Editor’s note: In the third of WRAL TechWire’s “State of Startups” series that will examine how North Carolina’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is performing from the coast to the mountains, what’s happening in Winston-Salem is profiled in detail by Jason Parker,

WINSTON-SALEM – “As a city, we’re transforming ourselves,” declares Karen Barnes, executive director of Venture Café, one of Winston-Salem’s hottest new success stories. “We’ve shown remarkable resilience and grit in reshaping our future.”

And there are marks of true collaboration amongst stakeholders. According to Barnes, all six colleges and universities within Winston-Salem recently pledged between $25,000 and $100,000 per year for the next three years to support recent alumni and graduating senior students in pursuing their entrepreneurial ventures.

This is part of a strategy to cultivate talent to grow the knowledge economy, says Tomlinson, and it is an incredible opportunity for Winston-Salem and the Triad. Tomlinson estimates that more than 60,000 college and university students enroll in classes each year in the Triad, yielding an opportunity to leverage human capital to fuel the economic growth of the entire region.

Capitalizing on this talent base is a primary focus for Tomlinson’s Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, which opened in 2012 with 800 people working for a few dozen companies. Five years later, more than 3,600 people arrive in the Quarter to work across a variety of industries and for more than 150 companies of varying size.

This growth represents one of the fastest growing innovation quarters in the country, says Tomlinson, and it is largely due to the organization’s efforts to focus upstream on entrepreneurial development–more than anything else.

State of Startups: The Series

  • Series overview: The project
  • Part One: An overview of the Triad
  • Part Two: What’s happening in Greensboro

And yet the ecosystem is fragile, says Tomlinson, “there’s still growth, but it is at a very early stage.” The region is seeing growth in three of four primary areas that support a robust entrepreneurial economy, reports Tomlinson, including talent, ideas, and physical space.

What the economy is missing is money. “Money needs to fuel innovation,” argues Tomlinson.

Finding the dollars

There is local money, says Barnes, including funds through VentureSouth Piedmont and Dioko Ventures, as well as other funds through statewide grant programs like NC IDEA as well as through the area’s accelerators including one led by the Center for Creative Economy.

Local business owners and industry leaders are frequently included in conversations and have been regular attendees at events, says Barnes, which has enabled and facilitated greater collaboration and buy-in from the general population.

But it’s not necessarily enough.

“We’re still seeing investors with little appetite for risk,” says Barnes, “we need to educate and encourage more people to deploy their resources and take that risk.”

New players

New organizations connected to the innovation economy continue to pop up in Winston-Salem, many within the Innovation Quarter.

Flywheel Coworking operates an active coworking model and serves as a central hub for many other affiliated organizations in Winston-Salem. The space hosts Startup Grind, a monthly Idea Tap, Pitch Scrubs, a Google for Entrepreneur’s monthly event, and a 10-month curriculum “How to Start a Startup.”

The New Ventures Accelerator operates out of Flywheel, with another focused on diversity, inclusion, and women-owned businesses in the works. Since inception in 2014, nine companies started at Flywheel have raised more than $2 million in follow-on funding. More than 300 people attended the New Ventures 2017 Demo Day, including 40 established startups that paid to participate in a pre-event expo.

At least one of these companies successfully leveraged the $25 vendor fee into a $150,000 investment from three North Carolina investors. That company is Open Broadband, which launches new wireless infrastructure in Belmont, NC, this week.

Winston Starts, the brainchild of Winston-Salem businessman Don Flow and supported by lead donor John Whitaker, founder and former CEO of Inmar Inc., launched in June. The nonprofit is based in a former insurance building in the heart of downtown Winston-Salem and aims to accelerate businesses local to Winston-Salem or attracted to Winston-Salem for the program. Flow and Whitaker tapped Steve Lineberger, former CEO of Sara Lee Casualwear and current CEO of Sneez, to lead the project. Applications to join the new program are open.

Venture Café selected Winston-Salem as their latest expansion site. Originally founded in Boston, Winston-Salem joins five other global locations for the organization (Boston, Miami, St. Louis, Rotterdam, and Tokyo are the other five). After an initial “listening tour” in early 2017, Venture Café began in May, and runs a weekly event aptly named the “Thursday Gathering.” The program embraces a wide definition of innovation, encouraging technology, medical, social, and civic innovators as well as students from area colleges and universities to attend events. The program launched with more than 400 attendees and averages 170 people at each Thursday event.

And further creative and innovative organizations are in development.

Beyond the addition of a diversity and inclusion focused accelerator housed at the Innovation Quarter, there are early plans for WS MIXXER to open a makerspace within Winston-Salem. The organization launched a capital campaign in the summer of 2017 and has plans to renovate a space and launch in early 2018.