3210

Mark Spencer, founder at Digium, speaks to our 3210 membership in 2016.

In 2015, I was recruited by Curse Gaming to move from Boston, Massachusetts, to Huntsville, Alabama, to help manage their network of gaming influencers. In the process, I fell in love with this little city (Huntsville) that aspired to become a tech hub like Austin.

Shortly after moving there and observing the surplus of engineering talent and the lack of innovation infrastructure, I created 3210, a biweekly, invite-only morning community group that congregated to meet founders and deep-dive startups. The group was an overnight success, attracting hundreds of founders, business owners, and professionals who aspired to start their own companies.

A year later, 3210 would become one of the core community functions of my forthcoming nonprofit, Urban Engine.

Jake Hare, founder at Launchpeer, speaks to our members at 7am.

Brandon Kruse, then founder at DialMaxx and now founder at CommentSold, was one of our early presenters.

On some occasions, we’d deep dive an existing startup’s model and then break into groups of 4 to brainstorm business ideas that leverage the same business model in a different context. This photo was from a deep dive of Slack.

Eventually we moved into hosting larger events with more successful local entrepreneurs. Here I am interviewing Andy Smith, founder at Daily Burn, in 2016. Andy would eventually join my nonprofit, Urban Engine’s, board of directors, as referenced in the Techstars book, “Do More Faster.”

In 2017, we flew Dylan Enright, director of fundraising at Wefunder, to Huntsville to speak at 3210 and to facilitate the first-ever live equity crowdfunding of a business. During the event, 3210 members pulled out their phones and invested in a Huntsville business in real-time via the Wefunder app.

After each founder deep-dive at 3210, we’d network and share startup ideas.