It's Your Business: A year in review for Bloomington's The Mill
December is a perfect time reflect, especially in the last week of the year when lots of folks are taking time off and it’s easier to find time to think. For me, reflecting includes reviewing my monthly stakeholder updates from the previous year, taking stock of the big wins and getting motivated for the upcoming year.
My first takeaway is that we have the best Entrepreneurial Support Organization (ESO) staff in the state, half of whom are new to the team. This year, we welcomed Haley Pritchett, Code/IT Academy program manager; John Fernandez, senior vice president, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships; Nick Faulkenberg, venue and booking manager; Scott Reynolds, general counsel for Flywheel Fund; Kelsey Fitzgerald, membership manager; Richard Millunchick, Startup coach; Jerrell Stephens, facilities manager; and Aimee Cottle, head of marketing.
My second takeaway is that The Mill and our startups have accomplished a lot this year. Our staff and the companies we help are extraordinary hard workers. I’m proud to lead this group of folks as we help bring Bloomington into the new economy. They’re smart folks who are doing cool, interesting things and I hope the list below makes you agree. Thank you to our cornerstone sponsors — city of Bloomington, Cook Group and Indiana University — for providing the financial support to make this work and impact possible.
January
Atlas Solutions re-brands to Grantcycle
The Mill signs an agreement with the Redevelopment Commission (city of Bloomington) to market and develop the Trades District and the Tech Center
Mill revenue grew 33% year-over-year
upSTRTER, an alternate career pathway program for K12, launches
Third annual Freezefest is held
February
Seven Mill or Flywheel companies are nominated for nine Mira awards
The Mill is nominated for Mira’s Entrepreneurial Service Excellence award
Three of five Nexus South (pitch competition) winners are Mill/Crossroads/Flywheel companies
Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, also a gubernatorial candidate, visits The Mill
March
infoSentience announces their new partnership with CBS Sports
rScan wins Crossroads Collegiate, our statewide pitch competition
More about 2024: Kerry Thomson announces appointments to Bloomington leadership positions
April
DREAM Tech is selected to participate in NIH’s Company Showcase at the BIO International Convention
The ecosystem is growing: A former co-founder of a Mill company is a new co-founder of another Mill company
$3,000,000 of final construction funding is secured for the Tech Center
We showcased three pieces of Crane intellectual property (IP) as part of our Crane accelerator
Bloomington won Midwest Startup’s “Midwest Madness for Best Startup City”
May
Sen. Mike Braun, also a gubernatorial candidate, visits The Mill
One of our startup founders, Erik Coyne, is named chancellor of Ivy Tech Bloomington
Flywheel Fund III invested at 10-15 times the national average for women- and minority-founded teams
Everewear and ReproHealth Technologies win Crossroads Spring, among an all-time record for applicants
Launched two websites: tradesdistrict.com and codeitacademy.org
June
Blueprint Stats is sold
Civic Champs receives $500,000 from the RK Mellon Foundation
The Mill publishes a “Notice of Offering” of the developable lots in the Trades District
The Mill becomes a “HubSpot for Startups” organization
Lemonade Day participation increases 50% year-over-year
Five students from CompTIA Security+ find jobs
Two Flywheel companies raise $7.5 million total (AfterSchool HQ and Qualifi)
July
Traduality is accepted to gener8tor
infoSentience signs an agreement with the world’s largest futures and options market
Four of 15 Nexus North/Central/South (pitch competition) winners are Mill/Crossroads/Flywheel companies
Two Flywheel companies win second place at Innovation Showcase
Advisory board for the Trades District is announced
The Mill becomes a Fast Company Best Places to Work
The showcase Startup Summer, our paid internship for collegiate founders, is held
August
Grantcycle participates in GrowthX
Bids request for the Tech Center are published
Crossroads Fall (our 15th!) applications opened
The Mill works with Monroe County Community School Corp. again to support their entrepreneurship curriculum
We also welcomed our second batch of high school interns
We judged a $1 million investment competition at Rally
September
Indiana University names their new head of innovation and commercialization
We secure $3 million additional for construction of Tech Center
The Mill is appointed to Ivy Tech’s entrepreneurship advisory board
New terms have begun for The Mill’s Board of Directors: Rahul Shrivastav (IU Provost), Jeana Finlinson (Cook Medical), Chelsea Linder (TechPoint), Don Lukes (IU Treasurer), Nate Lattimer (ShipSigma), and Eli Serrano (student entrepreneur representative)
October
Gubernatorial candidate Eric Doden visits The Mill
We produced a dozen events for Innovation Week, our annual celebration of events around technology and entrepreneurship, designed to showcase our community and get folks excited about our ecosystem
We broke ground on the Tech Center
Percipient moves to Bloomington
infoSentience partners with MaxPreps
Three of five Nexus State (pitch competition) winners are Mill/Crossroads/Flywheel companies
The Mill celebrates its 5th birthday
Pocket and Integrate, two EdTech companies, sweep Crossroads Fall
German American ranked #1 for Best Places to Work, our 6th annual edition
We moved seven Bloomington Remote participants, a monthly record
$40,000 grant awarded to pilot a southern Indiana pre-accelerator
November
IU officially launches IU Innovates
Civic Champs is awarded a $70,000 Moonshot Grant
Site and foundation work is progressing on schedule for the Tech Center
gBETA Bloomington/Columbus and Main Street Showcases are held
December
The showcase for Cohorts, our pre-accelerator, is held
Paid.Care and Sheep Wool Pellets won Crossroads Idea
Thank you to Duke Energy for sponsoring our new Climate Resiliency track
Flywheel Fund
In April, Flywheel Fund IV surpassed its fundraising goal of $1 million with $1.1 million. We made our first investment in July. To date, we’ve made 15 investments totaling $660,000. A third of those investments were in Bloomington companies. We also started chapters in South Bend-Elkhart and Greater Lafayette, where we made our first investments in May and July, respectively. In August, Flywheel was named the third most active investor in the Great Lakes region.
Code/IT Academy
Partnering again with Ivy Tech, we ran three cohorts this year: in the winter for CompTIA Security+ which recorded an all-time high for applicants, in the summer for introduction to web development, and in the fall for Amazon Web Services (AWS). In May, The Mill won a $1.3 million grant to expand Code/IT Academy from Monroe County to southern Indiana. The first two counties were Washington and Crawford. The next three are Daviess, Dubois and Orange counties will come this summer. We expect to continue teaching 15-20 students on average for each class in each county. Thank you to ROI and READI for this generous award that allows to make an impact across southern Indiana.
ReBoot
Designed for folks who are interested in starting a business, we held cohorts in the winter for women and non-binary folx and we expanded to the entire community in the summer and fall. We moved from a six-week course meeting once a week to a more focused and intensive schedule where we met five times in a single week and also made the switch from meeting virtually over Zoom to meeting in person at The Mill. This drastically improved registrations, engagement and completion. Our winter cohort had 28 registrations and 19 completions, our summer cohort had 22 registrations and 14 completions, and our fall cohort had 20 registrations and 18 completions.
Pat East is executive director of The Mill, a nonprofit entrepreneurship center on a mission to launch and accelerate startups and ultimately to become Indiana’s center of gravity for entrepreneurship.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: It's Your Business: A year in review for Bloomington's The Mill