Nashville hopes to become magnet for entrepreneurs

Business Editor

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce's bid to make sure Middle Tennessee takes full advantage of its entrepreneurial spirit is entering its final phase.

A 75-member task force will meet in April to review data and tinker with suggestions of how to market Nashville as a city where bright business ideas can take root and create jobs.

"We're about two-thirds of the way through our discovery process, and we have one more formal meeting of the task force coming up," said Robert A. Frist Jr., chairman and chief executive of HealthStream, and one of two entrepreneurs leading the chamber and Partnership 2010's task force.

The study of how to market Nashville as an entrepreneurial city, and how to coordinate efforts to help new entrepreneurs, is part of a five-year strategic business plan for the region.

"Entrepreneurship is a core pillar of what makes a city great and what attracts people," Frist said in an interview. "It helps a city grow and adds to the quality of life."

The task force has split into various committees to do fact-finding and to compare Nashville's startup environment with other major cities. Other cities being studied include San Diego, Lexington, Ky., and Raleigh, N.C.

Frist and Michael D. Shmerling, chairman of Choice Food Group and co-chairman of the chamber's task force, said one chore is to learn what other cities have done to promote the availability of funding, mentoring programs and business plan assistance in their areas.

The goal for Nashville is to build on angel fund investors, venture capital networks and other resources already in place here, Frist said.

"The resources are there. This is more about alignment and making sure that everyone knows what resources are here," he said. "We want to organize, align and promote all the organically occurring attributes we have in Nashville."

{}Marketing to come

Shmerling said one idea is to brand Nashville and the 10-county metropolitan area as a "place where entrepreneurs want to be." Think "Research Triangle" with some sort of Music City twist. An advertising campaign designed to draw new business investment and investors could take shape by the end of the year.

"Nashville has a rich legacy of entrepreneurship. We just need to coordinate all the resources and make sure the world knows this is a truly fabulous place," Shmerling said.

Frist said San Diego's "Connect" program has done a solid job of creating a one-stop shop designed to give entrepreneurs information about how and where to seek funding, how to rent space in a small-business incubator and where to get help drafting a business plan.

"Their system is noncompetitive. It supports the infrastructure already in place, including all the venture capital firms and academic resources," Frist said.

Shmerling said one advantage the entrepreneurial task force has here is that it does not have to reinvent the wheel.

"I've done business in other places, and sometimes you find that people work in silos and are very secretive.

"But it's a positive environment in Nashville. Any business I've ever started, you don't have trouble getting people to help as mentors or offer advice," he said.

Another plus for entrepreneurs is that Tennessee is one of a handful of states in the country with no state income tax. That helps entrepreneurs who create companies "build wealth," Shmerling said. "Tennessee is very generous."