For many entrepreneurs, interacting with government leaders isn’t part of the day-to-day routine. And while it still may not be an everyday occurrence, in the past few months, increasingly more Silicon Prairie founders and leaders have taken their stories to legislators in an effort to have their voices heard and their communities’ needs met.
Adam Arredondo, co-founder of Kansas City startup Hoopla.io and a co-leader of the Kansas City Startup Village, says he was first approached about speaking to legislators six months ago through Google Fiber. Although the first opportunity ultimately fell through, when another presented itself in late September, he took the opportunity to represent Kansas City’s startup community.
“As part of the Village and just as an entrepreneur, I’m a bit more passionate about it than others,” Arredondo told Silicon Prairie News. “I think it’s important that we help educate all of the different parts of the entrepreneurial ecosystem because the stronger the ecosystem, the stronger the companies in it are.”
On Nov. 20, Arredondo traveled to Washington D.C. and participated, along with representatives from Houston, Washington D.C. and Dulles, Va., in a hearing on the national startup movement. Arredondo says the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business was interested to hear what startup community leaders had to say in regard to the distinctions between startups and small businesses.
Thanks to our sponsor
“Startups in the context that we talk about them today is very different than the way they were talked about 10 years ago because of technology,” Arredondo said. “It doesn’t take the same resources it did 20 or 30 years ago, when starting a business also likely meant buying a building.”
Arredondo says the discussion largely centered around financing and the difficulties of startups—which often have low amounts of collateral and thus difficulty applying for loans—to secure capital for their companies.
At a state level, Higher Learning Technologies‘ co-founder Alec Whitters also recently spoke with legislators about the importance of government support for the startup community. Whitters was approached by the University of Iowa to share his company’s story with legislators and act as an example of how government resources have helped Iowa entrepreneurs.
“We talked to them about how a lot of government programs were the things that allowed our company to get over the hump in the very beginning,” Whitters told Silicon Prairie News.
Early on, the company’s founders funded HLT’s first products using money from student loans. The startup also received $100,000 from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Demonstration Fund in July, which helped build its software infrastructure and expand into new markets. Whitters said he sees increased involvement between entrepreneurs and government officials as a positive development, as it will likely lead to further community growth.
“It seems to me that in business a large part of success is about the connections you have, the people who you have built relationships with,” he said. “So from a startup perspective, it makes sense to spend some time with the people who build the policies. At some point, most entrepreneurs run into something policy-wise where they could benefit from a relationship within the government.”
Credits: Adam Arredondo photo from Twitter. Alec Whitters photo from HLTCorp.com.
