A Note from Our Founding Director

Even though TechSTL is a nonprofit, this first year we have behaved more like a tech startup than a charitable or government organization. Founded under a U.S. EDA SPRINT Challenge Grant and under the direction of the St. Louis Development Corporation, our inaugural year in operation still followed the path of running lean, navigating customer discovery, and determining market validation for our 501(c)(6). Our small team has practiced the art of staying curious, embracing risk, building fast, and pivoting often in order to find our place in the community. And after 12 months I can now validate two important things; something transformative is happening in St. Louis and TechSTL plays a part in it.

Now, this has been an extremely busy time for us. We started this journey with a monumental task, a staff of 1, a small budget, and a very short runway. But thanks to the passion of our robust and diverse network of 388 founding members, TechSTL has proven that when the work is right and the community is ready, you don't need as much as you think to start doing good work. You simply need to start.

Over the past year, the St. Louis region has shown us the spaces where we belong and the results have been beyond inspiring. Tasked with addressing a series of complex challenges over a 15-county bi-state region, we knew that our systems needed to be smart and scalable, so we jumped immediately into building them. Facing a fragmented network of silos and verticals, we owned our ability to become a horizontal bridge and developed inclusive cross-sector partner networks to facilitate strategic planning and asset mapping. In the wake of the pandemic, it was clear that the ecosystem needed a new "center of gravity" for high-energy community building to reactivate the innovation and business network, so we started hosting events until we figured out what worked

Now with a network of over 30,000 people and having successfully hosted over 120 events, we can confirm how eager the innovation community is to reengage. Top that with the strategic planning traction we are seeing in our affinity groups, ecosystem networks, and cluster networks, and it is clear that these are the spaces where TechSTL can drive impact in the region. As we enter year two of this journey, we are now equipped to start bringing our STEM Scholarship Fund and TechSTL Foundation to life, to ensure that more tech opportunities are made available to the black, brown, female, LGBTQIA2S+, and foreign born communities who are often left out of this conversation. And lastly, as a membership-based organization we now have the systems in place to more fully engage and support our members in helping them build the St. Louis Innovation Scene through creating more tech jobs, tech startups, and tech innovation. As I now embark on the next phase of this work I am extremely hopeful for what is to come for the St. Louis Metro!

Emily Hemingway

We are proud to serve as the first Tech Council of the St. Louis Metro. TechSTL launched in March 2022 under the fiscal leadership of SLDC and the City of St. Louis. We are now an independent membershipbased organization serving the 15-county bi-state.

TechSTL is committed to scaling the data economy by connecting partners, building infrastructure, and investing in the programs that equitably grow our innovation pipeline. We support the health of the STL tech pipeline to grow tech jobs, tech startups, and tech innovation.

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