Stone Soup for “teen” companies

The old Stone Soup folktale — where hungry villagers each add one ingredient to a soup that feeds all — is coming alive in Loveland.

In Loveland, however, the carrots, onions and other ingredients have been replaced by local businesspeople pitching in $1 million over the next five years to launch and grow the Stone Soup Business Accelerator, designed to bring new businesses to Loveland. This business-led effort will attract small, growth-potential companies from across the country that will quickly feed our region’s economic development.

Walk into the accelerator facility later this year and you may see 20-30 casually dressed men and women from young local and national firms working in modern, creative surroundings. A few suit-and-tie folks may be on hand, prepping for a meeting to secure additional financing or waiting for a job interview. While the majority may look laid-back, their ingenuity is off the charts. You’ll see small manufacturing-assembly rooms, shared conference rooms, cubicles in an open environment, all while hearing the hum of conversation in an inspiring setting. This is economic development alive.

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The Accelerator, which will launch this summer in 40,000-square-feet of the Rocky Mountain Center for Innovation and Technology (formerly the Agilent Technologies, Inc. campus), is not a business incubator. Stone Soup’s purpose isn’t to help new start-ups get their feet on the ground during their incubation period.

Instead, Stone Soup will help established, adolescent companies with products, services or technologies ready to sell, move from the incubator phase and accelerate into adult, stable firms that bring lasting jobs to the area.

We expect to see rapid results, most likely within a year. The meaningful collaboration among the local business community is well-planned, fast-moving and efficient. Already, 20 local businesses – from a four-person firm to a mid-sized company with several hundred employees – have committed funds. Together, they are providing 62 percent of Stone Soup’s funding.

Additional funds are coming from the City of Loveland, lease-payments by Stone Soup businesses, in-kind gifts and grants. Just like the Stone Soup folktale, this is community teamwork at its finest.

A chief benefit to accelerator-housed companies will be Stone Soup’s advisory board of longtime and highly successful businesspeople. These folks — many themselves entrepreneurs — will be mentors helping to guide the adolescent companies with decision making, growth opportunities, employee issues and other challenges the firms may face.

When was the last time our business community came together – not as competitors but as collaborators – working together to enhance our entire community, not just themselves? In my 62 years living in the area, the only time I’m aware of this happening was in 1958. Today’s Stone Soup endeavor mirrors what happened then.

The same year the Air Force Academy was built 55 years ago, determined and forward-thinking Loveland businesspeople provided funds to form the nonprofit Loveland Development Fund. Their progressive approach paid off when they lured a young company named Hewlett-Packard to Loveland, which was the first HP plant outside of Palo Alto, Calif.

Over the following 50 years, the fund also was instrumental in luring Woodward Governor and several other powerhouse companies to the area. Today we still see the ramifications of that pioneering group’s relentless efforts. I credit the Loveland Development Fund and its participating business people for launching our region’s widespread technology industry.

Fortunately, that same grassroots effort is happening today through Stone Soup. While it won’t be the large HPs and Woodwards drawn to Loveland, it will be out-of-state and local firms that likely will stay in the area, possibly grow into large companies, and hire locals and nonresidents who will live, shop and play in our area.

Without the Stone Soup Business Accelerator, many participating companies wouldn’t consider Loveland as their home. But now they have a smart reason to, and several already are lined up. The short- and long-term benefits of Stone Soup are endless, the largest being the influx of high-paying jobs to the area that will remain for years to come. The accelerator is just the latest economic spark to attract new business – and jobs – to our town.

Doug Rutledge is COO of KL&A Structural Engineers and Builders, Loveland and is Chairman, Loveland Development Fund.