St. Louis is blowing up as a startup hub in the Midwest, and soon the St. Louis startup scene could rival that of its neighbor to the north, Chicago. Previously, there was no way to see the actual size of the startup community in St. Louis. Thanks to a new initiative called the St. Louis Startup Map, the size of the St. Louis startup community is finally getting catalogued. The map is the brainchild of Marshall Haas. Haas is the co-Founder and CEO of Obsorb. Obsorb is a customized work platform that recently relocated to St. Louis as part of Arch Grants. Obsorb is Haas’s fifth company. He previously co-founded Crafted Contours, a company that manufactures and sells unique wood accessories for mobile electronics such as the iPhone and iPad. Haas is also the owner of 18th.me, a service that delivers custom 18th century style portrait art to customers based on their submitted photo; AllRendered, an architectural renderings service; and he previously co-founded ecommerce performance parts retailer Velocity Source. According to the map’s website, “the St. Louis Startup Map was created to organize and connect the small community of startups, incubators, and investors spread around the city”. Haas says that he devised the map to fill a need that he saw in the community as a new resident of St. Louis. “I created the map because we (Obsorb) had just moved to St. Louis and I wanted to see the other startups that are here. Every major startup hub has some sort of interactive map that lists everyone (see Mapped In Israel). I couldn’t find anything like that for St. Louis, so I made it. I want people outside of the city to know that interesting things are happening here in St. Louis. This was the simplest way I could think of to show that visually,” notes Haas The database currently includes a little over a handful of listings from the St. Louis startup community. Startups that want to be on the map must go to the site and create a listing for themselves. The site also has a jobs listing page for St. Louis startups. Although there is only one listing right now, the site could develop into the destination for developers and designers in St. Louis to find a job at a startup.
