Everyone knows Maine is the best place to live and raise a family. Can it be the best place to start a business? There is tremendous opportunity here in Maine to start and grow your own company. And growing new Maine companies is critical to our state. Do you want to keep young people in Maine? Grow the tax base? Develop careers and jobs? Startups are the answer.
The network of support for startups is strong. You can go to SCORE, whose mentors, many of whom are retired executives, will meet you at your office. You can go to the Small Business Development Center (with offices around the state) for advice on everything from developing financial projections to becoming a vendor to the Federal Government. The Maine Center for Entrepeneurs even has a startup boot camp called Top Gun, which currently has 47 companies from all over the state enrolled. I have served as a mentor for Top Gun, and it is intense fun. (Looking for a volunteer opportunity? The group is always looking for experienced startup founders and executives to serve as mentors).
Every company started somehow, somewhere. From the cable company to the gas station to this publication. Someone had the idea and the dream. There are many famous Maine startups that are now publicly traded international companies worth billions, like WEX, IDEXX and Covetrus. There are legendary personal care startups like Tom’s of Maine, and local clothing manufacturing companies like Hyperlite Mountain Gear of Biddeford, with almost 100 employees after starting just a few years ago.
And there is financing. When it’s time to raise money, it is often said that Maine is the best place to raise your first $500,000. If you’re willing to go all in, there’s a great network of funders and banks ready to make your idea a reality with significant funding. It can’t be a side gig though. It has to be well planned, researched, tested and ready to commercialize.
If you’re in that early stage, I recommend starting at Maine Technology Institute, which can make small awards to do market testing and prototyping. 
From there, many other funding opportunities exist, such as Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI) who makes significant investments and loans tied to their social mission of good pay and environmental sustainability. They have advisors covering each county in the state. Once your venture gets a little larger, the Maine Venture Fund, a quasi-state agency based Augusta, invests in fast-growing Maine companies that are looking to expand nationally or internationally.
Another great approach is to enter a pitch contest. Trust me, there’s nothing better for honing your business idea than being forced to explain it to other people… and there are many pitch contests in Maine. I have been involved with Gorham Savings Bank’s “Launchpad” for several years; their pitch competition is currently seeking contestants. You can also apply to promote your idea on TV with Greenlight Maine, which airs on Sunday mornings at 10AM on WCSH6.
But remember: it will always take more money than you think, and there will be curveballs. Founding a company is exciting, sometimes too exciting. It is a time when drawing on that network of business supports and advisers will be critical, so be nice to everyone on the way up.
The stereotypical startup founder may not be what you think – in fact, Maine has become a national leader when it comes to companies owned by women. Women start more businesses in Maine than men do, and women-owned businesses in Maine are also more effective at creating jobs and boosting revenue that those started by men. New Ventures Maine is an absolutely top-notch mentorship program for women, with classes at University College-Saco and other schools around the state.
Still, we have more to do, and there are some changes I’d like to see.
First, so far in this article I’ve mentioned CEI, SCORE, Maine Venture Fund, Small Business Development Center, Maine Center for Entrepreneurs, Maine Technology Institute and several others, and I’m feeling bad about quite a few I’ve left out. We are lucky to have all of these organizations supporting startups. But who’s your first call? It’s confusing. We should have a “no wrong door for the entrepreneur” program, kind of like a 411 for startup founders.
And once you get going, two or three years after the ribbon cutting, it can get kind of lonely. There isn’t as much support for the company that’s got out of the gate well but started to plateau. It’s like we’re a fish hatchery that just pours a bunch of fish fry into the ocean – and hopes they come back. That doesn’t always work. We need to change that, with more funding and greater availability of business mentorship programs for midlevel companies that have plateaued.
Our startup economy is also much too southern-Maine focused. I looked at the number of new businesses founded across the state in 2017, and it is depressing to see single digit numbers in Washington and Piscataquis counties while there are hundreds of new businesses founded in York and Cumberland counties. There is no technical reason for this, and it’s clearly a missed opportunity.
Lastly, we need to work harder to get the new ideas and technologies developed at our universities out to the marketplace. A patent doesn’t do anyone any good sitting on the shelf. The bridge from research and development to commercialization is where the new jobs are. We should build that bridge to tech developed in Maine institutes of higher education. There should be hundreds of startups around our universities, like there is in Boston, instead of the small cluster in Orono we have now.
To sum up, we’ve got a modest cost of living (compared to Silicon Valley, anyway) and a lot of very talented people. We’ve got world class colleges and universities. We’re known for our hard work and Yankee ingenuity.
So, start that next big thing. I’m on the other end of the phone if I can help.
Marty Grohman of Biddeford is a business owner, former Independent State Representative and candidate for US Congress. He served two terms in the Maine Legislature where he was a member of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Marty hosts a podcast for Maine entrepreneurs called ‘The Grow Maine Show’ – available on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher and many other platforms. Learn more about Marty at www.growmaine.com.
