Between the two recent announcements of Downtown Durham Startups & American Underground, Durham is making serious waves in the world of startups, entrepreneurs and small business.
Downtown Durham Startups launched on July 2nd and is meant to be an information hub offering startup news, background info, and resources for budding entrepreneurs. The site is looking to grow its database quickly by allowing local businesses to submit info, but the Startup Directory is already pretty comprehensive. One somewhat confusing quirk to the site – the blog is actually on its own domain at Bull City Startups. The Bull City site (now added to the blogroll) was founded by Jason Murtha this May, and he has now officially teamed up with the Downtown Durham effort. Another local name behind the initiative is Taylor Mingos of Shoeboxed, a (relatively) longtime stalwart of the Triangle startup scene.
As if that weren’t enough, today the American Tobacco Campus announced a great new space (26,000 sq. feet) they hope to fill with, you guessed it, startups. The space, dubbed the “American Underground,” is slated to open this October and a few significant tenants have already committed, notably the Council for Entrepreneurial Development as well as incubators LaunchBox Digital (previous coverage) and Joystick Labs. The announcement means the CED will be leaving its current location at the Alexandria Technology Center.
For full coverage and a nice video on the American Underground announcement, WRAL has the scoop here. More coverage is over at TechJournal South as well.
While these announcements are great cause to get excited about the future of the region, it’s also a good time to appreciate that these things have not happened overnight. Durham and the Triangle have been building the foundations and networks necessary for this kind of activity for a long time. The area has drawn new minds and cultivated its own through universities and organizations like the CED. The exciting events to come will be a testament to the efforts and foresight of those in this community.
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1 Vivek Wadhwa’s Jobs Plan – Entrepreneurs Create Jobs | Tech Town, NC // Aug 26, 2010 at 3:13 am
[...] Some of Wadhwa’s recent articles are in response to assertions by Andy Grove about America’s loss of “scaling” ability. I don’t want to wade into the Grove v. Wadhwa debate too much, as both arguments have merits and both men are vastly more experienced than I. But if Wadhwa is right (or even if they’re both right) a lot of recent local developments bode very well for the Triangle and the area I think of as TechTown, NC. [...]
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