EatStreet, a company I co-founded to provide online ordering software for restaurants, took its first order Feb. 1, 2010, a ham sub from Silver Mine Subs. That order happened to be for my co-founder, Alex Wyler. The order number in our system is one, and Wyler’s account ID is also one.
Since then, these IDs have increased by several million, and EatStreet has grown to power the online ordering for 15,000 restaurants nationwide. But not everything has changed. Wyler still orders the same ham sub from Silver Mine.
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Building a tech company in Madison has put me in the front row for a lot of changes to University of Wisconsin startup culture and the city’s startup culture as a whole. Much of the metamorphosis has been breathtaking; the progress over the last five years has been impressive.
But just like Wyler still ordering his sub of choice, some things have not changed in Madison. We still face many of the same challenges that we faced the day EatStreet took its first order.
Areas for improvement and the future
Madison has had a recent boom in startup activity and we need success stories to validate our efforts and spur more innovation for years to come.
In 2012, more than 30 percent of venture capital investments went into the San Francisco Bay area (San Francisco, Silicon Valley or San Jose). This stands in stark contrast to our largest neighbor, Chicago, which received only 1.9 percent of deployed capital.
Why the huge disparity? Although there are books upon books written about this very question, the simple answer boils down to a single truth: Success begets success.
Hewlett-Packard is seen as the “founder” of Silicon Valley, creating wealth and jobs in the 1960s while pioneering semiconductors.
Many HP employees spun off other ventures, perhaps most significantly Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.
Fast forward years from Intel, AMD, Cisco and Yahoo to the modern titans of Google, Facebook and Uber. The story that repeats is a community of innovation reinvesting in itself.
Madison is building momentum, but we have a long way to go. Epic and American Family Insurance are incredible companies, but Madison needs more successes.
Meaningful progress
Don’t lose hope; Madison’s start-up community is still developing. In a sweeping generalization, the two most significant changes have been the resources and communities available to new companies.
When Matt Howard, Wyler and I started EatStreet, we had less resources at our disposal than a new company today in Madison.
While we did make use of the Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic as an answer to our legal needs, almost every other challenge that we faced, we dealt with in isolation.
Today, for nearly any problem any startup could face, there is a resource or social group dedicated to helping, such as SUITs Happy Hour, the Big Data Meetup and Sector67.
All of these organizations exist to solve specific needs experienced in creating a business from an idea and they’re all worth a Google search or an email.
Because of these great resources, the startup community in Madison has become larger and more vibrant.
Although the resources and companies of the Madison startup scene share different competencies and direction, we all subscribe to a common ideology — make Madison a great town to build a new technology company.
As our startups mature, it’s important for the community to be viewed as a success story, a way to create jobs and generate wealth. When this happens, older generations of innovators invest in the new companies and the entire system becomes self-sufficient.
Are you interested in starting a company? What can you contribute to Madison’s exciting tech narrative? We’re still in chapter one. Help us write a lasting story.
Eric Martell ([email protected]) is the co-founder of EatStreet.
