Community support key for early-stage entrepreneurs at StartingBlock

Community support is key to some of the earliest-stage startups working in the recently opened StartingBlock space in Madison.

“All the faces that you see everyday — it keeps the mood up,” said Clay Burdelik, CEO of YoEats, which has been working out of the space for the past three weeks as construction crews finished up. “Entrepreneurship can be up and down. If there’s a friendly face, that adds a comraderie aspect because they’re going through the same thing.”

Organizers for StartingBlock held a launch event yesterday evening at the new Spark Building, which has several floors dedicated to the Madison-based entrepreneurial group. The space is envisioned as a hub for entrepreneurs and established companies to interface and make connections, ultimately strengthening the area’s startup ecosystem.

Over 400 people attended the event, which featured food, drinks, product demonstrations, live music and comments from StartingBlock leaders.

Scott Resnick, entrepreneur-in-residence for StartingBlock, said “this has been years in the making.”

Five years ago, organizers were looking for promising real estate projects to house the proposed startup hub. Three years ago, American Family Insurance decided to join the endeavor. Less than two years ago, building construction began at 821 E. Washington Ave., several blocks away from the state Capitol.

“Now, we’re finally ready,” he said.

Chandra Miller Fienen, operations director of StartingBlock Madison, said the project “is not just about co-locating startups together… it’s about building a community of startups and the ecosystem’s supporters and builders.”

She pointed to Madison startup groups like Doyenne, Capital Entrepreneurs and gener8tor, a nationally ranked startup accelerator with dedicated space at StartingBlock.

“We are finally open to accept memberships: we are finally ready to have programming,” she said. “We hope this is the first of many events that are here at StartingBlock.”

Fienen, Resnick and Lucas Frisbie, startup team strategist for StartingBlock, have been helpful in making connections and providing resources, according to several of the entrepreneurs in attendance yesterday.

“Chandra and Lucas have been great with helping us settle in, and then making any introductions we might need,” YoEats’ Burdelik told WisBusiness.com. “Scott Resnick has also been a great resource in terms of development; he has tons of technical development experience so that’s good for us.”

Burdelik emphasized that working alongside diverse startup teams is a benefit for his company.

“We have music, gamers, workflows — all of the different ideas that come out of that diversity, they throw your mind in a tangent as soon as you hear something, and you think: how could that be applicable to what we’re doing?” Burdelik said.

Randy Amundson is one of the founders of Bump Studios, a two-man game development team that’s three months into creating a horror survival game incorporating puzzle-solving elements.

“It’s interesting being here, because a lot of these people have pretty good business models. And for us, we’re kind of a media company so it can be hard to convey exactly what we’re trying to do,” Amundson said. “We’re just trying to make a vision.”

Like Burdelik, Amundson says it’s been “really good to hear” about the highs and lows that fellow startups experience, to know they’re not alone in successes or failures.

“There’s a whole side of setting up the business, doing the legalities properly… getting mentorship from a lot of these guys has been really useful,” he said. “I’ve already learned a few lessons, but there’s always more to learn.”

The working title of the game is “Lost,” but Amundson says that’s likely to change as development continues.

“We’re working on it,” he said with a shrug.

One of the more established companies taking up residence in the StartingBlock space is Arch Virtual, a tech company advancing the use of virtual and augmented reality in several industries.

Jon Brouchoud, owner and founder for Arch Virtual, plans to have four VR stations in the company’s dedicated space to be used for demos and generally to educate people about how VR and AR technology can be applied.

“We do projects across a lot of different markets — manufacturing, architectural visualization, medical — just across the board, so we’re going to be bringing anybody who’s interested in virtual reality in here, showing them what virtual reality and augmented reality are all about, and seeing where we can go with it,” Brouchoud said.

Arch Virtual was involved in modeling the StartingBlock building for Madison’s Plan Commission back in December 2016. Members of the commission were able to don the company’s VR headsets and experience a virtual model of the proposed building.

Now that the space has come together, Brouchoud said he’s excited to be part of a startup ecosystem made up of “a lot of great companies doing amazing things.”

Listen to a recent podcast with Burdelik: http://wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=390823

Listen to a podcast with Frisbie: http://wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=388707

Read more about how StartingBlock came together here: http://wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=390533

–By Alex Moe
WisBusiness.com