1. When Ideas
and
Opportunities
Collide
Dr. Richard Swart
Executive Vice President
Grow America

2. Required Disclaimer
 The crazy ideas in this presentation are
entirely mine
 I don’t speak for the views of Grow America
all of the time

3. I disagree with
 Classical economic theory
 Economic clusters
 Incubators
 Much of the way businesses in Utah are
organized and formed
 Laissez-faire economics and limited
government role in spurring entrepreneurship
 Tribal society
 The belief that smart people will do the right
thing most of the time

4. What exists between ideas
and opportunity?
 There are only three essential ingredients to
a successful launch:
 IDEAS
 TALENT
 CAPITAL

5. Startup Recipe
 Once launched, you need:
 To navigate growth
 Capture loyalty of new users
 Develop good business deals to grow user
base
 Forge advertising deals to convert users
to revenue
 Hire the right executives that understand
marketing to your customer
 Raise capital to make all of this possible

6. Community High Level
Recipe
 To build a world class company (you want
to, don’t you?) you need:
 Clusters of accessible executive talent
 Entrepreneurial capital
 Strategic partners that know how to build
from startup to sustainability
 The most precious resource of all –
human relationships!

7. Bad news for Economic
Development
 Clusters of smart, highly trained people do
not mean that capital or business savvy
naturally form
 The cluster and center of excellence model
do not show results, if created in areas
without existing high velocity of capital to
high growth potential startups

8. Recipe for Possibility
Discovery
 Ideas
 People
 Entrepreneurs
 Organizations
 Coordinating Infrastructure (unbounded)

9. Recipe for Innovative
Ecosystems
 Information Sharing
 Education
 Networking

10. Recipe for Business
Generation
 Analysis and Review
 Mentorship
 Virtual Companies
 Building highly successful teams and
scalable models

11. The Real Killer: Social
Distance and Distrust
 Networks are highly inefficient
 Hubs are golden
 Most entrepreneurs do not know how to
connect to connectors
 Social barriers create real transaction costs
 Disintermediation of screened entrepreneurs
and resource providers (meet useful people
who provide a lot of value)

12. Circles of Trust
Family
Church Present
coworkers
Social Past
Affiliations colleagues
Professional
Friends
Affiliations

13. Value of Networks

14. RX for Better Odds
 Vet and validate your ideas, actively engage
a wide range of people
 Network at and above your level
 Don’t waste your time, follow-up
 Actively seek co-founders (outside your
circles if possible)
 Get on a plane and into networks

15. Grow America’s Role
 Providing opportunities for feedback and
mentoring
 Learning and tools
 Competitions
 Supporting existing community innovators
and trying to be the bridge between groups

16. How can we help?
 richard@growam.com
 @AskAlanEHall
 @GrowAmerica
 @slcentrepreneur