Get Your Business Going, Be Social, Collaborate

Profile: Frustrated with the difficulty in raising funds for his favorite local charities, Jim Schneider, founded the startup Moorepon. His grand vision is to create a central hub to help local charities raise money by letting individuals setup and link their cashback rewards to those charities. The concept is powered by relationships with two paperless coupon and rewards programs for shopping at grocery stores like Harris Teeter, Lowe’s, & Food Lion and at national retail chains like Outback Steakhouse, WalMart, and Best Buy.

One simply needs to go to Moorepon’s website, click on the respective registration buttons, create an account, and enter their loyalty card ID numbers to get started. For now, the process is routed through the two coupon and rewards programs, but Jim hopes to centralize the process within Moorepon to minimize the friction in individuals being able to setup accounts and start sending rewards money to their charities.

Find out more about Moorepon by visiting their website at: www.moorepon.com

The program creates clear avenues for students to earn certification, Associate Degrees, and transfer credit in areas ranging from engineering and math, digital media technology, life and health sciences, to civil engineering technology. Specific to Moore Forward, is the Advanced Studies in Entrepreneurship class for juniors and seniors. This program will kick-off in the fall starting at Union Pines High School. This program will teach the fundamentals of starting a business with Moore Forward mentors and entrepreneurs paired with students working collaboratively in the Cool Space.

In the Cool Space, student entrepreneurs will actively work on developing a business idea of theirs with the assistance of Moore Forward. This process will help the students to take their ideas from an initial concept to real startup. Our goal is that the best ideas to come out of the Cool Space will compete in a competition at the Entrepreneur Summit to be held in April 2014. This program will evolve with a bridge into Sandhills Community College for student entrepreneurs to continue to develop and work on their startups.

First, is the initial Mentors Council meeting where the mentors will be discussing the different avenues the mentors will play a role in Moore Forward. This will include working with entrepreneurs, and students on their business ideas; be a source of expertise for Moore Forward speaking events and panel discussions; be our resident brain trust of new ideas. The meeting will be held at 8am on March 20. Expect regular Mentor Council meetings to be set either on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule.

Second, we have the 7th Annual Sandhills Entrepreneurial Summit which will be held at Sandhills Community College in Van Dusen Hall on April 10. The Moore Forward portion of the event will kick off with an introduction by Susan Purser, followed by a Moore Forward panel that will include entrepreneurs, mentors, and young professionals. Lastly, our keynote speaker will be Frank Plastina.

Third, a joint after hours event on May between Moore Forward, the Moore County Chamber, the local business associations (Southern Pines, Aberdeen, and Pinehurst), and Moore Young Professionals will be at Homewood Suites in Olmsted Village.

Finally, our first Moore Forward Entrepreneur Series event with food and speaking panel. This first event will focus on financing with perspectives from local bankers, investors, and entrepreneurs with fundraising experience. The date will be June 12 at 8:00am to 10am. There will be food provided (courtesy of St. Joseph of the Pines) and the event will be free to Entrepreneur Club members. Register to attend at http://mfeseriesjun13.eventbrite.com

Plus, the Moore Forward Board will be meeting in March and April along with separate meetings for our working groups (Build, Enable, Advocate, Measure) and don’t be surprised if we squeeze in another meetup in there somewhere.

The focus of the event was ‘Venture Outlook 2013′ and kicked off with Scott Kupor talking about a number of topics including that seed capital, which makes up 2 or 3 percent of the venture space, was starting to get saturated with the addition of institutional investors on top of the normal angels. Yet, the venture space overall was fairly efficient with a 1 to 1.5 multiple return. There were several other stats that were mentioned throughout the morning, but what I found particularly interesting was the discussion on the VC Panel in regards to the Triangle.

“It’s too cheap to live here [Triangle].” The comment that kicked off the discussion that had most of the audience nodding in agreement. The Triangle is a reasonable place to live where tech talent can move to the area, find affordable housing, decent schools, and get a job at a well established tech company (think SAS) with a good income and in a sense – become comfortable. The local market lacks the “liquidity” for tech talent to move around to different companies looking for new opportunities to score big (and fueled by a high cost of living).

Another aspect, is what kind of job opportunities are there for talent we bring into a startup? If a year from now the company folds, will the new VP of Marketing be able to find work after uprooting their family? What kind of infrastructure is there to support entrepreneurs in the early stages? What about early stage funding opportunities? What about just meeting other entrepreneurs? All of these things make up the ecosystem and the Triangle does a pretty good job of it (think CED, IDEA fund, colleges, RTP, and meetups over beer).

The in-roads that the Triangle has made into building an ecosystem that supports the entrepreneur community and business formation – it’s a model to follow in Moore County. Connecting the dots between entrepreneurs, ideas, talent, space, funding, and so on will help us build a sustainable economic engine for real long term impact in our community.

Reception Area

The Moore Forward co-working space has initial office space on the second floor of the Magnolia Place in the heart of downtown Pinehurst. This space currently consists of four offices of roughly 300 sq.ft. each.

Each office can be subdivided into four spots, with desks and chairs provided by Moore Forward, for individuals who want a collaborative environment and way to network and feed off the benefits that Moore Forward provides and the amenities of the Magnolia Place. The offices also can be combined into one large open space for cross-pollination with different sectors interacting with each other.

Using the initial innovation clusters that we have identified: wellness, military, and technology – the space could be divided up between those three clusters with new initiatives beginning their incubation in the space.

In addition to the office spaces, Magnolia Place also provides a separate meeting room, conference room, kitchen area, mail room, reception area, wifi, and is in the heart of downtown Pinehurst. A benefit that will grown more apparent as we approach and past the 2014 US Opens.

There is a huge potential to the co-working space and it can serve as a model of how to best implement such spaces in other locations around Moore County. It is up to all of us to decide on the best use of this space to drive innovation and economic impact for the future of Moore County.

• Serve as the liaison between the entrepreneur community and government officials and policy-makers
• Proactively review and comment on policies and regulations that have a direct impact on entrepreneurs and the startup community
• Stimulating change in public policy, as needed, to ensure that current and future policy promotes and supports entrepreneurs

Become a part of the Entrepreneurs Council by joining the Moore Forward Entrepreneurs Club.

Co-Working Interviews:

Moore County, besides being well-known as an international destination (Pinehurst), has a dynamo of benefits including: world-class health care system in the form of the independent First Health of the Carolinas; strong educational institutions with our top-ranked K-12 public school system and exceptional Sandhills Community College; close proximity to Fort Brag making us a home to military (active, reserve, and retired), contractors, and related industry.

We believe that by leveraging these assets by focusing on technology-driven products and services that stem from wellness and the military – we will be able to cultivate a dynamic economic environment.

The ecosytem strategy is focused on creating a robust pipeline of talent, building a strong support environment to help scale high-impact, high-growth enterprises, measuring their economic and social impact, and ensuring that local economic and community development policies support these efforts.

Build: Our roadmap on building the entrepreneurial talent pipeline through organic growth locally and transferring talent to our region.

Support: Enabling entrepreneurs by helping them bring their ideas from seed to scale by leveraging existing community assets including the community’s wellness industry, proximity to Fort Bragg, and the Research Triangle, and skilled retiree population. The intent being to provide entrepreneurs with a robust support network and capacity building resources.

Measure: Quantify the impact of these enterprises on the Moore County Region’s economic development and community welfare. In addition, to share the results as a means of improving the performance and dissemination of lessons learn through actionable research.

Advocate: Be the voice within the Moore County Region, throughout North Carolina, and across the nation, to elevate the region’s entrepreneurial community and accelerate its emergence as a pioneering rural innovation initiative.