In a recent interview with WRAL Local Tech Wire, CED President Monica Doss discussed how the culture of entrepreneurship has evolved in the Research Triangle.
QUESTION: Can you describe the entrepreneurial climate in the Triangle 20 years ago? What were some of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs were facing when they were trying to start a business?
ANSWER: Back then the Triangle had a very successful economy, which made it more difficult to draw attention to entrepreneurs and the things that they need. The Research Triangle Park was filled with recruited research companies that created lots of jobs. So, people focused their attention on those large companies. As the economy continued to strengthen, the attitude held by many was “why bother with entrepreneurship�?
With very few start-ups in the area, there were even fewer entrepreneurial success stories. Entrepreneurs had no one to ask when they had questions about specific entrepreneurial business matters. They found it difficult to get the right advice to help them succeed. Jim Verdonik, a long time member and supporter of CED once said that, at that time, you could fit all the local entrepreneurs in the back seat of one BMW and drive around the Triangle.
Because the Triangle’s entrepreneurial community was so new and so small, entrepreneurship was not discussed in the news. If you read the newspapers from 20 years ago, you would think you were on another planet because there was essentially no public awareness of entrepreneurship. The front page of the business section was littered with stories about the large corporations in RTP, the banks and whether or not Ernst and Young was going to locate its headquarters in downtown Raleigh or North Raleigh. There were no reporters covering entrepreneurs.
Having a very small, underground entrepreneurial community that was not widely covered in the news, innovators from different cities in the region were unaware of the efforts of other entrepreneurs throughout the region. CED was formed, in part, to address the issues raised by the Triangle’s spread out geography. Twenty years ago there was no way for the entrepreneur in Carrboro to cross paths with the entrepreneur from North Raleigh, while they may have been working on the same ideas. The Triangle needed to raise a flag that brought people together.
When CED began to bring entrepreneurs together, everyone assumed that the attorneys and investors would teach the entrepreneurs how to be successful. But, what really happened was a two-way exchange of ideas and information. Service providers and investors were able to attend programs and meetings, and join the entrepreneurial network. In doing so they learned how entrepreneurs work and what kinds of issues they faced. That allowed the service provider and investors to change the way they did business. One of the things that has made the Triangle unique is that all three groups have learned together, and are succeeding together. In other innovation centers I don’t think that is necessarily the case.
The other issue was capital. When CED was first formed, everyone assumed that the Triangle’s problem was that we did not have capital. Kitty Hawk in Charlotte was the lone venture firm in the state. After taking a long, hard look at the issue, we realized that the problem was much more than a lack of funding. Capital was a major concern, but an even greater problem was the lack of an entrepreneurial culture. Back then we had a risk-averse culture. With a risk-averse approach to investing, even with an abundance of capital we wouldn’t have been able to deploy it very well...
Visit WRAL Local Tech Wire to read part 1 and part 2 of Monica's interview.