The Idea Shop

In one corner, a team of students with their own startup company huddle around a 3D printer to work on a product prototype they plan to pitch to investors in a few weeks.

At another workstation, a retiree works in the woodwork shop on a project she intends to sell at an upcoming farmer’s market.

The door opens, and a father and son walk in wearing Cub Scout uniforms. They’ve got a Pinewood Derby car to build for the upcoming race.

That’s the vision behind the Idea Shop, a facility that opened in early 2019 in downtown Starkville and was made possible by the USDA and an individual donor to Mississippi State University. The 2,000-square-foot space is about three-quarters “maker space” and one-quarter “retail incubator,” said Eric Hill, the director of the MSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, commonly called the MSU e-Center, which built and runs the Idea Shop.

“The charter of the Idea Shop is not entrepreneurially driven per se,” Hill said. “There’s no entrepreneurial reason somebody has to have to interact with the makerspace. We want it to be an inspirational place, the spirit and culture of ‘making.’”

Hill said that people who want to sign up and use the maker space, which features a wood shop, 3D-printing facility and other tools for creating physical products, do not have to be students or faculty of the university. In fact, they don’t have to be part of any sort of business-incubation program.

“It will have its own programming—a series of workshops on how to use this equipment,” he said of the Idea Shop. “The goal is to involve the community members and alumni in the area, get them from their garages to here.”

Michael Lane, a recent graduate of Mississippi State with a degree in mechanical engineering, has been tapped to run the Idea Shop. He and his father were responsible for a lot of the construction of the space, and Lane takes personal pride in bringing it to people in Starkville.

Lane says he comes from the small town of Amory, Miss., where he wouldn’t have dreamt of having access to resources such as 3D printers and other tools the Idea Shop offers to locals. Now he’s running the membership-based organization where kids and adults can access those sophisticated tools for individual or group projects.

“It works like a gym membership, except … ours will run you through a training course when you come to join the first time, safety regulations and stuff for the space,” Lane said. “You pay monthly, (semi-annually) or annually.” The Idea Shop is open to members from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. during the week, and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

One of the goals of the Idea Shop is to help companies working their way through the MSU e-Center’s programs create the product prototypes they need to prove their business ideas. The e-Center is on campus and is designed to support students and faculty who want to start their own businesses. In fact, that’s a major differentiator at Mississippi State, Hill said.

Hill says that MSU students can participate in the e-Center “Venture Capital” program regardless of their major and what their project is. The program can grant up to $7,500 to promising companies in incremental stages. They start with a $500 grant to prototype their project. After training and mentoring, they can gain access to $2,000 more, and after proving their potential and going in front of a review board, some student companies can qualify for another $5,000 in funding.

Those grants have led to real companies forming and raising some serious money, Hill said. In fiscal-year 2018, 110 different teams from seven different colleges went through the e-Center’s programming. They ended up raising $1.1 million dollars as startups.

A lot of that startup capital has come from the Bulldog Network, a group of investors that aren’t directly associated with Mississippi State University, but is comprised of MSU alumni and people with a strong interest in economic growth in the region.

“I can’t overstate the Bulldog Network’s effect on our growth,” Hill said. “In fiscal year 2017, our student companies raised about $200,000. In 2018, (they raised) $1.1 million, and we’re on track to beat that this fiscal year.”

That focus on getting startup companies up and funded in the MSU ecosystem has spilled into Starkville, particularly downtown, where startup companies have taken up shop. The Idea Shop stands to be a big part of that.

“That’s another area that excites me,” Lane said. “I also have my own startup, and I enjoy entrepreneurship, and the Idea Shop is important for people wanting to come in and build their prototypes. If you want to raise money, it helps if there is something you can visually see, move and manipulate.”

The Idea Shop also has a “retail incubator” space where MSU-affiliated startup companies can sell their products and test the items’ popularity while gathering customer feedback.

While non-students can take advantage of the MSU e-Center (everything but the grants), The Idea Shop is really designed to be a living, breathing part of downtown Starkville.

“We have a tremendous relationship with the city,” said Hill. “Students with startups graduate and set up offices in downtown Starkville, creating a reason for people to be downtown. The city loves the younger energy staying downtown.”

“What we’re trying to do is create some economic churn and some activity downtown,” said Jeffrey Rupp, the former mayor of Columbus, Miss., and now the director of outreach for MSU’s College of Business. “We are looking at having family nights, so that instead of going bowling or to movies, they could come in and do a project together.”

Rupp says he wants to weave the Idea Shop into the fabric of the community. He calls it, “blurring the lines between town and gown,” so that the university and its resources are more accessible to the city in which it’s located.

“We think this could be a good model we could replicate in other communities,” Rupp said. “Mississippi State is a land-grant institution. By its very mission, we have a service component. To me, this is a logical extension of our mission as a university.”

Hill says that the Idea Shop and MSU e-Center fit into a larger narrative about Mississippi as a state.

“This is not about being the best in Mississippi, this is about making Mississippi more competitive on the national level,” Hill said. “We’re looking heavily at how MSU can be a driver among our state partners to help Mississippi promote that message and vision.”

In 2019, his plan is to create more funded startups at the e-Center, and he expects that the Idea Shop will impact the number of people trying new projects and building better prototypes.

“One thing we’re sure of is that it’ll impact the culture in Starkville and beyond,” Hill said, speaking of the entrepreneurial and innovation culture in the state. “That’s huge.”