Building a startup engine one connection at a time

SPRINGBOARD: From left: Allan Tear, Jack Templin and Owen Johnson, above in a 2010 photo, are the founders of startup-accelerator program Betaspring. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RYAN T. CONATY
SPRINGBOARD: From left: Allan Tear, Jack Templin and Owen Johnson, above in a 2010 photo, are the founders of startup-accelerator program Betaspring. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RYAN T. CONATY

Betaspring sprang to life in Providence in 2009 as a “startup accelerator” that feeds a super-charged diet of mentoring and investment to early-stage businesses. The micro-seed venture capital fund, as it is known in the investor community, got off to a jazzy start, and it hasn’t simmered down yet, having pushed 28 businesses out of the nest already. And with recent cash infusions, it figures to leave its fingerprints all over the Rhode Island business landscape for years to come.
Founded by three entrepreneurial geeks in their 30s who chose Providence as a place to settle, Betaspring thrives on one of Rhode Island’s most prominent assets – its size – which allows for robust, broad and easily accessible networks of entrepreneurs, something that Betaspring uses to maximum advantage for its portfolio of companies.
The founders themselves sport a diverse mix of backgrounds. Owen Johnson holds degrees from MIT, with a special interest in real estate. In 2004, after a brainstorming session with other entrepreneurs in San Francisco, he co-founded Investment Instruments, which operates two Internet tools that help automate the rental marketplace for landlords and tenants and that gauge rental rates in the United States. He also founded a social networking web-site connectprovidence.org, as a way to introduce newcomers to the city.
Allan Tear, a West Virginia native and an engineer with a degree from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, choose Providence as a fruitful place to build a career in information technology, moving here from Atlanta in 2002. Tear has founded four startups, including WhyData and Aptus Collaborative, as well as Hackable City and Mashable City, open-source resources that build social links in urban areas.
Jack Templin is a Vermont native who earned a degree in economics, spent time in the Peace Corps, returned to the United States, and caught the Internet bug. He enrolled in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and moved to Providence in 2005.
Soon after, Templin co-founded Providence Geeks, which hosts monthly meetings at which IT workers meet and pick each others’ brains. Templin is program leader of the RI Nexus initiative of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation and a member of the EDC’s board of directors.
But as much as Johnson, Tear and Templin have accomplished individually up until now, 2011 was filled with signs that the future holds the potential to catapult Betaspring into one of the keys to the state’s economic future.
In November, based on a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Providence created the Innovation Investment Program, through which startups that agree to locate in the Capital City for at least one year will be given a $50,000 convertible-note investment. That money could be matched by investments from the state’s Slater Technology Fund as well as the Cherrystone Angel Group. And the first group of companies eligible for the city’s program are the 11 graduates of the summer 2011 Betaspring “boot camp.”
This support follows by two months a $2 million infusion to Betaspring from the EDC thanks to a $13.1 million grant from the U.S. Treasury Department’s State Small Business Credit Initiative.
And the beginning of the year saw Betaspring named to the TechStars Network, a White House-sponsored initiative designed to connect startup accelerators from around the world.
Topping 2011 in the coming year will be a tall order, but given Betaspring’s track record, hardly out of the question. &#8226

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