas and opportunities, they decided it was time to formalize their ongoing work and get the word out to the community.
“My board chair came up with this concept, ‘We can’t afford to return to normal, we must aspire to return to better.’ That became the campaign phrase.”
The campaign was divided into four areas: Education & Programming, Service Providers, Innovation Fund, and Advocacy & Policy. The goal was to bring all of the entrepreneurial support organizations together to better serve entrepreneurs in the ecosystem.
“We can’t afford to return to normal, we must aspire to return to better.”
Education & Programming
One of the major needs identified was a common problem seen across ecosystems. There are various programs offered across various organizations - all with the goal of supporting entrepreneurship, yet there is no overarching organized or streamlined curriculum. One of the short term initiatives tackled was to put together a series of 101 courses that are high level and could be taken by a small business, lifestyle business, or high growth business. From there, they created additional programs for each of the three business types identified.
Service Providers
Another challenge identified was navigating the sea of entrepreneur support organizations. It has been hard for entrepreneurs to identify what resource is right for them, how and when to engage with them, and where they fit within their journey. The team came up with a list of vetted service providers in all areas of entrepreneurship to onboard onto a unified platform.
“We have a dozen or so service organizations here, not to mention individual providers, but the responsibility to get connected to them is on the individual who needs the help. They [the entrepreneur] have to call them, set up the appointments, fill out a multitude intake forms, and they don’t share records across the organizations. It’s frustrating,” explains Jake. “We’re looking to put this platform into place where the entrepreneur fills out a profile once, indicates where they’re at in the process, and then sends that out to the various service providers, putting the responsibility on the service providers to get in touch. This puts more responsibility on the different ESOs and holds them accountable for providing what they say they’re providing.”
Innovation Fund
Prior to COVID, Peoria didn’t have an early stage innovation fund.
“Our angels don't invest in early stage companies, which most angels don’t.”
The group looked at successful models in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Boston and set up an early stage proof of concept fund run by the non-profits. The Innovation Fund leverages tax-deductible charitable donations to make investments in the most promising early-stage firms, providing them critical time and resources to demonstrate commercial viability and establish revenue on an accelerated pathway to success. All returns from investments made are put back into an Evergreen Fund for future disbursement to entrepreneurs. Additionally, in light of COVID and the goals of ANBP and Right to Start, 50% of the Return to Better Innovation Fund will go to minority of women-owned businesses.
Advocacy & Policy
We all know that you can’t force government officials to review policies and change requirements. So how do you take the advocacy work you’ve been doing and turn it into actual policy that doesn’t just help your city but the entire region? The ecosystem builders in Peoria are in the process of formalizing MOUs between the Return to Better initiative and various government entities. This Memorandum of Understanding states that they will do everything they can going forward to support new business growth and entrepreneurship. This includes things like reducing fees for new business registration, making the process easier, reviewing zoning and licensing requirements, etc. They are also working with Kauffman to come up with a template that is adaptable for other ecosystems.
When all was said and done, the final piece was to put together in one place, a website with multiple pathways for different players in the ecosystem. The Return to Better website is an end-to-end experience aimed at meeting entrepreneurs, startups, and innovators at their point of need; enabling them to take the next step in their journey as easily and seamlessly as possible.
“It’s a model every ecosystem building should look at. It’s a result of lots of years of work. We’ve made the connections from both the top-down and the bottom-up to make the connection in the middle easier,” says Jake.