During a fireside chat Wednesday, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg had plenty to say about the role that the local entrepreneurial ecosystem plays in his vision for the city — and for the region as a whole.
Only one comment, though, garnered the loud applause from those gathered on the fourth floor of the Kentucky Science Center for the first Venture Connectors event of 2024: “We need to embrace people for taking risks because if none of us take risks, this will be a very boring city — so we need to encourage more risk taking.”
Before that, Greenberg had mentioned the “very public failure” of the 62-story Museum Plaza skyscraper project that was eventually abandoned in 2011.
The silver lining, he said, was that he and his business partners were able to take lessons learned from that situation and used them to help build up 21c Museum Hotels when he took over as CEO of the company in 2017 from its founder Steve Wilson.
“There is so much opportunity for learning that comes when people try to create a business, and don’t succeed — and instead of laughing or shunning these people and saying ‘Oh, this didn’t work. We can’t finance that individual,’ we should really embrace those experiences, knowing that that is a stronger entrepreneur, a stronger leader who is going to take those learnings, and is more likely to succeed the next time around.”
Greenberg was fielding questions from Bryce Butler, managing director of Louisville-based Access Ventures, as part of a segment called “Bridging Innovation and Community Growth.”
During his 30-plus minutes in front of the crowd, Greenberg talked about what role founders can play in his recently announced economic development plan. He also referred to a new nonprofit organization that will look to drive economic development that will be announced during “the first half of this year.”
Greenberg also mentioned that he was heading to Frankfort on Thursday with “a very short, but powerful" agenda for the state General Assembly. Among the asks for the assembly, he said, was to reinvest into state-sponsored venture capital firms, such as Keyhorse Capital and Commonwealth Seed Capital.
“Those are programs that have been around for a long time. They have not gotten state dollars in forever. We need to turbocharge the amount of capital that’s available here, and we’re asking the state to help to do that. We know that it will benefit not only Louisville entrepreneurs … but entrepreneurs across the state.”
Wednesday marked the first time that the monthly luncheon event was held under new leadership (Amplify Louisville), and held at a new venue, going from Story Louisville in NuLu to the Kentucky Science Center.
Amplify Co-founder and CEO Larry Horn told me beforehand that the monthly events would be held at the new venue for the foreseeable future.
“We wanted to have it back Downtown, where we have ample parking [and] we’re near our Downtown folks who walk to the event, and then I think this is a beautiful, opening space,” Horn said.
Founded in 1995 as a way for members of the ecosystem to network, Venture Connectors has been held at several different locations throughout Louisville, including the Muhammad Ali Center and The Galt House before recently taking place at the NuLu locale until Amplify took over leadership.
Horn added that he and his team aspired to hold various tech-related events at the Kentucky Science Center, as well as have keynote speakers come in from outside of the state.
