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Starting a business is never easy. But, with a host of programming, mentoring programs and pitch competitions, Maine offers a range of resources for startups.
“There’s never been a better time to launch a new business in Maine. There’s a wealth of support throughout the state. There are organizations to offer everything from free advice on just a nugget of an idea to training and education and advanced knowledge and data to get you to the next level,” says Tom Rainey, executive director for the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs.
The boom in entrepreneurial services and organizations, the level of funding and support for new businesses, the national attention of Maine’s livability and attractiveness that brings new talent, as well as fixtures such as the Roux Institute at Northeastern University in Portland help make now the perfect time to be an entrepreneur in Maine.
“Maine is by far the most organized when it comes to entrepreneurship. It’s organized chaos sometimes and there’s still the risk of programs overlapping but to the extent that we can, we coordinate,” Rainey says.
“The whole ecosystem for startups is very collaborative in Maine. The groups don’t have to compete because there’s more need and demand than any one of us can serve,” says Nancy Strojny, SCORE Maine’s assistant district director.
Entrepreneurs can get tunnel vision and finding a mentor can help bring perspective to a product or business.
“Mentorship is the single most important factor for business success,” says Strojny. “When you’re a solo entrepreneur, your family and friends get really tired of hearing about your business. A mentor is a neutral third party with skills and a relevant perspective and networking contacts who also provides encouragement and advice.”
Small business clients who receive three or more hours of mentoring report higher revenues and increased business growth, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers “Client Engagement” report in 2019.
“In the last 10 years or so, there’s become a romanticized notion of becoming an entrepreneur. But it’s really hard work. And you need help,” Strojny says.
There are several places to find mentors, including SCORE, the Small Business Development Center, the Women’s Business Center and Maine New Ventures, among others.
“SCORE will stay with a client for the life of their business if needed. It can be for a very long time. It’s a relationship,” Strojny says. “Every client has a different story and different business need.”
SCORE has about 130 mentors across Maine. Meanwhile, the Maine Mentor Network at the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs offers another 225 mentors, each with a unique perspective on how to help businesses.
The Maine Mentor Network offers “coffee mentors” who can meet and talk for an hour or two as needed. Meanwhile, the Maine Center for Entrepreneur’s Top Gun program matches each participant with a mentor for the length of the program. Some mentor relationships were so successful that the mentors have gotten hired by the companies they helped.
“It’s really about perspective and experience. You get so wrapped up in the product or the business that an outside resource adds a huge amount of value and opens possibilities for growth,” says Terry Johnson, manager of the Maine Mentor Network with the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs. “Mentoring is about helping an entrepreneur’s business become all it can be.”
Cultivating entrepreneurial skills at a young age can help students think more creatively, explore new career paths and help create more resilient workers, says Rainey of Maine Center for Entrepreneurs.
“They are starting younger and younger to promote creative thinking and promote a new generation of aspiring entrepreneurs,” Rainey says. “It’s an increasing trend in high schools to get teenagers to think about business and think more creatively about what their future could be.”
Falmouth High School, Waynflete School, and Southern Maine Community College are among the schools to offer entrepreneurship classes.
Beth Donovan, a teacher at Falmouth High School, has been teaching entrepreneurship classes for about four years and she’s amazed at the diverse range of ideas and products and services her students develop.
“We ask at the beginning of the class if there are any entrepreneurs there. And no one raises their hands, but there’s always some that already have their own businesses like landscaping or photography or video editing or something and they don’t realize they already are entrepreneurs,” Donovan says.
The class teaches students everything from marketing and advertising, to product development and prototypes to business plans and customer attraction and retention. The class culminates in a “Shark Tank”-type pitch presentation where the students discuss the problem they’re solving, their target market, their competition, how they will finance it and what their profit margins are.
Students have created ideas such as an Uber-type program for snow removal, to a boat-type Uber service for Casco Bay, and a film editing service for local schools’ sports teams.
The class hosts speakers from local entrepreneur groups, local companies and individuals who have successfully launched their own businesses. The class also reads books such as Phil Knight’s “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike,” and Marc Randolph’s “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea,” and listens to podcasts such as “How I Built This,” which is hosted by Guy Raz.
Some students have even joined some of the companies that have come in to speak, so the connections made in the class have been invaluable, says Jennifer Bush, Falmouth High School’s service learning coordinator, who helps with the class.
“When you’re involved with an entrepreneurial business, you have to be involved in every aspect of the business. This class exposes them to all aspects of starting and creating a company or product. It’s a rigorous but fun class,” Bush says.
For Torey Penrod-Cambra, co-founder and chief communications officer of HighByte Inc., the best part of winning the Gorham Savings Bank’s LaunchPad competition in 2021 wasn’t the $50,000 prize, but the preparation and work required just to do the application for the pitch contest.
“It really requires you to focus on your business and learn what makes it unique and be able to translate that to an audience that may not be involved in your industry,” says Penrod-Cambra. “We had to learn to hone our message so that everyone could understand what we do, not just those involved in deep tech.”
Penrod Cambra says HighByte, which collects data and prepares data for industrial firms to better understand what their systems are doing, had applied for the LaunchPad program in 2019 but didn’t make the cut.
“Don’t be discouraged by a previous rejection. That’s actually a good lesson and good education to have,” Penrod-Cambra says.
Steve DeCastro, president and CEO of Gorham Savings Bank, says Maine’s entrepreneurial sector has made great strides in the past five to 10 years.
“We’re helping build awareness around companies that are emerging. It’s a lift up. It gives them the opportunity to tell their story and craft it for an audience they might not ever have to the chance to reach without programs like this,” DeCastro says. “Programs like ours, as well as the SBA’s work, the venture community, the tech and biosciences companies in Maine, all pull together and help elevate these ideas so that they may mature and become sizeable companies in Maine.”
The LaunchPad program is just one pitch competition in Maine. Others include the “Greenlight Maine” television series, and the finals of the intensive Top Gun entrepreneur program at the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs.
“All the pitch competitions work together closely to encourage entrepreneurs to pitch and do the crucial work to get their message across. We’re here to elevate the companies, not to compete against each other,” says Julene Gervais, a producer and host of “Greenlight Maine.”
The most intensive competition is Top Gun, which began in 2009 and offers a four-month program when participants learn basic business tenets, gain mentors, and get a cohort of like-minded entrepreneurs to grow with.
“It’s the type of program where you really get out of it what you put into it. Some really give it their all. A good 70% to 75% of participants are still in business today. We’ve had a couple of buyouts but most participants are looking to grow a small to mid-sized business,” says Laurie Johnson, the Top Gun program manager with the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs.
“Every year I say ‘This is the best class yet,’ and I mean it. Every year I’m so impressed with the quality of the entrepreneurs and the amount of energy and effort and time they put into it when most have day jobs and families and lives,” Johnson says. “It’s more about building and working on your business instead of a focus on the cash prize. It’s a lot of effort to make if all you’re doing is going for the prize money.”
In 2020, Northeastern University launched the Roux Institute in Portland with a donation of $100 million from the Roux Family Foundation, which was established by tech entrepreneur and Lewiston native David Roux and his wife, Barbara.
“Roux itself is a startup within a global university system. We have the benefit of leveraging all Northeastern has to offer — 13 global campuses,” says Chris Mallett, Roux’s chief administrative officer. “We exist to drive economic impact in Maine.”
The institute aims to train workers in Maine and draw talent from around the world to work in areas such as artificial intelligence, life sciences and medical research.
“We hope the next big company in Maine was incubated at Roux,” says Chris Wolfel, the director of entrepreneurship at Roux. “We want to grow hundreds and thousands of jobs.”
“It’s a critical time for the ecosystem to show entrepreneurs they want them here. There are a lot of individuals who came here during COVID. The thing that gets them to stay is the talent pipeline. Portland to Boston is the same distance as San Francisco to Palo Alto. We want to attract people to New England and northern New England,” Wolfel says.
Over the past 18 months, 21 participants or companies have gone through entrepreneur training at Roux and another 35 new companies will enter in the next year. Roux aims to double that number over the next three to five years, Wolfel says.
“We’re building global startups that just happen to be based in Maine,” Wolfel says.
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