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February 2013 1 Copyright Vermont Business Magazine Vermont: The Entrepreneurial State by Joyce Marcel “A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” Steve Blank. T he most over-used and under- spelled word in Vermont these days might well be “entrepreneur.” But until we get a better, more easily spelled, (perhaps) English word, “entre- preneur” is the name of the game in today’s Vermont economy. According to CNN Money, Vermont is among the top 10 entrepreneurial states in the country: “Smaller biotech, bioscience, environmental engineering and other tech companies are drawn to Vermont’s vibrant venture capital network and state fund- ing for startups... Many innovative firms get their start in incubators based at the state’s top-notch schools... And when they need to take a break from business, entre- preneurs can let off steam at the state’s beautiful parks and hiking trails.” The downside? “High rates for individual and business taxes.” Or, as David Coates, the economic advisor to every governor since Madeleine Kunin, says, “We’re top ten with entrepre- neurs and top ten with taxes.” In his recent inaugural speech, Governor Peter Shumlin praised the hun- dreds of “creative, entrepreneurial ven- tures, large and small, in value added agri- culture, food systems, health care, technol- ogy, manufacturing, travel and tourism, energy, education, services, retail and the trades that bless our little state right now.” The first patent in the United States was issued to a Vermont man (although he was living in Pennsylvania at the time) on July 31, 1790. It was signed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among other notables. Fast forward to 2011, and Vermont is the top state in the US for patents, according to the State Entrepreneurship Index by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Although the majority of those patents are issued to IBM-Vermont, “the state's robust life sci- ences, burgeoning food manufacturing and microbrewing industries” were also cited. So despite its northern climate, its lack of an ocean or navigable river, its distance from major cities like New York, Boston and Montreal, its rural nature, its small manufacturing base and its tiny popula- tion, Vermont turns out to be a fertile place to live, to start and to grow a busi- ness. Why might that be? Vermont was ranked the healthiest state in the country in 2012, according to the United Health Foundation; it held Photo: Glenn Moody Mark Boves featured in VBM's September 2009. The Entrepreneurial State page 15

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February 2013 1Copyright Vermont Business Magazine

Vermont: The Entrepreneurial Stateby Joyce Marcel

“A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” Steve Blank.

The most over-used and under-spelled word in Vermont these days might well be “entrepreneur.”

But until we get a better, more easily spelled, (perhaps) English word, “entre-preneur” is the name of the game in today’s Vermont economy.

According to CNN Money, Vermont is among the top 10 entrepreneurial states in the country: “Smaller biotech, bioscience, environmental engineering and other tech companies are drawn to Vermont’s vibrant venture capital network and state fund-ing for startups... Many innovative firms get their start in incubators based at the

state’s top-notch schools... And when they need to take a break from business, entre-preneurs can let off steam at the state’s beautiful parks and hiking trails.” The downside? “High rates for individual and business taxes.”

Or, as David Coates, the economic advisor to every governor since Madeleine Kunin, says, “We’re top ten with entrepre-neurs and top ten with taxes.”

In his recent inaugural speech, Governor Peter Shumlin praised the hun-dreds of “creative, entrepreneurial ven-tures, large and small, in value added agri-culture, food systems, health care, technol-

ogy, manufacturing, travel and tourism, energy, education, services, retail and the trades that bless our little state right now.”

The first patent in the United States was issued to a Vermont man (although he was living in Pennsylvania at the time) on July 31, 1790. It was signed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among other notables. Fast forward to 2011, and Vermont is the top state in the US for patents, according to the State Entrepreneurship Index by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Although the majority of those patents are issued to IBM-Vermont, “the state's robust life sci-

ences, burgeoning food manufacturing and microbrewing industries” were also cited.

So despite its northern climate, its lack of an ocean or navigable river, its distance from major cities like New York, Boston and Montreal, its rural nature, its small manufacturing base and its tiny popula-tion, Vermont turns out to be a fertile place to live, to start and to grow a busi-ness. Why might that be?

Vermont was ranked the healthiest state in the country in 2012, according to the United Health Foundation; it held

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Mark Boves featured in VBM's September 2009.

The Entrepreneurial State page 15

2 vermontbiz.com Copyright Vermont Business Magazine

the same ranking last year. Vermont was the fifth best-educated state in 2011 according to 24/7 Wall St. According to the US Census, 35.4 percent of adult Vermont residents have at least a college degree. However, the median earnings for adults with advanced degrees here is over $13,000 less than the national median.

Former Governor Howard Dean used to joke that Vermont’s lower income stan-dards here were “our quality-of-life tax.”

Vermont has one of the lowest drop-out rates in the country. It’s also the 8th Best Run State, according to the 24/7 Wall Street folks. Just 6.6 percent of our population doesn’t have health insurance, and we are regularly on the low end of the national unemployment figures — sev-enth right now. According to the Center for Sexual Pleasure, Vermont ranked first in the nation in sexual health. And just recently the American Veterinary Medical Association ranked Vermont first in the nation for pet ownership — 70.8 percent of us own pets, especially cats. This is an interesting state that attracts interesting people.

Entrepreneurship jibes with the native characteristics of Vermont, where the first settlers tried to pull a living out of rocky, stone-strewn soil. This has always been a place where we use what’s at hand to create what is needed; where we see a problem and try to figure out the most direct way of solving it; where stub-bornness, tenacity and independence are valued virtues.

At the same time Vermont is known for its emphasis on the communal, on cooperation in a hard climate, on democ-racy, on community, on pitching in when crises occur.

These two seemingly opposite traits, independence and community, make up the state motto: freedom and unity.

All these things make Vermont an interesting place to live. The joke used to be, “Moonlight in Vermont — or starve.” Now it’s more like, “Moonlight in Vermont while you start your own busi-ness here.”

“In my experience in Vermont over the last umpteen years, I’ve run into many entrepreneurs and worked for some of them,” Coates said. “It’s the way Vermonters are. An entrepreneur is a person who looks at a cup half full, not empty. They’re optimists. They really believe in what they’re doing and they’re willing to take risks. That’s the inde-pendent streak Vermonters have. They’re born with it. They don’t follow the crowd. They don’t follow the pied piper. They follow their own drummer. They get an idea, they do their research and then they become very confident.”

In 2003, the editor of this magazine, Tim McQuiston, asked me to start a series of profiles of notable Vermonters. Some of them were politicians and other state treasures like US Senator Patrick Leahy, long-time state Senator Bill Doyle, former Governor Madeleine Kunin, for-mer state archivist Greg Sanford and the late Al Moulton, but most of them were entrepreneurs. For the past decade I’ve been crisscrossing the state and meeting

a wide variety of creative business people.There were serial entrepreneurs like

Robert Stiller, who founded Vermont’s largest company by revenue, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ($3859.2 mil-lion in 2012), after a successful career with another of his start-ups, EZ-Wider rolling papers.

Entrepreneurship runs in the fam-ily in Vermont. Take the Ortons of The Vermont Country Store; Lyman Orton took his father’s mail-order company and built it into an internationally-known, quirky retail powerhouse. He then turned it over to his three sons. Or take the Bove family in Burlington, who started with a restaurant in 1941; the restaurant is still going, but the next generation also sells the family sauces and meatballs nationwide. Or take the Alpert broth-ers, Briar and Adam, who grew BioTek Instruments, the company their father co-founded, to the point where it now sells $95 million worth of life science instru-ments and software around the world. Or take Brenan S Riehl, who grew GW Plastics, Inc, the company he took over from his father, to $105 million in 2012 with the help of a workforce so dedicated that they took their four-wheelers to work when Tropical Storm Irene took out the roads.

It is surprising how many Vermont artists have turn themselves into entrepre-neurs. There’s glass artist Simon Pearce, whose name is now synonymous with a global art glass company that had rev-enues in 2012 of $27 million. And folk painter Warren Kimble, who achieved an astonishing success in marketing his Americana images and now spends

his energy turning Brandon, his small Vermont town, into a place where artists love to live and work. And the creative Potter family, led by sign designer Sparky Potter, whose daughter Grace Potter is rocketing to rock stardom with her band, the Nocturnals.

From the woods, Ray Colton of Colton Enterprises in Pittsfield took a concept that every Vermonter with a wood stove knows in his DNA — that firewood has to be dry in order to burn hot — and now sells kiln-dried firewood to homes and businesses all over the East Coast.

In what some might think of as the old-fashioned, unchanging industry of farming, we have Allison Hooper, whose company, Vermont Butter & Cheese Company, regularly wins international prizes. Brothers Mateo and Andrew Kehler not only make the award-winning Jasper Hill Farm cheeses but built and run a multi-million dollar, 22,000 square foot underground cheese-aging cave in the Northeast Kingdom. Also in the Kingdom, Pete Johnson’s Pete’s Greens, a four-season organic vegetable farm, has already become an institution, as have Tom Stearn’s High Mowing Organic Seed Company and Andrew Meyer’s Vermont Natural Coatings.

Vermont’s booming technology entre-preneurs include Mark Bonfigli, whose Dealer.com creates Internet solutions for the car-sales industry, had $182 million in sales revenue in 2012 and employs well over 400 people. And Rich Tarrant’s MyWebGrocer, which is in the forefront of the on-line grocery business. And Logic Supply Co., a $14.6 million com-

pany that makes, among other things, computers for rugged computing. And large-scale Apple vendor Don Mayer, whose Small Dog Electronics had $35 million in revenue in 2012.

Then there are Vermont entrepreneurs who have had such unusual and success-ful ideas that they just leave our mouths open in surprise, like Hinda Miller, who created the Jogbra and set women free to run. Or John K Schramm, whose Tropical Aquaculture Products, Inc, sits in the middle of Rutland and delivers about 500,000 pounds of fresh and delicious South American tilapia to the American and European markets every week. Or Ric Cabot, who has devoted his life to creating the best socks in the world. He calls them Darn Tough socks and makes them at his Cabot Hosiery Mill, Inc in Northfield; for his annual seconds sale, people line up overnight. Or Francie and David Caccavo, who built an entire com-pany on croutons. And so many more.

True, in the Wall Street scheme of things, most Vermont companies are small. They fall far below the definition of “small cap,” which means a market capitalization of anywhere between $250 million and $2 billion. Still, they begin, they grow, they employ people, they pay taxes and they’re here.

Cairn Cross, co-founder and fund manager of FreshTracks Capital in Shelburne, which manages $25 million in two venture capital funds focused mainly on Vermont companies, has been a close observer of the entrepreneurial scene for a long time. He thinks the entrepreneurial spirit in Vermont is booming.

“I would say it does, increasingly, get better,” Cross said. “There are more and more resources for entrepreneurs and more activities for them in starting and growing businesses. In general, look at some of the recent iconic companies in Vermont. They had entrepreneurial roots — IDX, Green Mountain Coffee, Dealer.com, MyWebGrocer, Gardener’s Supply Company, Burton Snowboards, Vermont Teddy Bear, Seventh Generation, Magic Hat Brewery, Ben & Jerry’s. These are all homegrown companies that started here and grew. The founding executives of these companies were entrepreneurs at heart. Ten or 15 years ago, I would have had two companies on that list — Ben & Jerry's and I don’t even know what the second one would be.”

Nationally, studies show that more young people are interested in becoming entrepreneurs than ever before.

“Maybe they watched their parents go through significant job changes,” Cross said. “Mom or dad worked for a company for 20 years and got laid off. So they say, ‘I want to control my own destiny.’ They’ve seen people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook become heroes for developing companies. Movies are made of them. That opens up a career path to young people that they may not have thought of before. So there are a lot of programs being developed by colleges to educate and train entrepreneurs. In Vermont now, there’s hardly a college that doesn't have an entrepreneurship club or coursework or curriculum. Ten years ago, very few colleges were interested.”

The Entrepreneurial State from 13

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Adam and Briar Alpert of BioTek.

February 2013 3Copyright Vermont Business Magazine

Innovative, fast-growing and easily accessible technology allows companies to form much more cheaply today; that gives an advantage to younger entrepreneurs.

“It’s always hard to raise a lot of money for a startup company, especially for a first time entrepreneur,” Cross said. “When I was part of Green Mountain Capital 15 years ago, if a startup in Vermont was looking for financing, they were look-ing for $5 million. They needed to write a tremendous amount of code, employ programmers and maybe use a year to get the code up. Also, they had to buy some pretty impressive hardware to run that code. Then they had to manufacture shrink wrap discs, hire a sales force and figure out how to distribute. Today you can go on-line and find lots of software in the cloud or put yours out there. You don’t have to write something stand-alone. It lowers the costs dramatically. So a com-pany can say, ‘I don’t need $5 million. I need $500,000 to see if I have a viable idea and see if I have some traction.’ It’s easier to raise that money.”

Lowering capital requirements levels the playing field for Vermont, Cross said.

“Before, $5 million wasn’t available in Vermont,” he said. “You ended up going to Boston or New York. But now you can raise $500,000 in Vermont. It also levels the playing fields in other small markets like Idaho or Minnesota. But when you marry the can-do entrepreneurial spirit of Vermont with the level playing field of Vermont, that’s a good thing.”

Cross has been busy because a number of FreshTracks’ investments have been successfully “exiting,” or being bought by larger companies. An early acquisi-tion, EatingWell magazine, was recently bought by media powerhouse Meredith Corp., which owns among other national magazines Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal and Family Circle. GetWell Network, which provides inter-active patient care to hospitals, was recently bought by a New York-based pri-vate equity firm. NEHP (New England High Purity) in Williston was bought by Sequal Industrial Products, Inc.

“Out of our first fund, we’ve had a number of exits in the last 18 months,”

Cross said. “EatingWell left every-thing right here in Vermont. NEHP remains in Williston. We love these sto-ries. It’s what we like to do. We get these companies to a point where money can be made and yet the companies have an ongoing presence in Vermont.”

David Coates is not surprised that Vermont ranks so highly for entrepre-neurs. As a financier, he has known both entrepreneurial success and failure. In 1994, he was a partner in a company that planned to provide premium specialty foods for the take-home working crowd.

“We were ahead of our time,” Coates said. “MyWebGrocer.com later took over that concept and ran with it.”

But Coates was also an investor in PKC, a Vermont medical software com-pany which was recently and successfully sold to Sharecare, a health and wellness social network. (The financial terms were not disclosed.)

The days of entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, when a person started a company

which is still running decades after the founder dies, may no longer be the norm. Starting a company, financing it, growing it and selling it is the current hallmark of entrepreneurial success.

“Serial entrepreneurs are a great thing,” said David Bradbury, who as exec-utive director of the Vermont Center for Emerging Technology (VCET), is in the center of the startup boom in Vermont today. “Companies have a life cycle the way that products do. As a result, we’re seeing more companies and teams get built for maybe five or 15 years and then they sell or they really change into a new product category. That’s more typi-cal of the technology entrepreneur than a natural resource-based entrepreneur. We want to see repeat entrepreneurs. Personally, that’s my greatest hope for the next decade. We see more entrepreneurs who have — or even those who have — pick up and try it again and do so from Vermont.”

The danger is always that a company will start in Vermont, grow successfully here and either be sold and moved, or just be moved somewhere else by its founders.

“The danger is that as companies grow to a certain size, they find out that Vermont is not as friendly as they need Vermont to be,” Coates said. “So from time to time we have companies that move. We know Act 250 has always been a big issue. That’s probably the biggest thing. Secondly, again, we’re a heavily-taxed state.”

The Startup Boom

The Vermont Center for Emerging Technology is a nonprofit technol-

ogy incubator affiliated with the University of Vermont and partnered with Norwich University, Middlebury College, Champlain College and the five Vermont state colleges. Started in 2005 by the efforts of Sen. Leahy, the Vermont Technology Council and the University of Vermont, in the past five years it has worked with over 500 start-ups and entrepreneurs. Its portfolio companies — ones that have gone through incubation and seed funding — have raised “an excess of $50 million in capital,” executive direc-tor Bradbury said.

“We’re about the next generation jobs for this generation of Vermonters,” Bradbury said. “We have three main areas. The first is organizing and utilizing a world-class mentor network. The sec-ond area is through our incubation facili-ties and programs. The third area is the Vermont Seed Capital Fund, a $5 million revolving early stage venture fund.”

Bradbury says he has never seen a busier time in Vermont.

“The degree in interest from college students up to retirees who want to start a business is intense,” Bradbury said. “The barriers to starting a business are so much lower. Computers are cheaper, the Internet is accessible, the reach to remote markets and the ability to proto-type either software or a food product or a consumer product is that much quicker and cheaper and easier.”

The challenge is that it is quicker, easier and cheaper for everybody on the planet who has an idea, a computer and an ISP. That makes competition global.

“So as a state, we have to focus on the key drivers,” Bradbury said. “We have to

focus on a strong science-technology-engineering-math, or ‘STEM’ education. We have to have easy access to technical assistance from incubators and the small business development centers. We need mentoring from the business community, And we need start-up capital, whether it’s from an Internet crowd-funded Web site like Kickstarter or a venture firm like FreshTracks Capital.”

The qualities of an entrepreneur, according to Bradbury, are “passion, integrity, intelligence, character and a little bit of humility.”

“One of the biggest things is resil-iency,” he said. “That helps entrepreneurs get through the tough times — and there will be tough times. Beyond that, in busi-ness we look for startups that have identi-fied a real addressable market application instead of only a great idea. Part of our process is to help entrepreneurs think that through. The best work we do is to talk people out of things — talk them out of betting the house and the savings until they’ve refined the concept and their busi-ness vision improves.”

Bradbury likes to talk about “the inno-vation ecosystem here in Vermont.”

“Here you have access to people with the right skills, be it legal help or an accounting question or a product design question,” he said. “You have access to lawmakers. You have access to govern-ment. Our strong sense of community really enables any entrepreneur— or even a growing company.”

Resources

There is almost no end to the resourc-es for Vermont startups. Prepare to be dazzled by this partial list:

— The Vermont Small Business Development Center (vtsbdc.org) offers “no-cost confidential business advising and low-cost training to all small busi-nesses and new ventures in Vermont.”

— The Vermont Entrepreneur Technical Assistance Portal (vermonten-trepreneur.org) offers links to resources.

— The eight-year-old Vermont Technical Alliance (vermonttechnolog-yalliance.org) — whose motto is “By entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs,” consists of over 100 members and is “focused on developing, supporting, and creating business technology jobs and careers in Vermont,” according to executive director Jeff Couture.

“Outside the state, people think of us as agriculture and tourism,” Couture said. “But we also have a lot of high-tech appli-cations and we want to make sure people realize that. We were formed by a lot of small companies and individuals devel-oping creative and unique applications in software. The group got together to understand what’s going on and to share resources. We’re focused around compa-nies and individuals in IT who have new products, new applications and clients all over the world. Many of the companies that form our organization, like Dealer.com and MyWebGrocer, are large. But many are smaller. These are companies that are developing software applications as well as game applications. They may start out of their home or with a couple of partners and work in an isolated way. Our

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Sparky Potter featured in July of 2010.

4 vermontbiz.com Copyright Vermont Business Magazine

group is about connecting these people and providing collaborative opportunities. And about promoting Vermont as a place for entrepreneurs and technology.”

— The Vermont office of the US Small Business Administration (sba.gov/about-offices-content/2/3156/about-us) in Montpelier, provides financial services to the state’s small-business community.

“With 625,000 residents, Vermont is the 3rd least populated state in the nation,” says Vermont SBA Web site. “However, the Green Mountain State supports a vast network of highly success-ful small business ventures, ranging from home-grown, self-employment opera-tions to larger businesses of up to 500 employees.”

— UVM is promoting its own stu-dents’ startup ideas on UVMStart.org. Students with ideas for everything from energy-infused chocolate to menswear can be matched with UVM alumni inves-tors. The success or failure of this idea is being carefully watched by other inter-ested universities.

“Originally, this project was the work of VCET board members,” Bradbury said. “Moving forward, UVM Start will be a program that is owned, run, and managed by the Vermont Technology Council. VCET will move into a sup-porting role that provides mentoring, connection, and potentially incubation to student teams as is appropriate, depend-ing on their team, stage and opportunity. VCET will share the program process and ‘how to’ insights with other colleges and universities.”

— The Vermont Venture Network (vermontventurenetwork.org): “A forum created to enhance the interaction and exchange of ideas among Vermont’s entre-preneurs, the Vermont Venture Network has been at the heart of the Vermont entrepreneurial community for more than 20 years,” says its Web site.

— The Vermont Investors Forum (Vermontinvestorsforum.com) “brings together the best of New England’s entre-preneurial and investment communities,” says its Web site. “We’re responsible for millions of dollars in raised investment capital, strategic consulting and board relationships, and the tools and resources you’ll need to transition from start-up to profitable company.”

— FreshTracks isn’t the only venture capital firm looking at Vermont business-es. North County Angels (northcountry-angels.com) meets monthly as a group to hear presentations from companies seek-ing early-stage or seed investment. And the state is home to several small — $2 million here, $2.5 million there — pools of money put together by private investors looking for angel investments.

— Kickstarter.com is an Internet site where people describe their projects and solicit donations; it has actually produced startup money for Vermonters.

“Since 2010, 163 Vermont projects raised about $806,000 on Kickstarter,” Cross said. “The average size of money raised for each project was $5,500. The average number of backers or donors was 101. That would mean most people donated about $50. But that money adds up. A lot of these projects are arts and cul-

tural related, but some are start-up com-panies. Somebody’s invented something and they want to bring it out to market. This is really seed capital. Managers are going directly to the public. This couldn’t have been done 10 years ago.”

Women Entrepreneurs

About 21,000 Vermont businesses are owned by women, said Kate Paine, who runs a public relations and social media planning company, Kate Paine Assoc. Until recently, Paine also led the Women Business Owners Network, or WBON.

“WBON is a peer-to-peer networking support organization for women that was started in 1984,” Paine said. “Back then, many banks would not lend to a woman unless she had her spouse co-sign the loan. That’s not needed today. Still, a lot of women still believe they need to prove themselves, and they use male business-men as a thermometer to gauge their success.”

The 21,000 women-owned businesses include women who are partners with their spouse, who run a one-person busi-ness, or who have a freelance business.

“It’s a pretty broad group,” Paine said. “Compared to other parts of the country, 21,000 is not a high number. American Express did a report on women-owned businesses, and Vermont came in 46th. These women-owned Vermont businesses are employing over 13,000 people and generating $1.7 billion dollars in revenue to the state. But compared to other states, it’s sinful how small the numbers are.”

Women need to price their services the way men do, Paine said.

“As Governor Kunin pointed out

in her new book, ‘The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work and Family,’ women still make 70 cents on the dollar for the same work,” she said. “And that’s not OK. Women also need to know they can be successful outside of Chittenden County. They need confidence, spirit, a really great idea and ambition. Not necessarily in that order.”

Despite the hurdles, women are start-ing business at a growing rate, said Laura Lind-Blum, who runs the nonprofit Vermont Women’s Business Center in Barre, which is funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

“We have been in the business for 10 years,” Lind-Blum said. “Our primary mission is to help women start and grow thriving business and create success on their own terms. We offer one-to-one business counseling and a variety of train-ing programs.”

Women are most hampered by access to capital, Lind-Blum said.

“One reason is that the businesses they start tend to be smaller,” she said. “Another is that women as a group have tended to be debt-averse. They see it the same way they see taking on debt in their family. A lot of women we work with don’t have the personal resources to invest, to show to a lender they have as much skin in the game. And a lot of times, but not always, when women are starting businesses, one of their goals is having a business that provides them with more flexibility, so the revenue tends to be lower. It is interesting that women entrepreneurs appear to be very ingrained in their local community. They will often have part of their mission

as giving back to the community. At the other end of the spectrum, in terms of businesses that really grow quickly and attract venture funding, women have been typically underrepresented.”

Vermont Entrepreneurs

It looks as if an entrepreneurial-based economy is well on its way to being devel-oped. From maple syrup and cheddar cheese to goats’ milk caramels and soft-ware solutions, Vermont’s entrepreneurs are problem-solving as they go.

In 2012, the Legislature formed The Committee on Enhancing Vermont’s Software and Information Technology Economy. The goal was to figure out some strategies to enhance the growth of Vermont’s software development and information technology sector. This January, the committee issued its report. Some of its findings would help more than just tech startups.

Among the committee’s recommenda-tions, the state should:

— Continue to push STEM educa-tion and computer science skills, espe-cially in the K-12 education system.

— Market Vermont as “tech-friendly.”— Share intellectual property rights

developed under state contracts with the contractor if the contractor is a Vermont-based company.

— Continue to conduct business with Vermont companies whenever possible.

— Make access to working capital easier for small technology companies.

— Remove the $250 Business Entity Tax for the first three years of the life of a new business.

— Foster networking and collabora-tion.

— Support business incubators.Some of the committee’s findings

found their way into Shumlin’s inaugural speech, which described a Vermont that developed and supported a strong entre-preneurial base. He concluded:

“The Vermont that I envision for the future is one where... (companies) from border to border, are thriving with Vermont-trained and Vermont-educated workers. It is a future in which our kids can expect their top quality education to open a world of opportunity, right here at home. It is a future in which these students – as well as adults – are fluent in math and science and are using the latest technology to learn and then to work. It is a future in which the greatest dilemma facing Vermont businesses is not how to find a good Vermonter to hire, but how to choose among an abundance of qualified Vermonters. And it is a future in which Vermont is once again showing the nation what it takes to innovate, create new opportunities to grow, and lead. This future is within our reach if we have the courage and creativity to seize it.”

Joyce Marcel is a journalist who lives in

southern Vermont. She is currently writing

a memoir covering six generations of her

family caught in the sweep of history across

the 20th Century. She is writing another

book about Vermont businesses. More of

her work appears at her Web site, joyce-

marcel.com.

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Simon Pearce featured in October 2009.