Front, from left, Phyllis and Michael Peabody and Gerald Buckley, prospective Collaboratorium tenants. Back, Sean Griffin (left), chair of the Mayor's Entrepreneurial Spirit Award and Clint Baranowski of Kanbar Properties
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Tulsa Business Staff
2/16/2009
Since Mayor Kathy Taylor’s election four years ago, the City of Tulsa has made unprecedented strides in promoting and igniting local entrepreneurs, helping create new businesses and new jobs in and around the city.With programs like the Tulsey Awards, the Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards and the Collaboratorium, Taylor and her team of business-minded supporters are helping local entrepreneurs not only elaborate on their ideas, but also start and maintain thriving small businesses that are helping support and grow the local economy. The Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, in its third year with the 2009 awards process launching on April 2, is a partnership with SpiritBank, inspired in part by the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, that was born out of a desire to motivate entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Tulsa, Taylor said. “What many of the past contestants tell us is that the award process is more important to their entrepreneurial growth than the award itself. The coaching, judging and critical questioning has helped them think strategically about their business. They gain the skills to sell their business model in a concise way and, in the process, support getting the real value differentiation of their business plan down on paper, which is a challenging feat,” Taylor said. “The intention of the Mayor’s Tulsa Entrepreneurial Spirit Award is to make it sustainable so it can be carried on. While this began due to my personal passion, leadership from the chair of the Spirit Award, Sean Griffin, and the entrepreneurial team, are working to create a replicable model – one that will remain flexible enough to meet the needs of an ever changing entrepreneurial environment,” she said. An offshoot of the Spirit Award is the Collaboratorium, 10th floor office space in a Kanbar property at 111 W. Fifth St., that will house entrepreneurs and offer them additional resources. As part of his winning of the award. Grocio.com founder Gerald Buckley will receive space in the center when the facility opens early this year. Griffin is leading the Collaboratorium through the planning process and is working to define how the space will be used and what services will be offered. The Tulsa Business Journal asked entrepreneurs who participated in the Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award t how it impacted their businesses: Apples and Oranges Gerald Buckley, winner of the 2008 Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards, devised the idea for Grocio.com as he and his wife were leaving the grocery store after a particularly expensive trip. “I thought, ‘Surely there’s a way, before our next shopping trip, to put in our grocery list (on an Internet search) and compare prices,’” Buckley said. But there wasn’t. When Buckley launches Grocio.com this month, he’ll launch the first ever “apples to apples” grocery comparison Web site. More than 3,000 potential users nationwide have registered at Grocio.com. When the site is up, users will be able to, free of charge, input their grocery shopping lists and compare prices at local participating stores. The site will also offer free, printable coupons that coincide with the user’s list. The site is also free to grocers; Buckley will make money off of a distribution fee charged to manufacturers for the coupons downloaded from his site. “We provide basic, bare-knuckles comparison. If someone wants to know what orange Jell-O is going for in Tulsa, they can search for that and we’re going to spill the beans. Some grocers don’t like that, and some do,” said Buckley. He said some grocers feel comfortable with how their prices will compare, while others have said they want more control on how their prices are marketed on the site. He hopes to launch the site this month in Tulsa, with launches following in Oklahoma City, Chicago, Manhattan and San Francisco at dates yet to be determined. As winner of the Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, Buckley received a $30,000 prize from SpiritBank, which he said has helped accelerate the launch of his business.
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Aerospace
