Next year, the startup and tech scene in Denton could look a lot different.
City officials are working to establish public and private partnerships to make sure the scene stays here and grows, and are looking to fund a co-working space and technology improvements in the city.
The Denton City Council approved $220,000 for the initiative in August and Aimee Bissett, economic development director for the city, is working with local companies and other North Texas companies to implement these changes.
“Basically, it’s a program that supports high-tech and emergency technology companies by creating them here, and fostering new companies as well as recruiting existing companies to Denton,” she told the council. “The intent here is to create high-wage, knowledge-based jobs to keep our educated workforce in Denton.”
This initiative, called CoDenton, has two parts. One is to help local entrepreneurs by having a co-working space where startup business owners and developers can rent office space and have programming and events to help them develop.
Part two is to recruit existing companies here by improving the infrastructure with high-speed fiber optic networks and strong wireless Internet, as well as find new ways to create financial incentives to get these companies in Denton.
“We’ve found that Denton is already a natural draw for these types of companies because we offer a community that’s attractive to a younger workforce, and typically with tech companies there’s a younger workforce,” Bissett said.
With the help of TechMill, a local organization that has a co-working space in Denton already and holds events, the project has potential. The city is also in talks with the Dallas Entrepreneur Center to potentially help manage the space, while keeping it all things Denton.
This is the sort of thing the TechMill founders have wanted in the area, but because all of the board members have full-time jobs, it’s been challenging to create the space that Denton wants, said Kyle Taylor, one of the TechMill board members.
“I think we realized if we had a space that we don’t have to worry about maintaining and all the co-working space would be handled by DEC, then we can focus on programming, events and community building, which we really focused on when we formed,” Taylor said.
A partnership hasn’t been formed with the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, nor with any third-party company to come install the types of infrastructure technology companies are looking for, Bissett told the council. A timeline also hasn’t been created at this point, but the project is funded for the entire fiscal year by the city budget.
Trey Bowles, CEO of the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, said the community that’s been established in Denton without city help is already impressive.
“I think that Denton is one of the bright parts of what’s going on in North Texas for entrepreneurship,” he said. “Denton has a very unique, individual and powerful culture that I think is going to make for a really powerful community that they build.”
Existing technology companies in Denton are growing and helping the local economy, Bissett said.
GSATi, a company that helps businesses with technology, marketing and managed services, had three employees in Denton in 2012. Now, it has almost 60 employees who spend an estimated $500,000 in Denton annually, Bissett said. These growing businesses are the types of companies the city wants to attract, she said.
This is also what the grassroots technology supporters want as well, Taylor said. TechMill was founded because organizers wanted to provide support and networking for software developers, designers and innovators in the city, and now the city will help further their mission.
“It’s not a surprise the city wants to do this because we’ve going toward this for a while now, and one of our biggest things is we want to see Denton as a premier technology center,” Taylor said. “I think they recognize the community is kind of behind it, so it works out great on both sides.”
