To keep St. Louis growing as a startup hub, the region must concentrate on the industry clusters already succeeding in the region and look ahead to future growth opportunities. Take the geospatial industry cluster, which is still in its early stages. In industry clusters like biotech and health care, there’s a hint of what could lie in store for the geospatial industry, granted it’s given the same time and attention.
During the webinar Exploring the Anders Startup Funding and Outlook Survey Report: Where is the St. Louis Startup Ecosystem Headed, Anders startup advisors discussed the resources that helped elevate the biotech and health care industries and the lessons geospatial startup advocates can learn from them.
In the Anders Startup Funding and Outlook Survey, investors responded to the survey indicating that the industries they were the most interested in investing in included biotech and health care. These industries represent two of St. Louis’ top startup industries in terms of recent and expected growth, as shown by the survey results. Other industry standouts included AgTech and enterprise software, two mainstays in the startup game. But a relatively new force, geospatial, was the industry with the fifth highest level of investor interest, tied with consumer products and Software as a Service (SaaS).
What is Geospatial Technology?
Despite its status as a relative newcomer on the St. Louis startup scene, geospatial technology has wide-ranging impacts on several other industries, including satellite technology, AI, data collection on a huge scale, digital mapping and more. With so many use cases, it’s no wonder investors are looking into getting involved. But if St. Louis area investors want the future of the region to reflect the possibilities available with geospatial technology investments, they’ll have to look back at how biotech and health care became such a dominating force for the region.
Why Did Biotech and Health Care Blossom in St. Louis?
Biotech and health care were able to succeed in St. Louis due to a combination of two factors: support organizations like the Danforth Center and the Cortex, and a great deal of patience. Neither industry grew overnight; it took time and investment to get it where it is today. Today, the Cortex Innovation District is the largest innovation campus in the Midwest, home to over 425 companies and 6,000 employees.
A little over 20 years ago, the entire 200-acre district was nothing but an empty lot. It took the combined efforts of five St. Louis anchor institutions – BJC HealthCare, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Saint Louis University, the University of Missouri – St. Louis and Washington University – in addition to contributions from individual stakeholders such as Dr. William Danforth to establish. William was also the Founding Chairman of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, established in 1998.
Over the next two decades, biotech and health care startups began to establish themselves in St. Louis, utilizing support organizations and programs like those offered at the Danforth Center, BioSTL and the Cortex. The region is still in its earliest stages of setting up a similarly supportive environment for startups in the geospatial industry.
What Do Current Levels of Support Look Like for Geospatial?
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) began a Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) with T-REX on the GEOINT Hub to help the innovation and entrepreneur development center to transfer technology and foster geospatial intelligence workforce development and innovation for startups. Additionally, the NGA opened its own geospatial technology lab, Moonshot Labs, within T-Rex to accelerate efforts between academia, industry and the NGA. Finally, there’s the Geospatial Innovation Center at T-REX which hosts over 16,000 sq. ft. of workspace for startups, researchers and government partners to collaborate and network.
These programs, resources and workspaces are essential to continue to attract, support and eventually grow geospatial into another dominant industry for the region. The only other variable in this equation is time. The region must continue to patiently support these initiatives and add additional ones to provide long-term support and access to resources that enabled biotech and health care startups to flourish.
The Anders Startup team closely follows new developments within the St. Louis startup ecosystem to monitor their impact on the region’s entrepreneurs and investors. For more information on how our experienced advisors can help your startup, and the associated cost, request a meeting below.
