The first 10 days at KYN feel like they have gone by in just an hour… and yet, it’s been years in the making. Personally, it feels a little like a very big milestone is underway… as I recall touring this same space just two years ago thinking it would make a phenomenal home for a startup accelerator program. How things come full circle… :-)
During these couple of years our team has launched CoWork Jax, One Spark and other ventures. Each have been a key component of helping support the exploding startup ecosystem in Jacksonville. Additionally, they were great training grounds for the rapid pace that we are developing for the culture at KYN. Our team has been working together with One Spark, the STACHE Investments Corp., UNF’s College of Computing, Engineering and Construction and dozens of startup community leaders for months to bring this to fruition. As with any new venture, we’ll learn a lot along the way and get better as we go. For now, here’s a quick recap as to the first week and ultimately, what we are setting out to accomplish through KYN.
Ultimately, KYN is built to invert the success (or failure depending on how you view it) rate of startups. For example, statistically, 7 out of 10 startups fail (here’s some info on that). Our aim is to reverse that statistic through a limited amount of seed capital (finances) daily support/guidance and most importantly a ton of human capital (think great mentors - check out a few here).
As we are now full speed ahead in the second of 16 weeks at KYN, some of the teams have already secured new customers, channel partners and potential national opportunities. Others have made fundamental changes to their business model to set them up for a better chance of success. The pace is frenetic. The teams are focused and we’re excited.
In the weeks ahead, we’ll be sharing more directly from the teams themselves via guest blog posts. For now, back to work.
Thanks for reading and welcome to our ongoing story at KYN.
Cheers,
Elton
** Originally posted on the KYN blog.