Even as work continues on a Stamford high-tech incubator, the city is quickly becoming a mini-hub for technology activity in Connecticut, with the city”™s largest business group and a state technology council aiming to increase their profile in the startup community.
Since the launch of the Stamford Innovation Center in early February, the Business Council of Fairfield County has been working quietly behind the scenes to establish a link to the new high-tech incubator. It is part of a larger effort by the Business Council to increase its profile in the high-tech sector, including with the Connecticut Technology Council with which it intends to provide open workstations at its Landmark Square offices.
Meanwhile, the head of the Crossroads Venture Group will also work out of Stamford at least part of the time, with Liddy Karter”™s group focusing on linking venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in Connecticut, New York and the wider region. CVG was previously known as the Connecticut Venture Group; as part of its transition in the past year, it is ending its once-annual Crossroads Venture Fair in favor of smaller, quarterly Crossroads Club lunches, with the next Stamford event scheduled for mid-May.
It appears that business groups are rapidly coalescing around the Stamford Innovation Center in advance of Stamford Startup Weekend, scheduled for March 30 and April 1 and as Connecticut plows $250 million into the tech sector via its Connecticut Innovations Inc. venture capital affiliate.
“There has been a very, very intense effort in the past year to look at entrepreneurship and innovation across the state,” said Matthew Nemerson, the CEO of the East Hartford-based Connecticut Technology Council. “CTC is going to have an office down there.”
That office will be at the Landmark Square location of the Business Council of Fairfield County, which is one of fewer than 20 CTC members in Stamford ”“ with only half of that number companies offering technology products or services, the rest of them law firms and other tangential business services companies.
Over its history, the Business Council of Fairfield County has shown a bent toward the region”™s largest companies, but since the recession has created new networks of professional peer groups and interest teams.
Starting with general counsels, those groups have since expanded to include chief marketing officers and even law firm partners themselves; as well as a few that rope in smaller businesses, if sophisticated ones, like wealth managers.
A new “growth council” will focus on smaller companies, many offering high-tech products and services. CEO Chris Bruhl is not ruling out the Business Council of Fairfield County adding a peer group of chief information officers.
The Connecticut Technology Council, of course, already offers its own “growth network,” in Stamford via the Soundview Innovation Cell whose leader is Barry Monies, CEO of Computronix L.L.C. Still, just two Stamford companies made it onto CTC”™s 2011 list of high-tech “companies to watch,” of nearly 80 across Connecticut and a few outside the state.
