26 | WHO’S WHO 2015 |
THE ENTREPRENEUR: CRAIG KINLEY
Craig Kinley made a name for himself in the telecommunications industry and then tried his hand at early retirement. It didn’t take him long to realize he wasn’t cut out for sitting still, so he returned to Anderson and put his talents to work for his hometown. These days he is beating the Upstate bushes for entrepreneurial types who have a solid idea and are in need of support through the various stages of getting a new business off the ground. That’s the idea behind e-Merge @ the Garage, a business startup environment housed in a downtown Anderson parking facility. As a prelude to e-Merge, Kinley opened Growler Haus, a purveyor of craft beers with locations in Anderson and Spartanburg. In addition to tapping kegs of sought-after brews, Growler Haus plays host to Grain Ideas, an informal think-tank session where local folks can pitch their business ideas and get feedback on next steps.
The
UBJ
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03.27.2015
Entrepreneur
Craig Kinley
What are you currently working on that you are the most excited about? We’re working to build the entrepreneurial ecosystem in downtown Anderson through programs we’ll be rolling out in 2015 and 2016. Cyber Saturday is a collaboration with IT-oLogy that exposes students to technology and technology careers. Through the LemonADE stand we’re working with Clemson’s bioengineering staff to take high school students through the process of designing a product or service and launching a startup. And the Startup Business Boot Camp at e-Merge @ the Garage is a 12-week program that will match entrepreneurs with scalable business concepts with local and regional entrepreneurial mentors. Why did you choose to launch your businesses in Anderson? For four or five years, I had to spend a lot of time driving down the interstate to Greenville to play with the cool kids. I looked at Anderson and saw it needed a freshness, a coolness. Growler Haus was created out of that as a proxy to teach myself as well as the community that you can do some neat things that are boutique, but they can be very much embraced if you hit the right market. One of my mentors told me, “You can make an impact to the Upstate and the state, but you can make a greater
impact in your hometown and then grow from there.” Because I’m from Anderson, I wanted to give back to the community and to the younger generation here. We want to embrace and keep those younger generations here so they don’t move to Silicon Valley or New York or Chicago. Why is it important for Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg to work together? We absolutely need to work together. We want a specific identity of the Upstate. The more cohesiveness we get between Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg and work together as a whole, the more we can embrace our synergies and move things forward to really become a metropolitan area. Anderson has a lot of great small manufacturing facilities and a great learning environment with Tri-County Tech and what they’re doing with their industrial technologies program. Spartanburg has some pretty big catalysts in the professional world that have
made it big, and they’re putting their money back into Spartanburg. It’s very a much a sleeping giant—it will look like Greenville in another five to 10 years. Greenville has been on track for about 15-20 years, since they built the Peace Center. Hayne Hipp has invested in Greenville with the Liberty Fellowship and the Liberty Bridge that has really revitalized the West End, and Greenville has become a world-class community that people come to visit, to live and to play. I think when you put all those elements of Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg together, with the corridor of I-85 being the transportation catalyst and Clemson University in our backyard, we’ve got a lot of great things we need to embrace together and see how we carry forward as a collective community. What is the biggest topic of concern or excitement in your industry now? The biggest challenge we have is building the talent