With $30,000 in start-up capital, three Woodstock business leaders helped create Startup Woodstock, a pitch competition that will help launch a new business.
“The idea is that the closer the company is to solving a critical need within the community, that’s a big plus,” said Cliff Johnson, one of Startup Woodstock’s organizers and judges.
Johnson moved with her family from Atlanta to Woodstock during the pandemic. More than a decade ago, while working in Portland, Oregon, he founded Vacasa, an international vacation rental management company, which he left in 2018.
Johnson organizes the Woodstock competition with Jon Spector and Larry Niles, both members of the city’s Economic Development Commission, which focuses on issues such as housing, child care and downtown revitalization. The commission provided $10,000 for the competition, and the additional $20,000 came from private donors.
“We really want people to come here,” Niles said. “We’re going to do everything we can to address some of these very obvious issues, or barriers, to opening a business.”
High downtown rents contribute to barriers, Niles said, along with the perception that Woodstock has a bureaucracy that is difficult for prospective business owners to navigate. While the first may be true, he refuted the second, saying nearly all business owners interviewed by the commission said they had positive experiences with local government.
Niles also rejects the idea that Woodstock only caters to a certain clientele.
“I still cringe that we’re just a wealthy town,” he said, “because we’re made up of a lot of merchants and a lot of people who have lived here all their lives. .”
With that in mind, Niles and Johnson said Startup Woodstock hopes to cast a wide net by recruiting potential candidates for the prize money. People whose ideas may be in their infancy are welcome to apply. The same goes for service companies such as electrical, landscaping, and child care companies.
“A $30,000 grant could help someone start a new child care business quite easily,” Johnson said.
The competition criteria requires the business to fill an unfilled void in the community and hopefully create gainful employment or a sustainable owner-operated business.
If successful, Johnson said he hopes the competition will create “a culture of entrepreneurship and (allow) people to create their own destiny.”
Johnson imagines that kind of culture could develop in Woodstock. He moved to Vermont to raise his family, relishing Woodstock’s school system, tight-knit community, and access to the outdoors. He works remotely and sees the vacation destination of Windsor County as a draw for more remote workers like himself.
For a town of only about 3,000 people, Woodstock devotes substantial resources to economic development. Since 2016, the city’s Economic Development Commission has awarded more than $1 million in grants to support events, physical infrastructure, marketing, and other initiatives.
This year, the city government created a program paying landlords to convert short-term rentals to long-term rentals. The program aims to alleviate the shortage of housing in the city, aggravated by the tourist attraction of the village. Landlords received $3,000 if they accepted a one-year lease with a tenant and $7,000 for a two-year lease.
Johnson acknowledged that “concerns that arise when a community receives more vacation rentals,” including through Vacasa, adding that short-term rentals can be a “minor contributing factor to housing affordability.”
Still, he thinks vacation rentals can be a “positive part of most communities” when they are licensed, taxed and comply with local regulations.
Although a new idea, Startup Woodstock could expand if successful, according to organizers. Applicants can apply until December 1, when a panel of judges to be announced will narrow the field to a group of finalists by December 15. These finalists will present their ideas in February and a winner will be chosen soon. after.
Want to stay up to date with the latest business news? Sign up here to receive a weekly email on all of VTDigger’s reports on local businesses and economic trends. And check out our new Businesses section here.
 100vw, 610px”/></noscript><img data-attachment-id=)