🔒On the Record: Charting next chapter for Startup Maine

Sarah Smith, executive director of Startup Maine since October, has had a busy start as the first paid employee of the volunteer-powered nonprofit. Ahead of Startup Maine Week in Portland from May 18-21, Mainebiz caught up with the native of New Haven, Conn., to find out more about her plans for the Portland-based organization and assessment of the state’s startup scene. Mainebiz: What prompted your path to Maine and into the state’s startup community? Sarah Smith: After over five years in Charlotte, N.C., I missed New England and had a gut feeling Maine was my next home. People here care about each other, their community and what comes next. The Maine startup community is growing. There are more people building here and paying attention to what is being built here. We’re at an exciting inflection point, and I want to be a part of our startup community’s next chapter. MB: How have you spent your first six months at Startup Maine? SS: Both feeling like a startup founder and connecting with as many startup founders as possible. As our first full-time executive director, I get to tackle everything from fundraising to conference planning to strategic board meetings to operational tasks and back again. I have also made it a priority to connect with startup founders to learn what has been working for them, where their challenges are, and how Startup Maine can help them grow. Everything we build at Startup Maine has to be in service of what our startups need. MB: What startup niches are gaining the most momentum? SS: With the rapid growth of AI, more startups are either AI-native or built on AI tools. This is happening everywhere as well as in Maine. There are also more companies in the life sciences sector here — as displayed by the Maine Life Sciences Center and Bigelow’s Maine Blue Biotech Studio. Then you have national security startups building here — Roux’s National Security Innovation Hub and the Maine Defense Industry Alliance are providing support for those companies. MB: What do you see as the biggest obstacles facing Maine entrepreneurs today? SS: For founders starting companies, we have plenty of resources but often they don’t move at the pace of startups and are confusing to navigate. We need to simplify where to go when and make sure we provide startups what they need on a startup-friendly timeline. For companies scaling and growing, founders often have to look outside of the state for capital, talent and customers. We need to better connect our startups to other ecosystems and organizations that can help them grow if we don’t have the answer in Maine. And we should be working to find some of those answers here in Maine as well. MB: How are you reshaping this year’s Startup Maine conference? SS: This year’s conference is for startups, by startups. We are centering founders and their stories as much as possible. We are also bringing in national startup leaders to share their perspective and stories with the Maine startup community. Plus, we will have local founders on stage that we haven’t had at Startup Maine Week before. This year’s conference is going to showcase to the region, as well as to ourselves, that the Maine Startup community is here to be on the national stage. We have something special here and we want others to know that. MB: What does long-term success look like for Startup Maine beyond the annual conference? SS: A more robust, thriving startup ecosystem means success for Startup Maine. More startups starting, scaling, growing, exiting — and even failing. Big wins here. More founders who see Maine as the perfect place to build, whether they have been working here for a long time or are coming from elsewhere. Also, success for Startup Maine is a scaled organization with a larger team that can support various aspects of our ecosystem.