Stephen Von Rump moved back to St. Louis, his hometown, in 2019. But he never expected to stay.
He had been in Germany, serving as CEO of medical device firm Medite Inc., and figured St. Louis would be a good waypoint as he plotted his next career move. Soon after, he began attending Venture Café St. Louis, the weekly entrepreneur-centric gatherings that were held every Thursday in the Cortex innovation district.
Networking at Venture Cafe led to Von Rump taking on adviser roles with the IT Entrepreneur Network and innovation hub BioSTL. He would eventually become CEO of St. Louis-based digital health startup Aegis Digital Health.
That temporary stay in St. Louis is no longer temporary, and those Venture Café gatherings deserve some of the credit.
“I don’t know what would have happened if there hadn’t been Venture Café. I guess I might have gotten to the same spot, but it sure as hell would have taken a lot longer,” Von Rump said.
For a decade, Venture Café served as a central gathering space for St. Louis entrepreneurs and their supporters. Known for its networking, educational programming and free beer, the weekly gatherings provided a consistent forum for those involved in startups and entrepreneurship to network, share ideas and socialize. It welcomed more than 133,000 attendees since its launch in 2014.
Then it went away.
Venture Café in December 2023 suspended programming, citing a sharp fall in attendance and financial challenges around funding its programming into the future. Venture Cafe might have been the highest-profile startup event to shutter, but it was far from the only one to vanish. A series of startup showcase events hosted by NGA Accelerator, Stadia Ventures and Capital Innovators, all of which provided additional options for the startup community to commune, vanished after those firms ceased operating as accelerator programs.
The absence of such networking opportunities has left a vacuum in a community of startups, funding organizations and entrepreneur support organizations that come to rely on them for the connections needed to build a robust startup ecosystem in St. Louis.
“It seems like things were kind of effortless pre-2020 in terms of gathering folks,” said John Land, general manager of CIC St. Louis, which operated Venture Café. “I think there’s still an ongoing reckoning from a lot of people of what the ecosystem looks like now and what we need.”
But like a startup targeting a hole in the market, new ventures have begun to emerge to fill the vacancy left by Venture Café. One, called Founders Lounge, has begun its own series of weekly gatherings modeled, in part, after Venture Café. Another, Supercollider, is focused on gathering small teams of entrepreneurs for collaboration.
Other industries also grapple with staging in-person events post-pandemic, but startup leaders say it’s crucial theirs finds new ways for entrepreneurs to connect.
“St. Louis is such a relational city that those events took on extra importance, because they weren’t just something entertaining or even educational. They were truly how you met your co-founder, they were how you met your way to funding,” Land said. “Those relationships that people built were so critical and they happened in these gatherings.”
Innovation on the fringe
For more than a decade, Matt Menietti has helped organize events in St. Louis’ entrepreneurial sector, ranging from hackathons as executive director of nonprofit GlobalHack to his current role organizing STL Startup Week.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced Venture Café into an unplanned two-year hiatus from in-person events. That period changed the way the community prioritized how it gathered, Menietti said.
“It definitely feels different,” he said. “People have different priorities. The pandemic really reinforced ideas about what was important for people for where they wanted to spend time.”
That poses a challenge for St. Louis’ innovation ecosystem, which has positioned its ability to create community through events as a strength. Venture Café branded itself as creating “serendipitous collisions,” allowing a wide swath of innovators and entrepreneurs to mingle amongst each other. Other events have done the same. A startup pitch contest in 2019 held by businessman and Saint Louis University benefactor Richard Chaifetz included attendance from an array of investors and entrepreneurs, as well as then-St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.
Free networking events like Venture Café gave an entry point to entrepreneurs to connect with resources to help or grow a business. It provided a place for founders, entrepreneur support organizations and investors to mingle. However, attendance fell significantly after its Covid hiatus. In 2019, its last full year of programming before the pandemic, the weekly gathering attracted an average of 382 people each week. By 2022, that had fallen to 125 people.
Venture Cafe operated at a profit until 2019, when the nonprofit reported revenue revenue of $860,944 and expenses of $1.2 million. It’s losses worsened in the years after the Covid-19 shutdown.
But it brought value to the startup community as a facilitator bringing people with ideas together with the people that can help turn them into something.
“The best innovation happens on the fringe. It happens when unexpected things collide. We lost the ability to do that on a regular basis,” said Emily Hemingway, executive director of TechSTL, which oversaw programming for Venture Café in its final months of operation.
Erik Lutenegger, founder of web development agency Tenacity, worries the loss of events like Venture Café will have broader consequences for local entrepreneurship.
“It’s going to slow everything down, just in general,” he said. “If you aren’t doing relationships, you aren’t doing business."
Lutenegger since 2017 has organized Bourbon Friday, a weekly casual meetup for entrepreneurs. The event, which got its start at the T-Rex entrepreneurship center, is currently held at the TechArtista Downtown co-working facility. Trying to predict attendance at Bourbon Friday is a “week to week struggle,” said Luttenegger, estimating attendance varies from 10 to 30 people per week. Luttenegger is hopeful event attendance can rebound locally, believing the in-person gatherings are a boost to innovation efforts locally.
“Without that, we don’t have a community. We just have an ecosystem. Ecosystems are great. We all like that, but a community can build on it,” he said.
The next Venture Café
It’s a familiar setting: A Thursday night in the Cortex innovation district and a group of entrepreneurs has gathered to network.
If it sounds like Venture Café, that’s by design.
About a dozen entrepreneurs turned out on a recent Thursday at Founders Lounge, a new weekly event series that launched following Venture Café’s decision to shut down. It's held Thursday evenings at the Aloft Hotel in Cortex, across the street from Cortex’s 4240 building that used to host Venture Café.
Christian Johnson, a local entrepreneur, leads Founders Lounge, which he launched through MultiPass Ventures Community, a firm focused on creating connections between entrepreneurs.
Johnson, who attended Venture Café more than 200 times, said Founders Lounge is designed to provide entrepreneurs with similar programming and networking that once was available at Venture Café.
At the April 11 event, founders were given time for networking and then gathered for a fireside chat with Aaron Mottern, founder of Fenton-based fitness apparel company Agogie. Johnson said Venture Café for years provided a “center of gravity” for the St. Louis entrepreneurial community. He says he believes that’s still needed.
“That’s where we want to help and step in and offer that center of gravity,” he said.
The costs to operate Founders Lounge have been nominal so far, totaling a few thousand dollars, though he's still hoping to line up sponsors. He's also seeking companies to buy sponsorships that would allow them to set up so-called "office hours" to meet with and provide free services and consultation to Founders Lounge attendees. Revenue from sponsorships would be used to increase marketing of the event series, Johnson said.
Johnson isn’t alone in trying something new.
CIC St. Louis, which operated Venture Café and is the local organization of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based real estate firm Cambridge Innovation Center, has teamed up with Cortex and meeting planning company Filament to launch Supercollider, a new monthly program designed to help teams network and collaborate.
Held on the first Friday of each month, Supercollider caters to teams of three or more to co-work and attend business-focused workshops. While not affiliated with Venture Café, Land said Supercollider was structured around the lessons learned from Venture Café's demise. Key to those findings were staging an event during the day, as opposed to after hours, as well as the team format, believing people are more likely to be open to meeting new people if organized in groups.
“People are still trying to rebuild their social muscle after a long period of rest during Covid,” Land said.
Supercollider began operating in April with a soft launch of its programming, with its next event planned for June 7. The goal with the new event series is to create the “serendipitous collisions” that Venture Café once sparked.
“At the core of this, we fundamentally believe people need each other,” Land said. “They want reasons to come together. They’re just hungry for opportunities to collaborate and feel like they’re doing meaningful things together,” Land said.
Land said Filament, Cortex and CIC St. Louis are providing resources, including staffing and space, to operate Supercollider. He said it's difficult to estimate investment costs for the new program, given each entity is using existing resources to operate it. The program has been structured to "be low-lift, but high-impact in nature," Land said.
Existing programs are also retooling, with STL Startup Week tinkering with the type of events it plans to stage in its 2024 iteration, planned for November 11-15.
“The game has changed. We have to change with it,” Menietti said.
Menietti said there will be an emphasis on “high-quality micro events” focusing on event quality rather than quantity of attendees. He said, for example, that will include networking events more targeted to specific groups of attendees, with hopes of ensuring they allow for meaningful business connections.
“We have to provide more justification for ‘what’s in it for me,’” Menietti said. “We have to be a little bit more on our game for what we’re providing in terms of value.”
Von Rump, who became ingrained in St. Louis’ startup ecosystem through Venture Café, found new outlets to engage with the community, volunteering for events like STL Startup Week and with university entrepreneurship groups. He’s hopeful new events can fill the void left by Venture Café.
It’s a void he says remains palpable, citing a recent question from a college student about how best to get immersed in the local entrepreneurial community.
“I would have told him ‘go to Venture Café,’ but that’s no longer available,” Von Rump said.
THE NEW MEET-UPS
Efforts are afoot to fill the void left by Venture Café, the once-popular weekly networking event for startup founders and entrepreneurs. Here are details on two new events that have been created in the wake of Venture Cafe's shuttering.
FOUNDERS LOUNGE
What it is: A new weekly event series to provide a forum for networking and programming for entrepreneurs.
Who's behind it: Christian Johnson, a local entrepreneur, leads Founders Lounge, launching it through his MultiPass Ventures Community, a firm focused on creating connections between entrepreneurs.
Where: Aloft Hotel in the Cortex innovation district, 4245 Duncan Ave.
When: 5:30 p.m., Thursdays
Website: www.meetup.com/multipass-venture-community-events/
SUPERCOLLIDER
What it is: A new monthly program to help teams network and collaborate. Held on the first Friday of each month, Supercollider caters to teams of three or more to co-work and attend business-focused workshops.
Who's behind it: CIC St. Louis, the local organization of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based real estate firm Cambridge Innovation Center; Cortex Innovation District; and meeting planning company Filament.
Where: 4220 Duncan Ave. in the Cortex district.
When: Supercollider is held the first Friday of each month.
Website: www.meetfilament.com/supercollider
VC FINDS A WAY
Regular entrepreneur gatherings like Venture Café once were a good place for local investors to tap into the region's innovation community in search of new ideas. While the loss of such gatherings is a source of frustration to founders and entrepreneurs, investors seem to have found ways to adapt.
For one, the pandemic made it more common to do sourcing of startups through video calls, said Michael Rockhold, principal at Clayton-based investor Lewis & Clark Ventures.
Brian Matthews, general partner at St. Louis-based Cultivation Capital, said the venture capital firm hasn't had any issues interacting with startups that pique investment interest. But events still serve a purpose, he said, saying a series of upcoming pitch contests for St. Louis’ participation in the Startup World Cup contest could introduce him to new companies based locally.
