Collaboration in Waterville: Startups growing out of coworking space
Photo / Tim Greenway
Nick Rimsa, left, co-founder of Eariously, and RJ Anzelc, founder of Bricks Coworking and Innovation Space
Nick Rimsa and RJ Anzelc are two young people who have made a difference in Waterville, using the coworking space Anzelc founded, Bricks Coworking, as a base of operations to foster entrepreneurs from Colby College and Waterville in general. Rimsa co-founded Eariously, a software that converts text to audio.
Mainebiz: What sets Waterville and the downtown apart from other places you’ve lived or worked?
Nick Rimsa: We think that Waterville is an ideal place for small software companies to live and work. With large investments being made in the downtown, it’s exciting to be part of our growing knowledge and technology-based community. And because we bootstrap our software projects, Waterville’s affordability has allowed us to focus. I had initially planned to leave Maine for Los Angeles after teaching a product design course in January. But, after receiving so much help and support from the community like the Mid-Maine Chamber, Central Maine Growth Council, MTI and SCORE Maine, we realized Waterville — and Bricks specifically — an ideal home to make Eariously.
RJ Anzelc: The activity and energy exhibited in Waterville right now is unlike anything I’ve seen or been involved with previously. It makes you want to add your own contribution to help continue the city’s revitalization.
MB: How did you and RJ start working together?
NR: In April, RJ and I started chatting at a Mainebiz event in Waterville. I shared that I was working with a number of talented college students designing products for the first time. The students wanted to continue making things during the summer, but they lacked a home to do it and the help required to make significant progress. RJ very graciously offered to make Bricks their home.
RJA: I had just come from the Mainebiz roundtable, and Nick and I were talking about the students he had been working with. While Bricks had been growing steadily in the coworking space, I had really been lacking two key components: college students and innovation. I loved the projects the students and Nick were working on, and asked Nick what they were doing this summer to advance their projects.
MB: Nick, how did the idea for Eariously come about?
NR: Last summer, I was complaining a lot to my partner Brendan Barr that I had so many things that I wanted to read, but didn’t have enough time to get through it all. When I told Brendan that I wasn’t satisfied with any of the current options, he suggested that we should make it ourselves. So, we started making Eariously for ourselves. While we’ve been working on Eariously for nearly a year now, we’d like to think that we’re just getting started. It’s our goal that we begin selling subscriptions to our listeners this year. With that in mind, we started beta listening a few weeks ago, and we’ve been pleased with how things are going so far. We think the most important part of making anything is doing it with the right people. So, we’ve added some excellent teammates, Kia Jones and Ruth Lin, as well as Turtle’s software development team, to help create the best experience possible for our listeners.
MB: RJ, how did you identify coworking space as a need for downtown Waterville?
RJA: What really started it was an idea hatched with Garvan Donegan of the Central Maine Growth Council. I work remotely for a tech company in Boston, and was struggling working from home every day. I broached the idea with Garvan and he said it was something he had wanted to see in Waterville for quite some time. We spent months planning, evaluating the need, reviewing site alternatives, and finding the perfect downtown location in Hathaway Creative Center. While identifying the need for coworking in Waterville, location was always a key factor. Situated in a historic redeveloped mill in the downtown’s southern gateway, Bricks’ location is walkable, enjoys ample parking, includes shared resources, has robust fiber internet, and displays lifestyle amenities I wanted to see in the space, including talented neighbors and a brewery across the hall, Waterville Brewing.
MB: What sorts of other collaborations have come out of that space?
RJA: With Summer Startup, we had five student entrepreneurs with a focus on delivering mentorship, exposure, training, and advancement for them and their businesses. This was done through informal meetings, collaborative meetings, startup-focused events, a so-called startup bootcamp, taught by Mike Duguay of Thomas College’s Harold Alfond Institute for Business Innovation. Thus far, one of the students has received initial grant funding: Tyler Hansen with PieFolio, a platform that allows students to produce a portfolio website to share with potential employers in under an hour, and two others are in the process. When you look at any progressive startup community, such as Silicon Valley or Boulder, it’s all about the collaboration of individuals and sharing of ideas and talent. I want to see that here in Waterville.
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