When start-ups begin, it’s akin to Joseph Campbell’s mythical hero’s journey. Instead of battling hydras and gorgons alone, entrepreneurs often help each other face obstacles like entrenched markets, financing and abject fear of failure.

It is a symbiotic relationship that makes sense to Shradha Agarwal and Rishi Shah, both 31 and Co-Founders of ContextMedia, a health care media company in Chicago. The two entrepreneurs are expanding their 10-year-old company, which they started when they were students at Northwestern University. They have made a point of supporting other start-ups by financing an angel fund called Jumpstart Ventures. The fund has backed more than 45 businesses, giving $20 million since 2011.

Although there are no precise estimates on how many such ecosystems exist, the Kauffman Foundation, a research organisation focusing on entrepreneurship, found that nearly every one of the more than 360 major metropolitan areas in the United States had such a network in place.

ContextMedia provides customised health care information on screens at doctors’ offices and other sites. Doctors can show patients digital 3-D anatomical diagrams of procedures using ContextMedia “wallboards” or tablets. Their material is now viewed by more than six million patients a month at 25,000 medical practices or health care locations.

The company is also working with the Mayo Clinic to bring their media content directly to hospitals and physician offices.

More than 400 people work at the company, whose revenue last year was $63.5 million. It hopes to add more than 200 workers by the end of the year.

Although ContextMedia has made inroads into a notoriously difficult market to crack – doctors’ waiting and examination rooms – it was done without venture capitalists, who weren’t willing to take a risk, Agarwal said. Support from the Chicago entrepreneurial community not only got her company started, but it also helped the company clear some high hurdles.

Professors at Northwestern first helped Shah and Agarwal. And the founders “bootstrapped,” or self-funded, their enterprise during the recession. “In 2008-2009, we slowed down,” Agarwal said, “so we had to reconnect to our journey, which was our passion for changing health care.” With the Jumpstart fund, she says she now wants to “pay it forward” to other entrepreneurs.

These support systems need to be diverse to be effective, though. According to the World Economic Forum, which surveyed more than a thousand entrepreneurs around the world, what start-ups value most are accessible markets, funding, regulatory framework, an educated work force and major universities. That doesn’t mean, however, that the network always provides robust financial backing from big-money players like large venture capital firms.

Source: Business Standard