Serial entrepeneur and consultant Joe Procopio blogs on his startup blog ExitEvent about Asheville’s growing identity as a startup-friendly area:
But what really suckers me into Asheville as a startup hub is when I see blog titles like this: Asheville to have unprecedented presence at SXSW 2012; plan is to pitch Asheville as an entrepreneurial haven
That’d get you too, right?
Headlines like these hit my radar, I don’t know, every six-to-nine months. And when I see them, I automatically think “Yes, it’s about time… waaaaait a minute, didn’t I just see this?” The article mentions Sean O’Connell, CEO of Creative Allies, who I had lunch with, probably back in 2009, and asked him all those same questions. Beyond some infrastructure problems, he didn’t seem to think there was anything stopping Asheville from being a startup hub.
A few weeks later, I went up for an all-day startup/idea festival he had helped orchestrate downtown called Hatch Asheville. It was awesome. It gave me hope.
Then I didn’t hear anything out of Asheville for another six-to-nine months.
But now things seem to be coming together with a new level of stickiness. Asheville is preparing for their very own Startup Weekend on August 24th, the weekend immediately following the Startup NC launch on August 20th.
Read the full article here.
The DIY Economy conference, Startup Weekend, the N.C. Entrepreneurship Summit, the Mycelium School and rumors of a Unreasonable Institute event in Asheville coming soon… Is Asheville really becoming a start-up-friendly city?