A statewide tech and tech-enabled startup accelerator has recently completed its inaugural year. Kris Adams is the program manager for ARise, which is short for Arkansas Innovators, Startups and Entrepreneurs. Earlier this month, the collaborative program released a report detailing its first year of operations.
In an interview with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis, Adams says you have to recognize the organizations behind ARise to understand the impact of its results. He says Startup Junkie supports the initiative. However, it's the brainchild of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.
Kris Adams: They work to ensure economic growth across the state, and one of the ways they do that is by investing in startups. This program is designed to be long-term startup support so that startups have a better likelihood to grow, succeed and scale here in the Natural State. In turn, they nudge that economic needle forward. That’s why the state invests in this program and in others to support entrepreneurs and tech-enabled ventures.
Jack Travis: Let’s talk about that long-term continued support. I’m sure people in Northwest Arkansas are familiar with a few different startup incubators. But tell me about how y’all differ from that and maybe provide something for a post-incubator landscape.
Adams: There are a couple different programs that operate right now. I believe the state of Arkansas supports 12 different startup accelerators, and they cover a wide range of different areas. You have things like retail tech, cybersecurity, aerospace and defense, the lithium value chain. Those are all great. They do wonderful things for our economy and our startups. But they are time bound and industry specific.
They typically focus on one thing, run about 10 to 16 weeks, and they’ll run once or twice a year with different groups. ARise is designed to be long-term, steady startup support. If you’re too early for an accelerator program or once you’ve graduated, ARise is here running 24/7, 365 days a year. If you need to connect with someone who can give you some of our services to help your startup grow and succeed, we’re here.
One of the beautiful things about that is we work in collaboration with all the other programs in the state. We tie into the accelerators. We have some of their experts help consult with our startups. There’s this great continuum of us helping funnel companies to them and then picking them up on the back end. It’s a really good continuum of support so that no startup feels like they’re not able to be served. We make sure we can help them from idea stage all the way through an exit.
Travis: You’re a year in. You just had your inaugural report come out. Could you highlight some of the results that you’ve seen?
Adams: What was really exciting for us is we started from scratch, at nothing, at zero. In our first year, we’ve gotten up to 139 tech and tech-enabled startups in the program. We qualify those terms of tech and tech-enabled because people are familiar with tech products like SaaS software. But tech-enabled is really unique because so much of our economy is driven by things produced with high tech that most people wouldn’t consider technology.
For example, one of our companies that we highlighted makes duck decoys. They’re a decoy manufacturer, but they do advanced plastics manufacturing. We worked with them this year as they were moving from Oklahoma to Arkansas and setting up shop in Corning. It was really exciting to work with them because it’s very Arkansas. This is heaven for duck hunters, and for it to be a tech-enabled business that most people wouldn’t even envision as tech helps put a different spin on the program.
Those 139 enrollments were a big thing. We had 715 consults in our first year, which is wild. That’s almost two a day. Schedules were full. We were doing meetings all the time. That really is the bulk of our services. We do a lot of one-to-one coaching and consulting, both with our team at ARise, Startup Junkie — that’s our parent company — Conductor in Conway, and then we have a large expert network.
These include people with expertise in HR, sales, marketing, former founders who have been successful, and people with deep technology knowledge like AI, cybersecurity, biotech. The real geniuses of the program. When we say 715 consults, that means 715 times somebody spent a half hour or more with one of our team members or with an expert trying to get knowledge and assistance to help propel them to that next step.
That was huge. We also did 584 strategic referrals — connecting people with experts, with industry, with other ESOs. It really is a beautiful noncompetitive space. If we don’t have the tools you need, we can recommend another group that might. Between the referrals, consults and startups enrolled, we were thrilled with how well year one went. The goal now is to keep increasing that year over year and really see the startup landscape continue to grow, not just in Northwest Arkansas but in every corner of the state.
Travis: I would encourage anyone listening to go to ARise’s website. Y’all have all the companies you’ve worked with displayed, and there are some listeners will probably be familiar with. Curate, I saw, was on there. LockStop, too. That’s two very dissimilar companies who both found value in your program. Have you heard back from founders? What are they saying is that value?
Adams: We sent out a survey at the end of the first year asking everybody what were the best parts of the program. Overwhelmingly it came down to the expert network and the coaching and consulting that we do. People also loved the industry connections we provide.
A lot of our founders are head down, laser focused on their product and just keeping the ship afloat. Being able to provide referrals — because they don’t have the time to grow their network or attend all the social things they’d like — makes it easy to get a warm intro or direct connection to someone familiar with the program.
People also really liked our virtual and in-person events. We tend to do about two events a month, just like our parent company Startup Junkie. We host lots of virtual workshops so anyone across the state can access them, and we do in-person events from time to time scattered everywhere. We’re going to Helena this fall to do an event. I was just at John Brown University talking with students yesterday. It’s a great excuse to travel Arkansas — throw my fishing pole in the truck and find a creek or stream on the way back.
For our clients, some have mentioned they’ve been able to secure funding they hadn’t had access to before. Others have connected with experts who helped put together SBIR or federal funding proposals. Lots of different things like that have really helped them get that leg up and push them forward.
Travis: As you move into year two and beyond, what’s next?
Adams: First, year over year, we want to see more and more startups in the program. So this is your call to action, listeners: if you have an idea for a startup, or maybe you’re just trying to get one off the ground, or maybe you’re in the throes of building and running your company here in Arkansas, ARise is here to help you at any stage, as long as you are tech or tech-enabled. We’d love to have you in the program.
You can apply at arisearkansas.org. All we ask is you fill out an application form, then do an onboarding call with me where I’ll show you the ropes and help get you plugged in. Once a year, we ask for updated data — not to be nosy or difficult, but because it helps us prove what this program can do and the impact it can have. We want to dial in on some interesting metrics, like when Arkansas startups have a hard time. When do they tend to fall off if they don’t succeed? Is it year three? Year five? Year seven? We want to crunch those numbers and learn more about Arkansas startups.
If you’re able to do those two things, all of our services are no charge to you because the state is investing in you through ARise and they foot the bill.
The second thing we’re working on is finding some of those experts our companies need. We’ve been doing a really great job reaching out to new, fresh faces and talent across the state. We’ve got experts from as far west as Siloam Springs, an outreach lead down in Magnolia, people in Helena to the east, and another outreach lead up north in Jonesboro. We have a big spread across the state.
The goal is not just to see the startup scenes in Northwest Arkansas and Central Arkansas grow, but also to find grassroots people out in rural areas. Another big goal is to do more at colleges and universities, tap into hackathons and big events, and engage industry as well. If you work in a corporate setting and your company could benefit from doing a pilot with a startup or outsourcing to a startup to build and develop some tech for you, we’d love to talk. We have bright people here in Arkansas, and we love fighting that trend where people don’t consider Arkansas a tech state.
If we can take top talent from the program and get them connected with you, we’d love to see what’s possible and how these startups can assist corporate and industry settings.
We couldn’t do any of this without our incredible team. We’re made up of people across the state. We have four outreach leads. Our primary teams are based out of the Startup Junkie and Conductor offices. And the Arkansas Economic Development Commission is a wonderful group to work with. If you don’t know them, they really do bend over backwards to try to make Arkansas the best it can be.
From Hugh McDonald, Arkansas Secretary of Commerce, to Clint O’Neal, head of AEDC, and Esperanza Massana-Crane, who leads their entrepreneurship division — they are all huge fans of entrepreneurs and small businesses. They can’t wait to see what continues to grow and develop here. You know, the next Walmart, the next Microsoft, the next Spotify. Somebody’s going to hit it big, and we can’t wait to see who it is.
That was Kris Adams, program manager for the statewide startup accelerator ARise, speaking with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis. You can visit arisearkansas.org to view the full report, learn more about the program, and determine if it could help your business.
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