Interview with Chamber's innovation expert Evan Fay: 'Your efforts here will not be marginal'

For several years, momentum around Oklahoma City’s entrepreneurship community has been growing. Every month it seems new resources become available, new initiatives are launched and local companies are being put on the national stage.

Recently, VeloCity sat down with Evan Fay, manager of innovation and entrepreneurship for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber. Fay is the Chamber’s point person when it comes to connecting with entrepreneurs in OKC and has been involved with the launch of several new initiatives to help keep the community’s momentum going.

Editor’s note: This is part two of the interview with Fay. Click here to read part one. Fay will also be participating in the March Chamber Forum on OKC's entrepreneurial outlook. You can learn more about the event here. 

VeloCity: You spend a lot of your time talking with founders and entrepreneurs from outside of the state who might not be familiar with Oklahoma City. What would you tell them about our entrepreneurial community?

Fay: We've come across a surprising amount of people that have moved here to work remotely. About a week ago, I was on the phone with a gentleman that works for Google. He used to go to work at the Google campus before the pandemic. He moved here because his partner works for Apple and used to go to the Apple corporate offices every day and now they both work remotely and have a family here. He loves it here so it was interesting to get his perspective. He said, “You can be something in Oklahoma City.” He never once mentioned the cost of living, and I see that as a defining moment for Oklahoma City in that someone did not immediately mention how affordable it is to live here.  

So I tell people, your efforts here will not be marginal. You can be a large portion of a movement. It is really hard to measure stuff like this but there's just a general willingness of people to build things here and pioneer new frontiers.

I think the number one thing that I would tell somebody is there is a general sense of optimism here. You will immediately get plugged in with a community that wants to see you succeed. I feel like that's different than it is in other markets.

From a practical perspective, what are our strong points?

I think we're starting to establish the right amount of talent. We're starting to build more pipelines, whether they're non-traditional coding boot camps, CareerTech systems stepping up or our universities creating more talent that the market needs and wants.

There are also a growing number of people who have founded companies and have either left or exited and are starting new companies. So there are more second and third-time entrepreneurs and that brings more experience to our market. And then there's more venture capital readily available than there ever has been from a couple of different sources. They are all interested in doing Oklahoma deals. People want to invest in growing successful companies here.

Register for the the March Chamber Forum on OKC's entrepreneurial outlook. 

Similarly, you worked on the Forward Cities E3 Scorecard. Describe that process and its focus.

Forward Cities was born out of an engagement with the Kauffman Foundation to focus on removing barriers for entrepreneurs of different backgrounds. They came up with a scorecard process called the E3 Scorecard that stands for “equity for every entrepreneur.” They measure communities in eight areas. Is the foundation for capital equitable? Maybe there is plenty of capital in your community but does every demographic have the same access to that capital? The neat thing is they don't share your position compared with other cities. But they do tell you you're in the top 20% in this area or you're the second worst we've measured in this area. It is a very objective process. They spoke with 25 people here, blindly, that fell into different categories: ecosystem builders, investors, founders and educators.

What were some of the big takeaways from that process?

I think one of our big takeaways was storytelling. Are we highlighting the right “wins”? As a city or state, we spend the majority of our time talking about the big successes. “Somebody raised $10 million, Paycom went public, this person signed a strategic partnership with NASA” and so on. Of course, those events are important, but by only sharing the colossal successes it creates a narrative that success is only these big things. In reality, success for 99.9% of startups and small businesses is they acquired their first customer here, they paid off their note or they turned a profit. Success can come at any stage and we need to celebrate those wins.

Another interesting project is the Chamber’s participation in the Chapman & Company’s Ecosystem Health Challenge. Explain that initiative a little for our readers.

Chapman & Company is a consultancy out of Omaha and they advise cities on a multitude of more broadly economic development initiatives. Their sweet spot has recently become evaluating entrepreneurial ecosystems and beating the drum on how success is measured. Traditional economic development involves things that are easy to measure like jobs, wages and capital expenditure. However, the ultimate goal of economic development is building wealth for your community and citizens. That can be near impossible to measure.

Chapman & Company has developed a data science curriculum for measuring entrepreneurship ecosystem development and we participate in small cohorts with other cities. We talk about what needles we are trying to move and what the mission and vision for our city is, as it relates to building an entrepreneurship culture. We walk through different methods for collecting, analyzing and communicating data so that it normalizes entrepreneurship work in economic development.

It has helped focus what are the outcomes that really matter when communicating with city leadership, communicating with community activists and companies that have a heavy emphasis on corporate social responsibility.

We're in the cohort with Fort Worth, Boston and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It's neat to be able to bounce ideas off each other. For example, we do a lot of work around our location quotient and how to use that. Where are some areas we are truly unique and can offer expertise no other metro can? Those are great places to put resources. A great example for us is weather radar. We have a disproportionate amount of weather-radar related expertise compared to what can be found in other cities. We have an unfair advantage in our ability to nurture the development of related technologies and hopefully build companies around that. If we double down on energy, biotech, aerospace – we can be good at those things when all the right ingredients are in place. However, we have the opportunity to be the best in the world with weather and radar because the research assets and expertise are something that quite literally can’t be found elsewhere, startup companies and founders with expertise. There's no other metro that has that. That’s an area that we need to focus on.

To wrap up, if someone is reading this that wants to get involved in our local startup community but has no idea where to begin what would you tell them?

First and foremost make a profile on Launch OKC Metro. Get familiar with some of the names and faces there on the platform. Next, reach out to us and we can talk. What are your needs? How can we help you facilitate a relationship? Maybe you want an SBDC advisor to look over your business plan, or maybe you want to share your idea and 1 Million Cups Oklahoma City is the best place to introduce your product or idea to the world because of the support here. We work with founders all the time who just want to understand the lay of the land, want to know how to make their way through the ecosystem and develop relationships with people and organizations who can help them. That’s what we’re here for. If you’re a person or organization that has interest or expertise in serving entrepreneurs, we want to plug you in with the ecosystem development work that we’re leading. We host regular ecosystem roundtables where entrepreneurial support organizations get together on Zoom and talk about what they’re seeing, what gaps there are in resources and expertise, and how we can put entrepreneurs first in building an environment where they can be successful.

Read more about the Launch OKC Metro app.