Last month, I traveled to Conway, Arkansas for the state’s Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO) Summit, hosted by Conductor and Startup Junkie in partnership with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. The room was full of the people who make entrepreneurship work in practice. Economic developers, incubator leaders, mentors, and community builders who show up every day to help founders figure out what’s next.
I came home with new relationships, a jar of chocolate brownie batter spread bka Smudge (more on that in a minute), and one uncomfortable realization that I think the entire ecosystem-building field needs to sit with.
The Moment That Stung
During the summit, I watched as both an early-stage entrepreneur and an experienced, scaling entrepreneur were asked about resources they’d used in Arkansas. Neither of them had heard of the Arkansas Business Resource Hub, the statewide platform we’ve been building and powering at EcoMap.
I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sting.
This is our labor of love. We’ve spent years working with stakeholders across Arkansas to map the entrepreneurial ecosystem, connect organizations, and create a single place where founders can find the support they need.
The platform has nearly 6,500 users and over 11,000 sessions. People are spending an average of four minutes per visit, which means they’re finding what they need. We’re proud of this. This isn’t a product that’s sitting on a shelf. And two entrepreneurs, at completely different stages, had never heard of it.
My first reaction was discouragement, but then I caught myself. The problem wasn’t awareness. It was an assumption about how founders find support in the first place.
The One-Stop Shop Myth
These founders are running businesses. They’re not browsing resource directories. They’re making payroll, closing deals, and solving problems. Trust me, I know. The idea that every entrepreneur should know about a resource hub, and proactively seek it out, is the same assumption that leads our industry astray over and over again.
We love the idea of the “one-stop shop.” Build it, and they will come. Create a single portal where everything lives and founders will find their way to it. It’s a clean story. It’s fundable… sometimes. And in most cases, it’s a myth.
The goal isn’t for every entrepreneur to know the platform exists. The goal is to limit the number of touchpoints they need to get what they need. That’s a fundamentally different design problem and it’s one that shifts the burden from the founder to the ecosystem.
What Works: The Beth Wilson Model
Beth Wilson is the Economic Development Director for the City of Marion, Arkansas. She told me she uses the Arkansas Business Resource Hub all the time, and the way she described using it validated some of the newest product decisions we’ve made focused on digital connective tissue for ecosystems rather than the “one-stop shop.”
Beth isn’t browsing a directory. She’s having conversations with entrepreneurs, learning what they need, and then using the platform as a tool to connect them to the right resource at the right time. She’s using technology to reduce the number of steps between a question and an answer.
That’s what good ecosystem infrastructure looks like. The intelligence is embedded in the hands of the people already working with founders, and it makes those relationships more effective.
Two Founders, Two Journeys
Two stories from the trip brought this home in different ways.
Photo Caption: Misti Staley, CEO of Staley House LLC and creator of FreeArm, shared her entrepreneurial journey during the summit.
Misti Staley, CEO of Staley House LLC and creator of FreeArm, shared her entrepreneurial journey during the summit. Misti is a rural founder who has navigated the kind of nonlinear path that most ecosystem models don’t account for. And her testimony was truly a “I’m not crying, you’re crying” moment. She is an inspiration.
Her closing slide asked the room: “What MUST exist so the next rural founder’s path is easier to navigate than mine?” It wasn’t a request for a better website. It was a request for better infrastructure, human and technological, that meets founders where they are.
Then there wasd was my Uber driver on the way to the event, who turned out to be a founder himself. Rozik and two co-founders are building an app to create connection and community for immigrants. To make ends meet while they build, he’s doing odd jobs at consignment shops and making deliveries. We got to talking randomly, and it turned out he was awesome, a builder, a hustler, the kind of person this whole ecosystem exists to support.
He had never heard of the Arkansas Business Resource Hub. And he thought Arkansas didn’t have any accelerators.
So I pulled it up on my phone and rattled off several. His eyes lit up. Not because the platform was some magical portal he’d been missing but because a person in his orbit happened to know it existed and could connect him to it in real time.
That’s the model.
Looking Ahead
Arkansas is doing important work. The fact that Conductor and Startup Junkie convene this summit annually, bringing ESOs from across the state together to align and push each other, is itself a sign of a maturing ecosystem.
At EcoMap, this trip reinforced something we’re designing our entire platform around: the one-stop shop is a myth. The magic is connected intelligence in the hands of the people who are already doing the work.
The Beth Wilsons and the economic developers who pick up the phone when a founder walks through the door. If we reduce the steps between a founder and the resource they need, we’ve done our job.
The entrepreneurs don’t need to find us. The people who serve them do.
If you’re working on ecosystem building in your state or region, I’d love to connect. Schedule a conversation here or find me on LinkedIn.