New Mexico — and Santa Fe in particular — has become a sort of hub for creative entrepreneurs and organizations, thanks in large part to companies like the immersive art and entertainment powerhouse Meow Wolf and local nonprofit Creative Startups being based in the state.
The latter plans to capitalize on The City Different's creative strengths by hosting its second annual Creative Experience Santa Fe summit in early November. The three-day long event starts on Nov. 10 and plans to bring north of 200 artists, entrepreneurs and investors from across the country to the New Mexico capital.
Speakers will give presentations on topics from immersive technologies to digital twins to artificial intelligence. Those speakers include Leila Amirsadeghi, the principal product manager on Microsoft Corp.'s mixed-reality platform called Mesh; Boaz Ashkenazy, the CEO and founder of Seattle-based AI company Simply Augmented; and Chris Brooks, managing partner of Minneapolis-based VC Brown Venture Group; among a host of others.
The summit also comes with a mix of more recreation-focused events, like comedy shows by local comedians and Indigenous film screenings.
As Alice Loy, the co-founder and CEO of Creative Startups, put it, Creative Experience Santa Fe, or CxSF, is "two parts wonder and fun, and one part technical information and networking."
"Our idea is to make sure that New Mexico stays at the forefront of the booming immersive economy," Loy said. "And so, having a conference here — literally being at the center of the conversation nationally and internationally — helps us remain leaders in that economy."
Creative Startups, based in Santa Fe, helps grow businesses in the creative economy through a blend of venture capital and business development-focused programs. Its reach is international, too, with eight global faculty.
A big focus of this year's Creative Startups-hosted conference, Loy said, is helping bring together people who are interested in investing in creative technology companies in a way that "builds thriving communities."
"The conversation this year shifts away from putting the technology at the center of the conversation to putting communities at the center of the conversation," Loy said.
What does that look like? For Loy, it includes envisioning creative investment structures, alternative ways to use technology and thinking more critically about who gets to benefit from technologies and the wealth they can create.
Those creative investment structures, in particular, include things like shared earnings-based investments, instead of just straight equity-based investments, and cooperative ownership models.
Integrated capital — or the use of different types of financing to support one entity — is another recent trend in creating more unique investment structures. Loy said Creative Startups is currently piloting a project to combine grants, zero percent interest loans and revenue-based investments, for example.
That type of flexible investing opens up more financing opportunities to entrepreneurs who are "building the next generation of companies," Loy said. It's important for creative entrepreneurs in particular, she added, to have access to more creative investment structures because their companies often don't fit within typical, stable industry segments.
It goes back to the "roots" of venture capital, which Loy said was initially conceived as an innovative way to invest money in riskier businesses with the potential of much larger returns.
"But if you look now at what venture capital does now, it's pretty much stuck on the coasts, it's primarily going into people of a particular background, and it's leaving a vast swath of innovation sitting on the sidelines," she said.
Loy and Miniconjou Lakota entrepreneur and artist Kelly Holmes recently launched Skoden Ventures, a venture fund focused on underserved creative entrepreneurs, to help fill that overlooked industry segment. It anticipates investing in about 30 companies spread primarily across the Southwest.
