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More than 40 local companies launch in unique startup program

The Startup Collaborative is a fellowship organization dedicated to radically improving the odds of a startup’s success.

Erica Wassinger, Co-Founder of the Startup Collaborative, says they looked at how other Midwest cities developed their startup ecosystems. 

Wassinger says they would generally launch a space, then an accelerator program and host a bunch of events.  But she says that wasn’t cutting it for Omaha and the Nebraska startup scene in general. 

So she says the Startup Collaborative got bullish about how they approached startup success and startup growth. 

Wassinger explains, instead of taking the best of other people’s models, they decided to invent their own.

"So what you see here is actually the merge of three ecosystem players, a traditional 90-day accelerator program called Straight Shot, a traditional startup incubator and co-working space called Omaha Startup Collaborative and then a very iconic community building organization in the greater Omaha chamber.”

Wassinger says the Startup Collaborative took the best of those three and came up a with new model that is more entrepreneur-friendly, is more focused on business growth and is more culturally right for a Midwest entrepreneur. 

More than 40 local entrepreneurs are launching their businesses through this new collaborative.  For more information, the website is startupcollaborative.co.