Coming Soon
This is your About Page. It's a great opportunity to give a full background on who you are, what you do, and what your website has to offer. Double click on the text box to start editing your content and make sure to add all the relevant details you want to share with site visitors.
Shakopee is part of the reason why Eden Prairie is such a good place to call home with easy access to Canterbury Park, Valleyfair and a beautiful riverside downtown to provide entertainment. There are more than 24,000 jobs that Eden Prairie’s own are welcome to commute to. And, someday soon, there will be many more high-impact entrepreneurs to help our community glow even brighter.
​
The city of Shakopee launched a strategic program to grow these companies in 2021. Michael Kerski, director of planning and development reached out to John Moore in Greenville, South Carolina to help. Kerski and Moore had worked together in Greenville on building the NEXT program. The program there grew from eight founders to more than 100 companies over ten years. Moore currently runs Momenteum Strategies, which helps communities compete in the innovation economy.
​
Many times, members had previously solved similar problems and could answer tough questions, or they had connections to other professionals who could help. The program helped them realize they weren’t alone on their islands. They became part of a league of peers.
​
“The network worked. Over the following decade, it grew to well over 100 members strong. With their support we built three different entrepreneurship centers totaling over 100,000 square feet and filled with fellow high-impact entrepreneurs. We started an annual venture capital conference in a city which offered no venture capital at the time. And we provided member entrepreneurs with day-to-day support as they grew their businesses, created jobs, and made Greenville’s economy increasingly robust,” said Moore. >Keep Reading
Greenville-based medical records software company ChartSpan officials will announce today that they plan to fill 300 new jobs in the next 18 months, growing its workforce to 500 employees that include nurses and certified healthcare technicians.
​
The expansion is the third major investment for CEO and co-founder Jon-Michial Carter and his brother and co-founder Patrick Carter, ChartSpan's chief medical officer and a 20-year clinician, who founded ChartSpan in Houston in 2011. They moved the company's headquarters to Greenville in 2013.
The latest investment of about $16 million is led by Texas-based venture capital firm Cypress Growth Capital and existing investors. >Keep Reading
One of the Upstate’s biggest entrepreneurial success stories is ready to begin its next stage of growth, and with it, the expectation of 200 to 300 more jobs over the next 24 to 36 months, almost all of them in Greenville.
With a just-closed funding round of $15 million from a syndicate led by BIP Capital, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm, ChartSpan Medical Technologies is doubling its deployed capital, for a total of $30 million.
Now, new funding in hand, ChartSpan will spend “a majority” of it to embark on a national sales and marketing strategy designed to capture an even larger share of the chronic care management market, said co-founder and CEO Jon-Michial Carter.
​
Founded in Houston, Texas, ChartSpan chose Greenville for its headquarters in 2013 and soon emerged as the largest managed-service provider affiliated with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) chronic care management program. Currently, ChartSpan offers technology-enabled coordination of care to the patients of 106 health systems and medical practices, most of them in the Southeast. >Keep Reading
The Greenville Chamber’s NEXT entrepreneurship program plans to formalize its mentorship services, and a quick trip to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last week helped ensure they get it right. NEXT will join MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), an international network that matches entrepreneurs with highly skilled and experienced mentors.
​
NEXT is run by Greenville Chamber of Commerce staffers Brenda Laakso, vice president of entrepreneurship; and John Moore, executive vice president. They traveled to MIT with Amy Love, SC Department of Commerce innovation director, and Matthew Klein, business development director at the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Science, to receive training ahead of a VMS pilot in Greenville that will begin later this year.
“Even with all the educational institutions [in the Boston area], their biggest obstacle to growing globally impactful new ventures is lacking a skilled pool of entrepreneurs,” Moore said.
​
The training was intense, and the Greenville group had its own turn in the mentee hot seat opposite people such as a former head of the Bose Corporation as they received feedback on their plan. Moore said the most important takeaways were: >Keep Reading
Launching and growing globally impactful companies is critical to the economic success of any community, including ours. Headquarter companies that start and grow locally provide many important benefits to the area, including greater job creation, higher quality job creation, and wealth generation through ownership.
​
Attracting and supporting high-impact entrepreneurs is an aggressive economic development sport, and we have our work cut out for us to be competitive in that arena. That said, we have many of the ingredients necessary for a healthy ecosystem of entrepreneurs here.
​
One of the most pivotal is a strong history of entrepreneurship. Since Greenville’s founding in 1770, we have been home to a steady stream of entrepreneurs who have built thriving businesses that transformed the region economically and culturally.
​
In the earlier years, many of our top entrepreneurs were in textiles and engineering. Here are a few examples: >Keep Reading
With a new corporate structure, new board of directors, new space planned at the Bank of America building downtown, an MIT-backed Venture Mentorship Program and a collaboration with the Michelin Incubator in the works, NEXT has big plans for 2015.
​
John Moore, CEO of NEXT, refers to the activity as NEXT 3.0 – an evolution of the NEXT Innovation Center located on Church Street in Greenville. NEXT 1.0 was the beginning, before the economic development Accelerate program was launched by the Greenville Chamber. NEXT 2.0 was bringing on a full-time staff member, Brenda Laakso, who serves as vice president, and getting things more set up, Moore said. Now comes NEXT 3.0, which includes adding more full-time staff, getting the structure and governance in place and making sure NEXT has sustainable money and funding to carry them into the future.
​
“Almost like these companies we support, we’re growing,” said Moore. “This world is so dynamic and so demanding, that you have to be completely focused.” >Keep Reading
The third floor of the Bank of America building downtown is about to be transformed into a tech hub called NEXT on Main, as NEXT continues its evolution.
​
“The hope is to take a lot of the things that we’ve learned at the NEXT Innovation Center [NIC] that have been successful, and from visiting other spaces around the country, and use them here in this new space,” said Robert Hughes, project developer with Hughes Development.
​
“It’s more of an urban approach,” said John Moore, NEXT CEO, who will have an office at the new location. “We’re continuing to improve the model.”
​
Hughes said the project was a collaboration more than a year in the making with input from many different people, and “it’s finally coming together.”
​
The third floor is about 20,000 square feet in entirety. Hughes has three tenants already lined up and ready to move in May when the build-out is complete. Foxfire Software, which develops warehouse management software, will relocate to the new space from its current office on Markley Street. Chartspan, a health records management app that has become the No. 1 health app on iTunes, will be relocating from the NIC on Church Street. OpenWorks, a collaborative work environment space, will relocate from its current 2 North Main basement location. >Keep Reading
NEXT recently completed an Economic Impact Survey, which found that 145 Upstate companies supported by NEXT created 221 new full-time jobs in South Carolina last year.
​
The total full-time employment of NEXT-supported companies is now 913 workers.
NEXT companies also attracted $40 million last year in angel capital and venture capital investments. In 2014, two NEXT companies were successfully acquired by international firms: Hitachi Solutions acquired Customer Effective and EKF Diagnostics acquired Selah Genomics.
​
“It is very exciting and encouraging to see these kinds of results from our dynamic entrepreneur community,” Michael Bolick, NEXT board chair and CEO of Selah Genomics, said in a release.
John Moore, CEO of NEXT, said in the release, “When companies are founded and flourish here, everyone wins – the founders, the employees, the investors and ultimately the community.” >Keep Reading
Greenville Chamber members trained at MIT for entrepreneurship program
After months of training, applications and interviews, the Greenville Chamber’s Next entrepreneurship program launches this month with 15 founding mentors for an eight-venture pilot run.
“There definitely is a need” for the Venture Mentoring Service, said Next Vice President Brenda Laakso, the staff lead for the program. “The majority of the entrepreneurs Next supports are founders of their business, are CEOs. For the majority of those entrepreneurs, it is their first time building a business. What we saw was really lacking in the ecosystem was an effective way to connect these entrepreneurs to individuals who had a lifetime of experience in building a business.”
The Next program announced the mentorship service in October, when Next CEO John Moore said members of the Chamber traveled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to receive training for the program.
“Just as dollars are important to helping that entrepreneur build that business, so is the mindshare that helps them tap into the knowledge they need,” said Laakso, noting the 15 mentors were established entrepreneurs who could have decades of experience each. For the mentors, “This is probably the first time they’re being asked not for their money, but to really give back their mindshare that helps build the entrepreneurial talent in the community.” >Keep Reading
A space positioned to help jump-start startups
It’s a tall order, but a yet-unnamed downtown manufacturing center could take a crack at problems that span workforce, economic, manufacturing and community development if everything goes as planned, according to the project’s partners.
​
Slated for a now-empty industrial space within walking distance of the Greenville Health System Swamp Rabbit Trail, the project plans to serve as a co-locating space for a handful of high-technology, high-growth manufacturing startups that are caught between needing more than a garage but less than their own building, say the project’s developers Dennis and Russ Braasch of Braasch Building Group.
The development is known generically as the NEXT Manufacturing Center, because of its handshake partnership with the Greenville Chamber of Commerce’s NEXT program. The manufacturing center will also share the co-locating and business support services philosophy of the NEXT Innovation Center, which banks on the idea that such environments foster innovation, collaboration, support and the sharing of best practices that lead to a healthier, more vibrant business network. >Keep Reading
NEXT on Main officially opened its doors this week at its space on the third floor of the Bank of America building in downtown Greenville. SCRA Technology Ventures announced a significant investment in Servosity, one of the nine companies located at NEXT on Main, and celebrate its move to the new facility at a special NEXT on Main opening event Wednesday evening.
NEXT, the economic development organization dedicated to supporting high-impact entrepreneurs in the Upstate, occupies 20,000 square feet and offers tenants the same collaborative environment as the NEXT Innovation Center on Church Street, but in a compact, urban-centered location.
“NEXT entrepreneurs are making a major impact on the South Carolina economy,” said Robert Hughes, project developer with Hughes Development. “NEXT on Main will allow us to take a lot of the things that we’ve learned at the NEXT Innovation Center that have been successful and apply them to a new audience.”
NEXT on Main features an open-concept design with glass walls, multiple-sized meeting spaces with movable doors and walls, as well as phone booths offering privacy and seclusion. Tenants will also enjoy direct access to parking. >Keep Reading
The Upstate put her best foot forward this weekend, and not only for the thousands of foodies at Euphoria.
For the fifth year in a row, business leaders hosted an elite group of venture capitalists for a Venture Capital Weekend, aimed at showcasing the region’s growing entrepreneurial scene and business climate.
“There is very little VC funding in the whole Southeast, so it’s a little hard to access,” said NEXT President and CEO John Moore, who took over the event from the city after its first year. “Our companies are still raising capital successfully from here; we just need to make it easier.”
​
South Carolina ranked 29th in the country for venture capital dollars invested in 2014, coming to $47.7 million over five deals, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers. While larger states such as California regularly rank highest ($27.2 billion in 2014), South Carolina ranked even lower in venture capital per capita at 37th in the country.
​
“We’re showing them the entrepreneurial ecosystem that’s grown here. What’s going on with capital, what’s going on with facilities, what’s going on with talent,” said Moore. “We’re showing them that we have venture-ready companies, and then this is also relationship-building for them.”>Keep Reading
One of the Upstate’s biggest entrepreneurial success stories is ready to begin its next stage of growth, and with it, the expectation of 200 to 300 more jobs over the next 24 to 36 months, almost all of them in Greenville.
With a just-closed funding round of $15 million from a syndicate led by BIP Capital, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm, ChartSpan Medical Technologies is doubling its deployed capital, for a total of $30 million.
Now, new funding in hand, ChartSpan will spend “a majority” of it to embark on a national sales and marketing strategy designed to capture an even larger share of the chronic care management market, said co-founder and CEO Jon-Michial Carter.
Founded in Houston, Texas, ChartSpan chose Greenville for its headquarters in 2013 and soon emerged as the largest managed-service provider affiliated with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) chronic care management program. Currently, ChartSpan offers technology-enabled coordination of care to the patients of 106 health systems and medical practices, most of them in the Southeast. >Keep Reading
Four months after The Iron Yard announced its decision to close, two of the company’s former executives, including founder and CEO Peter Barth, plan to open a new coding school in downtown Greenville.
The school, also known as Carolina Code School, will offer a 12-week full-time web development immersive course to prepare college students and working professionals for a career in software development – no coding experience required.
The course, which cost $13,999, will be offered six times a year and accommodate up to 20 students per cohort. Those accepted into the course will study the basics of front-end and back-end web development for eight weeks and then focus on a programming language (Java, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.) of their choice.
“Our goal is to prepare students with the skills they need for careers in software development,” said Barth. “We’re not only going to teach them the basics of coding. We’re going to make sure they can actually apply what they’ve learned outside of the classroom.” >Keep Reading
A new coding school has opened at the NEXT Innovation Center in downtown Greenville.
The school, which is known as Carolina Code School, offers a 12-week full-time web development immersive course to prepare college students and working professionals for a career in software development — no coding experience required.
The course, which costs $13,999, will be offered six times a year and accommodate up to 20 students per cohort. Those accepted into the course will study the basics of front-end and back-end web development for eight weeks and then focus on a programming language (Java, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.) of their choice.
Carolina Code School is the first of several economic development programs organized by Build Carolina, a Greenville-based nonprofit “dedicated to building talent initiatives to support innovative companies across the Carolinas.”
Peter Barth, founder and CEO of The Iron Yard, launched the nonprofit earlier this year and currently serves on the board of directors alongside Eric Dodds, former chief marketing officer at The Iron Yard, and John Moore, CEO of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce’s NEXT program. Leila King, former director of communications at The Iron Yard, has been hired to serve as executive director. > Keep Reading
Among the thousands of people moving to the Upstate is a relatively small but potentially significant pool of talent that could be key to amplifying the region’s innovation ecosystem: C-suite executives and founders.
These industry leaders are moving here for many of the same reasons as everyone else, namely the quality of life and natural beauty that abounds in the Palmetto State.
But the traditional models and incentives used in economic development are ill-suited to attracting such entrepreneurs, according to John Moore, founder and principal of Momenteum Strategies, an economic-development consulting firm.
Plugging in
It’s no surprise high-powered executives who have founded and run highly successful companies are among the wave of people moving here. However, Moore said there’s no systematic effort to identify them and get them plugged into the region’s entrepreneurial network.
“There really are no organizations for people like this,” he said. “We don’t generally think about people as an economic-development opportunity.” >Keep Reading
In his quest to invent the electric light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said he did not fail, but merely discovered 10,000 ways that won’t work.
In this regard, it can be said Edison’s greatest achievement was persistence rather than inventiveness, and this distinction should be instructive to business leaders and entrepreneurs as they pursue success.
Expanding knowledge
While virtually no one sets out to fail, failure is itself an important step in the process of learning and innovation, according to Elysse Newman, associate dean of research for Clemson University’s College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities.
“Failure itself helps us understand the limits of what we know,” Newman says. “It’s always going to be useful if it teaches you something.” >Keep Reading
A new report shows the 102 companies supported by NEXT in Greenville and across the Upstate region created 261 new full-time jobs in South Carolina last year. NEXT is the economic development program launched by the Greenville Chamber of Commerce in 2006.
“Momentum for NEXT and the high-impact ventures we support continued to build in 2017 as we experienced significant growth on numerous fronts,” said founder and CEO John Moore.
In addition to the increased job creation, the payrolls of entrepreneurial ventures at NEXT grew significantly in 2017 with the average salary reported at $69,443, or 1.6 percent higher than the average salary in Greenville County. That amounts to an annual payroll of $52.3 million.
NEXT companies also continue to attract significant investments, raising $22,888,944 million in new capital during 2017 alone, according to the report. In total, companies at NEXT have raised about $169.6 million since the program’s launch. >Keep Reading
Talk to anyone who lives in (or has visited) Greenville, South Carolina, for more than five minutes and you’re bound to hear descriptors like “world-class,” “diverse,” and “hidden gem”–often in the same breath. Though its lowcountry cousin Charleston often gets the lion’s share of attention from tourists, Greenville is at the heart of a 10-county metro area that’s loaded with its own natural charms (think a 60-foot waterfall framed by a suspension bridge just off Main Street) and boasts an economic engine that has chugged through the recession; the region boasts $1.1 billion in new capital investments and has created more than 6,000 new jobs in the last five years alone.
Greenville is technically a medium-sized market, but it has more corporate headquarters than any other region in the state, according to the SC Department of Commerce. It’s also home to the offices of a diverse group of Fortune 500 companies including 3M, Lockheed, and GE. > Keep Reading
Where Startups Are Stakeholders
In May 2021 I met with a cross-section of the Upstate’s startup community at NEXT on Main, a second location for incubator and coworking organization NEXT Upstate that opened in in downtown Greenville in 2015 following the 2007 opening of the NEXT Innovation Center. NEXT, which supports more than 120 high-growth companies, is one of more than 50 incubators and coworking spaces that have sprung up in the region, backed by a blend of public and private organizations.
Cliff Holekamp, cofounder, managing director and general partner, Cultivation Capital, relocated to Greenville in 2020 to open Cultivation’s first office outside St. Louis. The early-stage venture capital investment firm, which specializes in tech from the coastal markets, is involved in about 60 deals a year, and was looking to expand its East Coast presence. Going virtual at the onset of the pandemic, as it did for many, sparked a change in perspective.
“I had more flexibility than I thought I did with regard to where I was living, and how the company was thinking about location and geography,” Holekamp said. “We looked from Arizona to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas. After full analysis, we ended up in Greenville.” >Keep Reading