With new grant funding, a Denton startup is looking to grow. And it’s looking to help expand the entire city’s tech and startup ecosystem as it does.
In a funding initiative designed in tandem with leaders in the local scene, the city of Denton awarded its first ever Entrepreneurship Economic Development grants at a city council meeting last week. Focused on creating more density in the startup community locally, a $106,500 performance-based grant to IoT company TeamofDefenders, and another $243,500 grant was awarded to VR startup From the Future.
Combined, the grants could help create more than 150 new tech jobs in Denton.
“The concept being: If we’re growing and as were growing, staying local and investing with local talent as much as we can… and contributing locally, as we do, to the community, then they wanted to put value on that and they accessed the grant to do that,” Mark Cieri, co-founder of TeamofDefenders, told NTX Inno.
Cieri said the city of Denton’s foray into investing in its startup scene began in 2016 with a partnership to create Stoke Coworking. And Cieri sees the grants as the next step in that journey, especially as the city council continues to meet about new entrepreneurial-focused economic development funding options.
“In the 21st century, many tech companies can locate anywhere, but these companies chose to start and, more importantly, grow their businesses in Denton,” said Jessica Rogers, Denton director of economic development, in a statement. “This is not an accident, but instead is the outcome of many strategic thinkers and economic development initiatives to invest in the rapidly growing Denton tech scene.”
The recent grants came out of a year-long process of working with the startups. Cieri said officials looked for feedback on the needs of growing early stage startups, while asking the companies about how they could impact community development and job growth.
“I basically expressed to them, ‘We’re growing, that’s the good news. But hey, we’re growing and we want to stay in Denton, I need help to do that. I’ve outgrown Stoke. This is the natural progression of a company as a startup,’” Cieri said. “When they looked at it and saw we weren’t just coming in there and consuming but we're also contributing, and all of this goes into how they shaped (the grants). That’s change that’s real positive change. It’s like, ‘we want to do this and within one year we did.’”
From the Future is a VR startup focused on training workers in a number of industries. The company was launched in 2008 by founder and CEO Mike Christian. In 2018, it landed its first outside funding with a $180,000 grant from the National Institute of Health.
Around the time From the Future was receiving its NIH grant, TeamofDefenders was setting up shop in Stoke. Growing from a seven-person team to more than 10, the new funding will help TeamofDefenders with its need for space to build out it development and marketing teams, as well as its lab and small-scale production.
In addition to starting the IoT startup, which currently focuses the proptech and digital transformation industries, Cieri is also active in the Denton Angels Group. Cieri said the commitment to investing in the local scene extends to TeamofDefenders’ mission. Already, the company looks to hire from the talent pool provided by the city’s universities – something it plans to continue to do – and as it grows Cieri said it plans to spin off smaller startups focused on specific end user needs.
“I get asked about the name, what is TeamofDefenders? The people in our company all consider it our Marvel, our X-Men, our Avengers. TeamofDefenders is a league of superheroes looking to deploy each of the individual employees superpowers and spin off superhero companies focused in different markets and end users,” Cieri said.
Cieri said the process of receiving the grant highlights one of the things that initially drew him to start TeamofDefenders in the city – its support of intimacy, creativity and the arts. He added the city’s proximity to the larger North Texas region and community amenities were another big draw.
However, Cieri said there is still more work to be done in terms of growing Denton into a startup hub. He said that there needs to be more investment in startups and support infrastructure like coworking spaces and access to capital. But he cautions that while Denton needs to collaborate more with the large North Texas ecosystem, it needs to retain its own sense of community.
“Today, it’s not Dallas. It’s not Austin. It’s not Fort Worth…. those are all special for their specific intent, but for us (Denton) was a different kind of community that really prides itself on that creative side combined with tech,” Cieri said. “My feeling is it's going to attract over time more and more people that are looking for that authenticity, people who are looking for places they like to be, and I think in the end as we grow, it’s going to show in lower turnover for our employees. I think they’re going to want to stay.”
The city of Denton isn’t the only one in the region looking to spur economic growth through earlier-stage tech companies. Earlier this year, the McKinney Economic Development Corporation launched its Innovation Fund, which has helped attract or expand more than a dozen headquarters for companies in the city. And out west, the city of Fort Worth awarded a first-of-its-kind $69 million grant in June to electric motor systems company Linear Labs to help it create potentially thousands of jobs, as well as manufacturing and R&D facilities.
“(Denton) doesn’t have to be one of the other cities. It needs to be Denton, but it will continue to have to find ways to collaborate so hopefully it can continue to accelerate its growth in the area of entrepreneurship,” Cieri said.
