This Could Be the Start of Something

Editorial

Back in 2009, the first year BusinessWest staged its Difference Makers recognition program, the group of honorees included a relatively new nonprofit devoted to inspiring entrepreneurship and giving startups and early-stage companies a leg up as they sought to develop concepts and bring them to the market.

It was called Valley Venture Mentors, and its mission was relatively simple … give entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs exposure to mentors within the business community and provide programming to accelerate startup initiatives and get them off the ground. And the need was real, because new businesses weren’t coming to the region in large numbers, existing businesses were being merged into other entities at an increasingly alarming rate, and, because of these forces, new sources of jobs would be needed for the decades to come.

VVM, as it was called, was still in its infancy then, but it was already generating momentum and some positive results, enough to earn it the designation Difference Maker.

A dozen or so years later, VVM all but vanished from the landscape. We’re not sure what happened, but it was probably a combination of the pandemic, which robbed it of momentum and the ability to stage in-person meetings, changes in leadership, and other factors that led to dormancy — and a sizable hole in the region’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Recognizing the importance of filling this hole, a group led by Paul Silva, one of the early leaders of VVM and an entrepreneur himself who has created several ventures aimed at fostering startups, has launched Innovate413, or what they have nicknamed VVM 2.0 (see related story, page 4).

Silva joked that he was ‘getting the band back together,’ a reference to some of the mentors involved with the original VVM who will be participating with this version as well. But Innovate413 will go a step or two further.

Indeed, fueled by $250,000 in seed money from the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation and the MassMutual Foundation, the new nonprofit will seek to link entrepreneurs with mentors, but also catalysts in the form of access to potential customers (employers with problems that need solving) and access to the latest artificial intelligence and product-development technology from groups such as the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDS) at the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass Amherst.

The broad goal, said Silva, is to provide teach-based startups with what he called “an unfair advantage,” meaning direct access to businesses looking for solutions. This will enable entrepreneurs to problem-solve and develop technology for which there is a recognized need, rather than developing a product or service and hope that a market for it will develop.

It sounds good on paper. Whether Innovate413 will succeed with this mission remains to be seen, but we are encouraged that the band is coming back together and that there is a concerted effort to fill this hole in the entrepreneurship ecosystem.

That’s because the need that was apparent back in 2009, is still painfully evident. The region is not attracting large employers, the pace of mergers and acquisitions is only accelerating, and, while there is a strong wave of entrepreneurship sweeping the region, there remains a need for new tech-based companies that will stay in the 413 and potentially become large sources of jobs.

We hope VVM 2.0 can generate some momentum on this front and become a Difference Maker in its own right.