JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – As word came from Gov. Jay Nixon’s office yesterday that Missouri had the highest business growth in the nation from 2012 to 2013 and that the state had ranked in the top ten for startups, the governor credited the work of the Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC) for some of that growth.
Rep. T.J. Berry, R-Kearney, has served on the MTC for three years and has been an entrepreneur his entire life. He believes that the work of the public-private partnership to foster growth for technology companies is certainly a tool that helps those who start businesses in the state of Missouri.
“We’ve been helpful but not instrumental to the growth of businesses,” Berry said. “[The MTC] fulfills a role in helping small start up companies in different funding levels and helps them grow. It’s a funding mechanism. We have had good success with the companies that have been helped, but the total number of companies helped is relatively small.”
For that huge jump in growth that outpaced every other state by at least a ten percent margin, Berry cited other successful entities for their work in promoting small businesses, including the St. Louis and Kansas City Chambers of Commerce.
“One of the things I think has helped is the St. Louis and Kansas City Chamber of Commerce have put an emphasis on entrepreneurship,” Berry said. “They have done a good job of rallying larger businesses into helping startups.”
Berry argues that when larger established companies work with smaller companies in the same locations, it gives small businesses an invaluable resource, one often missing in new businesses: experience.
“It gives them that boost when they’re starting, it helps them start growing,” he said. “It’s not any one thing. It is an environment of entrepreneurism and a lot of different support levels. If you can talk to somebody who has more experience than you have and can prevent you from making a mistake or connect you with people who can help you even more, it starts to add up and make a difference.”
Younger businesses in different areas also help themselves just from sheer proximity.
“Both in KC and STL, it’s more about an organic environment, these areas where really new companies are locating together and they bounce ideas off of each other and that supportive environment with people experiencing the same things, maybe in different fields, they can support each other,” Berry said.
Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5000 Fastest Growing Businesses of 2015 in the U.S. included 69 from the Show-Me State, more than all of its neighboring states except Illinois and Tennessee and more per capita than Illinois, Tennessee and Nebraska.
Berry has also looked closely at this data, but he focused more on the companies succeeding in Missouri, like Evolve Digital Labs, Pace Solutions, GigSalad and IntelliFarms. He found that by-and-large Missouri’s current most successful companies did not come from other states, but that a vast majority of them had started in Missouri.
He would do this simply by calling the founders of Missouri’s companies on that list and asking them a few questions, but the first one is always “Why are you in Missouri?”
“It isn’t because they were attracted here by somebody, it was either because they lived here to begin with or their spouse lived here,” he said. He also added that trend sticks with some of Missouri’s largest employers, excluding essential local services like hospitals and retailers, like Monsanto, Cerner, Boeing (a Seattle-based company which took over the St. Louis-founded McDonnell-Douglas), and Anheuser-Busch. Those companies which started in Missouri, grew in Missouri.
“We spend a lot of money in economic development statewide, looking to attract new business in Missouri, and I would like to see us spend more money helping Missouri businesses grow their operations here,” Berry said.
One key weapon in the fight to enable businesses in the state is the low cost of living, giving some incentive, Berry believes, for companies to take the risk of starting a business in the state. Keeping Missouri’s best and brightest, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, is a top priority for Berry, but many in those fields go to the coasts to pursue their dreams.
Berry says retaining those skilled people and fostering entrepreneurship by Missourians, instead of trying to emulate what other states are currently doing, it the right way to go.
“We hear an awful lot of times, we’re not the coasts, we’re not the mountains,” he said. “Well you know what, I’m not going to worry about the mountains, about the coasts. I’m going to start focusing on Missouri. Let’s not imitate those other areas, let’s focus on Missouri and the strengths that we have and not worry about other states.”
“Why not celebrate what makes us unique rather than what we don’t have?”
