PORTLAND, Maine — When it comes to providing a fertile environment for entrepreneurs looking to start a business, Portland ranks high — alongside much bigger metropolitan areas like Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York City — according to the editors of one national magazine.
The magazine Popular Mechanics released a profile of the city’s local food and entrepreneurial scene Monday, as part of its “Startup Cities” series, which is an editorial project sponsored by Toyota.
Portland’s profile comes after videos focusing on Phoenix, Arizona, and Oakland, California.
“We expect big things out of Portland’s startups over the next year or so, regardless of its size,” the article states.
Jess Knox, founder of Maine Startup and Create Week and statewide coordinator for the Blackstone Accelerates Growth entrepreneurship program, said the spotlight on Portland stemmed from the first Maine Startup and Create Week in June.
The event featured entrepreneurs and startup gurus from around the country and aimed to connect them with early-stage businesses in Maine. The broader goal was to strengthen connections between entrepreneurs in Maine and elsewhere and make connections with industries that support new companies, including private investors.
Knox wrote in an email that he did multiple interviews with writers from Popular Mechanics starting in September and they later came to produce the video that features, among others, bar owners Andrew and Briana Volk, and Jason Ryan, the founder of a makerspace collaborative where people can learn to follow through on creative ideas and have access to tools and equipment they might not have at home.
“You can go into any coffee shop and run into entrepreneurs and CEOs,” Knox said in the video.
Ryan, whose project also allows people to rent space that he said in an earlier interview he hopes will help entrepreneurs launch businesses, said in the video that many people encouraged him along the way toward starting the project in a building at Thompson’s Point.
“All I did was tell a story and Portland was ready to hear it,” Ryan said. “They were ready to have a place where people could get together and share ideas and make stuff and empower themselves.”