The One New Year's Resolution that I Kept
Resolve to be part of the community again in 2021.
In 2012, I made the only New Year's resolution I have ever kept. I wanted the community of Rochester to embrace entrepreneurship as a path forward to help diversify our economy as well as to take advantage of the tremendous wealth of talent around the life sciences that we have in our community.
That first year was full of stumbles as I worked through how I could best support this resolution. I tried to create a new startup and a blog highlighting the few bright spots I saw in the community. I quickly learned that sitting behind the soft glow of a computer or phone screen will not change anything. I needed to get out there and find my tribe, those people that felt the same way I did.
Getting out and meeting people was a huge stretch for me as I had been battling (and still do) massive anxiety in groups, especially groups that are new to me. Until that time, I didn't even know there was a community beyond the walls of Mayo Clinic, where I worked at the time. Downtown was a series of skyways and subways that I could comfortably grab a slice of pizza or go for a walk without a jacket on a cold winter day. Looking back now, I realize that there was so much I was missing by not getting out of my "comfort bubble."
I went to my first entrepreneurial meetup in Rochester in 2012. The Rochester Entrepreneurial Network (REN) was a fantastic group of people that not only listened to my crazy ideas but asked, "how can I help?" This was the first time that I had heard that phrase since leaving Salt Lake City in 2006. I realized that I had found my tribe.
After reading Brad Feld's groundbreaking book, Startup Communities, I began to understand that I couldn't change the entire community. I could, however, contribute in a small way to helping those with ideas and new businesses find a community of people who supported them.
I launched BioAM in 2012 to assist those interested in biotech and Med Tech entrepreneurship to find their tribe in the Rochester area. I quickly found that there was an appetite for more than just medical entrepreneurship. Over half of the attendees to my events were nonmedical entrepreneurs and community members.
In the years 2013-2016, with the help of so many great collaborators and supporters, BioAM hosted 200 events that ranged from morning coffees to evening events. We helped to bring Global Entrepreneurship Week to Rochester as well as Startup Weekend. Most importantly, I started to see the emergence of a stronger, more connected entrepreneurial ecosystem in Rochester.
These events helped to galvanize the Rochester entrepreneurial ecosystem, but the entrepreneurs did the hard work. From life science startups like Imanis and Vyriad to tech startups like Ambient Clinical Analytics and GoRout, these founders and their companies began to pave the way for the next generation of Rochester companies. They were (and continue to be) the heroes of our community's entrepreneurial story along with so many others.
It was a great start, but I knew that there was so much more to be done. It became clear in early 2015 that we needed to do more to tell the stories of these emerging companies. I launched Life Science Nexus, a blog that highlighted Minnesota's life science startup community. It wasn't until I had the honor to work with the fantastic Amanda Leightner on LSN that she helped me understand that we should start to focus on Rochester and that entrepreneurship wasn't just medical or high tech. We quickly rebranded the website to Rochester Rising, and Amanda took over operations and made it the success it is today.
In 2016 I took a leap of faith and left my career at Mayo behind. With the help of Hunter and Traci Downs, we launched Collider Coworking. The goal was simple. Each event that I held in our community was so energizing and impactful. I wanted that feeling to happen every day in a space that people could call their own. That was the idea behind Collider Coworking, a space to spark random collisions between people, leading to new ideas, collaborations, and (hopefully) new companies.
Collider Coworking launched in the fall of 2016 and immediately started to impact the entrepreneurial and business community of Rochester. I'm proud to say that at its height, Collider had over 80 members and supporters. We were also able to launch and host 1 Million Cups Rochester in Rochester, where we featured local and regional entrepreneurs.
Over the years, I began to observe a fantastic culture of collaboration and support happening in Collider. The culture became one of mutual support and encouragement. It all revolved around random acts of kindness, from a simple smile to a helping hand in times of crisis. Our members are what makes Collider Coworking successful every day.
In 2018, I began to feel like we should be doing more to focus on the entrepreneurial community of Rochester once again. Destination Medical Center and Discovery Square's emergence provided a tremendous opportunity to accelerate our community. Collider Coworking's three founders decided that we could better serve the community as a nonprofit organization. So we decided to spin out a nonprofit, the Collider Foundation, out of Collider Coworking to better serve the Rochester entrepreneurial community.
We were fortunate to recruit Amanda Leightner into the Foundation and bring Rochester Rising with her. We would later fold the operations of Collider Coworking into the Foundation as well.
As a nonprofit, Collider focuses on the needs of our new entrepreneurs. Collider helps to fill that gap by working with entrepreneurs to meet them where they are, to listen, and to assist where needed. In many cases, we found that new entrepreneurs simply need access to what we call "networks and frameworks" to help them get their business off the ground.
Collider was fortunate to receive funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation as part of their Inclusivity Open Program. The program aims to reduce barriers to entrepreneurship for underserved individuals in our community. This funding allowed us to host listening sessions with 100 entrepreneurs and organizations in our community to understand bright spots gaps in our ecosystem better. The result was our pilot Ecosystem Navigator Program that allowed us to hire three part-time navigators serving Female, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs in the Rochester area. We are so fortunate to have Sara-Louise, Julio, and Kristopher as part of our team.
2020 has been a tough year for most everyone, from a pandemic to social unrest. Many people ask me how we recover; how do we move on? While no one has a simple answer, the one I can repeatedly point to that has sustained me over the years: Community.
Cities, businesses, and social change are built on communities coming together for the common good. Throughout 2020, I have seen random acts of kindness and support for our community that has made me keenly aware that we live in a unique city at a critical time in history. Together we have the power to make our community a model for others in the future.
Let's start off 2021 by working together to build the type of community that we want to see. It's time for all of us to step up and put positive energy into something that you deeply care about. Something that takes you away from your screens and gets you back into the world...your community.
Let’s all resolve to make this community better this year!
Jamie Sundsbak is the Interim Executive Director of the Collider Foundation, a nonprofit that assists new entrepreneurs and small businesses with connections, education, and other support.
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