My Startup Ecosystem Journey

Rick Gregg July 30,2025 What do you think?

It’s been one year ago today since I embedded myself deep inside of the Omaha, Nebraska startup ecosystem. I wanted to know why ninety-nine (99%) percent of entrepreneurs in the ecosystem are routinely shunned and shut out from social acceptance and funding opportunities. First, a disclaimer: my comments are not meant to be critical of anyone and are based on hundreds of hours mentoring entrepreneurs, attending community events and investing in startups. Overall, participants in the ecosystem generally act with good intentions.

Entrepreneurs comprise the largest group of participants in the ecosystem and are given no voice. They’re invisible. Yet they are the economic engine that creates the value. Less than one percent (<1%) of entrepreneurs receive funding. They’re in the club. Or so they think. There are three main actors in any ecosystem: builders, funders, and entrepreneurs. The agendas of all are misaligned with each other. In some cases they conspire with each other to create greater misalignment and always to the detriment of the entrepreneur. Let’s take a deeper look at who the actors are and how they behave.

The Actors

1. Builders. Ecosystem community builders have the best intentions but no experience building or funding a startup. They listen to the funders who have an outsized role in influencing programs, without understanding the entrepreneurs jobs to be done. They are cheerleaders that are very protective of their position and can exert an outsized influence over the entire ecosystem without the background to do so while promoting and enforcing the interests of the status quo – all to the detriment of the entrepreneur. What is the status quo? The status quo comprises incubators, accelerators, startup studios, hackathons, pitch competitions, grants, cohorts, application processes, builder-funder programming; pre-seed, and seed funds, etc.
   
   
2. Funders. The objectives of the funders are completely misaligned with entrepreneurs. They play the odds and nothing else while placing a firewall between the entrepreneur and their access to capital, continually moving the investment decision goal post. Funders routinely force a startup to scale before they are ready. Failure is at a high rate and is for some inexplicable reason, acceptable to the funder while devastating to the entrepreneur. There is no lifeline and you are left on your own. Clearly, they do not understand the entrepreneurs jobs to be done.
   
   
3. Entrepreneurs. Early stage entrepremeurs aren’t given the correct programs, equitable funding and ongoing support to succeed by the builders and funders, yet most need to be an active participant in the ecosystem status quo to even have a slim chance at gaining social acceptance by the ecosystem in order to have any chance of obtaining funding. It’s a losing proposition for the majority of entrepreneurs who are the only group that can create value. The builders and funders seek to monitize the entrepreneur without regard to their success, and as a result, the trust level between the entrepreneur and the status quo is low.

Ecosystem Customer Discovery and Validation

The ecosystem builders and funders have combined to tell entrepreneurs what they need instead of asking them what they want. This is where I stepped in. I wanted to know if this same pattern existed elsewhere, or if it was just an Omaha thing. I became involved as a mentor and investor in one of the more popular accelerators in the Reno, Nevada and Boulder, Colorado ecosystems. These ecosystems are light years ahead of Omaha in their development. Did my observations apply equally across all three – Omaha, Reno, and Boulder? The answer was a resounding yes.

Spending over the last year deep in customer discovery and validation of these ecosystems revealed the severe painful, emmotional jobs to be done by both entrepreneurs and funders. These jobs can’t ever be satisfied by the status quo. The jobs to be done are obvious and plain on the surface, but are completely ignored by the status quo in order to protect their own interests. In many cases, they ignore the problem exists and routinely dismiss what they can plainly see. It’s like going to the store for ketchup and ignoring everything else you see while walking down the aisle. It’s also ironic – the status quo emphasizes the use of customer discovery and validation, but either isn’t capable of “getting out of the building” or doesn’t really believe in or realize its value.

The answer is in front of their face, but the friction of human inertia prevents acceptance of a new way of doing things. My detailed findings and analysis which fill many gigabytes of storage and a countless number of banker boxes full of notes, interviews and documents has led me to think about startup ecosystems in a new, innovative way based on the community startup concept.

The primary, over-arching characteristic of a community startup is to democratize innovation and entrepreneurship for everyone. EVERYONE. The behavior of early stage startup ecosystem builders and funders is completely mis-aligned with the real value creator – the entrepreneur. The saaskamp Community Startup is creating a new business model that removes the traditional builders and funders giving the entrepreneur the control they need to be successful. Won’t you join us? Let me know what you think in the comments below.