Aug 25, 2025 | 2025, Alabama, Birmingham, Birmingham Funded Start-Ups List, Economic Development, Entrepreneurial Assessment, Entrepreneurialism, Exits, FAV Funds, Financing, Founders, Investing, Legislation, Mid-Year Assessment, Regional Cooperation, Seed Investing, Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, Start-Ups, Valuation
“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” ― Carl Gustav Jung As we size up where we are mid-year with the Birmingham and Alabama entrepreneurial ecosystem, the theme that I see is: out of chaos comes order. One of the trends we’ve noticed...
Jul 28, 2023 | 2023, Alabama, Birmingham, Birmingham Funded Start-Ups List, Economic Development, Entrepreneurial Assessment, Entrepreneurialism, Financing, Founders, Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, Start-Ups
Birmingham and the Best Birmingham has a strange relationship with the concept and value of “the best.” Sure, we want to be the best place to live, work, and play; to have the best schools, best jobs, best houses. We want to hire the best. To my knowledge, no one in...
Jan 12, 2023 | 2022, 2023, Alabama, Birmingham, Birmingham Funded Start-Ups List, Economic Development, Entrepreneurial Assessment, Entrepreneurialism, Financing, Founders, Start-Ups
I have said this before, and I will probably say this again, but to grow our entrepreneurial economy, we need to directly invest in companies. We do not need to blindly invest in them, but we do not need to commission another study on the ecosystem. We need to be...
Aug 3, 2022 | 2022, Alabama, Birmingham, Birmingham Funded Start-Ups List, Economic Development, Entrepreneurial Assessment, Entrepreneurialism, Start-Ups, World Games
The best analogy that I have for start-ups and early stage companies in this time of tumultuous public markets is one of a submarine. A start-up shares the key benefit of being able to float beneath the surface — unaware and, to an extent, untroubled by the...
Jan 12, 2022 | 2021, 2022, Birmingham, Birmingham Funded Start-Ups List, COVID-19, Entrepreneurial Assessment, Entrepreneurialism, Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, Start-Ups
As always with the new year, we’re taking some time to pause and reflect. First Avenue does so by compiling our annual list of funded start-ups in Birmingham, which helps us analyze the health of the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. I also like to take stock...
