#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Laura Good, Co-Founder, StartupSac
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Accelerating Sacramento’s Startup Ecosystem
Sacramento-based entrepreneurs may not receive as much attention as their Silicon Valley neighbors, but StartupSac—a nonprofit focused on informing, educating, empowering, and connecting founders and innovators—is working to supercharge the local startup community’s growth. We recently spoke with Laura Good, the cofounder of StartupSac, to learn more about the nonprofit’s work, the local Sacramento startup ecosystem, and what the future holds for the city’s entrepreneurial community.
Can you tell us a little about yourself? What is your background?
I’m a native Californian. After college, I held various positions in a variety of disciplines for a Bay-area based fortune 500 company in the electronics industry. (Finance, Marketing, Technical Sales). While living in Orlando, Florida, I started working for a startup in the satellite communications industry. I was their first management hire. We went from 10 employees to more than 80 in the five years I worked there, and grew sales from $1 million to over $25 million. After a friendly acquisition, I self-financed a 2-year sabbatical which ended up taking me back to California. Bitten by the “startup bug,” I wanted my next role to be with another early stage company.
However, it was the beginning of the Great Recession (2008) and most early stage companies were not hiring. I ended up working for a non-profit whose mission was to grow the technology industry sector in the Sacramento region.I had the pleasure of working for/with not just one startup, but many. This is how my passion for ecosystem building was born! I worked with tech-based startups and their founders for over 7 years in my role as the operations director and program manager.
Tell us more about StartupSac. What is the work you’re doing, and how do you work to empower Sacramento’s startup community?
StartupSac is the phoenix that rose from the ashes after the previous non-profit I worked for was shuttered by its board of directors due to (in my opinion) a lack of a shared vision as well as funding challenges. Jeff Bennett—StartupSac’s president and CEO, and my business partner—originally launched the resource website to help entrepreneurs connect with available resources in our region. It was his talent at visualizing data and my first-hand knowledge of our startup community that created the first interactive Sacramento Region Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Map, which later became the starting point for our organization after we received a small seed funding grant from the City of Sacramento. We incorporated as a California public benefit corporation serving the Greater Sacramento region in 2017. Our mission is to accelerate Sacramento’s startup and innovation ecosystem by informing, educating, empowering, and connecting its startup founders and innovators. We do this in three primary ways:
We create and share digital content, news, and resources that are relevant to startups and innovators;
We create in-person events, workshops, and activities to connect, inform, and educate Sacramento’s entrepreneurs and innovators;
And we provide community support and outreach for the Sacramento startup community by guiding and connecting people to resources. We’re like the API or 411 of the Sacramento startup community.
I know one of your primary goals is to accelerate startup growth by connecting local founders, entrepreneurs, and innovators with the support they need to grow their businesses. What are the most crucial resources and tools that Sacramento startups are looking for?
Startups are always looking for funding, usually way too early in their journey. My ambition is to help founders understand what they should focus on before pouring too much time, energy and money into their startup idea. Basically, the concepts of Lean Startup—exploring product/market fit, the customer discovery process, build-measure-learn, etc. For most startup founders, these are foreign concepts to which they’ve had no exposure. There’s plenty of information about it out there in books, videos and web content, but it’s usually much more effective for them to learn about these concepts from entrepreneurs who have “been there, done that” with a measure of success. So it’s the community, or network if you prefer, that is the most crucial resource for startup founders.
At StartupSac, we help them connect to this community by organizing events like our monthly Happy Hour, where they can meet a featured founder and hear their story through a moderated “Ask Me Anything” format. We also aggregate information on everything happening in the Sacramento region’s startup community, regardless of which group has organized it. Whether that’s Startup Grind, an Investor pitch, or an educational workshop, we let them know what’s going on through our weekly Startup Digest.
My hope is that by helping founders learn a better process for launching a startup, there will be a higher quality of deal flow coming out of the Sacramento region. We do lack local sources of pre-seed funding, and I’m hoping that we can improve that situation by cultivating more investable startups. We have a local Angel group and a couple of VC firms in our region, but most of the investment in Sacramento companies comes out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Thankfully, we’re less than 100 miles away, and serious founders will work at developing relationships with SF Bay Area investors.
What makes Sacramento’s startup ecosystem unique?
Having lived in four other major metro areas (Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Orlando, and Salt Lake City) I have found myself loving Sacramento’s culture the most. It’s a very “inclusionary” environment. And people are “multi-passioned.” The elbows I’m rubbing in our startup community are the same ones who are passionate about local philanthropy, music, and the arts. It’s rare that I meet someone here who is not a 2nd degree connection. There is a deep sense of community here. You can see it in our love of the Sacramento Kings NBA Basketball team. We’re well known for having “the best fans in the league.” We fill the arena even when our team is on a 12-year losing streak! Sacramento cares about Sacramentans. And you are treated like a Sacramentan the moment you arrive.
Sometimes I describe it this way. When I lived and worked in the SF Bay Area, I felt that the workplace was very competitive. If people agreed to do you a favor, it was under the rules of “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” What I’ve experienced in Sacramento is more like, “Does your back itch? Let me scratch it for you,” with no expectation of receiving something in return. Sacramento gives first.
Are there any policies at the federal, state, or local level that have helped Sacramento’s startups?
At the local level, city governments are stepping up to support innovation and entrepreneurship. The City of Sacramento’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development launched the Sacramento Urban Technology Lab in 2017. The Lab allows government, academia, and industry to collaborate on ways of transforming Sacramento into that of a living laboratory for entrepreneurs, advanced technology businesses, and academic institutions to test, develop, and scale their ideas, products, and services. They’ve focused on some high-growth technologies like mobility, cybersecurity, health technology, etc. In the City of Elk Grove, they’ve launched the Startup Elk Grove Incentive Program which hopes to draw in entrepreneurs and startup companies by providing them with loans and grants, all funded by the city.
At the state and federal level, our local SBDC received special funding through the SBA last year to help accelerate technology businesses. While the funding wasn’t given to startups, it allowed the SBDC to partner with local organizations like StartupSac to provide more business start services to early stage tech entrepreneurs.
Because we have tremendous talent in our region in biotech and life sciences, the SBIR/STTR grant programs have helped to fund many ideas that take longer to incubate/launch (deep tech) than less complex products/solutions. CalSEED, a state program that invests in California's Energy Future, provides clean energy startups with up to up to $600,000 in grant funding. A number of local clean tech companies have benefited from this program.
What issues are Sacramento entrepreneurs dealing with that should receive more attention from state and federal policymakers?
The biggest downer right now for startups in Sacramento as well as all of California is AB-5, a California law which limits the use of classifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees by companies in the state. This not only applies to big corporations but also to tiny startups too. Startups often use contract labor and services in their early stages to get things done. It went into effect on Jan. 1, and big companies/industries are already planning to launch lawsuits against its implementation. I wish there was an exemption for pre-revenue companies.
And while it now seems ages ago, I haven't really seen much benefit to Sacramento startups from the JOBS Act of 2012. There was a lot of anticipation 7 years ago around equity crowdfunding but the SEC rulemaking has really made it hard for both investors and startups to take advantage of it. And the General Solicitation rules drive me nuts. Technically, Demo Nights, which don’t just have “qualified investors” present, could invoke the reporting rules of general solicitation. That’s really dampened the enthusiasm around pitch nights (although I think many of them just go on ignoring the rules while Congress or whomever sorts it all out.)
What is your goal for StartupSac moving forward?
We sometimes joke around about churning out a Sacramento Unicorn. It could happen some day. But I’d rather see fifty $20 million dollar companies grow here. I think it would be better overall for our economy.
Our goal at StartupSac is to keep “training up” solid founders and companies that can scale to provide high quality jobs in our region. We do this first by being present in our ecosystem. We get to know our startup success hopefuls on a first name basis—they aren’t just data points in some economic analysis. We meet them where they are, and then we make custom recommendations on next steps for their entrepreneurial journey. To expand this beyond where we are at now, we will likely need additional funding to add more ecosystem builders to our organization. Additionally, we will continue to work with other ecosystem building organizations in our region to fully leverage its impact on our community.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email edward@engine.is.
