As a way to make founders feel more connected, Amplify Louisville is launching a new online community platform.
Called AmplifyLouisville.Community, the platform will be unveiled at the end of this month through Amplify’s current website — though a set launch date for February has not yet been finalized.
Larry Horn, the executive director of Amplify Louisville, said the launch of the new platform is derived from wanting to create more social capital for founders.
“We’re trying to let founders connect with founders so they can get the resources they need faster, but also create trust and transparency so that you reduce the friction of doing things together,” Horn told me.
Although it is initially geared toward founders, anyone can join a way to find events, service providers, community partners, mentors and access to capital.
Horn said that eventually the hope is to create an online community that includes investors and support organizations who will have a direct way to connect to founders.
“I think what we see happen in a lot of social platforms is that it grows and then your content sometimes can get frayed, if you’re looking for direct communication or information on something,” he said. “People are tending to go to these smaller groups … to get into the smaller communities that are really more focused and targeted.”
Jenn Callahan serves as the director of business development and marketing for Amplify. She has been overseeing the project since its beginning. She said the ultimate goal was to provide a way for the unique users who visit the site — they get about 2,000 per month — to find the sources they needed “in a much quicker way.”
“The idea is instead of trying to sift through feeds of LinkedIn, you go here,” said Callahan, who also said the platform will have an educational component to it as well.
One free route, one with perks
The virtual community will run on a two-tier system. The first tier will be free and offer the baseline of being able to find people, groups, job openings, funding resources — as well as access to the support forum.
In the second tier, known as the "supercharge" option, users will pay an annual fee of $1,000 to receive several perks that are connected to the platform’s partnership with the Morrow network, an organization that provides communication resources to accelerators across the country.
Some of the perks include a $5,000 credit for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Activate startup support, a credit for customer relationship management platform by Hubspot (a $17,000 value) and an investment-readiness assessment.
Callahan said the new platform — and its content — would evolve based on the needs of its users.
“Once we have a better sense of what people are interested in and their preferences, then we can serve them content that is much more curated for them, and help them get connections,” she said. “Really what Amplify stands for is breaking down barriers, so that we can expand resources to all founders.”
Amplify Louisville is one of KY Innovation's six innovation hubs whose mission is to serve as connectors among those in the startup/tech space within certain communities — including founders, business accelerators, incubator programs, universities, companies and industry leaders. The other five hubs are Awesome Inc. (Lexington), GroWest (Paducah), SOAR (Pikeville), CREATE (Bowling Green) and Blue North (Covington).
