Despite there being more than 20 cities and towns spread out over the greater Phoenix metro, a group of young founders say that Tempe, above all others, is the best place to build a high-growth startup in the Valley.
“Tempe literally has all the makings, all of the makings, to build Silicon Valley and the peninsula, all of it,” Seedscout founder Mat Sherman said. “The only thing that's missing is the entrepreneurial rigor, which is the most important thing, but if we had that we literally have everything else.”
Sherman is a member of the JamPad, an invite-only group for founders in Tempe created by Adam Laor, another local founder. Laor, 19, believes that if founders band together then Tempe can not only become the startup hub for the Valley, but a presence for the entire region.
“We want to kind of create this network effect of an exclusive group of companies, startups, building real things, that over a course of five, seven, 10, 12 years, can get really, really large,” he said. “I mean truly Bay Area-magnitude large, that are on a national or international scale of success, that are based here in Tempe.”
Laor, Sherman and the other 10 or so members of the JamPad have high hopes for their companies and for Tempe, which they’ve picked for a few reasons.
ASU's presence
The city is smaller than many of its Valley neighbors and densely packed with innovators; Carvana, Culdesac, Opendoor, Microsoft, Zenefits, Silicon Valley Bank all have a presence in Tempe, not to mention Sherman’s company Seedscout and Laor’s Sinatra.
The other major factor is Arizona State University, which has its main campus in Tempe. ASU has helped spin out hundreds of startups and each year the university turns out hordes of new engineers, thanks to the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, the largest engineering school in the country.
Arizona’s startup ecosystem has been on the rise in recent years, setting a venture capital investment record in 2021, but the state still lags regional neighbors like Utah and Colorado while California still utterly dominates in attracting venture funding.
One of the criteria for entrance into the JamPad, besides actually running a startup, has to do with attitude. Founders need to be less risk averse and more willing to swing for the fences, a blend which Sherman called being Bay Area-minded.
If more ambitious founders find big success in Tempe, the thinking goes, then they lay a path for others to follow.
“We don't have enough examples of what Bay Area success looks like,” Sherman said. “A lot of people in the community could be willing to be part of something more Bay Area-minded if they knew what that even looked like.”
Building a network
Laor’s vision of building Tempe up starts with the JamPad, which is part social club, part support system, part business network. Laor said it's a place where founders and makers meet up, Sherman calls it a magnet for all things startup.
The meetings, held once a month at different locations, are unstructured so attendees can talk (or “jam”) about whatever's on their minds; Laor said a lively discussion over Web3 broke out at the most recent event. By attending these meetings, swapping stories and making connections, these founders are like buzzing bees pollinating flowers that will bloom in Tempe’s innovation ecosystem.
Eventually, in a few years, the idea is to have founders stay in Tempe and continue reinvesting their energy (and money) back into the ecosystem.
“We need more people that have done it, and then stay just so they have that experience and can talk about it,” Sherman said.
Laor pointed to Ryan Johnson as example of a founder choosing to stick around and help others build. Once a founding member of Opendoor, Johnson now runs Culdesac, which raised $30 million in series A funding earlier this month. Johnson is literally all about building community; Culdesac is a car-free development set to open up later this year.
While JamPad is invite-only, the goal is not to exclude people, but to vet potential members. Sherman and Laor said there’s plenty of visionary founders out there, it’s just a matter of connecting with them.
“It's really just about actually getting more of these great founders that are buried in Tempe and other places and just like weeding them out,” Laor said.
For Sherman, who’s about 10 years older than his pal Laor, he also wants to let people know that there are like-minded makers out there, so they can build a community where people don’t feel crazy about having a big dream.
“My favorite word for JamPad, it's just a magnet for go-big-or-go-home founders that don't fit in many other places,” he said.
