Building will be on the mind of a few hundred people attending a day-long gathering of investors, entrepreneurs and startups in Bentonville Tuesday. Onward FX is presented by Arkansas Inc. and the Northwest Arkansas Council.
The day begins with something organizers call an unconference and then continues into the afternoon with pre-scheduled meetings between investors and business founders. Serafina Lalany, executive director of StartupNWA, a program of the Northwest Arkansas Council, says it's all a chance for investors from around the country to meet with high-growth, high-tech businesses.
"It is primarily a day of these curated one-on-one meetings, but outside of that, we thought it was an opportunity to really welcome folks from the community to hear from these investors on topics that they don't often get the opportunity to hear about, to meet with the startups that are growing incredible businesses in the middle of the country, and to engage with one another."
Investors coming to the meeting include venture capitalists, angel investors and family offices from New York, San Francisco and Chicago — many coming to Northwest Arkansas for the first time.
"There's also investors that are more native to our region, so they're coming in from all across our surrounding state region. I would say it's a 50-50 mix."
The curated meetings between investors and founders on Tuesday afternoon are designed to start well past the elevator pitch level. Lalany says organizers worked with the parties taking the meetings.
"Three months in advance. We have scouted the country for the very best, high-potential, high-growth technology companies, and we've spent those three months getting to know those entrepreneurs, getting to know their businesses, the markets that they're in, their differentiators. And we produce what we call a memo on all of these companies. Then we put those memos in front of the investors that are coming into town, and they get to opt in to who they want to meet with. And this is where the magic happens — when they come into town and they're sitting face to face with one another, that conversation is happening at a much more accelerated rate because they've already gotten past 'Who are you? What's your business? How's it going? What are your goals? What does the future look like? What does an exit opportunity look like for these companies?' And they're getting right down to the deal itself. So the outcome that we're all hoping for at the end of this event is that we'll see a lot more capital raised by these companies from the investors that are participating."
According to organizers, since the launch of Onward FX in 2024, more than 500 such curated meetings between specific investors and startups have taken place, with about 1 in 4 participating companies securing a term sheet, resulting in about $22 million in investment.
Lalany says the day is not solely reserved for startups already in high gear. The morning schedule begins with an unscripted session — a chance for entrepreneurs at any level of development to pick what topics they want covered during panel discussions.
"We have a number of panels that are proposed by the investors, and we've let our audience of about 600 people decide on which panels they would like to see run. The panels will run concurrently, so you as the attendee can go from room to room choosing your own adventure. And they'll be on topics that these investors don't really get the opportunity to talk about in an audience of builders and other backers. We're encouraging folks to get off script a little bit, so there are no prepared remarks. We are encouraging our speakers to speak freely, to debate, to challenge one another, and to really start to unpack the topics that are kind of in the zeitgeist right now — about what will survive when the AI hype dies, which industries AI is truly transforming right now. There's another topic called 'Doritos versus daycare,' and it's sort of tongue in cheek, because a bag of Doritos has never been cheaper and a week of daycare has never been more expensive. How do we design key infrastructure in our country to serve the needs of Americans? And what is the role of technology in those spaces?"
The keynote for the unscripted portion of the day will be delivered by Jared Weinstein, co-founder of Thrive Capital, which grew from $40 million in assets to more than $50 billion, and a former special assistant to President George W. Bush. Lalany says Weinstein's investment work in his home state of Alabama could be a parallel to the startup environment in Northwest Arkansas.
"When we heard about what he's building and his story, there are so many parallels with what we're doing here in Northwest Arkansas. It felt like a great learning opportunity for our attendees and couldn't be a better fit for the unscripted session."
Onward FX is Tuesday at the Ledger in downtown Bentonville. Doors open at 9:30 a.m. The unscripted session begins at 10:30 a.m. Registration is free. More information can be found at onward.nwacouncil.org.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
