As a decently connected guy within the St. Louis startup community, I found myself faced with several similar messages in my inbox – “Hey, I’d like to learn more about the St. Louis tech scene, who should I connect with? Where can I get plugged in?”
I kept on making the same referrals. Connecting those people to the same contacts. Recommending the same meetup groups and events. I knew there had to be a better way. After looking at what other startup hubs were doing, I stumbled upon David Cohen’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Boulder Startup Community. And so, the St. Louis-version of the Hitchhiker’s guide was born. Major props to Michael Orlando, Paul Heirendt, Chris LeBeau, Jon Leek, Dan Lohman, Tara Pham, and Jeffry Harrison for contributing to the first version of this baby.
What this guide IS:
– A quick, 10,000 foot overview of the St. Louis tech startup scene.
What this guide is NOT:
– A comprehensive overview of the entire St. Louis startup scene.
– Meant to replace any existing resource referral networks or websites. In my opinion it was a lot easier to share this powerpoint with someone looking to get plugged into the tech scene than what currently existed.
– Owned by any specific organization or entity. I want it to be crowdsourced. I don’t need or want any credit for it. Contributions are welcome and encouraged.
My hope is that this can serve as a framework for other startup clusters – I’ve already had a couple of the contributors to the first version ask to do spinoffs for the game development and social enterprise communities.
This is intended to be an organic document so if you have anything you want add or modify, just leave a note in the comments or shoot me an email at [email protected] and I’ll update the presentation.
Please share with your respective networks, and please, don’t forget your towel.
