NIDIA Members, please take advantage of Start Fort Wayne (our new technology center located downtown) and their week long tech tour that runs from October 24th through the 28th. You can visit the agenda at www.startfortwayne.com/tech-tour. Start Fort Wayne’s mission is below:

To build a new economy in Fort Wayne, we need to rely on those new ventures created by people whose sole purpose is to create a “new way.” A new way of life for them and their employees, new technology or inventions that makes the world a better place, and new markets that no one has even dreamed up yet. While large, established companies make up a vital part of our economy, entrepreneurs bring the energy and new life that can shake up everything.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses provide 55% of all jobs in the United States, and they have created 66% of all new net jobs since the 1970s. Since 1990 large companies eliminated 4 million jobs, while small businesses created 8 million. And small businesses, in the right environments and markets, can grow to be world leaders. Think about how many Internet businesses you use on a daily basis that did not exist 20 years ago. It’s a new economy, built on the backs of startups and new ideas, and Fort Wayne needs to participate.

Start Fort Wayne is building a thriving entrepreneur and high-growth tech community in northeast Indiana.

Information technology has transformed our entire world, in every way. When one motivated student in a dorm room can create a multi-billion dollar company from scratch, it doesn’t matter where they live. With our great quality-of-life and low cost of living, there is no reason why the next Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, or Microsoft couldn’t originate here. We need a vibrant tech startup community to help attract, retain, and fund those startup inventors here in our city.

Start Fort Wayne considers itself a “start-up” that uses agile methods to achieve its goals. We are not trying to build a huge organization with overreaching pie-in-the-sky goals. Instead, we are looking to find the niches where we can serve the community the best, act quickly, and study the effects of what we do so that we can repeat and scale those ideas fast.

Thanks!

Dave

David Augustine, Col (ret)
Senior Vice President for Innovation / Business Development, Stryke Industries ( www.strykeindustries.com )
Chairman of the Board, Northeast Indiana Defense Industry Association ( www.nidiaonline.org )
LinkedIn Bio https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-augustine-820a7a87