There's a reason why Louisville Startup Week is being held between the back-to-back festival weekends of Bourbon & Beyond and Louder than Life.
That week, Sept. 19-23, is also bookended by the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, Louisville Pride Festival, NuLu Fest, Downs After Dark and the National Jug Band Jubilee, among several other local happenings. Render Capital's Render Competition and Louisville Healthcare CEO Council's Optimize conference are planned during the week, too.
It's strategic, Startup Week organizers say, to create density between multiple events — blending entertainment and business in a way that incentivizes people to stay and engage with the ecosystem.
"We have to think about how we can attract people to Louisville for more than just bourbon and horse racing," said organizer Michael DiCenso. "We're trying to build something that's similar to South by Southwest that draws entrepreneurs, creatives, makers, inventors ... Anyone that thinks outside of the box needs to be at this."
That broader vision began to take shape during last year's event, when DiCenso said he recognized a lack of resources and events for creatives that may not have identified with tech-focused entrepreneurs. Dozens of people showed up for only three events geared towards that community in 2021, he said, and organizers took that as a green flag.
Austin Lopesilvero, founder of Aspen Studios and another organizer behind the event, sees the two types of entrepreneurs as having a symbiotic relationship. Both are risk takers, but each one can offer something to the other, such as marketing and branding or sales and strategy.
"It helps with the overall startup ecosystem if you have creatives," he said. "The marketing is better; the storytelling is better. Louisville has so many amazing founders and companies — how do we tell those stories more?"
Louisville Startup Week is working with Fund for the Arts, Art of Impact and Medici Creative to aid in the curatation of the "Creator" track, with sessions ranging from podcasting to traditional art mediums. A couple of the speakers DiCenso and Lopesilvero named included Andre Wilson, an award-winning local designer, and Eden Bridgeman Sklenar, CEO of EBONY Media Group.
The other tracks are a bit more typical for a Startup Week lineup, including "Startup 101," "Web3" and "Growth & Scale." A few of the speakers that have been named so far: Drew Beechler, founder and CEO of Holder and former High Alpha exec; Tarik Nally, principal and founder of Kale & Flax; and Chris Wiedmar, co-founder of Party Horses.
One of the big speakers is Tyler Shultz, a whistleblower that reported the trouble at Theranos, a health-tech startup that, very publicly, failed. Its founder Elizabeth Holmes and former president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani were recently found guilty of defrauding investors.
Shultz, who was featured in HBO's "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley" documentary, will be recounting his experiences navigating complex ethical, regulatory, legal and personal dilemmas as he exposed the fraud in his Startup Week session called "Fraud is Not a Trade Secret."
The full lineup and schedule isn't available yet, but last year, the event had more than 80 speakers and over 50 hours of content.
The Startup Week team has also heavily invested in the networking portion of the event this year, Lopesilvero said, in addition to adding coworking and childcare offerings.
"Every person registered will create a profile and have the opportunity to match with other attendees that have similar interests or similar goals," he said. "We'll have a networking area in the center of the venue where they can schedule and meet people that have those similarities — it's all about creating collisions to connect better and to build the next wave of startups."
Louisville Startup Week will be held — in-person only — Sept. 19-22 at The Henry Clay in Downtown Louisville. Tickets are $60 and can be found here.
