At a Glance

Find St. Louis Startup Meetups

Please Note: dates displayed are not always exact and just reflect that meetups are planned around that period. Click into the specific event for more details of each program.

Lists

Ecosystem Navigator

St. Louis Startups

Explainers

St. Louis' Innovation Ecosystem

Over the past several years, CIC St. Louis has housed over 1,300 companies with more than 13,000 total employees. Over 1,100 companies have “graduated” (defined as leaving the CIC facilities for their own spaces). Globally, CIC companies have raised over $17 billion in venture capital; total capital raised is closer to $74 billion.

Coworking Guide to CIC St. Louis, the Original Shared Workspace in CORTEX

Last year, EQ introduced readers to the API Innovation Center, located in St. Louis’ Cortex Innovation District. In this short article, Mike Fabrizi reports on continued progress, including a major funding infusion, the opening of a state-of-the-art lab on the University of Missouri at St. Louis (UMSL) campus, and the API Innovation Center’s awarding a contract to a local biosciences firm for the manufacture of key medicines for which there are presently limited or no domestic sources.

Funding for API Innovation Center Reaches $20M, Opens Lab on UMSL Campus

Mike Fabrizi examines the forthcoming Wildcare Park’s impacts on our region. Some of these are economic, which stem from the construction project itself, increased Zoo operations, spending by visitors, more tax revenue, and increased property values. In addition to economic impacts, however, there are also the benefits stemming from enhancing our region’s “creative community”. They make our Saint Louis an even more attractive place in which to live, and tend to attract the “creative” and “entrepreneurial” classes, as do other cultural and civic institutions.

How Saint Louis Zoo’s Wildcare Park Benefits Our Region

As part of EQ’s building a contextual map of the St. Louis innovation and entrepreneurial scene, we interviewed Anthony Sardella, the Chairman and CEO of the Active Pharmaceuticals Ingredients Innovation Center (hereafter referred to as the API Innovation Center), an independent business leveraging our region’s bioscience and manufacturing strengths to solve a vital twenty-first century challenge. We thank Tony and his staff for generously sharing with us their expertise, their enthusiasm for the API Innovation Center’s mission, and their assistance with this narrative. What follows stems from this interview and the API Innovation Center’s published reports.

Active Pharmaceuticals Ingredients Innovation Center (APIIC) is Reshoring a Vital Industry and Restoring Health Security

EQ's resident expert in economic complexity theory, Mike Fabrizi, explains the different shared services offered by St. Louis' innovation districts. From lab equipment to utilities management, shared services cuts down on outsourcing costs and increases the chance of your AgTech or BioTech startup succeeding in these resource intensive sectors.

Shared Services in the St. Louis AgTech and BioTech Innovation Districts

Recently, two research reports have commented on the health of the region’s technology economy. EQ summarizes what they found and offers recommendations that expand upon their findings.

Snapshot of St. Louis Tech Economy and Region

EQ recently reviewed two assessments of the region’s tech economy that have caught local media attention. The bigger picture is neither as gloomy nor as sanguine as either report makes it out to be. EQ explains why it matters and how to put the data into perspective.

Putting the Health of the Region’s Tech Economy into Perspective

This article provides an historical introduction to St. Louis manufacturing, addresses its decline in the twentieth century’s latter decades, and then notes its more recent renewal around new sets of information- and knowhow-intensive industries. We conclude by discussing the St. Louis manufacturing renaissance in the context of regional planning efforts and documents, such as Greater St. Louis, Inc.’s 2030 St. Louis Jobs Plan.

St. Louis Manufacturing: Tradition and New Direction

The Zoo and Garden perform extensive fieldwork and research, which not only has a global impact, but many local benefits too: from building local infrastructure to attracting a

How the Saint Louis Zoo and Missouri Botanical Garden Make a Difference to the World

The research and conservation arms of the Missouri Botanical Garden perform good work that matters to the whole world. It is often under-appreciated how they build intellectual capital in the St. Louis metro area, providing a more fertile environment from which other organizations and commercial enterprises, including startups, sometimes germinate and sprout.

The Unseen Work of the Missouri Botanical Garden

The research and conservation arms of Saint Louis Zoo perform good work that matters to the whole world. It is often under-appreciated how they build intellectual capital in the St. Louis metro area, providing a more fertile environment from which other organizations and commercial enterprises, including startups, sometimes germinate and sprout.

The Unseen Work of the Saint Louis Zoo

The Zoo and Garden are great places in which to enjoy some beautiful animals and plants, hang out, and have fun. However, what is often under-appreciated and rarely discussed, is how much good work they perform that matters to the whole world through their research and conservation arms.

Two Saint Louis NGO’s Making an Impact on the World and Increasing St. Louis’ Collective Intelligence

Downtime

Put these six factors together and you've got a formula for investors to fund companies that invest in their cities with the help of their governments and the endorsement of their citizens.

6 Reasons Why Impact Investing Aligns Venture Capital with Startup Ecosystems

By staying indoors for more than a year and social distancing my way out of the pandemic, I have attained the dubious achievement of clocking every streaming TV service: Netflix, HBO, Starz and Amazon Prime. Here’s my list of the best TV shows for entrepreneurs.

6 Cool TV Shows Entrepreneurs Should Watch

Listen, do you want to know a secret? There’s more to St. Louis than beer, barbecue and the Gateway Arch. If you’re after non touristy things to do in St. Louis, read on. We’ll take you on a tour of the city which rapper Nelly is proud to call home and where Tina Turner and Chuck Berry went to High School (where you went to high school is like

13 Non Touristy Things to Do in St. Louis

Yarr! It's Talk Like A Pirate Weekend.

5 Ways Startups Are Like Pirates