Stirring Up Entrepreneurship in Your City

Last week I had the opportunity to meet one of my startup heroes — Brad Feld, co-founder of the Boulder-based startup accelerator TechStars. He was in Oklahoma City to speak at a local tech conference on the subject of how to build a startup culture in your city based on his new book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your City.

There are four principles of building that ecosystem which he calls the Boulder Thesis in the book, which are:

1. “Entrepreneurs must lead the startup community.”
2. “The leaders must have a long-term commitment.”
3. “The startup community must be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it.”
4. “The startup community must have continual activities that engage the entire entrepreneurial stack.”

I wrote a full post about it on my personal blog here, with thoughts on what is happening in Oklahoma City.

He says any town of 100K or more can become an entrepreneurial hub … and the metro area of Oklahoma City, where I call home, is 1.2 million and thus qualifies.

But what about your town or city? Do you have 100K+ and is entrepreneurship buzzing in your city? Or is it something you could help champion?