Kearfott Corporation-Motion Systems Division, Purchase the 2016-2018 Business and Industry Directory. If the outdoor industry is more your speed, well, strap in. While an improvement, that is still the 4th highest unemployment number in the state. On top of that, the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority released $5M in grant funding to businesses hurt by the drop in tourism, predicted to sustain roughly 4,800 jobs. You may not find a better time to try something new in our lifetimes than right now. Contact us at avlwatchdog@gmail.com. Steven’s certainly a worthy dog to join your kennel. For example, Venture Asheville, a high-growth startup initiative led by the Economic Development Coalition, exists to grow the next-generation of locally headquartered companies. Retention refers to all the programs like the CARES act, PPP, and EIDL that deploy capital to existing businesses to keep them afloat, to try to ward off a recession, and to keep people employed. These spikes are caused by a host of factors but two stick out: layoffs and novel problems emerging. Venture Asheville views new venture creation as a necessary component of the ecosystem, but also one that sustains a social equity gap. New funding opportunities, business-sustaining grants, an urban exodus, remote work policies, and new venture creation all point to an Asheville rebound. We went from best to the bottom in 3 months. A pdf and xls file are emailed to you after purchase. That being said, even the simplest business needs some startup capital to check things off the must-do list: register with the state, buy a domain, source product, build a website, design a logo, etc… Most founders begin with personal savings or a friends-and-family round. The Asheville Angels, a long-running angel investor network in the VentureSouth syndicate, has pumped nearly $500K into tech-focused startups this year. “Some businesses have needed additional bandwidth, but the greater demand has been from homes,” Goosmann said. By April 2020, unemployment was nearly 21%, and regionally at 16.5%, That’s close to 34,000 out-of-work people. It is in this turbulence that opportunities are realized and value can be created. Companies that once dismissed the idea of employees working from Asheville out of hand are now much more open to the idea of remote workers. Now there are some strings attached to this funding: the funding must remain in these 18 western counties, the funding is dedicated to healthcare innovation, delivery, and efficiency, and all $25M must be deployed by the fifth anniversary of the acquisition (January 31, 2024). Rates of new venture creation reliably spike during recessions. Good work. People are willing to move here, or have already had their eye on Asheville.”. This equity issue is the reason Venture Asheville created the Asheville Impact Micro Grant program. Many of these people are looking for remote work, but many of them are also open to relocation.”, Jon Jones, CEO of Anthroware, a digital product development agency, echoes Moore, “We had a lot of applicants from New York, Chicago, California… Lots of big markets.