3 Ways Tech Startups Can Win in a Post-Covid Economic Surge

Tech startups helped drive the world’s last economic recovery, after the Great Recession. This time around, they’re poised to again fill a crucial role in job creation–and cities will play a major part in making that happen.

“Tech innovation has proven to be a very effective means of innovating ourselves out of crisis–creating new job opportunities, new business opportunities, even in a recession,” said Stephan Kuester, a partner at research and policy organization Startup Genome. He made those comments on Wednesday during a virtual event focused on building successful tech ecosystems. “Surprisingly, we’re getting many calls these days, from many places in the world, where politicians and policymakers in economic development are looking to jump on the bandwagon over the next 12 to 24 months.”

The event, hosted by Startup Genome and titled “How Your Tech Ecosystem Can Be Successful in Attracting Tomorrows Unicorns,” touched on a series of useful strategies and predictions for entrepreneurs and small-business owners planning for the post-Covid economic recovery. Here are the three major takeaways:

It’s easy to hear “tech startup” and promptly devote all your time and resources into software engineering or research and development. Avoid that trap, Kuester advises–because you’ll still need to pay lots of attention to the non-tech parts of building a viable business.

Kuester points to decade-plus declines in major economic metrics for startup ecosystems in cities like Seoul and Taiwan, which have reputations of going all-in on R&D, as evidence. And he says the corresponding upswings in regions like Silicon Valley, Toronto, and Vancouver are due to their healthy mixtures of technological development and business creation. In other words, it’s not enough to simply develop a great product–you need to be able to find a viable market for it, commercialize it, and scale your company accordingly over time.

“These environments–Silicon Valley, Toronto, and Vancouver–are what we would call ambidextrous,” Kuester said. “Both hands coming together. Great research, great R&D capability, intellectual capability at universities and research centers. And on the other hand, entrepreneurs that can really take a concept from idea to market, and scale it to a successful company.”

Especially in the Covid era, it’s easy to start a company from anywhere in the world–and plenty have. It’s no longer rare to find highly touted startups outside the country’s major tech hubs. But U.S. scaleups, which Kuester defines as private companies valued at more than $50 million, remain concentrated in a handful of major cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, Boston, and Chicago.

The key to building sustainable startup ecosystems outside those hubs, then, could lie in crafting infrastructure to encourage company growth rather than new business formation. While that might sound like the job of someone in an economic development organization, it’s also key for entrepreneurs themselves to be thinking about this, says Arno Nijhof, director of ecosystems at The Next Web, a Financial Times-owned media company that hosts a series of annual startup conferences. He recommends starting by asking a simple question: What are the strengths of the startups that already exist in your community?

From there, Nijhof says, you can build on those strengths. And the cities can build growth strategies around the burgeoning businesses, including both investing in promising companies and building out the ecosystem’s infrastructure. The result: a stronger set of resources for local entrepreneurs and a tighter-knit community of entrepreneurs who can help each other through tough situations. And the resultant large valuations and exits will, in turn, attract even more resources and deeper-pocketed startup investors.

You may find a more nurturing place outside of where you currently reside. If you’re open to moving, Nijhof recommends searching for cities and regions with soft-landing programs, where a local government pays you to move and launch a startup, or relocate your company, in their locale. Especially for smaller cities, it’s an expensive proposition–but, Nijhof said, talent follows opportunity, and these programs can help separate growing ecosystems from stagnant ones.

A decade ago, Chattanooga, Tennessee, floated $169 million in bonds for its local utility company to create community-wide internet access at gigabit speeds, and launched a corresponding program paying entrepreneurs to start companies there. The investment led to a renaissance: Chattanooga ranked No. 36 on last year’s Inc. Surge Cities list of best cities in the country to start a business.

If every city does this, few can build an advantage. Nijhof recommends looking for groups of cities that coordinate their soft-landing programs, emphasizing different verticals or types of technology in different locations, depending on each city’s extant strengths and weaknesses.