Venture Winston Grants startup competition aims to create entrepreneurial identity for Triad

Looking to increase Winston-Salem’s reputation as a serious technological hub with a clear identity – similar to Charlotte’s expertise in fintech and the Triangle’s biotech prowess – Agile City has developed a plan to get more startups in the area.

The Venture Winston Grants competition plans to bring 20 early-stage businesses in a variety of different sectors to Winston-Salem.

The 20 startups will have a 12-month residency at Winston Starts in the 500 W. Fifth St. building in Winston-Salem and will receive a $50,000 non-equity grant.

“We are targeting startups that are post-accelerator and that are working on their minimum viable product (MVP),” said Karen Barnes, co-founder of Venture Winston Grants and CEO of Agile City. “So, this $50,000 is intended to help people either finish their MVP or to start getting traction on their MVP and take it to its next iteration and into testing with real customers.”

Agile City's partners in the venture are Flywheel, Winston Starts and Greater Winston-Salem Inc.

There were more than 1,200 applicants for the inaugural cohort when the application deadline ended on June 30.

According to Barnes, 75% of the 1,200 applicants were from outside of North Carolina and 68% were from minority and women founders.

The 1,200 applicants will be narrowed down through an evaluation process where 50 local experts, investors and founders will choose anywhere from 25 to 35 for the final pitch event, Disrupt Winston, on Oct. 9. From those, the 20 companies that will receive the $50,000 grant will be selected.

Once selected, those 20 companies must move at least 51% of their operations to Winston-Salem for the 12-month residency. If a company fails to do so, there is a provision that will revoke its grant reward.

Each company selected will have a different set of benchmarks they will be urged to meet. There will not be a penalty for failing to meet the set milestones.

“We have expectations for growth, but it’s not the same trajectory for each company,” Barnes said. “These folks are going to be surrounded by mentors and programming and early customers that are going to help them reach those milestones.

“People are going to be surrounded by the services and resources that they need. We’re not just going to hang them out to dry and pat them on the back and hand them a check and say, ‘Good luck.’”

Barnes said the genesis for the Venture Winston Grants competition came as a result of noticing “several gaps” in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the area.  

“While we’d made a lot of progress, we saw that our landscape of startups was very broad and very shallow. You couldn’t point to Winston-Salem, or the Triad region, and say, ‘This is what they’re known for,’” Barnes said.

Another discovery Barnes and her team made was after conversations with local economic development officials, the focus was on bolstering legacy manufacturing opportunities, not paving a way for startups and small companies.

These insights led to her asking what assets in the Triad can be leveraged into creating a “future-focused” economy.

“Those two insights led us to a question – what are the things that we want to own in Triad,” Barnes said. “Not how do we become a second Charlotte or a second Raleigh, but how do we capitalize on the assets that we have and leverage those to leapfrog into more of a future-focused economy.”

After doing some research, Barnes believes that several future focus sectors – health care, aviation, cybersecurity, connectivity, virtual & augmented reality, and food & nutrition – present opportunities to build upon.

To create a successful technical ecosystem is to own a particular space and to create density, Barnes said. The model they used as an example is Arch Grants in St. Louis. Arch Grants has funded 173 companies, created more than 2,300 jobs and $355 million in follow-on capital. Barnes said the goal for Venture Winston Grants is to recruit 100 startups over the next five years.

Barnes said that is hard to estimate right now how many jobs the program will provide for the Triad. But studies have shown that in other areas of the country, for every high-tech job created, several others in different sectors are created.

“When you try to speak innovation, density matters,” Barnes said. “The more that you have startup founders and technology and innovation and ideas that are colliding with each other, the faster that innovation goes.”