From left: Matt Benson, chair of the Entrepreneur of the Year Committee; Matt Albuquerque, 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year; Toral Cowieson, NH High Tech Council board chair; and Matt Cookson of Cookson Strategies. Photo by Malarkey Photo Group LLC.
Tech companies either innovate or die, and the state’s leading tech association (NH High Tech Council) is hitting its own refresh button by changing its name, hiring a new executive director, refocusing its efforts to serve its members, and integrating Live Free and Start into its DNA.
It’s already been a big year for the Council—it absorbed Alpha Loft to ensure that programming and resources would continue to be in place in NH to help startups—and in June it celebrated the 30th anniversary of its Entrepreneur of the Year award. (That award was given to Matt Albuquerque of Next Step Bionics & Prosthetics Inc. in Manchester.) It also awarded its first Lifetime Achievement Award, posthumously, to Ralph Baer, who helped launch the home gaming industry by inventing Pong.
At the Entrepreneur of the Year ceremony, Toral Cowieson, board chair, announced several major changes to the Council, including rechristening the organization as NH Tech Alliance, which will go into effect in the fall.
“The terminology is outdated. We wanted to be more inclusive and position ourselves as a partner with others in the tech ecosystem,” Cowieson says of switching from Council to Alliance. “Our stakeholders include businesses, academia, government [and other organizations]. We have a critical role to play as an alliance to be a convener and get individuals around the table to address issues critical to the state.”
She says the Alliance can do a better job within NH’s tech ecosystem to bring businesses, academia and other partners together to tackle the state’s workforce challenges.
The Alliance has established four pillars it wants to address, based on feedback from its members: talent and workforce development, education and programs, advocacy and policy, and ecosystem engagement. To help launch the 2.0 version of the Alliance, the board has instituted a search for a full-time executive director.
Cookson Strategies, led by Matt Cookson, has been serving in that role. Cookson continues to serve as the executive director and will switch to an advisory role once a new executive director is selected. “Matt Cookson has been fabulous, and he and his team have done a great job,” Cowieson says. “We experienced growth under Matt’s leadership.” Both the board and Cookson agreed it was time to hire a full-time executive director. A new director has not yet been selected.
The new executive director will focus on advancing the Alliance’s four major pillars, increasing membership, forming strategic alliances and being a “strong advocate and voice for our members at the state level,” Cowieson says.
The NH Tech Alliance announced in July that it is integrating Live Free and Start, an initiative that promotes startups in NH. Along with its acquisition of Alpha Loft, the integration of Live Free and Start is aimed at strengthening the Alliance’s capabilities of serving NH’s tech startups.
Representatives of both Alpha Loft and the NH Business Finance Authority (which launched Live Free and Start) separately approached the NH Tech Alliance about being the home organization of the programs. Cowieson says the proposals fit the new strategic direction of the Alliance.
“We can accelerate that work and help position [start-up founders and investors] for success in New Hampshire,” in addition to serving established businesses, Cowieson says. With the acquisition of Alpha Loft, the Alliance gained its first full-time paid staff members—Joshua Cyr, director of education and acceleration, and Kristen Crawford, director of development and entrepreneurship networks for the Alpha Loft program.
Liz Gray, who established Live Free and Start as director of entrepreneurship at the NH Business Finance Authority (BFA), was recently named state director of the NH Small Business Development Center. She will remain on the board of the Alliance.
The NH Tech Alliance has established a Startup Committee, which includes former advisory board members of Live Free and Start as well as others with a vested interest in the start-up community, Cowieson says. The Alliance also reestablished a committee dedicated to specifically serving members of the biotech and medtech industries, as they are a growing segment of NH’s tech ecosystem, Cowieson says.
“We are reorganizing and rebranding to position ourselves for the tech ecosystem,” she says. “Part of the Alliance’s role is positioning New Hampshire as a place to grow a business, attract employees and have people stay and work here. As a state we’ve done a good job around the tourism piece, but the tech sector also adds a lot of value and we want to see the tech sector promoted. The Alliance has a role to play in that.”
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