By Scott Meacham The energy is powerful when Oklahoma’s successful and “wannabe” entrepreneurs gather for the Oklahoma Entrepreneurial Summit and the simultaneous Who Wants to Be an Entrepreneur? (WWTB) event for college level entrepreneurs. This year’s program is Friday, November 15. The Summit begins at 8:30 a.m. and concludes with a networking luncheon, which participantsRead more
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By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman I set a goal for this summer’s series of columns to reflect on and write about my lessons-learned during my past six years of immersion in entrepreneurship. Our focus at i2E is on high-growth technology or life sciences businesses, but startups of every stripe are vital toRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2018, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. The State Science & Technology Institute (SSTI), the national network that serves those involved in technology-based economic development, recently announced a list of the most active technology-based economic development funds in the U.S. and Canada. SSTI reviewed PitchBook data from hundreds of nonprofit, public, orRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2018, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Anybody who’s ever heard me talk about building out Oklahoma’s innovation economy has heard me say that capital begets capital and deal flow begets deal flow. The challenge is that it takes a predictable continuum of investment capital to build a robust pipeline of startups,Read more
By Paula Burkes Copyright ©2018, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Oklahoma City veteran restaurateur Heather Paul said she’s amazed lenders accepted her business plan when she and her husband, Keith Paul, opened Cheever’s Café 18 years ago. In reviewing her budget line items, one banker noticed there was no mention of linens, Paul said. “Don’t youRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2018, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Kenneth Knoll, chief operating officer at WeGoLook, has been on i2E’s radar since he was a student at the University of Tulsa and led a team that earned first place in the Governor’s Cup (now the Love’s Cup) collegiate business plan competition. Knoll’s story sharesRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Twenty years ago, when i2E (first known as the Oklahoma Technology Commercialization Center), came into being there wasn’t a startup scene in Oklahoma. The economy was all about oil and gas, and agriculture and commercial real estate. We had no venture capital. Most young peopleRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Every year around the middle of October, I start writing in my head at least one holiday-focused column before the end of the year. I try to jot down a few ideas, feeling good that I have started well in advance, and then the whirlwind ofRead more
Copyright © 2017 The Oklahoma Publishing Co. It’s been almost a year since WeGoLook, the world’s first gig economy platform for enterprise customers, sold an 85 percent interest to Crawford & Company, for more than $36 million. Today, with over 130 employees and 30,000 independent contractors (Lookers) dedicated to operations, WeGoLook operates as an independentRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. It’s been almost 20 years since i2E first began providing business expertise and funding to Oklahoma’s emerging small businesses. In that time, we’ve supported more than 675 companies. Portfolio companies have attracted $590 million in private investment from banks, venture capital funds, angels and otherRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Last week, speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum’s chairman’s luncheon, I caught looks of interest, and perhaps a little surprise, when I told the audience that it is my firm belief that Oklahoma has entered the era of the high-growth entrepreneur. We have built theRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. The state stepped up almost two decades ago to help Oklahoma-based startup companies bridge the investment gap and leverage other private, federal, and institutional sources of capital. i2E Inc., in partnership with the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology, has been theRead more
By Jim Stafford Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. There is a saying in the startup world that if you want to be successful, you have to learn to fail fast. It appears to be an oxymoron, but there really is substance to the expression, said Scott Meacham, president and CEO of i2E Inc.,Read more
By Jack Money Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. A startup technology or medical company based in Oklahoma needed real luck in finding the capital it needed to propel it into the big leagues before 1998. But then, i2E was created. And, during the following 19 years, state, federal and private money the organizationRead more
Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Company There’s always a lot of discussion around pros and cons of state-sponsored venture capital funds. A recent Kauffman Foundation white paper even postulates that states should avoid state VC funds. The suggestion is that state-sponsored funds don’t match private VC funds when it comes to returnRead more
Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Company Selexys was one of the top five largest mergers and acquisitions of U.S.-based companies in the fourth quarter of 2016. That deal and the sale of WeGoLook are proof positive that Oklahoma’s strategy of public/private venture capital funds works. When the recent fourth-quarter and full-year MoneyTreeRead more
Due to significant job losses in its manufacturing sector, Oklahoma City needed a strategy to diversify and boost its economy. To move the city forward and create more opportunities for innovation and technology-based businesses, EDA partnered with local nonprofit, i2E, Inc., to support their “Oklahoma City Technology Business Initiative.” The initiative allowed i2E toRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Company If you look at economic development from the state perspective, there are three areas of concentration. One, Oklahoma can be in an arms race against other states for the next new manufacturing plant or the next corporation looking to move. Two, the state can createRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. I’ve been writing (and talking) a lot about the exits of WeGoLook and Selexys over the few weeks. In fact, when I sat down to work on this column, my wife even asked me if I was ever going to come up with somethingRead more
