Twilio immediately tweeted the challenge, and within an hour, San Francisco developer Tony Webster submitted Hero Jobs, an app that helps veterans find job openings for their skills.
“How many of you will build education apps that kids can download for help with math problems they don’t understand?” he asked the room of entrepreneurs, investors and D.C. policymakers. “Please, innovate at the intersection of policy and these markets.”
Startup D.C. is one of the 17 regional branches of Startup America, the Obama administration’s push to provide resources and funds for people who start businesses, and was part of the flurry of events held to celebrate Startup America’s one-year anniversary this week.
Elsewhere, Startup Virginia announced Tuesday morning that it was launching a branch. Startup Maryland is preparing to start its own in the coming weeks.
At Startup Virginia, Steve Case, the former chief executive of AOL and chairman of the Startup America Partnership, told an audience at George Mason University that the Washington region has grown far more hospitable to high-growth companies since he helped build his Internet company in the early 1980s. The investment dollars he sought from Chicago, Toronto, Silicon Valley and other pockets of the country can now be found here, he said. Case also used his time behind the lectern to advocate for policy changes that he and other business leaders have said could promote entrepreneurship, such as granting visas to foreign-born students who graduate with advance degrees in math, engineering and science.
Working is better together
Collaboration of all kinds—between groups of entrepreneurs, between start-ups and government services and between small and big companies—emerged as a theme at Startup DC, which was held at the co-work space Geekeasy near U Street. The event consisted of seven-minute talks by speakers outlining ideas on how to ramp up Washington’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. The group then voted on the ones they liked.
As the government trims its budget, Microsoft director of innovative engagement Mark Drapeau suggested that federal agencies might turn to entrepreneurs for solutions to public problems. He introduced something called the National Piggy Bank, currently a beta site, as a platform for entrepreneurs to take a crack at issues like safety or environment and to receive funding if their ideas are adopted.
Other speakers proposed establishing better venues for entrepreneurs to gather. Currently, there are dozens of groups for entrepreneurs and developers in the region operating on the meeting site Meetup, but traffic and space constraints dictate that any given meeting is inconvenient for at least part of the community.
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