TechSTL, St. Louis’ newly established technology council, is setting "ambitious" goals for the region as it launches its membership model.
The new entity, designed to provide the 16-county bistate metropolitan area with a forum to facilitate advancement of St. Louis’ technology and innovation sectors, on Wednesday unveiled a set of goals it wants to help the region achieve by 2027. The targets set by TechSTL include significantly boosting and diversifying the region’s technology workforce, supporting the creation of hundreds of new startups and establishing a new funding mechanism for early stage companies.
“For St. Louis to become a global leader in emerging technologies, we need to take smart, collaborative action right now. Our work with TechSTL bridges the social capital, financial resources, and digital infrastructure needed to rapidly scale efforts and elevate successes. Our goals were intentionally drafted to reflect those key priorities and we are eager to hit the ground running,” said Brian Matthews, president of TechSTL’s board and co-founder and managing director of St. Louis-based venture capital firm Cultivation Capital.
TechSTL shared its five-year targets, what it is calling its “5x5 goals,” as it readies on Friday to open registration for organizations to join its technology council. The establishment of TechSTL stems from a $474,020 grant awarded in 2021 by the U.S. Economic Development Administration to St. Louis Development Corp. for the launch of the new organization. TechSTL will operate its technology council with a membership model and focus on bringing together local companies and organizations to advance efforts around business attraction and development, data collection, and public and government relations. Its “5x5 goals” include:
- Doubling the region’s technology workforce in the next five years. The technology workforce locally currently counts 93,000 employees, according to trade group CompTIA, and TechSTL wants to help grow that figure to 186,000.
- Boosting diversity of the technology workforce, specifically by having 50% of local technology workers come from groups that have historically been underrepresented in the industry. St. Louis’ technology workforce is currently 27% female, 9% Black and 2% Latino, according to data from CompTIA.
- Increasing the St. Louis pipeline for technology talent fivefold. TechSTL said this will involve expanding STEM education, credentialing, apprenticeships and skills training programs.
- Help launch 500 new technology startups by 2027
- Create a new $20 million “founders fund” to invest in seed-stage startups. The fund would include local, veteran technology founders as investors and advisers. It plans to provide capital to more than 20 startups annually and make investments between $50,000 to $250,000.
TechSTL Executive Director Emily Hemingway described her organization’s targets as “big hairy audacious goals” purposely designed to be ambitious and that will require regional buy-in, collaboration and investment from a range of different organizations.
“These are transformational goals and they’re intentionally set in order to really drive big actionable collaboration,” she said.
Hemingway said the five-year goals also underscore TechSTL’s commitment to being a driving force that can help its membership achieve their own goals and help the region better position itself as a place for technology and innovation.
“This absolutely is a charge not only to us as an organization but also to the region of what do we need to do in order to make this now a reality,” she said. It’s become very clear these are the goals that need to be established in order to get St. Louis as a region to become a competitive player in the innovation game. Now it’s up to us as an organization as well as up to us as community to figure out how we come together in order to reach these necessary targets,” Hemingway said.
As it launches operations, TechSTL says it wants to create the “largest, most diverse, and strongest tech council in North America.” It has set a target of signing on 1,000 members by year’s end. It also wants to add 250 “community stakeholders" who will be given membership on the technology council to ensure equitable and diverse representation.
