🔒CTNext’s new leader Obiocha, legislature aim to expand state’s startup ecosystem

In January 2020, when Melissa Melonson transitioned and rebranded her marketing agency Lumi Hospitality to focus almost exclusively on the leisure, travel and real estate industries, she could not have imagined the devastating impact the global pandemic would have two months later on those sectors and her young company’s bottom line.

“Close to 50 percent of my [client] contracts paused … overnight, which was very scary,” said Melonson, who founded her company in 2016.

Wanting to stay true to her vision while pivoting her business model, Melonson turned to a business mentoring program through CTNext, a state-run organization that helps manage, support and build the ecosystem of startups, new business development and innovation statewide.

“We’ve always been primarily a digital agency with the [vast majority] of our work done online,” Melonson said. “But that summer [2020], with approval from the city of Hartford, we started doing [in-person] events, our ‘Picnic in the Park’ series, which allowed people to gather safely, enjoy live music and enjoy [Hartford’s] Bushnell Park.”

She said the pivot helped her company become more locally known, and by 2021, events and in-person programs drove about 25% of Lumi’s revenue.

Last year, the company grew from three to eight employees and expects to double its workforce in 2022.

“CTNext’s mentoring was really helpful at a time when we were trying to figure out how to successfully move forward,” Melonson said.

Lumi Hospitality’s progress — and survival during the pandemic — is a microcosm of the work that Onyeka “Ony” Obiocha, CTNext’s new executive director, would like to replicate, while also expanding the scope and diversity of Connecticut’s entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Those have been largely built over the past five years around CTNext’s Innovation Places in Hartford/East Hartford, Groton/New London, New Haven and Stamford, each anchored by core industry sectors.

Obiocha, 32, a Windsor native, assumes the reins of CTNext following the state legislature’s approval in 2021 of $64.2 million in general obligation bonds over five years to continue funding the organization’s operations.

Since its founding in 2016, more than 2,100 startup and early-stage companies have participated in CTNext programming, which has created or supported more than 17,000 jobs in the state, according to the group.

CTNext has also provided direct grant funding to 300 companies, which has helped leverage more than $67 million in private capital, it said.

“I look forward to continuing the success of [CTNext] and incorporating lessons learned from years of working in and around Connecticut,” said Obiocha, who has been involved with CTNext as the board chair of its New Haven Innovation Places program.

He also founded an Elm City coffee shop.

Broad focus

Obiocha’s experience includes serving as the managing director of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University and a stint as the director of integrated capitals and learning for the New York-based Heron Foundation, where he helped steward a $350 million endowment aimed at helping communities create social and economic change.

Obiocha said one of his top priorities as he assumes his new leadership role is to assess what’s worked well and what needs to be improved to better assist entrepreneurs.

“We need to have a lot of honest conversations with all stakeholders to make sure we’re building what we need in service to [entrepreneurs],” he said.

While core corporate and institutional partners like Yale and UConn are vital to the state’s innovation ecosystems, Obiocha said he wants to ensure the voice of small startups are heard and the ecosystem is broad enough to attract entrepreneurs beyond the state’s core focus sectors.

“I want the senior developer at a [startup] tech company to be super excited about the new [startup] coffee shop, … or the underground arts scene,” he said.

Rishabh Agarwal, founder of Peer Robotics agrees. In November, Agarwal — who was first exposed to Hartford’s startup ecosystem through a Techstars Accelerator program in partnership with Stanley Black & Decker — moved from India to Hartford to grow his company, which focuses on enhanced robotic automation for manufacturing.

Agarwal said proximity to the state’s robust aerospace and manufacturing hubs was a key rationale for relocating to Hartford, but equally attractive were the resources the region has available for early-stage companies like his.

“The presence of a developer ecosystem drew us [to Hartford] as a place where we can start and expand our operation,” he said.

Peer Robotics’ offices will be based in Upward Hartford’s coworking space at 20 Church St., and the company will be hiring for business development and engineering roles.

Michelle Cote, director of Launc[H]artford, CTNext’s innovation hub for the Hartford region, said the close-knit startup community has been a value proposition for Greater Hartford.

“The quality of the connections that we make, the industry expertise and the unique mixture of assets [in the state] offers a lot of advantages for entrepreneurs,” Cote said.

Through its focus on insurtech, medtech and advanced manufacturing, over the past three years Launc[H]artford has supported the creation of 54 companies and scaled 120 others, she said.

It has also provided more than 6,000 hours of mentorship to startups.

Whether it’s technical assistance, mentors, interns or venture capital, Cote said, her organization — and other startup and innovation players in the region, including ReSet, Upward Hartford and MakerspaceCT — are able to help entrepreneurs access multiple resources to support their needs.

COVID disruption

Marty Guay, vice president of business development for Stanley Black & Decker, which runs its Manufactory 4.0 “smart factory” in downtown Hartford’s Constitution Plaza, said the state’s and CTNext’s commitment to innovation is valuable, but scaling those efforts will be critical to long-term growth.

“Connecticut needs to scale because of its size and that will require a lot of collaboration between a lot of stakeholders,” Guay said.

He said the state’s startup community must attract more venture capital, a longtime issue in Connecticut.

COVID-19 has had a disruptive effect on Hartford’s startup ecosystem, including forcing the exit of Startupbootcamp, the London-based company that was hired to run two Hartford accelerator programs focused on insurance and healthcare technology. Efforts to bring in entrepreneurs from across the globe also slowed amid travel and other restrictions.

Some boosters have warned that Startupbootcamp’s exit from the two accelerators should serve as a warning that the burgeoning startup community that gained momentum in the three years leading up to the pandemic could fizzle without increased support and public funding.

However, while there have been setbacks, the state has also made some overall progress.

Bloomberg News in 2022 named Connecticut the fourth most innovative economy in the U.S., and Inc. Magazine in 2021 ranked Hartford No. 5 among U.S. cities where tech talent is actually moving.

Jessica Dodge, CT Next’s director of operations and programs, said what her organization has created to date is still relatively new and evolving.

CTNext’s services include an internship program that connects local college students with area startups.

“Our Innovation Places were unprecedented here in Connecticut and five years later perhaps we need to do some tweaking, but it’s supposed to be an iterative process,” she said. “There are ripe opportunities to make sure that entrepreneurs and startups of any industry sector feel they can come to CTNext and navigate through [the ecosystem].”

It’s what Obiocha calls a continuum of care for startups.

“It’s looking at the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem from the first time an entrepreneur has a [business] idea, and how we [can] bring them down the pathway and give them the resources they need to be successful,” Obiocha said.