I passionately advocate that our region has an opportunity to become a leading entrepreneurial hub for successful startups and emerging companies akin to Boulder, Colo., and Austin, Texas. 

We already boast a cadre of compelling, rapidly growing new businesses such as APANA, Demand Energy Networks, etailz, Gestalt, HyperSciences, Kochava, Mototrax, PawPrint Genetics, RiskLens, Rohinni, StayAlfred, Tedder Industries, and several more. 

The region also benefits from an outstanding and growing base of universities and colleges minting creative and motivated graduates in an array of fields, supplementing an already talented and productive labor force. For example, etailz’s growth was fueled in large part by the efforts of Gonzaga, Whitworth, and Eastern Washington University interns and graduates.

The spectacular lakes and mountains, numerous art and cultural venues, award-winning restaurants, brewers and vintners, and a broad range of sporting events including one-of-a-kind Bloomsday and Hoopfest, combined with a reasonable cost of living, enable a highly desirable and unique work/life balance.

My hope and aspiration for the next five to 10 years is that community leaders will align behind the virtues of our region and place a high priority on creating an entrepreneurial culture as well as providing the underlying resources to encourage and overwhelmingly support startup and other emerging companies. It’s well documented that new businesses produce the greatest number of new jobs and are the key stimulus to economic vitality.  

In this regard, I believe we should place a higher focus on starting new business than recruiting existing businesses to our region. Highlighting the value-added qualities of our region—and illustrating the number and success of new businesses here—will build greater awareness for our region and will facilitate the recruitment of other companies to expand or relocate. We should lead with a focus on startups and follow with recruitment, not the other way around.

Our recruiting efforts ought to be squarely focused on space- and labor-constrained technology companies in major markets like Seattle and Silicon Valley. These are companies that offer high-paying jobs and need most of what our region offers. A great example is Seattle-based F5’s presence in Liberty Lake.  

A group of successful, serial entrepreneurs and high technology executives, including Jim Fowler, Chip Overstreet, and Nick Smoot, are recommending defining the region as a Triangle starting with Spokane/Cheney, Sandpoint to the northeast, Coeur d’ Alene to the east, and Pullman/Moscow to the southeast. This group is further suggesting the region establish a focus on robotics and brand ourselves as the Robotic Triangle, leveraging the expertise and existing large base of companies in the region that already are producing products and providing services that automate otherwise laborious processes.

That effort is representative of the type of fresh thinking I hope regional leaders will pursue in efforts to help this area become a leading entrepreneurial hub.

Fueling startups and emerging companies is an expanding base of investors. I expect to see one or two new angel funds formed in our region in 2017. Angel funds provide capital to startups and other early-stage companies. 

In addition, venture capital funds and family offices increasingly are targeting opportunities in regions outside of Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and Seattle. Their motivation is to identify more novel ideas, fund companies with lower cost structures, to attract talent seeking a better work/life balance, and to secure more favorable valuations. Steve Case, founder of AOL, in his recent book “The Third Wave,” refers to this phenomenon as the “rise of the rest.”  I believe there will be an increase in venture investment in our region in the coming years.

Lastly, I expect to see an easing regulatory environment, which will enhance the ability to secure private capital, facilitate the exchange of interests in private companies, and reduce the time and expense of becoming a public entity.

To date, the focus on making our region a leading entrepreneurial hub has been limited to a handful of individuals and community-minded companies. Collectively, they have created a solid basis for a highly successful entrepreneurial eco-system, including the Spokane Angel Alliance, Startup Central, Ignite Northwest, the Innovation Collective, WIN, and Kickstart funds; the Think Big Festival; and the Triangle Venture Expo. 

Results have been impressive, as measured by the number of companies receiving funding, how much has been invested, and the number of jobs created. Members of the Spokane Angel Alliance, for example, have funded 27 companies with more than $9.5 million, and those companies now employ hundreds of people and subsequently have gone on to raise nearly $100 million from other investors.

I cannot predict with confidence what types of companies might be the darlings of tomorrow, either regionally or nationally. I can, however, prognosticate that our region has an opportunity to produce more than its fair share if we align our vision and provide the necessary infrastructure. I say this in the context of the number of successful startups that historically have been created within our region with limited community encouragement.

Imagine how many more would be started if we had a cohesive strategy to attract and nurture rapidly growing new businesses within the Triangle? The possibilities are inspiring. 

Tom Simpson is the president of the Spokane Angel Alliance and co-founder of etailz Inc.