Sramana Mitra with 1Mby1M, the first global virtual accelerator, just interviewed me for her podcast. A LinkedIn Top 10 Influencer, Sramana’s mission is impressive:
Nurture one million entrepreneurs in reaching at least one million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond, creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs.
No easy feat.
There’s a lot of overlap between what Sramana is trying to accomplish with her global virtual accelerator, the first of its kind, and what we’re actively working to accomplish in New Mexico. Over the past decade, there’s been an increased focus on startups and investing in the technology that gets produced in our tier one universities and national laboratories. With over $7B invested in R&D along the Rio Grande Corridor, there’s a lot of innovation and talent to be leveraged. The question is how we translate those technologies and sciences into businesses that can solve real-world problems and create a pipeline of jobs for our in-state talent and recent grads.
I’ve made a career out of building and investing in high growth companies in NM. Driven by an amazing way of life and more technology than we know what to do with, New Mexico has a huge opportunity to invest in itself. A quick scan of opportunities in just Albuquerque shows over 1,500 open positions for high paying jobs in the local startup ecosystem.
From helping to start the first accelerator in NM, ABQid, we now have a vibrant ecosystem of more than a half dozen accelerators collaborating with entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life. For example, Vince Kadlubek went from a participant in the Creative Startups accelerator to building Meow Wolf into a cultural phenomenon expanding nationally to now being a major sponsor of Creative Startups.
I know that from my own personal experience building and investing in companies that go-to-market is where it really gets hard. A great product or service, taking care of your customers – that’s just table stakes to get in the game. Go-to-market is where it pays off and what really determines your ultimate success.
We talk about all of these issues, and why it led to me starting boomtime, in Sramana’s interview:
All the best,
Bill Bice
CEO
