According to its leaders, and some current and former tenants: So far, so good.
“It’s surprisingly close to where we’d expected to be,” said Chandra Miller Fienen, who recently became the group’s executive director after having served as its acting director since early 2017.
The center, which opened in a high-rise office building at 821 E. Washington Ave. in June, recently shared numbers in a year-end report, touting some of its accomplishments: It has hosted 95 events, and provided a home for 37 companies that have collectively raised $15.3 million in investment.
Miller Fienen said it’s not clear to what degree that success is attributable to StartingBlock itself, although she said that StartingBlock conducted an in-house survey indicating that companies feel like they’ve been well-served.
“We can’t take credit for everything that our companies do,” she said. “In fact, we can’t take credit for most of what our companies do … but we’re seeing our founders that are here, they’re telling us that we’re making a difference.”
Miller Fienen also said that of the companies at StartingBlock, 35 percent are “women-managed” ventures, and 15 percent had racial minorities on their founding team. Read the full story here.
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