In 2013, the entrepreneur and longtime nonprofit industry worker attended one of the weekends sponsored by Fredxchange to foster entrepreneurial activity.
“The energy was out of control,” she said.
At the time she was still considering a move from San Diego back to her hometown of Fredericksburg but said meeting like-minded people through the event sealed the move.
O’Malley is now a board member with local start-up nonprofit FredxChange and is the volunteer executive director for its co-working space—The Foundry—in Fredericksburg.
That spark she saw is catching on.
Fredericksburg is among the top 10 cities nationwide for entrepreneurs to “be successful and enjoy life,” according to a list that is the cover story of August’s Entrepreneur magazine.
Fredericksburg ranks ninth in “The 50 Best Cities for Entrepreneurs.” The ranking shows “there’s life for entrepreneurs outside New York and San Francisco,” and uses data from Livability.com, which studies small and midsize cities.
“You’ve come to the right city if you’re an entrepreneur looking to advance your idea or company,” the list said, citing entities in place to assist startups including Fredxchange and the Fredericksburg Economic Development Authority.
The list takes into account a city’s number of businesses and employees, number of VC deals in the last decade, business tax rate, value of SBA and 7(a) loans, percentage of college-educated locals, cost of living, commute time, access to high-speed internet, income and population increase.
Chris Pilny, of Livability.com, said Fredericksburg—one of the smaller cities on the list—had both a 7 percent business and employment growth between 2011-2015, propelling it to the top.
The unemployment rate—3.8 percent when the list was compiled—falls well below the national and Virginia averages.
He said where Fredericksburg blows the other cities out of the water, though, is in the number of venture capital deals over the past few years, with 600. He said only five other cities out of the 50 either equaled or exceeded that amount.
Fredericksburg also had the most affordable housing on the list, as well as some of the lowest transportation costs.
“Combine that with the fact that the city had the highest growth of high-wage jobs on the list, plus a multitude of other quality-of-life amenities, and it falls easily at the number 9 position,” Pilny said.
Livability doesn’t just think Fredericksburg is a great place for entrepreneurs. In another recent list it ranked 92 out of the top 100 American cities for 2016 in terms of quality of life, as well.
O’Malley said Fredxchange was surprised by the list when it came out earlier this month.
“Startup work, it’s all data driven and here’s this data staring us in the face,” she said.
She said Fredxchange was born out of a realization that there had to be entrepreneurs in the region without resources.
Its co-working space opened last year and she said it is still taking members who want to start a business and work out of a collaborative community rather than from a kitchen table. They are also seeking anyone who wants to change up their work habits.
That’s primarily due to the location, with its proximity to the federal government and government contractors “the amount of technology talent is incredible, there are more talented software and program developers here than in Silicon Valley,” she said.
The number of college-educated locals and the value of our local Small Business Development Center also cannot be underestimated in the equation for entrepreneurial success, she said.
Fredxchange’s initial focus was on scalable technology but she said the organization has seen many successes in food businesses and lifestyle businesses.
She said while she isn’t sure about the number of VC deals, Fredericksburg gas a lot of angel investors- affluent people rather than firms who provide capital for a business start-up.
“In the last few years there’s a there there,” O’Malley said. “There’s something here that wasn’t when growing up.”
She said resources—regional economic development authorities, the regional Chamber of Commerce, the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance and others are all catalysts for growth.
But O’Malley said to keep growing to the top of Entrepreneur’s list, the region needs to figure out what each group is best at and coordinate resources rather than all hosting the same events.
“Being an entrepreneur is high risk,” she said. “We know the talent is here. We are still figuring out if that talent has the risk gene it takes to be an entrepreneur.”
Among those risk takers is Adrian Silversmith, who started Sprelly at Startup Weekend.
He now has a successful business selling gourmet peanut butter, and other nut butters, and a sandwich shop in downtown Fredericksburg.
His next goal is to be the Chipotle of peanut butter and jelly.
He said part of that success was taking advantage of every opportunity. Along with Startup Weekend, he also competed in the Made in FredVA business plan competition and the Sandwich Invitational held by the city.
“Have a clear goal and keep saying it,” he said. “Understand that there will be a lot of pivots, failures but keep going. Everything I said would happen has happened. Now I’m going to keep saying we’re going to be nationally known as a chain.”
He said to foster entrepreneurial activity, the city should have a business-friendly policy. He also wishes there was a single place or person he could have gone to at the beginning of his business to find out everything he needed to know.
Married couple Will and Maria Negron are opening Will’s Place, a Puerto Rican food truck, this month.
Will Negron was on Sprelly’s Startup Weekend team and said he learned a lot through the event.
“I always knew wanted to own a business but didn’t know what,” he said.
He came back to what he was good at—cooking the Puerto Rican dishes he learned growing up.
Staying in Fredericksburg was a conscious decision for the couple.
“It’s one of those places that grew on us,” Maria Negron said. “It’s centrally located with a diverse population.”
Another local entrepreneur, David Mills, rebranded his marketing agency to become Story Collaborative after meeting with Fredxchange.
He said the group helped him learn how to be successful and how to think differently about products and services.
Among those was learning how to create a an adaptive business model for entrepreneurs.
“We learned how to fail fast and be okay with innovation,” said Amy Alexander, also with Story Collaborative.
Mills and Alexander volunteer for Startup Weekend as coaches. They said it’s a way to give back.
“There’s a certain energy in collaborating on problem solving,” he said.
©2016 The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
