Last week Ben Castleman of the Wall Street Journal ran a story called, “Cities Hunt for Startup Magic.” In it, he profiled the entrepreneurs who were bucking national trends by launching their own companies—and he profiled the city in which they were doing it: St. Louis. Accompanying his article was a video called “Will St. Louis become the next Silicon Valley.” Cultivation Capital’s Rick Holton and Lockerdome’s Gabe Lozano were key pieces to the story.

But the St. Louis startup love didn’t stop there. James Corbett put together this snapshot of St. Louis entrepreneurship. It takes viewers inside the T-Rex startup city. Several of our portfolio companies (Capital Innovators, Tunespeak, FoodEssentials) and our General Partner Brian Matthews were all featured in the clip.

The takeaway? Big things are happening here in St. Louis. This is a town that is proving that entrepreneurs don’t have to pack up and move to the coasts to be successful. In fact, St. Louis is proving that startups can even be more successful and their employees can lead better, happier lives by basing themselves here. Five years ago, that thought might have sounded crazy. Today, it’s a reality. And Cultivation Capital is excited to be such a big part of the community.

St. Louis is in the early stages of an entrepreneurial boom. The city’s experience may carry lessons for the country as a whole, which has become less enterprising in recent decades. WSJ’s Ben Casselman reports.

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Cultivation Capital has been asked to become a regular contributor on Washington University’s website. Our General Partner Cliff Holekamp is a senior lecturer at Wash U and the chair of the entrepreneurship platform. He will be weighing in on a regular basis with his thoughts and insights on what’s going on in the St. Louis Start-Up community. We will also post his blog updates here. We’re excited about the collaboration with the University and the continued good press for St. Louis!

Read Cliff’s Washington University Blog Post

Inside the STL Startup Revolution
April 1, 2013 by Cultivation Capital

Right now St. Louis is a hotspot for entrepreneurial activity. Kiplinger magazine named it one of the top 10 cities for entrepreneurship. Forbes Magazine recently ran an article on the local entrepreneurial community, saying St. Louis has emerged as a new leader in tech startups and innovation. In 2010, venture capital investments in St. Louis doubled. They’ve gone up steadily ever since.

It’s clear that St. Louis is the new place to be for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, venture capital or technology.

Olin students have an incredible opportunity to be a meaningful part of the St. Louis startup community. We have students working hand-in-hand with startups, researching deals for venture capital firms, and starting their own companies, all before they graduate.

As a local entrepreneur, Olin graduate, and Olin entrepreneurship professor, I realized that one way to encourage the entrepreneurial growth in St. Louis was to combine and leverage resources from on and off campus.
Last year, I had the opportunity to join Cultivation Capital as a general partner and have taken advantage of the opportunities to build these connections.

In less than a year from the fund’s inception, we have invested in eight incredible St. Louis startups, infusing $6 million dollars into St. Louis based startups like LockerDome, Yurbuds, Aisle411, and FoodEssentials. Every step of the way, we’ve found opportunities for Washington University students to get involved– either by working directly with our portfolio companies or by helping conduct research and due diligence on potential investments.

One of the biggest developments we have seen in the fund is the growth of LockerDome. MarketWatch recently called the St. Louis company, “Facebook on sterroids.” We agree. Cultivation Capital stepped up as an early investor in the sports-based social media platform. The user growth was explosive. In fact, the growth was so incredible that it became clear LockerDome was ready for a major round of funding.

Cultivation Capital general partner Brian Matthews and I led the founding of a new later-stage fund, Cultivation Capital Growth Fund, in order for Cultivation Capital to lead a $6 million dollar Series A funding round into LockerDome. After Brian and I managed the negotiations and structuring of the deal, I joined the LockerDome board. The quick closing of this investment would have not been possible without the help of students from my Venture Consulting course at Olin. Mark Gillis, Karthik Karthik, Jacob Zax and Noah Mullin, did the due diligence to set the evaluation for the round. We are incredibly excited to see what LockerDome Founder Gabe Lozano, LockerDome CFO Mark Lewis (an Olin MBA alum and adjunct faculty member), and their team will be able to accomplish in the next few months.

Also on Cultivation Capital’s radar is the newest addition to our portfolio, FoodEssentials. FoodEssentials is a data-driven company developing best of breed technologies to solve problems related to food label information for consumers, manufacturers, retailers, and the government.

Ronak Sheth, an Olin EMBA graduate, serves as the CFO of FoodEssentials and is part of an all-star team from around the globe. Our decision to invest was largely influenced by the work of quite a number of hard working Washington University students. Jay Hong and Geoff Stonner put together a market and competitive analysis for FoodEssentials through the new CELect class that I teach with Ron King. Yoonkee Sull, Sunil Srivatsa, Ryan Rakestraw, Harry Bolson, Kasey Joyce, and Brian Howley were all on Cultivation’s due diligence team for this investment.

That is what is so incredible about St. Louis right now. We have companies on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. We have millions of dollars of investments being put to work. We are getting national and international attention for the companies that are emerging and developing in St. Louis. And Olin students are right at the heart of the action.

Stay tuned for more updates on what’s going on at Cultivation Capital and at the intersection of entrepreneurship in St. Louis….

-Clifford Holekamp,
Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Director of the Entrepreneurship Platform
Kasey Joyce, MBA’14 and incoming President of the Olin Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club contributed to this blog post.

We had a BIG first for us here at Cultivation Capital last week. It was our first (of many) Cultivation Connection events that we are hosting in order to build a better network among St. Louis’ startup community. The idea behind the event is that Cultivation Capital is committed to building the companies in our portfolio. We are also very committed to building up the startup community across the midwest. We figured one of the best ways to do that was by bringing the movers and shakers in our community together to pick each others’ brains about issues they have encountered.

The theme of our first Cultivation Connection event was marketing. We brought in two awesome speakers to kick off the discussion– Systematic Revenue’s Jonathan Herrick and Elasticity’s Brian Cross. Jonathan and Brian brought up their thoughts on how to effectively market and manage some of the pitfalls new startups will face. The response was amazing. We had more than 50 people attend and take part in the event. This is just the beginning for Cultivation Connection. Look forward to many more events in the weeks to come!
KCJ