How Does the Story End?: The 2022 Birmingham Entrepreneurial Assessment

How Does the Story End?: The 2022 Birmingham Entrepreneurial Assessment

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...
FAV Honored by UAB’s Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

FAV Honored by UAB’s Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

First Avenue Ventures proudly received the 2022 Innovation Award for Community Partnership of the Year. The Innovation Awards, given by the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HIIE), recognize UAB...
Current Perspective on the Birmingham Entrepreneurial Scene: Mid-2022

Current Perspective on the Birmingham Entrepreneurial Scene: Mid-2022

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...
The Competitive Landscape: Advice from Lee Ross on The Structured Start-Up Podcast

The Competitive Landscape: Advice from Lee Ross on The Structured Start-Up Podcast

The fifth and final episode of The Structured Start-Up Podcast is all about the competitive landscape. For this episode, we turned to Lee Ross, the CEO of SlateXP, a Birmingham-based student safety software company. Ross has successfully launched two companies in...
Finding Your Entrepreneurial Story: Advice from Jim Cavale on The Structured Start-Up Podcast

Finding Your Entrepreneurial Story: Advice from Jim Cavale on The Structured Start-Up Podcast

The fourth episode of The Structured Start-Up podcast focuses on the importance of finding your entrepreneurial story. As Mike Goodrich, the principal of First Avenue Ventures, says, “If you don’t have a compelling narrative that people will buy into, your...